Wednesday 15 April 2009

Brawn Diffuser Legal!

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 02:58 0 comments
For me it is an unbelievable decision by the FIA, the diffusers are legal!

I was expecting the usual dissapointing feeling you get from the FIA.. you know what I mean.. totally opposite to whatever is in the interest of fair play and excitement for the fans, but today they made a decision that ensures this year will be a classic.

“Based on the arguments heard and evidence before it, the Court has concluded that the Stewards were correct to find that the cars in question comply with the applicable regulations,” said an FIA statement.

Now we will be witness to a minnow team like Brawn GP trying to keep ahead of the developement of the old guard in Ferrari and McLaren and that, for my money, is a fantastic prospect.

I would think that Jenson, Rubens and all the Brawn GP team will be whistling on their way to work today safe in the knowledge that they have two GPs in the bag.

I suspect, however, that McLaren and Ferrari have been doing some developement on their own diffusers similar to the ones in dispute and will be able to implement them soon. Nick Fry has said, however, that Brawn's speed is not just down to the diffuser... so we shall see how things pan out.

This wdecision would have been a travesty if it had overturned the stewards decision at two races but I am glad to say (and we don't get too many opportunities to do so) that the FIA made the right decison this time around.

Sunday 5 April 2009

2 Up For Jenson and Brawn

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 05:53 0 comments
2 up! In unbelievable conditions in Sepang, Jenson stormed (erhm.. sorry) to a second victory in a row.

Jenson described his grand prix victory as a 'crazy race' after being declared the Sepang winner following almost an hour parked on the grid.

The red flag came just after half-distance, and with the light fading and the rain taking time to clear, Button was finally able to celebrate victory - although he will only receive half points due to the shortened race duration.

Four tyre changes in the 31 lap race could have runied the day, nut it was the right play as the rain levels fluctuated, forcing most of the field to change first from slicks to extreme wets, then to intermediates, before returning to full wets just before the stoppage.

"What a crazy race, it really was," said Button. "Choosing the tyres was very difficult, because normally here when it rains it pours, but it didn't to start with. We went for the full wet tyre and it destroyed itself, and then I saw Timo (Glock) flying up behind us with the inter, so we put the inter on. Just as he came by I saw his tyres were bald and it was raining out the back, so he was struggling quite a lot and had to pit. I got one lap in on the inter at a reasonable pace and was able to get in and put the wet tyre on and get back in front."

Button had already been the favourite for the victory prior to the downpour, having jumped from third to first in the initial pit stops despite losing a lot of ground with a poor start.

"My start was pretty bad," he admitted.

"I went back to fourth, got up to third, eventually got back up to the front, and I was pretty happy with that, our pace was pretty good."

I also hate to mention my little prediction from yesterday, that the race was likely to be stopped... wish I had bet on it!

Saturday 4 April 2009

Jenson Storms to Pole Again For Brawn GP

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 03:41 0 comments
Oh Yes!!! Jenson storms to pole once again. In his final lap the time of 1m35.181 was enough to edge out Jarno Trulli by just 0.1s. Rubens' qualified 4th but takes a penalty due to the gear box change and qualifies 9th.

Vettel was, once again, impressive bringing his Red Bull home in third, but with a penalty for him also, for last week's incident with Kubica, he qualifies 13th.

The McLaren's are out of it in 13th and 14th and Massa's mistake in Q2 and a bad call on tyres, leaves him back in 16th.

With none of the KERS cars around Jenson on pole the likelihood of a stolen start from any of them is diminished so , barring any disasters, Jenson is in a very good position to set the pace for tommorrow's race.

Jenson said "I was really struggling with the balance of the car. I had a lot of rear locking and instability, and when I have that it's not my forte really because I find it difficult to drive it around," he said.

"So we changed it around overnight and it's improved it a lot and I feel very comfortable in the car, so it makes it exciting for tomorrow."

Should be exciting tommorrow....

Friday 3 April 2009

Ferrari's Fastest in Practice...

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 10:40 0 comments
The Brawn cars are still being touted as favourites for pole this weekend, but so far they are down the standings in sixth and seventh on the practice times.

Wherever Ruben's qualifies he will be given a five place grid penalty because of an engine change.

Ferrari are the fastest so far with Raikkonen clocking 1:35.707 and team-mate Massa posting a lap of 1:35.832.

Lewis is having a mare of a weekend so far after being hauled in front of the stewards and then having to apologise for being less than frank. He also has been fined, twice now, for speeding in the pit lane. I suspect it is weekends like this when we will see the measure of the man, personally I think he is up to it.

Also with dark clouds circling the circuit at the end of the session the predictions are that it may be rain on Sunday.

For Brawn GP's sake, I hope it doesn't rain....it will just be a lottery, but the spectacle of seeing who drives the best if it rains when slicks are on is a mouth watering prospect. Jenson is seen as a bit of a rainmeister because of his smooth driving style so maybe a little downpour won't be too bad. Problem is that the drivers have been saying that dusk driving in the rain will be very dangerous so one suspects that if it happens they may call for the race to be stopped... just a little prediction there...

Thursday 2 April 2009

Hamilton Disqualified

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 03:42 0 comments
Oh Dear! More controversy around McLaren. Turns out that the stewards have looked again at the incident with Trulli and Hamilton. According to ITV, Trulli's third position has been reinstated and Lewis had been disqualified from the Australian GP.

Trulli had been given a 25s penalty, dropping him from third to 12th place, for illegally re-passing Hamilton during the safety car period, having dropped behind the McLaren when he ran off the road.

Trulli had always insisted that he had no option but to overtake Hamilton because the world champion had slowed dramatically and appeared to be in trouble or letting him past.

The stewards reconvened for a new discussion on the matter at Sepang this afternoon after new evidence, believed to centre on radio transmissions between Hamilton and his team, came to light.

You have to feel sorry for Lewis affter driving a great race coming from the back of the grid, but if there was any misleading info going on McLaren only have themselves to blame.... gutted for them...

Repeat after me, Lewis. "In with anger - out with love"

Tuesday 31 March 2009

Brawn GP Sandbagging - Let's Hope So!

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 23:51 0 comments
The rumours flying around at the moment is that Brawn GP is seriously quicker than other cars on the grid, but is being careful about showing this pace.

A ‘senior source’ within the company has told the Guardian the team chose not to show its full hand and had speed in reserve.

“I think, basically, that if someone is two-tenths off us they can feasibly win the race but, if we’re half a second in front, which is probably where we are at the moment, although we don’t necessarily look like that, it is just foolish to just annihilate people all the time,” he said.

Although Button pulled out a four-second lead on the opening lap in Melbourne, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was in contention by keeping the gap down and BMW believe their driver, Robert Kubica, would have won the race if he had not crashed out.

The Brawn GP source denied this and said “I think we have a little bit in the bag.“We’ve got good stuff coming and I think we have reason to be confident.” he said

The diffuser row is the only thing hanging over Brawn GP at the moment, with an appeal set for April 14th. If they lose the right to use the diffuser will all the advantage for BGP disappear? Not according the secret squirrel from BGP. “The visual bits are not really the performance drivers; it’s all the surfaces you can’t see that give you the real performance,” he said.

“One of the good things about the Brawn car is that competitors will look at all of it and say, ‘That’s the bit that’s making it fast.’

“But it is not necessarily one thing; they could be focusing on something that is not really a big performance driver.”

With Honda writing of the 2008 season, their designers had been working on the car long before other teams and completed the initial design several momths before anyone else. This gave the team confidence of the car's ability early on in testing.

“We were looking at everybody else’s times asking why were they all so slow,” he said.

“Our research was telling us we would be the quickest car.”

And will the other teams catch Brawn GP ?

“We’ve still got a lot in the bag,” said the source

“The other teams will come back at us very hard over the season, but, long-term, Brawn will be a force in the top three – certainly while these regulations are stable and the budget cap remains.”

Jenson's Melbourne Diary

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 03:43 0 comments


It is clear from the audio that Jenson is on top of the world and so he should be. There have been interesting comments around today about the preformance of the Brawn GP car. About Kubica's threat in the fianl laps of the race, Jenson said "I actually wasn't worried,".

Talking aboiut those final laps he said "I knew when I came out in front of Vettel that I would be fine as I knew that we could look after the tyre. The thing with the last stint was not to push and try and see what was the best time I could do. I was purposely driving very slowly, I wasn't turning in aggressively to any corners.

"I think I could have been in the mid 1m28s but we were taking an easy route to stop the graining because as soon as that graining starts you see what happens as Vettel lost a massive amount of time behind me"

"I was able to just plough on doing my mid 1m29s when he was in the 1m30s, so I wasn't worried once I was out in front of Vettel and I knew we could bring it home from there."

This has got others around the paddock suggesting that the Brawn car is even quicker than it showed to be "I think they are playing with us" was Vettel's response.

"It was a very mature drive from Jenson, driving as fast as he needed to," said Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug."They could have pushed more in my view but they are smart guys."

Ferrari's Stefano Domencali agreed with Haug's assessment of Brawn. "In normal circumstances without any safety cars, they would have flown away," he said.

Monday 30 March 2009

'Rivals Will Be Soon On Us' - Jenson

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 08:21 0 comments
Jenson is getting ready for the grid's response to Brawn's superiority at the Australian Grand Prix and realises that the other teams will be hot on their tails.

“I hope that we are quick all season and I hope that we have an advantage all season, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” the Englishman said.

With the start to the season that Brawn has had it is clear that the car could put both drivers in the running for a shot at the champonship, but their rivals won't make it easy.

“....I have a feeling that other teams are going to be on us very quickly, and when we get to a different type of circuit, maybe in Malaysia, some other cars which weren’t so competitive here will be.”

Altogether the weekend, apart from being a fairlytale ending to a traumatic winter, was encouraging for the Brawn team, but there were surprises for Jenson in other parts of the grid.

Vettel’s pace surprised me a little bit,” he said. “I didn’t think they were quite as quick as they were today when we watched them in practice but their pace seemed to be good.”

It must be a great feeling for the Briton to be finally in a car that can show his talents as well as show Rubens to be the great driver he is, but all is not so bright elsewhere.

Ferrari driver Felipe Massa, whose team endured a miserable opening weekend, expressed fears that Brawn would dominate the year, describing the team as "in another planet".

Asked when Ferrari might catch up, he replied: "I don't know if it will be possible.

"When you are three-tenths behind it is always possible, but when you are one second behind, or eight- or nine-tenths...quite difficult."

Sources:
ITV

How Awesome Was That? Brawn GP Kick Off With a Win

Posted by Brawn GP Fans at 03:18 0 comments
I have to say I do get a little sentimental sometimes. It is, perhaps, something that a petrol head should not admit in public, but yesterday sure put a lump in my throat.

The fact is that Rubens, Jenson, Ross and Nick are probably some of the most likeable characters in F1. For them to be waking up today with a one-two in their pockets and a sponsor like Branson bagged, must be a dream come true.

Unsually for F1, everybody seems to be happy about the team being on the up, at least for now. Yes I know there are grumbles down the pit lane about the diffuser but I do get the impression that everyone was pulling for Ross and the team... Makes a change from legal cases and bitching every season, doesn't it?

The opening race was, in my opinion, a classic. When was the last time we saw the underdogs slapping the big boy about? Jenson's drive was perfection, even though he admitted a few mistakes at the press conference and, considering Ross Brawn had warned that the pit crew were 'a little out of practice', I didn't spot a mistake in the pit lane by the Brawn GP guys..

Awesome...

The Trulli incident was a bit odd... seemed obvious to me that he had broke the rules.. couldn't understand why he was on the podium... what do you think?

Anyway, onwards and upwards to Malaysia next week.... looks like this season is going to be fun.....
 

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