F1 2013 Season

[Snokio]

The F1 app use to be free up until last season , it was very good then!

Look at all the Newbies! bit of a mistake imho.

What time does Q2 start (UK)?

[T-Bag]

I didn't bother staying up, and it seems I missed a lot, and at the same time, not very much. I might stay up for the qualifying tonight, but that'll make the race hard to wake up for...so many choices.

As for the F1 app. There's no way I'd buy it. It's a 19 race season and they charge £24 to view the times. I used a free version last year, though it wasn't constantly updated (only refreshed every 10 seconds or so), but it was good enough to have a list of all the positions in a race without waiting for them to scroll past on the TV. I don't know why they don't just show them all, in HD we can read it fairly easily.

[TeaLeaf]

Will be staying up late tonight to watch Q2 and Q3, due to start at 12.00am midnight, so should be done by 1.00am UK time.

What time does Q2 start (UK)?

See above!

[atomant]

I'll be on the DMR Team speak for the race if anyone is watching this live and wants to chat.

Q3 is coming up and seems the rain might have let up, Button did a good job for 4th in Q2.

Green flag for Q3.

Ant

[atomant]

Here we go..2013 and the skies look good. Go Go Alonso.

[atomant]

What a great exchange with Alonso and Lewis on lap 32 :boxing:

Lap 45 and Alonso moves to 2nd on a great pass. Cost time..7.7 secs to leader.

Congrats to the Kimmy Fans, that lotus looks great. Lap 55 could have been Alonsos" last when a back marker got right in his way.

I'm happy with 2nd..

Ant

[TeaLeaf]

Yep was a good race, those Red Bulls appear to be really heavy on the rears in low temps.    Webber's start......uuugh again.

Massa drove a great race but was pretty much hung out to dry by being called in early for a swap of medium compound tyres?   Why?   The tyres were not old, not blocked, not worn and he was doing great lap times (better than Alonso).   The cynic in me says that the only thing it achieved was to put him behind Alonso.

Quite surprised with the Force India straight line speed advantage, when tyres were still ok none of the top teams could get past even with DRS.  It was only as their older tyres went off that they were overtaken on the basis of traction out of corners and under braking.   Sutil did a great job and deserved more than he eventually got imo.  DIR got stuck behind ?Perez on his second stint and that qwrecked his strategy or he would have been another couple of places higher too.    5th & 6th for Force India would have been a great result.

McLaren has a nasty day, best forgotten and move on.

Maldanado did his usual "Oh I forgot the car was that wide" and put his left rears onto the grass before trying to brake at the end of the straight and turn into T1.  Unsurprisingly he lost the back end and parked it in the gravel.  He's done that a few times now and I bet the team are getting a bit fed up with it.

Mercedes did ok I think, they were losing tyres faster than Force India and Ferrari and could not keep it up towards the end of the tyre stints.   Quite surprised at how long the SuperSoft lasted though for Hami's first phase.

Lotus did well and I bet they breathed a huge collective sigh of relief when Grosjean just missed colliding with Alonso in T1 of lap 1 as he came back onto the track after being pushed wide.   Great result for Kimi and well deserved after such a consistent season last year.    And a 1.29 towards the end of the race on 30 lap old Mediums?   That Lotus is sure looking after the tyres well.

Malaysia will be interesting, I suspect the tyres will behave a lot better in the higher temps, but it's also a supposedly higher degradation circuit, so it will be interesting to see what happens as the teams swap low temp tyre deg for high abrasion tyre deg.   Looking forward to it!

[T-Bag]

P1 and 2 were occupied by the drivers I want to see battling for the title. It's good to see the drivers not the cars making a big difference again, rather than the car deciding the order. P1 vs P10 for Lotus, P2 vs P4 for Ferarri, P3 vs P6 for Red bull and P9 vs P11 for Mclaren. Just goes to show the cars are perhaps on more level playing field this season which could lead to more wheel to wheel racing and strategy which are the best bits anyway, rather that leading from the front or only gaining positions by having a car that's easier on its tyres.

[TeaLeaf]

Top 10 pictures form the Australian Grand Prix

Not that impressed with some of them, but I loved this one (Nico Rosberg in the Merc on Friday).  Go click the link and see the rest over at f1fanatic



Can't wait to see what Malaysia brings (other than hotter, steamier weather!)

[TeaLeaf]

McLaren ECU statement:

There is a new standard ECU (Engine Control Unit) in 2013 that featured on all Formula 1 cars that took part in the recent Australian Grand Prix.

It will power the 2.4-litre V8 engines this season and the new 1.6-litre V6 turbocharged parallel hybrid engines in 2014 and beyond.

Supplied by McLaren Electronics Systems, the new ECUs were run for the first time on the track by most teams in winter testing in February, just six weeks before racing began in Melbourne.

They replace the previous ECUs that have been running very reliably since the standard ECU was introduced by the FIA in 2008.

An ECU comprises several thousand parts, tens of thousands of solder connections and hundreds of thousands of lines of software. It is a very complex piece of equipment that controls the powertrain and DRS, and acts as a car's primary data system.

The electronic units themselves ran without incident in Melbourne, but there was a software-related issue that meant that Mark Webber's Red Bull Racing car's garage data system had to be re-started during the formation lap. That disrupted his preparations for the start of the race, for which Mark and the team has our apology. We are working together with them to prevent any recurrence.

[smilodon]

I agree but it's more about the sunset than the car that makes this pic. You could in theory put anything in the foreground and it would work. And I'll stop now before the photography nerd in me is unleashed and I write a critique on every photograph in the set

[JonnyAppleSeed]

Not wanting to spoil the Malaysia result if anyone has not seen it yet but its a cracking race ...

The atmosphere in the pre-podium room looked a tad icy to say the least. If looks could kill. Thrilling :flirty:

[OldBloke]

See that driver there? He aint happy. And that driver there? He aint happy either.

And as for me, a spectator, I'm as unhappy as them two :taz:

[Lameduck]

Funniest thing I've seen for years in F1, Hamilton driving into the McLaren pit-box and suddenly remembering that he was driving a Mercedes :lmfao:

[sulky_uk]

Felt sorry for the  2nd place guy