Abu Dhabi GP 2009 - Yas Marina

[noname]

I was thinking: what happens if somebody blocks the pit tunnel exit? Is there an alternate pit exit? If not, what happens if people get stuck in the pits because there is an accident in the tunnel? Specially with this race at the end of the year: in the future, championships could be decided at this track.

maybe that's why the tunnel is there. one tiny accident inside can mess whole championship and bring a lot of attention to F1.

maybe I am overreacting but I see a touch of Bernie's hand there.

[timbo]

I have to say, track looks simply amazing!
Of course with that money they have it is a bit easier, but they are really well at spending it.

[WhiteBlue]

Well done Sebastian Vettel and his engineers. They staged an extremely strong second half of the season and dominated this race. It could have been a nice fight with Hamilton and McLaren but reliability intervened. I feel a bit cheated for not enjoying the battle that looked quite balanced for the first 10 laps.

In terms of team mates Seb showed Mark the way. Even in qualifying Mark was totally dominated by Sebastian. Mark came a bit stronger in the second half of the season when his injuries were healed but his basic speed is not enough to touch Vettel. Vettel made a number of mistakes as all new drivers who are contesting a championship for the first time are doing them. We saw similar or worse from Hamilton. It obviously helped Brawn and Button who mainly won by virtue of patience and by mistakes of their competitors.

BMW Sauber had a nice run on Williams in the end due to a strong drive from Heidfeld to fifth. Nick showed again that he is an extremely under rated driver and I still think McLaren would be well advised to hire him for their second car. Hamilton is surely the quicker driver but Heidfeld would pick up a lot more points than Kovalainen has done over the season.

McLaren did beat Ferrari to third in the constructors as expected, however by a very small margin. McLaren are getting less reliable and this time its not the engine. The six Merc engines did not miss one beat over the entire season. Were Scuderia McLaren dependant of an engine of Ferrari's caliber they would have lost that contest.

Rockie of the year goes to Kobayashi although his chance may have come on the back of a dodgy medical report for Timo Glock's vertebra trouble. In the end it doesn't matter how he got the chance because he picked up the ball and ran with it. Very nice move again in this race a good sixth place. He outclassed Nakajima who failed to score where Nico got plenty of points.

Finally well done as well to Hermann Tilke and his team for an incledible project management. Not only is the venue and the facilities a dream but they also got it done with a bunch of contractors in record time and on schedule. To run evening races in Arabia seems to make a lot of sense and this facility can be very flexible in terms of calendar allocation. I guess it can be raced all year long as a night race in summer and a day race in winter. If the testing remains suppressed in the future the teams may be moved to do more races and extend the season to 10 months. Abu Dhabi will be a valuable asset which will help to improve the show.

I believe that the concept of a Eurocentric racing season instead of a racing year is outdated for F1. 19 weeks without racing looks foolish in the face of such splendid winter racing venues. The racing year should slowly be extended over the whole year with a possible gap of 6 weeks from December to mid January. If they run 20 to 22 races and some overseas races back to back it will create enough opportunities for two more major breaks in the season to rest the personnel. This would benefit the business of F1 and please the fans. Due to the now global allocation of races in all climatic zones the calendar would be managable.

[PlatinumZealot]

I feel robbed of the exciting race between Vettel and Lewis; at the second or third Lap I knew something was definitely wrong the car because of the inconsistent lap times. Lewis was driving on three brakes. But yeah.. that how it goes. I am still happy that Kovi kept Kimi at Bay so Mclaren can stay third in the WCC.

I really enjoyed this track..I think it's great. Looks good and drives good.. Even Ross Brawn said the track was "perfect" in what respect I am not sure though, but that means something.

[roost89]

The most exciting part of the race: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU-MOMfTa9M[/youtube]

[De Jokke]

I feel robbed of the exciting race between Vettel and Lewis; at the second or third Lap I knew something was definitely wrong the car because of the inconsistent lap times. Lewis was driving on three brakes. But yeah.. that how it goes. I am still happy that Kovi kept Kimi at Bay so Mclaren can stay third in the WCC.

I really enjoyed this track..I think it's great. Looks good and drives good.. Even Ross Brawn said the track was "perfect" in what respect I am not sure though, but that means something.

Couldn't agree more. I felt before the race, it wasn't going to be his day. Everyone was shouting: dominant hamilton win, even bbc. But I feared that the mcl wouldn't last the distance. Although it were the brakes, kinda surprise!

Pity because here and in valencia, he missed out two more wins to his 2009 season. I hope he bounces back strongly next season with a killercar!

[CMSMJ1]

I thought it was a boring race at a boring track. Even the GP2 races I saw were lame.

Nice looking area, but the race itself was not exactly a killer. Would you show that race to someone to show them why F1 is great? Do you think they'd care about the LED roof on the hotel after they saw it 30 times?

The only, small, saving grace was that Jenson was overtaken in a great move by Kobayashi and that he then came on strong at the end to battle with Webbo..

Shame for Lewis, he was going well and it would have been a good tussle for P1.

Rubens race pretty much summed up his season.

Roll on next year, looking forwards to seeing the new cars as always.

This has been a good forum to be on - seen some stupid posts, some amazing posts and some fairly middling ones too....but overall, a great place and a decent community.

Roll on Bahrain.. =D>

[Ray]

I remember getting quite a few 'WTH are you talking about?'s when I suggested that Lewis hang back and collect points in Monza so they'd have a bigger pad of WCC points at the end of the year, and then Lewis has a mechanical failure and proves me right. Thank goodness for McLaren Kovi pulled his head out of his ass and finished with enough points to beat Ferrari.That coupled with Ferrari not doing any more to their car for at least the last two races. Guess I wasn't to far off in saying that after Monza now was I?

Boring race, boring flat track, boring procession. The only good part was seeing Jenson and his limp-wristed attempts to fend off Kamui and his attempted passes on Webber. Lewis had his first mechanical failure of the year, I'd be willing to bet Vettel would have caught and passed him during the stops, and once again I was right about the night racing. It's better looking than in the day, no visibility problems, and everyone I know and have heard on TV thinks it is better than a day race. Glad to see that Peter Windsor won't be verbally fellating Lewis Hamilton next year. Maybe we'll get some decent commentary from the pit lane now.

[ISLAMATRON]

I feel robbed of the exciting race between Vettel and Lewis; at the second or third Lap I knew something was definitely wrong the car because of the inconsistent lap times. Lewis was driving on three brakes. But yeah.. that how it goes. I am still happy that Kovi kept Kimi at Bay so Mclaren can stay third in the WCC.

I really enjoyed this track..I think it's great. Looks good and drives good.. Even Ross Brawn said the track was "perfect" in what respect I am not sure though, but that means something.

Yeah, his braking looked comprimised even in the first lap, of course that could have been tires not yet up to temp... I'm still impressed that not only did he hold off Vettle, he built up a 2 sec gap at one point, and set fast laps... Talking to Peter Windsor on SpeedTV Lou said his brakes never felt right the entire race. Too bad, it might have been a great fight.

Great defensive driving from Webber today, he picked a line and stuck to it, non of the stupid crap he pulled against RB or Kimi.

Button sucks when it comes to wheel to wheel racing, Kobay made him look silly.

Heidfeld once again proves that he is better than Kubica, nothing too surprising... plus he is a much better team player.

That drive may have just won Kobay his toyota seat next year.

Those chicanes today provided some great side by side action, I wish we could get some more of that... BAN THE DDD!!!

GREAT to see everybody gunning for the win today instead of the silly points racing we've been subjected to the last couple races.

[Ray]

In defense of Jenson he did just pit so he was on a heavy fuel load and tires that weren't quite up to full temperature.

[djos]

Fantastic effort from the Red Bull guys taking a 1-2 but Hamilton would almost certainly have taken the race.

to finish 1st, first you must finish! [-X

[djos]

I feel robbed of the exciting race between Vettel and Lewis; at the second or third Lap I knew something was definitely wrong the car because of the inconsistent lap times. Lewis was driving on three brakes. But yeah.. that how it goes. I am still happy that Kovi kept Kimi at Bay so Mclaren can stay third in the WCC.

I really enjoyed this track..I think it's great. Looks good and drives good.. Even Ross Brawn said the track was "perfect" in what respect I am not sure though, but that means something.

Battle? there was never going to be a battle, Only KERS kept Hamilton in front during the first stint:

CHRISTIAN HORNER, Team Principal:“That was the most brilliant way to finish the season, by gaining our fourth one-two finish and our sixth win. Both our drivers were supreme today. Sebastian drove an immaculate race and we managed to jump Lewis through good strategy, good pace and good work with the pit crew. Mark also had enough fuel to get Lewis at the next pit-stop – however, that came sooner than expected when Lewis retired.

After That the overall pace of Seb in his RB5 was never going to be matched imo!

[tk421]

0.5 seconds on Vettel fuel asjusted! I know the long straight low downforce track suits the MP4/24 but the BOSS is a beast!
It was like Vettel and Mark were slapped with a pile of bricks!

When this was first posted, I wanted to respond "Vettel is going overtake Ham-bone during the first pitstop and beat him silly" but I decided to wait until it actually happened. It's happened now, so I can only say "eat it!" Ham-hock never had a chance, and I wish he didn't have a brake problem because then he would have been properly beaten down by Vettel. A later post states that a viewer was "robbed" of viewing the alleged race battle between Vettel and Hamilton, but I know, this and that person knows, and everyone else knows that Hamilton had 0% chance of beating Vettel.

[compo]

[WhiteBlue]

When this was first posted, I wanted to respond "Vettel is going overtake Ham-bone during the first pitstop and beat him silly" but I decided to wait until it actually happened. It's happened now, so I can only say "eat it!" Ham-hock never had a chance, and I wish he didn't have a brake problem because then he would have been properly beaten down by Vettel. A later post states that a viewer was "robbed" of viewing the alleged race battle between Vettel and Hamilton, but I know, this and that person knows, and everyone else knows that Hamilton had 0% chance of beating Vettel.

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