The Motorsport Thread - 2012

JJLehto wrote: sleeper wrote: You keep bringing up the Singapor race James but its well known that Alonso never actually had any knowledge of the conspiracy, it was down to Briatore, Piquet and Symmonds. Beat me to it That's why I get angry James, just admit you don't like someone and don't pin these BS reasons to it! Though now you finally say you just don't like him, even though you still pin the Piquet incident to him. I don't know contract details and all that jazz but I hope Massa was on contract to this year...otherwise I'll slap Ferrari for keeping him for so long. I still think it'd be a bit unfair to give a ride to Perez so soon with more deserved drivers out there (thought he clearly has skill) but it sounds like there is a natural road leading to Ferrari for Perez.

Massa has a contract for this year but no doubt that contract has performance clauses in it like all of them do. I actually read today that when other teams come up with their strategies they factor in not how fast the Ferrari is, like they would with other cars, but the different pace of Alonso and Massa, obviously plenty reckon they can get the one and not the other even before a race has started.

Perez is a contracted young Ferrari driver, so he may well get the chance for next year. The elephant in the room on that score is of course Kubica and whether he can recover enough to drive in F1 again. I read not long ago that he drove his own Skoda Fabia WRC on tarmac stages in the north of Italy, not far from where he had his crash, recently. 

They say Alonso knew nothing... there's no proof either way.  Just sayin'.

VanderGraafKommandöh wrote: They say Alonso knew nothing... there's no proof either way.  Just sayin'.

Sooooooo basically there is absolutely no way to know and we all believe what we want to!

Looks interesting Ric

VanderGraafKommandöh wrote: They say Alonso knew nothing... there's no proof either way.  Just sayin'.

The Piquet's never mentioned him as being involved, and since the whole point of bringing it up was revenge they'd certainly want to drop everyone involved in the deep end.

sleeper wrote: VanderGraafKommandöh wrote: They say Alonso knew nothing... there's no proof either way.  Just sayin'. The Piquet's never mentioned him as being involved, and since the whole point of bringing it up was revenge they'd certainly want to drop everyone involved in the deep end.

You'd think right?


Finally! This gap feels like it's been a month.
Yeah, I was wondering about Bahrain and was quite surprised to see it still on.
I guess they can't let those damn protesters ruin the event two years in a row!!!


You don't hear a lick of news (guess those crazy Arabs aren't hot press now) but I see bombs and buses were lit up just days ago.
I do hope things will be safe, (and the government doesn't just drop a bomb on them)

Nico Rosberg on pole!

Mercedes garage is lighting up.
First Mercedes pole since 1955.....well OK there may have been a slight gap in there

Great for Nico, and Schumi will take 2nd with Lewis losing 5 spots. Some great results while RBR struggles yet again, and again Webber out qualifies.

Pos.	No.	Driver	Constructor	Part 1	Part 2	Part 3	Grid
1	8	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1:36.875	1:35.725	1:35.121	1
2	4	Lewis Hamilton	McLaren-Mercedes	1:36.763	1:35.902	1:35.626	71
3	7	Michael Schumacher	Mercedes	1:36.797	1:35.794	1:35.691	2
4	14	Kamui Kobayashi	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.863	1:35.853	1:35.784	3
5	9	Kimi Räikkönen	Lotus-Renault	1:36.850	1:35.921	1:35.898	4
6	3	Jenson Button	McLaren-Mercedes	1:36.746	1:35.942	1:36.191	5
7	2	Mark Webber	Red Bull-Renault	1:36.682	1:35.700	1:36.290	6
8	15	Sergio Pérez	Sauber-Ferrari	1:36.198	1:35.831	1:36.524	8
9	5	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari	1:36.292	1:35.982	1:36.622	9
10	10	Romain Grosjean	Lotus-Renault	1:36.343	1:35.903	no time	10
11	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull-Renault	1:36.911	1:36.031		11
12	6	Felipe Massa	Ferrari	1:36.556	1:36.255		12
13	18	Pastor Maldonado	Williams-Renault	1:36.528	1:36.283		13
14	19	Bruno Senna	Williams-Renault	1:36.674	1:36.289		14
15	11	Paul di Resta	Force India-Mercedes	1:36.639	1:36.317		15
16	12	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India-Mercedes	1:36.921	1:36.745		16
17	16	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:36.933	1:36.956		17
18	17	Jean-Éric Vergne	Toro Rosso-Ferrari	1:37.714			18
19	20	Heikki Kovalainen	Caterham-Renault	1:38.463			19
20	21	Vitaly Petrov	Caterham-Renault	1:38.677			20
21	24	Timo Glock	Marussia-Cosworth	1:39.282			21
22	25	Charles Pic	Marussia-Cosworth	1:39.717			22
23	22	Pedro de la Rosa	HRT-Cosworth	1:40.411			23
24	23	Narain Karthikeyan	HRT-Cosworth	1:41.000			24
107% time: 1:42.931

Edited by JJLehto - April 14 2012 at 02:13

Lets go mercs.

sleeper wrote: Wow, Rosberg on poll by a big chunk of time, Raikkonen and Kobayashi make up the second row, Vettel knocked out of a very close Q2. I give up on making predictions, it's just too unpredictable. De la Rosa for the win!

ha! OK that may be a bit crazy...
*waiting for me to be wrong*

McLaren does seem to be the best team on the grid, thought just by a bit and Webber seems to be taking the fight to Vettel.
These seasons just keep getting better and better, the field is so level now.

It seems that pole position has become critical. Pretty much no one can catch you when you get to a good start from pole but from 2nd on the racing has been epic.