The Official 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix Thread **Spoilers**
Discussion
Another cracking race I thought!
LH/VB:
It wasn't the worst manuevere by a long shot but it was clearly Bottas' fault in my opinion, the nature of turn 1 at Sakhir means that unless LH was carrying way too much speed on the way in (which he obviously wasn't) he was always going to be cutting in to that apex from there and as the car that was clearly ahead going in to the corner he was quite entitled to do so. At best Bottas could have hoped to tuck in under his gearbox to try and hound him through turn 2, as it happened he lost the backend slightly under braking (cold tyres and brakes, fuel of fuel - not exactly a shocker that it might be tough to stop cleanly) and at that point physics was going to happen. Bottas has been round the block enough times to know better really, and to my mind when someone had made a flyer of a start like Bottas did on Sunday then there is more responsibility on them to avoid others so the penalty was justified IMO. Oh and Lewis really needs to sort his starts out, nailing a pole lap is all well and good but throwing it all away at the start means he's having to drive the wheels off the thing just to do damage limitation. I don't know if they can do useful starting practice in the simulator or not but if they can he needs to put some serious hours in until he gets it sorted.
Haas:
It might have been a complete non-event for Gutierrez but holy crap did Grosjean make up for it! He's clearly having a ball and with Renault having one car not even taking the start and the other trundling around struggling to make much of an impression it's looking like moving to the new boys is paying off in spades. Grosjean looked fast, comfortable and like he was having a ball being able to be on the offensive for the majority of the race. Whatever people might think of the tactic of buying everything they could off Ferrari no-one can say it's not working for them. Two solid points finishes in two races and even if they end up struggling with the development race later in the season Gene Haas & co can hold their heads high as a bona-fide F1 team..
Rosberg:
The real test will come when (if?) Lewis sorts his starts out and he has to handle real pressure from someone who not only has comprable machinery but has more often than not come out on top whenever they have gone head to head in recent years but for now so far, so good. Rosberg is doing everything asked of him right now and if he keeps that up it might just be his year.
Raikkonen:
Everyone who was saying that Kimi's problems last year were down to him not gelling with the pull rod suspension set up can smugly sit back and say "I told you so". Raikkonen has always been rather sensitive to the front end behaviour of the car, it just seems to be one of his weaknesses - he's just never seemed to have the Schumacher/Alonso ability to drive around a balance he doesn't like, but give him a car he can get on with and he'll deliver. Whether he still has a drive next year or not he's busy proving he's still got "it".
McHonda:
It's a real shame we never got to see what Button could have achieved in the race - the qualy difference was much closer than the two grid places suggested and in the race he was comfortably ahead of SvD when the car expired. He claims 5th was a possibility and while that might have been a touch optimistic I think both McLarens in the points would have been very likely. Speaking of SvD the guy clearly has some serious skills and whether it's at McLaren or elsewhere he surely deserves a seat in F1 next year.
C4f1:
I've got to say I'm liking the coverage so far - apart from the odd moment that falls a bit flat Steve Jones isn't that bad really. It feels a bit odd when they ask questions to Susie Wolff about what it's like for the drivers during the race build up etc as you can't help but remember that she doesn't really know as she's never actually competed in an F1 race but she does a decent enough job and her position as Toto's missus probably does help them getting access to the Merc operation (as with getting in the garage on Sunday) and it would be good if they can do more like that. I don't doubt that DC's (and now Webber's) history with RBR has been key in getting all the access they have had there (like the VT with the Dannys, talking to Horner on the pitwall etc) and the more teams they can get onboard like that the better for the coverage. Still have gripes with Channel 4 themselves though - getting the shows on All4 quicker after broadcast would be nice and putting adverts into the race if you were watching it on catchup just gave me the rage. I know I didn't miss anything in terms of the race but making what is already a long-ish time commitment to watch the whole thing even longer by showing me the same f
king ad for Chessington World of Adventures over and over (even showing two variants of it back to back at one point FFS!) during something that they make a big deal in the show about it being ad-free is a dick move.
LH/VB:
It wasn't the worst manuevere by a long shot but it was clearly Bottas' fault in my opinion, the nature of turn 1 at Sakhir means that unless LH was carrying way too much speed on the way in (which he obviously wasn't) he was always going to be cutting in to that apex from there and as the car that was clearly ahead going in to the corner he was quite entitled to do so. At best Bottas could have hoped to tuck in under his gearbox to try and hound him through turn 2, as it happened he lost the backend slightly under braking (cold tyres and brakes, fuel of fuel - not exactly a shocker that it might be tough to stop cleanly) and at that point physics was going to happen. Bottas has been round the block enough times to know better really, and to my mind when someone had made a flyer of a start like Bottas did on Sunday then there is more responsibility on them to avoid others so the penalty was justified IMO. Oh and Lewis really needs to sort his starts out, nailing a pole lap is all well and good but throwing it all away at the start means he's having to drive the wheels off the thing just to do damage limitation. I don't know if they can do useful starting practice in the simulator or not but if they can he needs to put some serious hours in until he gets it sorted.
Haas:
It might have been a complete non-event for Gutierrez but holy crap did Grosjean make up for it! He's clearly having a ball and with Renault having one car not even taking the start and the other trundling around struggling to make much of an impression it's looking like moving to the new boys is paying off in spades. Grosjean looked fast, comfortable and like he was having a ball being able to be on the offensive for the majority of the race. Whatever people might think of the tactic of buying everything they could off Ferrari no-one can say it's not working for them. Two solid points finishes in two races and even if they end up struggling with the development race later in the season Gene Haas & co can hold their heads high as a bona-fide F1 team..
Rosberg:
The real test will come when (if?) Lewis sorts his starts out and he has to handle real pressure from someone who not only has comprable machinery but has more often than not come out on top whenever they have gone head to head in recent years but for now so far, so good. Rosberg is doing everything asked of him right now and if he keeps that up it might just be his year.
Raikkonen:
Everyone who was saying that Kimi's problems last year were down to him not gelling with the pull rod suspension set up can smugly sit back and say "I told you so". Raikkonen has always been rather sensitive to the front end behaviour of the car, it just seems to be one of his weaknesses - he's just never seemed to have the Schumacher/Alonso ability to drive around a balance he doesn't like, but give him a car he can get on with and he'll deliver. Whether he still has a drive next year or not he's busy proving he's still got "it".
McHonda:
It's a real shame we never got to see what Button could have achieved in the race - the qualy difference was much closer than the two grid places suggested and in the race he was comfortably ahead of SvD when the car expired. He claims 5th was a possibility and while that might have been a touch optimistic I think both McLarens in the points would have been very likely. Speaking of SvD the guy clearly has some serious skills and whether it's at McLaren or elsewhere he surely deserves a seat in F1 next year.
C4f1:
I've got to say I'm liking the coverage so far - apart from the odd moment that falls a bit flat Steve Jones isn't that bad really. It feels a bit odd when they ask questions to Susie Wolff about what it's like for the drivers during the race build up etc as you can't help but remember that she doesn't really know as she's never actually competed in an F1 race but she does a decent enough job and her position as Toto's missus probably does help them getting access to the Merc operation (as with getting in the garage on Sunday) and it would be good if they can do more like that. I don't doubt that DC's (and now Webber's) history with RBR has been key in getting all the access they have had there (like the VT with the Dannys, talking to Horner on the pitwall etc) and the more teams they can get onboard like that the better for the coverage. Still have gripes with Channel 4 themselves though - getting the shows on All4 quicker after broadcast would be nice and putting adverts into the race if you were watching it on catchup just gave me the rage. I know I didn't miss anything in terms of the race but making what is already a long-ish time commitment to watch the whole thing even longer by showing me the same f
king ad for Chessington World of Adventures over and over (even showing two variants of it back to back at one point FFS!) during something that they make a big deal in the show about it being ad-free is a dick move.KaraK said:
Another cracking race I thought!
.....
I think both races have been good this year. .....
I can't agree with the LH/VB situation though. Hamilton turned for the apex after leaving the door open and Bottas dived up the inside into a gap that was likely to close.
Bottas was more at fault it but wasn't 100% and considering it was a first lap first corner incident I felt the penalty was harsh (and I don't even like Bottas). Normal protocol is for the stewards to be quite soft on first lap issues because it is absolute chaos. Bottas' move was nothing like a Grosjean Spa scenario.....
Haas - yeah great job from Grosjean but I don't rate Gutierrez at all, so hard to bench mark? I know there is a lot of moaning about the way Haas has come into F1 but I think if this kind of relationship allows new teams to enter and be competitive, rather than run around 4 second off the pace, it is a good thing.
Rosberg - spot on. But full credit to him for making the most of his good fortune to date. I'm some regards it is good for the championship because Lewis would already be psychologically half way to the title if he had won the two openers.
Raikkonen - much improved and only a couple of tenths down on Vettel compared to half a second or more last year.......there is no shame in that considering how strong Vettel is in qualifying and the respective age/career stages of the two drivers. Also after last year's incidents with Bottas it was nice that he showed he can still pull off wheel to wheel overtakes decisively. He could earn himself another year with Ferrari or even a seat elsewhere if he keeps up this form?
stephen300o said:
A cracking race!
Though the green ball gave it his best, he did not quite have the staying power and lost out to a resurgent orange.
Poor blue had no luck at all. Yellow and red had an excellent scrap, but their bullish driving bought little results.
holy cow! I must be drinking way too much coffee or something. I'm looking at this but not understanding anything! Though the green ball gave it his best, he did not quite have the staying power and lost out to a resurgent orange.
Poor blue had no luck at all. Yellow and red had an excellent scrap, but their bullish driving bought little results.
Dr Z said:
If Webber or DC mentioned 14 seconds, they were very much mistaken. Front running pace with heavy fuel was around 5s slower than maximum they could do. This is simply the functional characteristic of the tyres. Each compound has the best degradation rate for race and qualifying to extract max performance depending on the conditions. And the pace was consistent through out the race.
The fastest race lap was more than 2s faster than last year's race. The total race time improved enough to suggest that, Nico in the W07 with the 2016 tyre strategy would have lapped Lewis in a W06 with 2015 tyres. Again, consistent with the improvement we saw in qualifying pace vs last year.
ETA: Oops where did that post go? Anyway, Webber/DC apparently mentioned a big difference between qualifying and race pace. My post is in reply to that.
Yeah that was me, did some research after I posted it decided I was talking out of my Arse, deleted the post. The fastest race lap was more than 2s faster than last year's race. The total race time improved enough to suggest that, Nico in the W07 with the 2016 tyre strategy would have lapped Lewis in a W06 with 2015 tyres. Again, consistent with the improvement we saw in qualifying pace vs last year.
ETA: Oops where did that post go? Anyway, Webber/DC apparently mentioned a big difference between qualifying and race pace. My post is in reply to that.
Edited by Dr Z on Tuesday 5th April 11:29
Just thought I would let you know, you aren't going mad ;-).
civicduty said:
Yeah that was me, did some research after I posted it decided I was talking out of my Arse, deleted the post.
Just thought I would let you know, you aren't going mad ;-).
Oh glad I didn't reply to a phantom post. Just thought I would let you know, you aren't going mad ;-).
I do faintly remember Webber going on about the qualifying/race pace difference during qualifying on Saturday. He's a fierce critic of these tyres and known to exaggerate. If I was being cynical I'd say his inability to come to terms with these Pirellis might have cost him a championship or two.
Loved seeing him with Channel 4 though.
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