Formula 1 - The Neverending Thread

Koji carevi.

 

Sta smo naucili danas:

Da ako je Prost bio Le profesour, Glavinjo je primarius, bez obzira na uslove i srecu, odvesti onakvu kantu od bolida koja se jedva provlaci u Q3 do pobjede, mogu samo rijetki i po ko zna koji put je pokazao da je jaci od bolida i 97% vozaca koji su ikad zakoracili u F1.

Da je Perezu pobjedu uzeo niko drugi do njegovog inzinjera utrke, samo sto mu je rekao "be carefoul, we need this pos" lik je izletio sa staze, inace je imao pobjedu u djepu.

Da i Button nekad nema srece.

Da Merc ima krkanski bolid po uzoru na cestovne Black series, smijesno je kako dere gume.

Da je Raikonnen Kimi apsolutna legenda, lik nije sjeo dvije godine u bolid da bi na drugoj utrci sezone odvezao najbrzi krug :lol: :lol: :lol:

Da je Webber naucio startat a Vettel gurnuo prst u ...

Da treba izbaciti kišu iz F1, i Eclestonea isto .

Massa jarane gledaj gdje ti je teammate zavrsio.

 

Ne samo najbrzi krug nego i prvi krugovi sa Pirelli gumama na kisi i pravio je strasna vremena. Sta rece mate, nema vise vatre u njemu?

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Vec su krenule price kako su se italijani digli da smijene Massu, u igri su Trulli, Sutil i Perez.
http://www.yallaf1.com/2012/03/21/under-fire-massa-on-his-way-out-from-ferrari/

 

Šteta pereza, taman je mogla završnica biti zanimljiva. Dobro je pa je pala kiša, inače bih propustio utrku

 

Nije on nikad ni imao vatre, on je ICE, posebna vrsta

 

"We'd only done one installation lap and it was a bit of an odd feeling to go directly into the race with tyres we hadn't run.

"I just tried to stay with the others and stay on the circuit, and then pushed harder and harder. It took a few laps for me to pick up speed when I changed to dries, but after that it was OK."

Nakon dvije godine pauze :lol: :lol: :lol: Kimi je sa druge planete.

In your face Schumaher :smt006

 

Pa normala kad je Kimi vozio sa najboljima od najboljih u reliju i sad je svoju vožnju podigao na viši nivo F1 mu dođe ko trening

 

@Haker: ima li gorih fanova od Kimijevih, eventualno Kubicini :lol:

Ima drugi najbrzi bolid, sam kaze, vratio se na vrlo slicna pravila koja su bila kad je otisao, za protivnika ima rookie-a, nije nista posebno jos ni napravio.

 

Napravio je vise u dvije utrke nego lubenica u dvije godine.

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Sampionski, nema sta.
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Najbolji dio ove sezone je sto Vettel nije na vrhu, a to se ocito i kod njega osjeti

 

Ovo je najbolje od najboljeg. Sest sampiona, niko ne dominira i razmak u brzini nije nikad bio manji. Dugo se cekala ovakva sezona.

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Da. A moguce je da ce svaki od njih okusiti pobjedu ove sezone. Recimo Kimi uzima Spa.

 

Hajmo sad pretjeravati :lol:

 

:smt005

Da te vidim ako Lotus krene unazad tokom sezone, a dobre su sanse da hoce ako je suditi po prosloj.

 

Prošla je bila promašaj u svemu, od vozača pa do koncepta bolida. Imam strašan interview sa Markom Sladeom, kupio ga sa Autosporta za jedan ojro. Stavit ću ga kasnije na forum.

 

Slade has been around the block. He started trackside in 1994 with Martin Brundle at McLaren, then Mark Blundell, then was Mika Hakkinen's race engineer from '98 until the Finn retired at the end of 2001. He ran Raikkonen from 2002 until Kimi left McLaren at the end of '06.

"I then had Fernando Alonso for a year, which I really enjoyed until he unfortunately left, then Heikki Kovalainen for two seasons, then Vitaly Petrov for a season here at Renault, then Mercedes with Michael, which lasted only 10 races before politics got in the way a little bit. Nothing to do with Michael, I hasten to add, he was a pleasure to work with."

Slade had gone into a factory-based role at Mercedes after so long on the road, Hungary 2011 being his 300th grand prix. He was just getting used to seeing more of his family when he got a call from Sir Jackie Stewart, now consulting to Lotus owners Genii Capital, about Raikkonen.

Having worked with so many championship-winning drivers, Slade knew how motivating that is.

"Kimi is probably the one I've had the closest relationship with," he says, "although I felt I got on well with all of them. With guys of that calibre you know that the effort you put in is going to be returned in spades by their commitment. That's what makes it all worthwhile.

"I had really liked my year with Renault as it then was – they're a really enjoyable bunch of people to work with – so the prospect of working for this team, with Kimi, was the best it could be, really.

"I think they went through a rough patch last year and people were naturally a little concerned about the future. A lot of them have kids and you have to look out for yourself a little bit. Which is a shame because we're in really good shape I think. Or that's the impression I get."

Technical chief James Allison candidly admitted that he would not have gone the front-exhaust route in 2011 if he'd known what he later discovered about the Pirelli tyres. So, from a flawed, disconnected 2011 chassis, and with impressive simulation and computing capability, the potential for a step was there. And while Lotus perhaps could not replace Robert Kubica, it needed to get as close as possible.

"I think some people were not sure Kimi was coming back for the right reasons," Slade says, "but I was pretty confident that if he was calling me up to ask if I wanted to get involved, he wasn't going to let me down and was completely serious.

"I never worried about that and I don't think he's changed. I think he's the same young kid who was a superstar when he arrived on the scene. There was instantly a maturity in his driving and an approach to engineering the car that outstrips many of his contemporaries."

Lotus was very quickly convinced by Raikkonen in testing.

"He looks as fit as he's ever been and is absolutely at the top of his game as far as I can see," Slade opines.

Experienced Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane, 23 years with the team, was highly impressed that, never having driven an F1 car without refueling, Raikkonen so readily adapted to the feel of 150kg of fuel.

"We went from 30-160kg to show him the sort of difference he could expect, although from qualifying to race it's even bigger than that. We calculated the time difference from fuel effect and his first lap was absolutely spot on that difference.

"That was impressive, then he did another 20 laps with just the expected 0.1s per lap tyre degradation. He certainly impressed me from day one."

Talk to Permane about the power steering issues experienced in practice at Albert Park and he says it's nothing like as big a problem as it apparently was for Jarno Trulli at Caterham last year. Raikkonen was finding it a bit heavy when there were quick directional changes or steering corrections to be made.

"This race [Malaysia] is the one where he really seems to be back to how I remember him," says Slade. "In Melbourne he was still finding his feet a little bit and there were some things to do with the set-up that I thought, well, once you're up to speed you won't want it like this but we'll leave it for now.

"This weekend, though, he's making the sort of comments about how he wants it changed that I was expecting. That means he's properly on it again."

At both Benetton and Ferrari, Michael Schumacher was famed for wanting a car with a 'pointy' front end, and his ability to cope with oversteer. When Raikkonen arrived at Ferrari, however, they were astonished to discover that in that regard, he was Michael with knobs on.

It's a fallacy, though, to think of Kimi as all sideways blood and thunder, perhaps exacerbated by his fondness for rallying and the odd busy qualifying lap, one of which we saw in Malaysia.

"He's very smooth, actually," Slade explains. "And that means he can often handle a car that's a bit sharper than other drivers, who are more aggressive with their steering inputs, would be able to cope with. I think that's a strength of his."

And the others?

"He's not fazed by what goes on around him and he's very good at giving feedback in terms of what we need to improve.

"He's very independently minded and doesn't want people doing stuff for him. He wants to put his own helmet on, to sort the radio connector out himself… doesn't want people fussing around him.

"That all gives him a single-minded determination that is very good for the job. There have been times when his car's been on high stands with a minute to go before his qualifying run and he's just sitting there assuming we'll get it all sorted.

"Other drivers would get all flustered but with Kimi you almost have to tap him on the helmet to wake him up, and off he goes."

So the Iceman epithet is appropriate, then?

"In most circumstances. But when he wants to get a point across, he makes it very strongly and it can sound somewhat agitated. He's not, though; he simply wants to make sure that nobody's in any doubt as to what he wants. I can imagine that some people might take that the wrong way."

After the unsatisfactory end to Kimi's time at Ferrari, and two years away, I wondered whether Slade had detected any sense of Raikkonen wanting to show people, having something to prove.

"Yep," he nods. "He's always been a bit of a rebel without a cause. Definitely. That's part of the independently minded thing and sometimes it might even be good for him to have something to rail against! If it was all too easy then maybe he'd find it a bit dull."

Raikkonen has never been a fan of F1's peripheral stuff, the media and PR side, even if it does pay the bucks.

"He just wants to get in the car, drive it fast, work with the engineers and drive it faster," Slade says. "The rest of it he just sees as an annoyance and a distraction.

"It is necessary to do the other stuff and, as I understand, once he's been convinced that he needs to do it, he's very good at it. But he just wants to do as little of that as possible.

"I can understand that. I'm not saying I agree with it completely, but I can understand why he would see it that way. And at the end of the day teams take him on, they know what they're getting and have to work with it."

I spoke to Slade on Sunday morning in Malaysia and on mentioning Friday's long-run times that were second only to Vettel, there was a knowing smile and a glint in the eye.

"Absolutely," he said, "and I think his Friday pace was far below what we can actually achieve." Again, that pace was masked in qualifying by a five-place grid penalty for a changed gearbox, and then mixed race conditions.

In the drying final laps of the grand prix, nobody was quicker than Raikkonen. On a set of Pirelli primes, he lapped three tenths quicker than anyone else.

Does a man of Slade's experience see Lotus as a team that could actually mount a championship challenge?

"There's still a lot of good people who have been here a long time. It's a team that can challenge, absolutely.

"Obviously you need the car to do it, it has been a little while and we need to get back on our feet again after some difficult times. But I think everybody is back on track and with sufficient development there's no reason why we can't be right back up there."

Don't bet against Raikkonen winning a race or two in 2012.

 

True Kimi fan