The Motorsport Thread - 2012

I've always been a Schumacher fan, even when he was in the dastardly Ferrari.  Now he's old and less competitive, I want him to win even more.

And yeah, I don't have access to Satellite channels, so I cannot watch the race.  It's not an anti-Sky thing although I happen to dislike Sky too.

It also affects me watching the football as well.  Boo.

Go Kimi go.

9 a.m. (for start of coverage) for me and it's not even on BBC.  Hmm.  So not sure how I'll see it... plus other things are going tomorrow as well.

Grrr.

And Vettel wasn't happy.  Awww diddums.

I know, but I cant see Perez and Alonso holding him up for too long, his car is just that much faster and given the way Mercedes use their tyres I expect he'll be able to get ahead of them sonn enough. That leaves a rather nice fight between the McLarens, Red Bulls and Lotus's for the podium slots.

I can dream at least.

Would you look at that, the top 8 seperated by 0.45s, how many times last year did we see Vettel on poll by more than that?

I'm going to tip Raikkonen for a podium, he looks quick and that Lotus seems good on its tyres.

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Grid
1	4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:37.813	1:37.106	1:36.219	1
2	3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:37.575	1:36.928	1:36.368	2
3	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1:37.517	1:37.017	1:36.391	3
4	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1:37.172	1:37.375	1:36.461	4
5	9	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:37.961	1:36.715	1:36.461	101
6	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1:38.102	1:37.419	1:36.634	5
7	10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:38.058	1:37.338	1:36.658	6
8	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:37.696	1:36.996	1:36.664	7
9	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:38.151	1:37.379	1:37.566	8
10	15	Sergio Pérez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:37.933	1:37.477	1:37.698	9
11	18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:37.789	1:37.589		11
12	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:38.381	1:37.731		12
13	19	Bruno Senna	Williams-Renault	1:38.437	1:37.841		13
14	11	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:38.325	1:37.877		14
15	16	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:38.419	1:37.883		15
16	12	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:38.303	1:37.890		16
17	14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1:38.372	1:38.069		17
18	17	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:39.077			18
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	1:39.306			242
20	21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	1:39.567			19
21	24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	1:40.903			20
22	25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	1:41.250			21
23	22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	1:42.914			22
24	23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1:43.655			23
107% time: 1:43.974

Aw yeah, races so soon!
I like this, I hope (assuming the schedule does bulge to 24 sometime in the future) they keep it in clusters, so they can race every week with only gaps for travel across the huge distances.

Malaysia is a decent track, and rain always provides fun!
Also with the crazy first race out of the way we can start to see where teams line up.

Will RBR stay just off pace?
Will any of the others take third place or stay a clusterf**k of level caliber (naturally I hope for the latter).
I also hope RBR will end up being a steady threat to McLaren. A competitive year from top to bottom would just be awesome.

That is true but we'll see.  Ross Brawn said as much himself.  It's their controversial DRS system that allows them quick qualifying laps.  It doesn't have that advantage in the race.

But they're apparently still tweaking for qualifying and the race.

Oh and Red Bull aren't that happy this weekend.

The return of a Schumacher in a competitive car?

I do hope so.

I don't hate Vettel as a person.  I just don't think he's as amazing as people say and he is somewhat arrogant.

I kind of agree about Lewis too.  He seems to have a real chip on his shoulder.  He needs to relax and just race and not get so annoyed.

This is why I like Jens.  He's mostly always laid back but does naturally have moments when he needs to be outspoken too.  Plus he's British.