F1 World Championship 2012 Thread

By +Frank B.
in The Sporting Arena

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Grand Master

Jimmy0

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Pretty boring race, very happy for Nico and Mercedes, Brawn GP was my favourite team.

How can you say that!? I will grant you that the first half was boring, but the second was very exciting with everyone from 2nd-10th being so close together!

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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Pretty boring race, very happy for Nico and Mercedes, Brawn GP was my favourite team.

Boring? You must have watched a different race. The one I watched today was rather exciting.

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Daedroth

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Pretty boring race, very happy for Nico and Mercedes, Brawn GP was my favourite team.

You clearly weren't watching the same race as us! In the latter stages of the race, it was very compelling, especially when everyone was getting around the slow car of Raikkonen. Hamilton and Webber had some good battles too!

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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Lewis Hamilton tops first practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in the opening free practice session for the Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of world champion Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull and Paul di Resta's Force India.

In a fairly uneventful 90 minutes of running, the McLaren driver set a time of 1m33.572s in the middle of the session and remained unchallenged thereafter.

As expected, the teams were greeted with warm track temperatures - 27 degrees C and rising ? but just as predictable was the surface layer of sand on the asphalt that prompted one team to dismissively say the morning's runs as nothing more than 'dust surveys'. It led to a slow start to the morning.

Nico Hulkenberg was the first driver to set a time, a 1m35.544s lap, 20 minutes in. Dicing with his Force India team-mate di Resta, who also moved to the top during this period, the German then improved that to a 1m34.859s.

Other early runners were Romain Grosjean and Sauber's Kamui Kobayashi, who like Caterham's Heikki Kovalainen before him, ran too hot into the tightening Turn 10 left-hander and ran over the sand-coloured painted run-off. There would be several more cases of this through the field.

By one third's distance Grosjean's Lotus, complete with a new front wing for this race, had moved to the top of the times with a 1m34.847s. The Frenchman looked fairly wild though as he explored the limits of the track.

Not long after that, Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen set a new benchmark, the Finn lowering the target to a 1m34.609s on the revised-back-to-its-original Sakhir layout.

Just before half distance the Red Bulls emerged from the pits for their first runs on the Pirelli medium primes and immediately Vettel went fastest with a 1m34.311s ? the German now using the newer exhaust layout that Mark Webber chose to run in Shanghai.

But if his first lap was impressive, he followed it up with a much faster 1m33.877s, setting three purple sector times as he did so. His team-mate on the hand could only manage third fastest, having locked up on his early quick lap.

The two Mercedes were also out at the same time for their early runs on the prime tyres, but neither Nico Rosberg nor Michael Schumacher could match that Vettel time at this stage and went second and third quickest, while Jenson Button in the McLaren, went fourth.

Just before the hour mark world championship leader Hamilton moved to the top with a 1m33.572s ? three tenths up on Vettel - as Rosberg and Button also improved to third and fourth, ahead of Schumacher.

Things settled down for a while after that as teams continued working through their programmes on the prime sets they'd hand back after the morning session was over.

During this period di Resta's KERS went intermittent and he was forced to switch it off, running wide at the final corner not long after that.

Despite the track being less dusty, to the surprise of the teams, few of them seemed keen to chase times massively.

But in the last 10 minutes of the session both the Force Indias made the surprising decision to make an early switch to the option tyre, which explained why di Resta jumped up to third late on and Hulkenberg ended up sixth.

Neither Ferrari made it into the top ten after a low profile session that ended with Fernando Alonso 13th and Felipe Massa 15th - split by Valtteri Bottas's Williams.

f1p1bah.png

Source: Autosport

Grand Master

what

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Bahrain is a funny GP. If you ignore all the political problems going on there, it still isn't worth having on the calendar. It's an uneventful race on a boring track with no decent overtaking opportunities and enormous run-off areas - the only thing they can talk about is the amount of sand on the track after a breezy morning in the desert. They would have been better off giving the teams another extended break.

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Grand Master

MightyJordan

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Bahrain is a funny GP. If you ignore all the political problems going on there, it still isn't worth having on the calendar. It's an uneventful race on a boring track with no decent overtaking opportunities and enormous run-off areas - the only thing they can talk about is the amount of sand on the track after a breezy morning in the desert. They would have been better off giving the teams another extended break.

Agreed 110%. (Y)

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philcruicks

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For those wondering when Di Resta and Hulkenberg didn't run...

Force India will not run in FP2

Force India chose not to run their cars in the second practice session at the Bahrain Grand Prix so they could return to their hotel before dark.

The decision came after four team mechanics narrowly avoided being hit by petrol bombs during a clash between protesters and police on Wednesday.

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk...rmula1/17785335

Grand Master

MightyJordan

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MSC out after Q1 because he (or the team) tried to save tyres.

Oh dear.

Unbelievable. Kovalainen beat him to 17th by 0.013 seconds! :o

And Vergne's being investigated for going past a red light at the weighbridge.

Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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RTL Germany just interviewed Schumacher. He didn't go out again in Q1 because of a technical issue with the rear wing.

If nothing else having him on P18 is going to spice up the race tomorrow.

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starbearer

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RTL Germany just interviewed Schumacher. He didn't go out again in Q1 because of a technical issue with the rear wing.

If nothing else having him on P18 is going to spice up the race tomorrow.

Yes, the team was working on something at the rear.

He has had terrible luck all 4 races.

Out in races 1 and 3, spun in 2 and now podium hopes extinguished in 4.

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