Sep 22 2012

F1 2012: Marina Bay Qualifying

Next June 9th to 20th might be a good time to stay away from northern New Jersey and New York City as Bernie’s traveling circus comes to fat boy bully Chris Christie’s bond degraded New Jersey.  Bad news for Spain which faces secession by Catalonia AND the loss of the Valencia race.

Singapore next year is a provisional start as track officials argue that the expense of lighting the only night race and setting up the street circuit should merit a further reduction in the participation fee.  This is not good news for Ecclestone as the Formula One IPO has been postponed indefinitely while his company CVC has sold 50% of its once 65% share privately.

In another sign that the air is leaving the Formula One bubble, Speed’s Formula One Debrief is reporting that teams are moving away from schemes attempting to reduce costs through racing regulations in favor of flat expenditure caps.  I think this would actually be good as it would penalize diversity less and allow junior teams the track development time they so desperately need to be competitive.

Of course one of the problems is the expansion plans.  The inclusion of so many Asian events is driving up the costs of logistics and transportation, the question is whether the perceived value of name recognition and client relations from association with Formula One will be sufficient to continue to fund the lavish excesses of greedy parasites like Bernie.

Mercedes has a new exhaust.  Lotus a new wing.  We’ll be running Softs and Super Softs, the track won’t be helping them much as it will be hot and bumpy though it is a slow track, just slightly faster than Monaco.

How will the artificial lighting effect them?  Probably not much but if you’ve ever been night skiing you know it has a tendency to flatten out irregularities so what seems a minor mogul can suck your knees to your chest with compression or launch you unexpectedly.  More to the point is that the customary early evening showers are likely to wash off any ‘rubbering in’ and make the pavement slippery.  There’s not a lot of room for error on a street course, Caterham has already busted a suspension on the Jersey barriers bringing out a red flag that interrupted Friday’s second Practice.

Renault is having a real problem with their alternators in every engine they ship.  They made some modifications to give it a little more grunt that have proven disastrous from a reliability standpoint and unfortunately the defective AE35 unit in failure mode is little more than a chunk of twisted metal so post mortem diagnostics have so far been ineffective.

Race time tomorrow 7:30 am.  Any surprises below.

rustymancuso581

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  3. Just arrived.

  4. (Raikkonen) using up Super Softs already.

  6. Kobayashi

    Petrov

    Kovalainen

    Glock

    Karthikeyan

    Pic

    de la Rosa

  7. Raikkonen out early on Super Softs again.

  9. Hulkenberg

    Raikkonen

    Massa

    Perez

    Ricciardo

    Vergne

    Senna

  10. I’m as surprised as the announcers that Hulkenberg, Raikkonen, and Massa didn’t make it to Q3.

  14. Hamilton

    Maldonado!

    Vettel

    Button

    Alonso

    di Resta!

    Webber

    Grosjean!

    Schumacher

    Rosberg

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