Chinese GP 2012 - Shanghai

[Mestrades]

When the FIA is going to load the times? It would be nice to see the race sims.

[raymondu999]

This is the dilemma of the W03, which appears to be set up sensitive with regard to the use of its tyres.

Seems to me like it's a bit of a prima donna when it comes to tyres. You have to set it up specifically for a particular range of temperatures - and that range is small.

[raymondu999]

McLaren seem to be running loads of front brake bias. They're locking both fronts into 14.

Why does that imply lots of front bias?

It was a relative thing. The rears didn't lock; so the rears could probably brake a bit harder.

[Mr.S]

Lotus has 320 km top speed while MSC had 320.8. How on earth is Lotus with the Renault engine so quick without the W-duct stuff??

Anyways Lewis & Mclaren are well down on top speed. S1,Lewis had a tenth & half,S2 were almost similar,S3 Michael made 3 to 3 & 1/2 tenths. Only Vettel was within 2 tenths of Michael,Red Bull mechanically is fantastic this year.


Either Mercedes have sacrificied a bit of straightline speed & are high on downforce or the car is decent in fast corners as S2 has a couple of long fast corners.

Mechanically Mercedes have to improve. Would love to see a Sauber style exhaust on Mercedes. Despite not having the best exhaust Mercedes do allright on fast corners as I feel their sidepod design is very good.

[Lycoming]

ehh... I don't recall ever seeing locking rears. You typically set it a little bit forward of optimum so that if you do lock, the fronts lock up first and this way you don't spin off when you try to turn in.

[raymondu999]

I've seen it before - rear locking, as well as all 4 wheels locked.

Button was also complaining of "massive front locking" on the radio. "Massive front locking, even on the outside." I believe were his words.

If you have enough braking capacity at the front to lock up the front outside tyre, which would be loaded by virtue of the braking, AND by the roll of turning in, I'd normally take that as a sign they were braking too hard. But they were braking hard enough to lock the outside front, but even that wasn't hard enough to lock the rears. Hence why I suspect they can run more rearward bias

[Lycoming]

Ok, that was the explanation I was looking for

[sriraj1031]

Redbull and mclaren seem to be in good shape with sauber and ferrari being 3 and 4th fastest with lotus surprisingly going back with updates, well saturday should give us better view of things

P.S Mercedes is an enigma and cant see where they will fit in

[motobaleno]

Autosprint says that macca boyz are working hard on the broken gearbox in order to avoid the grid penalty...

[raymondu999]

How would they fix it? AFAIK the gearboxes are sealed with an FIA seal

[Mestrades]

I've analized the times on low fuel loads and the pace is pathetic like Melbourne and Sepang. We've the worst race pace of the top teams. Another race to forget.

[Hail22]

How would they fix it? AFAIK the gearboxes are sealed with an FIA seal

You can do wonders with a heat gun

[Lycoming]

I'm sure you could to a carbon fiber box.

[Pandabeer]

Very nice!

[motobaleno]

How would they fix it? AFAIK the gearboxes are sealed with an FIA seal

that's exactly what I thought reading the news...