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Kimi Raikkonen has converted a brilliantly working 2-stop strategy to a race wing for Lotus, immediately confirming the long run pace of the E21. Fernando Alonso finished in second place, 10 seconds behind while Sebastian Vettel completes the podium in third.
Only two teams had better tyre degradation. Alonso said they couldn't even contemplate a 2 stopper at Ferrari, and Mercedes only missed out by a small margin. If anything you could criticise their lack of knowledge of the car in failing to predict they'd miss out no a 2 stopper, but they hadn't run in anything like those conditions in Australia.ziggy wrote:Nico said in an interview they were surprised by tyre degradation. Initialy they wanted to do 2 stops, but they couldn't because of the tyres. Seems merc's tyre problems are far from over. Nico's face after his race said it all.
They did show it. It now occurs on the podium, with the questions asked this time by Martin Brundle.adcuz wrote:Anyone know why Sky didn't show the post race press conference? I can't remember if Sky did last year or not, I know BBC does/did.
I guess, they expected some showers and probably had a part of setup inclined towards wet. Probably a gamble that didn't worked out. Let's hope that Sepang is a complete dry weekend which would give us further evidence of the pecking order. I strongly believe that Lotus betted all their money on a dry race. Although the car has a history of being kind of on tyres, dry setup probably helped bit more in a 2 stop strategy. A Full dry weekend would help us understand where W04 stands.myurr wrote:Only two teams had better tyre degradation. Alonso said they couldn't even contemplate a 2 stopper at Ferrari, and Mercedes only missed out by a small margin. If anything you could criticise their lack of knowledge of the car in failing to predict they'd miss out no a 2 stopper, but they hadn't run in anything like those conditions in Australia.ziggy wrote:Nico said in an interview they were surprised by tyre degradation. Initialy they wanted to do 2 stops, but they couldn't because of the tyres. Seems merc's tyre problems are far from over. Nico's face after his race said it all.
On the super softs they managed the tyres as well as anyone, but failed to spot just how much better a race tyre the medium was. If they'd followed the same strategy then maybe they could have snatched 4th as Massa faded in the final stint, but they lacked the downforce and overall grip to really progress beyond that.
Still considering where they were last year that was an impressive showing. I'd love Hamilton to be able to fight for the championship, but that's unlikely to be a realistic goal for this year. If he can get a handful of podiums and snatch a win or two then it would be a very solid performance from Mercedes and a good indicator that they may be able to step up in 2014 and fight for the championship. Early impression is that they have a good chance of achieving all of that.
I have to disagree with this. They thought they had better degradation than others and tried a 2stop. It turns out they had equal degradation and had to do 3. Under shooting above average expectations is better than under shooting average expectations.ziggy wrote:Nico said in an interview they were surprised by tyre degradation. Initialy they wanted to do 2 stops, but they couldn't because of the tyres. Seems merc's tyre problems are far from over. Nico's face after his race said it all.
Was anything interesting said?lebesset wrote:Goran2812 wrote:they do have a press conference after the podium, but that one is not aired...[/quote
aired on spanish TV
Actually both Lotus' matevall wrote:Anyone noticed the big sparks underneath Kimi's car? For what I can tell, it was the only car that did that?
