China
Saturday, April 16, 2011 at 05:57PM
Hello everyone, missed you yesterday but I was at an event in San Diego, driving a Lamborghini Superleggera and Aston Rapide. All very nice and not on a track.
So Vettel is on pole again and by a big margin, but why did he sit in the car so long after qualifying? Webber's qualifying was a complete disaster, and going by the last two races he is going to have trouble staying out of trouble and moving up the field, especially if the KERS is not working and the car is now in parc ferme. Hard to see how the McLarens are going to beat Vettel on this pace unless he has a problem. Rosberg looked good through practice and qualifying, as did Michael, which is encouraging, it would be good to see Nico up there and challenging. The Ferraris are way off the pace again, but can they repeat their Malaysian trick in the race? Lewis played it canny and kept a set of softs for the race to avoid last weeks problems. I discovered the problem with my recording the sessions, SPEED are coding the broadcast so it can't be recorded on DVD, VCR works OK but of course the quality sucks. Does anyone else have this problem?
Still on F1, it seems that HRT have found enough pace to avoid the nasty 107% rule, so long as Vettel does not feel like turning it on in Q1. Pirelli came out prior to the event to say that the cooler conditions should result in fewer "marbles." Well not from what I saw after just 15 minutes of Q1 when presumably they were mostly using the hard tire.
Alexander Rossi won the FR3.5 race at Motorland Aragon, onward and upward. He has joined the Lotus, the Malaysian one's young driver group. That court case is supposed to have a verdict handed down this week.
The ALMS race is at Long Beach with two, yes 2, LMP cars, four of the spec series challenge cars and then the GTs. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Scott Tucker's two LMP2 cars did not set a qualifying time so will they race? There are really only 16 cars that should be out there aside of the grid fillers. Thank goodness for GT. Not that you can watch it anyway.
Montezemolo has continued his war of words with a warning Ferrari will stay in F1 as long as it is not "artificial" which he considers it currently is, mentioning that in 2012 the Concorde Agreement runs out. Pit Pass also has a piece about Mercedes and a breakaway series, which PP believes is never going to happen. Bernie has been to have a nice chat with the German Authorities and all seems to be well apparently, but Pit Pass has more on this. They have some very good sources or excellent researchers. Go to http://pitpass.com
David Coulthard stated the obvious, China is not interested in F1, and Malya said of India getting interested it was like playing cricket in Italy. Nice one.
Checa again took pole at the Assen WSBK round, with the BMWs surprisingly off the pace.
So Vettel is on pole again and by a big margin, but why did he sit in the car so long after qualifying? Webber's qualifying was a complete disaster, and going by the last two races he is going to have trouble staying out of trouble and moving up the field, especially if the KERS is not working and the car is now in parc ferme. Hard to see how the McLarens are going to beat Vettel on this pace unless he has a problem. Rosberg looked good through practice and qualifying, as did Michael, which is encouraging, it would be good to see Nico up there and challenging. The Ferraris are way off the pace again, but can they repeat their Malaysian trick in the race? Lewis played it canny and kept a set of softs for the race to avoid last weeks problems. I discovered the problem with my recording the sessions, SPEED are coding the broadcast so it can't be recorded on DVD, VCR works OK but of course the quality sucks. Does anyone else have this problem?
Still on F1, it seems that HRT have found enough pace to avoid the nasty 107% rule, so long as Vettel does not feel like turning it on in Q1. Pirelli came out prior to the event to say that the cooler conditions should result in fewer "marbles." Well not from what I saw after just 15 minutes of Q1 when presumably they were mostly using the hard tire.
Alexander Rossi won the FR3.5 race at Motorland Aragon, onward and upward. He has joined the Lotus, the Malaysian one's young driver group. That court case is supposed to have a verdict handed down this week.
The ALMS race is at Long Beach with two, yes 2, LMP cars, four of the spec series challenge cars and then the GTs. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Scott Tucker's two LMP2 cars did not set a qualifying time so will they race? There are really only 16 cars that should be out there aside of the grid fillers. Thank goodness for GT. Not that you can watch it anyway.
Montezemolo has continued his war of words with a warning Ferrari will stay in F1 as long as it is not "artificial" which he considers it currently is, mentioning that in 2012 the Concorde Agreement runs out. Pit Pass also has a piece about Mercedes and a breakaway series, which PP believes is never going to happen. Bernie has been to have a nice chat with the German Authorities and all seems to be well apparently, but Pit Pass has more on this. They have some very good sources or excellent researchers. Go to http://pitpass.com
David Coulthard stated the obvious, China is not interested in F1, and Malya said of India getting interested it was like playing cricket in Italy. Nice one.
Checa again took pole at the Assen WSBK round, with the BMWs surprisingly off the pace.
Reader Comments (2)
Bob,
Reasonable crowd there at Shanghai. Who knows what was free and what wasnt ?
One of the journalists mentioned on Twitter, that a grandstand seat was RMB 3,800 or so..Well, thats Aust $ 550 or so.
As the average Chinese still has a very low salary, they cant expect " The man in the street" to be able to afford to go.
Actually, good race, and well worth seeing again. Unlike the V8 Super Snores in New Zealand who seem to spend all their time bouncing over kerbs and crashing and having restarts under stafety cars. I fell asleep before the end of the race, so, still dont know who won.
Bob
The car manufacturers cannot afford to leave CHina. After all, it is the biggest car market in the world.
Even if you look at Europe, look at the pitiful crowds they get at some of the races there, and they are supposedly the " heart of F1"