F1 2010 #fb
March 13th, 2010
The season opens tomorrow with the Bahrain Grand Prix and, regrettably, I won’t be home to watch it. I don’t have access to SpeedTV so I’ll have the watch the replay once I get home.
Never-the-less, some things to note:
- My pick for the winner of the 2010 championship Sebastian Vettel proved that he and his Red Bull-Renault are so far up to the challenge by taking pole position in qualification today. So now we know that the car goes well when it’s hot (his team mate Mark Webber finished 6th today), the Australia GP will show if the car goes well in the cool temps. If so Vettel will be hard to beat this season.
- Felipe Massa proved he is back in the game following his horrific accident last year. Very good to see his 2nd place performance today and it’s a nice reward to the Ferrari team who stood by him.
- Ferrari also has to be pleased by the 3rd place qualification of former world champion Fernando Alonso. Alonso is the best driver in Formula One and now that he is in a top car he will only get better as the season goes on. Vettel and the rest of the field better hope they stay on sharp edge of performance if they have a hope of keeping up with Alonso once he is fully integrated with his car and his team.
- Lewis Hamilton has to be breathing a sigh of relief following the disastrous debut for McLaren in 2009. While a 4th place qualification is still not up to his standards it is certainly an improvement from last year.
- 41 year old Michael Schumacher proved his can still hang with the younger drivers by taking 7th in qualification today. It will be interesting to see how he holds up during the course of the season. He’s motivated to win another championship but time will tell if the rest of his body can match the enthusiasm of his brain and heart.
- Last year’s champion Jenson Button is not happy to be qualifying in 8th place. He complained about the car today, we’ll see how the race goes tomorrow. It could be a long season for Button if he and his team can not get things figured out.
- Robert Kubica may prove again in 2010, as Alonso did in 2009, how well the Renault car can do under the pure force of will on the part of the driver. 9th place qualification could be as good as we can expect to see with this car.
- Adrian Sutil was the last driver to make it through all three rounds of qualification today. The fact that he did it in the Force India shows this team is building upon the success they found in 2009. The other Force India car qualified 12th which is a steady improvement from the days when these cars were lining up each race at the back of the grid.
One aspect of the racing that I am really looking forward to seeing this year is the lack of refueling and how this affects the pit stops. Cars are required in 2010 to have all the fuel they need for the race loaded at the start. This means that pit stops will only be used for tire changes. Timing will be even more critical in the pits than ever before and some teams have been clocked executing their tire changes in under two seconds. The fact that teams will no longer be waiting on the refueling crew to finish their work before releasing the car from the pits, which usually allowed plenty of time for the tire crews to get their job done, means that all the pressure is now on the tire crews. This will make pit stops even more pivotal in 2010.
