2012 Australian Grand Prix Thread - Official

[N4D13]

It wasnt just hrt having problems with traffic, i think its more to do with the fact that its a street circuit and theres simply not room to move over on much of the track. we need backmarkers like hrt to spice up the show plus i like the underdog and they prolly only need this one race to gain that 1 second and they should be fine the rest of the season making the 110%. but if they arent allowed to race its basically tying their hands and prolly be the same scenario in malaysia. let em race! those guys are working hard as anyone else. if they were a couple seconds off of 110 fine but they are close enough in my opinion and from the sounds of the commentating by the experts they feel they will be allowed to race as well.

Personally, I hope that they're allowed to race, as it would be terrible for them not to. However, HRT is a shame for F1 and I believe that the sport would be better off without them. They don't seem to have done anything well in three years - this is their third season, and it's the third time that they're having a lot of problems in order to start the season. Marussia isn't quite a great asset either, but at least they seem to be well within 107% this season, which isn't bad at all considering that they haven't had any testing.

[Zico]

Wow.. What can I say?.. its fantastic that Red Bull no longer have a stranglehold on the front row and Its great to see Lotus & Merc so strong.. I knew Ferrari had problems but I didn't expect them to be THAT bad!


The smile painted on Grojeans face is what its all about. This season is shaping up to be a corker!

[Kevincal]

Personally, I hope that they're allowed to race, as it would be terrible for them not to. However, HRT is a shame for F1 and I believe that the sport would be better off without them. They don't seem to have done anything well in three years - this is their third season, and it's the third time that they're having a lot of problems in order to start the season. Marussia isn't quite a great asset either, but at least they seem to be well within 107% this season, which isn't bad at all considering that they haven't had any testing.

True probably HRT and Marussia should not be in F1 but since they are and times are close enough to 107 and they spent so much time and effort going to australia etc. it would just be rotten if they were not allowed to race. i think they only need the 1 race and hopefully get to run close to, if not a full race to work out bugs and figure out some performance. fia limits testing so much its really not that fair. now if there were more preseason testing i would agree hrt shouldnt be allowed but under circumstances..

and people please stop saying Ferrari is so bad. lets wait until the end of the race tomorrow to see that. I think simply Massa had a bad day and was capable of 10th and Alonso also had the silly mistake and was capable of p5 grid. i think Alonso will have a strong race tomorrow and Massa well. i think he should not be ferrari driver... hes just not the same since the horror crash. no denying it. but who to replace him... an italian of some sort. why not fisichella, old friends with alonso, give him a shot, or maybe trulli? :P surely couldnt do much worse than massa the last couple years. liuzzi!?

[N4D13]

True probably HRT and Marussia should not be in F1 but since they are and times are close enough to 107 and they spent so much time and effort going to australia etc. it would just be rotten if they were not allowed to race. i think they only need the 1 race and hopefully get to run close to, if not a full race to work out bugs and figure out some performance. fia limits testing so much its really not that fair. now if there were more preseason testing i would agree hrt shouldnt be allowed but under circumstances..

and people please stop saying Ferrari is so bad. lets wait until the end of the race tomorrow to see that. I think simply Massa had a bad day and was capable of 10th and Alonso also had the silly mistake and was capable of p5 grid. i think Alonso will have a strong race tomorrow and Massa well. i think he should not be ferrari driver... hes just not the same since the horror crash. no denying it. but who to replace him... an italian of some sort. why not fisichella, old friends with alonso, give him a shot, or maybe trulli? :P surely couldnt do much worse than massa the last couple years. liuzzi!?

As for HRT and Marussia, I agree. However, as for Ferrari... I know that one shouldn't jump to conclusions just by watching qualifying, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Ferrari is way behind the cars in front. Perhaps the gap isn't as big as it was last year when compared to the Red Bulls, but this year's field is much tighter, which means that being 0.8-1.0s behind means you're out of Q3. And the Ferrari's main strength is believed to be its single lap pace, so what is going to happen to them during the race?

By the way, according to Marc Gené, Ferrari's main problem is top speed, which is very low. I know that many people are criticizing Ferrari's radical design, but the main problem with the car is that it has a lot of aerodynamical drag, which means that they're losing a lot of top speed. The main talking point about this year's Ferrari was its suspension, which can't have such an influence on aerodynamic. It's obvious that the Ferrari's lack of top speed is due to a poor design, but I'm not so sure about if it's the fault of their radical design. The car seems to have acceptable downforce and it's OK when turning.

[jens]

Regarding Ferrari I can't help but notice one thing. They sacked chief designer Aldo Costa last year as a bit of a scapegoat. And what have we got now. Costa is at Mercedes, who is in a much-improved form, while Ferrari has dropped further backwards.

I think the fundamental issue here is that the management of Ferrari and more specifically Domenicali doesn't fully understand, where do the problems lie. Well, perhaps he has forgotten to look into the mirror. In any case, Brawn seems to have identified the problematic areas and Mercedes with its much-improved engineering team is finally on an upward-swing. Ferrari is going through the same bad patch, a lot of damage has been done already, so recovering will take some time. But recovering doesn't come automatically, they need to start making right analysis and decisions finally.

[DexDexter]

Pathetic is the whole Ferrari team IMO.
But that's fine, they deserve what they got after gradually removing their best assets in order for LdM to get in the spotlights. And guess what? he's in the spotlights for all the wrong reasons!

Yep. If you get rid of your best people who built the team up, you're gonna end up with a team which makes radical cars and then redesigns them in the middle of the year. Shades of 1992.

[jens]

I'm sure Aldo has a smile on his face right now..

Yeah, actually reminds a bit of what happened to Honda. They sacked Geoff Willis in 2006 thinking that he was at fault for the car not being good enough for winning. But as a result the team found themselves from hell in 2007.

How to halt the down-ward spiral? Looking at the past examples, Honda hired Ross Brawn in late 2007. Ferrari hired Jean Todt for 1993. I'm intrigued to see, what will be Ferrari's next step/decision, because they cannot continue with current policy for long. Remember, what Williams did last year. They kept going with their conservative policy for long until they realized enough is enough and hired a whole new design team for 2012.

[Zico]

Lotus are going to appeal the result of qualifying on the basis they believe the Mercedes rear wing to be illegal.... Whitmarsh has said he believes the rear wing to be legal.

Anyone else suspect that its because McLaren also have it?....

[ioan]

...and Alonso also had the silly mistake and was capable of p5 grid...

Based on what?

[pino]

Unless you are mentally retarded (are you?), you should not view that as lacking motivation.

Please let's not start posting such unpleasent insults thank you