Tag Archives: felipe massa

Two weeks, two tyre choices and two very different results for Jenson Button

In Australia Jenson Button made a very brave tyre call that effectively won him the race, he made it work but it gave him the opportunity to win. A week later and he sat on the grid with the softer option tyres whilst everyone around him was on the harder compound – and finished the race in 8th place 2 behind Lewis Hamilton who’d started behind him on the harder tyres.
Jenson’s race didn’t get off to a flying start as he found himself behind the Ferrari’s, a stop on lap 8 put him on the harder tyres and on a clear part of the track which he used to his advantage to put in some fast times which were out of sync with his rivals and in the process he jumped most of them, but, he’s now two thirds of the way into the race on the hard tyres which [...]

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 [...]

Australia Practice 1 – Robert Kubica takes the top spot for Renault

Robert Kubica has put himself and Renault at the top of the timesheets in the first practice session at the Albert Park circuit in Melborne. Rosberg, Button and Massa take the next three spots with Vettel taking the fifth place all with very similar times.
With the teams all using different fuel loads it’s hard to compare the times at the sharp end but further down the grid the Force India reserve driver Paul di Resta acquitted himself well finishing the session just a third of a second behind Liuzzi in his role as Friday tester for the team in place of Sutil.
The Sauber’s times mask a dreadful session for them where Kobayashi caused two red flag, de la Rosa’s car stopped out on track and the stewards want a word about one of the Kobayashi accidents, not the start to the weekend that they would have wanted given their poor [...]

On the ’second’ drivers and what a difference a year makes to F1

With the first race of the year now behind us and the first points on the board it seems that Michael Schumacher may be wishing he’s driving a Ferrari this year after all; I’m not sure that he’d want to be up against Alonso though as he struggled to keep pace with Rosberg.
The second set of drivers – by this I mean Massa, Rosberg and Webber though unless he improves will soon include Button – put on an interesting show on Sunday, Rosberg beat Schumacher, Webber was beaten by Vettel and Massa out-qualified Alonso but was beaten down to the first corner.
Nico Rosberg seems to have had the measure of Michael Schumacher all weekend and underlined that by beating him in the race. There is more to this though, firstly Michael Schumacher was some 0.5s off Rosberg’s pace in qualifying but only finished 4s behind him, there are two other [...]