Abu Dhabi 2012 - Preview

Abu Dhabi 2012 - Preview

"Cato Batista" 01/11/2012 18:39:03 ID #313

Ladies and Gentlemen,

And there were three...

Eighteenth round of the Championship coming up in Abu Dhabi, the spectacular circuit that produces anything but spectacular races. Let’s hope that changes this year.

The last GP in India has brought opposite opinions among the CFA members; some complained the lack of passing –there were only 6 overtaken manoeuvres (3 by ALO) among the top 15 drivers- but others enjoy the intensity of the racing and of course the battle between the 3 World Champions -Button, Hamilton, Alonso- in the opening stages that was an amazing display of precision skills. For the first time this season that was a one-stop race for the top runners mainly due to the conservative compound selection by Pirelli. The low friction surface of the Buddh Circuit generated something we hadn’t seen in ages: flat out racing for the entire distance, none of this careful, gentle balance between going fast and nursing the rubber. These conditions made for a fantastic GP although not necessarily for us watching from the outside. The true racers among the drivers were delighted, particularly HAM who said felt liberated as he was able to attack throughout the race.

For Abu Dhabi Pirelli is providing the 2 choices in the middle of their range: soft/yellow and medium/white, the intention is for 2 stops for a wider variety of strategies. They are looking to make the drivers to push from beginning to end by using 3 set of tyres during the race, the surface is low-wear but with expected high track temperatures (tyres reaching up to 120c deg in the closing sequence of corners) degradation could be very high. Added pressure for the teams will come in the form of saving tyre sets for the QF sessions, since starting position is so critical in this almost-impossible to overtake circuit they will have to use their softs to get to the front but falling short on the yellow sets for race day.

This is not a circuit with fast corners and directional changes that typically favours Red Bull, it’s long straight (second only to China’s) and many second gear corners tilts the balance to some of their rivals, so this may not be as easy as the last 3 for Vettel and Co.