@magon4
The median age of the voters is 20 (!!!), and first season median is 1998.
Fantastic! Glad to know that I’m just about perfectly average :P
Btw – as I understood it we’re meant to put up our first FULL season of F1 watching. My first season is 95 or 96 – but my first *full* season is 98.
To be fair, @Kingshark – you don’t have to keep average positions, just assign the P1 slot 10 points, and it goes down to 1 point for P10. Non-votes get 0 points.
Rain nowadays (unfortunately) is not The Great Big Equalizer anymore. If a car is quick in the rain, track back to Friday and Saturday (if dry). They will have demonstrated certain characteristics that distanced them from the field.
Look back to Friday in Malaysia for example. There were two teams which (1 somewhat surprisingly, 1 not so surprising) which were suffering from overheating front tyres. Guess which two teams? (clue: One is run by a Swiss gentleman, the other is a red-coloured Italian team).
Silverstone 08 – there was one car which could repeatedly kill the track on power out of the last corner, and out of Vale (and Club), while being only slightly above average in Maggotts/Becketts.
Canada 2011 – there was again one car which was consistently losing traction after a few laps, not due to degradation but due to overheating rears bloating up pressures in the rear tyres (hot means expansion). Subsequently there was one guy in the race who could get on a set of tyres and just be immediately on the pace, while his rivals who came in sometimes one or two laps later found that it was still to early for them to really get grip with their tyres.
I’m just using these 3 to illustrate examples – I’m by no means saying these are the only 3 to be such.
Nowadays rain perfromance is very much dictated (though to a lesser extent than the dry) by the car and how it handles in the wet. No driver these days has been consistently good in the wet – and usually, even these so called current-day “rainmasters” have also made big bad booboos in the rain. Alonso doing a glorious 720 rotation in Malaysia 2010 qualifying for example, or spinning out and crashing on his own in Spa 2010. Hamilton doing 3 or 4 360s in China 2009. Vettel spinning out in Malaysia 2009. Button horrifyingly average in the wet parts of Malaysia 2009, and through the whole of China 2009.
