After a pretty inconclusive winter testing it looked like the top 5 teams were closer than usual, with all of them setting fastest times in Barcelona during february and march, with some rainy days making it hard to make predictions.
Driver changes from 2012 include Hamilton going from McLaren to Mercedes, Hulkenberg to Sauber, Perez to McLaren, and we've got a big bunch of rookies this year: Bottas at Williams, Gutierrez at Sauber, Bianchi in at Marussia as Razia's funding went AWOL, van der Garde in at Caterham and Chilton at Marussia. Sutil is back in the Force India after his Chinese brawl-induced absence last year.
Mercedes looked very strong in qualifying, also Red Bull came to the front in a big way and were immediately accused of sandbagging in testing since they didn't set very fast times at Barcelona. A pretty weird and exciting qualifying in the end, ending with an ominous Red Bull front row lockout. And McLaren screwing Perez with a seriously stupid tire call in Q2.
But it turned out the Red Bull ate it's tyres too quickly in the cold in Melbourne. Both Ferrari and Red Bull look really fast but both perhaps are a bit hard on their tires, while Kimi managed to go reasonably quick for many more laps on the medium compund to take the victory. Webber making his traditional terrible get-away off the grid, he's really not good at that. Alonso nailing Sutil through turn 1 was pretty great. Hamilton's defending is overly aggressive in my opinion, he really hates giving up a position that guy, ruining his tyres in the process.
Perfect result for me, with my fav driver winning, and a pretty great race with lots of action among the top 5. Grid didn't reflect the race result at all, really, so cool. Too bad Rosberg didn't come through in Q3 and had to retire with electrical issues in the race. Guess the tires are playing games on the teams just like early last year, those super softs were truly shit!
What do you guys think of the season to come? Ferrari and RBR to pass Lotus later in the season in the development race? Will it finally be Alonso's third WDC, Kimi's second or Vettel's fourth? Melbourne is a one-off result due to the odd characteristcs of the track? Lotus didn't look too good on the inters or wets to me, maybe they'll suffer if it's a rainy GP next week in Malaysia. RBR and Merc on the other hand both looked strong in the wet. How long will it take for McLaren to get their disastrous car up to speed?
I'm pretty impressed with Bianchi thus far, if he can keep it up he should be one of the first to move out of the backmarker teams and into a front running team. Massa seems much more comfortable this year too, good for him. Impressive return from Sutil, too. Too bad for him the Super Softs screwed him hard at the end.
Driver changes from 2012 include Hamilton going from McLaren to Mercedes, Hulkenberg to Sauber, Perez to McLaren, and we've got a big bunch of rookies this year: Bottas at Williams, Gutierrez at Sauber, Bianchi in at Marussia as Razia's funding went AWOL, van der Garde in at Caterham and Chilton at Marussia. Sutil is back in the Force India after his Chinese brawl-induced absence last year.
Mercedes looked very strong in qualifying, also Red Bull came to the front in a big way and were immediately accused of sandbagging in testing since they didn't set very fast times at Barcelona. A pretty weird and exciting qualifying in the end, ending with an ominous Red Bull front row lockout. And McLaren screwing Perez with a seriously stupid tire call in Q2.
But it turned out the Red Bull ate it's tyres too quickly in the cold in Melbourne. Both Ferrari and Red Bull look really fast but both perhaps are a bit hard on their tires, while Kimi managed to go reasonably quick for many more laps on the medium compund to take the victory. Webber making his traditional terrible get-away off the grid, he's really not good at that. Alonso nailing Sutil through turn 1 was pretty great. Hamilton's defending is overly aggressive in my opinion, he really hates giving up a position that guy, ruining his tyres in the process.
Perfect result for me, with my fav driver winning, and a pretty great race with lots of action among the top 5. Grid didn't reflect the race result at all, really, so cool. Too bad Rosberg didn't come through in Q3 and had to retire with electrical issues in the race. Guess the tires are playing games on the teams just like early last year, those super softs were truly shit!
What do you guys think of the season to come? Ferrari and RBR to pass Lotus later in the season in the development race? Will it finally be Alonso's third WDC, Kimi's second or Vettel's fourth? Melbourne is a one-off result due to the odd characteristcs of the track? Lotus didn't look too good on the inters or wets to me, maybe they'll suffer if it's a rainy GP next week in Malaysia. RBR and Merc on the other hand both looked strong in the wet. How long will it take for McLaren to get their disastrous car up to speed?
I'm pretty impressed with Bianchi thus far, if he can keep it up he should be one of the first to move out of the backmarker teams and into a front running team. Massa seems much more comfortable this year too, good for him. Impressive return from Sutil, too. Too bad for him the Super Softs screwed him hard at the end.
