Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Chinese GP - Shanghai 2009

So, Brawn haven't managed to do it this time then. So much for their "super-diffusers".

I actually thought this was a bit of a boring GP, starting under the safety car, so no 1st lap-1st corner dramas. The only exciting part in my opinion were when Kubica thought he could steal a Toyota diffuser by trying to mate with Trulli's car, and took pretty much the entire rear off of the car!



Ferrari have had yet more problems, as it seems Massa had hydraulic problems, meaning his engine just went idle, whereas Raikonnen again, didn't do anything spectacular, but at least managed to finish the race this time.



Speaking of finishing the race, it was about time we saw Heikki Kovalainen actually do some racing! In the quite difficult wet conditions the Finn found his fin and managed to swim past his teammate Hamilton, to take a respectable 5th overall, bagging some much needed points for the team. Hamilton on the other hand, clearly wasn't the wet weather master that he showed he could be like in Silverstone last season, and span out several times. I think his car would've been much faster in the dry conditions, as he showed in the 1st Friday practice.



Red Bull clearly are on to a winner here, with a very decent car that has shown it is quick, and also WITHOUT that now fabled "double-decker" diffuser design, something which Adrian Newey doesn't think he'll have ready until at least Monaco. We can only wait and see how much quicker they will be once armed with this new design.



As for the diffusers, the FIA has published the following document outlining their reasons for declaring the diffuser designs legal, and their responses to the other teams arguments.



http://www.fia.com/en-GB/the-fia/court_appeal/judgments/Documents/ICA-14-04-2009-a.pdf



Pretty boring stuff, though it does contain a somewhat humourous obsession with the words "hole", "continuous", "impervious", "hard", "solid", and "rigid". I'll leave it up to you to decide why they chose these words...I also can't believe some teams thought using the words "against the spirit" would actually carry ANY legal weight whatsoever!

Renault had a pretty hard time, even if they were armed with a new diffuser design. Alonso made use of it "for sure" in qualifying, although shame about his end result. As for his teammate, well, he clearly did not. Qualifying P17, they were poles apart, and during the race, Piquet seemed to be like Michael Jackson, needing a nosejob every 15 minutes!

Vettel won the race. I wonder if Renault are eyeing him up as a replacement for Piquet? We'll see how long Red Bull are able to keep hold of him.

As for next week, I wonder if Brawn will show the half-second lead over the field like they did in the winter testing. This race certainly won't be wet. (Though it may be a test of how much those engines like to eat sand!)

1 comment:

Blue Ocean said...

'the Finn found his fin'... classic quote!

I'm sure McLaren and Ferrari won't take this lying down. It'll definitely be interesting to see how this season pans out, especially when we hit Europe.