Embarrassment for Hamilton? The Reborn Button...

[Max Speed]

Grosjean underrated, partly because of hasty and underprepared Renault understudy role in 2008; Kimi, although a super fast F1 driver at his peak, only a former world champion due to Hamilton's inexperience back in 2007 coupled with bad McLaren driver management. Even then, Kimi only scraped ahead by one point. It's Romain for me in this years "Lotus" battle.

[bdr529]

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed.
His time, a 1m19.670s, was faster than any testing laps at the Spanish track throughout 2011. I must say thats a bit of a suprise.
I'm guessing they let Kimi loose for the day, more importantly it's nice to see a black and gold Lotus at the top of the time sheets again.

[raymondu999]

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed.

Not if Grosjean does a 1:15. I don't think it will happen, but I'm not talking until all the cards are down

[Pierce89]

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed.
His time, a 1m19.670s, was faster than any testing laps at the Spanish track throughout 2011. I must say thats a bit of a suprise.
I'm guessing they let Kimi loose for the day, more importantly it's nice to see a black and gold Lotus at the top of the time sheets again.

I wouldn't get too excited over the time. Barrichello ran a 1:19.832 in last year's abortion of a Williams

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/89467/

[raymondu999]

Also; we don't have a benchmark against which to compare Kimi in the same car

[megz]

You signed up just to say that didn'tcha? haha.. I will have to direct you to the fanboy ying yang thread.

Look who opened the thread... Oh wait...

[nipo]

"Kimi is not the political person that Fernando was..."
- Eric Boullier, speaking of how Romain can fair better than his first time in F1
(From a Q&A at Formula1.com)

=D> =D>

Seems EB is not the biggest fan of FA... For the right reason~~

According to EB Romain has lost all confidence driving in a team that was then completely focused on FA. Politics does harm one's soul when you're young and didn't know what to expect. Now that (also according to EB) he's regained confidence we will see the young man in his true colors.

[LionKing]

"Kimi is not the political person that Fernando was..."
- Eric Boullier, speaking of how Romain can fair better than his first time in F1
(From a Q&A at Formula1.com)

Unfortunately, Kimi also is not the driver Fernando Alonso is :)

That aside, everytime Eric Boulier opens his mouth, I developed a bit dislike towards him. His treatment of his drivers, accusing everyone else but himself for the team's failure, etc...

[PlatinumZealot]

I think he is a truthful man that tells it like it is.

[Giblet]

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed.
His time, a 1m19.670s, was faster than any testing laps at the Spanish track throughout 2011. I must say thats a bit of a suprise.
I'm guessing they let Kimi loose for the day, more importantly it's nice to see a black and gold Lotus at the top of the time sheets again.

Different tires, different grip levels, different everything.

They now have better DRS than last year, and are better at using it during more of the lap. We don't know what kind of ballast and fuel loads are being run. We don't know how much of the lap they are running KERS, as it is unregulated.

Its testing. You simply can not look at times and say he is back on it.

You can look at the consistency of the times and say he is consistent.

If we went on times, Mercedes should be WDC and WCC right now as they topped the times in the end.

[bdr529]

Guys the original question put forth was "if Kimi was up to full speed?"
And yes I think after posting those times on tuesday it showed he is still fast.

Jenson Button:.. “Maybe he (Raikkonen) was running heavy,” said the 2009 world champion.
“We maybe haven’t seen eye to eye a lot of the time when we’ve been racing, but he’s a very quick driver, a world champion.

“He’s obviously in a very competitive car, and whatever they did today – low fuel or whatever – it was still quick.”

Now I don't know how well the Lotus will get this year,
I assume they will be fighting to get into the top ten, but we'll have to wait and see

I personally don't care which of the 2 drivers is the quickest,.. I'm no more a Kimi fan then a fan of Grosjean.
I thought my last line summed that up
"More importantly it's nice to see a black and gold Lotus at the top of the time sheets again."

[bdr529]

If we went on times, Mercedes should be WDC and WCC right now as they topped the times in the end.

Nobody said they would be handing out the trophies based on testing times.
That wasn't the question asked and nor was it the answer I gave,
there's no need to try and read more into my post then what I said, or bring up irrelevant statements such as the above.
If your not sure about what I said and/or you want me to clairify my statement, Please feel free to ask me.

[Giblet]

No need to be dismissive of what I said, as it was in direct response to

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed

Its not safe to say this whatsoever for the reasons I already listed. He may be a full second off the pace of the car, which would mean he is not up to full speed. I am just responding to your post, no need to be so short or say my post is 'irrelevant' when it was completely so.

This is a discussion, it goes both ways.

[bdr529]

No need to be dismissive of what I said, as it was in direct response to

Fastest on his first day back I guess its safe to say Kimi is back to full speed

Its not safe to say this whatsoever for the reasons I already listed. He may be a full second off the pace of the car, which would mean he is not up to full speed. I am just responding to your post, no need to be so short or say my post is 'irrelevant' when it was completely so.

This is a discussion, it goes both ways.

It was not my intent to be short with you, I'm sorry it came across that way.

I did not dissmiss your entier post as being irrellevent, your comments about the DRS and KERS are all valid points, I never discredited them
Just the statement "If we went on times, Mercedes should be WDC and WCC right now as they topped the times in the end."
because that is irrellevent, thats an argument to something that I never said in the first place and nor did I ever convay the feeling that Kimi would be WDC based on his times on the first day of testing.

[Giblet]

I was simply segueing from a post where someone I have yet to converse with yet made an assumption about a driver based on testing times. I was just saying that you can't read anything into testing times, and cited Merc as an example. If you hadn't used the testing times to tell us that Kimi is 'up to speed' we would not be having this discussion and you would not have heard the Merc point at all.

Please understand that we get a lot of new users here who do actually think testing times are something to go off of, or talk technically and then turn out to not know what cold or hot blowing is.

Unfortunately I assume the lowest common denominator with new users. You obviously get it and we are agreeing, it was all just semantics.