F1 Digest - Australia GP
- Length: 8:23
- Size: 7.8 MB
- File: digest4.mp3
- Transcript: digest4.pdf
- Torrent: digest4.torrent
What a race to start off with! F1 Digest brings you all the details from an incident packed Sunday in Australia, including your comments and the team conclusions.
The Race
We all knew that the regulation changes would lead to a few more driver incidents, but who could have imagined that there would only be seven drivers left at the end of the 58 laps?
Conclusions
A dream start for McLaren, BMW and Williams, whilst Ferrari and pretty much everyone else had the worst possible season opener imaginable. Everyone is now sweeping Australia under the carpet and looking forward to Malaysia.
March 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pmFelipe Leite said:
Holly cow, did you see which is the top private league in FantasyRacers.com??? Take a look there! And look at who’s in second place :p
Felipe Leite, the guy who managed to be worse than Christine on his bets…
March 16th, 2008 at 5:25 pmopenwheel said:
very good summary Christine. I also noticed something that LH said during the press conference. He was commenting on the fact of no help for the start when then he thanked his engineers for his start. I was wondering what he meant by that. No traction control–no spinning of the wheels at the start all over, but LH seemed to get off very quick. He had a least a half a car lenght lead at the first turn. His reaction time is great but so is Kubi’s. How could the engineer’s be responsible for such a good start?
March 16th, 2008 at 5:29 pmopenwheel said:
sidepodcast in the lead at fantasyracers.com over auto sport and we have more teams. We have the most racing teams of any league–that speaks volumns for you guys -
March 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pmme said:
really? wow, i didn’t even know they had a league!
honestly, we’re so impressed with how many people have been willing to give their time to get involved. you guys really make the show (and this site) what it is.
we can’t thank everybody enough.
March 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pmme said:
be honest you did badly to make her feel better, didn’t you?
March 16th, 2008 at 8:10 pmFelipe Leite said:
Ahnn… hmmm… Yeah! Sure! Why else would it be?
That first corner ender the race for half my bets. And I’d chosen Ferrari as a safe bet.. tsk tsk tsk
March 16th, 2008 at 9:40 pmPoppy said:
Wow what a way to start the season!
I was right in my predictions about about Rosberg ( 1st Reikonnen, 2nd Button(?) 3rd Rosberg)!!! Get me and my crystal ball!! Ok so I was totally wrong about the first two and had no faith in Hamilton’s ability to look like he was on rails for a couple of hours and then have a head cool enough to remember to do his overalls up to the top button on the podium to show all the sponsors off while poor Nick Heidfeld just looked done for - how does Hamilton stay so box fresh after races?? Does he have an identical twin? I think we should be told.
Am I just a tiny bit pleased it wasn’t a Mclaren/Ferarri party? I think so - lets hope the podium is a s mixed for the rest of the season.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:15 pmSteven Roy said:
Hamilton is way smarter than a lot of people think. He always quotes Senna being his hero but he has clearly watched and learned from Schumacher. The sprint up the stairs when he got out of the car and the jump at the top of the stairs were calculated to twist the knife in the other drivers who were clearly suffering from the heat. He not only had the best car and an unfair talent advantage but he has a fitness advantage at least late in the race.
He was in cruise mode for the second half of the race so the only way he could have made an error is if he lost concentration due to the lack of effort required at that pace. For the first 20 lap he set fastest lap after fastest lap then backed off. Kovalainen was slower than him until then but stayed on it a few laps longer and set the fastest lap on lap 23 then he backed off. There is a lot more pace in those McLarens than we saw yesterday/today?. Whenever it was.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:53 pmF1Punter said:
An astute observation Steven.
March 16th, 2008 at 10:59 pmme said:
lewis was always fast enough to keep himself out of trouble and schumi made a career out of doing just that. be fast enough at exactly the right time and the rest is easy.
just out of interest, i know that a couple of cars finished a lap down, but did hamilton or anyone else actually meet any backmarkers today?
March 16th, 2008 at 10:59 pmthe Blue Orange Lion said:
Hallo, how low?
Cool race it was, wasn’t it? And by getting rid of the TC Mad Max did the right thing, wow, I’m his biggest fan now, ha-ha-ha!
Can’t type any longer - too tired, I’ve got blisters on my fingers, to quote the song!
March 16th, 2008 at 11:02 pmbrendanstallard said:
“He always quotes Senna being his hero but he has clearly watched and learned from Schumacher.”
Steven,
Wrong: Prost.
Schumacher was a hell of a “racer”: Prost (the professeur) was much more in line with what Hamilton will be. For most of his time: Schumacher was .5 down on pole position: but he knew with race pace: a term he invented: he could get past the others with strategy.
Other than that: if you knew he was on your butt….it was just a matter of time before he got you.
Prost was the agglomerator, and he’d get you if you lost a tyre: as you most always did. He was also, of course: quick.
Lewis is quick: and I like him: much more than I like the evil Spaniard: but Lewis ain’t Schumi, or Prost: not yet.
brendan
March 16th, 2008 at 11:04 pmme said:
hate to say i agree, but i do.
mind you, wasn’t it him what brought it back in the first place?
March 16th, 2008 at 11:12 pmthe Blue Orange Lion said:
Not sure but the way things are going they’re gonna crucify me, only joking, the Beatles theme is following me today.
I guess it was Mad Max who brought TC back but 2003 was OK, I quite enjoyed it, can’t say the same thing of 2004 or 2002 or even 2001, 2005-2007 seasons were enjoyable to a certain degree, I sense this year I’ll get my kicks on route 66.
March 16th, 2008 at 11:59 pmlou said:
Heres an interesting thought that just crossed my mind
the FIA and Formula 1 are cost cutting and trying to be more enviromentaly friendly, right? So they get ride of the fuel burn stage of quali, make gear boxes last for 4 races, yada yada yada….
But they ban TC. Which is a good thing in my opinion, for both drivers and the fans as it makes it more interesting and more challenging for the drivers, cause it increases their chances of spinning off as we saw today. This in turn increases the risk of accidents, so this means more repairs will need to be done on the cars = more money spent on repairs than in previous years. Which ultimatly is not a cost cutting or frankly enviromentally friendly thing at all. Has Max thought about the message he is sending out?
- its ok to spend money on repairs that would not be necessary with TC but not ok to spend money on….
At least by increasing the risk of accidents then you also increase the amount of fuel that is used as there will be less cars taking part in the entire race. ok maybe he has thought this through…..
March 17th, 2008 at 12:08 amSteven Roy said:
Brendan
I was talking about Lewis’s behaviour after the race not his driving. Schumacher never missed an opportunity to demonstrate his fitness after the race to show that not only had he won be it took less effort for him to win than it did for the others to get beaten.
Lewis’s driving looks to me a bit like Senna’s without Senna’s unique/wierd pulsing throttle use. although mybe now we don’t have TC that may appear but I doubt it. I have only ever seen one other driver use that technique and he never got anywhere near to F1.
I always saw Senna as having the Prost/Stewart ability to sort out the car and get to the front and sit there but when the situation required he could grab the car by the throat and put it into positions it never deserved to be in like Villeneuve. Villeneuve could get to the front and cruise and collect too but he rarely had the car to do that in F1.
I think there is a clear line from Gilles to Ayrton to Lewis and I don’t think there is a whole lot to choose between the three of them.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:14 amCorey said:
What a start to the season if all the races are this exciting (hopefully with more cars at the end) its going to be one hell of a season. Great start by McLaren and glad to see that the rest of the podium was made up by BMW and Williams. I can only hope that they can challenge for the entire season. Didn’t expect to see lack of TC have this much impact but I’m glad. We even saw some overtaking today.
Like the new format with the F1 digest too. Great work guys
March 17th, 2008 at 12:32 amme said:
very good point.
albert park was little more than a very expensive scrap yard come sunday evening.
i also think they chose a heck of a year to ban spare cars. even on rubbered-in tracks, the first corner’s are going to be pretty hairy this season.
March 17th, 2008 at 12:34 amme said:
we did, and the battle between kovi and alonso was a pleasure to watch.
cheers. although our sunday show is running a bit late as a result. should be uploaded soon, and next week the process will be more efficient.
March 17th, 2008 at 1:12 pmPoppy said:
Those final passes Kovalinen/Alonso then Alonso/Kovalinen just amazing - I can only think that Alonso had his stroppiness drive set to Warp Factor 9 for that lastone! He was not having his old car infront under any circs was he?
I love watching Alonso drive you can see the car as an extension of his body language sometimes much more than the other drivers.
Looking forward to getting my next Sidepodcast fix I’m sure you’ll have tons to tell us!
March 17th, 2008 at 3:55 pmSteven Roy said:
Poppy,
Alonso got back past Kovalainen because Heikki pulled a tear off from his visor and bumped the pit lane speed limiter switch. Alonso did well not to run into him but Kovi gave the position away.
I guess McLaren need to look at their button design. In this day and age there should be no way a button like that can be accidently switched. It is not something that is ever needed in a hurry so they should be able to put some kind of safety interlock in place.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:10 pmme said:
i was slightly torn by this battle. i like kovi and hope he does well this year, but alonso in a renault just seems right. and really the guy needs all the points he can get.
i’m confused why it even operates at that speed? wouldn’t it make sense to only activate if the car is within 7% of the pitlane speed limit or something?
March 17th, 2008 at 4:17 pmme said:
just read Gene’s comments:
“Ferrari’s own speed limit system can only be activated when a driver is in a low gear, not at close to top speed on a main straight”
i guess if mclaren instigated a similar system there might be some trouble
March 17th, 2008 at 6:42 pmSteven Roy said:
It doesn’t need a high tech solution. There are thousands of examples of switches with a hinged cover over them so that the driver has to flick up the cover with his thumb then press the button. I could engineer that and no-one would accidently hit the button again.