Hamashima saying even the supersoft doesn't degrade here, and the concrete dust and general muck means no overtaking - whatever the shape of the track, it looks like they can't brake off line. Or even run off line if they can help it.

So Qualy will be all important. One tyre change and no passing.

FP3 on the other hand looks set to be quite interesting. More interesting than the race...

So Red Bull are running their F-duct, Merc, Renault and Ferrari are running their exhaust driven diffusers.

Do we know about the Renault Merc and Ferrari F-ducts? I've lost track.

Kindly can anybody PM me any live streaming link....


Many Many Thanks
Rgrds
Zavi

Should be an interesting day ahead, hopefully will somewhat compensate for the inevitable procession tomorrow

Glock with problems already

Only if the whole grid gets mixed up for some reason; red flags i.e.

Quite depressing comments from Hamshima san there - however these are racing drivers, if the front four (Red Bulls & Maccas) and maybe Alonso are all within six seconds of each other late into the race, I think their racer's instincts will take over and they will at least TRY to find a way to pass. Just cause the theoretical model points to a dull race, it doesn't necessarily follow that will result. I know Bahrain was bad, but I don't think a bad race tomorrow is a fait accompli, albeit a distinct possibliity...

Plus Alonso-Schumacher (Imola 2005) proved you don't need actual overtaking to generate drama, just the constant attacking/defending in such as situation (as with Mansell/Senna Monaco 92) can be entertaining/compelling television...

why was alonso not until now on track.
had he some problems?

Webber is looking a bit faster than Vettel this weekend.More consistent on the long runs and may even be shading him over a lap.

Alonso is looking like the man to beat though.Would be happy for him if he can win his home race.

Kubica

http://twitter.com/LucasdiGrassi

In an unsurprising move from a Virgin branded team, some bright spark has cottoned on to the possibility of getting some publicity by parodying Vettel's penchant for naming his chassis!

"Good morning. Sunny day in Valencia. Fat Veronica had a good sleep and is ready to go!" LOL!

LOL @ DiGrassi calling his car Fat Veronica... I saw that tweet earlier and had to dig into the BBC live text for more info...

God Almighty, the timings on F1.com are awful. Kubica and Webber have the exact same sector times yet apparently theres 0.150 between them. Would it be so hard to show more detailed times?

Yes, it pisses me off too ...

Ive been wanting that for ages

Also...

Glock's car is called Virginia....

According to Bernie there's not enough demand yet for more detailed live timing.

Hopefully Kubica and Sutil can ruin all the top teams weekends, make things interesting. They're going well right now.... but it really doesn't help Petrov and Luizzi, moreso Luizzi

Nowadays, F1 has simply become too tight for one decimal. Two decimals would be awesome.

Yay for almost breaking the 1:38 mark.

Interesting top 10, with Kubica, Sutil, Barrichello &Liuzzi all featuring!
Qualifying, bring it on

Alonso, Webber, Vettel and Kubica for pole.

God, please doesn't let Red Bull take another pole, pls pls pls. Give the pole to Pole

PS. Where to hell is Mercedes and McLaren !!??

I'm sure Kubica and Alonso will challenge the RedBulls. It will be very interesting...

Worrying Ferrari didn´t improve with softs. Hope they fix it for Qualy

What's with McLarens? The track was supposed to siut them. I don't want to rule them out but it's P9 and P10

Mercedes are on the 2nd row, in the hands of Sutil!

Pole for Pole !! Go Kubica ;) I hope Petrov will do it better.

Great drive from Alonso and Force India.

Where is Mclaren?

I can't wait for quali.....

I don't know, but Mercedes team reminds me of BMW somehow. I hope to be proved wrong because otherwise they can end like the guys from 'Munich' sooner or later.

Looking at the pace of Kubica, Barrichello and the Force Indias, I'm not ruling out a shock Q2 exit. We've seen Button only make it to Q3 by the skin of his teeth a couple of times, so he might have problems.

Pole position fight could be a close one...personally my prediction is that we may see an end of the finger-waving drought.

Me too.

He looks really hooked up this weekend..

Maybe RedBull has put extra weight in mark Webber's car to advantage Seb lolz.....

This is what I'm thinking but I'm also gonna give them a full proper season. They bought out Brawn pretty late and probably didn't get to throw their entire HQ at this car which was most likely being developed by BGP sometime last season, now Mercedes have a proper lead time to make their own car for next season as they want it, they should be much better next season. This is me being optimistic for them, I wouldn't be surprised if they fall down just like BMW, Honda* and Toyota did.


*Well... they are Honda

Here's hoping for some luck for Vettel for a change.

Don't worry he will blow it

Sectors http://www.formula1.com/results/season/201...ctor_times.html

Sutil fastest in the long, long middle sector. Comprised of the longest 2 straights and the twisty 2nd gear bridge and the other horrible 2nd/3rd gear complex section that splits the straights.

McLaren are losing half of their time in the final sector which is only a quarter of the lap time. This is the section with the only high speed corners on the track so we can assume they are struggling with downforce. McLaren are hardly dominating in the speedtrap either. The F Duct doesnt seem to be giving McLaren the advantage many thought.

Mclaren has no upgrades this race. And it's only practice.

OK, it's understandable (but being beaten by Williams and FI is quite surprising), but where is Mercedes ?? They have "large" upgrade for this race and it's not visible at all.

If they are outside the top10 in qualifying, then I'd be worried. But I wouldn't read too much in these times personally.

Kovalainen only 0.6 behind the Sauber of De La Rosa.

Barrichello 6th - Not a lot wrong with the Cosworth then...

1.6 seconds?

Well that was different. I suspect some teams were running very low fuel and most of the top teams a bit more.

Sorry, I'm waiting for my new spectacles and my Sinclair calculator is playing up - I'll hop into my C5 and go down to the shops for new Leclanché cells...

Is there any chance we'll see someone start on supersofts and try a long first stint instead of a short one?

No, he would have to pit as soon as othesr because, those on fresh rubbers will be making much faster times and lapfrog him in pits.

Forgive me for being silly, but aren't the softs faster than the hard tyres?
Assuming that the degradation is minimal, could it be that the softs to maintain their speed advantage for longer and push teams into a longer first stint than we might expect?

I'm just guessing, I'd hate this to be Bahrain repeated.

The softs are quicker but not as consistent. Seeing as how both tyres must be run it would make little sense to run the softs for so long when you have a more durable tyre that can take the weight of a heavily fueled car for much longer.

Oh damn, I better just get it done and expect another Bahrain. I might get surprised and hardly get disappointed... :/

Just flicked over to the qualifying program on the BBC...for gods sake Jake put the iPad down!

I didn't even notice it! He's got a cover on it I see, still iPad is creeping into business, imagine it could be handy to a reporter.

Some chance I'd guess. The SS has to be basically faster than the Medium, at some point a shiny new Medium will be faster presumably, but that might be quite late on by the sound of what Bridgestone are saying. The SS could stay fast for a long time.