2012 Korean GP - Yeong-Am

[Cylinder]

.....it's called Adrian Newey and the Red Bull development team have pulled another rabbit out of the hat.

I'd have to agree that a lot of the results of the WDC/WCC came from the extreme ingenuity from Newey and the intense dedication by the Red Bull team.

Of course, if we wanted to just purely compare drivers, we wouldn't be watching F1. I may think Alonso is the best driver out there on the track, but there's no beating the complete Red Bull Team.

If this race is any indication, Vettel will build a comfortable lead with victories in India, Austin, and Abu Dhabi; Webber will cover Vettel's six, only to get the nice consolation win in Brazil.....

I agree with most of this. But I don't think the title is over yet actually, I really think there could be a another twist yet. Vettel is a top driver no doubt, my issue is a driver who is not in the top 2 best drivers in the sport (in my view) is likely to be a 3x WDC. It's going to skew History.

This is not like Michael Schumacher, who was the clearly the best driver in his era as he proved when he was dragging inferior cars to last race title deciders and race wins and who was untouchable when he got the fastest car.... this is a bloke who is not even the best of his own era who BBC sport ranked as the 8th best driver of all time simply because of number of titles vs age, it's just getting absolutely ridiculous.

[Cylinder]

I really don't know why Sky Sports F1 have declared the title over, that's rediculous in my view, 6 points with 4 races to go is nothing, 1 DNF can change anything. Hamilton and Button are still keys in this championship, I think they will still want to win races and if they can get in between or infront of Webber and Vettel, than anything can happen. The key with Vettel is to get him RACING, he doesnt like racing, he's front runner, if you get get him to race as button showed in Canada last year.....things can happen.

[raymondu999]

At this point, Alonso would like to have Webber be the Ferrari No. 1.5 Driver and take poles and (hopefully) upper points positions from Vettel.

He probably does. Probably won't happen. Did anyone notice how he was practically Vettel's rear gunner today? He stayed 8-10s off Vettel, and every time Alonso got to within 1.5 seconds, blitzed him and pulled out a gap.

The key with Vettel is to get him RACING, he doesnt like racing, he's front runner, if you get get him to race as button showed in Canada last year.....things can happen.

I'd have agreed if you had said this maybe last year. He made overtakes before, but I wouldn't class any of them a "classy", and a lot were downright clumsy (using Sutil practically as a brake in Silverstone 2010)

But after Spa I'm not so sure to be honest. Of late he seems to have been very comfortable overtaking and defending, except with the booboo he had with Fernando at Monza. He's generally had the odd race where he makes one or two passes in the past (Monza 2011, Australia 2012), but Spa IMO was him for the first time cleanly moving up the field through traffic, and he did (to memory) a couple of passes too in Monza which were clean.

[mbvinnie]

Hulkenberg shows his skill. A personal favourite behind Lewis, obviously.

Looking at the Kobayashi incident, it looked totally his fault. He claimed that he was hit from behind and lost the control of the car, but what I could see there were no one near him.

Rosberg hit Kobayashi it's seems

Indeed, in this video (need to view the angle that starts from 6sec in) it looks like Rosberg moves across and Kobayashi gets squeezed, the first contact is with Rosberg (who took his line), and then he was just a passenger when he hits Button.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYdt9booD6c

I would like to see it from another angle, Kobayashi onboard for example. Not sure it is as clear cut as Button thinks.

[RB7ate9]

He probably does. Probably won't happen. Did anyone notice how he was practically Vettel's rear gunner today? He stayed 8-10s off Vettel, and every time Alonso got to within 1.5 seconds, blitzed him and pulled out a gap.

Of all that happened today in regards to Red Bull pace, the fact that Webber could basically hit a button and get back that gap has to be the scariest sign for the other teams.

And I definitely noticed the rear-gunner action. Red Bull team knows what it takes to win. Seeing Webber pull out that gap, you know he could've really taken the fight to Vettel, but at cost to both of their tire strategies.

[foxmulder_ms]

Looking very good for Vettel and Rebdull.

McLaren was terrible today, starting from 3rd and finishing at 10th! Only thing they were good at was slowing down Lotus:) Roman and especially Kimi lost a lot of time. Probably result would have been same but never know... Kimi may close down on Massa. Even without the turf issue Hamilton could have only finished 9th.

Ferraris were faster than I expected. Lotus was a little bit slower then what I thought. I was expecting a fight between Kimi and Alonso for the 3rd position.

I think the current championship standing for first three (Vettel, Alonso, Kimi) will hold at the end of the season, too.

[myurr]

He made an error going wide resulting in the astro turf lodging where it did.

He also had suspension failure that led to him going wide through understeer.

[Websta]

Good drive by Massa again. If the championship is tied up by Brazil (unlikely), I would like to see him fighting for a podium there

[Forza]

Few Race data from live timing



Race fastest laps


Race fastest pitstops


Lap time analysis (top 4)


Race Gap analysis VET WEB- ALO- MAS- RAI- HULK

[LionKing]

Where exactly is this botched pit stop for Lewis? 19.4, 19.6 and 20.8 ....

[adam2003]

whats a anti roll bar do

[beelsebob]

whats a anti roll bar do

It does exactly what it says on the tin – it stops the car rolling. It does so by limiting the amount of difference in travel between the suspension on each side.

[WhiteBlue]

whats a anti roll bar do

The anti roll bar is the damper that stops the car from rolling around the longitudinal axis. It was damaged for the second time in Hamilton's McLaren during the race. That is a lot of egg on McLaren's face.

[CHT]

I don't think Red Bull would issue team orders, I just hope that they don't botch Webber's pit stop (unintentionally) as it will still raise all sorts of eyebrows. Hopefully Hamilton jumps Vet at the start and they finish Web, Ham, Vet, Alo to make the championship more exciting

There is zero chance of Webber relinquishing a race victory to help Vettel unless RBR hold a loaded gun to his head.

Edit: especially for just 7 points - I could only see him doing it willingly at the final race of the season to seal the championship for Vettel, but not with 5 rounds left. He wouldn't be very happy about that situation either

Vettel will pass webber at the start tomorrow.

As I was saying..

[beelsebob]

Vettel will pass webber at the start tomorrow.

As I was saying..

Interestingly, every driver on the left hand side of the grid down to 8th gained one place, and everyone on the right lost one – they've got the grid arranged backwards here.

In the mean time... Lewis was looking good for 4th here, possibly 3rd if he was lucky until yet another McLaren cock up...
That's another 11 points lost to him, and he's now down 160-170 for the season thanks to McLaren.