Fortunately we get some time and points for the europian races, when the updates will come. We have to try to earn as much point as possible until Barcelona...

Indeed, particuarly if you count the fact that the gearbox change took him from being in the middle of a wreck, to watching it happen from behind. Talented? Yes, Good drive? Yes, jammy as a dodger? Undoubtably.

The point is when Fernando won in Singapore, they didn't say he was jammy, they said he was the most talented driver in F1. Yet he won principally due to luck or as some conspiracists believe Team planning! Hamilton puts in a great measured drive from the back, comes third and is called Jammy?

If you want Jammy, or in his own words "a lucky Bastard"....... look no further than Richard Branson

Wordsby you really are making yourself look stupid.

Check the thread "driver of the day" - majority saw what you refuse to.

Much the same as Alonso's win, It was largely due to his team mate crashing. If you think people didn't call him jammy, you must have had your head in the ground. Fernando was very jammy, but he followed it up with a win on merit 2 weeks later. Let's see if Lewis can do that next week.

A shame to see myself being misquoted again as it's not what I said...

Check the original post if you want to...

http://forums.autosport.com/showthread.php...153#post3527153

No that was Jammy too, the leading contenders crashed into each other

Plus the MP4-24 is lower down the grid in performance then the Renault was last year.

i wouldnt trust such a long-term weather forecast. It would be interesting to check with a KL local about when the showers are happening. Last year in singapore there were showers nearly every day before and after the GP but their timing did not coincide with any of the sessions if my memory serves me well.

Thank you.

That makes more somewhat sense.


So McLaren use their tunnel very conservatively? (i.e. a lot of repeatability I assume)









Is the first of those your info, and the 2nd your opinion?

Because, if the first was tyre modelling, it would explain an awful lot.

Superb result from Lewis, whether it will be 4th or 3rd in the end (should be 3rd, though). Great drive, Hamilton proves that he can come from behind, even in aun uncompetitive car. And he did manage to beat Alonso, the Renault probably being roughly comparable in pace to the McLaren, right now.

A lot of his great results is thanks to the smart use of soft tyres and light fuelload at the start; it allowed Lewis to attack both at the beginning of the race and at the end, when most of the others were on soft tyres. Great strategy from McLaren. Kubica and the Ferraris almost pulled off the same thing, but the Ferraris somehow lost it all. Ironic that McLaren has 6 (or 5, worst case scenario) points now, and Ferrari 0.

If Lewis stays 3rd, it would also be a historic 1-2-3 for Mercedes - a 1-2-3-4 if you count the safety car!

Yes, those elements looked to be key in this GP. The McLaren, BMW and certainly also the Brawn (of course) look to be less affected by the soft tyres than some other teams. And Hamilton consistently made the most of his overtaking opportunities (made it look quite easy indeed), and his pace was quite good given the relative lack of downforce on the car.

Mclaren had demonstrated good consistencies during long stints in the last tests and during FPs.

Maybe he really does have big balls

Someone mentioned that in an interview with Ron that he has said that they will have a new diffuser at the next race, anyone have any more news on this?

All I know is that Martin Whitmarsh said there will be updates and improvement to the car but the next race will nevertheless be a difficult one for the team. He didn't reveal what those updates will be though.

Excellent drive....best i have seen hamilton do mainly because of the car he had. This guy is good

Malaysia we might struggle because i believe it is very aero dependent. The only thing positive with this car is that it is very consistent.

We cannot expect any semi-decent result on an aero track, agreed. McLaren needs a major upgrade soon, in spite of this fantastic result.

The apparent pecking order of the teams (speedwise) right now, in tiers:
1. Brawn (seem to be clearly ahead)
2. Red Bull/BMW/Toyota/Ferrari/Williams (order a bit unclear here, though Red Bull is probably the best of the 5 now)
3. McLaren/Renault/Torro Rosso
4. Force India

Yeah, fantastic result for Mercedes! But it would be much better for McLaren to win. However, we should still support McLaren, Lewis and Kova! No matter we are the quickest or not!

Car's flattering Hamilton

In a way I agree with your order but I have to say I was surprised at the drop off in performance of the soft tyres for the ferrari's and Williams. Rosberg was going backwards so quickly at the end of that race...bizarrely the macca seemed to look after it's tyres quite well. Hamilton did a very long middle stint and it didn't seem to have that much impact on his tyre wear.

yup, very strange, that car lacks downforce and grip, but tyre wear isn't so bad.

On long runs Mclaren seem to be up with Renault and only need to find a few tenths to be in with Toyota, KERS BMW and Ferrari. All is not lost and it was good to beat Renault and even Toyota fair and square today - especially given how bullish they both were in the lead up to the race. The gods decided to reward a drive from the top drawer today. Hopefully those points will come in handy later in the year.

Tyres seems to be working good on the car, I hope they know whats wrong with the car and pray for the one win.

IF the Uberfuser teams are DQ'ed come April 14th - your winner is [drum roll]




























Lewis Hamilton[/drum roll]
Priceless stuff. Ferrari hands McLaren 10 points

I don't know about that; Honda also lacked downforce in 2007 and 2008, but I remember some great or at least threatening drives in the rain from Barrichello and Button. Rain tends to be a kind of equaliser between the cars (to some degree; I'm sure the Brawn will still be the best anyway), and races in the rain also come down to a large degree to having the right tyre and the right setup at the right time. Much more of a lottery, and since McLaren has pretty much zero chances in a regular race, rain indeed might be "better" for them - even if the drivers will have a very difficult time at the wheel. But then, so will most of the other drivers.

Lewis' fastest lap was 1.3s slower than the overall fastest and the 13th-fastest overall... that looks bad :\

Yes, interesting observation. The Ferrari and the Williams are fast over one lap and on a hard tyre stint, but they don't seem to take softs well. The Toyota doesn't look too good on softs either; both drivers went off under safety car, and Hamilton and Alonso could (surprisingly) dice with them at some parts of the race.

I'm not surprised McLaren seems quite OK on tyre wear though; the balance has been said to be good since the last Barcelona test, and both Hamilton and Kovalainen could run consistent (but not superfast though) stints at the final Jerez test. Hamilton tends to conserve his tyres quite good as well, an area where Kovalainen had severe problems last year.

Hyatt; I agree, we should not be under any illusions, the car is still way too slow overall (though quite consistent in its lap times). But this makes Lewis' result all the sweeter!

Let's hope they improve the car dramatically soon, or come up with a better one mid-season, if they can't dramatically improve this one.

He had very long stints on both sets of hard tires.

you know what? as a McFan i can much more enjoy a season where the Mcs arent challenging the WC ... no more heart-attacks at the race-start and no more beeing scared to death that a engine will blow while leading the race ... i'm sick, i know ...

Kilcoo - I accept, very much so, that you could be right. I've also already stated twice that if after Barcelona there is no sign of great improvement, I'll revise my opinion. If you're correct then the team should be in the doldrums for pretty much the whole season, correct?

AFCA - Apologies if I misquoted. Effectively was the key word it seems. If I've interpreted that post wrong I really wouldn't mind someone correcting me. It's the only way that seems to make sense to me. And it still implies under-development. Which Whitmarsh (yet again) said was the problem with the car again today.

I have sort-of the same feeling, I was very relaxed in watching the race until it started to look like they were points in store for Lewis.

To my heart, brother!

Malaysia might not be too bad of a race for mclaren, kers will be more useful there then in oz and hamilton showed that he can preserve his tires very well, and (hopefully) they wont start so far back

I'm not a hamilton fan, but that was a suberp drive. Almost shuey-esque: How the F*ck did he end up there??? MS used to surprise me like that when starting from the back. Kudos for Lewis!

yeah, i couldnt believe when i saw him exiting the pits after the second stop and beeing infront of Massa ... thought i missed something, was he lapped or something? strange ...

I still don't understand how he did it.

Nope, they were fighting for position then

I also couldn't understand that one. How is it possible that Hamilton came out of that stop ahead of Massa? Ferrari must have had a very bad pitstop strategy.

I totally agree. IMHO that was his best race so far.

I find it strange after such a great unexpected result we've not heard much from sound bites from haug, Martin or Ron

Well being 3rd Mercedes is nothing to brag about for Ron or Martin and Haug probably politely didn't want to rub it in

Same here The scary part was the last 4 laps - its seemed the others were ganining on him Alonso et al. Maybe he was told to take it easy - but lets not have any illusions the car is a complete dog. I compared our sints and we were on averaging 1 second slower than vettel and 1.3 to Button

I really had heart attacks in the Hakkinen era and Kimi era..............I can't even remember how manys races that has been threw away.

Why do Ferrari hand Mclaren 10 points?

Because Ferrari will do everything with FIA(Ferrari International Assistance) to protest or prohabit a faster competitor! If the Brawns are disqualified, Lewis will be the winner!

Yes, he'll go far ;-)

How did his stint times compare with others within the race. Sorry if this has already been mentioned in previous posts - short of time.

I dont have any hard info but it looks like they are much more consistent on the softer tires then the ferrari's and the bmw's but ultimately the times are much slower especially compared to rbr and brawn

Don't worry, but it's better to look for the post and quote it, otherwise stories are going to lead a life of their own going in all sorts of directions...

the tire wear in the hard tire is opposite of the softer....

and Rosberg went backwards quickly cos he didnt manage the softer option he was on. They told him to push to try to catch Barichello, he did n gained a second on the next lap, but after that the tire was totally gone