myurr wrote:NathanOlder wrote:Great job Jenson, Mclaren is the class of the field. The safety car seriously helped out the other teams. I feel the race was won into turn 1 today. whichever Mclaren driver made it there first had the choice of the pitstops so was always easily in control. And today the DRS (like last year) was not very effective. So once Jenso got into the leas it was game over. Pitting 1 lap earlier meant Lewis had no answer.
To be fair Lewis was having to protect his rear tyres constantly so couldn't push as he would have wanted to.
McLaren stayed out a lap or two too long on the first stint which brought Vettel back into it a bit and then were very unlucky with the safety car. Lewis lost about 4 - 6 seconds to Vettel in that first round of pit stops by being kept out two laps too long. Without those two things then Vettel would have been a solid third but not in touch with Hamilton.
I think the next race will be a bit different. The long straights will play towards McLaren's hands with their slippery car, but there are some faster corners where they'll have an advantage over the Mercedes and Lotus. The grippier surface should help Lewis with his rear tyres as well, plus they'll have a bit more setup knowledge to help manage that.
Red Bull will probably suffer again in qualifying but should have a good race. They'll have to battle through a few cars though to get close to the McLarens.
Mercedes are harder to read though. Very fast over one lap but then were nowhere at all in the race. Rosberg went backwards and whilst Schumacher seemed to be holding on a little better I have no doubt his tyres would still have gone off faster than the cars around him.
Hamilton was actually pulling away from Vettel on mediums while Vettel was chasing him down on softs. He was making and maintaining a two second lead on slower tyres.
They really did keep Lewis out far too long.
He basically wasn't allowed to come in until Button pits which is why they had to do the double pit. Hamilton needed the tyres, but wasn't allowed them. You can hear on the radio, Hamilton asking for tyres and his engineer telling him to just keep pushing.
Without the safety car, Hamilton was going to be second. Very unlucky today.
Maldonado though........he destroyed Grosjeans race, but I couldn't feel bad when I saw him harassing Alonso like that. It's a real shame he couldn't finish.