Formula One 2012: Shanghai Qualifying

Well here’s an interesting factoid I’ve missed so far this season.  There are now two female drivers working with Formula One teams, Maria de Villota of Marussia and Susie Wolff of Williams.  As the Daily Mail article alludes, they are hardly taken seriously by the corrupt macho culture that is F1 and frankly the backlog of drivers wanting seats is so deep that you have to bribe a team to get one.  I doubt either will see any race time even in GP2, but from little acorns…

Let’s talk a bit about Mercedes.  One of the reasons they’ve performed relatively well so far (though not top 3) is an aero innovation they’ve introduced.  Shades of the blown diffuser, holes exposed during deployment of the Drag Reduction System funnel air forward through carbon fiber chassis tubes and spoil downforce on the front wing too.  It survived a challenge from Team Lotus this week and is expected to be widely copied by the other teams to the extent they can.  The Mercedes chassis is purpose built around this and since they’re one of the most (and largest) pissed off teams at the moment, I expect this will stick while a similar innovation from Lotus got ruled illegal 3 weeks after approval.

Go figure.

Red Bull is very disappointed at their start this year and is intending to run dual setups.  Webber will be running a refinement of the rear aero used at Sepang and Vettel will be running the setup used in winter testing.  McLaren was using pitot tubes on the rear end to gather additional data during practice.

Hamilton has a problem.  His original gearbox is cracked and he’s highly likely to have to replace it and accept a 5 grid penalty though we won’t know for sure until today.  It may not matter so much as Qualifying has proven a less than reliable indicator of performance so far-

Pole Position Is Falling Behind

By BRAD SPURGEON, The New York Times

Published: April 13, 2012

It used to be that the man who scored pole position was almost certain to win the race. But as the series prepares for the Chinese Grand Prix outside Shanghai this weekend, the value of the pole and qualifying in general seem to have diminished as the fastest drivers on Saturday have rarely been those who finish the race in the top spots.

“I won’t deny that I’m disappointed to have had two pole positions and not to have been able to convert either of them into victories,” Hamilton said. “But I prefer to think of it that luck just hasn’t been on my side and that it will swing my way sooner or later.”

As usual it’s tires, tires, tires and the offering this week is Mediums and Softs though it’s distinctly possible that a large part of the race will be on Inters and Wets.  Shanghai has had rain 4 of the last 8 years and it rained during morning Practice on Friday.  Timo Glock parked hard in the second session, but says he’s ok and is expected to race.

• Formula One Official Site
• Speed Racecast

The actual race is a 2:30 am start tomorrow on Speed with a repeat at 3:30 pm.  If you happen to be up right now you can join me in watching Formula One Debrief or wait until 2 pm.  If you start watching at midnight tomorrow you get the full trifecta run up of Debrief, Qualifying, and Race.