All about Formula 1

[Gert-Jan]

How do I get there?
Where can I stay if I want to go to the race?
Where can I get some decent food?
Anything else you want to add?

Just ignore me ... seems I'm bored and want this race to get started!

[WalterB]

1. Airplane works good
2. At the ticket booth
3. At the snack bar
4. 2+2 is on my mind.
5. Too late to ignore. Race starts in 5..., 4..., 3..., 2...,

[rua1972]

http://www.pitpass.com/47893-Church-gro ... -Austin-GP

Personally i'm more looking forward to the race itself. What a bunch of weirdos.

[WalterB]

And, of course, God told them that they should go forth and disrupt good and decent people living good and fruitful lives, harrass and harangue the funerals of our American heroes and generally make hypocritical asses of themselves.

[rua1972]

I don't mind what religion people have, but staging a protest at a funeral is not done in my book. Altough in my eyes it hasn't much to do with religion more a sort of brainwash.

Back to F1. After FP1 Vettel is fastest , the track is still green so hopefully that will be different when qualifying is done.

[Gert-Jan]

Vettel on pole position and Alonso qualified the 9th time. Miracles happen in all kind of sports, but if Vettel wins and Alonso doesn't finish in the top 4 tomorrow, the German is the Champion, once again! Now looking in my crystal ball, but I don't see anything spectacular happening ...

19. United States GP - Qualifying
1. Vettel
2. Hamilton
3. Webber
4. Raikkonen (He keeps surprising me. Wonder how good Lotus' 2013 car will be.)
5. Schumacher
9. Alonso

Start the engines!

[WalterB]

I'll probably watch NASCAR and tape this one, but I'll get to watch it.

[rua1972]

Gert-jan don't forget that Grosjean qaulified 4th in front of his teammate but had to take a 5 place gridpenalty for a gearboxchange.
From what i saw from qauli it looks like a nice track for a race. Looking forward to it.

[WalterB]

Well, obviously I spoke before checking my details. I can't find where it'll be shown live at all on the F1 website, but it definitely won't be shown here. So, guess I won't watch it after all.

[Gert-Jan]

Drivers Championship 2012
1. Vettel. 273
2. Alonso. 260

Well, I've seen a nice race, mainly cause it was the first one on this track. Not the best race ever, not the worst either. Obviously Webber and his RedBull had to retire again due to a KERS problem, as said on the board radio. Later the team published a message saying the dynamo didn't function anymore, therefore no power and thus KERS failed. For a second there, I had a feeling Vettel was gonna face the same problem ... RedBull and KERS, will they ever get it to work properly? (Lots of downforce on their car does guarantee success on certain tracks though.)

Glad to see the Vettel and Hamilton battle got decided on the track and not in the pitlane. Vettel: "Sure, there is a bit of an undertaste when thinking about the overtake, as I think we made it a bit too easy for Lewis. It was unfortunate that we ran into cars to lap at that moment, but before that and after, we did everything right!"

What happend to Mercedes during the season??

This Austin track has everything for amazing GP's in the future. Love how it goes up at the start, then take the first corner and down it goes ... on the way to right/left/right/left/right/left , kinda like Maggots & Becketts on Silverstone, but not quite, lol. Herman Tilke has created lots of F1 tracks over the years, one better than the other, but Austin fits the category Turkey, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. Like it!

F1 Race Calendar 2012
18. Abu Dhabi (11/04) ~~ Kimi Raikkonen
19. United States (11/18) ~~ Lewis Hamilton (4th win)
20. Brazil (11/25)

[rua1972]

I really enjoyed that race. The first corner is awesome and the esses after that are very good. Kimi's move round the outside was wonderful. Hamilton was getting closer and closer to vettel al the time, when hamilton had past him he started complaining about the backmarkers. Even without the backmarkers hamilton would have past him. After the race is was finally time for the Rocket red victoryshirt.
A lot of the excitement came from the green track and the hard tyres.
I'm still thinking about visiting a GP again. Austin, Texas is on the shortlist now.
Bring on Sao paolo for the championship decider, still rooting for Alonso. There's rain forecast, could make for a good race.

[WalterB]

Not only did they not broadcast the race here, but there wasn't a single word about it in this mornings paper. Way to be a World-Class city, El Paso.

[rua1972]

Everybody in F1 wants to be in America, mostly because of sponsorship possibilitys. But if you can't even read about it in a Texas newspaper than there is a long way to go. Circuit of the americas has a contract for 7 years, so 6 more chances to go there yourself. Or for the newspapers to write about it.

Counting down already to FP1 on friday.

[WalterB]

El Paso is still a dirty little West Texas town, and kind of behind the times. It's about 70% Mexican now, and the paper is shrinking weekly, while the price goes up. The Monday paper is very thin, few pages. In fact all the papers are noticeably thinner than a year ago. I would guess that Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio papers gave it good coverage.

[John_fromNY]

I might as well put in the song by George Harrison. His ode to Niki Lauda, Jackie Stewart, and Emerson Fittipaldi...



The song was dedicated to "the Entire Formula One Circus" and in memory of Ronnie Peterson. The single was released by Harrison to assist the fundraising for the "Gunnar Nilsson Cancer Fund", a fund started after the death of the Swedish driver Gunnar Nilsson in 1978, caused by cancer. The single however failed to chart.

- Courtesy of Wikipedia.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_(Ge ... ison_song)

[rua1972]

@walter I was thinking isn't there a national newspaper in the USA but then i realised America is quit big. I believe the state of Texas is bigger as France and that is just one state.

The season ended with a very good race.
The qualifying on saturday was a very close one, only ,05 sec difference between the first two cars.
The race started with dizzle which became gradually more persitent rain. Lots of mayhem in the first laps where Vettel lost a lot of time because of a spin and Alonso moved up to forth. That would mean Alonso as champion, but there were 60 odd more laps to go. Some people switched to the inters while Button and Hulkenberg kept going on the slicks.
With the rain coming and going there were a lot of slides and near crashes.
In the end Button came on top and won the race. Alonso fought his way to second but with Vettel finishing sixth it meant the title went to Vettel.
All in all a very good race to watch.

Now the long wait till march the 17th is on when the 2013 season will start in Australia. in the meantime i keep looking for news on the new cars and how the testing is coming along. It'll be March before i know it.

[WalterB]

Believe it or not, Rua, there is a national paper. It's called "USA Today." Most decent hotels either give you a complimentary copy at your room or have them available in the lobby. You can also buy it at airports and news stands, and can subscribe on a monthly bases, I think, but it gets pretty expensive.

[Gert-Jan]

Drivers Championship 2012
1. Vettel. 281
2. Alonso. 278

Brazil. That's sunshine, high temperatures, tropical weather, Rio, hot women intensively shaking a certain part of the body ... yeah, right! An average grid temperature of only 33C during Qualification and 21C during the race on Sunday. And indeed, rain from the beginning 'till the end, which makes a F1 race always more interesting. What strategy are you going to use? How long do you stay on the medium tyre or change to inters? Or even to full wets?

I think nobody really expected the battle between Alonso and Vettel to get so close as it did. I mean, Alonso started behind him and he had to gain 14 points more than Vettel. Like that's ever going to happen ... but when Vettel got hit at the start of the race (who was it again?), I got goose bumps of excitement, lol. Could it really be that I was watching one of the most historical races in history? Not really. Vettel is never the fastest on the track, just check the "speed trap ranking", but he got passed one car even before he had passed another, amazing to see him go up that fast. And then you know, with the gap of 14 points in the back of your mind, Alonso is screwed.

Button and Hulkenberg had it pretty easy up front. They could drive around on the same tyres they started on, simply cause they weren't losing any time to the guys behind them, who first changed to inters. And as long as you don't lose time, why make a pit stop, change to inters also and take the risk that you are going to lose time. Like Walt wrote in another thread: don't 'fix' something, if it doesn't need any 'fixing'. Uhm, what was Hulkenberg thinking when he hit Hamilton?

So, Alonso gave all he got, second position was the maximum! In the end it's no surprise Button won this race ... if there's rain, you know there's the possibility of Button holding a big trophy. I've always loved the Interlagos circuit. Do you remember Hamilton and Massa few years back?! That's one I would call epic, but a very good 2012 race, indeed.

F1 Race Calendar 2012
19. United States (11/18) ~~ Lewis Hamilton (4th win)
20. Brazil (11/25) ~~ Jenson Button (3rd win)
F1 Race Calendar 2013
1. Australia (03/17)
2. Malaysia (03/24)

( USA Today ... no, not now! Duh! But when I was in LA. )

[rua1972]

Six more weeks till lights out in Oz. Nice to see there will be a dutch man on the grid again. Some new cars are being rolled out this week with the rest soon to follow. But still there are two empty seats to be filled.
Bring it on.

[Gert-Jan]

Van Der Garde had an acceptable GP2 season, so it makes sense that he now gets a chance in Formula 1. But like those other two still available seats, they do have to bring a big amount of money with them in order to get that spot. It's cool to see a Dutch man racing in F1, but Caterham ... really, how much can he achieve there?

Only six weeks?? Wow, time does seem to fly by ...