2013 Japanese Grand Prix ***Spoilers***

Should be an interesting race, although Vettel does have a good chance of walking out of Suzuka a 4 time champion. Should that be the case, what is the lowest position Vettel must finish to secure the title?

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Vettel can only secure the title with a win, coupled with Alonso finishing ninth or worse.

I expect we'll have to wait for India, 'yay' for Seb to take the title.

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Races: 163 - Wins: 23 - Pole Positions: 24 - Fastest Laps: 22
Season 9: Constructors' Champions

If Alonso finishes 6th or higher, he'll break Schumacher's record and become the highest-scoring driver of all time. One thing he's likely to end this season with, as well a probable runner-up position in the title race.

Regarding the race itself, it's hard to see anything other than another commanding Seb win, given his current form and his form at Suzuka. Hope there'll be a good race behind him though - I'm hoping for Kimi to pull another great result out of this one.

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So Webbah is on pole! Really glad for him, hope he does a good start for a change and the team goes with a Multi 21 strategy

Dissapointed about Vergne's problems, I'm sure he would've been able to get more out of the STR. Also as you may suppose really thrilled for Massa, hope he fulfills his promise. You know, the part about driving fast, not the part about crashing due to doing so



Stats: 139 Starts / 7 Wins / 9 Poles / 5 Fastest laps

I highly doubt multi 21 will happen again, not after what happen in Sepang. Still, hopefully Webber can stay out in front and bring home the win, even if it means he has to beat Vettel to do so.

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Well Webber will need to get off the line well for starters :p

Not usually his forte.

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

Vettel was incredibly lucky with this one i think. To me it seemed he never had an advantage in raw speed over Webber and Grosjean and i doubt he could have made the 3 stopper work if he switched strategies with Webber. Nontheless splitting strategies at RBR really did the trick, too bad Kimi wasn't able to mix with the top 3, that would've been interesting. Great drive by Grosjean imo, faultless performance.

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used to be GPGSL's Nick Heidfeld

seb was mega fast!!!

in the beginning of his second stint, grosjean was with brand new tyres and was lapping only 0.1, 0.2 seconds faster than seb on used tyres.

webber was fast, but not faster than vettel.

also, why did they pit webber with 10 laps to go?

he could have easily brought the car to the end with over 14 seconds gap to seb.

even if seb had caught him in the end, webber was faster on the straights. stupid decision to bring him in.

n00binio Wrote:
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> Vettel was incredibly lucky with this one i think.
> To me it seemed he never had an advantage in raw
> speed over Webber and Grosjean and i doubt he
> could have made the 3 stopper work if he switched
> strategies with Webber.

Isn't that just the kind of thing that separates the very best drivers from the others though? He seemed not to be any quicker, might well not have won the race - but did anyway. I think it was a measure of the depth of quality of Seb as a driver - He was on the back foot all weekend one way or the other, but still managed to win the race. Another excellent drive from him.

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If he stayed out, Mark would have won, or at least had a fighting chance ...Red Bull didn't want that!

If Seb can beat Mark in a straight fight then maybe I'd have more respect for him

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GPGSL -
GPGSL-3 - Pizza Party Racing manager and driver
Nations Cup - Team Scotland manager

There's no way Webber was going to the end. It was clear from how hard he was pushing after his 2nd stop that they had every intention of going for a 3-stop strategy. I thought it could work too, but he lost too much time behind Grosjean. It would have been tasty had he nailed Grosjean straight away.

For once, I do think the Red Bulls were fighting on an equal playing field.

Ppphhh... Vettel's 2nd stint proved that the tyres could last a fair while :P

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GPGSL -
GPGSL-3 - Pizza Party Racing manager and driver
Nations Cup - Team Scotland manager

I got the impression that Red Bull altered the strategy fairly substantially from what may have been the plan for it seemed unlikely that they wouldn't have overtaken Grosjean had they simply mirrored his strategy.

When Lotus didn't bring Grosjean in to cover Webber's 2nd stop I believed they had blundered, but in fairness they had nowhere to hide because whatever they could do was to leave Grosjean vulnerable to at least one of the Red Bulls if not both of them. Sticking to their plan would be logical as Red Bull effectively had Grosjean isolated and cornerd as Kimi was effectively out of play.

What Red Bull did was to put both cars into clear air to avoid being caught up in Grosjean's turbulence so they could lap quicker and then made sure they were on fresher tyres when Grosjean would be nursing his towards the end.

There will always be conspiracy theories suggesting that Red Bull favoured Vettel through stragety but historically Webber has been harder on his tyres than Vettel and less likely to make the longer stint route work. I think Red Bull taylored the strategy to give both their best chances and as usual Vettel proved to be the stronger driver.

It wasn't the best Japanese Grand Prix ever was it? The race was a bit flat from the first lap onwards.

I'm surprised that Ricciardo's drive thru penalty has not received more comment. I felt that the overtake itself was fine but he did exceede the limits of the race track immediately afterwards because he carried too much speed having possibly been very slightly offline and maybe on the marbles. I think the stewards would view that he effectively retained trackposition by going off the track and due to the precedent set with Grosjean's move on Massa at Hungary the penalty was really inevitable.

I think they should revise the rule, it overly harshly penalizes gueninely good overtakes that are just on the edge, when it was simply designed to stop drivers blatantly driving off the track to overtake another as per Vettel v Button at Hockenheim 2012.

I have to agree with you on Ricciardo. Harsh penalties are becoming too commonplace

Funnily enough, the vast majority on another website agree that Mark was indeed screwed over by Red Bull

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GPGSL -
GPGSL-3 - Pizza Party Racing manager and driver
Nations Cup - Team Scotland manager

EC83 schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n00binio Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Vettel was incredibly lucky with this one i
> think.
> > To me it seemed he never had an advantage in
> raw
> > speed over Webber and Grosjean and i doubt he
> > could have made the 3 stopper work if he
> switched
> > strategies with Webber.
>
> Isn't that just the kind of thing that separates
> the very best drivers from the others though? He
> seemed not to be any quicker, might well not have
> won the race - but did anyway. I think it was a
> measure of the depth of quality of Seb as a driver
> - He was on the back foot all weekend one way or
> the other, but still managed to win the race.
> Another excellent drive from him.

Yep, i fully agree with that. Luck was probably the wrong word anyway, it's just that you don't see this kind of performances too often in recent times i think.

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used to be GPGSL's Nick Heidfeld

I agree with Ricciardo's penalty.

While Grosjean had every intention of staying in the track limits, he exceeded them by mere millimetres and then only to avoid contact with Massa, Ricciardo went miles off track (intentionally or otherwise), potentially wouldn't have completed the move had he not and wasn't really ever that close to the driver he was overtaking.

By the same law, they were equally guilty, but I still argue that Grosjean's was incredibly harsh given the circumstances of it.

Basically that aspect of the sport has become too sanitised anyway with all the extended kerbs and tarmac run-offs. Bring back proper grass and gravel run-offs and then leaving the track would be self-penalising like it used to be.

But, yeah, Ricciardo's penalty was fair IMO too.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2013 12:02PM by EC83.

J i m Wrote:
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> There will always be conspiracy theories
> suggesting that Red Bull favoured Vettel through
> stragety but historically Webber has been harder
> on his tyres than Vettel and less likely to make
> the longer stint route work. I think Red Bull
> taylored the strategy to give both their best
> chances and as usual Vettel proved to be the
> stronger driver.

Who cares if they favor Vetter through stragety? There is also bigger things happening:

[www.zaslike.com]

And more importantly lets also not forget this:

[www.motorsport.com]

Kimi, so, Massa Fernando Sebastian is faster than you. Can you confirm you understood that message?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2013 07:28PM by IWE.