That looks a good call, Matt. Yes. Although I feel Button has made a significant adjustment (and improvement) to his tyre-warming style, it is far less natural to him than for Hamilton. Yes, that is interesting isn't it! But - at least in part due to the tyre warming mentioned in response to AllSaintChris (above) - I have voted for Hamilton as the more likely victor. (I also wanted to balance the poll: when I checked in to this thread, Vettel was leading the vote by one point from Hamilton).
I recall Force India doing long runs on medium tyres with very consistent lap times with harldy any drop-off. At other times on mediums, they were losing 2-3 seconds in about 8 laps. They're not the only team in that situation. We need to wait until Melbourne before we know which teams have issues with tyre management. Tomcat, AMuS claims that Red Bull are having problems with their exhaust, the same issues Ferrari had with their launch-spec exhaust. Seems that only McLaren and Sauber are able to get their exhaust gas down to the floor. If AMuS are correct, it likely that Red Bull will use their old exhaust.
I remember reading that the Caterham's drop-off in terms of tyres was only 0.5 seconds, regardless of tyres, during that last test, when they were doing short runs much like everyone else. Considering most teams had 2 seconds drop-off even on the mediums, that's pretty good! (Even if it won't be until at least the third or fourth race that they manage to get out of Q3)
According to Helmut Marko RBR will again bring some new updates in Australia. He just said that on Servus TV. So i guess they will race with an updated version of the spec-B exhaust. He said they are pretty happy with the collected data on the spec-B car.
If their tyre wear is that low, then perhaps they may suffer like Ferrari last year with one lap pace? Alternatively, they make believe that they are far enough ahead of Marussia and HRT that it's irrelevant, and the lower tyre wear in the race will allow them to pose a greater challenge to the midfield?
This is the key issue. They were in testing a lot closer in the race pace sims but they never troubled anyone except Williams when it came to the banzai laps. But that will come later in the season I think.
Looks like Bernie is having a hissy fit over austrailia not accepting a night race. He is now threatening to negotiate an end to their contract asap or tempt them to change their mind by offering discounts to the race fee. This is not how F1 should be run! How dare he bully a country to cater to european times. Does he have no respect for the people of australia? Also true F1 fans do not care what time the race is on! Fairweather fans dont mind watching re runs! so what is the point here?
Harsh but fair and I hope they do. I want Australia (and Japan) to be 4am or 5am starts - something special that we have to reorganise our routines for.
Does anybody have last years vote count, cause I'm pretty sure Vettel and Lewis were leading the votes then. Or is this the "safe option" for the first race as people don't know how the cars will perform come quali and will just pick the 2 best placed drivers the f1 masses believe will do well this year.
haha, our equivalent of the British "chav" or American "rednecks". Example: The majority of people who turn up to the V8s at Bathurst are bogans.
If I had to get up early to watch Valencia or Bahrain then that would be a problem. But I like getting up early for the races such as Australia being they seem more special like that.
So Australian Chavs wear socks and sandels! I can imagin them hanging out on the beach... up to no good
I love getting up at stupid hours to watch a grand prix, don't know why but it makes everything so much more awesome
I reckon it's to do with disruption to the circadian rhythm. Everything is more exciting when you're supposed to be asleep. Plus you know that you're watching a real event 'with' a bunch of other like-minded people, similar to the epic Canadian GP last year or Brazilian GP qualifying in 2009.
I love getting up early to watch the first Grand Prix of the year. My old man tells me to shut up every year as we try to figure out who is the quickest at the start of the season.
