Tag Archives: australia

Williams, Force India and Sauber

Before the season started the general opinion was that Williams, Force India and Sauber would be contesting those places that the big teams didn’t occupy. With four major teams and ten scoring places that leaves two slot and so it has played out with Vitantonio Liuzzi and Rubens Barrichello scoring points at both the opening races.
The drivers that have scored the points may raise a few eye brows as Adrian Sutil seems to be the driver that most consider number one at Force India and there was the expectation from some that Nico Hulkenberg would show up Rubens Barrichello this year. It seems that F1 experience may count for something when you’re running on the margin of the points and have to take advantage of what’s on offer.
Sauber are still lacking any points and given their pace in the pre-season testing this seems to be somewhat of a shock, it [...]

Looking ahead to Malaysia – what’s in store at the next race?

The Malaysian Grand Prix has had a few shows in the past and has been a Ferrari stronghold at times but it’s the torrential rain that it’s famous for. Last year was the worst rain in recent history though for race day and the race had to be abandoned after just 36 laps with the win eventually going to Jenson Button though he only got half points.
The race retains it’s late afternoon start time so we’ll be hoping that the rain we had last year doesn’t make a reappearance on Sunday. The forecast doesn’t look that great though with Sunday having the least chance of rain at only 80%. If it does rain all weekend then the track is likely to be very green and the tyres will have a hard time, though if it rains in the race this won’t be an issue.
McLaren are trying to manage expectations ahead [...]

What happened to the Ferrari’s in Australia?

Ferrari promised from Bahrain that they were going to be one of the cars to beat this season and then they seemed to fade in Australia. How much of this was due to the weather and how much of this was due to Alonso’s first lap spin?And was there anything else at play?
It seems that the Ferrari team are playing it safe this year – they aren’t taking extra risks like coming in for tyres or changing to early – I’m not saying that it was the wrong decision but I think it is why we hardly saw the Ferraris all race apart from Lewis Hamilton’s onboard camera. They had a solid race, they finished 3rd and 4th after all but they had promised much more – it seems odd that they couldn’t pass the Renault of Robert Kubica but then if the paddock is to be believed you need [...]

Lewis Hamiton’s fun weekend in Australia

Lewis Hamilton didn’t have a good weekend at the Australian GP – not as bad as last year and he should be pleased to walk away with sixth place in the end but I doubt he’ll see it that way. It seems that all is not calm in the Hamilton camp at the moment.
He started the race weekend late by arriving later than most to fuel speculation that he’s going off the rails without his father and then followed that up by getting pulled over by the Australian police for basically being a bit of a twat. He’s a world champion, he has ample opportunity to drive fast cars and pull stunts like that – why he thought that doing in front of a police van was a good idea we’ll never know. The story itself has been blown out of all proportion really though – it’s not like [...]