Chinese GP 2013 - Preview
by Cato Batista, 11/04/2013 23:25:18
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Start warming up your engines, we’re heading to China this weekend for the third round of the season.
Team orders and what they meant for VET (not much) had been pretty much the headlines since last race, but behind the scenes tension keeps developing between Red Bull criticizing Pirelli and Lotus defending them. Both teams had been directly affected by the short life of the tyres, negatively for Red Bull as they can’t take advantage of their superior downforce that increases tyre wear, and positively for Lotus that has the most tyre-friendly chassis. Pirelli is responding by saying that as long as each and every team don’t ask for changes they will keep making compounds with short durability.
What do you think? would you prefer the purist approach of every driver attacking the races at full speed and the fastest will win, or the current format of mixing up results with tyre strategy?
Talking of tyres, let me take this opportunity to correct myself on how to access one of my favorite features on our CFA website: the chart prepared by Santiago after each GP showing in detail each drivers’ tyre strategy. From the top menu (the one open to the public) select ‘Race’ and then go to ‘Tyres Race’ to find it. It is indeed the best description of each drive/car performance in every race.
Last year’s Chinese GP was won by Maria, the Lady beating the 21 gentlemen with 11 points. So far this year the winners (Lou & Rodrigo) had won with 10 ...
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Malaysian GP 2013 - Results - Rodrigo has taken the lead
by Cato Batista, 25/03/2013 3:45:08
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Team orders and pitstop mistakes were the highlight of the day. Red Bull dominated, Mercedes was second best. In the name of team interests their drivers were ordered to hold position after the last stops, Nico obey to gave Lewis a place in the rostrum; Sebastian did not and stole Mark’s win. We hadn’t seen such a tense and unhappy podium since the days when the Ferrari-Schumacher-Todt machine manipulated race results. Lotus was not in contention and Ferrari accepted their huge mistake by keeping Alonso out with a broken front wing.
Rodrigo won big in Malaysia, his triple 3-pointer for 10 points was double the group’s average. Santiago was second with 9 points, the only one scoring with 5 of the 6 top drivers. Maria, Fredrik, Joe & Matias did pretty well with 2 gold scores (same as Santi) tied next at 8 points. The rest of us were below the Black Horse/Starting ...
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Malaysian GP 2013 - Race
by Cato Batista, 23/03/2013 18:32:20
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Q3 was decided in Intermediate tyres as rain hit the session. The top 3 Vettel, Massa & Alonso admitted the conditions helped them as the fastest car today was Mercedes. Hamilton was the quickest in the dry in Q3 and Rosberg had been fastest in all on Q2, but in the closing moments Vettel bolted a second set of Inters while the rest opted to do the session in a single set to save new ones for the race. Raikkonen was penalized with 3 grid positions for blocking Rosberg and will drop from 7th to 10th. It’s the 4th straight race that Massa out-qualifies Alonso. McLaren showed signs of improvement pushing both cars in the top 10 but still behind the impressive Sutil in the Force India.
If qualifying was a lottery under the wet conditions, be prepared for the same tomorrow. It’s going to be pretty unpredictable!
We score our typical average results in QF, that is, low. Uwe, rookie Roger, Ian and I got 2 points each, no one imagined Massa in second (although Fernando, Lou & Rodrigo had him in third). All points came from Vettel on pole (12) and Alonso in 3rd (9).
The grid for tomorrow:
VET MAS ALO HAM WEB ROS BUT SUT PER RAI
Here comes that tough question again: wet or dry? On slicks Lotus and Mercedes are fastest, on Inters it is Ferrari and Red Bull. With it’s very high ...
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Malaysian GP 2013 - QF
by Cato Batista, 23/03/2013 18:27:50
Ladies and Gentlemen,
The top 3 teams are very close in outright speed –only 92 thousands separated the fastest Lotus-Red Bull & Ferrari- in the rain interrupted P2 session but when it comes to tyre durability Lotus has the clear advantage. The issue is so concerning that team preparations during practice sessions was mostly focus in long runs for race conditions.
Pirelli aims for their hard compound (prime) to last just over 20 laps and up to 15 for the medium (option), this will make the race a 3 stopper in theory but RAI’s Lotus is set to repeat his 2 stop strategy without losing any speed to the front runners. In fact, Kimi is the front-runner: second in P1 and fastest in P2.
P1 – WEB (1.36.935) RAI VET ALO ROS SUT MAS DIR HAM GRO
P2 – RAI (1.36.569) VET MAS ALO WEB GRO ROS DIR HAM SUT
Red Bull and their superior downforce aerodynamics are aiming for the pole as usual, but the current Champions are shredding the hard-primes much below the targeted 20-plus laps. Mercedes opted to used both sessions to find a set up for the heavy load-long race stints, as a result they are getting controlled degradation on the hard tyre although they had done very little running on the medium and may leave them unprepared for qualifying. Ferrari is happily sitting in the middle: very close to the front in single lap form and confident with their tyre longevity for the race. The situation in the McLaren camp is as bad as we haven’t seen in years, there’s even talk of ...
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