Before we head off to Tasmania for a week to follow the close knit tarmac rally community here’s 93 photos from the Chinese Grand Prix. We hope you like them!
Category: Ferrari
Here’s the full post-race press conference transcript from the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix, featuring interviews with race winner Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) and minor place getters Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes AMG).
Before you get reading there’s some housekeeping from the race to cover. On lap 15 Mark Webber (Red Bull) collided with Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso). Stewards have apportioned blame for the incident to Webber and handed him a three spot grid penalty for the next race.
“I was coming from a reasonable distance behind, Jean-Eric was really wide,” explained Webber. “But when we came close to the apex he wanted to hit it, which he is entitled to do, but by then I was committed to the inside and the incident happened.
“It was a couple of laps before our pit stop window, so I had to come in early. The guys thought the tyre was fixed when we left the stop, but it came off on the out lap. We have had a few problems this weekend; I think we could have done something from our start position today, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
In happier news Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) reckons his seventh placing was well deserved. “The points are very welcome but the really good thing to take away from this is that I think we got to where we were with genuine pace,” he said. “I’ll have to look at a replay and see everything else that happened but I don’t think we benefited from getting lucky with strategy, I think the pace was there for us to finish seventh entirely on merit. And that’s a very nice feeling to take with me to Bahrain.”
[Pic: Ferrari]
Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) has made up for his first lap exit in Malaysia by collecting maximum points for the win at the Chinese Grand Prix.
Tyre strategy once again ruled the day and it was an odd race really. Nothing happened and everything happened. Drivers were asking their teams if they should be racing the car behind or letting it through, all due to tyre wear and their own individual strategies.
In the end the only real excitement was in the last few laps when Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull), running a brand new set of soft compound tyres, was taking seconds per lap out of Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes AMG) in the chase for the final podium step. Hamilton was able to hang on for third, but only by a couple of tenths from the charging Vettel.
Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) was second and but for a mishap early in the race which left him with some minor damage to the front of his car he may have been able to put more pressure on Alonso who enjoyed victory with a margin of 10.1 seconds.
Mark Webber’s (Red Bull) horror weekend continued with his left rear wheel falling off as he was coasting back to pit lane with problems. This, after already being forced to start from pit lane due to his fuelling dramas from qualifying.
On the positive side for Australian F1 fans Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) took the six championship points on offer for seventh place. That’s a career best result for Daniel and we hope his improved form continues.
The stewards will be investigating a host of drivers after the race for using DRS in yellow flag conditions. Should that alter the race results we’ll be sure to let you know.
The F1 circus backs up next weekend in Bahrain. We’ll be away interstate at Targa Tasmania but will endeavour to cover proceedings as best we can.
Lewis Hamilton claimed his maiden pole position for Mercedes AMG in qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix earlier today. His time of 1:34.484 gave him a relatively comfortable margin of almost three tenths back to Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus, 1:34.761) and Fernando Alonso (Ferrari, 1:34.788).
The Mercedes duo have shown good pace all weekend and Nico Rosberg (1:34.861) may be a little disappointed to be starting on the second row.
Tyre strategy once again influenced the final qualifying session more than the FIA would probably like with no flying laps set until the closing minutes of the session and two drivers, Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) and Nico Hulkenberg (Sauber) failing to set a time at all.
You can add Jenson Button (McLaren, 2:05.673) to that list too. The only reason he completed his slow lap was to ensure he started ahead of Vettel. Both Vettel and Button will start the race on the longer wearing harder compound tyres (mediums), while all those ahead will be on the softs. Will Vettel’s sacrifice and lowly P9 grid position pay dividends?
It was a bit of a shambles for Red Bull today actually. Mark Webber managed just one flying lap in Q2 before being asked by the team to park his car due low fuel. He spent much of Q2 in the top 10, but as the track conditions improved those around him went faster and eventually bumped him down to P14. Worse was to come, though, and Mark will start the race from last place after being penalised as his car contained just 150ml of fuel, well below the one litre required for its mandatory sample.
In better news for Australian fans Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) made it into the top 10 and will start the race from P7. His teammate, Jean-Eric Vergne, could only manage a time good enough for P16.
Categories
Fernando has fun in LaFerrari
Here’s a short and sweet video from Ferrari showing Fernando Alonso at the wheel of the LaFerrari at the company’s famous Fiorano test track.
Alongside Alonso is GT racer Andrea Bertolini. Asked to do a couple of slow laps for testing purposes Alonso couldn’t resist and let rip in the 708kW über-hybrid.
So, the Malaysian Grand Prix, you may have heard about it. It’s a perfect snapshot of how the mainstream media in Australia handles Mark Webber.
Last week the local media tore shreds from Mark after his woeful start, which, funnily enough, ended up not being entirely his fault. Now, the media is lauding him as some sort of saint-in-waiting who has been dealt an unimaginable injustice by that devil in disguise named Sebastian Vettel.
It’s also an excellent example of how quickly the media world can force things to spiral things out of control; we’ll go into a bit that later.
Anyway, enough banter, here’s the pics from Sepang. We hope you like them.
Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) has claimed his 38th career pole position and his second of the year in qualifying at the Malaysian Grand Prix this afternoon.
The triple world champion was made to work hard for it though. His Q1 and Q2 efforts were well off the leading pace and were it not for a late shower ate in Q2 it was feasible he may not have even progressed through to Q3. But he did, and with the rain staying, his choice to pit for a second set of intermediates proved to be the decisive factor, setting the quickest lap of Q3 (1:49.674).
Felipe Massa (1:50.587) nailed his last lap, as conditions improved, to pip his Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso (1:50.727) for the fourth race in succession. It’s the first time Felipe has started on pole since electricity was invented, but the question remains, can he match the racecraft of the wily Alonso on Sunday?
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes AMG, 1:51.699) finds himself in fourth and was on provisional pole for much of the final session, until times began to fall late in Q3. Mark Webber (Red Bull, 1:52.244) heads the third row and with better timing for his runs could have been further up the grid.
“It’s disappointing to finish fifth. We didn’t get the timing quite right in the last part of Q3, I thought I had more laps,” Webber said afterwards. “We were quick enough, but we went too slow on the lap when we should have been going quick and it meant we didn’t get a last timed lap in. The time doesn’t represent how comfortable I felt in the car today and it’s frustrating when you put so much work in and know you could have done better.”
Nico Rosberg (Mercedes AMG, 1:52.519) will start alongside Webber, who will be hoping he has no mitigating circumstances affecting his start this week.
Australian Grand Prix winner Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus, 1:52.970) qualified seventh, but will start from P10 after incurring the wrath of the stewards for impeding Rosberg during qualifying.
Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso), often behind Jean-Eric Vergne during timed sessions this year, managed to progress to Q2 and will start from P13. Vergne, though, didn’t make the cut from Q1 and will start back in seventeenth.
In contrast to his fellow Aussie, Ricciardo was happy with his result. “Coming into qualifying today, if I’d been told I could sign on the dotted line for thirteenth, I’d have taken it,” he said. “It’s a decent result and we haven’t been that far up the time sheets all weekend in practice.
“We have improved but I still want more. Tomorrow, I plan to move up the order in what could be an unpredictable race. I really want to be in the top ten and get some points on the board early in the season.”
Heavy rain is expected at Sepang tomorrow and it may well spice things up quite a lot for the race. With that in mind the field remains open if rain does affect proceedings you can see any one of the top eight qualifiers grabbing the glory.
[Pics: Red Bull/Getty Images]
UPDATE: The transcript from the post-qualifying press conference has now been added below.
Ferrari has released this behind the scenes clip featuring its new 708kW LaFerrari hypercar. Consider it a teaser for a new promo to come on the next week or so. As well as visuals, which we’ve already seen, we get some audio tidbits that are music to the ears of V12 fans.
Koenigsegg reckons their Agera R, first shown in Geneva two years ago, still has what it takes to see off the latest hypercar challengers from Ferrari and McLaren.
Firstly, with 830kW (1115hp) available the Agera R has more power than the LaFerrari (708kW) or the P1 (675kW) and, crucially, at 1418kg with fluids they say it weighs less as well. The Huayra is lighter than the Agera R, just, but with a paltry 539kW on tap it’s little wonder Koenigsegg is having a wee chuckle.
Oh, and with a v-max of 420km/h the Agera R really does laugh at its competition, which are all wallowing in top speeds that start with a lowly three.
Koenigsegg is also confident it can see off any of its challengers at the track as well and on road tyres. Which is a not so subtle dig at Pagani who fitted its Huayra with specially made hand-cut slick tyres before handing it over to The Stig, who then set a new lap “record” around the Top Gear track.
Of course, the Agera R does hold a number of world records regarding acceleration and braking, so it’s no surprise they are so confident. All we need now is for someone to get all four cars in the one location and let them rip!
[Source: Cars UK]
Aww, isn’t that cute, Kimi and his Australian Grand Prix trophy sharing a quiet moment together in front of their adoring fans.
And with that image another pictorial journey in Formula 1 begins. It’s AUSmotive’s third year of compiling F1 pics after each race to share with our readers and so perhaps now is as good a time as any to share a little about how it all works.
The images are all sourced directly from each team, via their media portals. While we wish we had the budget, time and ability to either commission photographers to act on our behalf or attend every race ourselves that’s simply not the case. It’s all done from AUSmotive HQ in Canberra.
As to the image selection, generally, we select six images from each team, three for each driver. So with 11 teams competing in 2013, at a minimum, you’ll see 66 pics in each gallery. Actually, make that 60 images, because Marussia still won’t answer our emails.
In addition to the base selection of images we give the winning driver and his team extra attention with anywhere from 12 to 30-plus photos. That often depends on the team. Pics from Red Bull normally feature heavily, in part due to having an Australian driver on its books, but also because they provide the best gallery each race and make it the easiest to access them. Ferrari is probably next best. But Mercedes, and sometimes McLaren and Lotus, don’t always give us a lot to work with, which some may argue is fair enough.
Ideally, we like to get photos from raceday, and where there’s a good behind the scenes shot we’ll include them too, no matter the team. Getting back to Mercedes, as this article goes live they only had a handful of images from Sunday in Melbourne, although none of them were on-track photos, so all the F1 W04 images you see are from the practice days. Unfortunately, this is typical for Mercedes/Daimler.
So there you go, we hope that helps you understand a bit more what we’re doing with these galleries and if you have any ideas on the type of images you’d like to see, or any other ideas, please let us know. You can think about it while you’re taking in the 105 images waiting for you after the break.
That’s quite an amazing podium there, a total of six world championships are shared between Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. Not only that, to have Lotus win the first race of the year helps set the tone that this may not be the usual Red Bull–Ferrari two-horse race we’ve been accustomed to seeing of late.
Before we get into the transcript from the drivers on the podium here’s a few words from Mark Webber (P6) and Daniel Ricciardo (DNF) on their somewhat disappointing results from today’s race.
Mark Webber (Red Bull Racing): “We had a few issues on the grid, getting the telemetry from the car to the pits, which wasn’t ideal in terms of the guys knowing where to set everything up for the start. We lost KERS also for the first part of the race. It looked like we were quite heavy on the first set of tyres and we weren’t that quick to challenge for the win as a team today. We had a slow pit stop (which was due to a front jack failure), which put me behind Jenson. We salvaged something in the end, but that was Melbourne today and it was disappointing not to get more out of it. It was hard to fight against others on a two-stop.â€
Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso): “In the end I had to retire with a problem linked to the exhaust. I reported back to the pit wall that I could hear strange noises and I tried to fix it by changing a few functions, but it was not to be. At the start of the race, I struggled to find grip and it felt like I was driving on ice, as it took a very long time to warm up the tyres. But afterwards, after about ten laps, I got up to speed and my lap times were not too bad, but by then I had lost too much time in the early stages. I think we have more homework to do when it comes to the tyres. Not the ending I wanted for the first Grand Prix of the season, especially here in my home race.â€
[Pic: Ferrari]
Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus) has driven a well calculated race to claim the 2013 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne this afternoon. For the Albert Park circuit it was an unusually trouble-free race with no Safety Car periods, this allowed Raikkonen to maximise his two-stop strategy, which was one stop fewer than his closest rivals.
Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) turned his P5 starting position into a second place, finishing 12.4 seconds behind Kimi. Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) finds himself on the bottom podium step, not what he would have planned after claiming pole position this morning.
Mark Webber (Red Bull) made a poor start from P2 and could only manage a sixth place result, behind Felipe Massa (Ferrari) and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes). Webber revealed after the race he lost KERS and there were telemetry issues, before conceding he didn’t have the pace to fight for the win in any case.
Adrian Sutil’s (Force India) return to Grand Prix racing delivered some time in the spotlight, twice he lead the race, before slipping down to P7 due to fading supersoft tyres. Close behind was Sutil’s teammate Paul di Resta. Rounding out the top 10 were Romain Grosjean (Lotus) and Jenson Button (McLaren).
Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso) retired from the race on lap 39 with a suspected broken exhaust. The only positive for him being that teammate Jean-Eric Vergne finished out of the points in P12.
After the wet weather we had yesterday and this morning the race was dry for the most part with only a few light drops falling at various stages. Prior to the race the general consensus was the Red Bulls would be the cars to beat if the conditions were dry, yet the results told a different story and show that we are facing a very open start to the 2013 season.
It’s Raikkonen’s second Australian Grand Prix win, joining his 2007 success. For Lotus, it’s the first time since 1978 (in a former life) they have won the opening race of the year. In 2007 Kimi won the drivers’ championship and in 1978 Lotus won the constructors’ title; a new omen for both perhaps?
Formula 1 backs up at Sepang next weekend for the Malaysian Grand Prix.