2013 Japanese GP - Suzuka

[henra]

At least a somewhat more interesting race despite a Vettel win.
Thanks to both RBs at least messing up the start royally.
In a certain way the third place after the start vor Vettel was potentially better than a second place would have been. This enabled RB to put pressure on RG by splitting the strategy.
Feeling a bit sorry for Webber but on the other hand knowing that he isn't nearly as good at tyre saving as Vettel or the Lotus's it looks to have even been also the best strategy from a pure WCC perspective. I'm not sure they would have achieved a 1 - 2 with any other strategy. On identical strategy Grosjean was too fast for this. It was forcing him to pit early which broke Lotus' strategy.

Impressive part on Vettel's side was keeping up with the lap times of Grosjean when he was still on old tyres while Grosjean was on fresh ones.
That was the key to his win today.

[stefan_]

Nice start for Grosjean, but after that it was pretty much clear that he couldn't fight with the bulls, they were keeping and controlling that 2s gap in every which way they wanted. Was a nice shot at the win, it is close but Romain has to wait a little bit more. Good thing Lotus seem the only ones who can in some way keep up the pace with the RBs. At least in the last couple of races.
Great result for Sauber today, glad that Esteban scored some points and Hulkenberg was up there again.
Ferrari was nowhere today.

[CHT]

Why is webber not where he was supposed to be during the podium interview? I thought thats kind of disrespectful.

[iotar__]

At least a somewhat more interesting race despite a Vettel win.
Thanks to both RBs at least messing up the start royally.
In a certain way the third place after the start vor Vettel was potentially better than a second place would have been. This enabled RB to put pressure on RG by splitting the strategy.
Feeling a bit sorry for Webber but on the other hand knowing that he isn't nearly as good at tyre saving as Vettel or the Lotus's it looks to have even been also the best strategy from a pure WCC perspective. I'm not sure they would have achieved a 1 - 2 with any other strategy. On identical strategy Grosjean was too fast for this. It was forcing him to pit early which broke Lotus' strategy.

Impressive part on Vettel's side was keeping up with the lap times of Grosjean when he was still on old tyres while Grosjean was on fresh ones.
That was the key to his win today.

I don't know about impressive. When you play with, how to put it, marked cards than it's easy to pretend that some special
strategic or driving skills are required. Where was this brilliant strategy/driving in Hungary (twice 2012-2013) or Germany 2012? It really was a no-brainer, do your two stopper with big hards advantage and nothing else. Webber will be taken taken care of anyway, and as you said earlier Lotus had to react to two strategies etc.

About the pace on new/old tyres: as said previously the race was over in the second stints on hards, from then on they had to play it safe with length of the stint/tyres and less pace overall. That's why Webber/Vettel overtakes were different. RG had little business to be there anyway, pace when needed earlier was impressive enough until hards went off. They could have tried something with mediums, probably better tyres for Lotus but that would require some flexibility. I'll wait for team comments with that.

Pity they left all the bad features of "aggressive" tyres while erasing all the good ones by changes and playing it safe on all fronts - this is the result.

[Juzh]

Vettel heads red bull 1-2. Must be a conspiracy! RB changes it's mind quite a lot it seems, yesterday they were sabotaging vettel's kers and today they sabotaged webber's race lol.
Mark was attacking grosjean and in the process destroyed his tires, while vettel patiently sat behind waiting for his turn. Webber could never do a 2 stop because he's much harder on tires than Seb as witnessed numerous times since pirelli came into f1.
Good effort by gro to keep the RBs behind but he used too much fuel in the process and obviously had to run lean in the final stint, before parking his car at the end of pitlane. What goes around, comes around.
Funny how mercs self-destructed. Hamilton driving into vettel was a racing incident as far as I see it. He thought he was already in front, much like grosjean in spa last year.
Silly stuff in the pitlane forcing ros to do a drive trough, dropping him way down the field and then got stuck behind hulk who was doing a fantastic race.
Alonso lucks into somewhat good position as usual.
If anybody could hold RBs behind it was raikkonen, had he not botched qualifying yesterday. His fault entirely. Doesn't seem like a bright future in ferrari with 2 less than optimal qualifiers in the team.

[hendrix]

What is not optimal qualifing in Ferrari is the car.
Alonso has won every teammate in all the teams and have been in similar rate os poles with Hamilton in McLaren, who is by far the best qualifier out there. So you don´t have to many arguments to tell he is not good qualifier.
Raikkonen is always tuning the car for race not for qualy.

[xyler]

1st: RB did the best they can do - a 1, 2 after being 2,3 after the start. What do you want?
2nd; RB had to split their strategies. To do it not was a much discussed error of Mercedes this season (I don't remeber the race).The only thing we don't know is whether Webber was forced to his (maybe not so good) strategy.
3rd: The difference between Vettel and Webber was - and this maybe decided the 1,2 - how fast they passed Grosjean. Vettel made short process.
4th: I want to know how many persons who hate RB for assumed team order also hate Ferrari for their "official" team order!

[hendrix]

1st: RB did the best they can do - a 1, 2 after being 2,3 after the start. What do you want?
2nd; RB had to split their strategies. To do it not was a much discussed error of Mercedes this season (I don't remeber the race).The only thing we don't know is whether was forced to his (maybe not so good) strategy.
3rd: The difference between Vettel and Webber was - and this maybe decided the 1,2 - how fast they passed Grosjean. Vettel made short process.
4th: I want to know how many persons who hate RB for assumed team order also hate Ferrari for their "official" team order!

Alonso overtake Massa was a team order?, I think we have seen different races.
And you are right, are a lot of person who hate Vettel and Red Bull, and they are feeding them every sunday.

[acidtech]

webber's 1st & 2nd stint, no deg.

[xyler]

1st: RB did the best they can do - a 1, 2 after being 2,3 after the start. What do you want?
2nd; RB had to split their strategies. To do it not was a much discussed error of Mercedes this season (I don't remeber the race).The only thing we don't know is whether was forced to his (maybe not so good) strategy.
3rd: The difference between Vettel and Webber was - and this maybe decided the 1,2 - how fast they passed Grosjean. Vettel made short process.
4th: I want to know how many persons who hate RB for assumed team order also hate Ferrari for their "official" team order!

Alonso overtake Massa was a team order?, I think we have seen different races.
And you are right, are a lot of person who hate Vettel and Red Bull, and they are feeding them every sunday.

I think you did not understand my post because I never said that I speak about this race when I mentioned Ferrari. I thought about Ferraris long tradition with teamorder - f.e. the famous race in Zeltweg "Let Michael pass for championship".

[turbof1]

Good race from Grosjean. Nothing he could do to hold on first place; Red Bull played it very smart with the pitstop strategy. If he went for a 3 stop, he would still be behind Webber and the latter has more pace. If he stayed out longer, say 5 more laps, Webber's strategy would have played out.

[Just_a_fan]

Hamilton too impatient at the start, busted himself.

Really? What was he supposed to do? Both Red Bulls were slow away and he'd passed Vettel and was alongside Webber. Was he supposed to slow down and allow the Red Bulls to stay ahead of him off the line?

Hamilton was paralleling Webber which resulted in a fairly light touch against Vettel's front wing as Hamilton moved across in response to Webber's hard jink to the right. It really shouldn't have resulted in a puncture anyway. It's a real shame because Hamilton looked likely to be second in the first corner behind Grosjean. That would have made the battle even more interesting.

[Jonnycraig]

They screwed Webber with that early 2nd stop. It forced Grosjean to pit, Vettel stayed out and that was all they needed.

Webber could've followed the two stop strategy and finished 2nd, instead he went to a three stop strategy and finished second.

having 13 sec advantage 11 laps to go ... figure it out yourself. he had to be more than second faster just to catch him

Vettel was 2 seconds faster than Webber on his inlap with another 10 laps after it.....

Radio Webber :"mode 3 Multy 22", means you will pass to 3 pitstops strategy and you are not fighting with Vettel or Grosjean, you fight with your self.
Radio Vettel: "you are fighting with Grosjean, not with Webber". Means: We have put Webber fighting with his self because he was in better position to win the race. That is all.

Vettel Radio: "You will be under pressure from Mark at the end so save some tyres"....

Really? What was he supposed to do? Both Red Bulls were slow away and he'd passed Vettel and was alongside Webber. Was he supposed to slow down and allow the Red Bulls to stay ahead of him off the line?

Without wishing to get into the 'fanboy ying yang' stuff, Alonso was in an identical situation in Melbourne, he was going for a gap between Massa & Hamilton off the line that suddenly closed and backed out, set himself for T1 and overtook Hamilton into T2. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour.

[henra]

Good race from Grosjean. Nothing he could do to hold on first place; Red Bull played it very smart with the pitstop strategy. If he went for a 3 stop, he would still be behind Webber and the latter has more pace. If he stayed out longer, say 5 more laps, Webber's strategy would have played out.

Sums Grosjean's option up nicely.
Indeed strategically clever move by RB, despite all conspiracy theories. No effective defense conceivable against what they did. Somewhat ironic coincidence (/tragic for Webber) that the perfect strategy for RB as a team was consistent with the perfect strategy for Vettel, despite Webber being in front of him at the beginning.

Re Overtaking Grosjean. I'm usually rather critical of Webber's performance.
In this instance I feel like I have to defend him a little bit. The Medium's didn't provide terribly good lap times over many laps here. Until he had closed the gap on Grosjean, he had used up most of the usefull performance/life in the tyres, whereas Vettel was much closer behind Grosjean when he came back onto the track after the pitstop. So his Hard tyres were still quite fresh when he overtook Grosjean.

[GrizzleBoy]

Well, its that time of the year again when I'm no longer excited by F1.

Vettel has already won, his nearest "championship rival" can barely make Q3 and is being challenged by his team mate more than anything else. Meanwhile the people who can get even an inch close to Vettel had no chance of winning the championship since a good few races ago.

Just running the clock till 2014.

Same thing every year.

/whining

Nice to see Grosjean finally being released to show all the potential/speed he showed in 2012 and also nice to see the Saubers able to put up good fights against better teams for a couple races.