WTF happened to Hamilton? How come Raikkonen was lapping 1 second faster than him at the end of Q2?
Were his tyres just too worn??

Raikkonen was a second faster (always lapping in the low 1:38) while Hamilton was lapping in the low 1:39.
Why was that?
It's even more wierd when you consider that he (Hamilton) finished 2nd in Q1, by a mile in front of Raikkonen.

I could give a few possible solutions:

Dry set up?
Loss of confidence after poor tyre choice?
Car set up completely wrong?
Pressure of the last week getting to him?

He wasn't exactly top in Q1 either so McLaren have a real task to figure out what they can do.


Who knows what caused it?? One things for sure Lewis and Kimi have a lot to think about.

Why all the "what happened to Hamilton" from all corners? He got caught out by the weather. I thought that was obvious really. As did Raikkonen. Why is it inconceivable that Hamilton could lap a second slower than the world champion?

Basically nobody seems to be acknowledging that Kimi was also in the same situation.

Personally I was hoping Massa was going to stay in 12th, purely to see which of the three of them would do the best job of progressing through the field tomorrow. Should be a very interesting race now anyway.

Go Vettel!

Kimi's balls are smaller and lighter so he had an advantage.

Cold wetness is causing shrinking balls.

Kimi's laps were much faster, so were Kubica's, even if they didn't manage to get into Q3 either. Hamilton was slow.

I'm thinking it's dry set-up.

You don't understand that RAIKKONEN WAS LAPPING FASTER THAN LEWIS, by 1 SECOND, in Q2. It is not a question of tenths, but of seconds.

Hamilton couldn't get under 1:38. He was losing half-a-second already in Sector 1 and lost quite a bit more in the other sectors compared to Raikkonen. Even his top speed shows it (he barely got over 300 kph).

But then, if it is really a dry set-up, why was Hamilton 2nd in Q1, barely behind his teammate?

probably confidence or something not quite right with setup, he didnt seem to have the same speed as kova in Q1 either

Meh, he was just too late while the others managed to do a lap before the track got that worse.

Because he stole Hamilton balls dude. Maybe he ie better on those conditions than "THE MISTER BALLS NEW RAINMASTER"

Massa did his p10 lap in already bad conditions.

Yes, and Kimi and Kubica were much faster than Lewis too.

Massa was the only person to improve their time in the last 7 or 8 minutes of Q2 I think. Major credit for that. Could have just increased his championship chances in a huge way right there. I still think it would have made a much more interesting race had he not improved on P12 though.



It's not inconceivable that the gap between two cars, especially the two slowest cars, can increase beyond a couple of tenths in those kind of conditions. Both of their teams screwed up. People seem to be deluded that Hamilton is going to be the fastest thing around every time it rains. He's not the new rainmaster, which seems to be a term I'm hearing a lot lately. Sure, he was pretty amazing in Fuji last year. But what about the Nurburgring? And today. People need to lower their expectations.

Stupid choice of going to inters and then bad timing and set up.

ROFL.

Monaco and Silverstone 2008? He arguably did the most dominant wet races in years @ Silverstone.

He currently is one of the fastest, if not the fastest in the rain.

he was fast at the ring tho, that call for dry tyres cooked his goose tho :/

Kubica is alluding to something. In the first part of Q2 the track was drier and I am wondering if that allowed the drivers to get some heat into the tires which helped throughout the session. Hamilton meanwhile due to the misjudgment started his run when the track was too wet to get any heat into them.

Just an idea.

Well actually he is "currently" 15th fastest in the rain.

In all seriousness though, yes he was supreme in those two races you mention. My point is moreso that lately nearly everyone I spoken to about it seems to automatically think that if it rains, Hamilton will win. But nobody is invincible. Especially in the wet when it's much easier to spin off, make a bad tyre call, whatever. So just because a driver has produced performances like Lewis did at Monaco (where he won the race, but still hit the wall might I add) and Silverstone, doesn't mean that he will always and reliably produce those performances as if all the other drivers have forgotten how to drive on wet tarmac.

Rain is the biggest variable in F1 and to expect anyone to always be first in those conditions is just plain unrealistic.

McLaren left him in the box for far too long, a stupid mistake. Probably also the wrong setup.

What are the chances of rain tomorrow? And what would be better for Hamilton, rain or dry tomorrow? Probably changeable conditions, because those allow the most opportunities to return to the front (risky conditions for everyone). And for Kovalainen, best a dry race, or a steady rain perhaps?

60% chances. They say light rain.

http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/busi...ur=4&begDay=258

All of this remember me how many people in Spain were expecting rain every race last season. They thought Alonso would invariably be first after his Hungary performance the previous year. They said Alonso would "blown away" Hamilton if it rained. We all remember what happened...

No one is invincible. Senna wasn't 2 seconds faster every time it was raining. He was good, but not God. Schumacher was 4 seconds faster than everyone else at Barcelona in 1996: but he wasn't THAT fast every time it rained. Ultimately wet weather performance is down to setup and car.

If it is still possible to drive on grooved tyres in those conditions, that would probably be best for McLaren. Ferrari seems to lack grip in such circumstances.

So... Hamilton's mistakes or dry set-up?

I think here we've got the winner!

Kimi & Robert on the same tires and conditions were lapping much faster than Lewis. They were just simply faster. Everyone can have bad day, but I'm sure some of you will find some out of Lewis' hands excuses.

Excuse me? I thought this gentleman in question had "superior feel for grip" and HUGE balls, allowing late braking regardless of circumstances, tyres, setup, and all the other irrelevant factors.

As someone mentioned his balls probably shrank so he had no feeling



I think so. Remember his engineer advising him to just focus on the lap.

It appears that none of us know what each drivers setup was, can we keep the bashing until the end of the RACE?

His balls suddenly shrank

Wingnut,

Personally I believe huge gaps between top guns like Hamilton/Räikkönen - to one direction or another - are ALWAYS explained by car/setup/tyres/etc. I don´t believe in divine inspiration or drivers forgetting how to go fast. But if you start talking about rainmaster, and how it´s 100% driving (nothing to do with eg Ferrari struggling on wet)...then you better be fast every single time. Because it can´t be Lewis Hamilton is the only one getting slowed down by poor setup/etc.

... oops, i see that i am not the only one who had to think of shrunken balls... LH was smacked back to earth

don't worry, he'll be up in the sky the next good race

I find it hard to believe that suddenly massa is better than raikonnen and that hamilton cannot drive in the rain. I think hamilton and raikonnen are on completely dry set-up and kova is on intermediate with massa. If it rains tomorrow massa will dissapear in the distance. if it dries he will spin like a bottle top. Mark my words.

Quite. It was all about timing, and McLaren/Hamilton and Raikonnen blew it. I still cannot fathom WHY they would have wanted to try inters anyway. What was the point????

The point was they thought it's not going to rain that heavly. But then again Massa managed to pull out good lap to get to top10 while conditions were very bad already and he's probably on similar setup to Kimi & Lewis. Lewis also was lapping much slower than Kubica & Raikkonen on the same tires and conditions. It just wasn't his day - bad team's choices and Lewis poor driving.

Actually it's not that sudden, Massa has been showing better form to Kimi for most of the season.

I lot of people here fail to understand that you can change setup between qualy sections. So no, they were not on full dry setup on q2.

And finally your idea that if it's dry Massa will be spinning left and right because he has a wet setup makes no sense.

id guess at it looked like the track was just about ready, but i think what ruined that is the gap between sessions, as the cars shift a huge amount of water, ofcourse with the break of 5-10minutes the rain didnt stop, water builds up again and inters are no good...

they only have 3 sets of extremes and 4 of inters isnt it? reported he had used up one set pretty well, so theres that aswell

did they hold him in the pits aswell? lost tyre temp and grip, then didnt have the confidense/grip to work the tyres harder to get heat into them

got possible setup issues aswell, but it looks like atm, he just didnt have the confidense :\

The fastest in wet of the title contenders, as of today, is Felipe Massa.

Monaco - Hamilton win
Silverstone - Hamilton win
Spa - Hamilton finished in front of Massa (you could call it a win)

You can't clearly base your opinion on the qualifying session...

Which makes a lot of sense.

Atleast in the dry we know how decisive it could be for performance if the tires have had a heath cycle in them, so clearly it's a complex part of a package's speed.

given the conditions today and potential for rain tomorrow, it would make sense if a team ran their cars with different set-ups. in McLaren's case, they may have gone to an extreme, with HK going full wet and LH going full dry (or, something like that). maybe, just maybe, LH knew that his goose was cooked at the start of Q2, and it was deemed then that he had to go a radical route with the inters in order to have a shot for Q3. ok, the times from Q1 do not support this theory, but it is noteworthy that McLaren did the inters experiment with their WDC contender and not the number 2, and that is not typical by any means. HK, for his part, seems to be McLaren's rabbit, whose goal it was to qualify ahead of the two Ferraris, period. it remains to be seen if this agenda was prudent, since, if they indeed went this route with his set-up, and it's dry(ish) tomorrow, he may end up a sitting duck.

If Hamilton was really on a dry setup, then why did he post one of the slowest speed trap?

Because his apex speed on the previous corner was slow.

CC

Somebody should quote him his line about "balls" from Spa ...

This is exactly why Hamilton should STFU at times and let his driving do the talking - which he is perfectly capable of. Comments like these contribute a lot in building up an anti-driver faction just like how there were so many (still are) anti-schumacher F1 fans.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/70583

The Q&A session explains it in that he was also called to the weighbridge as well as running the lap on inters so when he went out it was raining pretty heavily and he was unable to get any heat into the brakes or tyres- Kubica, Raikonnen and Massa had already been running earlier so generated heat in the initial drier conditions. As was the case in Spa in the last couple of laps, when tyre temperatures go, cars become much slower.

This statement is somewhat reassuring in that the setup is unlikely to be hugely off and that particular set of circumstances is unlikely to repeat itself, so he should be competitive in the race.

he needs to unglaze his brakes aswell, but they can run thru the pits several times before going to the grid

Surely that would be considered a safety issue and Mac could request to work on them in Parc Ferme.