Grand Prix thread 2017 Not606 Australian GP Chat and Predictions

What a way to properly retire then eh. Smedley talked of Massa being used to the pre-2009 cars.

 

I'm wondering whether across the board we'll see the more experienced drivers looking stronger than last season. It'll be hard to judge though as neither of Alonso, Hamilton or Massa's team-mates offer much of a yard stick, and Vettel vs Kimi you'd expect both to like the new direction.

 

The eye catching far away from the front two teams has to be Toro Rosso. Given the Power unit problems we know Renault is suffering from at the moment. For them to have Sainz in p8 is quite promising. It just looks right, doesn't it?

At least this year they do have an engine that will be updated, so we hope for Renault to do a good job

 

Where this years car made up it's time,

 

the top 6 all broke the lap record.

 

Just realised but it seems Ferrari may have reliability issues :/

Kimi had to change his energy store and control electronics this morning.

 

I haven't seen anything where he blames the team. Read the quote below which seems pretty honest, whilst there is a little bit of 'woe is me', he pretty much accepts that he screwed up in FP2 and is probably carrying forward an issue as a result.



"Yesterday I was feeling really strong. I was really happy even straight out of FP1, I was saying this is great, we've got grip, this is good," Palmer said.

"But today, from the word go I've not been happy and just overall grip. I'm really struggling everywhere. Braking, balance and exit, I'm off. And from FP3, it carried into qualifying. Compared to yesterday, that car was feeling much worse."

Palmer was baffled by the setup problems surrounding his car on Saturday, and said he felt like nothing was going his way in Melbourne.

"Obviously I've had tough weekends before, but this one's strange," Palmer said. "Firstly, everything has conspired against me. I made my own bad luck in FP2, I'm the first to say.

"But for some reason, we've turned up today and I thought I could salvage it from yesterday, but we're missing something. It's really clear driving it and the lap times and everything that we're really struggling."

Palmer did concede that it was possible he was carrying some undetected damage on his car following the crash, citing it as the turning point in his weekend.

"It's possible," Palmer admitted. "Clearly the crash has had an impact on the performance, because pre-crash the pace was strong, post-crash I've obviously got a lot of new components on the car, and the performance is not strong. So from me crashing, I've lost performance. That's all I can say."

Read more at http://www.crash.net/f1/news/243059...ed-against-me-palmer.html#XGzQsr7OA0MRtiUW.99

 

How to make the cars look faster? Less tracking with the camera.

 

Melbourne tends to be a bit unique, but I was surprised it was as few as that. At some point this season I could see the entire grid doing it.

One of the new graphics I liked this morning was one showing the difference in speed through a corner compared to last season, the final turn was 20 km/h quicker at the apex.

 

Not a good start for Ricciardo... urgh.

 

Hopefully Ricciardo will get to start the race. If he does start from the pitlane at least we'll get to see how these cars overtake.

 

Here we go. Let's hope it's a good one!

 

Intrigued to see how these cars get away with their simplistic clutches and big fat tyres. I can't believe all off the top 4 will get away well together.

 

It could be ugly.

 

I hope they do get away this one time, just to see where the cars are at. From the next race they can start mixing it up with bad starts

 

What was the aborted start for?

 

Filled Ricciardo's spot?

 

They're working together to delay the start for Ricciardo.

 

Vettel not letting Hamilton romp off.

 

Well this is new, a leader not pulling away from P2. Relatively clean start all round.