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Category: Melbourne

Button wins in Melbourne with perfect strategy 1

F12010 / Featured / Formula 1 / Mclaren / Melbourne / Race

Button wins in Melbourne with perfect strategy

McLaren’s Jenson Button took an outstanding victory in Melbourne this evening after an inspiring early switch to slick tyres following a wet start to the race. Showers around the start of today’s twilight event resulted in a thrilling and action-packed race, but Button nevertheless had more reliability problems on Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull to thank for claiming his maiden McLaren victory.

With light rain falling just before the start of the race, all drivers were forced to start on intermediate tyres, with polesitter Sebastian Vettel making a clean getaway at lights-out to lead on the opening lap. Directly behind him on the grid, a poor start by Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso resulted in disaster as he hit eventual winner Button at the first corner, putting the Spaniard to the very back of the field.

Vettel leads Red Bull one-two in Melbourne Qualifying 1

F12010 / Featured / Formula 1 / Melbourne / Qualify / Red Bull

Vettel leads Red Bull one-two in Melbourne Qualifying

Sebastian Vettel will be on pole for tomorrow’s Australian Grand Prix after he dominated qualifying at Albert Park.

On a cold day in Melbourne with the threat of rain hanging over the circuit, all the cars came out early to set a banker lap in each of the three sessions. Vettel’s second pole of the year came after he set the fastest time in all three, pipping Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber by a tenth to the dismay of the local crowds.

Fernando Alonso took third in the Ferrari, ahead of Jenson Button’s McLaren and the fellow Ferrari of Felipe Massa. Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will start in 6th and 7th for Mercedes while Rubens Barrichello, Robert Kubica and Adrian Sutil round off the top ten.

Hamilton leads McLaren in Melbourne practice 1

F12010 / Featured / Formula 1 / Melbourne / Practice

Hamilton leads McLaren in Melbourne practice

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton ended the first day of running at the top of the timesheets in Melbourne this evening, clocking a time of 1m25.801s early in the weather-disrupted second practice session. Occasional rain over...

Melbourne Practice 2

F12009 / Formula 1 / Melbourne / Overtaking / Practice / Qualify

Melbourne Practice

2009 season has finally started today with a lot of questions and concerns in mind. Despite these two sessions were only practice sessions, we have surprisingly three teams which are the subject of diffuser protests at the top of the standings. They are closely followed by Red Bull, Ferrari and Renault while BMW and McLaren were near the bottom. As you know practice is only for setup the car and evaluate different options. So, Let’s try to analyze which teams are really fast and which teams are not.

Ferrari seemed better in the first practice whereas they had some difficulties in the second one. They are very consistent over the long runs and Massa was running in low and medium 27’s in one of his ten lap stints. Thinking that most of the fastest times of their rivals have been set during the short stints Ferrari is now in a strong position for the race. As far as race fuel loads concerned, they have a very solid car with the prime tires from the beginning. But their problems started to rise when they opted to softer tires. They were almost without grip and missing brake points at every corner. This is mostly because of the graining at their rear tires. Also as I realized Massa was pressing KERS button a couple of times during a lap. So, they are probably using KERS not just once, but a couple of times during a lap which is logical for the circuits like Melbourne with mpre than one circuits.