2016 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 18-20

[ollandos]

after quali new format ...this 3 tyre choise is another fiasko

very good pace from haas and gro....similar stategy with FI and williams same pace
bad day for mclaren but similar last stind with toro rosso almost similar best sectors times...

[gandharva]

...this 3 tyre choise is another fiasko

I like it, and it hopefully will stick.

[ripper]

do you understand tire wear and how much it affects pace? old supersofts versus newer mediums .. after about 5 laps the supersofts will lose every time.
the only stint you can draw anything from is the first stint with the same tires with the same amount of wear and the Ferrari was pulling away ( clean air did have an effect)

Do you understand that the SS should've been 2 seconds quicker? But all Vettel got within 5 laps or more was a 3 second gap. Speaks for the Mercedes I guess.

Even with clean soft tyres Vettel could not gain that much of a time to Rosberg who was towards the end of the race managing his tyres.

Mercedes is still the car to beat, that's sure.

Vettel managed to open a bit of gap with Rosberg on first stint, but Rosberg was behind Raikkonen so its pace wasn't the real one.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Mercedes still the fastest car out there. Rosberg could easily follow Vettel with medium tyres. That was pretty impressive. Also Hamilton gained time on Vettel as soon as he got Sainz out of the way.

Mercedes was beatable last year too when they started bad. But don't see how anyone could've touched them today had they not lost position at the start.

Fernando pretty lucky. Gutierrez gives him no place to survive and we're lucky nothing serious happened afterwards. I wonder how a halo would've influenced this crash. Don't see how Alonso would have managed to get out of the car so easily.

do you understand tire wear and how much it affects pace? old supersofts versus newer mediums .. after about 5 laps the supersofts will lose every time.
the only stint you can draw anything from is the first stint with the same tires with the same amount of wear and the Ferrari was pulling away ( clean air did have an effect)

Give yourself a bit of rest man. You need that swagger for the rest of the year.
Those who think Ferrari should have bolted a Medium too, are not understanding two key elements.
1. Ferrari has a trait of being slower and slower as the compound gets harder and harder. I bet you, they will never use the Hard compound throughout this season and will stick themselves to the least harder compounds in every race.
2. Mercedes has poured enarmous amount of effort to set their car to Mediums. They seems to have built the car around that. Expect them to bolt mediums way too often this season.

For the race, Ferrari were lucky that the Mercedes cars didn't got a good start. But even then, Ferraris weren't flying either in the beginning and it was Kimi who was holding up Nico. I seriously think, if the Mercedes would have gotten ahead, it was a race to forget. If Ferrari would have bolted the mediums, they still would have got overtaken by the Mercedes. When finally Vettel bolted those Softs, he wasn't flying either, against an old set of Medium on Nico's car. Once again a mistake from Lewis brought Vettel closer and then he made a mistake.
We know already how vulnerable Mercedes cars are on tight circuits. Last year in hungary and this year, here. In essence, Ferrari need Mercedes' bad luck to challenge for Championship. But before that, they have to conquer their reliability. That massive fire inside that Ferrari, seems like one set of PU is gone.

[TLof]

What we can already say is that Mercedes seems to be really strong on mediums. I think at the end of the day Ferrari had no chance but to use supersofts. They probably hoped to create a decent gap to Rosberg so they can attack in the last laps but were surprised how well the Mercedes runs on those mediums.

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Mercedes still the fastest car out there. Rosberg could easily follow Vettel with medium tyres. That was pretty impressive. Also Hamilton gained time on Vettel as soon as he got Sainz out of the way.

Mercedes was beatable last year too when they started bad. But don't see how anyone could've touched them today had they not lost position at the start.

Fernando pretty lucky. Gutierrez gives him no place to survive and we're lucky nothing serious happened afterwards. I wonder how a halo would've influenced this crash. Don't see how Alonso would have managed to get out of the car so easily.

do you understand tire wear and how much it affects pace? old supersofts versus newer mediums .. after about 5 laps the supersofts will lose every time.
the only stint you can draw anything from is the first stint with the same tires with the same amount of wear and the Ferrari was pulling away ( clean air did have an effect)

Give yourself a bit of rest man. You need that swagger for the rest of the year.
Those who think Ferrari should have bolted a Medium too, are not understanding two key elements.
1. Ferrari has a trait of being slower and slower as the compound gets harder and harder. I bet you, they will never use the Hard compound throughout this season and will stick themselves to the least harder compounds in every race.
2. Mercedes has poured enarmous amount of effort to set their car to Mediums. They seems to have built the car around that. Expect them to bolt mediums way too often this season.

For the race, Ferrari were lucky that the Mercedes cars didn't got a good start. But even then, Ferraris weren't flying either in the beginning and it was Kimi who was holding up Nico. I seriously think, if the Mercedes would have gotten ahead, it was a race to forget. If Ferrari would have bolted the mediums, they still would have got overtaken by the Mercedes. When finally Vettel bolted those Softs, he wasn't flying either, against an old set of Medium on Nico's car (at that stage, he needed to be two seconds faster to beat the cross over period and get ahead of Nico before softs go off). Once again a mistake from Lewis brought Vettel closer and then he made a mistake.
We know already how vulnerable Mercedes cars are on tight circuits. Last year in hungary and this year, here. In essence, Ferrari need Mercedes' bad luck to challenge for Championship. But before that, they have to conquer their reliability. That massive fire inside that Ferrari, seems like one set of PU is gone.

[Edax]

Max got EXACTLY what he deserved... remember him being told to let Sainz through and saying no last year?? payback hurts

The team was standing ready for Max, when Sainz barged in the pits and took his stop and his tires. Where exactly did he deserve that?

[jetho]

The team was standing ready for Max, when Sainz barged in the pits and took his stop and his tires. Where exactly did he deserve that?

That is most definitely not what happened. If Sainz took Verstappen's tires he would have gotten penalized. Each set of tires is assigned to a certain driver and checked via a barcode.

[giantfan10]

Mercedes still the fastest car out there. Rosberg could easily follow Vettel with medium tyres. That was pretty impressive. Also Hamilton gained time on Vettel as soon as he got Sainz out of the way.

Mercedes was beatable last year too when they started bad. But don't see how anyone could've touched them today had they not lost position at the start.

Fernando pretty lucky. Gutierrez gives him no place to survive and we're lucky nothing serious happened afterwards. I wonder how a halo would've influenced this crash. Don't see how Alonso would have managed to get out of the car so easily.

do you understand tire wear and how much it affects pace? old supersofts versus newer mediums .. after about 5 laps the supersofts will lose every time.
the only stint you can draw anything from is the first stint with the same tires with the same amount of wear and the Ferrari was pulling away ( clean air did have an effect)

Give yourself a bit of rest man. You need that swagger for the rest of the year.
Those who think Ferrari should have bolted a Medium too, are not understanding two key elements.
1. Ferrari has a trait of being slower and slower as the compound gets harder and harder. I bet you, they will never use the Hard compound throughout this season and will stick themselves to the least harder compounds in every race.
2. Mercedes has poured enarmous amount of effort to set their car to Mediums. They seems to have built the car around that. Expect them to bolt mediums way too often this season.

For the race, Ferrari were lucky that the Mercedes cars didn't got a good start. But even then, Ferraris weren't flying either in the beginning and it was Kimi who was holding up Nico. I seriously think, if the Mercedes would have gotten ahead, it was a race to forget. If Ferrari would have bolted the mediums, they still would have got overtaken by the Mercedes. When finally Vettel bolted those Softs, he wasn't flying either, against an old set of Medium on Nico's car. Once again a mistake from Lewis brought Vettel closer and then he made a mistake.
We know already how vulnerable Mercedes cars are on tight circuits. Last year in hungary and this year, here. In essence, Ferrari need Mercedes' bad luck to challenge for Championship. But before that, they have to conquer their reliability. That massive fire inside that Ferrari, seems like one set of PU is gone.

starting a race is a part of racing so i'm not buying the IF mercedes had a better start stuff.. they didnt and thats the end of that... too many IFs in there for me . this is 2016,, traits from last year are dead and gone .
Vettel had a 12 second lead on those softs before the red flag and second was the worst he was going to finish IMHO....
you are entitled to your opinion of course on what u think was going to happen ... i'm going to bed enjoy

[ripper]

Mercedes still the fastest car out there. Rosberg could easily follow Vettel with medium tyres. That was pretty impressive. Also Hamilton gained time on Vettel as soon as he got Sainz out of the way.

Mercedes was beatable last year too when they started bad. But don't see how anyone could've touched them today had they not lost position at the start.

Fernando pretty lucky. Gutierrez gives him no place to survive and we're lucky nothing serious happened afterwards. I wonder how a halo would've influenced this crash. Don't see how Alonso would have managed to get out of the car so easily.

do you understand tire wear and how much it affects pace? old supersofts versus newer mediums .. after about 5 laps the supersofts will lose every time.
the only stint you can draw anything from is the first stint with the same tires with the same amount of wear and the Ferrari was pulling away ( clean air did have an effect)

Give yourself a bit of rest man. You need that swagger for the rest of the year.
Those who think Ferrari should have bolted a Medium too, are not understanding two key elements.
1. Ferrari has a trait of being slower and slower as the compound gets harder and harder. I bet you, they will never use the Hard compound throughout this season and will stick themselves to the least harder compounds in every race.
2. Mercedes has poured enarmous amount of effort to set their car to Mediums. They seems to have built the car around that. Expect them to bolt mediums way too often this season.

For the race, Ferrari were lucky that the Mercedes cars didn't got a good start. But even then, Ferraris weren't flying either in the beginning and it was Kimi who was holding up Nico. I seriously think, if the Mercedes would have gotten ahead, it was a race to forget. If Ferrari would have bolted the mediums, they still would have got overtaken by the Mercedes. When finally Vettel bolted those Softs, he wasn't flying either, against an old set of Medium on Nico's car (at that stage, he needed to be two seconds faster to beat the cross over period and get ahead of Nico before softs go off). Once again a mistake from Lewis brought Vettel closer and then he made a mistake.
We know already how vulnerable Mercedes cars are on tight circuits. Last year in hungary and this year, here. In essence, Ferrari need Mercedes' bad luck to challenge for Championship. But before that, they have to conquer their reliability. That massive fire inside that Ferrari, seems like one set of PU is gone.

Sadly I agree with you. The only thing that I'm not sure is that Mercedes guys could surpass Vettel if he had medium compound even if they were faster.


Raikkonen said in an interview that it wasn't the PU but something else, but they still didn't know what happened

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Vettel had a 12 second lead on those softs before the red flag and second was the worst he was going to finish IMHO....

That's an IF too. Red Flag, Safety Cars are PART OF RACING (your own words).

[GPR-A duplicate2]

Raikkonen said in an interview that it wasn't the PU but something else, but they still didn't know what happened

PU is not just the ICE. With such a fire, the whole EC would have gone for sure. ICE would have bore the brunt. We will only know the damage once their full analysis is complete.

[Edax]

The team was standing ready for Max, when Sainz barged in the pits and took his stop and his tires. Where exactly did he deserve that?

That is most definitely not what happened. If Sainz took Verstappen's tires he would have gotten penalized. Each set of tires is assigned to a certain driver and checked via a barcode.

All I know is that the team was ready for verstappen and one lap later they did not have the tires ready. Somehow I think that is related to Sainz jumping the pit stop order.

[tonmeister]

The team was standing ready for Max, when Sainz barged in the pits and took his stop and his tires. Where exactly did he deserve that?

That is most definitely not what happened. If Sainz took Verstappen's tires he would have gotten penalized. Each set of tires is assigned to a certain driver and checked via a barcode.

All I know is that the team was ready for verstappen and one lap later they did not have the tires ready. Somehow I think that is related to Sainz jumping the pit stop order.

Has it crossed your mind that it was maybe related to Max coming to box without warning his mechanics?

[turbof1]

I'm happy for Haas, they were lucky with the red flag but 6th place is an awesome place for them

With everything else that happened, that is something that slipped my mind! Wow, they probably would never have expected that themselves. That's a very good start for them.