Fernando Alonso took pole position for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim in conditions that he felt were “on the limit” as rain soaked the circuit. He ended up beating Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. Michael Schumacher was fourth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg, Pastor Maldonado, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, Paul di Resta and Kimi Raikkonen.
Again had to resort to text commentary, as once found, (After a long circular search with many dead links) the BBC R5Live commentary was on golf or cricket depending on when you tuned in. There were a few minutes of F1 in between the golf, cricket and news. My DAB radio said F1 commentary but it was golf for most of the time. Over 50% of qualy missed!
rpaco – get yourself a satellite dish pointing at 19.2E and you can watch F1 on free-to-air German channels. I don’t speak German but learn a few numbers and you can follow most of what they’re saying – the drivers’ names and team names are the same, after all! Twitter and formula1livetiming.com fill the gaps while BBC are filling their airtime with gold and cricket.
Seriously? I’ll look into that, I’d do anything rather than give my money to Murdoch.
Why not turn the sound off and listen to 5live?
scott yes, seriously. A cheap dish and decoder is all you need. FP2 is on a channel called N-TV, FP3 is delayed an hour but on a channel called RTL, qualifying and race live on RTL. All easily obtainable and no problems: I had a satellite installer man do mine but only because I’m soft and wouldn’t go up the ladder. Cost £250 but for a DIY job the dish and box would be under £100. Beats £35pm or whatever Sky want, and you get a free ‘beat Murdoch’ feeling.
Normally would dip the sound and listen to 5live, but as rpaco said, they were covering golf and cricket yesterday.
Disappointed in McLaren’s result, their strategy will have to be perfect in the race. Alonso was brilliant (I guess, cos I could not see it) But I am afraid it’s Vetel to win again, no rain tomorrow.
Alonso had new tyres right at the end, why didn’t McLaren do that!? It was so obvious that was the thing to do.
McLaren having a half decent strategy tomorrow is not something I’d put money on. Strategy decided by committee just doesn’t work.
Didn’t Button try fresh wets, but to little benefit ?
Looks more as though Ferrari and Red Bull found some way to get the wet tyres in the sweet spot that the others couldn’t.
I suspect McLaren left both cars in dry set-up. This would mean they are going to make a doublé easily! Joe, can you tell us if it’s possible to adjust ride height during the race?
No, ah, well you can, but it must require tools, automatic systems are not allowed, nor are simple lever operated systems by the driver. It needs a fair bit of time and may involve changing parts. There may be a loophole I’v just thought of in pit operated cams, but it’s complicated enough already.
Suggest Scarb’s tutorial on suspension, dampers, inertas, torsion bars etc (springs are old hat, many cars have no springs at all)
This is an area where on a wet practice/dry race weekend the park ferme rules ought to allow a change to a wet setup or vice versa, it’s a safety thing.
But at the moment McLaren have a dry setup which was fast, did Ferrari and Red Bull use wet or dry setup?
everybody seems to be expecting no rain… I seriously doubt there are massive differences in the setup for most of the cars. What do you think Joe ?
This is of topic, but there appeared an article on Germanies Spiegel Online today, talking about Adrian Sutil driving a “Racecab” at Hockenheim. The author claimed that Martin Whitmarsh was responsible for getting Adrian Sutil fired. According to the article, McLaren wanted to protect Lewis Hamilton, and therefore put pressure on Force India to fire Sutil right after the China incident. Force India refused, but ultimately bowed down to the pressure, because McLaren was important as a technical partner, and that that is why Sutils contract wasn’t renewed. Have you heard anything about this Joe? I’ve never read anything of that sort and it doesn’t really make sense to me. After all, at the end of the season, Hamilton was not in danger of suffering bad press because of Sutil.
Here is the article, for those that can read German: http://www.spiegel.de/sport/formel1/ehemaliger-formel-1-pilot-adrian-sutil-arbeitet-an-seinem-comeback-a-844732.html
What a lot of tosh.
It was my understanding that Sutil assaulted someone. Is that not a convincing enough reason to be fired?
Joe,
did eccle$tone put his money where his mouth is and make an appearance at Hockenheim on Saturday?
There was no sign of Bernie at Hockenheim on Saturday.