You could definitely hear a strange “abnormal” sound from the engine, so it was obviously something engine related.

Vettel said himself in an interview, that some of the lost power came back later, and sometimes the car accelerated so bad, he didn’t even reached the 7th gear.

Webbo had a little revenge on Kubica for last year's Monza GP ;).

Harley is Tier 2.

The driver bashing that goes in in here is ridiculous. Some people must have such poor self esteem that they can only feel better putting someone down and ridiculing them with no logical facts or reasoning. Disgraceful. Anyone can make a mistake when pushing at the limits like that especially with only one chance to get it perfect. Its even more critical now to nail qualifying so I think Mark needs to do more than 1 run in q3 to give himself the best chance.

During the race Mark was behind Schumacher and Button for most of it and was not able to pass, no matter how hard he tried. It seems passing is even harder than ever this year. Even Rosberg couldn't get past a Vettel in a misfiring RB6. When everything is going well for Mark and Seb there is not alot between them especially in races. Add to this that Mark has to compete against arguably the hardest teammate in F1 at the moment and I think hes doing a bloody good job. Its the first race of the season cut the guy a break geez.

Now back to the subject of this thread, the RB6 looks really good again this year as long as RBR can iron out the bugs. This track traditionally has been one of the weaker tracks for Red Bull esp with quite a few more 'mickey mouse' slower speed corners so to be fighting up the front bodes very well for the rest of the season!

So, the weekend ended as bad as it started. Seb got screwed by technical problems. And Mark lost a place at the start and another one during the stops. Still don't know what went wrong there. Surely McLaren didn't do a 0.3 seconds pitstop for Jenson.

Conclusions are the RB6 surely is capable to win races without any luck. And overtaking is next to impossible if you're on the same strategy as the cars around you. That or today's drivers have no idea how to driver a fully fueled car.

Hope we'll score a 1-2 in Melbourne. Ferrari certainly will be the main rivals. Flawless qualifying and no technical issues will be crucial.

Lol yeah loved the instant smoke screen! that was almost like something out of that old cartoon 'The Wacky races!' LOL

Im pretty sure Webbers right front was a little sticky coming off, The mechanic tapped it about 5 or 6 time before it budged. It definetly wasnt a great stop, however the fact that Webber allowed Button be right on his arse coming in to the stops while also letting MS skip away was just as bad.

Yeah, right front wouldn't come off ...roll on Melbourne.

Would there be another driver on the grid with as bad a case of 'pit lane fever' as Webber?

Hehe thanks mate I needed them back.

There seems to be great emphasis being placed on the Red Bull being slower than the Ferrari on the harder tyres. But surely fuel was a big reason for the change in performance. According to the BBC commentary Vettel was quite a bit lighter than the Ferraris at the start due to the Red Bull's better fuel consumption, giving him a speed advantage. As the race goes on that advantage is bound to reduce and ultimately disappear completely as fuel is used up.

our car is over a second a lap faster than yours.
i think you guys need them more than us mate

in all seriousness, looks very promising for the season ahead, dispite the first race was quite dissappointing.
i have a feeling the 6 is going to be a monster everywhere this year. we look like the quickest car in the fast AND slow stuff this year.
our 1 lap pace is looking very good, and with the current regs, if you wack them on the the fron row in quali, you will more often than not finish there.

Yeah he did set his own fate, drove a conservative first race, he needs to pull his finger out with qualifying the thing, may need to reconcile he isn't as fast as Seb over a lap, position himself so that he can take advantage of the situation if it develops and help out with the WCC chase.

I don't think it is bashing to call it like it was. Webber proved to be the weak link this round. At present, I hope they work out the reliability issue. The point system is very strange this year. I haven't yet bothered to look up the rationale, but now I think that is necessary.

I don't think that any of that has anything to do with it.....The ONLY reason there are claims otherwise is there are Ferrari fans hoping that this is the case without much logic behind it, which is fine but there are some glaring problems with their assumptions.


The RedBull was capable on Zero Fuel a 1:53, there were other cars in the field capable of 1:55 on hards. Alonso showed over one lap he was quite capable of pulling more time out of those tires and others in the top ten were doing it, Button on MS, MW on both Button and MS. We could not see real pace of any team except maybe a small window Alonso piled on some time to gap Massa.

Massa was conserving his engine.

Vettel's engine was cactus

Hamilton was going as fast as he could = bad in comparison to the RedBull and Ferrari, if we thought there was a second difference, that means it was possible to get a 50 second gap to Lewis, they didn't Vettel, Alonso were just pacing as fast as they needed to go not as fast as fast as they could've have gone.


Nico and MS were just road blocks, MW was able to pull up to them at will, including Button. There was a massive pace difference between the Redbull/Ferrari and the next two Mercedes/McLaren.



Groupings

Red Bull/Ferrari


Mercedes/McLaren


Renault/Force India/Williams


The rest.......................

WOW. A Spark Plug?
Apparently the cause of Sebastians loss of power, NO exhaust problem.
Pecking Order?
Red Bull/ Ferrari (depends on circuit characteristics), ahead of the field at the start of the season.
Followed by:- McLaren (Lewis), Mercedes (Both Drivers), Renault (Kubica), and Force India (Sutil).
Without the Webber version of the "Fog of War" I think we would have had an interesting mix today

Conservative? Your kidding right? Mark had an issue with the engine at the start as confirmed by Renault engineer Fabrice Lom and lost a place, next he gets stuck behind Schumi for ages and then due to a bad pitstop is stuck behind Button later on. I thought he drove as best he could given the position he was in. He was much faster than those ahead later in the race save for Vettel and the Ferraris but passing was virtually impossible as many drivers stated. Mark tried his hardest to get past those two but in the dirty air and wake of the DDD it was nigh on impossible. Alonso couldn't do it on Vettel before his misfiring and even Rosberg couldn't take Vettel while the car was running like crap. Even the principals have acknowleged it.

"Most of the front-runners stopped just once and many drivers, including Michael Schumacher, reported that it was difficult to follow rivals closely and therefore overtake."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/82145

New rules have made it even harder to pass and something needs to be done to fix it to make things more exciting other it may be a bit of a boring procession this year.

He made a mistake in quali which anyone could have done on thier day, apart from that not much more he could have done from his race position and what transpired for him during the race. Not going to criticise for one bad quali result. He needs to lift his game for sure in quali but you do seem to like sticking the boots into Mark going on previous posts.

Note when I said conservative I was thinking of a 19 race season, I thought his method was conservative, an aggressive race would have been actually not worrying to much about tire wear and punching his Redbull inside MS and JB at the very first opportunity, he didn't do that at all he chose to push the tire a little in a conservative window, explore whether sitting behind would force a mistake, very little car posturing just used the cars inherent pace, smacks of a decision that I am not going to push the point but I will sit and take advantage if it happens, thats a conservative approach and it worked well, it was the lowest risk approach with the fastest car in the field. I have no problem with it, its race one it was far better than crashing out but it was conservative none the less it wasn't like Kubica who was aggressive the whole race.

You'd drive like that in a race?

What did you see ?

Too quick!

First race into the season without any information on the new track and the effect of temps and high fuel load wasn't a place to be doing what you're suggesting.


Everyone was conservative - MW got pretty close to Schumacher, and then Button....it wasn't hard to see the effect of a lack of downforce in thsoe situations - he was never close enough to have a lunge. We saw this issue all day.

He was more than close enough in the S2 he never pushed the issue or chose a desperate lunge move because he was conservative, further down the field they were doing it all day and taking the risks.

I think you said exactly what I said just with different wording, concisely he drove a conservative race, note its not a slight its an observation.

As has been stated by most drivers it is nigh on impossible to overtake because of the dirty are generated from the DDD. Hopefully next year we will see some overtaking on track

Boy we have lots of 6 year old children on this forum they have nothing better to do then have a go at Mark, Grow up will you. Every driver has made mistakes at some time or another.

If it was Brazil 2009 and I was Jenson Button I would, there is a wide range of reference one must take into account. If I was being aggressive I would drive like I described, I would have probably drove a conservative race considering its race one, and did exactly what Webber did.

You know what I am really getting sick of Webber fans having a go at Webber fans for discussing Webber in the Red Bull 2010 thread.

Yeah but if other posters want to discuss your observations on Webber, they have to do it in this thread because you've abandoned the Webber vs Vettel thread...

How can you call it conservative race from Mark? You must have been watching a different race. Mark and also others like Schumacher stated they had trouble even getting close to the car in front and pass. Even Rosberg couldn't against Vettel with a sick car.

Mark -> "It was very, very difficult to stay close to the cars in front. "

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/82137

Rosberg -> I couldn't quite get Sebastian at the end as I lost grip in the dirty air when I got close.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/82136

So you seem to know better than the drivers?

TBH I thought Mark was almost trying too hard at times -often when we were watching him on the incar camera and he was closing in on button he'd get almost close enough to have a go and the fronts would lock or the front would wash out wide. It was obvious from the footage that the dirty air was making things rather difficult.

I do think he was trying to find a way past but if he'd had a red hot go and taken himself and button out can you imagine the reaction of people on here? Blimey...

This was not a bad track for passing (not like Monaco)
At the front of the pack the ONLY passing was in pit stops and when mechanical issues came into play.
This format blows chunks.

The ONLY racing you will see all year is Q2 and the 1-2 laps at the end of Q3 and the run into T1 on race day

Mark was in trouble last year with his qualifying but was able to race well and get some results.
This year if he does not sort out his Q3 run we can expect RBR to be a one horse team.

...with last years fuel loads you could.

Come on - you know the cars were incredibly heavy and overtaking last year, even on lighter loads, was problematic....and Brazil is a pretty good track to overtake on. You certainly chose a situation to suit your argument!

The performance advantage with softs on this surface, track outline and the high temps was clear. It is also likely that the RB6 (and Seb) conserved them better. I agree that we do not know how much faster Seb could have done without risking the primes too much. He drove very smoothly IIRC on them, having a very consistent trend. Both Alonso and Massa were less consistent, if memory serves. In the end he didn't have to go faster, because Alonso had to fry his tyres to get near. The thing is that both during the race (Seb's head tech.) and after it (Seb and Marko) were convinced that they were easily in full control of the situation, ready to counter Alonso if he really tried again, just like when he first got near and than had to keep the distance again. With so many unknowns and the limited engines it would have been foolish to push even mildly without needing to do so.

IMHO speedwise there are a lot of good signs.








I agree mostly. But we do not have any definite answer about the relative speed of the RB6 and the Ferraris, just that both were faster then the rest even when conserving.



H2H

Didn't see it discussed elsewhere, so here my question:

Would it be allowed (legally, as no rule against it) to create such a oil-smoke as Webber's car did, as a 'weapon' in the race?

What would stop a car/driver from having a little thingy in the cockpit, that the driver can control, and that spritzes a little oil at the right place to produce that smoke.

It was very distracting for the drivers following, in my view it caused the problems for Sutil.


I know it is over the top, and very unsportman like, but would it be legal?

As it would be classified under dangerous driving, then no of course its not allowed. Its formula 1, not a destruction derby or mario kart.

You're quite paranoid just to even suggest this

I chose the situation because it was necessary for a driver who had been driving conservatively for some time to drive aggressively, I really have no idea why this simple concept flicks your argument switch, Mark drove a conservative race, for good reasons, whats the damn problem?

Agreed. Mark must improve on his qualy efforts from last year as it seems that this year passing will be extremely difficult. Hopefully Bahrain will not be the norm but I have a feeling that this is how the year is going to go - let us hope for a few wet races at least...



I think the stewards would take a pretty dim view of it and would soon start to black flag cars if it became suspicious...

Because it was hard to pass they drove conservative till the end of the race and didn't force the pass. There were certainly other drivers out there in the same conditions forcing the pass and driving aggressively however none of them were in the Top 8 drivers.

Yeah I could see it, he was just trying to get button to make a mistake, he didn't so he just sat behind him till the end, not much else he could do but remain conservative and sit there.

I guess the other thing going through all the drivers minds - and probably discussed with the team when it became obvious that passing was probably not going to be possible - was that with the limited testing, getting some race mileage was also pretty valuable. I dare say quite a few questions were answered in yesterdays race...

Your lack of manners perhaps.

Driving around, staring at the gearbox of the car isn't conservative - it's just the state of the sport - given the rules.

Redbull are just trying to blame something out of their control instead of admitting their own car fragility. Something quite large clearly fell off that left rear side of the car and on inspection Kravitz pointed out exactly what that was, the exhaust went out of tune and started resonating loudly causing a vibration that affected the power. It wasn't a simple mis-fire from a plug. They've got a completed and radical exhaust system and it just needs developing slightly most probably, especially since its the first race. Felipe's car went 'out of tune' also I noticed, if you listen to his car when he's driving away from the camera one side was a different frequency from the other causing a 'Kazoo' effect.

You're suggesting Renault are prepared to have their engines criticised, when the issue isn't their fault? I'd suggest that if a faulty sparkplug was a fabricated issue - Renault would have quite a bit to say about that by now.

It's Redbull's tradtion.They always complain this and that and never admit their own fault. Newey's car is super fast, but the cost is realibility.As a McLaren fan, I fully understand it. Check the Mercedes engine performance between 1998 and 2006(Newey's McLaren time) , so many DNF due to engine failure. And then after Newey's departure 2007-2010, suddenly no engine failure, it is strange,isn't it? So I guess that Redbull fans can not enjoy the race with a relaxed nerve even though one driver is leading the race with a great advantage this year. Enjoy it!

The fact that so many non RBR people are posting in this thread shows that RBR are being taken seriously as a championship threat. That's a positive I guess. These people weren't here in winter testing while other teams stole the glory with lower fuel loads.

The tyre wear thing proved to be bullshit. As expected. If anything it seems the RB6 is soft on it's tyres? Alonso admitted that he couldn't keep up with Vettel in the first stint. Vettel was supposed to fry his tyres after 10 laps but he was the last of the front runners to pit? In the final stint, it seems obvious now looking back that the Ferrari was quicker. On the harder tyre. Is this tyre wear, or is it because the Ferrari is quicker when the fuel load comes down? Can't say. But the Redbull ain't bad when it comes to tyre wear. Webber was in traffic all race but still posted a pretty good fastest laptime. His tyres would have had the worst wear out of anyone in the top 8 due to consistant dirty air.

And with these stupid regulations, qualifying speed is at a premium, as long as your not very slow, it's hard for any car to pass you.

If your leading and your slower on a new set of tyres, the car in 2nd can catch up and then start wearing his tyres quicker once it enters the 1 second zone. Then the guy is 3rd catches up to the guy in 2nd and starts wearing his tyres. Then the guy in 4th catches up to him and starts wearing his tyres. Hilarious and stupid all at the same time.

So now that the tyre wear seems pretty good, I guess people can start focusing on the reliability factor, cause it seems the biggest weakness. Redbull are unreliable, we will be hearing alot of that in the next 8 months.

Vettel vs Alonso for the WDC IMO. Redbull's speed vs Ferrari's reliability. Racecraft won't matter much because of the stupid regulations.

Very surprising how quick Vettel was in S2 despite his problems.

The real problem for Webber though is that he had a terrible qualifying lap, that was of his own doing

Yep not debating that at all. He needs to do more Q3 laps instead of relying on just 1. His racing is good its quali letting him down, however its the first race of the season so people need to stop being so critical of one mistake.

so sad...


but Vettel did a great job.

Has the supposed fuel efficiency advantage of the Renault engine been quantified in terms of fuel weight benefit at the start and laptimes? If so, does it outweigh the power disadvantage?

Its not one mistake though.
Its an ominous sign but Seb was outpacing Mark in Q1, Q2 and Q3 and all by significant margins.

The car despite the reliability issue looks great though.
Can't wait to see it around the faster corners in Malaysia.