Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel continued their ongoing on-track slugging match with Lewis beating the Red Bull star by 0.27 sec in the second practice session on Friday in Interlagos. The two men were clear of Mark Webber and Felipe Massa, with Felipe Massa’s Ferrari team-mate Fernando Alonso behind him. The worst case scenario for Ferrari if such a situation remains at the end of qualifying will be to send Massa back five-places with a grid penalty, which would bump Alonso up the grid. Behind them there were the two Mercedes of Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg, ahead of Jenson Button Romain Grosjean, Paul di Resta and Nico Hulkenberg and Kimi Raikkonen. Bruno Senna was 13th ahead of Sergio Perez, Kamui Kobayashi, Daniel Ricciardo and Pastor Maldonado. Jean-Eric Vergne set an identical time to his morning session, while Caterham’s Vitaly Petrov and Heikki Kovalainen were ahead of the HRT’s Pedro de la Rosa, Marussia’s Timo Glock and Charles Pic, and Narain Karthikeyan.
If Massa were to outqualify Alonso by just one spot, would it be worth dropping him 5 places back? It would be easy enough to swap them at some point in the race and Massa could be a useful rear-gunner should anyone be coming through the field at speed. Indeed, it may even be possible with a bit of luck in the pit strategy to have Massa stay out and work it so Vettel comes back out behind him and have to find his way past. At least it could compromise Red Bull’s pit strategy if they have to be wary of track position against him.
I wonder if Red Bull are deliberately not going for broke, possibly worried about affecting race reliability? Vettel doesn’t need a podium to win the WDC.
If Ferrari were to pull the same gearbox stunt for a second GP in a row, wouldn’t a charge of bringing the sport into disrepute be appropriate? In any other sport, surely that would be a professional foul?
The rules are the rules.
I was under the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the rules were not all mutually exclusive, i.e. that a disrepute charge could stick even if no other rule was broken. After all, McLaren did not break any other rule, did they?
…and this application of that rule should be changed.
The fuss over this seems deeply silly. I wish people would read a bit more deeply into the history of the sport before they started whinging about a perfectly legal, perfectly understandable tactical decision.
I agree with John C, a very good comment. The level of intolerance to anything displeasing is amazing these days…, what is it with these people that they want to immediately apply sanctions to everything they don’t like?
It only becomes an issue if it’s a side-of-the-grid issue, where there’s a risk of something of a cascade of penalties as everyone tries to avoid being on the wrong side.
Not even close. I would question how much they’d have to gain by doing that, though, as mentioned by another commenter.