Month: November 2014

British driver Lewis Hamilton put his act together to beat his German team mate Nico Rosberg by passing him on track and lead all the way to the checkered flag making it his 10th win of the season and increasing his championship lead to 24 points with two races to go, Brazil and Abu Dabhi.

In a brilliant move, he took over the lead on lap 24 after an interesting first period of racing marked by the safety car coming in on lap 1 after a collision between Mexican Sergio Perez (Force India) and German Adrian Sutil (Sauber) with both cars abandoning and causin several others to come into pits for tires after running over a lot of debris, this all happening on turn 15.

Red Bull´s Daniel Ricciardo made an impressive recovery after a bad start, gaining positions with exciting passes and really took the Williams of Felipe Massa and Valteri Bottas out of the podium. In the end Massa started to come closer on the hunt of Ricciardo but it wasn´t enough. This was one of the best fights between the Williams cars and Red Bull that proved to really be one step ahead on race pace. Sebastien Vettel on the other hand suffered from the beginning starting from the pit lane and then having to come into the pits again after the lap 1 incident and then again on lap 2. During the race he had to make his Red Bull last long enough to make it to lap 26 for another stop on a strategy which made him look slow at times but it really paid off in the end when he came in on lap 48 (of 56) for fresh rubber with which he posted the fastest lap of the race and went into an all or nothing approach and battled his way though to reach an impressive 7th place.

Spaniard Fernando Alonso also had a big race, joining the group of drivers fighting at the beginning with Ricciardo and then with the McLarens of Button and Magnussen. Strategies allowed the fans to enjoy a lot of overtaking, not necessarily thanks to the DRS system but because the track gives you enough room to have different race lines and most of them pushing really hard on the brakes knowing they woul have a two stop strategy. We must remember last year it was a one stop race, this one was a two stop, Pirelli doing an excellent job. Pastor Maldonado had an excellent race, the Venezuelan driver with strong motivation and pace figthing with Toro Rosso´s Jean Eric Vergne and eventually finishing 9th but after taking a 5 second penalty due to speeding on Pit Lane he had to settle with 10th.

Caterham and Marussia did not race this weekend as financial difficulties have made him struggle, their future in the category is uncertain as the issue awakens the awareness of how much is invested by the teams in order to cope and how much the teams receive back from the organizer. But that is another story that I will write about in a following post.

Positions are as follows as we go to Brazil for the next race in one week´s time:

Jenson Button (McLaren Mercedes) was penalized by the stewards for a gearbox change and will have to take a 5 grid penalty for today´s USGP in Austin. Qualifying went well for the british driver but unfortunately the penalty will drop him back from 7th to 12th on the starting grid. Daniil Kvyat was also penalized after the team reported a complete engine change for the russian driver being this his 7th enginge to the 5 engines allowed per season. The russian did not manage to get a good qualigying result as lied 14th before the penalty which will see him drop to last since the engine change has a 10 place grid penalty.

The provisional starting grid after penalties is the following:

Nico Rosberg (Mercedes) put a magic touch in today´s qualifying session with a fantastic unbeatable lap to end Hamilton´s domination. Almost 4 tenths of a second faster, the German driver made a clear point to Hamilton who has proven to be a fast qualifier, today was the exception as both drivers are fighting for the Championship.

Along with the Mercedes drivers, Valteri Bottas represented Williams well, being the only other driver to go under the 1 minute 37 seconds ahead of his team mate, brazilian Felipe Massa. As predicted the fight for the next spots on the starting grid proved to be pretty close amongst Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren. 6 tenths of a second separates the 4th place to the 9th place on the grid, when you consider the track being 5.5 kilometers long, that´s barely nothhing but goog enough for possible and all too valuable points.

Here are the results from today´s qualifying session:

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are setting have set the pace during the first 3 practices in Austin, Texas. With many concerns about reliability issues coming into effect for the last 3 races, the drivers set into the first three sessions (Practice Sessions) to try and find the best set up for both racing and qualifying. First victim, already announced, Sebastian Vettel, with a new power unit that will see him starting from the pitlane and that is the reason in the following chart with the practice times you will see him mostly on the bottom as he limited only on setting the car for race pace only, not qualifying. This could definetely work to his advantage, because he is investing all of his time in practice towards a specific set un instead of going for two, this and a good strategy will definetely be on his favor if perfected by Red Bull.

The rest of the times mark the contenders as they should be marked according to the results and showings this year, Williams follow the Mercedes, Alonso, Ricciardo and Hulkenberg follow with very similar times for Ferrari, Red Bull and Force India, then a very optimistic Adrian Sutil managed to put an underdog (this season) Sauber in 8th place, clearle denoting an improving package as they focus on the 2015. Another team that has focused its efforts on 2015 is McLaren, with Button and Magnussen proving to be competitive and definetely focusing on race pace, so don´t missjudge them from their practice times just yet. Maldonado and Grosjean are improving with the Lotus and are close to the midfield. Mexican drivers Gutierrez and Perez for Sauber and Force India also focused on race pace and so it should be a killing qualigying session with all these drivers in very similar times.

Caterham and Marussia are absent from the USGP due to financial difficulties, so the qualifying will take 4 from the 18 drivers off in the first session, then another 4 to leave 10 for the final 15 minutes. All drivers have expressed their joy to race at COTA, a circuit that flows and allows for a lot of overtaking so it pretty much looks set to be a very interesting and exciting race.