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Lewis Hamilton’s win for McLaren at the Australian Grand Prix almost went unnoticed in Albert Park this afternoon - and that tells you just what sort of race it was. The 23 year-old Briton dominated an event characterised by safety car interventions following a series of dramatic incidents that all happened behind him.
Hamilton would build a lead, lose it behind the safety car, build it again, lose it again. You get the picture. But if he was impressive here a year ago, he was even better on Sunday...
Originally posted by Obliv_au
slightly ot. but do you guys play GP Legends, F1 2002 or the good ol "grand prix world"?
(gp world is an old team management game)
McLaren drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton will each drop five places on the grid for Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix after stewards decided they had blocked rival drivers in the closing stages in qualifying. They will now start the race eighth and ninth respectively.
Kovalainen and Hamilton were called before the stewards after suggestions that BMW Sauber’s Nick Heidfeld and Renault’s Fernando Alonso were impeded during their final Q3 runs, when the McLaren drivers were conserving fuel on slowing-down laps, both having completed their final runs.
"The first corners of my last lap went smoothly, but then there were several cars driving very slowly on their in-laps,” said Heidfeld, who qualified seventh, but will now start fifth. “Apparently they had no information that the qualifying was still going on. Before Turn Four I lost a lot of time because both McLarens were cruising on the racing line.
“I think this has cost me about two tenths of a second, which would have meant being third instead of seventh. I just couldn't drive on the line I wanted and, even more importantly, could not brake were I wanted.”
McLaren are not expected to appeal the decision, which means row two on the grid will now be formed by the Toyota of Jarno Trulli and BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica. Red Bull’s Mark Webber moves up to P6 to join Heidfeld on the third row, while Alonso moves up from P9 to P7.
Originally posted by ArMaP
reply to post by internos
I noticed that on the TV transmission, especially when Heidfeld found a mobile chicane in his way.
I also noticed that Hammilton kept on the racing trajectory after finishing, so I think that it is a good call from the stewards, the team should have made them aware that the qualifying was still on, and if they did then the pilots are the ones to blame.
At least three drivers will drop from their original qualifying positions on the grid for Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix. McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton both lose five places for impeding rival drivers in Q3, while Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima starts from the back after his ten-place penalty for a collision with BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica at the last round in Australia.
The full provisional grid is as follows (the final grid will be published as usual by the FIA on Sunday morning - we will bring you details of any additional changes):
World champion Kimi Raikkonen takes a dominant win in Sepang,
finishing 19.5 seconds ahead of BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica.
Heikki Kovalainen is third for McLaren.
Toyota's Jarno Trulli is fourth ahead of Lewis McLaren in the second McLaren.
The remaining points go to BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld, Red Bull's Mark Webber and Renault's Fernando Alonso.
But it is the Nazi overtones of the session that have caught the headlines: some of the women involved wear Third Reich paraphernalia and Mosely is heard to speak in German during the session.
his father Oswald was a famous fascist and Nazi sympathiser who organised his own army of blackshirts to terrorise Jews in London's East End in the 1930s.
Felipe Massa has made the running here all weekend, but on Saturday he had to play second fiddle to Robert Kubica as the Pole grabbed the first pole position of his career, and the first for BMW Sauber.
When the chips were down in the final runs of Q3, Lewis Hamilton went to the top with 1m 33.292s for McLaren, but then Kubica banged in 1m 33.096s - even though he said his car was pulling to one side under braking - and when Massa came up short with 1m 33.123s, the dye was set, to the delight of the men from Munich and Hinwil. Their speeds, of course, could owe much to their respective fuel loads, but it was all great theatre.
Behind them, Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen just pipped fellow countryman, McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen, for fourth, 1m 33.418s to 1m 33.488s, and again fuel loads may be a factor there.
Any driver deemed to be driving unnecessarily slowly during their out- or in-laps during qualifying, or during the reconnaissance laps for which the pit lane is open prior to the race, or in a manner which might endanger other drivers, will be reported to the stewards, the FIA have announced.
As far as Bahrain is concerned, this means cars leaving the pits will be timed between the second safety car line (50 metres before Turn One) and the first safety car line (after Turn 15), and any car exceeding a time of 1m 39s between these points will be deemed to have been driven unnecessarily slowly.
The move is designed to prevent drivers on flying qualifying laps being impeded by drivers travelling more slowly. It follows the five-place grid penalties handed to both McLaren drivers at the last round in Malaysia, where Heikki Kovalainen and Lewis Hamilton were judged to have hampered the progress of rivals.
Felipe Massa needed a win in Bahrain, and all weekend he looked like a man who had come to get it. When the red lights went out at the start, he lit off from the front row of the grid, and that was all she wrote as he dominated in style for Ferrari.
BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica lost second place to Kimi Raikkonen on the third lap, and from then on, pit stops apart, it was an easy one-two for Ferrari.
The start also set the pattern for McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton. He was very slow away, and ended the opening lap in 10th place. Then he clobbered the back of Fernando Alonso’s Renault, and the resultant pit stop for a new nose put him into a cycle of running a heavy fuel load in traffic for the rest of a frustrating afternoon in which he took only 13th place and lost his world championship points lead.