I can't find any quotes. The best I could find was this, and it's not even coming from Vettel: http://sportnet.at/home/motorsport/formel1/1446289/Mercedes-gibt-WM-auf_Der-Vettel-ist-durch
Ah ok cheers was wondering wtf was going on with that quote going about when I was stalking on the tifosi website. Was thinking did he really say that?!?!?
Autosport decide to do it properly Mr Benson The real giveaway of Red Bull's level of confidence is its choice of seventh-gear ratio. Just as in its dominant season of 2011, the team has opted for corner performance at the expense of straightline speed. This is a choice that can only be made at Monza if you are very confident you're going to be starting from pole and will have enough of a laptime advantage that you're not going to be vulnerable at the end of the straights - and you estimate that those cars with faster end-of-straight speeds will not be able to get close enough to make it count. The Red Bulls were reaching only 328km/h (203mph) through the speed trap before the braking zone for the first chicane. This put them near the very bottom of the trap list. The fastest cars were making around 334km/h (207mph). Furthermore, so much faster are the Red Bulls coming out of Parabolica than the rest that it will be a long way down the straight before they're actually going faster than the distant Red Bulls. The speeds from the start/finish line (around 300 metres on from the exit of Parabolica) have the Red Bull pair fastest at 314km/h (195mph) compared to 309km/h (192mph) for Lotus, Mercedes and Ferrari. On this sort of low-downforce track, only when Red Bull is not confident of being able to set pole does it deviate from this gearing/wing-level strategy - as happened last year. Looking at the average long-run times of the usual top four teams in greater detail we see the following picture: MEDIUMS Vettel 1m27.5s (9 laps) Grosjean 1m28.3s (9 laps) Raikkonen 1m28.6s (10 laps) Webber 1m29.0s (14 laps) Alonso 1m29.2s (12 laps) Hamilton 1m29.5s (13 laps) HARDS Webber 1m28.3s (7 laps) Vettel 1m28.5s (12 laps) Rosberg 1m29.4s (17 laps) Grosjean 1m29.6s (10 laps) Massa 1m29.9s (8 laps) Looking at the runs on the medium compound, the difference in times between Vettel, Grosjean and Raikkonen on the one hand, and Webber, Alonso and Hamilton on the other, appears to be excessive. This would be consistent with the first three having a fuel load around 20kg lighter – or about the difference in fuel level between cars on one or two-stop strategies at the times of their tyre changes..... .....Applying that suspected fuel-load difference would give the following order: Vettel 1m27.5s Webber 1m28.1s Grosjean 1m28.3s Alonso 1m28.3s Raikkonen 1m28.6s Hamilton 1m28.6s In other words, the Lotus and Ferrari look very evenly matched as the next best after the Red Bull, Webber is struggling a little for pace compared to Vettel (although he did suffer a KERS problem that kept him in the garage for some time) and Mercedes is lagging behind a little – although on the hard tyres Nico Rosberg was actually next best after the Red Bulls, albeit around 1s adrift of them. Both Rosberg and team-mate Lewis Hamilton were struggling for braking stability.
Loving it, Autosport/Twitter behind me by 2 years claiming a significant amount of British F1 fans are xenophobic with Vettel/Germans in F1. #CatchUp You see guys I don't make stories up, well.... I bitch about them before they become "wide spread" #Truestory This is why I love sociology, can see it a mile off before it starts getting questioned in the public opinion. *Awaits for Sky/BBC to bring up to topic* Did I ever tell you the time I bitched about prejudice towards vettel? *sarcasm* *Groaning from the forum*
Nah it will be closer Red Bull have always looked plenty quick in practice by anything of up to 0.8 on a Friday only do be closed down to less than 0.2 come Saturday. Remember India last year where it looked like RBR would dominate qualifying only to be closed down from the massive gap they had in practice and it was in fact "pretty tight".
I remember the days when they used to say, 'Max, young lad, you shouldn't try to read too much into practice...'
Weather forecast update: 20% chance of rain for qualifying, significant chance of rain during the night and a 50% chance of rain during the race tomorrow. Could be interesting, I wonder if some teams will go for a wet set-up
Lol Herbert when he won at Italy, he sure isn't pointing that to his Mum please log in to view this image
Interesting to see the surprises up there, especially Maldonado, who once again proves he is only consistent in his inconsistency. I'd like to think that Lotus are gambling on a wet race and are setting the cars up accordingly but I think it's more that the updates (especially the long wheelbase chassis, which they've scrapped) just didn't have the desired effect. Ferrari must look more tempting to Raikkonen by the hour...
