Kimi - A one stop strategy before the race ;-)

Justin:

Starting from where we left off in 2012 seems to be the main theme for Round 1 in Australia.

The three men on the podium were the top three in the title race last year and I would possibly put Kimi alongside Seb and Fernando in terms of real title contenders for 2013.

Of course, it's just one race and it's a quite particular street circuit in Albert Park. Malaysia has a lot of rather different characteristics as a track with fast, sweeping corners which may mean we'll see other cars coming to the front.

By way of a two stop strategy, and a one stop strategy before the race.... Kimi beat Fernando by over ten seconds in the end, with Vettel a further ten seconds down the road in third.

There was some great racing, nail biting stuff in the early stages with Vettel being hustled by the two very quick Ferrari's.

Mclaren are absolutely nowhere and Lewis must be loving his move to Mercedes, where he finished a solid if unspectacular fifth.

Sergio Perez's debut in his new team was frankly not good enough. Ok, its a difficult car, with JB struggling to ninth. But as we all know in F1 you must beat your team-mate first and foremost. I almost forgot Perez was in the race at all to be perfectly honest.

Mark Webber had a rubbish start yet again, from second on the grid. We learned later that he had an electronics fault AND no kers...does this guy get any good luck at all, ever?! Great recovery drive to sixth.

Adrian Sutil should get a mention - he led the race after a year out and didnt look out of place amongst the front runners at all. He faded due to differing strategies, but still finished a well earned seventh.

Good to see Massa is still keeping Alonso very honest, as he did in the last handful of races last year.

Alonso said the pace of the Lotus was a worry. Keeping things in perspective though, Ferrari have turned up with a very fast car. This time last year theirs was an absolute dog.

It seems Mclaren has brought the ugly duckling along this year.

Pecking order looks like Ferrari and Red Bull (RB may have better one lap pace but they seem to ruin their tyres in the race), Lotus then a small gap to Mercedes. Mclaren have fallen back and need to sort themselves out quickly.

To Malaysia in one week!

This isn't the Kimi we know - he usually drinks all the booze :-)

Bring on the sub-headings

Phil: I completely agree (as always) with my learned co-blogger that so much was going on at Sepang on Sunday that we need an A to Z to find our way through it.

A. Alonso
General consensus in the paddock is that Alonso is the best driver of his generation, but that he rarely has a car to flatter his talents. General consensus also says that this year's Ferrari is the worst car they've built in years. At Sepang, as in any wet race, the performance differential between a good car, a mediocre car and a really awful car is to a certain extent levelled off, and raw driver talent plays a much bigger role. Alonso's win tends to prove both theories correct. Together with his fifth place in Melbourne, it also gives him the lead in the world championship. But - and it's a big but - even he acknowledged after the race that at dry races it's going to be damage limitation.

B. Bruno Senna
Nice one.

C. Coverage
I'm afraid I don't subscribe to any of conspiracy theories doing the rounds about Sky sabotaging the BBC's access to the juicy bits. All broadcasters' pictures are the same as they come direct from FOM (Formula One Management), so this should really be under B for Bernie. Or even B for bollocks. After all, it would hardly be the first time the producer has shown us a shot of someone pitting from eighth place when someone else is challenging from the lead.

G. Grosjean
Qualifies well, goes off in first lap incidents. We're only two races in though and the first one was a simple racing incident (at the time I'd have put the blame more at Maldonado's feet, actually) so I'd give him the benefit of the doubt.

K. Kimi
Before the season started I confidently predicted Kimi would be a laughing stock by the beginning of the European season. However, his pre-race poo strategy is really paying off and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he might actually win a race this year.

L. Lewis
I fear my co-blogger may have misinterpreted my earlier blog as tending to be supportive of Lewis when I was actually taking the piss out of him. He seems not to have taken the hint either (anyone would think he doesn't actually read this blog), so I think things now need to be spelt out to him.

Lewis. When you first came into F1, I was a huge fan. I was impressed by your maturity as well as your talent. I was impressed that you weren't overawed by having a double world champion for a team-mate. I was genuinely over the moon the next year when you became the first British world champion in over a decade having given us the Official Best Race Ever (see last year). But now I have tell you you irritate me more than any of the other drivers. More than Kimi. More than Alonso. More than Vettel. More even than Michael Schumacher. And the reason is this. When things don't go your way, you sulk. You're second in the world championship, and you're sulking now. And I think the reason you sulk is that you can't deal with failure. Your life except for the last 2-3 years has been one success after the other. You've been a champion in every form of motorsport you've entered, including the very highest. So you've never learned that sometimes, in racing, and in life, things don't go your way. Sometimes you can give it every ounce of breath and every drop of sweat you have, and still watch it all fall to pieces on the very last lap. Just look at Maldonado last weekend. Some drivers spend their whole careers doing that. You're lucky, you're a world champion. But you're not special. You don't have a god-given right to have everything your own way. When they don't, that doesn't mean there is some kind of conspiracy against you, that's just racing. The thing that worries me the most, Lewis, is that you're slowly but surely turning into Ayrton Senna. By the end of the season you might very well be shunting Jenson off into the kitty litter at the first corner at Suzuka, then telling everyone he had it coming to him. And you know what happens then. Gerhard Berger throws your briefcase out of a helicopter and fills your hotel room with frogs. Oh yes. Don't say we didn't warn you.

P. Perez
It's pissing down with rain and a promising young Latin American driver scores an amazing second place which was very nearly a win. As James Hunt might have said, this marks the arrival of Sergio Perez as a major new talent within Formula 1.

S. Schumi
He's 43 years old, he was world champion 7 times and won 91 races along the way. He has nothing to prove to anyone, but he is still beating his team-mate, has started both races this year from the second row of the grid and seems to be having the time of his life (well, apart from winning everything in sight for about 10 years). I'm actually almost warming to the old sod.

V. Vettel
Slightly uncharitable about Karthikeyan I thought. It's difficult to go any faster when you've only got an HRT to drive. However we won't put him in the naughty corner, because Lewis is already there.

On thing is 'for sure' (as racing drivers don't say any more). We're in for a cracking season.

When I was in 'Nam...

Phil: Got back a couple of days ago from a very enjoyable honeymoon in Vietnam. Imagine my excitement on the morning of The Big Day when I turned on the telly to watch the first race of the season. Doesn't Albert Park look a lot like Interlagos, I thought, no lake, lots of hills, and hasn't Kubica done well to get it together in time for the first race? After about a minute I realised I was actually watching last year's Brazilian grand prix. In Vietnamese. Anyway, this blog tells me everything I need to know about the race I missed, and my co-blogger has done an admirable job of reporting it. I have only the following to add. 1. Aren't Ferrari crap these days? As my co-blogger has observed, they're at best the third best car this season, after Red Bull and McLaren. And Alonso can't do better than ninth in Friday practice at Sepang. 2. Didn't Petrov do well? Were I wearing a hat, I would take it off to him. After all, he was fairly lacklustre last season, but to put the Renault on the podium? Well doneski. This really only begs the question whether Reanult might actually be faster than Ferrari this year, and of course what Kubica could have done with the car. Finally, a brief personal message for my co-blogger. Have been having issues with my phone lately, but we are definitely on the annual live event on Monaco weekend.

The German renaissance

Phil: I'm going to leave Alonso's penultimate lap engine blowout to my co-blogger, as I know it's a subject dear to his heart. Instead I'm going to congratulate Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Red Bull on their 1-2 at Sepang. The title race is tight, very tight, as I'll explain, but if Adrian Newey's car can give Vettel reliability as well as speed, I think he has to be the favourite.

Alonso's early exit means that he has had to concede the lead of the world title chase to his teammate Felipe Massa, who now leads with 39 points. Alonso and Vettel follow on 37 points, then Button and Rosberg on 35 points. Four points separate the top five drivers. What's more, the new points system was designed to ensure drivers have to win races to win the title. Three drivers have won the first three races of this season, but the man at the head of the title race isn't one of them. Consistency is still the most important thing where the world title is concerned.

Something else that's noteworthy. A quarter of the field, or four of the top 10 in the drivers' title chase, are German. When Michael Schumacher drove his first race in 1991 he was the only one. Sebastian Vettel, born in 1987, was only four years old at the time. My point is that he, Rosberg, Sutil and the rest are the Schumacher generation: the young German kids who grew up with him as a motor racing role model (those of us with slightly longer memories realise that he might not be altogether the best role model for an aspiring young driver to have).

All that remains is for me to name my Skiver of the Day, which dubious honour today goes to BBC1, for shunting the coverage to BBC2 mid-race to make way for some God-bothering. Aren't Sundays sacred any more?

Can Webber deliver?

Phil: To set the record straight, I'm not sure we've ever said Webber looks good. We've said he's an underrated talent, a talent as yet unrewarded with significant results, but never that he looks good. Well, he doesn't do it for me anyway.

I really don't know what went wrong with Hamilton, Alonso and Massa today. After last year's washout at Sepang, McLaren and Ferrari must have been aware of the possibility of a wet qualifying session. That they didn't take the opportunity to get a lap in at the beginning of Q1 before the rain started properly like everyone else, except Lucas di Grassi whose Virgin was in bits, shows at best blissful ignorance and at worst supreme arrogance. The effective demise of both McLarens and both Ferraris meant that Kovalainen could put the Lotus as high as 15th, ahead of three of the four world champions on the grid. Regrettably, I found myself agreeing with Eddie Jordan that the big cheeses could and should have done much better.

Speaking of which, perhaps Eddie will find himself a shirt that's better suited to the tropical climate tomorrow. It's lucky we weren't watching in smellyvision.

Seriously, for a minute, well done to Red Bull on their third consecutive pole - let's see if they can convert it into a race win tomorrow. A pat on the back also to Nico Hulkenberg, or Hülkenberg to any fellow Germanists, who qualified fifth in only his third grand prix.

A grid as scrambled as this one promises an exciting race tomorrow and further rain will only serve to spice things up. Can the big boys cut through the field fast enough to influence the result? Can the Red Bulls capitalise on their advantage? How will the rain and the possibility of a safety car affect tyres and strategies? Might we see a maiden win for Rosberg, or even Sutil? Set your alarm clocks for 9am tomorrow to find out.