Way too early to say anything.
First there are the tyres. Webber was the first front-runner to pit I believe and Vettel’s were going off before Hamilton’s. This could have been important in yesterday’s race and will be important later on.
From what Red Bull say their KERS is kind of wrapped around the internal stuff, instead of being neatly packaged together to be put in an optimum place. Seeing as they’re going to need it for the circuits with real straights, its re-installation looks like messing with the car’s centre of gravity, an advantage that played a small part in their Melbourne triumph. Add this to Whitmarsh’s claim that the broken KERS (with all the brake bias issues) cost Hamilton 0.5s (probably an exaggeration – let’s say 0.3). So the one-lap advantage is going to be about half of that 0.778s we saw (especially when we add the introduction of KERS into the mix).
(What I am saying here is that without KERS Red Bull will be slower in places like Malaysia, but having it on won’t preserve the performance advantage they had in Melbourne and may even work against it)
The race pace advantage, which I calculated at one point in the race (before Hamilton’s undertray troubles), was an average of 0.26s. Considering this is a car that has had little testing and brand new parts on, compared to a car that has been honed over 15 days and only the smallest of upgrade tweaks, this is a very catchable deficit.
