F1 2013 Season

Next weekend in Melbourne

No F1 in NY/NJ this year

Merc have been doing really good in the testing in Barcelona,

looking forward to the start of the F1 season ... my boy Nico was fastest in final testing, but I'm apprehensive about believing in the promise of race pace just yet ...

this is what it must feel like for Reporters when interviewing Kimi

I hope Ferrari can be at least reasonably behind in pace,it's cosmic injustice that Alonso's brilliance last year went unrewarded with a title.Vettel is certainly a deserving champion but Alonso driver wise had a season that was one of the best ever.Absolute world class drive,hopefully he can maintain it this year but that will be extremely difficult.

Vibe teach me f1 pls

Super softs are red,
Full wets are blue,
Tyres don't matter,
Maldonado hits you.

looool

Ferrari's year

On a serious note, I agree with Vibe - Alonso was juz nothing short of brilliant last year. Juz a poor car and some misfortune (Belgium and Japan) let him down. I think he is capable of maintaining it throughout this season.

P.S. Don't forget Felipe Massa

fernandos prolly the best driver in the pack, see what he can do, hopefully he wins cause man crush, other than that i hope its a random as hell race and not a vettel leads from lap 1 to the end kind of gig.

One thing that should be extremely interesting this season is to see what's the difference between Mercedes teammates Hamilton and Rosberg. Nico left Schumacher in his shadow and is a quick driver, but Hamilton is the superstar and is expected to be faster. Very interesting to see how all that goes.

cant wait... i still cant make anything from friday practice cause everyone has different programs with different fuel loads...

from practice 3 to qualy then race we will see the picture.. but red bull looks to set the benchmark followed by Lotus, Ferrari Mercedes... still cant make of anything yet..

meanwhile medium tires lasting 20-23 laps, Supersoft just 5-6 laps.. everyone has to start with whatever tires they qualified with (Top 10) others have option to choose the compound

some interesting facts meanwhile...

Mclaren has opted for a bit of changes in design instead following the evolution of last year MP4-27 (pull rod suspension at the front)

Paddy lowe, Technical director for Mclaren for no. of years now is set to leave Mclaren by the end of the season (reportedly has agreed to join Mercedes AMG F1 )

Tim Goss, Engineering Director is promoted as TD at Mclaren

Mclaren is also providing new ECU this season, but in pre-season reportedly had bug issues with it...

new engine mappings not allowed; last year with V8 engine, next season engine manufacturers will provide V6 turbo engines

no DDRS .. but passive ones are allowed also limitations with DRS

what else... well feel free to add anything i am tired atm to even think thats going on cause lot is going on.

some managerial changes in Mercedes AMG F1

Rory Bryne is back for Ferrari and is leading the design for next year car, Rory said " 2013 car is child's play compared to 2014 cars" he is the only designer to have won more championship than Adrian Newey until he retired in 2006 ... i think??

anyway... what else... um... mike coughlan has been working in williams for 2 years now.. i was surprised to hear that when he was banned (mclaren spygate saga in 2007 - busted for having 730 pages of ferrari designs at his home when he signed for mclaren following leaving ferrari) ... was working for military vehicle designs in war in Afghanistan.

lots and lots going on..

Qualifying postponed until Sunday 11:00am local time due to heavy rain.

If the race was held in Adelaide like the good ol' days then we would have had all three Qualifying sessions today. #justsayin'

Nice win for the Iceman!!

Any of the Aussies on here go to the race?

Great season start TBF...

Kimi with the easiest win I've seen in a while,great strategy from Lotus.Low degradation was certainly key...Ferrari finally off to a proper season start,fantastic race pace,best on the grid.I'm afraid the Bulls are still very strong and will unlock their pace,which they obviously have as seen in qualifying where they are at least half a second ahead of anyone.High degradation for them as well,I think it prevented them from pushing harder.

McLaren Why the hell did they make so much changes to the car,they had the quickest package last year and needed to work on reliability.If achieving that costed them all this pace then it was certainly not worth it.I think the obvious guess is the suspension...Checo : vagi : So far Hamilton seems to have made a good decision.

Merc is certainly better than last year,but their races are still a mess.They have the raw pace though obviously,I think with some fine tuning they could be topping the grid.

Good Race, and KIMI

Webber has some bad luck at home, an appalling start from him

McLaren will be behind merc and Lotus this year, this is their redevelopment period. And Merc did alot better in Quali than what Brawn or their drivers thought they did, all of them thought they had a bad car.

Legend wrote:Good Race, and KIMI

Webber has some bad luck at home, an appalling start from him

McLaren will be behind merc and Lotus this year, this is their redevelopment period. And Merc did alot better in Quali than what Brawn or their drivers thought they did, all of them thought they had a bad car.

Webber is reported to have some KERS and exchange of info (telemetry) issues..


Mclaren had great car, actually faster car than red bull by the end of the season... but they probably thought with faster car, they must have assumed they couldn't pull of too much performance and potential out of car because of stable regulations.

there was huge hint last season i think paddy lowe or whitmarsh said they would follow ferrari route of pull rod front suspension... but i absolutely doubt that pull rod front suspension is the only reason why mclaren was so slow..
starting something a bit different from its predecessor is difficult. u all saw how badly ferrari started and ended up being one of the best teams out there...
mclaren shouldnt be underestimated.. they are best team out there... i am convinced they will be back to their best at some point

even though if they cock up this year, that means they will have all the time in the world to focus on next year car, next year will have massive regulation changes...

as for Mercedes, performance is exactly what they had predicted it would be. they have been very true to their word. mercedes said that in preseason they were able to claw back some 1-1.5 seconds of performance but we know that rivals are not just gonna stay the same.

and mercedes and brawn never said they had bad car... they said result is yielding exactly as they have predicted.. right from the pre season

they have had awful lot of technical changes, they also upgraded their scale model to 60% (which is max. allowed) lets see...

seeing the race performance i thought they werent that bad.. on high fuel loads / plus ambient temp getting really low, hurt them perhaps a bit.. getting best out of tires.. but i was surprised pleasantly to see that their degradation on SS tires were really good compared to all teams.. plus they also changed strategy in the middle...

think they still are a bit behind ferrari lotus and red bull but, if they keep their development rate and understanding of car, setup and tires well .. i think they can get decent result this year.

Vibe wrote:Great season start TBF...

Kimi with the easiest win I've seen in a while,great strategy from Lotus.Low degradation was certainly key...Ferrari finally off to a proper season start,fantastic race pace,best on the grid.I'm afraid the Bulls are still very strong and will unlock their pace,which they obviously have as seen in qualifying where they are at least half a second ahead of anyone.High degradation for them as well,I think it prevented them from pushing harder.

McLaren Why the hell did they make so much changes to the car,they had the quickest package last year and needed to work on reliability.If achieving that costed them all this pace then it was certainly not worth it.I think the obvious guess is the suspension...Checo : vagi : So far Hamilton seems to have made a good decision.

Merc is certainly better than last year,but their races are still a mess.They have the raw pace though obviously,I think with some fine tuning they could be topping the grid.

race is ok for merc... but i agree they still need lot of work on high fuel runs.. as race progressed merc were one of the best out there... but too late.

ferrari and lotus looked ridiculously good on that cold temp.. this is gonna be another great season...

and did i mention force india??? wow!!! sutil was great.. but man i kept on watching his race pace in live timing... impressive stuff... he only fell down because he had started with medium tires .. at some point have to race with SS.

but my god... his race pace was matching with red bull... part of the reason why he was able to keep vettel at bay for a long time.

that was impressive stuff from force india..the car was so good in race.

JespSwe wrote:

Vibe wrote:Great season start TBF...

Kimi with the easiest win I've seen in a while,great strategy from Lotus.Low degradation was certainly key...Ferrari finally off to a proper season start,fantastic race pace,best on the grid.I'm afraid the Bulls are still very strong and will unlock their pace,which they obviously have as seen in qualifying where they are at least half a second ahead of anyone.High degradation for them as well,I think it prevented them from pushing harder.

McLaren Why the hell did they make so much changes to the car,they had the quickest package last year and needed to work on reliability.If achieving that costed them all this pace then it was certainly not worth it.I think the obvious guess is the suspension...Checo : vagi : So far Hamilton seems to have made a good decision.

Merc is certainly better than last year,but their races are still a mess.They have the raw pace though obviously,I think with some fine tuning they could be topping the grid.

race is ok for merc... but i agree they still need lot of work on high fuel runs.. as race progressed merc were one of the best out there... but too late.

ferrari and lotus looked ridiculously good on that cold temp.. this is gonna be another great season...

Come on,it was a mess...

1 car DNF,other car strategy failure.

Vibe wrote:

JespSwe wrote:

Vibe wrote:Great season start TBF...

Kimi with the easiest win I've seen in a while,great strategy from Lotus.Low degradation was certainly key...Ferrari finally off to a proper season start,fantastic race pace,best on the grid.I'm afraid the Bulls are still very strong and will unlock their pace,which they obviously have as seen in qualifying where they are at least half a second ahead of anyone.High degradation for them as well,I think it prevented them from pushing harder.

McLaren Why the hell did they make so much changes to the car,they had the quickest package last year and needed to work on reliability.If achieving that costed them all this pace then it was certainly not worth it.I think the obvious guess is the suspension...Checo : vagi : So far Hamilton seems to have made a good decision.

Merc is certainly better than last year,but their races are still a mess.They have the raw pace though obviously,I think with some fine tuning they could be topping the grid.

race is ok for merc... but i agree they still need lot of work on high fuel runs.. as race progressed merc were one of the best out there... but too late.

ferrari and lotus looked ridiculously good on that cold temp.. this is gonna be another great season...

Come on,it was a mess...

1 car DNF,other car strategy failure.

lol no... last year merc had one of the top cars yet they had not that good results in Albert park.

nico's car had electrical failure ... i gotta bad feeling its coming from Mclaren's new ECU...

meanwhile Christian Horner confirmed that Webber indeed suffered from Mclaren's glitches and blasted them ..
i wont be surprised if nico had same problem cause he had similar problems in the weekend...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Horner criticises McLaren for ECU troubles - At the end of a nightmare weekend for McLaren, Red Bull's Formula One team principal Christian Horner added the final insult.

Briton Horner, boss of McLaren's archival, blamed the Woking based team for Mark Webber's Melbourne woes.

Australian Webber had a terrible start and then a KERS issue in his home race, and Horner said afterwards: "You need to ask McLaren why the ECU didn't work because he was blind and had no telemetry.

"It is something they need to get on top of because it caused a lot of issues during testing," he added.

Horner is referring to the standard electronic control unit mandatorily supplied by McLaren subsidiary MES to every team in Formula 1.


lewis strategy didnt work but performance was exactly as expected..

well if you see it result wise its ya not that good performance wise it was good

Despite the reasons,one car broke down and other had a costly strategic failure.Those are facts...I don't understand how can it not be considered a mess.That is 30% of teams potential for this weekend achieved.

Hamilton drove conservatively and lost a bundle of time and told the team tires weren't gonna make it.They disagreed but listened when it was too late,and in the end they told him the race was won by a car on a 2 stop strategy.Things like that need to be straightened out,everyone must be on the same page.

I guess you are focusing on the positives,and there were some good signs.But overall,if it was truly good,would you mind that Merc have a DNF in one car and strategic error in other car for every race?

Vibe wrote:Despite the reasons,one car broke down and other had a costly strategic failure.Those are facts...I don't understand how can it not be considered a mess.That is 30% of teams potential for this weekend achieved.

Hamilton drove conservatively and lost a bundle of time and told the team tires weren't gonna make it.They disagreed but listened when it was too late,and in the end they told him the race was won by a car on a 2 stop strategy.Things like that need to be straightened out,everyone must be on the same page.

I guess you are focusing on the positives,and there were some good signs.But overall,if it was truly good,would you mind that Merc have a DNF in one car and strategic error in other car for every race?

yeah you could say that, mercedes didnt show their full potential due to strategic stuffs, or setups or whatever. DNF issue i am not even surprised... its not ECU based... but this season mercedes has new gearbox so i guess it takes a bit of a time to iron these issues out.

first race, team still hauled good points, tell me this stuff, when in half season, it still keeps on going with merc, scoring no podium at all... i would raise my hand and say i was wrong.

mercedes so far has been true to their word, that result was expected. so i am content, not really happy but satisfied. in china onwards i am expecting merc to bring updates. lewis said there is a possibility that merc could do that in malaysia.. but i dont think they would have time to bring updates just in second race, if they did, then great...

but its all about development race now...

Red Bull
Vettel

Alonso

Mercedes

Force India

McLaren