tweet wrote:and bare in mind that 10kg more fuel add about 0,2s on fast circuits. So you´ll see that if you add about 20kg and so about 0,4sec to alonso´s time, that that time was right behind the Brawns and in front of the best Toyota
With that additional 20kg alonso would have started from 5th place and with a common fuel load.
i´m not trying to say that renault is the thing to beat, i just want to show that they catched up and maybee are already equal or faster than toyota/williams
Sorry, but I detect a little wishful thinking here. It is common knowledge that 10 kg of fuel costs at least 0.3, more likely 0.4 seconds a lap, just compare Q2 and Q3 times (Hamilton for example was 2.8 seconds slower in Q3 than Q2 with around 70 kg more fuel = 0.4 seconds per 10 kg of fuel). Also, Trulli had 27.5 kg more fuel than Alonso, not just 20 kg.
So let's re-do the maths: Alonso was 0.45 seconds faster than Trulli in Q3, but with the same fuel load he would have been around (27.5*0.035)-0.45=0.51 seconds
behind Trulli. This is still an improvement compared to Malaysia (at least compared to Toyota if not to Red Bull), but to me it's clear that Renault are still not on the pace of the top teams. Neither is McLaren, Ferrari or BMW of course.
To me the pecking-order at the moment looks like this:
Red Bull & Brawn
Toyota & Williams
Ferrari & BMW & McLaren & Renault
Toro Rosso
Force India
Can the "big four" catch up? Who knows. I think they will, but it will take some time and they can't afford to give away points like they have been doing so far this season (Kubica's crashes, Hamilton's lies, Ferrari's poor strategy and reliability, Alonso's driving errors, etc, etc.). It promises to be a thrilling season, possibly the best ever.