Tag Archives: robert kubica

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 [...]

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 [...]

Australian GP Qualifying, Sebastien Vettel takes pole for Red Bull again

The qualifying session for the Australian GP started with traffic problems as the new slower cars tried to get out of the way of the fast cars on the shorter track. The weather was also threatening for the whole session as the teams scrambled to avoid being caught out. It was the Red Bull team that put down a marker though with Sebastien Vettel taking pole and Mark Webber locking out the front row in an ominous fashion .
Session 1
The first part of qualifying saw the elimination of all the new cars though the Lotus cars performed the best of those. Vitaly Petrov joined the new cars that were knocked out of the session as he struggled to get to grips with the Albert Park circuit.
Session 2
The second session saw all the teams getting times in to make sure that they avoided any weather problems, the only real surprise is [...]

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 [...]