2013 Japanese GP - Suzuka

[acidtech]

http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/1328/9s4x.jpg

Webber time from lap 7 to 10 looks pretty bad and grojeans seems to be pulling away.

that's because he was in gro. dirty air

[beelsebob]

The Vettelism runs high on the forum these days.

And it should! The guy deserves all the praise and accolades possible...

But yesterday he received a great help from his team, yes he did a great overtake over Grosjean, something Webber didnt do.

But for the Gods sake, I dont know how anyone can seriosly think that a 3 stop strategy was the winner one. Doing 2 stops Webber would have won the race, but RB didnt want this. Vettel did a good race but he didnt need to do this, and Rb will still try to convince everybody that there is an equaly treatment for both drivers, please...

Simple – if grosjean had stayed out to do a long middle stint on his 2 stopper, then vetted would never had had the huge tyre advantage to get past him, but he would have come out behind Webber. RedBull quite literally gave Grosjean the choice of who won the race – just as long as it wasn't him.

[dren]

An exciting race on several fronts. Mercedes deep dicked themselves yet again. Hamilton might be due to bad luck, Rosberg was his own fault. They were in a position to score some good points vs Ferrari and Lotus.

[turbof1]

Simple – if grosjean had stayed out to do a long middle stint on his 2 stopper, then vetted would never had had the huge tyre advantage to get past him, but he would have come out behind Webber. RedBull quite literally gave Grosjean the choice of who won the race – just as long as it wasn't him.

This. Vettel pitted at lap 36, Grosjean at lap 29. If Grosjean kept going for those 7 more laps, he would have lost between 2 and 3 (if not more) seconds a lap, with Vettel stuck behind him.

Splitting strategies was the best thing red bull could have done. Either Grosjean stuck to his original plan, a 2 stopper at lap 36-37, loosing out on Webber, or they went for a 3 stopper, loosing out on Vettel due track position. They eventually went for the worst strategy: a very long thirth stint. That initially covered both drivers, but sacrificed too much. Lotus should have gone for a 3 stopper. That would have covered Webber and as the mediums are the preferred tyres of Lotus, it might have given them a shot at Vettel.

[dxpetrov]

Exactly. Some very clever lateral thinking in RB. They would never have beaten Gro with both Webber and Vettel on same 2 stop strategy. Basically only Vettel gained 2 places, Webber would have stayed 2md regardless.

[komninosm]

Another one is penalised (and outraged) for going off the track, this time he didn't get the luxury of stewards asking him to give back position. So where were you Ricciardo when R.G. got robbed in Hungary? Like Hulkenberg, so much worse, so much blatant and clear case and they whine? [They say he "lost" time not gained]. It was meters from a clean overtake, no one forced him off at centimetres range like Massa did, he just overshot the corner. Why can't it happen to "high profile" driver ?

Yeah, the stewards were pretty tough/hard in Japan.
BTW do they always give drive-throughs for unsafe pit exits (Rosberg) or do they fine teams only sometimes?

[SectorOne]

The Vettelism runs high on the forum these days.

And it should! The guy deserves all the praise and accolades possible...

He will most likely go down as the most successful driver in F1 history i give him that.
I´m waiting for the day when he´s not having a can as a teammate. See how good he really is.
If he gets whooped then all the titles, the glitz and glamour in my opinion is nothing more then a number in a book.

And before i get flamed. I´m not saying he will get whooped, or he will open up cans of whoop ass but until the day comes i shall remain uncertain of the true abilities of Vettel.

And on top of that, if let´s say Hamilton who i am a huge fan of because i "think" he´s the fastest man in F1, get´s whooped left and right by Vettel, make no mistake, i´ll convert to Vettelism faster then you can say "told you so".

To me there´s a distinct difference between being one of the most successful and being the best of your generation.
And i can´t wait for Alonso/Kimi showdown as it´s a further yardstick of the creme de la creme in F1.

Imagine if Hakkinen was at Ferrari in the haydays with equal machinery to Schumacher.
Some people at Mclaren is adamant that Hakkinen was faster then Senna. They genuinely believe that.
That´s insane when you think about it.

[LionKing]

I don't think we really need to have Hakkinen at Ferrari to judge him. His Mclaren was far superior to Ferrari and the title still went to wire in 1998. He barely beat Irvine in 1999. and when the tables turned Schumacher destroyed the opposition...

[SectorOne]

You can take that argument and twist it around. For all we know Montoya might have had a championship in there until a certain team complained about tire widths.
You need to have drivers in the same team, there´s no way to quantify driver/car percentage with different cars.

[LionKing]

You can take that argument and twist it around. For all we know Montoya might have had a championship in there until a certain team complained about tire widths.
You need to have drivers in the same team, there´s no way to quantify driver/car percentage with different cars.

Hakkinen was badly beaten by Coulhard in 2001 by about 30 points. He came 5th when Coulhard came 2nd in WDC. Sometimes there enough information to make a good deduction. I don't think we really need pair Schumacher and Coulhard to see what would have happened.

[Juzh]

Another one is penalised (and outraged) for going off the track, this time he didn't get the luxury of stewards asking him to give back position. So where were you Ricciardo when R.G. got robbed in Hungary? Like Hulkenberg, so much worse, so much blatant and clear case and they whine? [They say he "lost" time not gained]. It was meters from a clean overtake, no one forced him off at centimetres range like Massa did, he just overshot the corner. Why can't it happen to "high profile" driver ?

Yeah, the stewards were pretty tough/hard in Japan.
BTW do they always give drive-throughs for unsafe pit exits (Rosberg) or do they fine teams only sometimes?

They generally do. But this time it was rosberg who actually jumped red light in the pits. The team had done nothing wrong.

[iotar__]

Simple – if grosjean had stayed out to do a long middle stint on his 2 stopper, then vetted would never had had the huge tyre advantage to get past him, but he would have come out behind Webber. RedBull quite literally gave Grosjean the choice of who won the race – just as long as it wasn't him.

A bit like that, they could have forced some options on RB, depending on decisions and timing, "decide" not really, it's RB after all

They had the choice to fight for second in some ways already pointed out several times here. Now they're trying to explain it and it sounds weird, I mean the reasoning and options are OK, "decision making" is weird:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/110644
"I don't think there was any way we could have won it." Hindsight, fine. "But what we could have done, and we discussed it at the time, was to forget about Vettel and assume he was going to beat us anyway so go longer on that second stint."
Exactly, pitstops timing.
"We may then have beaten Mark. But at the time we said, let's just try and win. Let's give it a go."
That's the weird part, what were they expecting to happen actually, pace on hards change suddenly out of no where? Plus top speed, degradation/length of the stint. So they risked losing better position and points for impossible win? At least it's good to see that questioning their tactics wasn't baseless.

[turbof1]

I don't believe that going longer on the second stint would have aided Grosjean concerning Webber. If he postponed it to lap 36 Webber would have made up his pitstop.

In hindsight, a 3 stopper to cover Webber would have been much better. That way Grosjean would have ended up being on better tyres then Vettel near the end of the race, perhaps giving a shot at first place.

[SectorOne]

Hakkinen was badly beaten by Coulhard in 2001 by about 30 points. He came 5th when Coulhard came 2nd in WDC. Sometimes there enough information to make a good deduction. I don't think we really need pair Schumacher and Coulhard to see what would have happened.

And you still don´t have a clear Schumacher/Hakkinen comparison.
I´m sure you have a couple more examples put forth but unless you can prove Hakkinen and Schumacher actually did share the same car in F1 it´s going to be for nothing and an unanswered story of what if.

[henra]

if let´s say Hamilton who i am a huge fan of because i "think" he´s the fastest man in F1, get´s whooped left and right by Vettel, make no mistake, i´ll convert to Vettelism faster then you can say "told you so".

Where does this naive thinking that one driver will be better than another in absolute terms come from???
Is it simple Fanboyism?
It could be (and I even tend to believe that) that Vettel whoops Hamilton's a** in the RB9 while Hamilton might again whoop Vettels posterior in the Merc (which is also well conceivable).
What is then the conclusion? Who is the better?
Do you see where I'm getting at?
There are cars with certain traits and drivers with certain driving styles. The result can't be deduced by simply doing the sum. It's a lot about driver's confidence and coherence to the strength of the car.