2012 Bahrain Grand Prix Discussion Thread

[fjackdaw]

Button won races in cars that had no chance at winning the world championship.

He did that ONCE and that was in a race when virtually everyone in front of him turned their brains off. Don't even go ahead and dare trying to claim that the 2011 McLaren had not even a theoretical chance at winning a world championship.

So Vettel won easily in the best car on the grid - explain to me how come that makes him the better driver than Button, who won easily in 2009 in the best car on the grid.

[AdrianSutil]

The Force India team not shown debate seems to be a deliberate attempt at trying to cause a storm in a tea cup.

I can't recall seeing Force Inda. But then I also Can't recall seeing Sauber or Ricciardo. Frankly I can't really recall seeing Force India in any of the qualifying sessions, it has been a problem for a while now that the midfield teams do not get the coverage in Q2.

I saw a FI for about a second as it slowed to let Webber through. As for Sauber, both Perez and Kobayashi had half a lap on the TV and Ricciardo got a whole lap in Q2.

[AdrianSutil]

... meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that Charles Pic qualified 21st?

Yes!! The commentators were saying it's the first track he really knows, and plonks the car 21st ahead of Glock.

Maybe the lad has some talent and won't suffer from Virgin/Marussia number 2 syndrome.

[Minardi Man]

Button won races in cars that had no chance at winning the world championship.

He did that ONCE and that was in a race when virtually everyone in front of him turned their brains off. Don't even go ahead and dare trying to claim that the 2011 McLaren had not even a theoretical chance at winning a world championship. Barrichello achieved more in weaker cars so so much for that.

Vettel was often half a second ahead of the rest of the field in that car for the vast majority of the season, never mind Button.

I have nothing against Barrichello, who knows what he could have achieved had he not been forced to become Schumacher's little sidekick, but he was simply out-driven by Button in 2009 (and other season's i'm sure). They had equal machinery at the beginning of the year, and yet it was Button who pushed home the advantage of the car, not Barichello, and if you want to talk about driver's profiting from the others around them "turning their brains off", then what about later on in the season when Button seemed to be buckling under the pressure? Barrichello certainly profited from that (or at least, should have).

And if Button is so lucky, how come he lost a good amount of points in 2011 due to sheer bad luck?
In monaco Button could have easily been on for a second or first spot had the race not been stopped to the benefit of Vettel and to a lesser extent alonso in front of him.
At Silverstone, Button would have been on for a high points finish, likely a podium had his pit crew not messed up his stop
And in Hungary he again retired through issues outside of his control.
Had he not have had some of this bad luck, then yeah, i guess he could have really challenged for the championship like you said.

[AndreaModa]

... meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that Charles Pic qualified 21st?

Yes!! The commentators were saying it's the first track he really knows, and plonks the car 21st ahead of Glock.

Maybe the lad has some talent and won't suffer from Virgin/Marussia number 2 syndrome.

I don't know, people were saying the same thing about D'Ambrosio at various points during last year.

Whilst I don't want to take away from HRT and Pic in what for both of them was an excellent achievement, I suspect the reality is Glock must have had some sort of problem or fudged his lap.

Also, was anyone else pissed with Caterham for not even trying in Q2? Kovalainen did a single flying lap on the harder tyres, setting a time some two seconds slower than the time he set to clear Q1. I honestly can't see the point in them even trying to get into the next session of qualifying if that's their attitude towards it. Best just set a time good enough to beat HRT and Marussia and save the tyres.

[mario]

I'm not sure I wish to be connected to Bernie if he takes an attitude like this:

Bernie Ecclestone, whose FOM company is responsible for producing the live coverage, scotched the suggestions that Force India was deliberately ignored.

He insisted that fans are interested only in frontrunners, hence the lack of Force India screen time.

"Nobody cares if someone is ninth or 11th," Ecclestone told Reuters. "Only the people that are watching a particular team.

"I spoke to our people and they were more or less concentrating on who was going to be on pole, rather than somebody going to be 10th."

Go home, Mr Ecclestone. Please. If Williams put Susie Wolff into the car, I think people would be very interested in whereever on the grid she qualified, eh Bernie? Or even if Maria de Villota got her Virgin drive? Or is this the whole reason why I was to marry one of his daughters? To knock some sense into him?

Actually, to take his point to the extreme, maybe if nobody cares about 9th or 11th places, maybe there should only be eight cars full stop. Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren and Mercedes. And then reintroduce the 1990s points system - if there are only 8 cars, we don't need points to go all the way down to 10th any more. And who cares if Formula Renault UK got canned for 2012 for only having 6 entries confirmed for this season? F1 is bigger than that. It doesn't need to put on a show. It'll get by fine because nobody cares about anything at all but what happens on the track at the front. Absolutely nothing else. At all.

Sadly, though, to a certain extent Bernie is right if you consider the casual audience - if you only watch a handful of races a year, and gain your information from the wider media rather than a specialised motorsport reporter, the manufacturer backed teams and drivers are going to be a lot more familiar to you than an outfit like Force India. Added to that, on a more cynical note the higher ranking teams - McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari - also have some of the biggest and highest value sponsors, which in turn is likely to skew coverage in their favour.

Also, was anyone else pissed with Caterham for not even trying in Q2? Kovalainen did a single flying lap on the harder tyres, setting a time some two seconds slower than the time he set to clear Q1. I honestly can't see the point in them even trying to get into the next session of qualifying if that's their attitude towards it. Best just set a time good enough to beat HRT and Marussia and save the tyres.

That is the flip side of the very soft tyres that the teams are using this year - we saw how that happened more than once last year in Q3 (and it happened again as neither Alonso or Di Resta tried to set a timed lap), and with tyre wear expected to be quite high during this race, it is more advantageous to share tyres than try for another fast lap. It wouldn't be the first time that such a decision could come back to haunt him - in the 2011 Spanish GP, Kovalainen might have won some praise for setting a time in Q2, but using up his tyres to do so actually cost him in the race, because Trulli, who had been knocked out and therefore had more fresh sets of tyres, was able to get and stay ahead of Heikki.

[Sublime_FA11C]

... meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that Charles Pic qualified 21st?

Yes!! The commentators were saying it's the first track he really knows, and plonks the car 21st ahead of Glock.

Maybe the lad has some talent and won't suffer from Virgin/Marussia number 2 syndrome.

Marussia actually bother to have no.1 and no.2 drivers?

I read some driver's comments and it seems Rosberg and Raikkonen both have a fresh set of options for the race. So... i guess we will watch them waste perfectly good tyres in a proccesion. Then again Rosberg watched cars gobble him up for two races when his tyres gave out. And I'm not surprised Kimi wanted a really fresh set after last week's disaster.

[Waris]

Thank goodness I will be doing something else tomorrow afternoon, so I will have an excuse not to watch this race. I've been consistently missing exactly one race for the past three F1 seasons, to my great annoyance, so I resolved to watch every race this year, but I've decided that this is a special case and doesn't count.

By the way, I think it's rather stupid of Anonymous to hack the F1 site during the race - during the race, everyone will probably be watching the race (they should try to hack the broadcast instead...), they'd make a better point hacking it right after the race, when people visit it to see the results, IMO.

[Peter]

... meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that Charles Pic qualified 21st?

Yes!! The commentators were saying it's the first track he really knows, and plonks the car 21st ahead of Glock.

Maybe the lad has some talent and won't suffer from Virgin/Marussia number 2 syndrome.

Marussia actually bother to have no.1 and no.2 drivers?

It's not that, it's that every Virgin/Marussia second driver, despite not doing such a bad job, has been canned at the end of the season twice in a row already. I can see it now, Pic making it 3 times, unless he manages to beat Glock.

[eytl]

On a more serious note, the top 4 look awfully simillar to an average 2011 grid. Let's hope we won't see a return to that type of races too.

I share that concern. Leaving Malaysia aside, there wasn't much of a battle for the lead in Australia or China. The leader was allowed to clear out and essentially "do a Vettel" (ie avoid being DRSed and control the race). I sincerely hope Vettel doesn't "do a Vettel" tomorrow. Or for that matter for the rest of the season. It's a bit concerning (from a variety point of view) that Red Bull have found their qualifying speed. It's been fun watching them with clearly good race cars having to come back from lower grid positions. If they have found one-lap speed whilst maintaining long-run speed, then the honeymoon for everyone else might be short-lived.

Schuey had a DRS problem which prevented him from doing another run in Q1. Would explain why he never came out to do a lap on the softs, at least.

I think I'll invoke James Hunt on that one ("And all I can say to that is bull****"). Or at least publicocrap. They took a gamble, and lost.

... meanwhile, has anyone else noticed that Charles Pic qualified 21st?

I did! I did! He's been faster than Glock all weekend, and been really impressive for me. Either that or Tim O'Glock is having a shocker.

[DemocalypseNow]

Regarding Marussia Number 2 syndrome, this photoshop I made at the end of last season explains the problem perfectly;


See the point here?

[Pamphlet]

I think I'll invoke James Hunt on that one ("And all I can say to that is bull****"). Or at least publicocrap. They took a gamble, and lost.

Even though Hunt was generally a misinformed overrated...c-word that rhymes with his name, after taking another look at that part I have to agree. It does seem like an excuse.

[Aerospeed]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

[Nessafox]

Probably i'll do. But i will have a double feeling about watching it.

There's the point that sport and politics should not mix on one side, and the fact that sport should not act like as if politics don't exist on the other side.
But then on the other hand, we can say the same things about a lot of countries.
We can't have championship existing of 20 races at Francorchamps. Oh hell, actually we can!

[RealRacingRoots]

We can't have championship existing of 20 races at Francorchamps. Oh hell, actually we can!

[shinji]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Nope. First race I won't have watched in 10+ years, don't care what the outcome is either.

Will be studying all day anyway so wouldn't have been watching live in any case. It's my moral objections to the race that'll preclude me from watching highlights though.

[Valrys]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Will be watching it, as I forgot to cancel my Sky Go monthly pass, meaning they already have my money for this month so I might as well make use of it.

[DemocalypseNow]

Maybe the highlights at 5pm. Otherwise, no.

[RonDenisDeletraz]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Not sure yet.

[Pamphlet]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

I have zero reason not to do it. It'd be selfish of me to not watch it simply because of the situation. I highly doubt anyone in here cared that much about the situation in Bahrain before the Grand Prix came up. I'm not going to invoke morality as an excuse. I don't support the decision, and I don't like what's going on over there, but my not watching the race won't make a difference.

[Sublime_FA11C]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Don't let people wanting to watch shatter your faith in humanity. Let the fact that in 6 or 7 years no one at all will remember anything about this sink in. For every Bahrain that gets some attention thousands of Sudans, Afghanistans, Sri Lankas, Tibets, Bosnias, Georgias, Checnyas, Croydons, Chilean miners, Ache tsunamis, NOrth Korean famine victims and forgotten others fall by the wayside. You've every right to feel pissed, but what can you do except vent or surrender to the inevitable. Now i'm all gay and preachy. I do honestly belive that F1 has every right to try and sell a race in Bahrain. If Bahrain experiences political instability that does not automatically force F1 to pull out or cast it as some villain if it goes ahead with the plan. Remember that these are long term plans laid years in advance. My opinion is that the race should have been provisionally taken off the calender and reinstated at the last moment if possible rather than the other way around. But i suspect that a) That was probably legally nigh-impossible to achieve, and b) it was not in the be$t interest of the parties involved.

It's perfectly normal and justified to want to watch a race. It's the rest that's abnormal. If i'm honest, a decision one way or another makes no difference to the world, it only matters to you.

[Nuppiz]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Nope, I'll check the results from Wikipedia soon after.

Perhaps not for the political issues, but simply because I rarely watch F1 races live if I'm at home alone.

[Klon]

Are you planning to watch the race?

Yes. And to make you just as miserable as I am, I will tell you now that most people watching the race won't give a toss about the protesters.

[WaffleCat]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Not really motivated,first F1 race since 2009(apart from Valencia and Yeongam 2011) where I feel like buggering off to someplace else.

On the topic of qualifying,I seriously feel like quoting David Purley and James1978's sig...

"If you don't stop pointing your finger at me, I'll snap it off and shove it up your arse".

[AndreaModa]

Are you planning to watch the race?

I would have, if the BBC were showing it live!

But then again it's one of those races I really don't care about, along with Valencia, but I'll find the time in my uber-busy schedule (i.e. grand total of f*** all) to watch the highlights show in the evening. The fact is, they're racing there. Now deal with it and move on. It's harsh, and it's a shame, but it's what's happening. No point getting hooked up on the what-ifs and might-have-beens. The race will happen, and I plan to enjoy it as a sport, unconnected from political motives or protest.

[Alianora La Canta]

I won't be watching it, since for me to do so would imply that I thought it legitimate for a governing body to ignore its own regulations to play politics (and then speak falsely about it).

[DemocalypseNow]

The only reason I didn't want F1 to go to Bahrain was the safety of the staff who were forced by the FIA to show up. I'm not Bahraini so I'm not interested in the power struggle. Is it a shame the protests have turned violent? Yes, it is. Should we really be racing there? IMHO, no, we shouldn't. But seeing as we are, and these are the cards everyone has been dealt, I probably will be watching the race highlights - as I can't watch live being in the UK with no Sky subscription.

One protestor died. ONE. Even in an undisputed first world western country like here in the UK, police brutality during protests lead to deaths sometimes. I think the issue is being blown out of proportion by the media now, there were genuine concerns a week or two before the event but now we are into the event proper the media has just gone into a stupid frenzy.

[Myrvold]

I don't feel like watching it, no. This is the first time since I started watching F1 as a 7yo in 98, that I don't look forward to a race.

[tristan1117]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

I'll probably watch the first half, get bored, then go do something mildly productive for my Sunday morning.

[Shizuka]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Yeah, for the podcast that I started this year with the Malaysian GP, I have to sit down and watch the race in order to have a fair opinion on the race.

[tommykl]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Yes, from a lack of anything to do. I have a bad feeling about the race itself, but if I were not to watch races in countries with protests, I would only watch about a quarter of the season.

[QuickYoda41]

I'll watch it, I wanna see who finishes in 9th and 11th.

[RonDenisDeletraz]

I'll watch it, I wanna see who finishes in 9th and 11th.

As do I

[fjackdaw]

Though I'm against the race being run, me watching or not watching makes no difference to anything, so I might as well as not. If there was a mass popular movement organised not to watch, to hit Bernie in the pockets, and I was going to be watching through... ahem... legitimate sources, then I wouldn't - but there isn't and I'm not, so I may as well see what happens.

[RealRacingRoots]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Being in the Pacific Standard Time-Zone, I get the biggest shaft in terms of European motor racing. I have more than enough brain cells to know that getting up at 5 in the morning for a race just isn't worth it. Sleep is for the weak? Sleep is for people who like having wisdom and intelligence! So yes, no more watching F1 live until they come to Canada, which even then is a stretch since getting up at any-time earlier than 10 on a weekend doesn't happen unless I have to do something.

And I refuse to watch the rebroadcast of races by SPEED on the grounds that I hate them all outside of Will Buxton (who I actually quite like).

Inb4 Political Unrest.

[AdrianSutil]

I have no choice but to ask one brutally honest question:

Are you planning to watch the race?

Yes. Highlights later tonight on BBC. Despite all the negativity about Bahrain, it's still a Formula 1 race and will treat it just like any other. Although I'll be a tad nervous about protestors.

[CoopsII]

I'll watch it, I wanna see who finishes in 9th and 11th.

I'll watch the BBC highlights because not doing so for political reasons will make no difference at all. I know F1 and all of us will move on after this (I expect the drivers to be gone from Bahrain before the faux-champagne has dried out) but I dont think the sport will be untarnished. Although its not a like-for-like comparison, the England cricket team playing in South Africa in the 80s caused huge damage to the players reputation and the sports governing body who seemed powerless to stop them. Its a shame F1 seems to have painted itself into a corner over this.

[GwilymJJames]

Five place penalty for Schumacher, who, being in P22, no-one cares about.

[TomWazzleshaw]

I'll watch it, I wanna see who finishes in 9th and 11th.

I'll watch the BBC highlights because not doing so for political reasons will make no difference at all. I know F1 and all of us will move on after this (I expect the drivers to be gone from Bahrain before the faux-champagne has dried out) but I dont think the sport will be untarnished. Although its not a like-for-like comparison, the England cricket team playing in South Africa in the 80s caused huge damage to the players reputation and the sports governing body who seemed powerless to stop them. Its a shame F1 seems to have painted itself into a corner over this.

Speaking of Apartheid, I'm surprised nobody's brought up the South African GPs held in the 80s yet. Again, whether it's a like-for-like comparison is entirely up for debate.

[Boomstick]

I'll watch it, I wanna see who finishes in 9th and 11th.

I'll watch the BBC highlights because not doing so for political reasons will make no difference at all. I know F1 and all of us will move on after this (I expect the drivers to be gone from Bahrain before the faux-champagne has dried out) but I dont think the sport will be untarnished. Although its not a like-for-like comparison, the England cricket team playing in South Africa in the 80s caused huge damage to the players reputation and the sports governing body who seemed powerless to stop them. Its a shame F1 seems to have painted itself into a corner over this.

Speaking of Apartheid, I'm surprised nobody's brought up the South African GPs held in the 80s yet. Again, whether it's a like-for-like comparison is entirely up for debate.

Exactly, or the first race behind the iron curtain in 1986?

Anyway why is nobody talking about the McLaren Bahrain link?!?!?! They would rather winge about PDVSA and Williams :-/