Formula 1 2012

[Coffer]

A shame for Kimi, but it's nice to see him and Lewis charge straight back into the championship fight.

Unsurprisingly, Hungaroring produced yet another boring race.

[Ligier]

"The Great" Michael Schumacher stopped in the wrong grid slot, and then switched off his engine despite the amber lights coming on (he should know the new formation lap rule by now). He then picked up a puncture when his car was pushed over a drain in the pit lane, in which he then broke the pit lane speed limit and recieved a drive-through penalty. Amusing afternoon.

[Coffer]

As usual by now.

Sebastian Vettel
Q: 8 | R: 8 | Average: 8 | F1R: 8
Fought for as long as he could, but he had no real response to Hamilton and the Lotuses.

Mark Webber
Q: 4 | R: 6 | Average: 5 | F1R: 5
Great start, but after that he did absolutely sod all.

Jenson Button
Q: 8 | R: 6 | Average: 7 | F1R: 7
Unfortunate.

Lewis Hamilton
Q: 10 | R: 9.5 | Average: 9.75->10 | F1R: 10
Welcome back to the championship fight, Lewis. Monstrous in qualifying, though the part with the blue flags made me laugh. Driver of the Weekend

Fernando Alonso
Q: 7 | R: 6 | Average: 6.5->7 | F1R: 7
Subpar performance. He was afraid that the F2012 wouldn't be strong enough here, and he was right.

Felipe Massa
Q: 7 | R: 3 | Average: 5 | F1R: 4
Had a bad start and seemed to, once again, lack pace compared to Fernando.

Michael Schumacher
Q: 3 | R: 1 | Average: 2 | F1R: 2
Madre mia...sure, not everything was his fault, but he messed up way too many times. Worst Driver

Nico Rosberg
Q: 6 | R: 6 | Average: 6 | F1R: 6
Remember what I said about the Mercedes not being a true race winning car?

Kimi Raikkonen
Q: 8 | R: 10 | Average: 9 | F1R: 10
Made an absolute mockery of Grosjean. Welcome back to the championship fight, Kimi.

Romain Grosjean
Q: 9 | R: 8 | Average: 8.5->9 | F1R: 8
Was decent early on, but Raikkonen is unforgiving.

Paul di Resta
Q: 7 | R: 6 | Average: 6.5->7 | F1R: 7
Other than the incident with Maldonado, he was invisible.

Nico Hulkenberg
Q: 8 | R: 6 | Average: 7 | F1R: 7
Not a whole lot to say about him either.

Kamui Kobayashi
Q: 6 | R: 3 | Average: 5 | F1R: 5
As inconsistent as ever.

Sergio Perez
Q: 6 | R: 4 | Average: 5 | F1R: 4
*snooze*

Daniel Ricciardo
Q: 5 | R: 6 | Average: 5.5->6 | F1R: 5
Bad qualifying, but he did make up ground.

Jean-Eric Vergne
Q: 7 | R: 5 | Average: 6 | F1R: 5
Beaten to the line once more.

Pastor Maldonado
Q: 8 | R: 2 | Average: 5 | F1R: 3
It's like he's playing Venezuelan Roulette. Zero pace compared to his teammate, and, once again, he's being way too aggressive.

Bruno Senna
Q: 8 | R: 8 | Average: 8 | F1R: 8
Button, Webber and Massa had no response to him. Not bad.

Heikki Kovalainen
Q: 6 | R: 6 | Average: 6 | F1R: 6
Invisible. Could have done better in qualifying.

Vitaly Petrov
Q: 5 | R: 5 | Average: 5 | F1R: 5
Beaten by his teammate.

Pedro de la Rosa
Q: 5 | R: 3 | Average: 4 | F1R: 4
Is there something about old guys and grid spots that escapes my mind? It wasn't just Schumacher, after all...

Narain Karthikeyan
Q: 4 | R: 2 | Average: 3 | F1R: 3
And Narain does it again.

Timo Glock
Q: 4 | R: 4 | Average: 4 | F1R: 4
One minute behind Pic? Maybe whatever kept him out of Valencia is still affecting him.

Charles Pic
Q: 6 | R: 8 | Average: 7 | F1R: 7
One minute ahead of Glock? Stellar.

[Coffer]

Those standings are well weighted by personal bias. Perez gets a '*snooze*' for a comment but rated a point higher than Webber?

Then you'd probably be better off raging at the entire F1Rejects community. Most, if not all of them gave him a 5, and that place is the biggest Webber circlejerk I've ever seen.

Plus, Perez drives a Sauber. Webber has his RB8. I'm not going to give him more points solely because he has the better car. He should've beaten Senna. He didn't, so he loses points. Not to mention that neither Senna nor Vettel were all that brilliant, and the latter still outpaced Webber.

Although, in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have given, say, Massa such a high rating. Editing now.

but he had a far, far better drive than, say, Perez, Pic, Petrov or Massa which you rated higher than him.

Pic beat his teammate (Timo freaking Glock, who is still considered to be a good driver by most people) by a full minute, and he's a rookie. For that reason alone, I can't take your post seriously.

I will try and make them look a bit more objective though.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Still don't get why Mclaren decided to put Button on a 3 stop when there had been about 2 overtakes on the track in the 30 or 40 odd laps leading up to that point, one of which was button v vettel in turn 3-4 of the first lap that placed button in front of vettel for the rest of the race up to that point.

[Coffer]

Still don't get why Mclaren decided to put Button on a 3 stop when there had been about 2 overtakes on the track in the 30 or 40 odd laps leading up to that point, one of which was button v vettel in turn 3-4 of the first lap that placed button in front of vettel for the rest of the race up to that point.

There's no use trying to make sense of it. The strategy failed, that's pretty much it. His bad stop was the killing blow.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Has anybody got a transcript or video of vettel's team radio outburst re: button in front of him?

[Deleted]

Hope so, i need it as a ringtone.

Button was so unluckly though, the McLaren team strategy during the race was absolutely appauling.

[Deleted]

Seems like there my have been some back ground politics to the decision to put button onto a three stop. It certainly didnt make any tactical sense and i get the impression he knew that.

[Deleted]

They tried to put Hamilton onto it as well iirc and then changed their minds at the last minute. Button actually asked towards the start "Are you sure?" when they said they thought they needed to go to a plan B strategy. Was a baffling decision.

[Rivenda]

Thank god I recorded the race. What a lovely race really, when there was 6-7 rounds left I was really worried that Hamiltons tires would fail, but luckly they didn't. Even more amazing was that Alonso and Vettel finnish "way" behind him. Gonna be fun to see next race..
Also I laughed my ass with Botton/Vettel, Vettels outrage was just so hilarious. If I were McLaren I would just have let Botton keep slowing Vettel down.

Go Lewis!

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Could you take Vettel's outburst and upload it somewhere?

What a lovely race really, when there was 6-7 rounds left I was really worried that Hamiltons tires would fail, but luckly they didn't.

Even if they had Raikönnen wouldn't have got past, it really is that hard to overtake at the Hungaroring .

[Coffer]

Any predictions for Spa? Kimi and Michael are obvious choices for most people, even with the Merc being crappy, but nothing else is certain. I wouldn't be surprised if Grosjean nicked pole. The double DRS should give him a fairly large advantage if it doesn't rain.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Any predictions for Spa? Kimi and Michael are obvious choices for most people, even with the Merc being crappy, but nothing else is certain. I wouldn't be surprised if Grosjean nicked pole. The double DRS should give him a fairly large advantage if it doesn't rain.

"It not raining" is not something traditionally used in the same sentence as "Spa-Francorchamps"

[Coffer]

"It not raining" is not something traditionally used in the same sentence as "Spa-Francorchamps"

Oh, I know, but I'm pretty sure we had a dry race last year so it's definitely not impossible to have a dry qualifying session this year.

Schumacher would probably love it if it rained the entire weekend, even though he'd lose the advantage of the double DRS. Alonso would probably gain even more from that, as the Ferrari is strong in the rain and they don't have the double DRS yet.

[Farra]

Can't wait until Spa, probably one of my favorite GP's of the season, so unpredictable thanks to the changing weather conditions at either end of the circuit.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Can't wait until Spa, probably one of my favorite GP's of the season, so unpredictable thanks to the changing weather conditions at either end of the circuit.

And drivers can overtake outside of the DRS Zone! Or, maybe a bit more accurate, a rarity on the current calendar: Drivers can overtake!

[Coffer]

Can't wait until Spa, probably one of my favorite GP's of the season, so unpredictable thanks to the changing weather conditions at either end of the circuit.

Spa almost always produces great races.

There's only one GP on the calendar that I look forward to more, and it's actually Singapore. Sure, we don't usually get great races there, but driver-wise it's the toughest circuit on the calendar. That alone makes me love it. It being a night race is just the icing on the cake. And who knows what might happen there this year. After all, Valencia was absolutely stunning. Valencia.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

Spa almost always produces great races.

There's only one GP on the calendar that I look forward to more, and it's actually Singapore. Sure, we don't usually get great races there, but driver-wise it's the toughest circuit on the calendar. That alone makes me love it. It being a night race is just the icing on the cake. And who knows what might happen there this year. After all, Valencia was absolutely stunning. Valencia.

Hungary wasn't, however. Although we did see two overtakes! I don't count pit-lane overtakes as proper overtakes.

[Farra]

Spa almost always produces great races.

There's only one GP on the calendar that I look forward to more, and it's actually Singapore. Sure, we don't usually get great races there, but driver-wise it's the toughest circuit on the calendar. That alone makes me love it. It being a night race is just the icing on the cake. And who knows what might happen there this year. After all, Valencia was absolutely stunning. Valencia.

That is a very good point! Valencia totally stunned me, I expected it to be the same old boring race as it is every year but it certainly wasn't.

I enjoy the Singapore GP also, I heard an interesting piece of information on TV last year about it, the drivers can only take 2 litres of liquid in the car with them, but lose around 3 or something during the race? numbers may be off but they certainly lose more than they gain. Couple that with the fact that they're concentrating so hard as to not hit a wall, then you realize how tough it must be for them.