2012 Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix

[Hampus Andersson]

I think this might have to do with RBR being competitive in Qualifying as well.
http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/red-bull-bahrain-sidepod-analysis/

 

[Kartik Sri Harsha]

I think this might have to do with RBR being competitive in Qualifying as well.
http://scarbsf1.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/red-bull-bahrain-sidepod-analysis/

Thanx for the info
According to the data do you think if the hole was appeared again in updates do that effects the Down force again

 

[Hampus Andersson]

No idea, possibly they have another tunnel solution later on.

 

[Chris Jenkins]

When In season test will be done??

First week of May I think

 

[Jack Acid]

ApexHead's F1 2012 Bahrain GP Rapid Fire Review

Another race, another benchmark for what is turning out to be a very competitive season. Plenty to discuss and debate, but here’s my highlight thoughts…

1. Vettel’s win looks familiar, but the Red Bull is still not its 2011 form
Lightening start? Check. Gapping the field early on? Check. Running away with the race? Not so fast.
Sebastian Vettel had a great drive and deserved this win, but had the race been a handful more laps, Kimi Raikkonen‘s Lotus would have passed him — and likely should have before both drivers came in for their last set of tires.
The Red Bull 8 is still very quick in the corners but is one of the slowest cars on the straights. Vettel was able to make it work this weekend, but without improvements, I don’t expect Vettel to suddenly start dominating as we saw in 2011.
On the other end of Red Bull, Mark Webber continues to be Mr. Consistency, landing 4th for the fourth straight time in as many races. Despite Seb’s win, Webber has been a lot closer to his teammate so far this year.

2. Lotus shows it cannot be discounted
Expectations for the former Renault team were a little mixed this winter. The team handed the keys to Kimi Raikkonen, who yes, is an accomplished driver, but had been out of the sport for 2 years. His teammate was a young unknown in Romaine Grojean. But after four races, Lotus’ gambles have proven on point so far.
Kimi turned in his best result thus far finishing P2, after a disappointing fall in China the week before. Lotus probably should have had a 1-2 finish, but Vettel was able to keep the Fin at bay for the last dozen laps or so. Meanwhile, Grojean landed his first career podium and what could be many to come — the young Frenchman has shown great pace all year, but will need to continue demonstrating maturity to give McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull runs for their money.

3. Bravo, Paul di Resta
This was the Paul di Resta we had set our confidence in after a promising rookie 2011 campaign with Force India last year. After saving his tires in qualifying, a 2-stop strategy worked out well for the Scot. He finished a strong 6th place, a half-fozen places up from his teammate Nico Hulkenburg. Force India had been mostly invisible for the first three rounds; now let’s see if they can compete as we start the stretch into the mid-season point.

4. A little dicey at times, but overall, a good result for Mercedes
Michael Schumacher put in his best race of the year, starting all the way from 22nd to finish 10th. Granted not much for points, but given the concerns over the tires in Bahrain, it was nice to see the 7-time world champion finish well ahead of his starting position and frankly, finish at all.
Coming off his first win last week in China, Nico Rosberg finished a very respectable 5th. But it was not without controversy and close shaves with the stewards. Nico had two near-identical incidents with both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, where it appeared Nico had driven both off the track — but the stewards would eventually rule that he was within his rights to defend his position and no penalty was handed down.
Alonso, needless to say, was not impressed.
Still, Nico certainly looked jittery at times and was likely pushing too hard. The good news is that the tires held up better than expected in Bahrain.

5. McLaren’s pit crew strikes again
Lewis Hamilton was very let down by his team in the pits, where a thread problem meant two pits stops ran a marathon 21+ seconds. Not even starting P2 on the grid was enough to overcome such disasters. Lewis should be commended for finishing 8th under the circumstances.
Meanwhile Jenson Button, who is normally a master with his tires, struggled with grip the entire race. Eventually a puncture, exhaust problem and it seems like every other problem forced his retirement.
Obviously, this was a day to forget for McLaren. They better tighten up their pit times or the team could fade despite having a good car.

6. Sauber & Williams pull off disappearing act
Granted, Sergio Perez finished 11th, which isn’t too bad. But collectively, he and Kamui Kobayashi (P14) ended up out of the points after three strong races prior to. The 2-stop strategy didn’t work for Kamui, and Sergio seems a little harder on his tires this year than last. Now it’s time to see if the BMW team can rebound in Spain.
Meanwhile, Williams turned in their worst performance thus far and ended up with a double retirement.Pastor Maldonado had a spin out that forced him to retire and Bruno Senna struggled with tires and eventually brake problems. The young duo still have a lot ahead of them, so let’s hope for Williams’ sake their reliability can keep up with the maturing talent of their drivers.

Odds and Ends

• With Felipe Massa finishing 9th and securing his first points of the season, all drivers outside of Caterham, HRT and Marrisia have points.
• Speaking of Caterham, very good drives from both Vitaly Petrov (16th) and Heikki Kovalainen (17th). It makes one wonder if Caterham is finally turning a corner and is poised to pass HRT and Marussia on a consistent basis.
• Toro Rosso’s Daniel Ricciardo‘s 6th place qualifying spot seemed to good to be true and on race day, it proved to be so. A nightmare start led to the young driver fell all the way back to P16 before the end of the first lap.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

(c) Martin Rowson. "Formula One celebrates while anti-monarchy protesters continue their fight on the streets of Manama"

 

[Markus Neumann]

Oh for god's sake.
In retrospective it seems pretty obvious that the opposition benefited more from the race than the government and royal family. They finally got their deserved global media coverage, which had been mostly focused on Tunisia/Egypt/Libya/Yemen/Syria so far. And the regime completely failed at using F1 to present an image of normalcy - the media reports all over the world, even those who normally never even touch F1, were absolutely scathing.
The protesters got the opportunity to tell the world about their plight (which reacted with overwhelming sympathy), the regime got some nice Sunday afternoon entertainment out of it. Which is better?

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Couldn't suppress a hard LOL yesterday when i saw all those Sheikhs waving to the crowd and nobody applauded to them How many 's have you seen them doing during the weekend to all the camera's?

 

[R Soul]

 

[Carlos Luna]

Disappointed Schumi had to resort to complaining about the tyres. Really poor sportsmanship on his part. I mean, all the drivers were given the same tyre compounds so they were all on a level playing field, yet he feels the need to complain about it.

 

[Kartik Sri Harsha]

Now the F1 is kick starting the Europe Season and we are going to have Spain GP at Barcelona
Which team would get benefited by tires in Barcelona??
Like we saw Merc got win in china with low temp's and RBR with high temp's in Bahrain

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Disappointed Schumi had to resort to complaining about the tyres. Really poor sportsmanship on his part. I mean, all the drivers were given the same tyre compounds so they were all on a level playing field, yet he feels the need to complain about it.

You miss understand the whole point though.

He asked if Formula1 should be a sport where everyone is not going as fast as they can but instead look at a time delta on their screen and follow that.

They are running at around 80% of what the car can do in the races. Is that Formula 1 for you?

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Now the F1 is kick starting the Europe Season and we are going to have Spain GP at Barcelona
Which team would get benefited by tires in Barcelona??
Like we saw Merc got win in china with low temp's and RBR with high temp's in Bahrain

Mclaren won´t win anything. They have consistently put sticks in the wheels of their drivers to not give them the ability to win anything.

they are doing a splendid job i have to say....

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

I think I agree with Schumacher. Making tyres that are intentionally bad is just weird. And honestly, more pitstops doesn't mean better races. I'd rather give them good tyres and let the racing happen in the track. If that's boring, then change rules to fix the racing, not to add artificial pitstops.

Also, these tyres are so unpredictable it isn't even funny. They hit the cliff at some point, but then they doesn't, then someone complains about degradation after 5 laps, then someone does 20 laps on softs. I guess that's the worst part for the drivers and the team, it's like tyre russian roulette.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

No penalty for Rosberg's strange moves o_O I wonder what could have been if Hamilton did this...

 

[Kevin Cordice]

No penalty for Rosberg's strange moves I wonder what could have been if Hamilton did this...

+1

 

[Hampus Andersson]

No penalty for Rosberg's strange moves I wonder what could have been if Hamilton did this...

Had it been Hamilton he would have gotten 500 drive-throughs, 65 place grid penalty, 400 trips to the stewards, 10 hour long conversation with Charlie Whiting, three billion in fines for making F1 interesting.

These numbers are of course counted low so you can probably double them for a more realistic view

 

[Ivan Mills]

yeah i think Calros either translated the MS article when he read it,or he just simply misunderstood what MS was trying to convey through the message

I certainly agree with MIchael..F1 cars are supposed to be driven fast,instead they seem to be cruising even slower then last year during the race,...races are fun atm,cuz they are so unpredictable,but im beggining to wonder if people will eventually get fed up with this chaos

 

[Kartik Sri Harsha]

I think I agree with Schumacher. Making tyres that are intentionally bad is just weird. And honestly, more pitstops doesn't mean better races. I'd rather give them good tyres and let the racing happen in the track. If that's boring, then change rules to fix the racing, not to add artificial pitstops.

Also, these tyres are so unpredictable it isn't even funny. They hit the cliff at some point, but then they doesn't, then someone complains about degradation after 5 laps, then someone does 20 laps on softs. I guess that's the worst part for the drivers and the team, it's like tyre russian roulette.

I believe in 2011 the pirelli tires are way too much better and they did not Fell of Cliff so quickly due to change in temp
it also allowed drivers to push to their limits and we had the perfect driving and excellent races with pit stops like Hamilton and Vettel in Spain or Vettel Alonso and Button in Monaco
In that races they didn't bother about tires and they pushed for Victory until the very end
But this year if they pushed they cannot Complete the Stint and they will loose the time in pitstops

I request pirelli to bring back 2011 tires so that the races will get Excited but not getting too much unpredicatble

 

[Kevin Cordice]

In the build up to the F1 weekend i saw a BBC or maybe a Sky Sport interview with a former WDC in the person of Nigel Mansell, but to the story i not sure what GP maybe Sliverstone it was Mansell an his teammate were at loggerheads, during one of his pit stops he was held up for quite some time, which the first place drive had a massive lead of 28sec that did not stop Mansell from breaking the lap record a significant number of time to over take his teammate to get the win never will we see something of that splendor with these now crummy tires

Please correct me if i'm wrong as it was not my era