Wow, Lewis. I started losing interest in him this season. But he looked absolutely driven chasing down Vettel. He wanted that win.
He and Vettel were in a class by themselves today.
The Austin course looked good. It’s corners seemed to allow a multi-line approach that I haven’t seen since the old Cleveland airport with it’s infinitely wide track. Lots more pass and repass rather than the typical F1 parade.
Not sure if Fernando has a huge chance to win the championship beyond bad luck on Vettel’s part.
Have to say the circuit was awesome, great job by the designers.
Yeah I know a lot of people were worried it’d be another boring Tilke track – I specifically remember someone complaining about the unnecessary S curves he threw in there – but I thought it turned out great. It’s very watchable. I know Spain and Yaz Marina look striking but all the turns kind of run together to me. I feel like I know this track well already. It also feels very open. That probably works well for American audiences that are used to oval tracks.
Another classy move overnight by Ferrari, breaking the seals on Massa’s gearbox to deliberately gave him a five spot grid penalty, elevating Alonso one place and moving which side of the grid Fernando started on.
After the things Rubens had to go through and now Felipe it’s a wonder there’s any Tifosi left in Brazil, but no doubt they’ll be out in large numbers at the next race.
You call it cheating, I call it brilliant strategy. Dirty underhanded strategy, but brilliant nonetheless. Forza!
I don’t think I called it cheating.
Gaming the system to turn a penalty into an advantage, though since it was dependent on the bad surface on one side of the track I doubt that the officials will try to figure out a way to stop that (team penalty so that both cars get penalized).
Since you mentioned the reaction that we have here in Brazil to these attitudes of Ferrari, I gotta say that basically all of these things resulted in both Rubens Barrichello and Felipe Massa becoming jokes here, we have lots of humor tv shows comparing them to turtles and stuff like that. Rubens Barrichello in special has been a target for a looong time, and if you ask people here in Brazil about him they’ll mostly says that he’s a terrible driver.
This is a shame of course since both Rubens and Massa are obviously very talented, but they also have a lot of responsibility in this for accepting these kinds of actions by Ferrari without trying to fight back.
Ferrari could do that kind of thing to either driver depending on their standings - Massa was the guy who came one turn away from being world champion not so long ago, and if Ferrari could have gimmicked him into a world championship, they would have. But yeah, Ferrari tends to hire a main driver and a support driver. You wanna drive for Ferrari, you have to accept one of those roles, and they are paying Fernando a lot more money.
Checking in for a few minutes. Don’t have time to adequaely express how I feel about the track, other than the fact it was friggin’ awesome.
Probably won’t be pics for awhile (at least Saturday), but this was from my iPhone on Turn 12:
Not the greatest of shots but…
— Alan
From those seats, we could see 11 of the 20 turns on the track. Save for the folks in the observation tower, we had the best seats in the venue. But, I couldn’t mentally keep track of what was going on at all of them at once.
I watched Hamilton overtake Vettel right there.
Around the Long Beach circuit there are huge screens so you can follow the race when the action is not in front of you. Laguna Seca you can watch like 75% of a lap, or go to the other side of the hill and only see a little, but it’s the spectacular plunge of the Corkscrew (but no screens, at least the last time I was there).
What was the crowd reaction like during Hamilton’s pass? I heard a little cheering but didn’t catch anyone leaping out of their seats. Just curious. I figured it wasn’t like a home game at a sporting event where everyone went wild. Unless you’re at Monza of course.
Generally, everyone clapped and cheered whenever a driver made a successful pass and clapped and cheered doubly loud if the passed driver regained the position on the next corner.
The screens were gorgeous, but they only help if you have audio. I had some sense of what was going on elsewhere just from going to lots of club races, but I think most of the fans were lost without the commentary that goes along with it. The F1 cars drown out the PA system, so you need some kind of headset/receiver with noise-cancellation or in-the-ear buds.
You can hear the crowd better with quieter cars. Here’s the audience reaction to passing during the Ferrari Challenge race.
Jesus, what a race…
^ Agreed. A bit of rain on an old-school track = incredible race.
Yeah, rain on a track I know very well is massively fun to watch. Good fight by Alonso, not much more he could have done.
That was all I could ask for a final race with cars flying about, risks, hard driving and the odd excitement of two teams racing for non-points that mattered.
Vettel. Meh. That’s the first time I’ve ever typed that word. Anybody but Vettel next year. And Red Bull. One can aspire to drive a Ferrari, a McLaren, a Lotus…who the hell can drive an over-priced junk drink? That I have never drank.
But more important to all that was…no more Bob Varsha calling the race!!! Yes, the rest of the announcing crew moves over, but Varsha is the face and voice of Speed. Sigh.
And crack a flipping smile in 2013, Kimi. One can always hope…