2014 Australian Grand Prix - Melbourne

[ringo]

The chassis is that damn good as i suspected. Lord have mercy when they get that engine to work. Doesn't look good for the competition. However i feel riciardo can make vettel look ordinary half the time. And i'll enjoy that.

[subasurf]

Anyone making podium picks yet, given P1?

[ecapox]

I love the whistling from the turbo when they come into the pits.

[Faustino]

Rosberg for poll. I felt Merc had something in hand over the other teams at the moment, they were overly cautious once the sensor went in Hamilton's car with regards to Nico's running.

Think the times will get into the 1.28's when it gets down to the serious business.

[Sevach]

I love the whistling from the turbo when they come into the pits.

I think the sound overall is quite a disappointment, like going from a Ferrari to a Volvo.

[Faustino]

Huge step forward for Red Bull though.. they will be challenging sooner than anyone expected.

[Chuckjr]

Fred seems racy. I'm picking him for pole. Mercs for a few spots then lucky #7.

Edit: and not nessasarily a factory Merc...just to be clear. ..

[Sevach]

The didn't show any top speed numbers on screen which was dissapointing.

[djos]

I love the whistling from the turbo when they come into the pits.

I think the sound overall is quite a disappointment, like going from a Ferrari to a Volvo.

Im in the Docklands area a few Km's away and cant hear them at all, the V8's could be heard across the Docklands and much of the CBD!

Still I like the sounds I've heard in the videos, it's a much more Technical sound imo.

[Faustino]

The didn't show any top speed numbers on screen which was dissapointing.

Sky were probably too busy sniffing their own farts to bother putting up any useful info

[ecapox]

Lotus must not have gone out so that they can hide their speed.....

[Earnard Beccelstone]

First practice was interesting. Some general observations.

More lock ups and slides than I’d expected. Whether is just the lesser amount of engine noise making the tyre squeal audible, or the reduced downforce or brake by wire, there were a noticable amount of lock-ups, run-wides, grass mowing and mid-corner slides. Most prominently early in the session at T1, but also at T9. I know the cars are new, but I though they might be taking it a little easier early on

Engine noise is a bit meh. Neither impressed or disappointed, about what I expected. I never really liked the particular sound of the V8s that much, and there are some interesting pop, bang, whine, growls sounds with the V6s, but I’ll miss the F1 wall of sound effect.

Times were about 1 to 1.5 seconds slower than I’d hoped. I really though they’d get towards 1:30. Excluding the Marussias, the field was tighter than I’d expected – only 3.7 sec between the fastest Ferrari and the fastest Sauber. Only 1.6 sec between the top 10.

Ferrari fastest was a surprise, particularly by half a second as the car didn’t look particularly quick. Maybe that’s why its so fast though. Nice and smooth through the entry and in mid-corner by looked marginally little unsettled on exit. Bigger gap between Fred and Kimi than I’d expected.

Mercedes looked very solid, particularly the way it changes direction and through the front end. There was a great shot of the car going through the T11/12 complex and it looked very smooth indeed. Looks like Lewis will have a lot of set-up work to do in P2.

Redbull looked really good. Super smooth and planted in the hands of both drivers. If this is them with a troubled power package, I really wonder what the second half of the season is going to be like. The amount of laps they got under their belt must be confidence lifting.

Williams didn’t appear as quick as I’d thought/hoped they would. Massa looked like he was being mega-aggressive with some of the curbs and pushing fairly hard, but the were still six or seven tenths off the pace. Still 46 laps, the most of any team, should give them a nice baseline to work out set-ups.

McLaren. Not sure really. Car look like it has a good front end with plenty of grip, but something about the balance seemed a little off. Both drivers look very smooth, so I can see them doing well once they really start to push.

Torro-Rosso. Woha, that’s a lot of laps. And a lot of trips into the weeds. Surprised that the car was ahead of both the Force India and the Sauber given their testing troubled. Really surprised that they managed 57 laps – that’s just over 300 km, or better than 12% of the distance that they managed in testing.

As for the rest, I didn’t pay enough attentions. Fingers crossed the Lotus gets out of the pits in FP2 though.

[Sevach]

The didn't show any top speed numbers on screen which was dissapointing.

Sky were probably too busy sniffing their own farts to bother putting up any useful info

I live in Brazil, but we didn't get it either...

Numbers are out now.
http://www.formula1.com/results/season/ ... _trap.html

Still all over the place... we will have to wait for Q to see who truly has straight line speed.

[Kiril Varbanov]

Times:

Code: Select all

Pos  Driver             Team/Car              Time       Gap       Laps
 1.  Fernando Alonso    Ferrari               1m31.840s            20
 2.  Jenson Button      McLaren-Mercedes      1m32.357s  +0.517s   23
 3.  Valtteri Bottas    Williams-Mercedes     1m32.403s  +0.563s   27
 4.  Felipe Massa       Williams-Mercedes     1m32.431s  +0.591s   19
 5.  Daniel Ricciardo   Red Bull-Renault      1m32.599s  +0.759s   26
 6.  Nico Rosberg       Mercedes              1m32.604s  +0.764s   17
 7.  Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull-Renault      1m32.793s  +0.953s   10
 8.  Kevin Magnussen    McLaren-Mercedes      1m32.847s  +1.007s   28
 9.  Kimi Raikkonen     Ferrari               1m32.977s  +1.137s   18
10.  Jean-Eric Vergne   Toro Rosso-Renault    1m33.446s  +1.606s   30
11.  Nico Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes  1m33.533s  +1.693s   23
12.  Sergio Perez       Force India-Mercedes  1m33.855s  +2.015s   24
13.  Daniil Kvyat       Toro Rosso-Renault    1m34.272s  +2.432s   27
14.  Esteban Gutierrez  Sauber-Ferrari        1m35.578s  +3.738s   7
15.  Adrian Sutil       Sauber-Ferrari        1m36.445s  +4.605s   13
16.  Jules Bianchi      Marussia-Ferrari      1m40.859s  +9.019s   6
17.  Max Chilton        Marussia-Ferrari      1m46.922s  +15.082s  4
18.  Marcus Ericsson    Caterham-Renault                           1
19.  Lewis Hamilton     Mercedes                                   1
20.  Kamui Kobayashi    Caterham-Renault                           1
21.  Pastor Maldonado   Lotus-Renault                              2
22.  Romain Grosjean    Lotus-Renault                              

[BTM]

First practice was interesting. Some general observations.
snip

Is it fair to comment that this may be reading into it a little much, given our ignorance regarding fuel loads, and practice objectives? I'm not saying practice times are meaningless, but this to me feels like an extreme inference. How cars appear to handle and how the actually perform can often be quite disconnected