You get more ridiculous with every post.

Yay, McLaren have improved their performance all the way up to 12th and 13th

Boys with their toys moaning like big babies. Just another day in F1.

Hamilton and Raikkonen are just the biggest moaners and non team players. They take all the credit and blame everyone else when things go wrong.

Rosberg was wrong today though but his attitude is down to other things at Mercedes, notably them favouring Lewis. Rosberg needs out and they need to get someone who will challenge Lewis, or in the likely case of Alonso, beat him. It's sad to see the greatest F! driver in such a poor McLaren.

Button is not the greatest F1 driver , but I know you meant Alonso, who is far from that title, FAR FAR from it

If Rosberg took the first corner and the roles were reversed he would have done the same thing. Its called controlling the race.

In fact Rosberg is mentally shot at the moment. He needs to apply (cycling) rule #5 PDQ if he wants to win anything.

I can only laugh at Rosberg, if Hamilton was going too slow he should have overtaken him.

The best part of the race was undoubtedly Button versus Maldonado.

I wish F1 wasn't so predictable. I haven't enjoyed it since 2012 really bar the odd race. I wish everyone had the same engine and was a matter of finding out who was the best racer rather than have Schumacher, Vettel, Hamilton drive off into the distance.

The fact that middle teams battles are more interesting says everything I need to know about recent times.

Not really, its only because of mistakes by other drivers or Marussia!!

Alonso is getting paid buckets of money to go on a Sunday drive

I really hoped that Alonso and Button would be pushing for the top because they two of the more interesting drivers to watch.

Have to agree, and Alonso was about to maybe join in, pity Jenson tagged the back of the Lotus because that battle could have went on a lot longer.

Martin Brundle voiced an interesting theory after the race, namely that Bernie asked Mercedes to 'go slow' and allow Ferrari to stay close behind and make it seem like a much closer race than it otherwise would have been. He suggested that the Mercs' lap times throughout the weekend, especially Hamilton's blast at the end of the second stint, strongly suggested they had a lot of performance in reserve and Rosberg's outburst supports this theory (although it would mean the team only told Lewis, or only instructed him to manage the pace). Brundle seems to have seen that Bernie spent a lot of time this weekend talking to Toto Wolf & Arrivabene and has put 2 and 2 together... however I think he's come up with 5. Yes I think Mercedes were very conservative with their pace on Sunday but I don't think they would have known how good they were going to be on the tyres based on Friday/Saturday.

Mercedes clearly still have a second plus of raw pace over everyone else but Ferrari have a chassis which is kind enough on the tyres to make up some of that over a race distance. How much is dependent on the track and conditions.

In Melbourne the Mclarens were over 4 seconds a lap slower than the Mercs and only managed to get one car to the grid. In Sepang they were over 3 seconds a lap slower and Alonso only managed a few laps in the race. This time out they were around 2 seconds slower which put them just at the back of the midfield pack and both cars completed the race. At the end Alonso was putting in some excellent lap times on the soft tyres and they were both easily keeping pace with the FI which supposedly had 100bhp+ advantage. As Alonso said after the race, they are making excellent progress in both performance and reliability, it's just a shame they started from such a long distance back.

I think Mr Brundle is spot on.

It explains entirely Mr Rosbergs "outburst".

That Mercedes setup allowed for substantially better performance than what we saw, which was a controlled laptime that kept the third place car never too far behind. Of course controlling the race in this way absolutely requires that the drivers don't race each other otherwise there would be no control as the speed of the cars increase. Rosbergs comments and behaviour on track show he must have been following these team orders, it simply does not make sense (I hear the argument that Rosberg could not get too close because running so close to Hamilton's affects his own overall performance (tires), but I wave this argument away with a wave of the hand, which is more than the point of view deserves).

The instructions would be clear and along the lines of
1) The leader controls the race speed to make sure that there "gap" between him and the next NON Mercedes is within a specified window.
2) If another Mercedes car is in second he must not attempt to race and therefore stay JUST outside of DRS.
3) In the case of a Mercedes "one two", the leader must be aware of the gap between his team mate and the third place car.

It would appear that all went to plan apart from the third condition (in my suggested example), whether Hamilton did it deliberately I don't know. I suspect he did NOT.

I suppose I am obliged to explain the Malaysian result. I can't bring myself to believe the rumours (at the time) that Ferrari was "allowed" to win. Instead I did think that the setup of the Mercedes in THAT race had been set to mechanically reduce its performance to make Ferrari seem more competitive than it was. I think it went wrong and China relied on the drivers to control the race.

I would like to set myself apart from other Conspiracy Theorists by acknowledging that my opinion is not fact, but I do strongly believe that the only explanation of Rosbergs comments and position in the race was it was scripted.

EDIT; Scripted not to affected the winner, but to make it a "better" race and a better series to watch.

The need to loosen up the engine regs, having a load of 1.6 V6 turbos isn't great, back in the 80's, you had V6 turbos, IL4 turbos, rare v8 turbos, N/A V8's, V10's etc, having everyone stick to the same engine spec rather limits my interest.

I would like to see one rule and one rule only. Four open wheels, then let the engineers, engine manufacturers and designers have a free hand to make the racing as diverse and exiting as possible. Clearly, in my view, this would also benefit the R & D departments of the various motor manufactures.

You would have a pile of dead drivers at the first corner, as they would have all passed out due to the high G.

Some comments from Ham on the matter;

“I won the race and did the best job I could have done,” he said. “But it’s natural in battle that if you haven’t won, you’ll feel frustrated. Last year, if I lost to him, I would just go away and try to be better the next time.

“I always want to win. If I had been the one feeling that Nico wasn’t going fast enough, I wouldn’t have sat back. I would have been pushing. I don’t know what he was thinking.

“I want a guy to be on my ass, pushing to pass me, if he has the pace. If he’s got enough, he’ll pass me. Perhaps Nico was just comfortable in P2 [second place], and maybe that’s the difference between us.”

From The Independant. Owch. Now THAT is how you lay a verbal smack down on somebody.

And to hose suggesting that Hamilton should be looking after his team mate's race strategy as well as his own; are you serious? Oh dear...

Was it Mercedes who were criticised previously for just having one race strategist for the team rather than one for each driver?

It turns out Mercedes have been ruining the racing further down the grid as well.


http://www.f1today.net/en/news/20109...er-to-ferrari?

So they given a better engine to Williams for their own selfish reasons to try and getin the way of Ferrari. Worse still they give Force India and Lotus such bad engines that they end up fighting the terrible under powered Mclaren Honda. Brundle was saying during the GP at some occasions how come the honda just out dragged a mercedes engine.

Now we know the answer that Mercedes are controlling all their teams power levels based on what is convenient for them.

It's terrible for the sporting integratery for F1 that one manufacturer is controlling everbodies pace up and down the grid. No wonder the sport is so boring right now it is all contrived.

Merc are contractually bound and also by the rules to provide the same spec PU's to their customers that are used in the works teams.

Where difference comes in, is in the software which isn't shared and car aerodynamics.

Ha ha ha, you couldn't make it up... oh, you did. FI are still running a 2014 car hence their lack of pace. Grosjean had a good race last time out and Maldonado was 'racing' the McLarens but only after he mucked up his own race with his comedy in-lap. Williams were hardly a threat to Ferrari and while we're at it, how dare Ferrari supply their customer team Sauber with a much better engine!

Seriously, get a grip. Ferrari are going to be second this season. Deal with it.

I heard that but dismissed it as tongue in cheek.

Trouble is, this is Bernie we are talking about. He'd do anything to protect "the show", and by that I mean the value of the commercial rights value.

To be honest, F1 has been becoming more and more artificial for years now in the name of "better racing". I suppose there was little choice, even with degrading tyres, DRS and the like its still frequently a bit too dull. The damn designers are far too clever and the aero packages too efficient

After avidly watching F1 for more years than I care to remember, I'm finally getting bored with it.
It's taken a while, but there you go.

I was out doing some ironing while the race was on on Sunday, and started to hear the commentators getting very (very) excited.
Nipped in to see what was happening and it was an overtake for 11th place.
Dear oh dear.

At least there was some action. In past seasons we've been able to literally count the number of passing moves per race on one hand. I appreciate the close racing no matter where it's taking place. You're more likely to get close racing down the field where it doesn't matter as much - if you're dicing for 12th & 13th you're not risking points, only pride.


Brundle can be very dead-pan so you're probably right. I agree Bernie only sees the $. As the sport has become more global and marketable the conflict between the 'sport' and 'business' gets worse. One team dominating through technical innovation is the way it's always been and it's what drives progress. One team finds an advantage and the rest fight to catch up. We're seeing it right now with the engines.

The problem we have right now is the combination of aero that makes following closely difficult and tyres that are too sensitive meaning if you do follow closely you ruin them. Reduce aero to reduce turbulence and replace it with mechanical grip (better tyres) or ground effect (which doesn't create turbulence). The cars will be as quick and will be able to race more closely. Of course it won't stop one team being faster than the rest.

That tool Ecclestone is now demanding more money from Monza to secure it's future for the Italian GP.

http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/no...ney-ecclestone

Time for Bernie to go, he has already lost us 1 track.

http://thejudge13.com/2015/04/16/amn...o-f1-weekend/?

Bahrain GP continues to bring shame on F1. Why have the German GP when F1 can go to countries which practice sick sexual torture.

Well done Bernie.