The official 2009 Belgian Grand Prix thread ***SPOILERS***

This weekend Formula 1 makes it's 12th stop of the season at the Spa Francorchamps circuit, home of the famous Eau Rouge corner. Brawn GP have proven that it's far from over for them, and McLaren have shown that Hamilton's win at Hungary was no fluke, which leaves Red Bull Racing with it all to do to keep themselves in the championship fight.








Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2009 01:44PM by mortal.

Im betting on raikkonen for pole, not sure about overrated lewis hamilton! and luca badoer for 19th!

both Ferrari and McLaren are not strong at tracks that have highspeed corners...of course drivers can make the difference at spa so they still can fight for podium places and maybe kers do give them some small advantage.RedBull should be clearly the strongest here and I expect them to dominate! Brawn will not be so good because it will be cold and they don't get their tyres to work so well.

Valencia though had quite a selection of fast corners..

Only 3, 2 of which were flat-out and the other was a deceleration zone. It's nothing like Spa.

Ferrari were pretty handy at Spain still...

Massa was pretty handy at Silverstone...

Brawn apparently know what the issues were, and so you'd expect them to have sorted something for Spa. If not then the closest challengers to RedBull are likley to be Kimi, Nico and possibly Lewis.

I trust Brawn will be improved from Silverstone Hungary, and Nurburgring and would like to think they could challenge RedBull. Them and Mclaren are going to be the unknowns, but hopefully know by Friday afternoon :p. Mclarens monster diffuser and other upgrades I imagine will help their earlier season downforce issues, but enough to challenge for a win?

If theres ever a track Kimi will shine its here. If Brawn cant take the challenge to RedBull Kimi is top of my list of the guys who will. I also reckon Nico could spring a supprise... Depending on Friday form if I were him id be tempted to run light and steal the spoils on Saturday and be in a safer posistion regarding the KERS cars going up to Les Combs.

edit - I know the one thing you cant predict at Spa is the weather, but looks like it will be warmer adn sunny on Sunday than Sat and Fri.

Also, this year the loss of front wings has been alot less last year it seems (thanks to Button and Nico being further up the field :p) but what about at Spa? Sparks, and wings flying at turn 1?

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/27/2009 12:44PM by chet.

Can't wait for this one.
If it's a dry race, RedBull should thoroughly whoop everyone. They'll never have better conditions this year in which to do so, that's for sure.
But I'm hoping there'll be at least some rain about on race day. That would put the cherry on top of what's promising to be a quality race anyway, given the venue.
M'mmm, some rain during quali to shuffle up the grid wouldn't hurt either. :D

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Looking forward to this race, i love this track!

If anything, I hope somehow Kimi wins, as it would be nice for ferrari and Kimi to win a race this season before they really fallback due to no car development.

Though in reality, I think a redbull win going to happen.

Redbull should win this. I'm hoping as usual for a JB win.

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This is Kimi's best chance of a win this year, but hopefully Webber can win it and make some inroads into Button.

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X (@ed24f1)

I'm hoping for a Webber win if it's RedBull, or a Rubens win if it's not. It's time someone finally took a decent chunk out of JB's championship lead, for the sake of a good championship battle.
Having said that, I'd love to see Kimi win too. It's been so long now, it'd be great to see him win at least one more race in F1, and it'd be a fitting result after last year's race.

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Brawn running 320km/h for the run up to les combs already!

the engines should be turned down quite abit... quite a skinny rear wing too. let's see how much that speed can increase. There looks like a head wind too.

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

Kimi's quite fast in the wet! One of the fastest if not, the fastest on track!

Grosjean not too shabby either

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

LOL, so much for the weather forecasting. The 2 I looked at on Wednesday said it would be dry and sunny for the whole weekend. :D

sunny again now...

How long have brawn had a shark fin engine cover? first time i've noticed it!

EDIT - Rubens hasn't got it - i saw it on Jenson's car earlier in the session

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Team Japan Owner - GPGNC




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2009 02:49PM by harjinator.

Not looking good for Badoer again, 2.5s off 1st at the moment. His learning curve shouldn't be as long on this circuit though.

Good start for Red Bull, but the most impressive so far imo has been Alguersuari in 4th.

While you can't usually read too much into practice, last weekend the Red Bulls were slow in practice and for the whole weekend, and same for Brawns at a couple of the races before that, so it could be a fairly good indicator.

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X (@ed24f1)

Jenson like a snail through middle sector!!!

edit - to be exact, as slow as Luca!!

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/2009 03:12PM by chet.

Does anybody have a good stream of the FP? All the links I had have been taken down and Google returns little success. I'm currently on a live stream from someone who's placed his camera in front of the TV, recording the French Eurosport. Not really ideal...

Badoer's still just not pushing it. There's no commitment at all in the fast corners. Not bothering the kerbs in the fast corners and so late and hesitant on the throttle in the slow corners. He really should be up to a decent speed (as in comparable to the other drivers - of course no one expects him to challenge Kimi) by now.

It's great to see Eau Rouge is a big challenge again with the aero cut back. They're still all flat-out, but they're having to clamber all over the curb on the exit to do so.