2013 Australian Grand Prix Thread - Race SUN 0700 CET

Jocke1 · Post by **Jocke1** » 15 Mar 2013, 19:49

Pic pushed his Renault engine to the Max, Chilton still ahead in the speed trap.

CarlosFerreira · Post by **CarlosFerreira** » 15 Mar 2013, 20:42

Oh McLaren, what now? I'm half convinced that Lewis will win this year before McLaren does. At the very least, Hamilton will qualify higher than Button and Perez in the first few races.

I expected Williams to be higher, but at least Maldonado hasn't pushed anyone off the road. Yet. Sauber isn't shining too brightly either. As for Caterham... :roll:

Wallio · Post by **Wallio** » 15 Mar 2013, 20:49

This wrote:I guess that if Pic manages a reasonable time, VDG will be allowed to start, as Caterham could probably come up with some excuses to why VDG is so slow. (but we all know that in fact he's just rubbish)
But still these are worrying signs.

The FIA hardly ever enforces the 107% rule since they brought it back, unless the cars aren't put together, so I'm so he's in.

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:29

DanielPT wrote:
AdrianSutil wrote:
Ataxia [BacLettNinj] wrote:I don't think it matters who Force India would've picked out of Bianchi and Sutil. Both have been pretty impressive, it has to be said.

And I'm very pleased for both so far this weekend. Sutil hasn't lost his pace and Bianchi is proving to be a big signing for Marussia.

It seems that Bianchi can really make the difference. He just has to keep it up! Still, it is yearly days and don't forget that, besides Pic, the others are complete rookies and still finding their feet.

All of this spells bad new for Di Resta's career prospect if he doesn't get a move on anytime soon.

Ferrim · Post by **Ferrim** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:42

Who is going to get up early tomorrow? It's at 7:00 AM in Spain. I've actually never got up for Melbourne qualifying before, it's gonna be my first time; on the other hand, I've watched every single Australian GP live since 2004.

Klon · Post by **Klon** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:46

Ferrim wrote:Who is going to get up early tomorrow? It's at 7:00 AM in Spain. I've actually never got up for Melbourne qualifying before, it's gonna be my first time; on the other hand, I've watched every single Australian GP live since 2004.

If you want to do so, you ought to go to bed soon.

Which is what I will be doing, since I ain't gonna miss the first live qualifying session of the year. Over the rest of the season, I mainly tend to watch the replay at a later time (thanks for that, RTL) but not watching the first race live is unacceptable.

Post by **Londoner** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:46

Ferrim wrote:Who is going to get up early tomorrow? It's at 7:00 AM in Spain. I've actually never got up for Melbourne qualifying before, it's gonna be my first time; on the other hand, I've watched every single Australian GP live since 2004.

Well, it starts at 6AM here in the UK. I'll give it a go, though I'll be massively dismayed if it turns out I've given up my Saturday lay-in just to see Vettel qualify half a second faster than the rest of the field. :evil:

Warren Hughes · Post by **Warren Hughes** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:52

I want to get up to watch it live, but Sky, yada yada yada :evil:

Afternoon highlights on BBC it is.

Salamander · Post by **Salamander** » 15 Mar 2013, 21:58

Wizzie wrote:
DanielPT wrote:It seems that Bianchi can really make the difference. He just has to keep it up! Still, it is yearly days and don't forget that, besides Pic, the others are complete rookies and still finding their feet.

All of this spells bad new for Di Resta's career prospect if he doesn't get a move on anytime soon.

It also proves Vijay Mallya is a BATHPLUGGING MORON.

S951 · Post by **S951** » 15 Mar 2013, 22:04

Ladies and Gents of the forum can any of you come up with an explanation as to why caterham is so utterly crap so far? As ugly as the car is they have a better engine, good rear end from rb the car itself looks to be more complex aero wise, but then we have marussia plodding along nicely car looks basic but faster / on par with them.

I know Marussia have a proper aero program now plus kers which is good, still its madness that caterham have got progressively worse since the t128

Ferrim · Post by **Ferrim** » 15 Mar 2013, 22:05

Klon wrote:
Ferrim wrote:Who is going to get up early tomorrow? It's at 7:00 AM in Spain. I've actually never got up for Melbourne qualifying before, it's gonna be my first time; on the other hand, I've watched every single Australian GP live since 2004.

If you want to do so, you ought to go to bed soon.

It's nearly eight hours to go, I still can wait a bit. But I'll go to bed at midnight.

Hound55 · Post by **Hound55** » 15 Mar 2013, 22:17

S951 wrote:Ladies and Gents of the forum can any of you come up with an explanation as to why caterham is so utterly crap so far? As ugly as the car is they have a better engine, good rear end from rb the car itself looks to be more complex aero wise, but then we have marussia plodding along nicely car looks basic but faster / on par with them.

I know Marussia have a proper aero program now plus kers which is good, still its madness that caterham have got progressively worse since the t128

From what I've read they have a serious understeer problem, but I'm not really sure as to why. The Marussia, on the other hand, is simpler yet less prone to either oversteer or understeer.

Post by **mario** » 15 Mar 2013, 22:22

GwilymJJames wrote:
mario wrote:As others have pointed out, at the moment van der Garde is potentially in a situation where he may fail to qualify - his best FP2 time was slightly worse than his best FP1 time (did he have problems that prevented him from doing more laps?)

He crashed 30 minutes in.

Thanks for that - I've only been able to read a brief summary of events and therefore didn't know whether or not he'd had an accident judging by the low number of laps he'd done. Admittedly, as Wallio says, the chances of van der Garde being kicked out for not getting within 107% are low - Caterham could point to his FP1 times where he was within 107%, and I expect that he should improve in FP3 given that Pic also found a substantial chunk of time between sessions.

CarlosFerreira wrote:Oh McLaren, what now? I'm half convinced that Lewis will win this year before McLaren does. At the very least, Hamilton will qualify higher than Button and Perez in the first few races.

I expected Williams to be higher, but at least Maldonado hasn't pushed anyone off the road. Yet. Sauber isn't shining too brightly either. As for Caterham...

Having taken a look at some of the onboard clips of Perez in action, Perez did seem to be rather cautious during his laps (he was fairly cautious on getting on the throttle and braked earlier than usual). Whilst the team are probably underplaying their hand a bit and are perhaps running with a reasonably high fuel load, the overall performance of the car doesn't look that promising - Whitmarsh has admitted that the team were really struggling with understeer and ride problems, whilst some of the spectators at the track were reporting that both drivers were having to back off in certain parts of the track, like in Turn 12, as the car looked to be relatively unstable under braking and quite skittish in the bumpier parts of the track.
Now, it is probably somewhat exaggerated by McLaren's tendency to run with a very stiff suspension set up, but it does sound as if McLaren are going to go through some of the same problems that Ferrari had in the early part of 2012 when they struggled with their car. Whitmarsh may be claiming that the long term development potential of the car is far greater, but by the sounds of things McLaren will have to hope that they can start unlocking that development potential pretty soon.

At the very least, I have to agree that it looks like Hamilton probably will outqualify McLaren in Melbourne provided that reliability doesn't get in the way - neither Button nor Perez have brilliant records in qualifying (Hamilton beat Button 16-2 in qualifying last year, whilst Perez only beat Kobayashi 11-9 over the season despite Kobayashi being considered a slightly weak qualifier too), and the car doesn't look good on either tyre compound. Their tyre wear doesn't look that great either - Perez's times seemed to drift away more quickly than those of Raikkonen or Vettel, although that could be fuel load related (given that nobody ran especially long stints).

BlindCaveSalamander wrote:
Wizzie wrote:
DanielPT wrote:It seems that Bianchi can really make the difference. He just has to keep it up! Still, it is yearly days and don't forget that, besides Pic, the others are complete rookies and still finding their feet.

All of this spells bad new for Di Resta's career prospect if he doesn't get a move on anytime soon.

It also proves Vijay Mallya is a BATHPLUGGING MORON.

It depends at what price a deal with Bianchi would have come at - there were suggestions that signing Bianchi, which might well have seen Ferrari putting heavy pressure on Force India to use Ferrari engines in the future (Ferrari are fairly aggressively chasing customers for 2014 now Toro Rosso are aiming to cut their ties with them), might have compromised Force India's technical partnership with McLaren.
Given how much Force India value that deal, I guess that they decided that it was better to hold onto that deal and gain more performance out of the car rather than sign Bianchi but risk sliding back down the grid if that partnership was cut back in scope.

S951 wrote:Ladies and Gents of the forum can any of you come up with an explanation as to why caterham is so utterly crap so far? As ugly as the car is they have a better engine, good rear end from rb the car itself looks to be more complex aero wise, but then we have marussia plodding along nicely car looks basic but faster / on par with them.

I know Marussia have a proper aero program now plus kers which is good, still its madness that caterham have got progressively worse since the t128

It is an interesting question - the technical team is fairly experienced and several senior members have fairly decent track records (Mark Smith did a fairly decent job at Force India, for example, whilst John Iley has a fair amount of experience at Ferrari to draw on), whilst there are a number of mid level engineers that came to the team from Toyota on the back of Gascoyne's recruitment drive back in 2010. Petrov's management did mention that there was a fairly considerable amount of restructuring of their technical team in late 2012 which might have cost the team development time whilst Abiteboul's influence on the team will take time to develop, but on the other hand their move to Leafield should have expanded their design and research capabilities and given them access to much better facilities.
The team has generally been running at a slight profit, as far as I am aware, and has an OK budget (certainly better than Marussia does), and whilst their line up may be inexperienced, it is hardly as if Marussia are better off in that regard either (Bianchi may have driven in free practise sessions, but Pic has a year of experience under his belt).

All in all, it is a little odd that all of those factors are simply not gelling together to yield any significant improvement in performance - either Marussia are gaining considerably more from their technical partnership with McLaren than Caterham are from Red Bull, or somehow Caterham are failing to extract the maximum performance out of their resources, designers and equipment. Hound55 has a point that, maybe, the CT03 has more potential that is currently not being tapped due to poor set up decisions (or perhaps the handling problems are more deeply rooted to the design of the car itself), but given that the car is an evolution of the CT01, they should have something of a known quantity to work with.

AndreaModa · Post by **AndreaModa** » 15 Mar 2013, 23:02

My guess as to why Marussia appear to be making better use of fewer resources than Caterham?

Pat Symonds.

Salamander · Post by **Salamander** » 15 Mar 2013, 23:11

AndreaModa wrote:My guess as to why Marussia appear to be making better use of fewer resources than Caterham?

Pat Symonds.

Oooh, that's a good shout. He is one of the most talented people in the pitlane...

Dj_bereta · Post by **Dj_bereta** » 16 Mar 2013, 02:46

race starts 3:00am here

. I go with downloads in this time. I want to sleep :lol:

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:09

Man, the weather across Port Phillip Bay is looking awful right now. And it's heading straight for the circuit

Shadaza · Post by **Shadaza** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:18

only 15 minutes if dry running,
It is now raining quite heavily in Melbourne.

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:24

Shadaza wrote:only 15 minutes if dry running,
It is now raining quite heavily in Melbourne.

You know, this weather is gonna make the V8 race in an hour's time very interesting indeed

Shadaza · Post by **Shadaza** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:28

Wizzie wrote:
Shadaza wrote:only 15 minutes if dry running,
It is now raining quite heavily in Melbourne.

You know, this weather is gonna make the V8 race in an hour's time very interesting indeed

Indeed, is there anywhere I can get a stream of that?

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:30

Shadaza wrote:
Wizzie wrote:
Shadaza wrote:only 15 minutes if dry running,
It is now raining quite heavily in Melbourne.

You know, this weather is gonna make the V8 race in an hour's time very interesting indeed

Indeed, is there anywhere I can get a stream of that?

Try this: http://tensport.com.au/motorsport-live-streaming.htm

I don't know if it works outside of Australia though

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:50

Seb's car has just crapped itself at turn 4. Probably karma for changing his helmet design mid-session

the Masked Lapwing · Post by **the Masked Lapwing** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:57

That Caterham just looks stupid on inters.

RealRacingRoots · Post by **RealRacingRoots** » 16 Mar 2013, 03:59

Wizzie wrote:Seb's car has just crapped itself at turn 4. Probably karma for changing his helmet design mid-session

Karma, Vettel? Two words I thought I'd never see in a sentence together.

Sure hope this ominous weather continues into the Q.

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 04:16

Guess what? There's more weather on the way.

Thank HWNSNBM for the BoM being one of the best meteorological services in the world

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 05:05

Looks like the track will be absolutely soaked for qualifying. And if the V8 race was anything to go by, it'll be a cracker of a session.

EDIT: Channel 10 lost the audio feed just when they get back from the commercial break. The look on Rusty's face when it happened was priceless :lol:

Shadaza · Post by **Shadaza** » 16 Mar 2013, 05:20

So the power has cut for a second time, just as Martin Brundle was talking about the power cut. Not to mention that the DRS electronic system is busted and will therefore be physically enabled every lap even if the stewards want it off. Fun fun fun.

Horns · Post by **Horns** » 16 Mar 2013, 05:31

Well, I'm glad I got up early. This fault caption is gripping.

Can they not at least show us P3 instead?

the Masked Lapwing · Post by **the Masked Lapwing** » 16 Mar 2013, 05:55

I love this ad that Channel Ten has running featuring Kimi Raikkonen and a voiceover with a vaguely Finnish accent :lol:

Shadaza · Post by **Shadaza** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:00

the Masked Lapwing wrote:I love this ad that Channel Ten has running featuring Kimi Raikkonen and a voiceover with a vaguely Finnish accent

There was a similar Fiat add with Alonso where they had a generic European voice over, so cringeworthy.

Qualifying delayed 10 minutes, the rain is chucking it down.

dr-baker · Post by **dr-baker** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:01

Qually delayed by 10 minutes due to rain. Damn. F1 deprivation continues a little longer...

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:03

Shadaza wrote:
the Masked Lapwing wrote:I love this ad that Channel Ten has running featuring Kimi Raikkonen and a voiceover with a vaguely Finnish accent

There was a similar Fiat add with Alonso where they had a generic European voice over, so cringeworthy.

Qualifying delayed 10 minutes, the rain is chucking it down.

Welcome to Australia. Hot as hell one day, underwater the next.

dr-baker · Post by **dr-baker** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:06

Wizzie wrote:
Shadaza wrote:
the Masked Lapwing wrote:I love this ad that Channel Ten has running featuring Kimi Raikkonen and a voiceover with a vaguely Finnish accent

There was a similar Fiat add with Alonso where they had a generic European voice over, so cringeworthy.

Qualifying delayed 10 minutes, the rain is chucking it down.

Welcome to Australia. Hot as hell one day, underwater the next.

You only get change like that one day to the next? Change like that could happen several times in one day in Britain!

Post by **Londoner** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:09

Another delay? Oh bathplug.

dr-baker · Post by **dr-baker** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:10

Delayed another 10 minutes. Rats. And I woke up specially!

Post by **Londoner** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:14

The telemetry between race control and the teams has failed. ROTR contender already. :lol:

Hound55 · Post by **Hound55** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:14

Plot twist!

I hope this shakes things up across the grid. Although I do feel bad for everyone at the circuit. I can't imagine sitting in the rain is all that pleasant.

I really appreciate the slow motion footage of the marshals pushing water off the track with brooms. Really awe-inspiring.

Ben Purse · Post by **Ben Purse** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:15

Another Power outage I think...

TomWazzleshaw · Post by **TomWazzleshaw** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:15

Shadaza wrote:So the power has cut for a second time, just as Martin Brundle was talking about the power cut. Not to mention that the DRS electronic system is busted and will therefore be physically enabled every lap even if the stewards want it off. Fun fun fun.

It's not just the DRS thing that's gone on the blink. Now, they can't turn it off during a yellow flag, none of the cockpit flag lights work, and drivers have to manually switch to Safety Car mode instead of race control doing it for them whenever the SC is deployed. If it wasn't pissing down with rain right now, it'd be one of the easiest ROTR awards in a long time :lol:

GwilymJJames · Post by **GwilymJJames** » 16 Mar 2013, 06:16

Suggestion for Pirelli: Invent some sort of tyres that can be used in the wet. They could call them wet tyres.