Well, he does have previous too but he's a rebel and he gives authority the finger. It occurred to me though, his famous radio messages sound less funny and more arrogant in the light of his recent behaviour. Lucky Ferrari, eh? Off the top of my head, the cars were in very different states from quali to the race. Nevertheless, it does look odd...
not to cause any embarrassment on Webbers part but he got into the wrong car on Saturday. Hes getting old bless
I'd say it was because he was so desperate to beat Vettel to pole that he compromised his set-up, he finished less than 3 seconds ahead of Rosberg
Some stats Chilton Max Chilton set a new record for consecutive races completed by a rookie with his 17th straight finish. Tiago Monteiro had previously finished his first 16 races in 2005, and Heikki Kovalainen was classified in his first 16 in 2007 (despite retiring with engine failure in the closing stages of the Monaco GP, the fifth race in the string). Now Chilton has two races to equal the longest run of consecutive finishes without scoring points. Kovalainen holds that one. Last year he was classified from the Malaysian to the Brazilian Grands Prix, posting a 13th as best result. Chilton's best finish so far is a 14th scored in Monaco. Alonso This is not a great period in Alonso's career, as his Abu Dhabi stats underline: He was eliminated in Q2 after 28 straight races of reaching Q3. It was the first time in eight races that a Ferrari had failed to get through Q2. He's been beaten by team-mate Felipe Massa in qualifying at five of the last six races. The last time Alonso had that experience was back in 2007 against Lewis Hamilton at McLaren, when the rookie outqualified him at six of the seven races from Canada to Turkey. This was the first time Alonso had been outqualified by a team-mate in Abu Dhabi. Alonso has now had four straight races without a podium. The last time that happened was from Abu Dhabi 2010 to China 2011. Twelve straight races without winning equals Alonso's worst winless streak since joining Ferrari. His last drought was from Hungary last season to Malaysia this year. One consolation prize for Alonso was the 21st fastest lap of his F1 career. He equals Vettel and Berger at 10th place in the all-time list. Kimi Raikkonen retired because of an accident for the first time since the 2008 Singapore GP. That's a string of 56 races without incident. Without taking account of his sabbatical, this would be the second longest all-time run. Vettel is in the midst of the record sequence, as he hasn't crashed out of an F1 race since his infamous tangle with Webber in the 2010 Turkish GP, 68 races ago. Abu Dhabi isn't the first time a Raikkonen recovery drive has proved brief. A qualifying mistake in Spain in 2003 left him last on the grid, and his race was over within a few yards as he slammed into Antonio Pizzonia's stalled Jaguar. Dominant Sebastian Vettel's margin over Mark Webber at the finish of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was 30.827 seconds, which makes it the second time the champion has won by half a minute this season, after defeating Fernando Alonso by 32.627s in Singapore. Winning by such a margin in a dry race is already a major achievement. Doing it twice in a season is very rare, and hasn't happened since Michael Schumacher achieved it three times in 1995, in Spain, Monaco and France. His Benetton team-mate Johnny Herbert was runner-up in the first of those, with title rival Damon Hill the defeated man in the other two events. Another major achievement for Vettel was that the second-placed driver was his team-mate. The last winner to put more than half a minute over his team-mate was Ralf Schumacher, who won the 2002 Malaysian Grand Prix 39.699s ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya, who had to serve a drive-through penalty for his first-turn collision with Michael Schumacher Speaking of team-mates, Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari failure on the 2002 Spanish GP grid surely helped Michael Schumacher's 35.629s winning margin over Montoya that day. In qualifying, the two Ferraris had already been 0.6s clear of the opposition, led by Williams duo Montoya and Schumacher Jr. Usually such huge gaps are achieved in wet races: Lewis Hamilton won the sodden 2008 British GP by 1m08.577s from Nick Heidfeld, and Jenson Button won his maiden F1 race in Hungary in 2006 with 30.837s over Pedro de la Rosa in mixed conditions. In dry races we often associate huge gaps with things going awry: in the 2005 Hungarian GP, Kimi Raikkonen at the end of the race had 35.581s over Michael Schumacher, but Ferrari that year had quite an uncompetitive car and Kimi's main rival, Renault driver Fernando Alonso, had spoiled his race by hitting Ralf Schumacher at the first corner. Montoya, Raikkonen's McLaren team-mate, had retired when leading, due to a suspension problem.
It's funny you should mention him because after the last two races I found myself remembering Manny's lament that Mercedes couldn't run two cars successfully at once. I wonder if he still thinks that's true
