Category: McLaren

With thanks to the FIA we bring you the full transcript from the post-race press conference at the 2012 Chinese Grand Prix.

It’s safe to say that Nico Rosberg would be enjoying a few celebratory drinks at the moment. Here’s a quick grab from his comments in the presser: “Well, it’s an unbelievable feeling: very, very cool. I’m very happy, very excited. It’s been a long time coming for me, and for the team as well over the past two years and a bit. Now, it’s finally here. It’s just amazing and it’s just nice to see how quickly we are now progressing. I didn’t expect to be that fast today.”

Nico Rosberg has completed a maiden pole position–race win double by claiming victory in the Chinese Grand Prix today with a margin over 20 seconds.

For those counting at home, it’s the first win for a factory Mercedes team since the 1955 Italian Grand Prix. And it’s the first win by a Rosberg since Nico’s father Keke won the inaugural FIA Australian Grand Prix in 1985.

With the two McLarens coming home in second and third it was an all Mercedes powered podium as well. Actually, it was a sloppy final pitstop for Jenson Button that handed the easy win to Rosberg. Prior to that their contrasting strategies were looked like they would provide a gripping grandstand finish.

Lewis Hamilton will be happy to have recovered from his five-place grid penalty to claim a trifecta of third place finishes to start the year. Mark Webber, likewise, has finished all three races in the fourth place for Red Bull. He managed to pass teammate Sebastian Vettel in the closing stages to relegate the dual world champion back to fifth place. However, after qualifying in P11 and making a terribly slow start Vettel should be pleased with P5.

There was some great racing today and it mostly centred around tyre strategy. Webber started the trend for making early stops when he came in on lap seven. He made two more stops leaving himself, like most others, a relatively long final run to the flag.

Kimi Raikkonen and Lotus planned for a long run to the finish after his final stop and was running in P2 for quite some time, albeit with a long trail of cars in tow gathering behind him. He asked his last set of tyres to do 28 laps when they only cared for around 22. As Kimi’s tyres started to go off the race really livened up with great wheel to wheel action and overtaking aplenty. In the end the 2007 world champion dropped right down the field to P14.

A decision from Jean-Eric Vergne and Toro Rosso to start the race from pit lane after giving the Frenchman’s car significant updates overnight paid dividends as he finished ahead of teammate Daniel Ricciardo. Although both were well out of the points.

The shame for Mercedes AMG and their sponsors is Rosberg’s relatively untroubled race out front gave them little camera time as the director, perhaps rightly, focused on the action behind.

It wasn’t a total fairytale for Mercedes today, with a pit crew error forcing Michael Schumacher to retire after his front right wheel was not fitted correctly during his first stop. Who knows what the crafty 43-year-old may have conjured up if he had a full 56 laps to play with.

In the end, though, Mercedes will be overjoyed at registering their first win since they rejoined the F1 circus at the start of 2010.

In recent times F1 has been mired in controversy over its (now confirmed) decision to race in Bahrain. Thankfully, qualifying at the Chinese Grand Prix brings a good news story with Nico Rosberg claiming his first pole position, after 110 previous attempts. It is also the first pole position for a “Mercedes” team since 1955.

These are the right sort of headlines for motor racing and adding depth is the fact that defending dual world champion, Sebastian Vettel, continued his struggles failing to make it past the second qualifying period. Giving that stat extra spice was his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber setting the fastest time in Q2 (1:35.700).

In Q3, though, Rosberg needed just one flying lap to register an untouchable time (1:35.121) that gave him a comfortable 0.505 second margin back to Lewis Hamilton (1:35.626). Michael Schumacher continued to show the Mercedes AMG F1 W03 has strong one-lap pace by qualifying in third place (1:35.794).

Webber couldn’t replicate his Q2 speed and ended up in P7 (1:36.290), a relatively poor result by Red Bull standards. Still, it’s better than Vettel’s P11. Daniel Ricciardo again out-qualified his Toro Rosso teammate Jean-Eric Vergne making it into Q2. Vergne was not so fortunate and despite a 0.8 second gap to Ricciardo the pair will start from P17 and P18.

The front-end of the grid will have a minor reshuffle as Hamilton is required to serve a five-spot penalty for changing his gearbox. That will put the two Mercedes on the front row and push the likeable Kamui Kobayashi and his Sauber in to P3 for tomorrow’s race.

With thanks to the FIA, the transcript from the official post-qualifying press conference can be read after the break.

Two races, two pole positions. That’s Lewis Hamilton’s record for McLaren so far in 2012 after he set the fastest time (1:36.219) in qualifying tonight at the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Proving the McLarens are the team to beat in quali Jenson Button (1:36.368) locked out the front row for the Woking-based team. And in his best qualifying result since his comeback Michael Schumacher (1:36.391) wound back the clock to qualify in the top three for Mercedes AMG. Schumacher was sitting on the front row for a while, too, until Button knocked him off at the death.

Mark Webber (Red Bull; 1:36.641) once again qualified ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull; 1:36.634). Webber qualified fourth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen (Lotus; 1:36.641). Although, as the times suggest, the pair could barely be separated. However, a five-spot grid penalty for Kimi due to a gearbox change will see him start from P10.

That means Vettel moves up one place to P5 and will start alongside Romain Grosjean (Lotus; 1:36.658). Sensing he did not have the pace to claim pole Vettel chose to run the final qualifying session on the harder compound tyres, the only man to do so in Q3, and it remains to be seen if that will prove to be a wise move.

Further down the field the Toro Rossos couldn’t match their results from Melbourne. Daniel Ricciardo (1:37.883) will start from P15 and he did at least make it into the second group of qualifying. Jean-Eric Vergne (1:39.077) failed to do that and will start from P18.

Conditions were warm and dry at Sepang and the drivers struggled with braking often locking the inside front wheel on the last corner. Things are unlikely to improve tomorrow with a mid-race rain shower predicted which will be sure to keep the teams on their toes.

The transcript from the official post-qualifying press conference can be read after the break, with thanks to the FIA.

[Pics: Vodafone McLaren Mercedes & Mercedes AMG]

Rain interrupted proceedings during both of F1’s free practice sessions at the 2012 Australian Grand Prix yesterday. It robbed the teams and fans of the first genuine chance to see who was going to be the team to beat in Melbourne.

In drying conditions during the morning session it was Jenson Button who set the day’s fastest time when lapped the 5.3km Albert Park Circuit in 1:27.560. For context that time is four seconds slower than Sebastian Vettel’s pole position time from last year.

In the afternoon Michael Schumacher relived the glory days by finishing the session on top of the timesheets. His time was 1:29.183 and as such doesn’t really offer us a true representation of what to expect in today’s sunny and dry conditions.

World Champion team Red Bull Racing was down the field, with Webber finishing fifth fastest in FP1 (1:28.467) and Sebastian Vettel eleventh (1:29.790). While in the second session it was Vettel who led the Red Bulls in tenth (1:32.194) just ahead of Webber (1:32.296).

Australia’s other hope Daniel Ricciardo took his Toro Rosso to seventh in the morning (1:28.908) before being well down the field in twenty-first during the afternoon (1:34.604).

Free Practice 3 starts at 2pm and runs for an hour. Qualifying starts at 5pm and it is then that we should get the first genuine insights as to how the early part of the season should progress.

[Pic: asphotos]