Saturday 17 March 2012

Australia - Qualifying

What a start to the season! Firstly, I was disappointed not to see Caterham get through to Q2, I thought their pace in testing and how the drivers had been talking about the car, that one of them would have a good enough lap to make it through.

Lots of offs with drivers. Looks like just putting a wheels on the astro turf is a great way to end up spinning/in the gravel/looking like a twat. I think the drivers, Vettel in particular, are struggling without the extra downforce of the blown diffuser. There was a lot of wiggly driving from Vettel.

Mercedes are doing something right, though! Their interpretation of the rules that allows them to have an f-duct that directs air to the front wing when the DRS is open is brilliant. However, Redbull and Lotus are talking to the stewards about this being an illegal development saying it is driver-operated aerodynamics. We'll probably see the outcome of this before the weekend is over.

I think Mercedes have done what they did with Brawn in 2009 and interpreted the rules brilliantly to bring a car with a slight advantage over the other teams.

Raikkonen made a mistake during Q1 and got knocked out. A huge surprise as I'd been rooting for him since he first showed good form during testing.

Alonso had a lovely spin and ended up in the gravel causing him to go out in Q2. I saw a Ferrari spinning and instantly assumed it was Massa, who eventually ended up 16th. The Italian papers are going to rip them to shreds.

In Q3 I was sure that Mercedes and McLaren were going to put in stonking laps until Vettel got out there and did what he does best. One final quick lap!

That wasn't the case. Hamilton flew, soon to be followed by Button. The icing on the cake was Romain Grosjean coming in at 3rd with the Red Bulls and Mercedes behind him. Just think what Kimi might have been able to do had he not got knocked out in Q1.

Rosberg would've been up there, perhaps on pole if his wheel hadn't locked on his hot lap. He ended up 7th but I think we'll be seeing great pace from both him and Schumacher tomorrow.

Now I'm looking forward to Mark Webber having a good start (yeah right), more pirouetting from Massa and the surprises at in the middle of the pack carving their way up to the front. Namely Kimi and Fernando.

Final Result: 1. Hamilton. 2. Button. 3. Grosjean. 4. Schumacher. 5. Webber. 6. Vettel. 7. Rosberg. 8. Maldonado. 9. Hulkenberg. 10. Ricciardo. 11. Vergne. 12. Alonso. 13. Kobayashi. 14. Senna. 15. Di Resta. 16. Massa. 17. Perez. 18. Raikkonen. 19. Kovalainen. 20. Petrov. 21. Glock. 22. Pic. 23. De la Rosa. 24. Karthikeyan

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