Better than hanging out with me on the Internet??! Oh man. You must lead an exciting life brother!

 

I still think Rubens is a good play at least for the beginning of the season. Yes he benefited from the Kubica/Vettel crash but you have to remember he qualified 2nd but had a horrific start. If he can qualify 1st or 2nd again and get a normal start this time he could time trial it like Button did.

 

Haha okey, you got me

 

That is a good point you bring up about the cyclical nature of tires that Bridgestone is imposing on F1. Bridgestone did indeed say they would bring two vastly different tire compounds to each race, but this was at the urging of Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA. The agreement this season was that Bridgestone would develop a total of 6 different tires for the whole season: supersoft, soft, medium, hard, intermediate, and wet. Of those tires, Bridgestone is required to bring the intermediate and wet tires to every race, and then must select 2 other tires that are nonsequential in terms of grip to bring to the race. For Melbourne, the teams had to decide between supersoft and medium. For Malaysia, they'll have to choose from soft or hard tires. As your mentioned Erich, the supersoft tires will offer excellent grip right out of the box but start graining badly within a few laps and degrade further from there, whereas the medium slicks required 3 or 4 laps to get up to temp but then lasted much longer. The only downside to the medium tires was that they lost heat quickly, as was made quite clear when Piquet went spinning into the gravel after the first long safety car stint. As you already mentioned, the battle between Vettel and Kubica began only after Vettel's tires had already started degrading whereas Kubica's were just getting up to temp. I think the new rules as pertaining to tires will actually be the key to what makes the races interesting to watch this season, more so that even KERS and the adjustable front aero.

 

Anyone got any info/statistics on how much the drivers actually adjusted the front wing?

 

Not sure. I don't think the teams have to make that stuff available like they do with fuel loads and KERS.

 

That makes sense. Was just curious if they actually change it that much or if they use it for like overtakes and such. Maybe increasing downforce just before braking at the end of the long straight or something like that.

 

I think the adjustment of the wing might be tied into the KERS system so that when it's used for passing, the wing changes its angle to allow the boost of speed to be optimized. For cars without KERS, I think it's just a button the driver can press to lower downforce in the front and allow easier acceleration on the straights.

 

And don't forget he also lost 2 front wings! First thing I did Sunday morning was drop Lewis and Kimi and add Rubens, Kubica and Vettel.

 

Yes he did, its BS.

Hopefully Kubica and Vettel won't pull the same crap, b/c everyone who's saying that Lewis put on a hell of a show should take into account the amount of spaces that he inherited.