oh yes they can.

tachyos, les chats noir, team plymouth and team scotracer are exerting their influence, getting both engines into the top 10. now, how to remove kubica? still, no kers on his, so no worries about start, indeed the first kers would be heidfeld, with the 11th fastest time...

muah ha ha

but heidfeld could start 5th, hmm, two rows leap with kers puts him into... first!!!

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on season progression, the differentiator will be when to switch to ferrari/bmw/mclaren. will anyone take the gamble on switching as soon as mclaren launch a new car?

I think it may be a while until ferrari/bmw/mclaren can best consistently faster than Brawn so it might be quite a gamble to switch...however the reason I managed to gain a lot of ground from barely in the top 30 at race 4 to 8th position by the seasons end was dropping Rosberg for Kubica before Canada and dropping Kubica for Hamilton before Silverstone, so cannot be too conservative... keeping an eagle eye on the free practice times and stint lengths will be more important than ever.

Don't You Forget About Me

Simple Minds

Crappidy-crap-crap.

Why the bobbins didn't I pick any Brawn related selections in my line up? This has all the hallmarks of being a long ol' season!

Lemme guess who you picked

My quali results were satisfying ;)

I'm certain the other teams will in a few races time (some say Barcelona) build a similar diffuser or adjust in some way allowing them to catch up to the Brawns. I read the McLaren was in fact built to just stick in a similar diffuser, hence why they didn't protest it.

The key in this game will be to predict these things, shifts in strengths, however by then we all might have a budget allowing us to pick as we want, so yes it could be a very tight season.

Aaahhh!!! What a race! Very exciting! Thank you Vettel for justifying my choice of Williams engine, hehe.

What a battle we have on our hands this season! Record first round score of 154 for 8 teams!
...and Tachyos, les chats noir, team scotracer, team plymouth and lachine machine, titans of F1 manager, all among those 8!

It's gonna be interesting to see the results after Malaysia, who'll make which update to the team!

le chat noir, I have a feeling this is gonna be closer and even more fierce than last year!

Team Scotracer Press Release

With the recent team name change from Ecosse Racing we expected to suffer the teething troubles of all major teams in their first race under a new banner. However, with a conservative selection of drivers and parts Team Scotracer can leave Australia with heads held high that it holds joint-lead in the World Championship as well as the Atlas F1 BB series.

Despite a poor start for Rubens we managed to consolidate the position with some strategy changes mid-race and with a little help from a safety car period as well as other drivers' mistakes we come away with near-maximum points for the weekend.

Next stop Malaysia; with a change to the power train over the coming week, we may experience some problems but the added performance should lead us to victory.

Team Plymouth Press Release

Team Plymouth is very satisfied with the result of an exciting race, leaving it in joint first position. There were certainly issues along the way after Barichello's bad start, but Vettel and Kubica's coming together certainly helped its cause and vindicated the last minute change from Red Bull to Williams engines. With a healthy bank balance meaning that lot of options are available for both itself and its competitors to either upgrade the power train to a choice of any of the front running engines or perhaps save up for a chassis change by race 3...whoever moves correctly will be able to break free of the group.

so i expect like many at the top i went with a toyota chassis upgrade.

so much to take into account in making that decision though.

boding well so far tho.


all you other hidden teams, now is the time to reveal!

Well, I was about to buy the Toyota chassis, but decided to wait for 3rd practice, then by accident I saw they closed selections at 07.00 (swedish time) and I was there just checking 07.15!

Missed it by 15 minutes! Have to trust Sutil and Fisi will score for me now, hehe! I'm just as bad as Ferrari when it comes to timing!!!

Well well, the season is long....use your (likely) head start you get on me now le chat! I'll hunt you down like last year!!!

from quali i have 59, tachyos a meagre 38. thats $1.05m

yum.

at least two other teams with same line up, possibly 4.

however its the ones with toyota chassis and red bull engines that need watching, sure they'vo got less in quali, but those redbulls will surely finish ahead of the williams in the race...

or will the diffusor make a great difference in the rain?
but then the redbull has a philosophy all of its own...

(other query, not really for here, but wills the kers be muted in rain and cause wheelspin if used?)

Not too sure about that.
I have Glock, Toyota chassis and RedBull engine and still only ranked 48 of 68.
A competitive bunch, this

Team Plymouth's manager was in the firing line today after a decision made to switch to Red Bull chassis while inexplicable forgetting about Vettel's 10 place grid penalty...here's hoping for better in the race

i didn't check names, just have, and was talking really about wales grand prix who has the button-barrichello line up too and lie 5 points off the leaders, 6 after quali. supposing they finish 5-6 (the redbulls) and rosberg 7th, they gain 7 points on the leaders - giving them the lead! by one point! it is close

looking good. sadly no longer leading the overall league, there are 46 others 2 points ahead.

but still leading the atlas league, with 2 others only. lovely gap to perennial rivals tachyos - that'll teach you not to miss deadlines!

but only two ahead of the pesky toyota-red bulls

what will we all upgrade to?

quite enjoying the speed of improvement now!

Yeah, this hurts a lot, could have had a beautiful score there!
Maybe I could work for Ferrari?... judging by my timing and strategy prowess

At least I've got a shitload of money now to spend "wisely" before China!

Yay! 4th

Time to reveal what we're all doing again now the database is closed.

In an attempt to separate myself in the lead for both Atlas and Overall I took what I thought would be the riskier strategy of Brawn chassis and Red Bull engine, upgrading from Toyota Williams. There were a lot of options but if Brawn go 1-2, RB 5-6 with Toyota in the middle, its worth more points than other available upgrades. However RB haven't scored well so far. In Overall there are around 5 teams with open formations that have made the same decision, and with todays quali looks like it should pay off nicely.

One chap though has Vettel Button Toyota Red Bull, which has two points more than me from quali. He's two points behind at present though, and I fully expect the Brawns to overhaul the Red Bulls in the race. Fingers crossed they all finish.

Now, what are the rest of you up to?

Again another 50:50 decision that backfired for Team Plymouth- Was so close to lining up a Red Bull chassis and Brawn engine combo for this race though ended up going for a Brawn chassis and keeping the Williams engine- hope Red Bull have some reliability/tyre wear problems in race or else I may lose further ground

Button and Barrichello with a Redbull chassis and Brawn engine.

Tachyos is running Button, Barri, Brawn chassis, Toyota engine. Thus 27+13+5=45 pts from qualy.

Let's hope those Toyotas can beat the Red bulls! Can't allow myself to slide much further back...

But what an interesting season this can be! Suddenly Alonso is up there, Red Bulls getting strength, Toyota seemingly losing some, who knows what happens next race?

64 pts from qualy. Let's see those Redbulls get 3rd and 4th behind the Brawns.

Well, that's a surprise.

Just keep Ultra behind me. Tie with Perfect still. Who is this btw?

I imagine Ultra was unable to go Brawn/Red Bull and just as well as Red Bull/Brawn was worth so much more. Annoyingly meaning that in Overall there's 22 points to the top guys, who may also have had such a limited choice. But still, 6th out of 10,000 isn't bad...

Tachyos, you're nearly 100 points behind. Time for new management?

yeah, this sucks! Lost even more ground.

This manager has some turnaround to do to save his job!

But I think I've already hatched a brilliant idea for the next race, but it will remain a secret for now...

Team Plymouth Press Release

It was groundhog day again for Team Plymouth's manager Will as misplaced faith in Nico Rosberg and the bloody Williams team sent him plummeting down the standings again, this time to 12th position in the early season, having come so close to doing a Red Bull/Brawn engine split rather than go for the Brawn chassis and keep the Williams engine prior to this race. However like McLaren Team Plymouth will not give up with memories from last season's recovery and potentially lots of changes to be happening this season. The team will be able to make the necessary changes to hopefully shore up its standing next race, with Rubens Barichello looking particularly vulnerable from Vettel's rise.

It's early days.

Practice didn't give too much insight.

Who's taking risks and who's playing it safe. We shall see on Sunday.

49 points from qualy.

Seems like an all-Toyota clad team is the thing for this GP. Was in fact considering it in order to catch up, but thought it too risky.

However we'll see tomorrow how the Brawns and Red Bulls go in the race, I think better compared to the Toyotas than today.

same as me.

looks like they'll pit trulli first, glock a lap later, vettel button hamilton alonso a lap later, barrichello massa rosberg a lap later, raikkonen a lap later

Team Plymouth's conservative choice has netted him a fairly decent 53 points which may halt the slide, hoping however that the Toyotas have long run tyre wear/brake problems in the race

Heard on TV that Trulli was in fact heavier than Glock, quite a remarkable pole lap then!

Button admitting that Brawn no longer has an edge over the RB's and Toyotas will certainly throw in more of the luck element in our championship when choosing team parts. Quite welcome I'd say, I might in fact stand a chance at catching up!

Atlas remains fairly status quo.
Overall slip to 14th.

Back to Europe, to the testing track at Barcelona. What do, what do? Two weeks to consider, but I think my mind's made up already. Even so, the upcoming Friday test will be the most important since Oz.

made it into the top 10% overall and the top50% on the Atlas scale....Hardcore bunch

Tachyos has managed to close the performance gap to the leaders. The points deficit didn't expand this time, it stays constant at 96 terrible points.

Seems like a lot of teams came up with the all-Brawn idea, so something audacious is required for the next GP.

Luckily it's now very unpredictable between RB, Toyota and Brawn, with seemingly Ferrari and McLaren edging closer.

This is exactly the moment Tachyos has been waiting for: The time for managerial masterstrikes has come!!!

Team Plymouth's Press Release

Team Plymouth would likely to congratulate its new signing Sebastien Vettel and Red Bull engines that worked well on their debut, heavily outscoring the outgoing Rubens Barrichello and Williams engine, particularly in terms of race performance, nicely stabilising the gap to the leaders and rising back into the top 10 of the Atlas F1 standings. This was a particularly strong scoring round all round for a lot of the teams so the decision between playing conservative or safe will be paramount for Barcelona. Luckily judicious stepwise buying has left the team with a good budget to make any necessary last minute changes after Barcelona's Friday practice.

The upside down grids and race results this year have made the game more even but less interesting at the same time IMHO. The race to be able to afford top drivers and cars was over already after a couple of races. Now the rest of the season is only about selecting the right pieces for each weekend. The money management aspect that I found interesting is gone.

As the teams develop that could change.... Or not.

With top placements possible from race #1 onwards, if McLaren or Ferrari suddenly finds a lot of pace I (and I would imagine most players) wouldn't need to wait to buy them. The game used to be played in 3 phases: 1. scrambling for any points, 2. pacing the upgrades, 3. optimizing per race results by switching top equipment. This year we went straight to phase #3. It's still interesting, but I preferred the other option...

i think jarno who builds it, really got the form wrong. but then it was hard to judge.

it'll be better again for phases 1 and 2 next year.

even so, its interesting how many atlas people got it wrong this year already. but i do think spain could see a significant change. and at some point we will need to swap to hamilton i think, maybe not ferrari though. what with it being so tight at the top, the timing of that could be excellent or catastrophic. think it must be hard to catch up if significantly behind now though. you know, if you're happening to manage tachyos or something

This year we have no clear goal to head towards as the rate of development really makes it hard to judge over anything more than a race-by-race basis (well apart from Brawn pace). I think Barcelona will be a turn up for the books.

Tachyos is pleased with the qualifying effort, scoring 87 points.

It looks good for the race tomorrow, but we shall see what our competitors have come up with for this race.

i scored the same. straight after bahrain i had swapped barri for vettel, then swapped back late last night. i expect him now to overhaul vettel in the race. barri does look on it. and i think we may see some mistake from vettel too.

whatever happens, tachyos can't close the gap!

Team Scotracer scored 88 points and is quite pleased with the result.

Indeed it looks like that!
I was close to going with a full Toyota team in the hope they would lock out the front again and keep positions in the race. Unfortunately there's not much room for opportunistic decision making, since Brawn and RB still being the top 2 teams.
But the season is long....I'll get you one way or another ;)

88 for me also ties me for with le chat noir.

ooh interesting!

what do you have then? lemme know so i can know what's happening in the race. i'm all brawn at the mo.

and with the amount of money we all have i won't have any clue as to what you'll have at the next race anyway

Button, Vettel and all Brawn.

ah, i actually have 85. miscount. i wonder if bruno miscounted too, or has something other than all brawn.

you're two ahead going into the race ultra, and i might have a sleepless night rueing sacking vettel.

i thought when his car twitched in the final section, my premonition of a mistake was right, but he still went faster than barri. still if barri turns it around and goes barri 2 vettel 3, then you'll end up four behind...

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just seen weights. barri lighter than vettel. looks like i'll regret my late decision to revert. unless vettel throws it off the road. (go on!).

massa looks quick. perhaps time to switch to ferrari soon.

hmm, could be 8 points off the lead after tomorrow.

Drivers crash. Differentials in score are hard to predict when one considers that.