Korean GP 2010 - Yeongam

[WhiteBlue]

Btw... Any pics of the metal from vettel's car flying out once his engine blew up???... (that is what is being reported)...

[andrew]

Edit: ammended previous post.

[Shrieker]

10 million dollar (literally) question: Could Hamilton have kept Alonso at bay had he not ran out of track ? I guess we'll never know...

Until then I'll take it as handing the win (and maybe the title) to Alonso on a silver plate.

Other than his critical 'off' Hamilton IMHO did everything that could be done with the Mp4/25. Mclaren clearly lack downforce compared to Red Bull and Ferrari, which was made even more obvious in slippery conditions. His car was probably sliding more than Alonso's or Vettel's, so he had to choose between conserving the tires or pushing hard and destroying them. He did conserve until Vettel retired, but when he pushed for a few good laps to catch Alonso the tires went off quickly and he was forced to nurse the car home in the closing stages.


If Alonso wins the title will it justify Ferrari's choice of forcing Massa to help him ? Probably will. And if you ask me, Mclaren should have done the same for Lewis earlier in the season given Button's display today.


As for Vettel. He is up there with Alonso and Hamilton, no question about that. He had a quicker - albeit more fragile car this season. Typical Newey trait... He could've wrapped up the title by now though if he had had as much luck as Webber enjoyed previously.

Still 2 races to go, and judging by the comments in this thread Ferrari have a task of 'engine management' for Alonso. I don't what the situation is like for Hamilton, but AFAIK he is in a better situation compared to Alonso. Game on !

[andrew]

[...]

10 million dollar (literally) question: Could Hamilton have kept Alonso at bay had he not ran out of track ? I guess we'll never know...

I think Alonso would have got past anyway. hamilton was having tyre problems so I think is was a queation of when not if.

[Shrieker]

One has to ask why the Renault engines on the Bulls keep breaking, but the ones on Renault cars haven't once (AFAIK) broken this season.

Tight Newey packaging+retarded ignition ? It's hard to stikre a good balance between performance and reliability, and looks like Newey has failed to get it right - yet again !

Remember the time when Raikkonen was being blamed for mechanical DNFs back in the day in 2005 ?

[JohnsonsEvilTwin]

10 million dollar (literally) question: Could Hamilton have kept Alonso at bay had he not ran out of track ? I guess we'll never know...

Alonso would have sailed past Hamilton. Did you see Alonso's tyres at the end of the race? They still had visible tread patterns where Hamilton was near bald.
Brundle actually commented on it towards the end of the race.
I think had it come push to shove Alonso would have pushed Hamilton into either making a mistake(plausible given his recent form) or Overcooking his tyres which would have slowed him down alot more comparitive to Alonso.

Hamilton should be pleased, Button was nowhere.

[zeph]

I do not understand why people are saying the RBR is fragile/unreliable.

Mark Webber has finished with points in all but two races and those DNF's were because of crashes, not mechanical failures.

It's only Vettel's stuff that breaks...


[now stepping aside for incoming torrent of "poor Vettel" conspiracy theories in 5,4,3,2,1...]

[WhiteBlue]

...Suffice to say that the majority of the drivers so far seemed to think stopping early was not a ridiculous idea.

The TV screen are glowing in the dark at the McLaren pit wall command center on lap 44. This was at the time when the sun was setting officially.

Q: Felipe, give us your read on the conditions today. A bit of night driving at the end and what third place means to you and the Ferrari team.
Felipe Massa: Well, it means good points for the team. It means a good race in very difficult conditions as at the end it definitely was very, very dark. Even though we have a very strong light in the steering wheel, which was very, very strong, it was difficult to see in front as it was coming very strong on your face.

Alonso btw was lucky to avoid a penalty for setting a purple third sector time under yellow after Petrow crashed his Renault in lap 41 at the pit entry. It appears that everybody was too busy to notice it.

[jon-mullen]

I'm sure Renault wanted to post something like; "It's a crying shame that Vettel with his aggressive driving ruined our engine"

For good measure they could've added, "We're also confident it had nothing to do with the Red Bull team using our engine as an air pump for their massive diffuser. We never cringe when we hear the sound their car makes off-throttle."

[segedunum]

One has to ask why the Renault engines on the Bulls keep breaking, but the ones on Renault cars haven't once (AFAIK) broken this season.

That's the problem. They don't keep breaking.

[Terrible3]

I do not understand why people are saying the RBR is fragile/unreliable.

Mark Webber has finished with points in all but two races and those DNF's were because of crashes, not mechanical failures.

It's only Vettel's stuff that breaks...


[now stepping aside for incoming torrent of "poor Vettel" conspiracy theories in 5,4,3,2,1...]

Its called luck, sometimes you have and other times you don't. Additionally for the record I do believe that MW did have a gearbox failure (filings found in oil)at the Canadian GP prior to the race. He was able to change his g-box out at the expense of 5 grid spot penalty. I also recall in 2009 Mark had a front brake failure at Singapore.

[Pup]

Several drivers it seems wanted the race stopped. In fact there was only one driver I can recall during the post-race interviews who laughed about the possibility of the race stopping early but his mentality over this issue proved to me once again that he is an immature idiot who still feels the need to act up to the camereas..

Laugh is maybe too strong a word but they certainly found the idea of stopping early laughable but I'm not mentioning names. Suffice to say that the majority of the drivers so far seemed to think stopping early was not a ridiculous idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

[andartop]

This race was surprisingly entertaining after such a lame delayed start!

I never understood what was the point of having them go behind a safety car for so long: if it was so bad they should have postponed or cancelled the whole damn thing, if not let them race!

All front drivers tried to manipulate the race director and the viewers depending on whether it suited their WDC chances if the race went on or not!

Mark Webber's mistake was only marginal but he paid a high price; still it was his mistake and no one else's as he admitted, but nowhere near as bad as to justify some comments that he ran out of talent. We've seen so much worse this season from all top drivers...

Vettel was really unlucky, but that's part of racing. I think he put on one of his stronger performances ever today.

Alonso did so as well: he was always very close to Vettel and managed his tires apparently better than everyone else. His pace near the end was staggering, opening up the gap from Lewis from 1.9 sec to 10 sec within a few laps, and then more, having only one lap less than Lewis on these tires.

Lewis salvaged well deserved points but was nowhere near where his fans would have liked to see him. Funny when he puts in a great performance in the rain it's always down to his superior skills and when he doesn't and just cruises to the end it's because his car was only that good! A lot of people have been waiting for a showdown between Alonso and Hamilton, and Alonso was clearly the winner today.

Massa scored a much needed for the WCC third but really should have been able to put some pressure on Lewis, which he never did.

Other than that, I was just surprised to see Sutil get away with it when he went off track and used the escape road to maintain his position in front of Button and Alguersuari, which I thought he should have allowed through. Aren't you supposed to try and return to the track where you left off? And if not wasn't that an unfair advantage?

[marcush.]

Buemi showed a very weak performance and to top it all he did a masterpiece of kackhanded
outbraking attempt wiping out Glock who was really well placed to perform the Virgin wonder in that race...what a pity .
Jaime Alguersuari has ,in my view now clearly realed in on Buemi and is the one they should retain .

[djos]

For those saying that Vettel killed his engine. That is not possible with a modern day F1 engine. The engine management system will NOT allow a driver to kill the engine. It goes up in smoke on it's own.

So explain why in the RB5 and now RB6 Vettel keeps having engine* failures and Webber doesn't?

*and other mechanical issues