Grand Prix Rejects

Grosjean, Hulkenberg Ricciardo, Gutierrez, Di Resta and Maldolan are out almost certainly.

Di Resta

it's 4.30PM in Malaysia in March. it is going to rain.
Why anyone suprised?

pablo_h wrote:it's 4.30PM in Malaysia in March. it is going to rain.
Why anyone suprised?

I'm surprised. It normally rains around 4:25.

got to say sutil is like a new man this year

East Londoner wrote:Grosjean, Hulkenberg Ricciardo, Gutierrez, Di Resta and Maldolan are out almost certainly.

Had that rain hit just a fraction earlier, then we might have seen Alonso, Massa and Vettel ending up getting knocked out in that session instead (they were only fractionally further round the track than Di Resta) - though it seems to have given Vettel a slight ace up his sleeve as he has an extra set of unused tyres now.

Di Resta gets a lesson by Davidson. I'm OK with this too

Looking at the straight,one half looks torrentially wet,yet the other half as dry as a bone is the Atacama desert.

WaffleCat wrote:

pablo_h wrote:it's 4.30PM in Malaysia in March. it is going to rain.
Why anyone suprised?

I'm surprised. It normally rains around 4:25.

I think we have a contender for post of the thread

Fascinating stuff so far.

Sutil for pole...?

WaffleCat wrote:

pablo_h wrote:it's 4.30PM in Malaysia in March. it is going to rain.
Why anyone suprised?

I'm surprised. It normally rains around 4:25.

I LOLed.

Wizzie wrote:I think we have a contender for post of the thread

S951 wrote:got to say sutil is like a new man this year

Let's just hope no one insults him again when there are champagne glasses around.

VETTELPOLELOL.

Oh my god here we go.

Cmon Kimi!

Last man over the line's gonna take this.

For bathplug's sake, go home Vettel!

East Londoner wrote:Last man over the line's gonna take this.

Which looks like Vettel

Hah, Vettel again... Somehow or other they often get it right, don't they?

in all honesty i think ham could of got pole but good team call by rb

Vettel Generic Celebration Radio Message #1-Qualifying just played over the radio.

I'm just hoping Red Bull's race pace is as poor as it was in Melbourne. Massa for the win anyone?

East Londoner wrote:I'm just hoping Red Bull's race pace is as poor as it was in Melbourne. Massa for the win anyone?

I've already made my predictions in the thread for it. Alonso I think.
Don't forget it's probably going to be a dry start, then strategy when the rain comes, and the team decides who gets to pit when...

East Londoner wrote:I'm just hoping Red Bull's race pace is as poor as it was in Melbourne. Massa for the win anyone?

If anything Red Bull look to be even worse here.
Vettel surely is blessed by the weather gods after limping through Q1 in 15th and rain shortened Q2 in 9th. I can see Red Bull slipping back very quickly with a straight fight between Ferrari, Mercedes and Raikkonen with an outside chance of Sutil doing something.

Shadaza wrote:

East Londoner wrote:I'm just hoping Red Bull's race pace is as poor as it was in Melbourne. Massa for the win anyone?

If anything Red Bull look to be even worse here.
Vettel surely is blessed by the weather gods after limping through Q1 in 15th and rain shortened Q2 in 9th. I can see Red Bull slipping back very quickly with a straight fight between Ferrari, Mercedes and Raikkonen with an outside chance of Sutil doing something.

That certainly looked like the case based on the results from the first practise sessions, where Vettel's pace seemed to drop off more rapidly than either the Ferrari or Lotus drivers, especially when compared to Kimi. Mercedes also looked reasonably handy too - Rosberg and Hamilton did the longest stint in FP2 of any of the top drivers (12 and 14 laps respectively), and both of them seemed to have fairly consistent lap times over their stint too.

Overall, I think that I'd have to agree that Vettel was a little fortunate that rain shower hit when it did - had it held off a little longer, he was at risk of being knocked out of Q2 by di Resta and Grosjean (both of whom had better first sectors than Vettel, but had to back off in the middle sector due to the rain), whilst if it had struck any earlier in the session he'd have potentially have been knocked out by those who set their best times in the dryer conditions. You also have to wonder whether Mercedes perhaps missed a trick in not calling in either Hamilton or Rosberg for a fresh set of inters, since that worked wonders for Vettel - then again, if rain is expected some time tomorrow, Red Bull might regret using up an extra set of inters in qualifying.

It does look as if the car is more competitive in wet conditions too, although his current set up seems to be rather poor for dry conditions - we'll see how things pan out, but I wouldn't be surprised if, assuming the race starts in dry conditions, Vettel struggles a bit in race trim (particularly on the harder tyres, which is the favoured race tyre for this weekend).

Uurrgghh, saw the press conference, and once again I am reminded of Vettel's abuse of the word 'yeah'.
He overuses it more frequently than a crack addict getting his crack fix.

I wouldn't rule out Vettel so soon. Remember they can choose tomorrow on which tyres they will start, and he's got plenty of them at his disposal.

Still, he should be overhauled off the line by the fast-starting Ferraris, and I hope that he goes backwards during the race, because I'm convinced that Red Bull will fix their problems sooner rather than later.

Ferrim wrote:I wouldn't rule out Vettel so soon. Remember they can choose tomorrow on which tyres they will start, and he's got plenty of them at his disposal.

Still, he should be overhauled off the line by the fast-starting Ferraris, and I hope that he goes backwards during the race, because I'm convinced that Red Bull will fix their problems sooner rather than later.

It is true that Vettel does have slightly more sets of fresh tyres available to him than those around him - having used the same set of medium tyres in the first two stages of qualifying, he should therefore have at least one extra set of unused hard tyres available to him. Still, it has to be said that the wet weather also means that he doesn't necessarily have that much of an advantage, since most of the other teams will also have that same flexibility over strategy - most of the other teams only used one set of the hard and medium tyres respectively, so most of them will also have a fair number of fresh tyres available to them too.

That said, I don't think that Vettel will end up that far off the pace - perhaps he'll be beaten by Kimi and Alonso again, but he's still probably likely to end up on the podium at the end of the race (maybe 4th at worst).

Räikkönen gets a three-place grid penalty for impending Rosberg. That's very good for me but bad for him.

Klon wrote:Räikkönen gets a three-place grid penalty for impending Rosberg.

Is there a video of the lap somewhere?

I really really hope for a dry race tomorrow. Raikkonen can power through the field to victory while the Red Bulls drop like a stone by eating their tyres like hungry hungry hippos.

S951 wrote:in all honesty i think ham could of got pole but good team call by rb

yep..
he would have

Merc only used 1 set of inters

We did our lap with older tyres than the guys in front, which was a bit unfortunate, but our pace was good overall so I can’t complain.

http://mercamgf1fans.wordpress.com/2013 ... ualifying/

I hope for a dry race tomorrow because it's either that or this:

6 laps of dry running, pretty standard.
Light rain. A few midfielders switch onto inters.
Slightly heavier rain, leaders pit to put on wets, midfielders who were on inters get ahead of them to provide humorous Toro Rosso-leading kind of circumstances.
Monsoon, cars on inters slide off the track, safety car out. Team radio of drivers complaining about aquaplaning, Ferrari's is in Italian.
15 interminable laps behind safety car, rain doesn't ease up, red flag.
Lots of sitting around on the grid, portable gazebos, fading light.
Race called, everyone wasted their time.

I really hope it doesn't rain. Though I guess my hypothetical is still better than a dry race with constant shots of Metéo France screens promising rain in 10 minutes.

I think Massa might be in with a good chance to win this. Probably a good job I'm not a betting man though...

Holy crap, that was a monster lap from Bianchi! He might actually genuinely be troubling the midfield this race - imagine what he would be doing in that Force India!

Fair play Bianchi, he's absolutely monstoring everyone in the Caterham/Marussia battle (admittedly not hard but still).

At present, I'll be surprised if we don't see both Ferrari's on the podium, they have been consistantly on the pace. The two Merc's could also trouble Vettel

BlindCaveSalamander wrote:Holy crap, that was a monster lap from Bianchi! He might actually genuinely be troubling the midfield this race - imagine what he would be doing in that Force India!

Maybe he just did a normal job and this is the real pace of the car and Chilton on the other hand is just slow?

I heard an interesting stat mentioned during the US broadcast that neither Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso, Massa, or Webber have won a race from outside the top 5, but Raikkonen has.

BlindCaveSalamander wrote:Holy crap, that was a monster lap from Bianchi! He might actually genuinely be troubling the midfield this race - imagine what he would be doing in that Force India!

If he's outperforming the car (he's starting to drive it like Kubica with the R30 - if Bianchi scores points, it'll be inevitable to compare the two), then I believe Sutil would be evenly matched with him.
If the car is this good, then I still think he'd be better than Milk.

Ben Purse wrote:Di Resta

Im not a fan of Adrian Sutil at the moment, unless its the one who posts on here, but he's certainly giving PDR a wake-up call. Those 'Im Destined For Big Things' comments he makes may need to be tempered with 'But Not As Big As Sutil' if this keeps up.