Wouldn't be surprised if Trulli left the team halfway through the year. Sad end to his career, but he's gone downhill so rapidly since that first season at Toyota. EDIT: At the same time, would be a great place for Alguersuari to rebuild his career.
This would be my ideal scenario. I'm sure I read somewhere that he said he had something "with a top team" in the pipeline but since then, nothing. Poor Jaime, bet he's not feeling like a god right now. Petrov was also rumoured to have the seat and said he'd have something to announce but nothing since either. So Trulli it is...
They may well be very fast. Last year's car was quick out of the box and straight up onto the podium. Their problem was, I think, not having the funds to keep up in the development race and then as they slipped back they seemed to panic a bit and it just made things worse. Still, an impressive showing in testing and having Kimi in the team would surely help secure funding to avoid the same problem recurring this year.
Jarno, seems more capable of producing a half decent Pino than he is of driving an F1 car, perhap's he should focus on winemaking. Incidentally, Ferrari seem to have surprised everyone including themselves and found something on the car that works, I wonder if they can remember what it was !!
Ferraari said that their problem has been understanding setup, and ever since Alonso took over testing the reports have been that the car has been more stable, and of course the impressive lap times yesterday. I think that yesterday was a glory run, and they still have problems, but I guess we'll see soon.
The run down please log in to view this image The Merc's obviously fast but a fair spread between McLaren and Ferrari team mates compared to Red Bull. Both Red bull drivers on same program whilst Ferrari and McLaren have their drivers doing different things?
I do hope Caterham manage to build a decent car this year - we may see the return of the infamous Trulli-train!
It's a shame the times from Mercedes are influenced by their blown diffusers which are outlawed from this season.. Or is something else in the car gaining these times?
I am optimistic in a way, but then again.. if they have something illegal, then it's not a truthful representation of their speed, a legal and genuinely brilliant design thought up from the FIA loopholes would be nice to see. As you said, it could be like Mclaren in 2011 or 2009.
I know the drivers disliked the attempt at it that Mercedes used towards the end of last season (Suzuka free practice maybe?), and so they didn't race with it. Too much instability under braking or something like that. If they've reworked the concept though it could be interesting.
Thanks. Yes, I'd forgotten about that but there seem to be new rumours about it for this year. So much speculation. Either they're hiding something special or stalling because the car's not right yet and we just have to wait in suspense Thing is, they've been quite public about how early last year they started development that you'd expect them to be ready before their rivals, and that suggests they may be hiding something special. But that's just more speculation...
They made a massive mistake last year, getting cocky about starting in mid-june, but then they had cooling issues/tyre wear issues throughout the early stages of 2011. Now they have knowledge of the 2012 tyres on the 2011 car, How much of the 2011 car will they use in the 2012 machine?
We've not had a quiz in ages! I think my 2000th post came during exams, so I never got round to it, but I think we need to reinstate the tradition of a quiz for every 1000 posts.
Too early for definitive judgements, but the big surprise for me is Grosjean vs Raikkonen, given that they both had three race distances. I can only assume that one driver did quali-like runs and the other didn't, but that decision in itself would surprise me a little.
