2012 chinese GP thread

Seriously great race. Great overtaking in the last few laps. Congrats to Nico for getting his first. And did anyone else notice Schumi looking genuinely magnanimous in the garage when he saw his teammate win? 6 or 7 years ago I'd never have thought that could happen.

Personally, I think he has just as must invested emotionally in the team as Brawn, so would be excited for the team to finally get that breakthrough. Either that or all those years of media training :p
 
That was a cracking race! Well done to Nico of course, but the battles behind him were brilliant :clap:
 
Three races, three winners. This season will be very interesting.

This was a race, dominated by strategy and tactics.

Great job from Mercedes-Benz and Nico Rosberg. The first win of a Mercedes team since 1955. Way to go :)

Also great job by McLaren, who - as Norbert Haug pointed out on the podium - also wear the Mercedes star on their overalls :)

Ferrari, where were you?

Red Bull is a bit of a loser this time. Looked like Vettel could climb the podium at first but then his tyres let him down in the last laps. The bad qualifying really was his downfall after all. But 5th place is still a good achievement.

Too bad for Schumi, his mechanic clearly tried to make himself understood, that something is not right and the TV guys here immediately noticed that. But I have a feeling, that we will see Schumi victories again this year. Let's see how they move on.

In the end we could actually see three teams fighting for the championship: Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull. Which is actually what was predicted before the season started.
 
The other major story we've all neglected thus far: Kimi and his tires.

Uh. Yeah.... :yucky:
 
The other major story we've all neglected thus far: Kimi and his tires.

Quite a failure to completely run out of tire with 7 laps to go, a shame we didn't hear any team radio. I wonder if they even told him to slow down or just wanted him to keep fighting in front of Vettel? Good fight and suddenly shazam, 10 spots down in one lap. Not that there was much space to slow down with a train of cars on your ass.
 
Well it's 5am now and I'm way too excited after watching that to go to sleep.

I cannot believe that, with all the jostling for second place, there was no contact. Top class driving :).

Schumacher's pit crew will be devastated after that but oddly enough Schumi himself seemed happy.

Webber must have enjoyed that pass on Vettel :p.

Also amazing how Raikkonen dropped from 2nd to 14th so quickly. Saubers dropped back quite a lot too. Great work from Senna and Maldonado though.

Hamilton's pit crew did well this time. Did Button's crew have the same issue that Hamilton had last race?

Great racing so far in the season. I bet all the teams are scratching their heads as to why Mercedes's race pace didn't drop off. If this wasn't a fluke, then with their ridiculously fast qualifying, they're serious title contenders now.
 
Mercedes' tire problem is, that they can't make the tires work except for a very narrow range of temperatures. This narrow band seems to be around 23?C. Yesterday we had 23?, for most of the race we had 22?C, so they were massively helped by the constant weather conditions. Let it be 5? warmer or colder and they may well fall apart in the race again :?
 
Mercedes' tire problem is, that they can't make the tires work except for a very narrow range of temperatures. This narrow band seems to be around 23?C. Yesterday we had 23?, for most of the race we had 22?C, so they were massively helped by the constant weather conditions. Let it be 5? warmer or colder and they may well fall apart in the race again :?

That makes sense I guess. I was expecting their tyres to fall apart as we've seen in the first two races but they kept it together. Would've been interesting to see how Rosberg's tyres would've held up in the final stint if he had Button chasing him down. It's good to see him win I guess.

Great to see Williams get a decent result. Noticed Head and Shoulders appear to be a new sponsor, perhaps in response to CLEAR's sponsorship of Lotus, so hopefully they can get a few more blue chip companies on board.
 
Hamilton's pit crew did well this time. Did Button's crew have the same issue that Hamilton had last race?

isn't there just one crew for both drivers? when they both come in at the same time (like in malaysia), you don't see the crew making place for another one...

that was a great race!

no one mentioned grosjean? i think he drove brilliantly, not only did he finish the race, i think he showed great moves as well! (GP2-moves) i don't remember against who, but his defending was awesome!!

and for a moment, when hamilton had difficulties to get passed, i though massa was going to finish in the points...silly me :lol:

tumblr_m2im9blqsk1qd804zo1_500.jpg

:lol: i love this site! - http://f1humour.tumblr.com/
 
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Great race! Well deserved win for Nico and a very long time coming (I think he beat Jenson by 2 races in terms of the number of races before his 1st win). Great racing all through the pack. It was a shame though for Michael though, really want to see him grab a podium or even a win. Also a shame for Jenson, that pitstop cost him dearly. He said after the race that the team calculated that if he'd had a normal pitstop then he would have caught Nico 2 laps before the end (what a grandstand finish that would have been) but he got into traffic and lost time because it meant he couldn't get his tyres up to temperature which meant they grained and meant he couldn't overtake. Another shame for Kimi too that his strategy didn't work out because he was driving really well.

Looks like we've got a great season in prospect with lots of potential race winners.

I also heard some nice stats after the race:
-Nico is the 103rd different driver to win an F1 race. This got me thinking; who was the 100th? I rekon it must have been either Kubica or Kovalainen.
-He's also the 3rd race winning son of a race winning father. Presumably the other 2 are the Graham and Damon Hill and Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve.
 
AMAZING race.

couldn't help but notice that this thread is suspiciously lacking in the "Ferrari fan" category

I can fill that in for you.

Fuck this race, what was Alonso doing?

Heh. Anyway, that's about where i expected Alonso to finish, in fact could've been a bit higher if the marbles did not derail him. Best ever proper dry race we had for a long time.
 
AMAZING race.

couldn't help but notice that this thread is suspiciously lacking in the "Ferrari fan" category

I was tempted to write that but didn't want to risk any more neg reps from fanboys ;)
 
I also heard some nice stats after the race:
-Nico is the 103rd different driver to win an F1 race. This got me thinking; who was the 100th? I rekon it must have been either Kubica or Kovalainen.
-He's also the 3rd race winning son of a race winning father. Presumably the other 2 are the Graham and Damon Hill and Gilles and Jacques Villeneuve.

Kubica was 99th, Kovalainen was 100th, Vettel 101st and Webber 102nd.
 
I was tempted to write that but didn't want to risk any more neg reps from fanboys ;)

At least we get to enjoy a week without hearing about how Alonso's superb driving will make up for the eight tenths of a second and that the car is getting better and better every week thanks to God's own engineering at Maranello. :)
 
At least we get to enjoy a week without hearing about how Alonso's superb driving will make up for the eight tenths of a second and that the car is getting better and better every week thanks to God's own engineering at Maranello. :)

Sarcasm not working. Jimmies not rustled. Haters gonna hate.

Alonso did what he could, sixth was reachable but some mistakes crept in. With that dog of a car it's a great effort.
 
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