2013 Rolex Australian Grand Prix

[Vlad-SRB]

A big congratulations to Kimi and to Lotus! What an amazing pace, tire preservation and strategy!!! Crazy!

IMO, Pirelli has gone too far with those tires. We almost see no racing apart from first 2-3 laps on fresh tires. Everything else is preservation. I dislike it.
Feeling sorry for Hulk and Nico...
All in all, Abu-Dhabi finish-like, so not bad.

[François]

IMO, Pirelli has gone too far with those tires. We almost see no racing apart from first 2-3 laps on fresh tires. Everything else is preservation. I dislike it.

It's Melbourne, and it was particularly cold weather. Probably not an indication for the entire season.

[Green Flag]

Kimi and Lotus made it look pretty easy actually. Hope that continues

And some things never change, like Webber's poor starts...

[iceman1]

Kimi: 1 championship: 1st position
Alonso: 2 championships: 2nd position
Vettel: 3 champiosnhips: 3rd position

[iceman1]

Apparently Webber didn't have KERS at the start.

What's the issue between Webber and the KERS system?

[sportingcp]

Something I think it wasn´t mentioned yet, Grosjean´s pace was terrible in comparision with Kimi. Romain is not a slow driver at all so probably Lotus run some updates on Kimi´s car that were not on Grosjean´s car so if in Malaysia he has those new updates he will much better I suppose.

[naiego]

Not a very thrilling race but still a decent one. Nice to see a change in the scenery compared to what we saw in qualifying. Apparently Red Bull are flying on the options but on the primes they struggled.
I don't think it was Pirelli's intention but eventually they created a "qyalifying" tyre, that is the otpion tyre. Those tyres couldn't last 5 laps, on the other hand the drivers were fighting on an equal basis since almost everyone was driving on the primes but I don't see the point having a tyre that lasts that short, the only thing that gives is an additional headache to the teams trying to find a setup for these.

[phil1993]

I predicted the top three correctly.

Sadly, wrong order

[iceman1]

Highlights of the race

[phil1993]

Australian Grand Prix review
http://www.f1zone.net/news/relentless-r ... iew/18148/

Driver ratings to follow

[Mitsuro Sano]

What a race it was!! Nice battles, nice overtakes, Massa back on form and Raikkonen winning!
I was afraid like many of us to see Vettel easily win but it was not the case! Just one sad thing is that McLaren are nowhere! To even think to bring back the MP4-27 is something!

[iceman1]

Q. (Don Kennedy – Hawkes Bay Today) Kimi, that seemed to be a very popular win judging by the crowd reaction out there. Can we perhaps expect a re-release of the 'I know what I'm doing' t-shirts? They're pretty popular, I gather. They only had a hundred released and they sold out. Can we have a few more?

KR: No. That was last year and nothing to do with this year or this win.

[kals]

F1 needs more Kimi Raikkonens

[phil1993]

I was looking at the data and while it's very difficult to compare lap times sometimes because of when drivers pit in terms of fuel load, compounds, track conditions, there's huge differences between Pic and Van der Garde in the last stint.

Pic pitted on Lap 33, Van der Garde on Lap 34. Both onto mediums. Pic's fairly consistently in the 1:33s, as is Van der Garde. But then around Lap 45, Giedo's tyres just went. Pic keeps doing 1:33s but Van der Garde dips into the 1:35s and 1:36s.
http://184.106.145.74/f1-championship/f ... alysis.pdf

Either Van der Garde had a problem or he just can't preserve tyres.

[kals]

So is it unfair for me to say that Maldonado and Chilton lived up to expectations?