No Re-fueling? What at all?  Does that mean all cars come with a bigger fuel tank now?

I'm not really a fan of F1 as I find it too boring but this piqued my interest!

Yes also looking forward to the new season. Just a shame my lottery dream of following the Circus for a year has failed to happen again

I wonder if we'll see many cars falling off the track due to running out of fuel?

Apparently the new teams are woefully off the pace. That said, the top four teams have 8 top drivers and hopefully this will result in an excellent race for the title. I just hope that disgusting cheat (and the finest F1 driver in history) Schumacher has an utterly woeful season. Or better still gets a taste of his own medicine and is rammed off the road by a rival who goes on to be champion at his expense. Not that I'm still bitter about 1994...

I for one can't wait for Sunday

I really hope that Jenson proves the nay sayers wrong and shows that he can still cut it in a comparable car to Lewis.

I think think that a Ferrari in Alonso's hand's will be a very tough challenge for all the others to beat though. I would say that, much as it pains me, that he will be the one to beat this season.

I do hope that I am proved wrong on this and will reserve the right to change my mind on Sunday after the race

I think the back end of the year will be an example of TOTAL domination by McLaren, that car is just too damn sexy to not win every race.

First Practice times:

Pos  Driver         Team                   Time              Laps
 1.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1:56.583            18
 2.  Alonso         Ferrari                1:56.766  + 0.183   18
 3.  Kubica         Renault                1:57.041  + 0.458   19
 4.  Massa          Ferrari                1:57.055  + 0.472   19
 5.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1:57.068  + 0.485   19
 6.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes       1:57.163  + 0.580   19
 7.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes   1:57.194  + 0.611   19
 8.  Rosberg        Mercedes               1:57.199  + 0.616   15
 9.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault       1:57.255  + 0.672   17
10.  Schumacher     Mercedes               1:57.662  + 1.079   16
11.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:57.722  + 1.139   18
12.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth      1:57.894  + 1.311   20
13.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault       1:57.943  + 1.360   17
14.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:58.399  + 1.816   13
15.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1:58.782  + 2.199   11
16.  Petrov         Renault                1:58.880  + 2.297   13
17.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari         2:00.250  + 3.667   18
18.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari         2:01.388  + 4.805   11
19.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth        2:03.680  + 7.097    8
20.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth         2:03.848  + 7.265   21
21.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth         2:03.970  + 7.387   15
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth                             2
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth                                3
24.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth

Good lord that HRT car looks like it's driving on ice...

Fascinating insight into the ace up McLaren's sleeve - http://www.planet-f1.com/news/3213/6016 … rear-wing-

At least the teams (mainly the whingers at Red Bull) have accepted its legal and will now piss £400,000,000 up the wall copying it rather than dragging it through scrutineers again and again.

Listening to the conversation during second practice, its interesting to note how Schumacher is immediately trying to dominate the Mercedes Team despite being told he couldn't.  Lets hope Rosberg pastes him.

Heero Yuy last edited this patent nonsense on Mar 12, 2010 at 7:44am

The FIA have ruled it legal because the actual rule says 'cars cannot have movable aero devices', which means wings that flex to change the characteristics of the car at different speeds.  A few years ago, some teams had wings that stiffened at speed.

As the link posted states, its actually the driver doing the movement which affects the internal airflow (notice how most other cars have holes at the tip of the nose - McLaren have it on top of the cockpit) and they can't reasonably expect the drivers to not move.  It's an interpretation of a vague rule, just like the double diffuser.

One thing that interests me about this is everyone immediately latched onto the 'stall' idea. I was under the impression that stalling a wing element whilst reducing the 'lift' (or in this case downforce) component also massively increased drag, which obviously would not be a desirable outcome for a F1 car looking to gain top end speed.

Pos  Driver         Team                   Q1        Q2        Q3       
 1.  Vettel         Red Bull-Renault       1:55.029  1:53.883  1:54.101  
 2.  Massa          Ferrari                1:55.313  1:54.331  1:54.242 
 3.  Alonso         Ferrari                1:54.612  1:54.172  1:54.608 
 4.  Hamilton       McLaren-Mercedes       1:55.341  1:54.707  1:55.217 
 5.  Rosberg        Mercedes               1:55.463  1:54.682  1:55.241 
 6.  Webber         Red Bull-Renault       1:55.298  1:54.318  1:55.284 
 7.  Schumacher     Mercedes               1:55.593  1:55.105  1:55.524 
 8.  Button         McLaren-Mercedes       1:55.715  1:55.168  1:55.672 
 9.  Kubica         Renault                1:55.511  1:54.963  1:55.885 
10.  Sutil          Force India-Mercedes   1:55.213  1:54.996  1:56.309 
11.  Barrichello    Williams-Cosworth      1:55.969  1:55.330 
12.  Liuzzi         Force India-Mercedes   1:55.628  1:55.653 
13.  Hulkenberg     Williams-Cosworth      1:56.375  1:55.857 
14.  de la Rosa     Sauber-Ferrari         1:56.428  1:56.237 
15.  Buemi          Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:56.189  1:56.265 
16.  Kobayashi      Sauber-Ferrari         1:56.541  1:56.270 
17.  Petrov         Renault                1:56.167  1:56.619 
18.  Alguersuari    Toro Rosso-Ferrari     1:57.071
19.  Glock          Virgin-Cosworth        1:59.728
20.  Trulli         Lotus-Cosworth         1:59.852
21.  Kovalainen     Lotus-Cosworth         2:00.313
22.  di Grassi      Virgin-Cosworth        2:00.587
23.  Senna          HRT-Cosworth           2:03.240
24.  Chandhok       HRT-Cosworth           2:04.904

Was a damn good session, very entertaining, nice to see Red Bull stick on the front, interesting to see Rosberg pip Schumacher and likewise Massa with Alonso. Shaping up to be a good race.

Could do with a very good drive, depends a lot on how the front runners cope with tyres. I don't think anyone has won here from further back than 4th before though, so he'll have to really put the work in if he wants it.

I notice Button and Schumacher are the only 2 in the top 10 who didn't dip below 1:55 in any of the sessions though, and Vettel was the only one who managed a 1:53, even Sutil in the Force India pulled out a better time in Q2 than either Button or Schumacher managed in all 3 sessions.

Rich last edited this patent nonsense on Mar 13, 2010 at 9:29am

First race, was always going to be meh. Was more interesting than entertaining.

Was a typical first race, nothing new. Got to see the real pace of some of the teams though. I honestly think that Ferrari and McLaren are the ones to beat this year. With Red Bull and Mercedes very close behind.

The new teams were basically found out, with piss poor cars and the like. It'll be 12 months before they really come into it tbh.

Can't wait for the next race though at Albert Park, really like the Australian GP venue!

dull, dull, dull, dull...more dull than ever in fact. i was so hopeful that this season would be the one to take F1 back to the days of old and god forbid, overtaking, but no that was too much to ask!

Indeed.
Cars in the past has less ideal aerodynamics, so there was less of a detriment to be behind the car infront.  In that race, you saw that getting behind the car infront meant your car instantly overheated.

fit all tracks with sprinklers more like, to come on at a random time during the race and last for between 2 - 40 laps

SgtDave last edited this patent nonsense on Mar 15, 2010 at 11:13am

SuPerNoVi wrote:

They should have ramps and loop the loops like Trackmania Nations. That'd be awesome to watch.

Sod it, let's just make it into Rollcage without the weapons.

Sp4rkR4t wrote:

Sod it, let's just make it into Rollcage without the weapons.

Without weapons?  I saw your twitter feed - surely we've found the solution to your Ferrari/Alonso problem!

I'm willing to let this race slide on the entertainment stakes - its never given a good race in its short history and is always an anti-climax when they use it as the season opener.  Roll on Australia!

It's worth noting that every single team principal and a good deal of the drivers have been up-in-arms stating that the new rules are not conductive to competitive racing, enough so that Bernie has stated that they're definitely going to be tweaking the rules, if not radically shaking them up.

Heero Yuy last edited this patent nonsense on Mar 16, 2010 at 4:09am

that is an idea just bursting with win