2019 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne, March 15-17

[Manoah2u]

Mercedes are not the fastest. Ferrari and Red Bull are faster and even the Williams might be a challenge.

they are 4 and 5 seconds off the pace. how on earth do you even remotely think they are a challenge.

[marvin78]

Mercedes are not the fastest. Ferrari and Red Bull are faster and even the Williams might be a challenge.

they are 4 and 5 seconds off the pace. how on earth do you even remotely think they are a challenge.

Read again. It's clearly sarcasm.

Or he wrote the speech for Toto Wolf.

[Manoah2u]

Mercedes are not the fastest. Ferrari and Red Bull are faster and even the Williams might be a challenge.

they are 4 and 5 seconds off the pace. how on earth do you even remotely think they are a challenge.

Read again. It's clearly sarcasm.

Or he wrote the speech for Toto Wolf.

my bad!

in that case

[wickedz50]

Mercedes are not the fastest. Ferrari and Red Bull are faster and even the Williams might be a challenge.

Mate any reason for this statement?

[wickedz50]

they are 4 and 5 seconds off the pace. how on earth do you even remotely think they are a challenge.

Read again. It's clearly sarcasm.

Or he wrote the speech for Toto Wolf.

my bad!

in that case

Hope that's not Toto himself!

[bosyber]

https://twitter.com/andrewbensonf1/stat ... 5807884289

Interesting, I suppose the soft degradation is quite a bit then, and the hard is just too hard, leaving the medium as the much faster race tyre? If so, p11 is going to be a coveted spot, and Ferrari surely will try to go through q2 with that tyre.

[Jambier]

Finaly ranking is quite what was expected for now.
Except Ferrari but they will be better tomorrow.

Renault will have hard time to beat the Red Bull bis and the Ferraris bis. This is 6 B car to beat for them

Honda is confident that Gasly engine issue is not a big deal

[djones]

I was fully expecting to see the news this morning and Ferrari be 1-2 in both sessions a with a half second lead.

Instead they are eating tyres and noticeably off the pace.

Worst thing is the Mercs did not even look settled so have time to come.

So much for all the talk of low rake being the wrong choice and the front wing being last generation

[Vasconia]

I was fully expecting to see the news this morning and Ferrari be 1-2 in both sessions a with a half second lead.

Instead they are eating tyres and noticeably off the pace.

Worst thing is the Mercs did not even look settled so have time to come.

So much for all the talk of low rake being the wrong choice and the front wing being last generation

Well Alfa Romeo looked good so perhaps is just a balance problema(hopefully).

[Schuttelberg]

Mercedes are not the fastest. Ferrari and Red Bull are faster and even the Williams might be a challenge.

they are 4 and 5 seconds off the pace. how on earth do you even remotely think they are a challenge.

Read again. It's clearly sarcasm.

Or he wrote the speech for Toto Wolf.

Hit. Nail. Head.

I honestly feel Ferrari struggled with tyres today. Australia is anyway an atypical track. My frank assessment is that Ferrari and Mercedes are close and the tyres will decide which way it swings over a weekend.

[Schuttelberg]

Read again. It's clearly sarcasm.

Or he wrote the speech for Toto Wolf.

my bad!

in that case

Hope that's not Toto himself!

[kaido]

I know it is still early, but where are all the experts that swore Ferrari had a sizeable advantage? Merc looks like they are going to dominate here. Although we have not seen the best of Verstappen yet. What the hell is Ferrari doing in FP2?

Do you really think times for FP2 are representative of the order.

In the past Ferrari had a habit of setting fastest time in FP, then coming to qualifying they were out pace by the MERC. Less showboating and more focusing on their program.

Yeah but when one team sets the fastest time in FP1 and FP2 it's usually because they are fastest. I don't think the gap is what it looks like in FP2 though. It is probably closer to what we saw in FP1, but Merc has got the big difference maker in Hamilton, who absolutely loves this track...

Don't disagree with that either, Lewis has a way to pull a rabbit out of a hat when it comes time for the final runs in Q3.

I do think Ferrari need to improve their setup but this is nothing unusual. plenty of times last year they were off the pace Friday and come Saturday it all changed.

All 3 of the top teams can make improvements due to setup. Will be interesting to see how it all places out i am expecting the top 3 to be alot closer to each other but which will lead i think we won't really know to the end of Q3

[Ringleheim]

It's way too early to make predictions about true qualifying pace.

I think it will be very close between Ferrari and Mercedes. It is true, Hamilton has a gift for cranking out a near-perfect lap when he has to in qualifying, but that often masks the race pace of the car...

I think Ferrari and Mercedes are very close and the race itself should be very interesting.

As long as Vettel is near the front, it doesn't matter if he misses pole anyway.

[Sierra117]

I haven't seen other onboards so do correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the RB doesn't have that much downforce. Blasphemy I know, but at the turn 11-12 left-right section, Max on his flying lap sim seems to lift off quite a bit. Compared to last year's pole laps I mean. Again, maybe everyone is doing this, I didn't get to analyse others, but just something I noticed.

[Jambier]

As long as Vettel is near the front, it doesn't matter if he misses pole anyway.

Indeed, he just need to wait for Albon to crash and safety car to come out