-Between lap 20 and 28, Kimi's was 10 seconds faster than Sutil
-Between lap 20 and 28 Kimi was 24 seconds faster than Fisico
-From the drivers you mentioned, only Bourdais was faster - around 2 seconds between laps 21 and 25. However, we have to mention he's driving a Red Bull, the car which has a great wet weather record...

Anyway I agree with the rest of your analysis, Raikkonen and Massa have been very well matched so far

If you have the lap times, show Felipes times in the wet. From those times you can see Kimi was fastest of those in the wet, but what about the rest?

Other guys (except Force India and Bourdais) were on brand new wets or intermediates, so I don't think it's good idea to compare them with Kimi. But speaking of Felipe:



Actually I am very suprised by these numbers. Red Bull gang and Timo on inters were in different league, but Felipe was the best of the rest .



Another, but rather worthless comparison.



I just wanted to point out that on particular laps Kimi wasn't fastest driver on "destroyed" wets, but boy, I was so wrong, his pace was great .

This is pretty flawed and missing the point.

In the first stint Kimi was up to lap 5 included less than 1.5 sec. behind Kubica unable to show his pace,
than he droped slightly off next two laps and for other two laps he was involved in fights including some wheel banging so hardly to draw any conclusion.

After tire change Kimi lapped basically the same laptimes as Felipe in a spun of 10 - 12 laps before and after SC while Felipe enjoyed free track. Thats being 7 laps heavier which makes massive difference of about 0.7sec. Couple of laps later being on the low fuel load as Felipe KImi actually scored lap 0.7 sec quicker than Felipes best.

In Malaysia any meaningless comparisons is totally impossible both for q
and race, so all work on that is totally useless.

Nice to watch the usual hairsplitting.

My driver was faster, because in lap x on tyres y with fuel load z his pace blah blah blah.

And all other laps when he wasn't faster? Irrelevant, of course.

so is it true that kimi 's weight is a problem for him this year as massa will always be lighter?

So Kimi was indeed massively faster than Massa in the wets, even if you didnt like to say it

I thought most drivers' exact weights are closely guarded secrets? Anyway, information from a couple of years ago shows that Massa was around 15kg lighter than Kimi, unless they had reported Massa's weight wrongly (55kg), which I always thought was a little light.

I think Kimi has lost a fair bit of weight for 2009 anyway, so I don't know what you're worried about, but he will never ever be as light as Felipe, nor heavy enough to be handicapped by KERS.

You can say that Massa failled to execute the racing strategy.
Was too fast at the start of the race and ruined his tires.
Also in the 2nd stint.

According to Planet-F1 this round goes to Kimi:

So, shall we for once unanimously agree on giving this round to Kimi?

I am not sure why Andy Davies has upgraded Kimi from 5th to 3rd in his little championship of drivers most likely to lose their seat. But then again, Andy Davies boldly predicted Montoya would beat Kimi in 2006, he is not a big fan

Yes, he was faster on self-made intermediates.

See how wrong you are there. Ferrari screwd Felipe in quali and we have more than a couple of posts blaming him. Ferrari screwd Kimi in the race and we don't have any post blaming him much less two pages. In light of this I would say Massa's fans 1 x 0 Kimi's fans.

WTF? What place will be logical for Kimi? What's completely wrong with this team? Equality? Or baby just need feeling support? What a crap really.

They're just putting a positive spin on a coincidental "pattern".

If I remember correctly, Kimi was first in 2007, third in 2008 so maybe this year he'll be second!

Or 5th?

Or 9th!

Gyus i think a little bit and i apologise. It must be a joke - first step after 2 consecutive zero and earlier FM said the same but wish podium not win. So Kolajani is two thumbs up Maybe they were so drunken after party about Baldi factories depart and wrote it.

Baldisseri in factory working in the next car updates team.... Massa tends not to be that sad, honestly.

Why would he be? baldi has about 18 years with ferrari... I don't think kimi is that sad either.

kids these days... :\

That's a good promotion, isn't it?

worse case, are the ones who intromit in the talk without interpreting. :\

Sorry, thought it was a forum, althou i do get a sense that "some" here say some ferrari personnel only develops the car towards massa... just so you know i know what some are already screaming about.

The quali was not good, but it was not a total catastrophe, I was expecting worse. I think that this time it went to Kimi quite clearly...

Is it 2-1 now for KR?

Yep...

Looks like 0-0 to me last time I checked. Who cares about brownie points in qualifying if they are scoreless and the car looks mid-field quality, at best?

I think the current state is hard for Felipe, because you need to nail every lap in qualifying, is not enough to relax and make a one fast one in the end. Having said that, it looks like the speed advantage has shifted back to Kimi in qualifying. In race it always was there.

The same applies for all drivers and teams. Just because you see some other team on top or some large gaps between drivers in some other teams, dont mean the drivers are doing better.

I would. Whether the car is capable of points or not is irrelevant. They could be driving F3 cars and I'd still be interested in who was doing better.

Sure, but I'm talking about Ferrari, not the other teams/drivers.

Having seen some of Kimi's laps, especially one of his qualifying attempts at Malaysia, you could see he nailed every corner, never missed an apex and was still slow.

The drivers are getting most out of the car, the speed just isn't there.

Kimi's qualifying seems to have improved relative to massa this year. He hasnt been off the pace yet, although its only been 3 races. In Australia the gap was less than a tenth and hes been ahead the last two races. He seems more solid over a lap now, where as in the previous two season he would stuff up or be lost when it counted.

Could you say the slicks are helping him, I know there is an issue regarding tyre wear and graining but over one lap, it's more predictable like the Michelines of old.

Unless a driver makes an obvious mistake, most laps will look like they were 'nailed'. The problem is that we dont know how much better those corners could have been taken in that same car, *especially* in regards to car setup.

I've seen laps of drivers in the same car, both seemingly 'on it' and hitting every apex and whatnot, but one driver was a couple or more tenths faster. You gotta remember that we're talking TENTHS of a SECOND here. That type of difference is very hard to tell even from an onboard camera. Its the tiny little things that make the difference. A meter or so different braking point. Slightly smoother release of the brake when trail braking into a corner. Getting the power down a split-second earlier. All of these things are SO hard to discern from an outside perspective.

Given Kimi's track record of fastest laps, a WDC title, and several "on it" years at mclaren, I would say he's getting pretty much all there is out of that car just now.

Fastest laps - dont see the relevance here. 10 fastest laps and only 2 wins pretty much tells me that he WASN'T able to get the most out of the car for the most part.

WDC - deserved, but not the most convincing WDC I've ever seen. Still not very relevant. Even Villeneuve and Hill got WDC's and I'm sure most people would agree that others could have done even better in those cars.

Years at Mclaren - I definitely think Kimi looked like a different driver at Mclaren. I'm a big proponent that the car somebody drives makes a huge impact on how confident you are with it, and hence, how well you perform in it. But he's not driving a Mclaren this year, and moreover, the cars of 2005 are long gone and we are in a different era. I think the most I can say is that I dont think he's that adaptable. Either way, it's still 100% irrelevant as to how much he's getting out the Ferrari this year.

i tend to agree,he seem in my opinion more focused less rattled than massa,i may be wrong

You could say that about any driver in any car in any situation so how is this relevant here?

I dont agree. You need an eye for it, but you can tell.

Obviously, the point is that we cant say that Kimi and Massa are definitely getting the most out of the car.

Some drivers are considered benchmarks, and I dont think Kimi or Massa can be considered such a thing nowadays. Kimi's good and Massa has markedly improved, but I still cant forget seeing how big of a difference there was from Schumi to Massa in 06, and then seeing how it that entirely disappeared when Kimi came in to replace him. Either Massa went from mediocre to all-time great in the space of a winter testing season, or Kimi is not nearly as good as some think.

Massa definitely improved.

And I suppose you think you have an eye for it and can definitively say that Kimi is getting 100% out of the car?

You're right that it can be noticed, but I dont think many people really have 'the eye' for it. Largely because people often see what they *want* to see, and with something where the most miniscule differences can mean large determinants, I have a hard time taking people's word for it when they say that somebody was truly 'on it'.

I'm not doubting that. But by *how much*? He may have gone from mediocre to good, but I certainly dont think he suddenly leapt from mediocre/good to top-level in the course of a winter testing season. It seems much more likely that a large part of the appearance of this 'improvement' has come from the lower standard of his teammate.

Well when you see someone on a forum saying a driver did a perfect lap you really have to take it with a pinch of salt as you dont know how good a judge they are. this argument's just getting a bit pointless though, imo that Ferrari is off the pace, you can think otherwise if you want.

Obviously you haven't actually been paying attention to what I've been saying if you think my point is that Ferrari isn't off the pace. I've said more than once that the car definitely isn't a winner.

My only point was that its a bit naive to think that what Kimi and Massa are getting out of the car is the most its capable of. The field is so very tight behind BrawnGP. If you remember back to Australia, the difference from 3rd to 10th was only a few tenths. Thats the kind of situation where a better driver can truly make a difference.

Fair enough. The current drivers are not gonna exceed the car's potential and put it further up the grid than it should be like a prime Schumacher would have done. But I dont think they did badly thus far, performance wise. I do think they are about where they should be. If the car was really capable of more and neither driver couldnt extract it, at least there would have been some glimpses here and there, a competitive sector time or whatever. I have seen nothing of this sort so far.

A lot of people at Ferrari have stated that they are amazed at how much Massa has improved and find it almost hard to believe at times. Still, I don't think Kimi is getting 100% out of the Ferrari and never has. My gut feeling (note that I am not claiming I'm right) says there is something fundamental about the car that stops him from achieving the level he was at during his McLaren days. I don't think it has anything to do with motivation, but there's something. If you look at how Kimi fared against Montoya, who was rated as high as anyone at that time, I doubt any driver would have gotten more out of the Mac than Kimi then. I just don't see that happening at Ferrari. Not this season or the next one. 2007 he was WDC, but speed-wise he wasn't really that impressive even then. I had no "how did he do that?" moments like when he put that crappy Mac on pole 3 times during 2006.

I have to agree with that but that was the beauty of the Kimi + McLaren combination.

Had he stayed at McLaren, I have no doubts, the 2007 title would have been his easily. Alonso would already be in a Ferrari too.

I did hear whispers about McLaren setting up the car and telling him to go out and drive, the natural characteristics of the McLaren were perfectly suited to him as well.

Unfortunately, Ferrari, I guess expect him to be a MS and go out and there and perfect it himself and drive around the problems.