2012 Chinese Grand Prix

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LMSCorvetteGT2
Pit lane is close to begin with also Hamilton was just fine same with Kimi, they had to obey the speed limit. I'm sure if Hamilton could have jetted out of there without Kimi's nose next to his side pod he would. Neither team have the ability to predict when another car is going to get released and it is only their job to watch out for cars coming down pit lane behind the car they are releasing. I've never heard of a un-safe release, but then again I might learn something new.



Not sure on this one, Shumacher was penalized when he did it to Rubens. Yet Alonso doing it to Vettel at Monza didn't get a penelty if I remember correctly. So it's a balancing act it seems with the rules on those type of situations.
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You must not have watched many races in the past then as there have been plenty of "unsafe release" penalties in previous years!

Schumacher pushing Rubens into a concrete wall is just a tiny bit different to Perez or Alonso squeezing Kobayashi or Vettel towards the grass. Schumacher literally gave Rubens no room as Rubens did actually touch that wall just to get past. Whereas Perez here was just a little aggressive turning towards Kobayashi but he did give just about enough room.
 
Just to weigh in on Vettels race, right from the start he had a strategy advantage as he had an extra set of options due to going out in Q2. However, going back to 15th on the first lap and then struggling with no top end behind a Williams (Maldonado?). Personally I think they shouldve bought him in with Webber at the beginning. He had the tires to do a double stint on the softs if they wanted too, and he might of got out into clear air, which is very important as we saw in the last round of stops with Button and Rosberg.

In the end though, yes, he was helped by his strategy, it did put him in the position he was in, but he was also hindered in the sense that his tires were a bit shot at the end, and he dropped places like a stone. Not quite as many as a certain Finnish stone, but several none the less.
 
The Vettel and Kimi strategy at the end was a risk/reward thing.

They could have stayed out, like they did, and try to finish as best they could.

OR.

They could have pitted and finished further back (at least in Vettel's case).
 
Hmmmm no news yet of any penalties for Hamilton, for the making two changes of direction incident at the end. Does anyone know if the stewards are investigating? It seemed pretty obvious to me, but i can't find any reports of it.
 
There was no investigation notice during the race for Hamilton. And if they did investigate, I'm sure the penalty would be out by now.
 
GTPorsche
The Vettel and Kimi strategy at the end was a risk/reward thing.

They could have stayed out, like they did, and try to finish as best they could.

OR.

They could have pitted and finished further back (at least in Vettel's case).
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Indeed.

For those complaining of Vettel's average drive, or Massa getting the short end of the Ferrari stick, it's worth noting that all three teams (Red Bull, Lotus, Ferrari) gambled on a split two-three strategy for the race. It's just luck that the three stop was better, as shown by Webber, Grosjean, Alonso and the McLarens. Rosberg's was a canny call... They gave up that lead in the middle stint by letting him drive "off the cliff", then brought him in knowing that Button would still need another stop and wouldn't be far enough ahead to stay out in front.

And Mercedes has the edge in having a car that's ridiculously difficult to pass on the straights.

Massa's strategy was a gamble. He wasn't doing too badly, but he's in a car that's ridiculously mid-pack. Vettel was in a car that was nearly just as bad, thanks to keeping the old exhaust, so to come out right behind Mark on strategy with the "slower" Red Bull is not bad at all. Especially as that Red Bull has poor performance down straights and in high speed corners compared to all the cars around him... which makes overtaking horribly difficult. As opposed to cars like the Sauber or McLaren.



Of course, Mark was happy dicing with the Lotuses and the McLarens, but remember, different strategy, new exhaust.
 
niky
Especially as that Red Bull has poor performance down straights and in high speed corners compared to all the cars around him... which makes overtaking horribly difficult. As opposed to cars like the Sauber or McLaren.
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I'm pretty sure the Red Bull is good in cornering precisely because it's rubbish down the straight; IE It's got good downforce, but fairly high drag.
 
Great to see another driver enter the winners list... Well done Nico!!!

There are so many if's in this sport....... so....if Button was able to be released as per normal, time wise, the battle would have been for first, not 2nd-3rd-4th-5th. This I am sure of.

I still think the jury is still out for Mercedes, as the cooler track temps in China, were their ally. Bahrain will not be.

3 races in and the only sure thing is Red Bull cant win......... yet.
 
ROAD_DOGG33J
Did they show anything interesting in the Skysports build-up?
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Natalie Pinkham. Mmmmm.

Oh and Simon Lazenby and Vettel doing some martial arts, Brundle talking through the cockpit of a car and how it gets suited to each driver. Comparisons of MS and Rosbergs quali laps, run through of each of Hamiltons races at Shanghai.

Wasn't too bad to be fair.
 
Pagey279
Hmmmm no news yet of any penalties for Hamilton, for the making two changes of direction incident at the end. Does anyone know if the stewards are investigating? It seemed pretty obvious to me, but i can't find any reports of it.
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Are you on about the moves down the home straight (I think Vettel was behind him, can't remember)? Because that wasn't 2 defensive moves. The racing line naturally moves over to the left of the track. Just because he jerked left doesn't necessarily make it a defensive as such. Hamilton can move as early and as suddenly to the left as he wants (as long as he doesn't cause another driver to slow down or react to not make contact, of course), if that's the line he (or any driver that does that for that matter) wants to choose. The defensive move was the move back to the right off of the racing line further down the straight.
 
Ardius
You must not have watched many races in the past then as there have been plenty of "unsafe release" penalties in previous years!

Schumacher pushing Rubens into a concrete wall is just a tiny bit different to Perez or Alonso squeezing Kobayashi or Vettel towards the grass. Schumacher literally gave Rubens no room as Rubens did actually touch that wall just to get past. Whereas Perez here was just a little aggressive turning towards Kobayashi but he did give just about enough room.
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First off not sure why you need to bring you ego, I've watched plenty of races in all series since 93 as a kid. Anyways, being released into traffic coming down to make a pit is different from what we saw. Both drivers were released only fraction apart from one another, but significant enough to allow Lewis to edge ahead. The penalty your referring to is something like Ricciardo and HRT at Korea GP last year I believe, or better yet fine Merc GP received this weekend for the Shumacher incident. Yamato as well back in 2010 or HRT were due to injury of a team member. These are unsafe releases in their own right but no where do I see the release of Lewis or Kimi reason, only due to both coming in at the same time and being release nearly the same time and racing for the spot. That is part of the battle and you see this through several different motorsport walks especially Nascar and Indy. Trying to micro manage those type of incidents and lump sum them with unsafe doesn't seem right.

As far as Perez goes, the only slightness I see is one was a wall the other was grass. Also Rubens never touched the wall, he came quite close but video from in car and ahead of them both shows that he didn't. Either way I bring it up because both times the aggressor and defender could have wrecked due to the action taken by the aggressor. Same thing goes for Perez.


 
niky
Indeed.

For those complaining of Vettel's average drive, or Massa getting the short end of the Ferrari stick, it's worth noting that all three teams (Red Bull, Lotus, Ferrari) gambled on a split two-three strategy for the race. It's just luck that the three stop was better, as shown by Webber, Grosjean, Alonso and the McLarens. Rosberg's was a canny call... They gave up that lead in the middle stint by letting him drive "off the cliff", then brought him in knowing that Button would still need another stop and wouldn't be far enough ahead to stay out in front.
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Exactly.
Rosbergs two stop worked well for him because he didnt have to race with other cars and chew through his tires. He did what Vettel had done all last year.
 
Hollidog
Exactly.
Rosbergs two stop worked well for him because he didnt have to race with other cars and chew through his tires. He did what Vettel had done all last year.
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That was what Button and Hamilton were implying in the press conference if I "read" them correctly. It was a good fun race with battles but not the result cause they were lost in it instead of saving tires and/or being faster in clean air.
 
zed300
I still think the jury is still out for Mercedes, as the cooler track temps in China, were their ally. Bahrain will not be.
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I think they've improved the situation though, I still think Mclaren will be ahead at warmer tracks but Mercedes won't have extreme tyre wear anymore (or less extreme then they were experiencing in the first 2 races).
 
LMSCorvetteGT2
First off not sure why you need to bring you ego, I've watched plenty of races in all series since 93 as a kid.
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Oh grow up really. If you don't already know me better than that, then let me tell you now - I don't write my posts as personal attacks, please do not read them that way.

Unfortunately, such penalties aren't particularly exciting so its not easy to do a random search for unsafe release penalties on youtube but I did manage to find at least one example I remembered off the top of my head:



And yes, Webber was penalised for that. There was a regulation change to do with pit stops around 2009/2010 where the teams cannot release a car when another car is within a certain distance in the pit lane. It resulted a few unfair penalties hence the FIA have become a little more lenient in this area it seems as they presumably accept its pretty difficult to always judge how fast the car is able to get out of the pit box. Sometimes (especially in wet weather!) the cars end up side-by-side not because the lollipop/traffic light was too late but because the car got so much wheelspin or had issues with the clutch.

As for Barrichello/Schumacher, you said it yourself that there is a difference between a concrete wall and grass. By the way, there were marks left on the wall from that incident, so yes, Barrichello did touch that wall! Balls of steel!
 
I knew when I saw Kimi in 2nd place on the option tire there was no way in hell they were going to hold on until the end of the race; seems odd to me that they kept fresh options available to them via qualifying, but didn't use that advantage in the race.

Great run for Nico though, long, long time coming; to bad about Schumacher, would have been great to see him on the podium - 2nd and 3rd for McLaren was about all anyone could have expected of them; I'm not convinced that even with a perfect stop Jenson would have been able to hold off Nico for the win towards the end of the race; the Mercedes is very fast in a straight line, and finally looks to have its handling somewhat sorted now.

That was an insane race - one of the most hectic F1 races I have ever seen; I expected several times for a collision to occur but everyone kept it clean. This is stacking up to be a great season - F1 has needed this sort of uncertainty for awhile IMO.

EDIT: And how about Mark Webber pulling a wheelie?!?

 
Good pretty clean race.
British Touring cars were really crash bang stuff but the Shanghai race was overall very clean indeed. Racing side by side, not too much pushing drivers off the track when side by side on a corner exit.

Felt sorry for Kimi who had to drive hard to hold second for so long with no DRS only for him to spend too much rubber currency before the end of the race and spend the last few laps going backwards.

Shame for M$chumacher. Really felt sorry for the Front Right wheelgun dude -
Button drove very well to reclaim 2nd - without the fumble pitstop and the resulting traffic - maybe he could have pushed Nico Over the cliff so to speak, But Nico earned Pole and drove as fast as he needed to.

Most entertaining - Nice to hear Eddie Jordan eating his words - again. Never gets old... Now if only he could buy some proper clothes... Hello Kitty Pink... Must have been a bet.
 
Ardius
Oh grow up really. If you don't already know me better than that, then let me tell you now - I don't write my posts as personal attacks, please do not read them that way.

Unfortunately, such penalties aren't particularly exciting so its not easy to do a random search for unsafe release penalties on youtube but I did manage to find at least one example I remembered off the top of my head:



And yes, Webber was penalised for that. There was a regulation change to do with pit stops around 2009/2010 where the teams cannot release a car when another car is within a certain distance in the pit lane. It resulted a few unfair penalties hence the FIA have become a little more lenient in this area it seems as they presumably accept its pretty difficult to always judge how fast the car is able to get out of the pit box. Sometimes (especially in wet weather!) the cars end up side-by-side not because the lollipop/traffic light was too late but because the car got so much wheelspin or had issues with the clutch.

As for Barrichello/Schumacher, you said it yourself that there is a difference between a concrete wall and grass. By the way, there were marks left on the wall from that incident, so yes, Barrichello did touch that wall! Balls of steel!
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Grow up, I've argued you enough times to know that their is a bit of spite in your comments, perhaps not this time but even you can see why some may approach this the way I did. If I took your comment the wrong way this time I apologize but I do have my reasons.

I posted unsafe release or commented on the incidents to show you that I actually do know what they are. Also to show that neither driver or team should be penalised because they were racing to beat each other out. Now if Kimi came in 10 seconds after Hamilton stopped and they were about to release Lewis instead of waiting for Kimi to pass, that would have been unsafe.

I didn't see marks from that incident and if you freeze the video before he gets to the end of the wall, you'll see it is already marked up. As if a car prior to them had rubbed against it, it's just a race I remember quite well and I didn't see any footage of pictures that Rubens hit the wall, the videos show to the best of ability that he doesn't touch either.
 
If anyone should have got an Unsafe release penalty, it's Raikkonen. Hamilton was laready out of his stall before Kimi had even touched the clutch.
 
Less "Unsafe Release" and more about the race? Can we just agree to disagree about it? Since neither team nor racer has commented on it after the fact, chances are they're both content that they were racing for that spot and that one won, one lost. That's basically all there is to it.
 
niky
Less "Unsafe Release" and more about the race? Can we just agree to disagree about it? Since neither team nor racer has commented on it after the fact, chances are they're both content that they were racing for that spot and that one won, one lost. That's basically all there is to it.
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That's what I'm trying to say.
 
I wonder why more teams weren't opening their 7th gears up for that straight. McLarens and Redbulls as well as many other teams were bouncing off the limiter there at 313-315 km/h. Not gaining much on others that way.

Perez's Sauber managed 320 there, which would've been a huge advantage had he been in the same situation Vettel was against Kimi for many laps, gaining a bit in the DRS zone but too little to actually make a move.
 
Because they prefer having better drive lower down in 7th for other parts of the track presumably. This has been going on for a few years now and people keep blaming the rev-limits, its partly that but its also determined by the aero setup and overall gearing of the car as well.
You never see them hitting the limiter at Monaco for example because they pile on the downforce and use the shortest gears as possible - there are no real straights to hit the limiter on.

But China has quite a few tight corners and corner exits which require good drive. If they used taller gears they might suffer out of the corners and overall laptime would be damaged.

At the end of the day, its the overall laptime that truly matters and the ability to use a full gear on the straights to overtake usually comes second to that.
 
You'll find it's the case in any motorsport - better to get up to a low top speed quickly, than get up to a high top speed slowly.

If teams aren't hitting their top speeds at the end of straights - without a draft - then they're losing something out in terms of acceleration.
 

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