China Quali

Speshal

World Champion
Valued Member
Wow.....!

Well that's thrown up a few surprises - Congratulations to Seb V and Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaark - seems Newey's design is well suited to the Shanghai circuit without the "uberfuser of justice"

The Renault looks quick but imho probably a bit light but well done Nando ( I was going to say the Renault looks good but then that would make me a liar it still looks like a skip on wheels - right colour too)

The Ferarri just look plain slow and hard on their tyres :(

I wait with baited breath to see what fuel loads people are on and I still fancy Lewis for a podium as only 3 cars are running Kers (white elephant anyone?) and he seems to have the knack (all those years of RC cars are paying off ;) )

All in all I think this could be a really good race, I hope the weather gods smile and hold off (that said, a shower could mix things up nicely!)



Ohhh and get me - over 100 posts LOL
 
quite a lot of people have said on several occasions the red bull looked the best of the rest already in the first 2 races. they seemed to have upped their game a bit today. maybe fuel load but not completely sure. the way the red bull performed so far points out to other reasons then 'just' a diffuser or not. the suspension maybe or the way they control their tyres.

bmw missed the mark big time, only team who sent their car to china with no new components, actually no new components since the first race of the season and that shows. strange for a professional team to make such a mistake.

but most impressive, nando. ok, he might have been on fumes but that car was built from bits and pieces laying around and he had hardly any testing at all with the thing. i mean, the difuser only arrived, i think, this morning. and then to get to second, amazing.

and i was surprised by how nervous the macca's and ferrari's looked, especially during the onboard shots, cannot remember for instance LH having to work this hard.

i think tomorrow will be another Brawn day though.
 
Quite clearly Brawn no longer have the huge advantage they had for the first 2 races.

The other teams want to be thankful that the Red Bull can't be retro-fitted with a double diffuser as it would be quite a bit faster.

A great result for Red Bull and Alonso.
Brawn must be a little peeved that they're on rows 2 and 3.

Massa once again doesn't get to Q3 but Kimi does.

Any news on Heikki being blocked on his hot lap?
Has it been appealed?

Once the fuel loads are published we'll have a better idea of how everyone performed comparitively.
 
Here are the weights, fuel loads and predicted laps for the first stint.

Pos. 	Driver			Weight 	Fuel 	Laps
1 Sebastian Vettel 644.0 39.0 13
2 Fernando Alonso 637.0 32.0 10
3 Mark Webber 646.5 41.5 14
4 Rubens Barrichello 661.0 56.0 19
5 Jenson Button 659.0 54.0 19
6 Jarno Trulli 664.5 59.5 21
7 Nico Rosberg 650.5 45.5 15
8 Kimi Raikkonen 673.5 68.5 24
9 Lewis Hamilton 679.0 74.0 27
10 Sebastien Buemi 673.0 68.0 24
11 Nick Heidfeld 679.0 74.0 27
12 Heikki Kovalainen 697.0 92.0 34
13 Felipe Massa 690.0 85.0 31
14 Kazuki Nakajima 682.7 77.7 28
15 Sebastien Bourdais 690.0 85.0 31
16 Nelsinho Piquet 697.9 92.9 34
17 Robert Kubica 659.0 54.0 19
18 Adrian Sutil 648.0 43.0 14
19 Timo Glock 652.0 47.0 16
20 Giancarlo Fisichella 679.5 74.5 27
 
fuel weight combined with tyres, i indeed think brawn will win. but then, rain seems to be expected. so all our clever thoughts made get washed away :)
 
Wow, Alonso was light...... no wonder he got second.

He could have done it in a 1.4L Corsa with that fuel load...... :)
 
Did anyone else see Hamilton's front wheels lifting clear of the track in the corners in Q3? :o

I don't think I've ever seen an F1 car do that before.
It must have an extremely stiff setup to do that.
 
Brogan that doesn't say stiff to me that says problem! Its definatley not right thats for sure. Think Brawn still have the pace overall perhaps, but redbull and alonso all going faster will put spanner in the works even tho theyve gone lighter i think. and after practice I expected a lot more from rosberg too.
 
It seems to me that at least Kovalainen and Piquet look like they're gambling on rain, possibly also Bourdais and Massa - The supersofts don't really allow for a 1-stop strategy, and those 34-lap estimates seem a bit too high for an 'uneven' 2-stop strategy.

The smart money would still have to be on the Brawns, if it stays dry.
 
Brogan... What algorithm did you use to calculate the laps?

I have something a little different for Kovi et al.

Here are the weights, fuel loads and predicted laps for the first stint.

Pos. 	Driver			Weight 	Fuel 	Laps
1 Sebastian Vettel 644.0 39.0 12
2 Fernando Alonso 637.0 32.0 10
3 Mark Webber 646.5 41.5 13
4 Rubens Barrichello 661.0 56.0 18
5 Jenson Button 659.0 54.0 17
6 Jarno Trulli 664.5 59.5 19
7 Nico Rosberg 650.5 45.5 14
8 Kimi Raikkonen 673.5 68.5 23
9 Lewis Hamilton 679.0 74.0 25
10 Sebastien Buemi 673.0 68.0 22
11 Nick Heidfeld 679.0 74.0 25
12 Heikki Kovalainen 697.0 92.0 31
13 Felipe Massa 690.0 85.0 29
14 Kazuki Nakajima 682.7 77.7 26
15 Sebastien Bourdais 690.0 85.0 29
16 Nelsinho Piquet 697.9 92.9 31
17 Robert Kubica 659.0 54.0 17
18 Adrian Sutil 648.0 43.0 13
19 Timo Glock 652.0 47.0 15
20 Giancarlo Fisichella 679.5 74.5 25

I've used 2.78kg/lap (Based on 2.55 kg/5km) and a 2 lap grace to account for lap to the grid, parade lap and anything extra required in the car. The Brawns often seem to have a better fuel management than other teams, so expect them to go 1 further lap than written here!

[?Edit.... Something went wrong with my initial excel.... That should have removed any little glitches now!] :)
 
The Artist..... said:
Brogan... What algorithm did you use to calculate the laps?
I think I used 2.55kg per lap, rounded down and then I dropped 2 laps for the out lap, etc.
Some of your figures don't look right though. You have Trulli with more fuel than Barrichello but on 1 lap less.

I'm surpised nothing has come of Kovalainen being blocked on his hot lap.
Even if McLaren don't protest, the stewards in the past have proactively penalised drivers for blocking.
I wonder why they haven't done so this time, bearing in mind how irrefutable the video and telemetry data is?

Equally interesting I suppose is why McLaren have chosen not to protest.
They must be running scared of the stewards/FIA now...

P.S. I've wrapped your table in the
 tags to preserve the formatting, hope you don't mind.
 
I expected Alonso to pretty much be running on fumes considering he got second. I would think that the reasoning behind this strategy is that they are gambling on some early showers. Sutil is clearly hoping for the same sort of weather as he's on the same fuel load as the pole sitter! I'm surprised at the lack of pace that Williams have shown given that not only Nakajima didn't get into Q3 (again) but that Rosberg was running light but got no where near the front.

Here's hoping for another cracking race :popcorn:
 
So, I see the re-jigging of the calendar has worked wonders :givemestrength:

Well done Bernie you :censored: senile old :censored: dwarf

I see Bert Mylander is winning at the moment

Sand storm in Abu Dhabi anyone?
 
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