2011 German Grand Prix

Well, in all fairness, he finished behind both HRT's. In a car that usually is pacier then the Virgins.

Surely, but no need to go berserk since this is his first race with a Pirelli tyres, in a tough condition with less than a hundred laps in hand in one of these spec of cars... He spins a lot too during the race. But all in all, I respect him for being able to cope for the whole 60 laps - perhaps 57 since he's about 3 laps down the leader without doing any major damage to the car...
 
He spun several times in that race, was miles off the pace of Kovalainen and was lapped by everyone - including the HRTs.
I think we have closed the book on Karun's F1 career here, this weekend contrasts very much with Ricciardo's at Silverstone - he also finished last but he never spun the car once. While in Ricciardo's case we can maybe make an excuse because he isn't used to running with blue flags and not losing too much time with them, Chandhok has had an entire 2010 season of them.
Not only that but Daniel has made a very clear step forwards this weekend as he was 8-10 seconds from Liuzzi all the way till Liuzzi retired.

I think to be fair that Karun isn't completely hopeless, qualifying 8 tenths off Kovalainen isn't the worst result in the world for his first taste of the car (ok he had 8 or so laps in previous practice sessions in the year but it was almost always in the wet...and well, it was 8 laps).
But I don't think he is F1 material and he certainly doesn't deserve Trulli's seat. He might have a little bit of speed but when he tries to find some more he seems to make a lot of mistakes.
Once again, like Trulli, we are left a little unsure of whether the brakes excuse is just an excuse or a genuine issue for him.

I actually hope this makes people wake up and notice Trulli isn't doing that bad this year and he is far more valuable to the team than running pay driver rookies. The only driver on Team Lotus' roster worth a try is Davide Valsecchi - and even he is a little bit of an unknown as he has been around in GP2 for ages and never really raised himself above "pretty good".
 
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Chandhok wasn't even that successful in GP2.

He had his moments like almost winning at Monaco with Ocean, etc. But yeah, he wasn't amazing. This is why I say, I don't think he is utterly terrible like some might be saying, but he certainly isn't a hidden talent in waiting and no where near a driver like Jarno Trulli.
 
Chnadhok's qualifying pace was good. As he said after, his weekend started 2.5 seconds off Heikki, then 1.5s and his target in qualy was to be a second off. 0.8s, job done. Also saw the one spin, at which point you could argue that both Schumacher and Vettel spun too. If there were more spins then it does raise a considerable point at that stage of a GP weekend.

Overall though, I was very impressed with the coverage of the battle at the back of the grid for once. Q1 is all about them, and yet all we see is the top teams do a lap on the prime tyre then pit, followed by chat about how comfortable the lap looked. This time it was different and we were shown the battle going on thanks to just the duelling drivers on track. We got interviews and chats with those drivers at the back, and then also Martin Brundle's grid walk only involved 18th place backwards. Its good to see a different perspective of the weekend for once, even if the race (rightly so) concentrated on the action within the duels for the podium and the midfield.
 
Really enjoyed that race. The battle between Hamilton, Alonso and Webber at the front was fantastic, all three thoroughly deserved to get on the podium.

Was a shame that Button retired - probably could have worked his way up to 4th in the end. Vettel seemed very uncomfortable for the whole race, and it was good to see a bit of fire in Schumacher's belly again even if he's still not as quick as he should be.

Beleive me when I say this. Schumacher is quick. Ever since his return, he hasn't been doing so well in qualifying, but he'll usually finish quite a bit higher up the order than where he started. He's better than Nico in the races for sure, if it weren't for his spin, he'd have beaten Nico.

In fact for most of these races so far, Michael has had a dismal qualifying, but then had much better race pace, and only bad luck would prevent him from scoring big and beating Nico. Look at Silverstone, lost his front wing from a collision, got a stop and go, but still finished 9th, compared to Nico's 5th, that's a good job.
 
I would have thought making no mistakes in the race would be considered as being "better in the race"..but apparently not.

Bad luck has prevented Schumacher from finishing better? :lol: An odd interpretation of luck, eh? There is an element of making your own luck, and Schumacher rarely does when he keeps making these very basic errors. Bad luck would be reliability issues or losing out on strategy with the weather or safety cars. Taking your front wing off and spinning in pretty much every race isn't bad luck, its bad driving.

I will say that Schumacher has seemingly found a little bit of speed since last year and he is sometimes faster than Nico this year in the races. But he has been so clumsy and inconsistent that he has nothing to show for it. Once again, I really question his worth to Mercedes when they could put a much more proven and younger driver who has more potential - Schumacher has nothing more to prove.

Perhaps this might seem hypocritical on my part after saying Lotus are better with Trulli over younger talents, but Lotus are still a young team and really need the experience simply to finish the races, rather than to push for all-out speed. Mercedes still have much high ambitions than simply finishing races in the points, they want to be fighting for wins and podiums. I personally think they are wasting their time waiting for Schumacher to get up to speed, only for him to be close to retirement again anyway. When they do replace Schumacher with a younger driver, they will once again be waiting a season or two for them to develop.
 
He had his moments like almost winning at Monaco with Ocean, etc. But yeah, he wasn't amazing. This is why I say, I don't think he is utterly terrible like some might be saying, but he certainly isn't a hidden talent in waiting and no where near a driver like Jarno Trulli.

Trulli's old, he's not the guy who used to give Alonso a run for his money anymore. Lotus, and so do I, think that Trulli's losing his fire, and he's unable to work properly with the car's power steering at the moment. We won't know if Karun is better unless he stays in the car for longer, but his qualifying pace wasn't bad, just a little off Heikki, little more than the same distance that Jarno might have been. In the race though, Karun spun a few times, lost his nose once, and did a 3 stopper. Normally, the backmarkers will do 1 or 2 stoppers. All those problems added up are what made him finish 70 seconds off of Ricciardo.

I also don't think that Lotus need so much experience anymore. The team are now on steady ground. Big budget, and decent designers and engineers to push the team forward. And Heikki is enough to keep them running, they probably want to put a youngster in to get a more interesting lineup.
 
Really enjoyed that race. The battle between Hamilton, Alonso and Webber at the front was fantastic, all three thoroughly deserved to get on the podium.

Was a shame that Button retired - probably could have worked his way up to 4th in the end. Vettel seemed very uncomfortable for the whole race, and it was good to see a bit of fire in Schumacher's belly again even if he's still not as quick as he should be.

Yep, definitely one of the best of the year, after perhaps China and Canada. These races have been a lot more interesting since McLaren and Ferrari (more so than McLaren, despite today's result) have been able to close down the gap to RBR.

My impression is that Vettel thought discretion was the better part of valor. He's got a fairly insurmountable championship lead and finishing fourth (or a few fourths or fifths) isn't going to hurt that much. But he has been looking decidedly human lately... Maybe he too will suffer the late-season fade that Button did two years ago.

Buemi/Heidfeld was a racing incident to me. Buemi putting the squeeze on Heidfeld was not the safest thing in the world but Heidfeld probably should've backed off instead doing his best Petrov impression...
 
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And yet Alonsos win at Silverstone was a fluke.

I never said that. Yes, he got gifted the lead, but his pace was great. He'd probably have overtaken Vettel for the lead had RBR not bungled his pitstop. Stop putting words in my mouth. It can't have slipped your attention that Ferrari clearly don't give a damn about Massa anymore. Most of the time, they're so busy concentrating on Alonso that they ruin Massa's race by simply leaving him out too long before even considering stopping him.

And yet people get so wound up about RBR favouring the driver who is clearly the top performer in that team. Double standards anyone?
 
I never said that. Yes, he got gifted the lead, but his pace was great. He'd probably have overtaken Vettel for the lead had RBR not bungled his pitstop. Stop putting words in my mouth. It can't have slipped your attention that Ferrari clearly don't give a damn about Massa anymore. Most of the time, they're so busy concentrating on Alonso that they ruin Massa's race by simply leaving him out too long before even considering stopping him.

And yet people get so wound up about RBR favouring the driver who is clearly the top performer in that team. Double standards anyone?

That's where you're wrong. In a team, there are always 2 sides to the pitlane with 2 different sets of engineers and strategists, but all under Domenicali's jurisdiction. Massa has his own engineers and strategists to man his car, so don't blame Ferrari for not caring about Felipe anymore, blame Felipe's mechanics and strategists for just not having a great strategy or having a poor pitstop. Sure Ferrari has a tendency to make a number 2 driver the number 2, but the number 2 driver always exists and is always on their minds.
 
How can we blame the strategists when it's clear Alonso gets priority stop. They have very clearly left him out to help or not affect Alonso pretty much every race this season.
 
How can we blame the strategists when it's clear Alonso gets priority stop. They have very clearly left him out to help or not affect Alonso pretty much every race this season.

In general, isn't the leading driver given the priority stop?

To my recollection, Vettel has had the priority stop for Red Bull in every race this year. But with Webber ahead on Sunday, Vettel ended up with the secondary stops.
 
But they haven't been brought in at the same time, which Ferrari have done several times this year.
 
I would have thought making no mistakes in the race would be considered as being "better in the race"..but apparently not.

Bad luck has prevented Schumacher from finishing better? :lol: An odd interpretation of luck, eh? There is an element of making your own luck, and Schumacher rarely does when he keeps making these very basic errors. Bad luck would be reliability issues or losing out on strategy with the weather or safety cars. Taking your front wing off and spinning in pretty much every race isn't bad luck, its bad driving.

I will say that Schumacher has seemingly found a little bit of speed since last year and he is sometimes faster than Nico this year in the races. But he has been so clumsy and inconsistent that he has nothing to show for it. Once again, I really question his worth to Mercedes when they could put a much more proven and younger driver who has more potential - Schumacher has nothing more to prove.

Perhaps this might seem hypocritical on my part after saying Lotus are better with Trulli over younger talents, but Lotus are still a young team and really need the experience simply to finish the races, rather than to push for all-out speed. Mercedes still have much high ambitions than simply finishing races in the points, they want to be fighting for wins and podiums. I personally think they are wasting their time waiting for Schumacher to get up to speed, only for him to be close to retirement again anyway. When they do replace Schumacher with a younger driver, they will once again be waiting a season or two for them to develop.

There is quite simply one answer to this, Schumacher is sponsorship gold. Or at least he was last season, I expect by now the sponsors aren't so interested in old Schumi anymore. I expect that to some extent Schumacher was a pay driver. But also somebody to help with development of the car. Remember, Mercedes were trying to get hold of Vettel as their number one, I don't think Schumacher was truly their long term plan and if he was, they're starting to see sense.
 
While I agree about Schumi being Sponsorship gold, he is getting paid an awful lot... Unless that is merely a percentage of the sponsorship he attracts.

Clearly things aren't working out well, but the intention was that a man of Schumacher's experience would keep the outfit at the top. As it happens, he hasn't and so far, operation MGP has been very disappointing for everyone involved.

As for Vettel, before he re-signed for Red Bull in mid 2009 (around Valencia IIRC), he was even hot property back then, with Ross Brawn and Martin Whitmarsh interested in him.
 
Hulkenberg, Di Resta, Sutil, Glock... All possible replacements for Schumacher. Three of them are German and the other has strong links to Mercedes. C'mon MGP, Schumi's career is coming to an end. Again. Replace him whilst you still can.
 
Hulkenberg, Di Resta, Sutil, Glock... All possible replacements for Schumacher. Three of them are German and the other has strong links to Mercedes. C'mon MGP, Schumi's career is coming to an end. Again. Replace him whilst you still can.

Hulkenberg may be available, but he may be tied to Force India. Same goes for Di Resta. Only speculation of course. Hence the word May. Sutil is a maybe, but I don't want to see him promoted when I believe others deserve it more. As for Glock, there was a story going around at the weekend that he has re-signed for Virgin until 2014.

If that is true, then bye bye successful F1 career. Glock should get out of there as soon as possible IMO.

EDIT: Not just saying this because I made the thread, but there is a 2012 transfer/speculation thread.
 
Hulkenberg may be available, but he may be tied to Force India. Same goes for Di Resta. Only speculation of course. Hence the word May. Sutil is a maybe, but I don't want to see him promoted when I believe others deserve it more. As for Glock, there was a story going around at the weekend that he has re-signed for Virgin until 2014.

If that is true, then bye bye successful F1 career. Glock should get out of there as soon as possible IMO.

EDIT: Not just saying this because I made the thread, but there is a 2012 transfer/speculation thread.

You're right about Glock, Forgot about that. I was just trying to think of German drivers. Heidfeld is a possibility though since he lost his seat at BMW-Sauber I think he's lost his touch. I'll stop with the transfer talk lol :D

But seriously, Mercedes need to sort out the problems with their car before they sort out their drivers. But maybe with the development of the car, there is a weak link and the drivers can be an influence and they could be the weak link, who knows. (I doubt that is the case, I reckon budget constraints are their problem, they're spending maybe half that of Mclaren, Ferrari etc.
 
Daimler Benz's CEO Dr. Zetsche has had a man-crush on Schumi for years and thus felt it necessary to have him on their F1 team. Each year MB questions why they are in F1 to be beat by thier own engine at McLaren.
 
Trulli's old, he's not the guy who used to give Alonso a run for his money anymore. Lotus, and so do I, think that Trulli's losing his fire, and he's unable to work properly with the car's power steering at the moment. We won't know if Karun is better unless he stays in the car for longer, but his qualifying pace wasn't bad, just a little off Heikki, little more than the same distance that Jarno might have been. In the race though, Karun spun a few times, lost his nose once, and did a 3 stopper. Normally, the backmarkers will do 1 or 2 stoppers. All those problems added up are what made him finish 70 seconds off of Ricciardo.

I also don't think that Lotus need so much experience anymore. The team are now on steady ground. Big budget, and decent designers and engineers to push the team forward. And Heikki is enough to keep them running, they probably want to put a youngster in to get a more interesting lineup.

We don't know if Karun is better? Better than what? Better than Trulli? I can say with some certainty that Karun is not better than Trulli. Can Karun display some better ability? Possibly, but his past career and the speed he has shown don't show a huge amount of potential for improvement. I think at best Karun could be a solid driver who would finish GPs but I don't think he would ever be fast enough to even get close to the podium in a top car. But the main point here is that having Trulli in the seat gives Lotus a mistake-free race as well as being faster than Karun, even if Karun hadn't made mistakes he would have been fighting the Virgins in a car which has pretty much always been 1 second ahead of them...

I thought this race was a pretty clear indication Lotus do need experience still, as they have just let a young-gun have a go and he finished dead last..whereas their experienced driver fought up in 15th for much of the race, well ahead of their rivals Virgin and HRT. The constructors is worth a lot of money even at the bottom end of the grid, and those 15ths, 16ths, etc count at the end of the year.

Having Kovalainen and Trulli ensures both Lotus cars remain ahead of Virgin and HRT so that they can capitalise on mixed races and always have the best finishing positions - securing 10th place.

Are you reading what you have typed? I mean, you're backing up what I am saying that Karun's race was ruined by his own mistakes. If he hadn't made those mistakes he might have been ahead or at least a lot closer to the HRTs and Virgins. But he wasn't, due to his own mistakes. Again, mistakes, not bad luck, just like I said with Schumacher - how can genuine driving errors be considered bad luck?

There is quite simply one answer to this, Schumacher is sponsorship gold. Or at least he was last season, I expect by now the sponsors aren't so interested in old Schumi anymore. I expect that to some extent Schumacher was a pay driver. But also somebody to help with development of the car. Remember, Mercedes were trying to get hold of Vettel as their number one, I don't think Schumacher was truly their long term plan and if he was, they're starting to see sense.

Well yeah, but that wears a bit thin when he tarnishes his own legacy by becoming the circus clown constantly taking front wings off and hitting other drivers. Although there is always the benefits of negative publicity too and the name will always be a household one, is it all worth it?

I don't see the point of it all really, to me if I was a team owner, I would want Michael Schumacher in the car because of his 7xWDC...I would easily find much more consistent and cleaner drivers with potential to improve if I was happy to take a driver who can start 10th and finish 8th. Some people are saying that if Schumacher was a new driver, he would be praised for his constant pushing for results even after mistakes, etc, but that in itself points out the problem to me - he isn't a new driver, he is Michael Schumacher, if he wasn't hired because he is a world champion then why not actually hire a new driver?
It kind of reminds of Michael Andretti in 1993 for some reason. Sure, with more time Andretti would have improved. But he was hired to be great immediately, if he couldn't make the mark quickly, why bother? Lets give Mika Hakkinen a try as he has shown humoungous amounts of potential talent....

I think Nico Hulkenburg should be given a try, his potential is huge. Sutil, Glock and Heidfeld have somewhat shown their potential though all 3 have earned such a seat. I think Hulk has much more to prove still though.
 
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Hulkenberg, Di Resta, Sutil, Glock... All possible replacements for Schumacher. Three of them are German and the other has strong links to Mercedes. C'mon MGP, Schumi's career is coming to an end. Again. Replace him whilst you still can.

Replace him? Why? He's doing a fine job, a bit of lousy driving, but his soulful ,never-give-up attitude will benefit Mercedes whenever things go his way. Schumacher has brought Mercedes the closest to a podium this year, and while he's down in qualifying, his race pace is better than Nico's and almost always gains a fair amount of positions from his starting position.

Besides, Schumi said that he plans on sticking around for longer to build up the team and put them on the right track.
 
While I agree with Ardius, I think there are other young drivers that could be close to delivering the kind of performances Trulli has given, but who also have room for improvement.

Karun is clearly not cut out for F1. However, there is no harm in having him as a third driver. If they're looking at potential replacements for Trulli, they should look for someone who can do the job, rather than looking for money.

I know Fernandes would love to put an Asian driver in one of his cars. If he feels that strongly about it, then he should have gone for Sato.
 
We don't know if Karun is better? Better than what? Better than Trulli? I can say with some certainty that Karun is not better than Trulli. Can Karun display some better ability? Possibly, but his past career and the speed he has shown don't show a huge amount of potential for improvement. I think at best Karun could be a solid driver who would finish GPs but I don't think he would ever be fast enough to even get close to the podium in a top car. But the main point here is that having Trulli in the seat gives Lotus a mistake-free race as well as being faster than Karun, even if Karun hadn't made mistakes he would have been fighting the Virgins in a car which has pretty much always been 1 second ahead of them...

I thought this race was a pretty clear indication Lotus do need experience still, as they have just let a young-gun have a go and he finished dead last..whereas their experienced driver fought up in 15th for much of the race, well ahead of their rivals Virgin and HRT. The constructors is worth a lot of money even at the bottom end of the grid, and those 15ths, 16ths, etc count at the end of the year.

Having Kovalainen and Trulli ensures both Lotus cars remain ahead of Virgin and HRT so that they can capitalise on mixed races and always have the best finishing positions - securing 10th place.

Are you reading what you have typed? I mean, you're backing up what I am saying that Karun's race was ruined by his own mistakes. If he hadn't made those mistakes he might have been ahead or at least a lot closer to the HRTs and Virgins. But he wasn't, due to his own mistakes. Again, mistakes, not bad luck, just like I said with Schumacher - how can genuine driving errors be considered bad luck?

Also, he finished behind Ricciardo, who is in a slower car, and is less experienced. I'm sorry, but Chandok is not the way forwward for Lotus, who need to prove they can fight with the midfield next year. With Jarno and Heikki, that may very well happen, but with Karun, probably not. (On the other hand he brings good sponsorship money though)
 
While I agree with Ardius, I think there are other young drivers that could be close to delivering the kind of performances Trulli has given, but who also have room for improvement.

Karun is clearly not cut out for F1. However, there is no harm in having him as a third driver. If they're looking at potential replacements for Trulli, they should look for someone who can do the job, rather than looking for money.

I know Fernandes would love to put an Asian driver in one of his cars. If he feels that strongly about it, then he should have gone for Sato.

Sato isn't a young driver, and while has again flashes of speed, he was very inconsistent and couldn't handle the pressure of top teams.

There are bucket loads of great young drivers in the junior categories, if they really wanted a great young driver, they could get one. But they don't need one just yet, they just need consistently fast drivers who can adapt to different conditions and develop the car through the season. Sticking new drivers in the car runs the risk of them screwing up good results and for what? To let them get used to the car? This is only worth it in the long term, and long term do you really see Sato or Chandhok becoming much better than the current Team Lotus line-up?

Please everyone, lets wake up from the dreamworld of fan-favourite drivers.

I don't think Fernandes is so foolish to want an Asian driver immediately and to gamble on unproven or not-so-great talents. I personally think if he wants a Malaysian, Jazeman Jafar seems to have some potential..though its still early days.

I think that Lotus should consider trying out a rookie when and if Trulli retires from the team, but even then its still better to pursue a proven driver like Glock, Sutil, etc etc etc. Even better if they can somehow grab another race-winner and a driver who has driven for a top team.
 
Why all this hate on Karun. He had a bad race, his first in a long time, in a new car, at a new track. Last year some people rated him higher than Senna, this year, because of a bad first race, he's all of a sudden not cut out for F1. Karun just needs more time with the car to be able to close the gap to Heikki and make less mistakes, he was only 8 tenths off in qualifying anyway, which is not dissimilar to what Jarno has done more than once this year. This is also a track which isn't easy anyway, it's rather tricky, we saw other drivers go off this race.

Bottom line, Karun's showing in the race wasn't good, but it doesn't mean he's not worth F1 or anything like that. I'd bet my ass that if he were driving in Hungary, he'd be closer to Heikki, and not do badly in the race, or at least finish ahead of both Hispanias and Virgins.
 
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