2014 Australian Grand Prix ****Spoilers****

An unexpected advantage of the quieter cars is that you can actually hear the crowd. I like that. Gives a lot more atmosphere to the TV viewer.

To be fair.. I think we would have heard that crowd over the V8s as well

Possibly. Let's just say I never noticed them before, then.

Also, FOM have taken the sector times out of the live timing in order to force you to buy their app. However, it's only for iOS and Android and I have neither. Is there any other place you lot know of where I can follow sector times?

Unfortunately not... I think FOM have that one covered.

I have to admit... I'm quite peeved about it. I really don't want to subscribe to the official apps, as when I used them initially a few years ago they were buggy as hell. That's bloody useless if you have to pay for a live-timing app that ends up not giving you live-timing.

No Sleep *check*
Beer *check*
Chips *check*
Schizophrenia medication *check*

I'm ready for a chaotic race.

Expect the unexpected

Anyone here to share his thoughts on the first Laps?
-Great stuff from Nico and Kevin
-WTF Kamui? *tora tora moment for Mini Drivers?*
- Bottas is doing a Mansell Charge *aaaand he blows it* and he is doing it all over again *lol*
- Please rename Vettel's car into Unreliable Ursula

Man of the race *personal opinion*
BOTTAS

Great charge back into the points well deserved 8 Points.

The Real Story of the Race was that the Renault's fell apart and the Ferrari's didn't.
Rosberg headed for the sliproad and retired, probably because of Nicotin starvation they have still not given him a helmet with a little hole in it.



Edited 9 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2014 08:58AM by Toki.

Toki Wrote:
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> - Please rename Vettel's car into Unreliable
> Ursula
LOL
Nice race, good start of the season!
Congrats to Ricciardo and Magnussen. Impressive driving

___________________________________________________________________________
For a list of EVERY download for GP4, look here:[docs.google.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2014 08:56AM by Soutsen.

Wow, return of the Kobaykrashi. That was ridiculous.

Merc have the best looking car and seemingly the fastest too. Wow.

Measured performance by Ricciardo - well deserved podium.

A Prost-like performance by both Macca drivers today, Maggy (lol) looks amazing.

Bottas - incredible - silly brush against the wall ruined his chances of a podium but that was great to watch. I wonder where Massa would have been.

Ferrari don't look comfortable. I still can't bring myself to look at that awful nose, it's horrible.

Renault - got further than anyone thought. Caterham / Marussia same as ever.

Sauber are appallingly slow and unappealling.

Force India look like they could have some refining.

Great work by STR and especially Kvyat who impressed me today.

LOL @ Button's dick falling off.

A few point to note,

Given their pre season, P2 for Ricciardo, Red Bull and Renault is an epic win.
Kevin owns Jan Magnussen
Koybashi as much as I love him, was a numpty
It will now take at least 11 races for Vettel to bore us all by winning 10 in a row
Mercedes are currently light years ahead of everyone
I don't want to inflate Marko Helmut's overly large ego but young Kyvat is the real ticket
Enstone have gone from a thorn in Red Bull's side to their weakest form since 2001

And finally... Two years ago Maldonaldo was chasing down Alonso and then put it terminally in the wall. Today, Bottas puts in the wall whilst chasing down Alonso, rips off a wheel and STILL brings it back deep into the points in a car which had about five times the torque.

A bit of a mixed bag then for Williams then with some unfulfilled promise.. but the car looks like it could benefit from a touch more downforce in relation to it's direct competitors.

Kobayashi had a brake failure (no rear brakes whatsoever) caused by a malfunction with the ERS system, I've been reading...

Interesting race, great drives by the highly-rated drivers (aside from Ferrari and Bianchi) that stayed in the race, mediocre drivers did... mediocre, which is really nice to see, as was the lack of fuel and tyre saving

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

The first dozen laps were awesome. Overtaking all over the place with the drivers just thinking "meh, bored of you now, see ya!". Thought we were going to be in for a stunning few opening races. Then it got relatively boring later on.

Mercedes are miles and miles ahead at the moment. You have to feel that with the safety car and if they wanted to, they would have lapped every car. I think Vettel would have been a bit closer had he been the one following Rosberg, but Ricciardo had a faultless race. Clearly Ricciardo will be giving Vettel a bit more to think about than we'd (and he'd?) been expecting though. Red Bull will soon close that gap now that the car is (usually) moving.

Button looked like he had the young ones running rings around him early on. By contrast, Magnussen just put his foot down and got on with it. Could be a long season for Button if he doesn't pull his finger out sharpish (of course, he's had a difficult pre-season off the track, but experience should still have given him the edge in the race).

Watching Raikkonen was painful. We know he needs to feel at home with the car (see his Lotus steering complaints), but that was ridiculous. There will only one winner between him and Alonso if that's the mood Kimi is going to be in this season. Apparently the Ferrari's had some niggling issues with their engines, so we'll have to see where they are and if Kimi will be more interested if he gets a car which isn't hobbled.

Speaking of Lotus, they were a phenomenon! It actually looked like an F1 car today, and it nearly even made the end! Very, very worrying if they ran those parts into the ground hoping to finish though - that may well be another couple of power unit components out of their allocation which are already on the pile out the back.

Many thanks to Bottas for providing most of the entertainment. Williams clearly do have a good car, and he probably would have been up with Button or Magnussen had he not split his wheel in two, but then a 4-times champion did exactly the same in qualifying and carried on. Then again, he was so close to also being Kobayashied at the start.

I'm warming to the volume now - they're much better with plenty of cars on track, I think FOM have tweaked the levels and I do like that you can hear lockups and slides in the vicinity. I do worry about the sound levels in the vast swathes of Sepang, Bahrain and the other Tilke parks. Still, I adore the noise itself though. Utterly, utterly love it.

Ricciardo's 2nd place is in doubt - he has been found to have been "consistently exceeding" the maximum allowed fuel flow rate.

What a surprise. First cheater of the year award (already for multiple years in the row) goes to [bada bum tsih!] Infiniti Red Bull Racing!



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



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2014 11:23AM by IWE.

IWE Wrote:
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> What a surprise. First cheater of the year award
> (already for multiple years in the row) goes to
> Infiniti Red Bull Racing!
>
> [pbs.twimg.com]
> rge


Wow, Red Bull cheating and getting caught? Who would have thought?!

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

Yeah, that's the typical BS they've been allowed to get away with for years because they somehow think they're beyond the rules they deem to be finicky.

No moveable bodywork? Yeaaaaahhhh, we're not going to stick to that.
Budget cap? Yeaaaaahhhh, we're not going to stick to that.
Maximum fuel flow? Yeaaaaahhhh, we're not going to stick to that.


This is how you win four titles, not to take anything away from Vettel. Ferrari were the same during the Schumacher years.

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

Let's just hope this won't cause Ricciardo to lose his 2nd place. He put in a great performance to finish 2nd, and now that Red Bull have been found to have been cheating, that puts him at risk at being demoted. Just have to wait and see what the outcome will be.

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As much of a shame as it would be, I think he'll be excluded completely. The only thing which will stop it is if Red Bull show it was a faulty meter (FIA have had issues with them all weekend), but you'd have imagined the Jo and his team would have checked this before they raised it with the stewards.

They may get a 25 second penalty if it only crept a teeny bit above the fuel flow limit, but that would rely on a hefty amount of persuasion and some very understanding stewards.

That would be a crying shame, because as refreshing at it'd be see see something other than a Red Bull on the podium I couldn't in all good faith begrudge Ricciardo that performance and result. Rules are rules however.

I enjoyed the race, it wasn't the best ever, it wasn't the worst ever and as curtain raises generally do it raised more questions than it answered.

I also have to admit that I did lapse into Williams fan-mode a bit and focused a bit too much on the progress of Bottas at times.

It'd be interesting to see just how far ahead Merc could have been, I doubt that Rosberg pushed for much of the race and I wonder if the team would have let him and Hamilton race each other or simply manage their performance like at Malaysia last year.

The RBR fuel flow thing, poses the question if their performance today is slightly flattering.. but ultimately I think the car is just quick anyway being a Newey car.

I do think the TV technicians need to tweak the sound feed. I know the engines are quieter.. but we can barley hear them on the coverage, just a little tweak to increase the ambient feed volume over the commentary feed could work wonders.

DQ

[www.news.com.au]

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

Quote
J i m
The RBR fuel flow thing, poses the question if their performance today is slightly flattering.. but ultimately I think the car is just quick anyway being a Newey car.

I doubt the fuel-flow would have increased the pace much. They would have had to have to saved fuel at some point in the race, and while the safety car and two formation laps will have helped that, they couldn't have had that much extra fuel to squeeze into the engine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2014 01:08PM by gav.