F1 2012

So much for that root. Did he make it even one lap?

Yep - he made it to lap three when he got dinged by Maldonado.

Mercedes must be very disappointed - Schumacher appears to have broken his own gearbox or electronics banging over curbs and then Rosberg was just… ordinary the whole way through. If their rear wing vent is giving them a genuine advantage then they’re in trouble if it gets banned or if everyone else decides to copy them.

Sauber were flying and for Perez to come all the way up from the back of the grid was excellent.

With the return of Raikonnen, there are now 6 World Champions on the grid. I think that’s a record and I think the previous one was last year’s 5.
How times have changed. It used to be that drivers would stay at their teams for long periods and teams like Williams and McLaren would not let go of their dominance.
And in the eras previous to that, drivers would often die in their racing cars, champions(Clark, Ascari, Rindt and more) and challengers alike(Villeneuve, McLaren, von Trips and many more).

Well, he didn’t make it one lap cleanly in Malaysia. Spun and bumped Schoomy.

Think they’re both still racing though.

Edit in: Nope. Beached it in the sand lap four. Fast but can’t last.

Not wanting to stay up until 3 AM, I set the recorder and went to bed. Sure enough - long rain delay so that the race had 20 laps to go when my timer gave out. But watched the replay today.

The reviled Screwderia chassis won? Great driving by Alonso, and so close for Perez! McLaren self destructs. But hey, it was waaaaaay more entertaining than a Vettel coast-to-coast cruise. Lotus snagged a fifth, so that should be interesting as Raikenen and “Crash” Grosjean get up to speed (or stay on the circuit, as individually apply).

The worse the weather, the better the race. Perez was the driver of the day, it was awesome watching him relentlessly close the gap to the Ferrari lap after lap. Shame he made that mistake…I wonder if he got distracted by that radio from the team. Did the message mean to not overtake Ferrari, their engine supplier? Maybe not, Perez was all smiles in the interview.

-Too bad the Kobayashi Maru went out, he usually drives a storming race[amazingly, there were only 2 retirements]. And for Schumacher getting punted, he used to be especially dominant in the rain.
-“Senna takes Schumacher…haven’t heard that in a while”. 19yrs at least, I’m guessing.
-speaking of which, Lotus are fast. Crashy Grosjean qualified at the sharp end again and Raikonnen had the fast lap of the race I think.

Grosjean claimed that it was Schumacher who punted the both of them. I didn’t see the camera angle. Was someone predominantly at fault there or was it a racing incident?

As I recall it, Grosjean came up on the inside of Schumacher and his front wheel hit Schumacher’s back wheel, which means it’s Grosjean’s fault if it is anyone’s. Considering the weather, I’d be more likely to chalk it up to a racing incident.

(Been away from F1 for a long time)

Is the DRS and DRS zones new this year, or has it been around for awhile?

DRS has been a couple years now. Once it became apparent that KERS wasn’t going to make overtaking easier.

I think the efficacy of Mercedes’ hidden “F” duct under the DRS plate can be seen by the fact that they keep qualifying right up the front, but then essentially vanish in the race. You can use DRS pretty much wherever you can press the button in qualifying - in the race it’s restricted to the DRS zones.

Big fan of those Jim Hall Chaparrals.

With modern F1 cars so reliant on downforce at the front of the car one way to improve overtaking would be to add the ground effect from the Chapparals, (and those delicious red Brabhams), back into the sport.

The FIA doesn’t want to go down that route though, because of what it means when you lose ground effect for any reason, at high speed in the middle of a corner. So we have video game style aids instead.

I believe they use limited ground effects on the GP2 cars, but that’s a little easier to monitor since the chassis’ are all of the same spec.

I think there were plans on the table to try to reincorporate ground effects in like 2014, but the catch up mode DRS was so popular they scrapped them.

China Qualifier spoilers…
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let’s see if vettel can climb back to the front by lap 15

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[spoiler]Lotus had their complaint about the Mercedes rear wing vents waved away this week meaning the system has been protested and passed at each of the races so far, so I expect the race will be on now for the other teams to copy it.

With race performance generally disappointing for the Mercs, it’ll be interesting to see if Kobayashi can have both of them by turn six.[/spoiler]

The tire state really allowed a lot of passing as they started to go off - poor Kimi’s went off precipitously when I thought there actually might be a Lotus podium finish. But at least Vettel got passed by three cars in the final couple of laps, so I was happy. I suppose anything is better than a Vettel parade start to finish race after race after race. And all in all a pretty clean race. Now for Long Beach (oh wait, gotta stick with the recording…Lakers…ooooo, and Dodgers with Vin Scully back at the microphone).

Animated .gif of Webber catching air:

cleste09:
“ A Red Bull flying again…
”

Is that really tire cruft going on there at the sides, and did it hinder passing during the race that much?

http://wonderduck.mu.nu/f1_update_china_2012 (second image on the blog)

Hotlinking disabled, but the tire debris looked really bad to my eyes.