Agreed with this. Of course, Ferrari's decisions and actions aren't always perfect, but you cannot expect that in a real time environment with lots of different factors (one always should aim for it though), but they haven't had any major screw ups and have maximized performance and position. It might prove to be very important, the Ferrari did seem faster yesterday than before in this season, so if they are indeed able to be in the mix again, they start on a level playing field (even in front of a lot of competitors) even though their car was not nearly as fast.f1316 wrote:I'm not sure that the Ferrari is particularly agreeable with the tyres, more that they've been extremely efficient with everything else apart from sheer pace. With Alonso they've been able to capitalise most of the time on the issues others are having with various things, which simply would not have been the case if their pitstops, starts, strategy hadn't been generally pretty spot on (with a few exceptions, granted).
What I think a lot of people are missing, however, is how important it actually is to be running at the front. I'm not sure Vettel's race pace, for example, was really any slower this time than in Bahrain, it was just impossible to tell because he was always in traffic. Being at the front allowed him to judge his race last time, even against someone with more sets of tyres, and he could push in clean air when given the chance.
Much as I don't think it helps Ferrari, I think being on the front few rows is going to become increasingly important because a consequence of the close running and strategy options the tyres give you is that unless you get away from the pack at the start significantly, you have a lot of problems with traffic after stops.
It is, in my opinion, an unrepresentative picture that Hamilton's qualifying has not yet yielded success, since a combination of penalties, weather and poor starts have made him unable to use it as he normally might. But unless Alonso can get close to the front-running pace in quali consistently, we may seem him unable to maxmise his relative good race pace.
Apologies for the length of the post, just a lot of thoughts to dump
One cannot expect that to last though, Hamilton will get wins and better positions, Vettel probably too (although I've yet to be convinced by the Red Bull, they are so much slower on the straights that they need to start on front and have a perfect race to score major points it seems). I'm sure Fernando will continue to maximize performance and he and Hamilton have really shown the best consistency, but for both they need to show consistency at the front to be able to fight for the title.
