Congratulations to
Kimi Raikkonen on winning his first win of his career. Also congratulations go
to Fernando Alonso for his first Pole position of his career.
The second race of
the season produced an interesting result. Thanks to a first corner incident
that took out Michael Schumacher, Jarno Trulli and Juan Pablo Montoya from the
front and also mixed up the field. There were also some interesting strategies
by some of the teams as they continue to find the optimum strategy for the new
regulations.
A
few of the highlights:
Once again
Kimi Raikkonen proved to be of championship material driving faultlessly
and this time he didn't have any bad luck and won the race.
A superb
performance by the young Spaniard Fernando Alonso who snatched pole albeit
on a lighter fuel load than the rest and managed to finish third despite
having troubles with his gear shift in the last half of the race and
suffering from a fever.
Michael
Schumacher committing a mistake for the second race in a row!. That is
uncharacteristic of Michael. This time he caused the 1st corner incident,
could that be due to him not being used to cars in front of him at the
start ?
Ralf
Schumacher continuing to struggle in qualifying, this time starting from
17th. He managed to finish 4th but after a lot of other top runners ran
into problems.
Tyres played a
major role in the outcome. It appeared that the Bridgestone were suffering
from the heat while the Michelins managed reasonably well.
This was the
first race where the weather was not a factor. Do you think the new rules
added to the excitement ? Is it worth sacrificing the Qualifying event ?
Your
thoughts ?
Of course you can comment on other aspects of the race - Have
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What others are saying:
The future of Formula 1?
What a great race for we have seen Alonso and Raikkonen the future of F1 on
the podium. No Schumi on the podium again! This will not last however, but it
does prove that he is not Superman. The new points system has allowed him to
gather 8 points which will be very useful later in the year. The F2002 is
still the fastest car out there, closely followed by the McLaren. Malaysia
showed us that Trulli is not just a qualifier, as on a number of occasions he
tried to outbrake his competitors. Great stuff!
Renault were impressive and appears to have a car similar to the Stewart of
1999 - less powerful but great chassis.
Hopefully Brazil provides an explosive race, with a Brazilian winning and Mark
Webber scoring his first points in another storming drive for Jaguar. Lastly
Toyota should do well here and should have a few points had it not been for
reliability issues - Craig - Australia
Michelin won the race. And that's it.- Andre B - Brazil
Hooray!
Two races in a row without a Schumacher on the podium. Surely someone has
looked up to see how long it's been. Certainly the rules changes re:
qualifying played a part in this, but the more important point is that there
were FOUR DIFFERENT makes in the first FOUR PLACES and the gap from first to
fourth was insignificant (I can't tell from the posted results if it was more
than two seconds).
Do you remember when Ron Dennis replaced a World Champion Finn with another
Finn and people were saying he stole Kimi from Ferrari? Ferrari denied it, of
course. But if they WEREN'T trying to get him that was a major mistake. I knew
Michael wouldn't have 30 points going back to Italy; I never dreamed he'd have
less than 10! And Alonso: what a race!
I loved last year (I'm a lifelong fan of the red cars); but I love this year
even more --and it's only just begun!
I only wish I knew what they did at Renault this week; in Oz they didn't look
anything like this impressive. Alas, my other favorite teams (Jordan &
Jaguar) look to be trending down. Can BAR really be coming back? This is just
fun. That's the only word.
Bring on Brazil!! - Jim W - USA
Looks to me like the new rules (particularly qualifying) have achieved what
they set out to do. We now have different cars at the front of the grid, there
is lots of different race leaders, lots of passing and McLaren are dominating
instead of Ferrari (albeit different drivers).
The bit I seem to be missing is the racing. The passing is only because of the
different strategies (fuel loads) that different drivers are on (and which I
can't seem to be able to work out).
Check out the fastest laps done in the race - none of them were done by the
top 3!
And Ralf Schumacher, did anyone see him do anything useful during qualifying
or the race for his 4th?
Michael was catching the Trulli/Button dice at something like 2 or 3 seconds a
lap, until he caught Trulli and then couldn't pass. I am a bit concerned that
once you dig a bit deeper, these changes are going to spoil the fun of F1.
Solution: Lets find a way to make overtaking happen!!!!! Can we make the
things as narrow as a motorbike? Can we take the wings off? How about skinny
(slick) tyres? Can we make the engine smaller to compensate?
OOPS, I think somebody already thought of that - it's called Formula Ford! now
that's exciting racing - GAZ914 - Australia
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