I may be wrong as I don't really know the technicalities of the engine change next season other than going to smaller capacity, less cylinder, more efficient turbo engines, but had imagined that it would require a total re-design of the car, especially the back end. Smaller engine, smaller fuel tank, totally new exhaust etc... I had envisaged cars next season looking very different than this with physically less weight and just less stuff in the back so the back end could be slimmer & lower. With that in mind, I cannot see why Mclaren would be running next year's car now as without the engine it's pointless, isn't it? It's like designing a jet aircraft before you actually have a jet angine and therefore using a prop engine in place - the engine effects the design.

Massa didn't need to slow down for starters. In the first few laps Alonso made a couple of moves and Massa went defensive to block him off. All Ferrari would need to have told him is don't defend, let Alonso come through. No time would be lost and Alonso would be through. I'd also add that if Ferrari were so evil and only cared about Alonso etc. they wouldn't care if Massa lost lap time. Remember the Brazilian GP last year when Massa effectively sacrificed two positions (the move on Webber) to get Alonso in a good position.

Even assuming that for some reason there were team orders to hold position until they could switch positions at the pit stops, if Ferrari had some evil plan they would have pitted Alonso on lap 8 and Massa on lap 9. That would have been enough to get him past Massa easily (we saw later that one-laps worth of undercut was enough for Alonso to jump not just the car in front but the one in front of that as well and Sutil then couldn't defend).

So for the idea that Ferrari engineered this whole scenario to be plausible, you have to assume that they were worried about the two of them racing (which they weren't) and decided to use team orders to get Alonso past during the pitstops, just not the first round because... Yeah that follows, those devious bastards...

Or... Massa along with the other drivers were given a pit window with the best time to pit in order to make the tyres last long enough to reach the next stint. Alonso then decided to pit earlier in order to jump all of them. Sutil and Vettel reacted immediately thus meaning the best option for Massa was to stay out briefly, try and put in a few good laps and then pit in the actual pit window (lap 24 so 4 laps later), have slightly fresher tyres and hope that comes into play. Massa is surprised that the others have pitted because he had, correctly, been told that for tyre management the best time to pit is in a few laps. Alonso simply went for an early stop. Nothing sinister, just a driver making a smart call.

Pitting earlier does not always mean you win. It also means that Alonso had to do a much longer 3rd stint than the others (well, bar Kimi). Had his tyres gone it would have backfired completely. That's why the pit window was probably around lap 24 onwards. I'll also question why, if the undercut were so obvious to everyone, Vettel or Massa didn't use it?

If Alonso made the call to pit early, which I suspect he did...what's the issue?

bib is the crux of it really.. Ferrari want to win more than anything and they know that FA represents by far their best chance of doing so. I imagine the fact that Massa is still in the team has more to do with his compliance than his ability. Its a shame though 'cos it must be eating him up inside

No, you're quite correct.

I refer you to my analogy of what happened at the end of the 80's when turbo engines were banned and teams chose to run non-turbo engines the previous year as well.

If you think about all the implications of what McLaren have done this year it's actually a huge admission of lack of confidence.

What they're saying is, in effect, that they knew the 2012 car was a bit of a white elephant; they saw that it was a development dead-end (for reasons we can only speculate on) and that they wouldn't be capable of taking an entirely new car from drawing board to chequered-flag in a single development season.

Basically, they think the car they had was going to fall further and further behind the competition AND that their new car was going to start behind the competition and take at least a year to get up to speed, in the hope of giving them a winning design (with evolutionary changes, obviously) for 2014.

The trouble is, of course, that nobody knows what the other teams are going to do for 2014 either.
Maybe this "building year" will pay dividends for McLaren and they'll find themselves a step ahead of everybody else in 2014 or, on the other hand, maybe the current RBR/Lotus/Ferrari will also provide a good platform for evolving next year's cars as well?

Again, it's like back in the 1980s, when everybody thought McLaren would blitz the last turbo year but then do badly the first year they ran non-turbo engines... but they didn't.

S'funny, it makes you wonder if that was a factor in Lewis Hamilton's decision to change teams too.
I mean, at some point I'm sure the 2013 car would have been revealed to the drivers and they will have had access to the data about it.
I doubt LH would have been particularly thrilled at the prospect of another year like 2011, where he's scraping around for points in the mid-field.


The first pit-stop revealed the extent the advantage of changing tyres earlier, an advantage which was used to get Alonso ahead of Massa.

May I ask a stupid question?

Does F1 have a time limit? e.g. The race has 60 scheduled laps but a 2h time limit. If the race is held up for whatever reason and they have only completed 50 laps but the 2h limit is gone then that it counted as the last lap.

and if the cars are on a red flag then at the 2h limit the positions are final.

Yes the result would stand at the 2 hour limit.

Another point to note, If less than 3/4s (not sure about this number) of the laps are completed then only half points are awarded for the race.

I believe the limits for each race are 200 miles or 2 hours of racing and an overall limit of 4 hours for an entire event (in the event where there's a restart or a red flag).

IIRC, the final positions are established on the lap before the 2 hour limit is reached.
I seem to recall that there have been some unlikely "winners" due to situations like this, where people who happened to pit or not pit just before a race was red-flagged have subsequently been declared the winner.

It's either a lap or two laps before. I remember the massive confusion caused at the 2003 over whether or not Fisichella had crossed the line to start another lap made even funnier by his car catching fire in the pit-lane, and the fact that since the third place driver couldn't be at the podium cermemony (Alonso had crashed quite badly) none of the podium spots were occupied by the correct driver.

That might be the race I was thinking of.

I recall that there was one race, in particular, that somebody either took the lead on the last lap or broke down on the last lap and it then turned out that somebody entirely unexpected had won as a result.

I also vaguely recall a time when it involved the pits though.
Somebody had their car damaged but didn't pit (possibly because they couldn't get across to the pit-entry in time), everybody else pitted, went back out, caught and passed the driver with the damaged car but then the race was red-flagged and then declared complete and the guy who stayed out was declared the winner cos everybody else had pitted on what turned out to be the last lap.

I bet he must have thought he was the luckiest guy in the world. I hope he got laid that night

Brazil 2003.

I remember watching the Sky Sports F1 Review for 2003 showed Kimi and Fisi having a 1st place trophy handover from the (previous) Brazilian race due to the red flag and legal confusion.

That's a niggling way to win your first race and not have a 'proper' podium ceremony

Seems like Pirelli have supplied a less controversial choice of tyres for Malaysia so, although they're both softer than they were last year, there shouldn't be quite the massive gap between the two.

I see that both Webber and Vettel have been critical of the tyres in interviews though.

Must say, I kind of agree.
I'd rather see 60 laps of actual racing rather than 10 laps of racing and 50 laps of tyre-preservation.
Trouble is, of course, that the current cars don't really allow for overtaking even when the tyres don't fall away so I guess the powers that be have decided that overtakes during pitstops are more enjoyable than no overtakes at all.

Kinda makes you wonder if they might deliberately manipulate the way tyre choice is applied to create interest though.
I mean, at a track like Sepang or Monza there's plenty of opportunity for "proper" racing whereas, perhaps, at places like Monaco or Valencia they might deliberately supply wacky tyres in order to create a bit of interest.

Looks tight at the top RBR/FER/LTS but LTS look good on the long runs

so if dry RBR Pole/KR win?

weather will naturally turn that upside down

Does anyone know what Sutil got a reprimand for?

What is happening to the Red Bulls?

Both the Mclaren's made it through

Can't help but feel Grosjean will really benefit from coming 11th.

Massa bumps Alonso down to the 2nd row of the grid.

Gearbox problems for Massa again tonight?

And Vettel is on pole. Again. WIth another change of helmet in between quali sessions just to irritate me. Great lap from Massa, just edged out Alonso. The Ferrari's charging off the start will be awesome.

4 in a row apparently. Meet the new Massa, same as the older Massa.

Woo hoo!! Both Ferrari's in the top 3. Absolutely made my day

And Kim's responses in the interview cracked me up....he is soooooooooooooo unenthusiastic at all times. I love it.

Great result for Massa. I hope he is allowed to race for the win. Would be one of the most welcome results in F1 for a long time I think. Glad to see the Mclarens a bit higher up the grid and Kimi will still be very competative in the race. Should be an excellent one tomorrow. Not sure what Webber was grumbling about at the end, though? Not allowed to come in for a new set of inters, perhaps?

Kind of interesting to keep an eye on McLaren's "come-back", depending on how you look at it.

On the one hand, RBRs best quali' time this year was actually better than last year (by around 0.2s) whereas McL were 0.6s slower than last year so that's not a good sign but, OTOH, McL have gone from being 2.5s slower than RBR in Oz to being 0.7s slower than RBR so that can be viewed as a helluva improvement.

Be interesting to see if Lotus manage to maintain their momentum at more "normal" circuits or whether their performance in Oz was just an aberration,

Whitmarsh yesterday said he didn't expect any real improvement this weekend over last as they've done nothing to improve the car other than gather more data about how it works and hence are able to set it up a bit better. I suspect therefore any improvement this weekend is morw about the conditions than the car itself. He was clear though that they had to show a big improvement from China onwards which suggests they have some new parts which they hope will help. Hope is not a great word to be using, though!