Tag Archives: sauber

May201130

Rob

0

The streets of Monaco supply the F1 drama

Monaco is always a fabulous weekend, with the drivers pitting themselves against the ultimate F1 challenge. Sergio Perez, Felipe Massa, Vitaly Petrov and all the other incidents just goes to show how little room for error there is on the streets of the principality. Vettel won a lucky race, Button and Alonso had the pace at various stages to beat him but circumstance prevented them from doing so.
The race was fantastic with the drivers overtaking around the streets, though some did it better than others, Hamilton was lucky to walk away from the weekend with any points, if I was the stewards I’d have given him a drive through for the crash with Maldanado which would have meant a lot more than the 20s he had tacked onto his race time. He needs to calm down and focus, Button was unlucky not to win the race and Hamilton was [...]

May201126

Rob

0

So Barcelona was a good race…

Yes I know that Sebastien Vettel won again but it wasn’t a walk in the park, and Lewis Hamilton nearly had him. But the race as a whole was good, Barcelona doesn’t always produce the best racing because the teams know the track so well – I guess it’s not as bad these days with the limited testing but still. It wasn’t even the DRS that helped, I don’t think it was massively down to the tyres either, though they clearly have an impact especially if this article about the Red Bull not being able to use all of it’s downforce is true.
Down the field there were battles between drivers all over though I think some of these were due to the tyres. This part of the racing seems to be settling down over time as people become used to the differential in pace and are running much more similar [...]

Apr201127

Rob

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Alonso vs. Sauber in fairness

In Australia Sauber’s cars crossed the line in seventh and eight places, they were then disqualified because of a technical infringement on the car. A (supposedly) non performance critical part was a few millimetres outside the allowed margin, Sauber sucked it up, said they were wrong, improved their process and got on with their lives. Ferrari weren’t punished at all for the malfunction on Alonso’s DRS in China.
So what is different about the two cases and why were Sauber punished and not Ferrari? If Sauber are to be believed then their infringement wasn’t a performance gain whereas Ferrari’s most certainly could have been so that argument is moot given that Alonso wasn’t punished. Could it have been the pure infringement of the rules that caused Sauber’s penalty? Well Ferrari’s DRS system was clearly active in an area of the track where it shouldn’t have been and so directly contravened the [...]

Apr201106

Rob

0

2nd stop – Malaysia

With a decent start to the season in Australia behind us the F1 circus moves to Malaysia. The Red Bull cars look unstoppable and with Martin Whitmarsh dampening hopes of McLaren staying in touch does this leave the fighting for third place as the best hope for anyone but Sebastien Vettel or Mark Webber?
The teams will come to Sepang and regard it as the first proper racing track – Australia is a street circuit and as such doesn’t have the same characteristics as a racing circuit. Sepang should let the DRS actually work and should show some more of the aero effects from the new rules.
Ferrari and McLaren will be hoping that they can get on terms with Red Bull and Mercedes will be hoping that they can figure out how to use their car. The tyres will play an important role and all the teams will be keen to [...]

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