There was a Safety Car mid race that absolutely screwed him. His fuel strategy was working right and if he could have maintained pace and gotten the proper IN and OUT Lap…he might very well have stayed in front of Vettel.

I’m surprised no one has talked about this and the British Press did not run the headline: “Safety Car Dashes Button Hopes in Shanghai.”

Am I right about this or was I bleary-eyed at 5am NY time??

Also, I think Toyota will be right up there with their 2nd generation DD (which is now a TD). At Red Bull they will have to be content to hot-rod their existing diffuser until later in the season. I don’t know if Brawn are messing with success.

So who will prevail? I think I’m going 1st) Toyota/Trulli 2nd) Red Bull/Vettel and 3) Button/Brawn (not my final sweepstakes guess however, wanna see some practice sesions first!

All the teams know what there doing out there,they are the professionals with huge teams of designers.

Lets all sit back in our armchairs and watch a few dry races.

Sutil crashes about as often as Piquet does and I wouldn’t be surprised if a big part of the poor performance of that FI can be attributed to the drivers. Imagine two Bourdais’s in the STR or two Nakajima’s in the Williams. Those cars would look a whole lot worse too, if both drivers were not quite up to spec.

Don’t forget, when Hamilton and Sutil were in the same F3 team, Sutil was destroyed by Hamilton. The battle between Hamilton and Piquet in GP2 was a lot closer.

We have not seen any evidence of 1 or 2 so it would appear that the Brawn may have sufficient down force for the job and arguably has such good mechanical grip that downforce is not being piled on to make up for any lack in that direction. We should expect less drag and higher speed on the straight than any car of comparable cornering power though cars with less ability and slower lap times may appear to be faster because their setup has been distorted.
We need an aero dynamacist, any volunteers?

Trulli and both Ferrari guys are going to be on a mission and their car is not hugely changed yet from when they tested at Bahrain.

One thing I am noting is just how tough the Toyota and Brawn front wings are. They are built like bullbars and Glock in particluar knows how to use one doesn’t he?

I think too that Webber is still faster over a lap than Vettel by a shade. Vettel was quoted as saying his new tub post the Melbourne crash was faster than his old one and that may not be just a jibe or related to the bolt on bits for Shanghai. Coming from behind in Shanghai Webber was also pushing purples and while Vettel matched & shaded him his tyres didn’t have to scrap their way into his race position at that point. Mark just has to watch his particular choice of puddles at times and rebuild confidence. It is so much easier being the young guy with early success on success than a guy who has done it tough for years not getting the laurels for lack of vehicle opportunity.

Still utterly amazing how such a great champion (F3000 and 4 times successive IndyCar/Champcar) cannot succeed in F1.

Maybe F1 just doesn’t suit his style altogether. IIRC Zanardi had the same problem and maybe Andretti too.

If we add the different engine/setup argument and different driver experience/skill levels, the performance gap is not surprising at all. In fact Buemi did quite well in China, so maybe a hint that, aero-wise, the cars are much closer now (in addition to Buemi getting more experienced race after race .

Facts are facts:
- Hamilton has performed a lot better with his underperforming McLaren than Alonso has in his slightly better Renault
- McLaren has improved their car more than Renault (obviously since Hamilton was now faster than Alonso in Q2 where before he was slower)

You say Piquet is out of his depth at Renault. I think Jenson Button struggled at Benenton/Renault under Flavio Briatore and, now all Flav can do is say Button is a tallentless “concrete post!”

| predict Ross Brawn and Jenson Buitton will evolve and get close to emulating the Brawn/Schumacher partnerships at Benneton and Ferarri.