F1 : 2012

f1 was shaken up a bit by the tires but in general its like gps, maybe worse because there are no satellite cars (the toro rosso maybe was when it used to be last years red bull with another engine thought).

if all things are normal you have to pay attention to mclaren,ferrari,redbull and thats pretty much it.

hope lotus can keep their form to provide kimi with a good car and mercedes get their heads out of their ......the more competitive cars the better.

F1 has always had it's top teams and it's underlings much like motogp from the seem of it. Up until a couple of years ago you could say Sauber were the Ferrari B team as Toro Rosso were the Red Bull B team. Now you're not allowed to work together, each team has to design and build their own chassis.



The rapidly changing results early in the season were down to the blown diffuser being banned. It meant all the cars were relatively equal until the smart people got to work and found another way of gaining an advantage. Ferrari started the year with a dog of a car, so for Alonso to do as well as he has is a big deal, even though I seriously don't like the guy, he's a hell of a driver. Cliche is right though, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull are the top three teams, Lotus and at times Mercedes are close behind them before you get to the midfielders like Williams, Force India, Toro Rosso, then you have your back markers of Caterham, Marussia and Hispana or HRT who are apparently up for sale and if no one buys them pretty quick could be gone by 2013.



Sergio Perez has done things with the Sauber he shouldn't be able to do, he's driven the car way beyond it's limits and stayed on tyres the others would have binned a long time before. He's did get a bit over enthusiastic or excited after his move to McLaren was announced, but he was a bit more calm last race I thought. I hope he does well there, he's in with a chance of some wins next year if he can handle the car when he gets there.



What has ruined F1 for me is the whole KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) that allows you to have effectively a booster button and DRS (drag reduction system) which were both introduced to aid overtaking. Basically if you use them you can mug the guy in front with little to no chance of him defending. The tyres have a similar effect, bung on a new set and you can pass people much more easily than you should be able to. These things together haven't increased the enjoyment for me, they've annoyed me. The great passes are few and far between these days, they're usually down to pit strategy, DRS or tyres and that's not racing as far as I'm concerned.



Ferrari will use any advantage they can and once again a (dodgy in my opinion) move has Alonso at the heart of it, after all it was him who gained in the whole Singapore episode wasn't it?



The last race should be good, especially if it's wet with the title to be decided. I want Vettel to get his third title and I hope he can manage it. I'd normally be excited over such a scenario, this year I find I'm not and that saddens me more than I can tell you. I'm already looking ahead to our racing next year, see, I'm a conert to the bikes now, there is no going back

cliché guevara said:

i was alluding to the gearbox change with the team orders

red bull would only be right to play the same game,but i hope though they don't. i've always liked red bull because they let their drivers race it out.would be a bit disappointed if they let ferrari force them to stoop to their level.

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You're kidding, right? Do you remember Silverstone 2010? Vettel damaged his front wing (newly developed one) during a practice session, they had no spares so they took Webber's away and put it on Vettel's car. This also because they did not want to dent Vettel's title hopes. If it meant a WDC and/or WCC, no team in F1 would resist 'stooping' to favoring one driver over the other/do team orders. They are there to win.

The advantage gained by swapping those wings is negligable compared to dropping a driver 5 places on the grid in order to move your favoured guy to the correct side. Deliberately giving your driver a severe penalty like that to aid the other driver is still a worse crime in my eyes.



Yes all teams employ team orders, it's just Ferrai seem to sail closer to the wind than others and let's not forget even when team orders were banned they still blatantly used them and thought we were all so stupid we wouldn't figure it out.



"Alonso is faster than you Felipe, can you confirm you understand?" I mean come on!!!

silverstone 2010:

red bull bring 2 new front wings for their cars. both webber and vettel try them, webber prefers to stay on his known front wing, vettel is eager to try the new one.

vettels front wing breaks before the race, there is only one left.

webber changes his mind that he wants the new front wing (i believe he also held better grid position but don't quote me on that )

teams tells him to .... off because there is only one new front wing left and it will go to the guy that had called dibs on it and did not break it himself.vettel point blank refuses to give up his front wing,hardly understandable right?nothing to do with only letting the preferred driver try the new parts (which werent as good as if they bought 0.5 of a second immediately anyways)

since i'm not wearing a tin foil hat this is what i choose to believe if multiple people in the team tell that exact story.



webbers claims that he is a number 2 driver are laughable and can only be accepted by people who are sympathetic towards the whiner that webber is and see ferrari tactics everywhere.

if you were so inclined you could say the car was developed to webbers liking this year as opposed to vettels.watch onboards of the australian gp and how twitchy the car gets at the rear under deep braking.

total non sense of course to say it has been done on purpose (banned diffusor is the reason) , but there you have it you could make a case for the other scenario as well.

red bull treat their drivers totally equal, and thats the sole reason i'm very happy that the old jaguar team is not just gone but now fields 2 very compeitive cars

Lyria said:

"Alonso is faster than you Felipe, can you confirm you understand?" I mean come on!!!

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please don't remind me, i was with my buddies in the motodrom there going nuts because we thought we could see a good battle between vettel and alonso on equal terms and then the race gets sabotaged.

400€ well invested.

was never more pissed off at a race than right there and then. took away i had the love for ferrari since i was a little kid in the early 90s

eltoro said:

You're kidding, right? Do you remember Silverstone 2010? Vettel damaged his front wing (newly developed one) during a practice session, they had no spares so they took Webber's away and put it on Vettel's car. This also because they did not want to dent Vettel's title hopes. If it meant a WDC and/or WCC, no team in F1 would resist 'stooping' to favoring one driver over the other/do team orders. They are there to win.

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i'm dead serious.

of course one driver will support the other in the event that it is only possible for one driver to win .i'm not naive, if they didnt do it theyd be stupid.

but before that the drivers are on equal terms (as has been proved quite a couple of times before) and maybe because red bull is not a beloved manufacturer like ferrari i could never see them playing tricks as foul as ferrari do and get away with it (with the fans etc. that is). you don't want your team that is there for PR first and formost to be hated.

sabotaging a drivers whole season ,and like in this instance a whole race in order to aid eyebrows is not even in the same league as possibly saying to webber " hey its the last race and we have a good chance with seb, if he happens to be behind you in the race, behave yourself and let him pass".

the last proof i needed for my theory as to how ferrari does this much worse than red bull would be willing to do?

webber didnt have his gear box cracked. because it would be a lousy thing to do and you only ever forgive funny speaking italians unsportsmanlike behaviour.

rant over, bring on brazil

Even when the team ask Webber not to pass Vettel or hold station he takes no notice, those two race properly, there is not the number one and number two role like there is at Ferrari and Mercedes, and to be honest I think the fact McLaren would never let Hamilton be their number one driver is why he's quit and going to Mercedes as well. Some drivers seem to think they have a right to that sort of treatment, Alonso sure does as did Schumacher and it seems Hamilton does too in my opinion.



Yes F1 is a team sport but seriously ruining the chances of one driver to favour another like Ferrari do is pushing that too far in my opinion. They are by far the worst team for this kind of behaviour and that is why I can't like them as a team. I always want Vettel to win but if he does ever go to Ferrari I just may have to re-think that.

one question though: you surely mean mclaren when you say mercedes dont you? "save fuel jenson". heard more than once but definately, with mclaren its not too bad,especially when compared to ferrari.

can't recall something like that with mercedes gp , but to be perfectly honest here they were never in the position to pull something like that off.

i'll always be schumachers greatest fan but i can't say that he was treated badly when compared to rosberg (who i only started to like since he cut his hair and isn't as arrogant as he used to be in the williams days)



concerning schumacher and early alonso ca. 2003-2006 : that wasn't too bad (if we don't care too much about the unnecessary spielberg/indy incidents in 2002) , the important factor here was that those two had the cars designed around their driving style (loose back end vs. endless traction and a front that "bites" towards the apex). but perfectly understandable, when you have once in a lifetime talents racing for your team you focus on their unique strenghts in order to exploit them, not on barrichello or fisichella/trulli, even though those are very good drivers but will never be legends.

different game since alonso moved to mclaren/renault.

i like a sort of ruthless ,dedicated driver that is driven to win,otherwise i should hate senna,schumacher and all the other greats i hero worship.

but alonso and ferrari are quite a good step beyond that since 2010,match made in heaven those two



edit: concerning hamilton : don't know whether he wanted to be the undisputed number 1, but i'm sure even though mclaren are saints compared to ferrari they would give him all the support he needs once he beat button constantly over say first half of the season so thats not really why i think he left.

could have more to do with the mclaren drivers not getting any trophies they've won, which i find more than odd and maybe personal sponsorship/reduced pr obligations for the team?

also since no sane driver should consider joining ferrari before 2017 , mercedes is the only really prestigious car out there (sry, but i don't rate red bull/mclaren/williams to have the same fascination from a drivers point of view as a silver arrow,let alone winning in a ferrari).

i'm quite sure guys like vettel/hamilton will want to end up racing a ferrari at some point of their career or at least the next best thing

I'm just find it funny that you guys are debating which team(s) are more 'saintly' than others. 'Oh, that isn't to the same degree as this!' Seriously, whatever moves teams make that that involve manipulating conditions, it's always going to look sketchy no matter what 'scale' it is. I don't give a damn if it's Ferrari, RBR, McLaren, etc. Bend the rules, not break them (probably a mantra that most F1 teams have).

degrees do matter.

speeding on the motorway is less appaling than child ....

Way to take it to the extreme man. Keep thinking your beloved RBR is 'above' the fray in terms underhanded tactics. No team is above it. F1 is just as silly a political circus as any other around.

i take your arguments to their logical conclusion ,nothing more.

such childish drivel, beloved RBR?just because i don't enjoy the ugly antics of mafiarrari and your beloved eyebrows? get real.

Now then boys, no fighting, it's not worth it!!



All the teams push the limits from time to time, that is a given, it's just to me Ferrari are always the ones who push it that bit further than all the others. It's not all black and white, more shades of grey, some are just darker than others. Clearly eltoro you don't agree, but how boring would the world be if we all agreed on everything? We'd have nothing left to talk about would we?

Good news for Jumkie





Sergio Perez says Esteban Gutierrez will replace him at Sauber





Another Mexican in F1, he will be pleased Full story here



http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/104476

Lyria said:

Now then boys, no fighting, it's not worth it!!



All the teams push the limits from time to time, that is a given, it's just to me Ferrari are always the ones who push it that bit further than all the others. It's not all black and white, more shades of grey, some are just darker than others. Clearly eltoro you don't agree, but how boring would the world be if we all agreed on everything? We'd have nothing left to talk about would we?

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the voice of reason

eltoro , i wasn't trying to mouth you off. unfortunate choice of words on my behalf, i was just trying to point out that it matters a great deal to me to which degree team order is deployed and that what ferrari does borders on sabotage,not teamorders IMO. apologies if it came across wrong.





the hulk is confirmed at sauber right?

where does this leave kamui? loved especially his suzuka performances, would be sad to not see him next year.

i don't want to take anything away from perez, but promoting him to mclaren and kicking koba out of f1 seems a bit...unfair

Coming from a completely neutral position. There are no degrees. Results are either manipulated or they are not. I cannot understand how this can happen particularly because gambling is allowed. It is blatant matchfixing.

i understand your position , but if i had such a purist point of view f1 would definately be the wrong sport for me.

so call it rationalization if you want, but having one team that IMO clearly stands out when it comes to matchfixing is sort of a good thing because it takes the heat from all the other teams and hence the whole sport

cliché guevara said:

the voice of reason

eltoro , i wasn't trying to mouth you off. unfortunate choice of words on my behalf, i was just trying to point out that it matters a great deal to me to which degree team order is deployed and that what ferrari does borders on sabotage,not teamorders IMO. apologies if it came across wrong.





the hulk is confirmed at sauber right?

where does this leave kamui? loved especially his suzuka performances, would be sad to not see him next year.

i don't want to take anything away from perez, but promoting him to mclaren and kicking koba out of f1 seems a bit...unfair

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Yes, Nico Hulkenberg is off to Sauber and I reckon that's a good move for him. As far as I know Kobayashi doesn't have a drive for next year yet which is a shame, but he is apparently working hard on getting one. It's not all over for him yet, there are a few drives left I believe.

barbedwirebiker said:

Coming from a completely neutral position. There are no degrees. Results are either manipulated or they are not. I cannot understand how this can happen particularly because gambling is allowed. It is blatant matchfixing.

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I agree, when betting is allowed and they amned the results like that it's wrong. That's why I'd never gamble on F1, even if I was a gambler, which I'm not.

what seats though, i don't think theres much opportunity in signing to hrt,marussia or caterham.

force india maybe?is di resta even confirmed for next year?

what about williams?bottas to replace senna?any news on that?