Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

Kimi Räikkönen & Sebastian Vettel

sunnuntai 27. maaliskuuta 2011

Australian GP: Red Bull´s KERS mystery solved

What a season-opener we saw in Australia today! Sebastian Vettel took a sweeping victory from pole position at the wheel of his Kinky Kylie. And what a start the German had while Hamilton suffered from  wheel spin. And what makes Vettel´s start even more surprising and sensational is the fact that after the race RBR´s team principal Christian Horner admitted that both of the RB7s were lacking the KERS system. But especially at the opening laps of the race Vettel´s pace was so convincing making a 3-second gap to Hamilton very soon. Why would Red Bull even need KERS if they´re this fast? For sure the KERS system would have helped Vettel´s team-mate Webber who had a close fight with the Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso during the race. It´s interesting to see whether Red Bull decides to use KERS in Malaysia or not.

Vettel´s performance was outstanding but what happened to Webber? Apparently he was very frustrated after the race and he pulled off the track immediately past the pits after crossing the line. He suffered from the degradation of the tyres more than his team-mate and he didn´t seem to reach the same pace as Vettel did.

On the other hand the McLaren drivers did both well although Button got the unfortunate drive-thru penalty due to the overtaking incident with Massa. Before the race I had expected Ferrari to be the "main rival" for Red Bull but Alonso clearly couldn´t match Red Bull´s pace. The Spaniard  had an exciting fight with Petrov in his Lotus Renault. It kind of reminded me of the Abu Dhabi GP last year when Alonso got stuck behind Petrov and lost his chances to win the world championship... Petrov did a splendid job today by taking his first podium finish!

For the Mercedes GP the weekend was a catastrophy. DNF for both Schumacher and Rosberg, not good at all! It was such a shame especially for Nico who had to retire after engine failure caused by Barrichello crashing to his car trying desperately to overtake the German. A racing driver with that much racing experience isn´t expected to do such a stupid move!

The Mexican rookie Perez made a great impression by finishing 7th in his Sauber! He even beat his team-mate Kobayashi who finished 8th. Sauber has showed they´re capable of challenging the top teams maybe not yet in Malaysia but if they´ll keep working like this we might see some surprises along the way. And what a strategy Perez had, he pitted only once during the race while Webber for instance was on a three-stop strategy!
What about the tyres? They didn´t seem to degrade as badly as many drivers feared they would. And the new moveable rear wing? It didn´t seem to make overtaking TOO easy as some of the drivers feared but it surely helped Vettel to pass Button for example. So the new season looks very promising indeed and I can´t wait to see what happens in Malaysia! But before that... I hope to hear some comments from Vettel in Finnish! I am about to burst out of curiousity what the new Finnish song might be that Vettel´s Finnish physiotherapist Tommi Pärmäkoski has taught the flying German..... :)

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