2015 Australian Grand Prix *Spoilers*

[legion]

I was expecting this kind of attrition last season, not this season.

It looks like McLaren has taken another step backwards with the new engine. Red Bull was surprisingly weak.

Sauber and Ferrari have improved. Mercedes still has the best car.

[tevake]

Well the race was better than the last race at Indy, but not a lot.
The FIA. Sure expects a lot to come to them for an event like this.
Sure hope the season doesn't go on with this sort of races.

Another season of racing for third

[yellowperil]

A good race IMO. Good to see some talented rookies and for a change sitting in good cars. The Sauber looking very racy.

Also good to see the Governor doing the winners interviews, they seemed to
be very pleased to see him, "thought you were taller" was brave of Ham.

Perhaps the Ferrari engineers should take a look at Vettels head size specs
and get a cap built for him that fits.

The Merc looks like it might be hard to beat again this year.

Oh, and those trophies are great. Would love to have one (won)!

[herr_oberst]

Originally Posted by yellowperil

The Merc looks like it might be hard to beat again this year.

Could be the understatement of the season, and the season has barely started.

[yellowperil]

See above.

[Don Plumley]

Originally Posted by yellowperil

Perhaps the Ferrari engineers should take a look at Vettels head size specs and get a cap built for him that fits.

I thought the same thing.

Amazing showing by the rookies. Shame for both Kimi and Verstappen's retirements. Was great to watch Nasr go W2W in the first corners. Between the improvement in Ferrari, continued strength by Williams, and the Sauber surprise, I think we will see some interesting racing - especially on tight tracks where the Merc's speed advantage can be equalized a bit.

[DaveE]

Lots of crying after the race. Christian Horner, who dominated for 4 seasons, wants the FIA to equalize performance, Massa crying that they aren't getting the same engine the works Mercedes uses and wondering why Mercedes want to help Ferrari. Lewis disappointed that Arnold is so short...


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[Henry Schmidt]

Originally Posted by DaveE

Lots of crying after the race. Christian Horner, who dominated for 4 seasons, wants the FIA to equalize performance, Massa crying that they aren't getting the same engine the works Mercedes uses and wondering why Mercedes want to help Ferrari. Lewis disappointed that Arnold is so short...


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I'm not certain that Horner's complaint isn't justified. When Red Bull was dominant, the rules allowed the weaker teams to design there way to more competitive cars.
With the new homologation rules for engines, it looks like if your design is flawed you are stuck with it. Horner claims the Renault engine is 100 horse power off the pace. At this level of design, I doubt Renault will be able to "tune" their engine to ever be close given the engine limit and restrictive rules. If F1 is not careful they could end up a single engine series......yikes!!! How bad would that suck?

It looks like Horner is saying out loud what Vettel knew last year.....

[jyl]

Hmm. So is it worth me (a cord cutter) trying hard to get access to F1 TV in 2015?. Or do you guys predict another snoozer?. (I slept through half the races I watched in 2014.)

[motion]

I'm predicting a boring season. Hammy has won 7 of the last 8. Looks like he has Rosberg under control. They both had the engines turned down the entire race. Coulthard speculated that they could have lapped the entire field had they wanted to. I'm not pumped for this season at all.

[tevake]

Yep, the on air team tries to build some excitement about the race for third.
Not really easy to do.

Yes there are some new young guns with skills. And there will be some good dicing for position mid pack. And that may be enough for the hardcore fans.
But I too found myself dosing thru some of the races last year.

It was interesting reading Hartmut Kristen's comments in a resent Panorama article about the lack of fun in the F1 Scene even years ago. This was in comparison to the sports car racing world. Seemed grim even then.

Sport is supposed to be fun.

Cheers Richard

[lowyder993s]

Originally Posted by motion

Coulthard speculated that they could have lapped the entire field had they wanted to. I'm not pumped for this season at all.

If you know that...pm me so I can get the Skye Feed. I CAN'T seem to get that schit right on my computer...proxy server and all. Their stuff is top shelf compared to to NBCSMEGMA...

[GG Allin]

When spoken by an Englishman, Felipe Nasr sure sounds like Felipe Massa.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by motion

I'm predicting a boring season. Hammy has won 7 of the last 8. Looks like he has Rosberg under control. They both had the engines turned down the entire race. Coulthard speculated that they could have lapped the entire field had they wanted to. I'm not pumped for this season at all.

How is it different when Ferrari won almost every race? When Schumi was on form and the cars were just plugging around they were were faster than everyone. Same with red bull and Vettle.

How long has it been since two different manufacturers really went head to head for the title?

[yellowperil]

Both Saubers in the points, 14 total is pretty impressive. Plus they passed some fast cars, Daniel Riccardo, for one. The car and drivers lived up to expectations I think. Good looking car too.

Too bad for Pastor getting wrecked, wasn't his fault this time. He might have had a good race, we'll never know.

[motion]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

How is it different when Ferrari won almost every race? When Schumi was on form and the cars were just plugging around they were were faster than everyone. Same with red bull and Vettle.

You're right, of course

I don't think Ferrari ever had this much of a gap on the field back then, and I also give them more credit for the Todt/Brawn/Schumacher coup d'etat, rather than just all out HP.

[VincentVega]

I was expecting this kind of attrition last season, not this season.

Same here, really surprising how few cars actually finished.

Pretty impressive how Sauber turned what could have been a terrible situation into a pretty solid result. I do like the simple appearance of the Sauber car too.

[Deschodt]

Kinda shocking that last year with all this new tech more cars finished than this year ! You'd think by year 2 they'd master this more... Disappointments all around for me. All in all, I respect Mercedes' achievements but it's gonna kill the sport. Everybody knows Hamilton will win this championship unless he breaks a leg coming off his jet and is sidelined for a month. Then.... Rosberg will still lose it with one race to go ;-)

- Bummed Mercedes is so far ahead (they're not even pushing that hard)
- Bummed Williams is further behind (jokes made that maybe they don't have the exact same engine)
- Bummed Suzie Wolff didn't get a dispensation to run - god knows the grid could have used more cars and we'd know if she's OK or not (I suspect not, but hey..)
- Bummed about McLaren. It may come together but not this year... Fernando must be wondering if he will ever pick a winning team again ;-) Him staying home to recover makes a lot more sense all of a sudden ;-)
- Sad for Renault: *Countless* manufacturer titles, they clearly can build ICE engines, but not KERS !!!
- RebdBull's sour grapes: Jeezus Horner, quit whining and get to work...

I love F1, but this is gonna be boring... If you wanna keep the current engines formula, warts and all, PLEASE STOP with the *bull$hit* Token system and let the teams test at will, let the manufacturers supply as many engines as they want! Cost savings my a$$. They spend the $ in CFD, sims, wind tunnel and the things suck on track. If they fold or leave the sport, where's the savings ? Let them run, test days used to be open to the public too...sell the tickets, everybody wins... clearly lots of teams out there need to run more! No savings to be had killing the show... and nobody will catch up under the current regs, it cannot be done when engineers have limited upgrade paths and no testing...

[Deschodt]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

How is it different when Ferrari won almost every race? When Schumi was on form and the cars were just plugging around they were were faster than everyone. Same with red bull and Vettle.

You make a valid point. But I'd like to think that back then, other teams had *a shot* at catching up. Nowadays, teams have a hand tied behind their backs with the stupid token system. For them to catch up to Mercedes at this point, they would need Merdeces to stop improving their car for about a year or 2. Which won't happen.

No testing, no tokens, limited updates. Status quo. The way F1 is losing teams and viewers, I really think they should drop these so called "cost savings" and let engineers to their thing.

[motion]

Horner has a point. When they had the advantage over the field, concessions were given to other teams to catch up.

I think Alonso will have a headache and dizziness for the remainder of the year