Sebastian Vettel has taken an easy and utterly dominant victory at the Indian GP to extend his lead further in the championship. Fernando Alonso however progressed from 5th on the grid to 2nd at the finish to keep his title hopes alive. Mark Webber finished third, just ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
f1316 wrote:The unknown quantity is this, comparitively major, update Ferrari are supposed to be bringing. Of course Red Bull will bring updates too, but the Ferrari has looked OK in recent races without anything *new* (just wing optimisations for layout), so you feel there may be more to "fix" with the car than the RB.
On the flip side, RB seem to understand their car better, so their updates might be more effective. But it's not as cut and dry as some seem to be suggesting. RB are clear favourites, but if Ferrari make a step they can be very close.
I think the updates are an unknown quantity period at this point. When was the lasttime an update worked? Alonso said 7 races - and 7 counting Korea means Silverstone. That means through Hockenheim, Hungary, Spa, Monza, Singapore, Suzuka and Korea their updates have all not worked.
f1316 wrote:The unknown quantity is this, comparitively major, update Ferrari are supposed to be bringing. Of course Red Bull will bring updates too, but the Ferrari has looked OK in recent races without anything *new* (just wing optimisations for layout), so you feel there may be more to "fix" with the car than the RB.
On the flip side, RB seem to understand their car better, so their updates might be more effective. But it's not as cut and dry as some seem to be suggesting. RB are clear favourites, but if Ferrari make a step they can be very close.
I think the updates are an unknown quantity period at this point. When was the lasttime an update worked? Alonso said 7 races - and 7 counting Korea means Silverstone. That means through Hockenheim, Hungary, Spa, Monza, Singapore, Suzuka and Korea their updates have all not worked.
Well, exactly. It's therefore quite likely that they won't be able to make a big step right away.
But if you consider they're as close to the pace as they are without a big update, then there's certainly a chance that a few small tweaks could make them really competitive. The issue with using the Cologne, Toyota wind tunnel (rather than their own) may have helped them correlate data, but let's see.
Yeah, from a performance point of view it probably helped. But logistically I don't think it's at all efficient to be ferrying parts between Cologne and Maranello - especially if it's a part you have to make, just to ship it to Cologne to get what is, in effect - an approval.
raymondu999 wrote:Yeah, from a performance point of view it probably helped. But logistically I don't think it's at all efficient to be ferrying parts between Cologne and Maranello - especially if it's a part you have to make, just to ship it to Cologne to get what is, in effect - an approval.
Better that than to go down a dead end with a part that doesn't work...
Anyway, it's far from ideal, I agree. My point though is that the performance gap was not that huge in Korea, so whilst it's likely Vettel will win the next race, it's far from a forgone conclusion at a similar track.
The Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, and on some tracks Sauber Willilams and Lotus, can all win races if they start at or near the front. That much has been established. I think having understood this and given their good race pace, Red Bull have gone back to focus on qualifying. Once you have clean air you can preserve the tires far better than if you're dicing with someone on track. Ferrari has the race pace to match the Bulls now it seems, now they just need to get on top of their qualifying. The Mclaren isn't the fastest car on race pace, it has the same problem as Mercedes albeit to a lesser degree, it's very fast and consistent, but it chews through it's tires, but if it can start at the front, Lewis or Button are good enough to manage the race. Luckily the car is fast everywhere, and Hamilton is brilliant over a single lap.
The biggest thing that has worked in Ferrari's favor seem to be their break tunnels, they seem to have made a step forward in that area, perhaps the update for India is the implementation of the cheese graters on the lower endplates of the rear wing to better interact with the exhaust and break ducts.
For India all but two mayyyybe three of the high speed corners are just short changes of direction it's like a bunch of degner curves.
Given the races since Canada have basically been 2 stop OPP (with the random tyre-friendly guy going OOP, and Monza being OP) - I'd wager that we have that strategy here.
"...and there, very much in flames, is Jacques Laffite's Ligier. That's obviously a turbo blaze, and of course, Laffite will be able to see that conflagration in his mirrors... he is coolly parking the car somewhere safe."Murray Walker, San Marino 1985
godlameroso wrote:Ferrari has the race pace to match the Bulls now it seems, now they just need to get on top of their qualifying.
If you recall from Korea, whenever Alonso was within 1.2s of Webber, Webber put the hammer down and boosted that back up to 3 - 4s gap within a lap or two. From there, Webber was able to maintain that pace for the rest of the race. I would not say that Ferrari has the exact race pace to Red Bull, but they do need to get Alonso on pole and Massa in 2nd or 3rd to cover his back end. Massa has good starts and can race well, so if he can qualify just behind Alonso, then he has a solid chance of upsetting Vettel/Webber/Hamilton/Raikkonen's race and give Alonso the gap he needs to avoid the pit-stop undercut.
I keep hearing back and forth about Ferrari updates for India, we'll see who is right.
It's going to be a very interesting weekend, can't wait for it!! I'm very intrigued to see just what these updates for Ferrari are and if they work. I do hope Vettel just doesn't run away with it and Alonso can put some kind of pressure on him.
I don't want to derail the topic as this is about the India race, but Massa clearly had the pace in Korea, and he's been quoted as saying that he finally understands how to drive the car to maximize it's performance. In any case I expect India to be close again between Ferrari and Red Bull.
godlameroso wrote:I don't want to derail the topic as this is about the India race, but Massa clearly had the pace in Korea, and he's been quoted as saying that he finally understands how to drive the car to maximize it's performance. In any case I expect India to be close again between Ferrari and Red Bull.
And what exactly was that ''close'' between them? RB in hands of SV ran away and disappeared and then switched off the engine and preserved the tires. You don't judge the speed of RB by looking at Webber, do you?
I don't think Webber was slow at all to be frank. I think he was just maintaining a gap to Alonso, teasing Alonso to push (and thus wear his tyres out) Webber blitzed Alonso anytime Alonso went below 1.3s of Webber. IMO looking at the sector times during the race I felt that Webber was doing a fantastic rearguard action - blocking off Alonso's attack (and thus being Vettel's bodyguard) whilst teasing Alonso to push and destroy his tyres.
IMO in Korea the Bulls were just toying with the Ferraris and managing tyres.
We saw (or I did in my personal calculations anyways) in Korea long runs that the bulls were some 7 tenths off the Ferrari pace set by Alonso - in hindsight the Bulls were probably running at full tanks, Ferrari not so.
raymondu999 wrote:I don't think Webber was slow at all to be frank. I think he was just maintaining a gap to Alonso, teasing Alonso to push (and thus wear his tyres out) Webber blitzed Alonso anytime Alonso went below 1.3s of Webber. IMO looking at the sector times during the race I felt that Webber was doing a fantastic rearguard action - blocking off Alonso's attack (and thus being Vettel's bodyguard) whilst teasing Alonso to push and destroy his tyres.
IMO in Korea the Bulls were just toying with the Ferraris and managing tyres.
We saw (or I did in my personal calculations anyways) in Korea long runs that the bulls were some 7 tenths off the Ferrari pace set by Alonso - in hindsight the Bulls were probably running at full tanks, Ferrari not so.
Absolutely got this impression as well.
Ferrari, for the rest of the season, needs to be on form in quali with a solid P1/P2 because Korea showed they [Red Bull] could command the pace from the front, but the unknown factor as of yet is how hard they [Red Bull] can attack with the DDRS. Only giving Alonso P1 and Massa as acting Webber in P2 can they get that extra cushion. I expect Q3 to be a major battleground in India.
Edited for clarification
Last edited by RB7ate9 on 15 Oct 2012, 22:26, edited 1 time in total.
I think your comment raises an interesting question - will Ferrari perhaps start compromising their race setup for a better qualifying pace? Possible, methinks.
