2013 Abu Dhabi GP - Yas Marina

[ringo]

Lotus is using every trick in the book to not achieve anything this season and remain marketing driven circus run on owner's whims. Worked in Singapore brilliantly, qualifying in India and now combination of two different cars and one falling apart.

What's happened?
I wasn't able to watch fp1 and 2

[IceIceBaby]

Lotus is using every trick in the book to not achieve anything this season and remain marketing driven circus run on owner's whims. Worked in Singapore brilliantly, qualifying in India and now combination of two different cars and one falling apart.

What's happened?
I wasn't able to watch fp1 and 2

Lotus reverted back to the Shorter Wheel base car with Kimi, because it clearly suited him better. Romain had a brake problem in FP2 and only did 18 laps.

[Juzh]

Raikkonen was super fast on race runs with very little or no degradation on softs. He was consistently faster in 2nd and 3rd sector than both RBs on mediums. Lotus 1 stopping for sure. RB on the other hand had a fair amount of tire deg on softs. They ran ~15 laps or smth like that on them and drop of was something like 1,5-2s. They had zero deg on medium, much like anyone else. 40 laps on a single medium set could be pushing it a bit.

[godlameroso]

It's going to be a two stopper, starting on mediums could actually pay off here seeing as how the softs last at least 10 laps. The mediums can easily last 25 laps, Red Bull is definitely faster but their lead isn't as large as it's been in the previous 5 races.

[dxpetrov]

Raikkonen was super fast on race runs with very little or no degradation on softs. He was consistently faster in 2nd and 3rd sector than both RBs on mediums. Lotus 1 stopping for sure. RB on the other hand had a fair amount of tire deg on softs. They ran ~15 laps or smth like that on them and drop of was something like 1,5-2s. They had zero deg on medium, much like anyone else. 40 laps on a single medium set could be pushing it a bit.

I can see you being easily mistaken. RAI did his run on softs on his second race stint, and very short one, therefore such competitive lap times. I see this maybe the strongest and most dominant wins in the season by RB, with 40 to 50s to any car after them. They were easily 1s per lap quicker than anything else...

[Juzh]

Raikkonen was super fast on race runs with very little or no degradation on softs. He was consistently faster in 2nd and 3rd sector than both RBs on mediums. Lotus 1 stopping for sure. RB on the other hand had a fair amount of tire deg on softs. They ran ~15 laps or smth like that on them and drop of was something like 1,5-2s. They had zero deg on medium, much like anyone else. 40 laps on a single medium set could be pushing it a bit.

I can see you being easily mistaken. RAI did his run on softs on his second race stint, and very short one, therefore such competitive lap times. I see this maybe the strongest and most dominant wins in the season by RB, with 40 to 50s to any car after them. They were easily 1s per lap quicker than anything else...

How short exactly? Because he was popping some pretty good sector times for quite a while.

[dxpetrov]

Not 100% sure but something around 4-5 laps at the end of the session only...

[iotar__]

Lotus is using every trick in the book to not achieve anything this season and remain marketing driven circus run on owner's whims. Worked in Singapore brilliantly, qualifying in India and now combination of two different cars and one falling apart.

What's happened?
I wasn't able to watch fp1 and 2

1. Limited running and no long runs in FP2 - can be a problem when the second car is different
2. Car's falling apart - brakes and "vibrations" so they stopped
But after reading their practice notes you might think that it's the perfect way to prepare the driver for the race as far as Lotus is concerned, so maybe I'm wrong .

[Hail22]

*peers into the mighty crystal ball*

I predict another boring finger filled weekend.

[zere]

How short exactly? Because he was popping some pretty good sector times for quite a while.

Outlap
1:45.2
1:45.0
1:44.5
1:44.6
Inlap

The long runs VET vs. RAI showed a 1sec advantage for the RB over the Lotus iirc

[atanatizante]

Last race Grosjean did 14 laps on soft tyre so here Lotus could do easily 22-25 laps max. and then it's a straight one stop for them and I think Vettel was genuinely when he said they are very quick around here ...
Now according to Rosberg, bearing in mind that option tyre is 1,5 to 2 sec. faster then medium one and most of all it's last longer than 5 days ago, it's pretty even-steven strategy between one and two stops ...
So Lotus boys and Ferrari & Macca Boys will go with one stop and Merc Boys and Webber will try a two stop strategy like OPO ? ... and that's why Vettel isn't sure about his strategy ...

[SectorOne]

Hopefully a Mercedes steals another pole here. Will be very tough though, the RB is super strong at the moment.

[atanatizante]

Rumors says it'll be a one stop race, again ...
I don't understand, it's just so simple for FIA to stop this tyre endless issue : they just have to enforce a mandatory 3 stop race with Pirelli tyres that can last at least a half of the race and give the drivers the opportunity to have an attack race not a management tyre farce race like we have nowadays ...

[WhiteBlue]

Vettel will do it. Ferrari on P11 and P14. The car looks undrivable.

[stefan_]

The rotating onboard camera was moved to Kimi's car