Getting a little ahead of your self aren't ya Alex

True, But the Ferrari and the McMercs are quick enough to beat every other team except Brawn having said that though I believe Ferrari, Mclaren, Toyota, Williams, RBR, Renault, BMW are within a couple of tenths of each other Brawn however is easily a half second quicker than the rest of the pack

 

I'd have to disagree about the McLarens being faster than most. Ferrari might be faster if they can keep their cars on the track, but Hamilton wasn't exactly reeling Vettel and Kubica in before their crash. The car is probably the slowest part of McLaren's equation and without Hamilton absolutely driving the wheels off the MP4-24 in the way only he can do it, there is no way that McLaren would've/should've finished where there did. It's hard to say what will happen in the future but I have a hunch that Malaysia will show us just how much quicker Brawn GP is over the rest of the field.

 

Don't any of you guys thin that Kubica would have caught Button had he not crashed? Heck, I think Vettel had a chance to reel him in. Kubica was gaining nearly a half a second per sector with 2 laps to go. He was making his move. I think the whole Brawn GP fairy tale would have been much less dramatic had Kubica and Vettel not taken each other out. In the end, Jenson and Rubens benefitted as much from that crash as Lewis did.

 

McLaren is not optimistic about its chances in Malaysia.

 

I dont think Jensen was on the limit towards the end, you could see that he wasn't even on the racing line going through some turns. If Vettel or Kubica had started to make inroads on him, I think he would have been able to pick up the pace.

I agree with the drama aspect though, although it was a fairy tale win. The 1/2 was just the icing on the cake that made them seem more dominant than they really were.

 

The way I see it the new regulations not only erased the performance gap between Ferrari, Mclaren and the rest of the field it put the once dominant duo on the back burner. The FIA knew what it was doing when they introduced the new regs; its only natural that the teams fighting for the championships will continue developing their 2008 cars while the rest of the field worked on the 09 car. Now if it weren't for the drastic changes in the rules the front runners wouldn't be hurting now because their 2009 car would be a tweaked and honed version of the 2008 car, in my estimation the 2008 car was atleast 85% of the 2007 car. However with the new regulations Ferrari and Mclaren payed the penalty of success by starting late on the 09 car while Brawn(Honda) arguably the most miserable car of 2008 is currently the leader because I believe Ross Brawn stoped development of the 08 car and started working on the 09 car as early as the Bahrain GP last year. Now this isn't sour grapes I applaud Ross Brawn as a genius because even BMW Sauber started development early I'd say by the end of the Montreal GP and Brawn managed blistering pace. The way things stand now there are three classes in F1 Brawn in a league of their own(leading the pace by half a second), next are the midfield with RBR, Williams, Toyota and BMW leading the midfield while Ferrari , Renault and Mclaren are at the end of the midfield in that order(not much between them a tenth or two at the most) and finally you have STR and force India in the back but the STR is much faster than the Force India yet not fast enough to compete in the midfield. You can bet that the boys at Fiorano and Woking are working tirelessly to remedy the situation but how soon will the solutions come with a ban on testing now that's the $64,000 question.

 

I'm staying with the same lineup as last race.

 

Alzilla - I plan to wake up!

 

I was thinking about the race a little more this morning. On Saturday I posted the laps that I predicted each driver would pit based *only* on fuel load. And boy was I wrong!!! Why was I wrong? Well, as we all saw, the teams had to adjust to a tire strategy over fuel strategy. Teams like Ferrari, who started on the soft compounds, came in after 9 laps! This threw the pack into even more uncertainty as it was unclear how the leaders, who started on the hard compounds, would manage at the end of the race. So my post this morning is on Bridgestone and tire compounds.

I don't know what to make of tires as a variable. It wasn't this way last year or the year before. But I heard the commentators on Speed (or maybe it was the BBC guys) saying how Bridgestone *purposefully* brought two compounds to the race that were that were "very" different from each other. It was the commentators' opinion--based on info they had received--that Bridgestone wanted to see the teams "deal" with divergent compounds. The softs were super soft. The hard were super hard. There was a wide margin between them. This is why there was such a performance gap between them on track.

Part of me thinks that Bridgestone shouldn't have such a powerful role in the race. That is, they should bring tires that are best suited for the cars and conditions as best they can tell during the week ahead. They shouldn't be able to make tires such a factor in the race, as we saw this weekend. The other part of me loves it. It makes for another kink in the whole process that the teams have to "deal" with and adjust to real time. Some teams had absolutely no trouble dealing with both compounds, like Brawn. Others tore up the softs within a few laps. Anyhow, I just thought about the race more and the increasingly active role Bridgestone seems to have taken this year. Tire compounds are a factor to keep an eye on.

 

You know that I will be here.