A few questions asked by people during today's coverage.
Do you have any speed trap information?
AUTOSPORT.com's @TeamAnglais says:
"The timing screen gives us speed trap readouts at the end of each sector, but they're not in the right places to give us useful top speed data. For example, the trap at the end of the first sector is just after the exit of Turn 4 (the quick left-hander). Vettel is the fastest there so far today, at 273.9kph - but that tells us more about Red Bull's high-speed cornering than it does about its straight-line speed.
"Sector two ends between Turns 9 and 10 (the two right-handers before the chicane) and Fernando Alonso is fastest so far through there at 133.8kph - again, that's speed carried through corners. The start/finish line is early on the straight, still very much in the acceleration zone. Nick Heidfeld tops that one at 280.5kph in the Renault."
"Would you agree that compared to last year, the new teams look like being a lot closer to the main pack (HRT excepted, perhaps)?"
"Heikki Kovalainen has been in the 1m23s and 1m24s during his runs today, which suggests that Lotus has made some progression when compared to similar run times of the likes of Sauber, Force India and Toro Rosso. But, as ever in testing, we don't know fuel loads and tyre compounds so we can't know for sure.
"It's harder to say with Virgin because Timo Glock didn't do much long running in the last two days, and Jerome D'Ambrosio's 19-lapper just now was some way off the pace, but suggested a heavy fuel load and him looking after a set of, presumably medium or hard, tyres."
[U]Finally[/U]
Here's an analysis of Ferrari and Mercedes stints by @TeamAnglais
Schumacher
26.5, 26.5, 27.2, 27.3, 27.2, 27.2, 27.4, 27.4, 27.5, 27.8, 28.2, 28.5, 28.6, 32.3
Alonso
2: 05.9, 26.3, 26.3, 26.4, 26.3, 26.5, 26.4, 26.9, 26.8, 26.7, 30.0, 27.1, 27.4, 27.6, 27.8, 28.9
Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher recently completed similar runs, the Ferrari 16 laps and the Mercedes 14. Once again, putting the unknown tyre compounds and any excess fuel aside, let's compare their times:
Ignoring Alonso's very slow first lap, they began with similar first laps. Then Alonso was able to stay in the 1m26s for nine laps, while Schumacher dropped into the 27s after two.
11 laps in, the Ferrari was 1.1s slower than its quickest, while 10 laps in the Mercedes was 1.3 slower than its best.
Had those times been from a race scenario (and we remove times that vary by a couple of seconds from the previous lap), Alonso would have been 8.8 seconds ahead just before Schumacher pitted after 13 laps.
@genius83
Part of your question is answered by Autosport. The only bit i feel could be added is that the front running teams would be sand bagging quite a bit right now, at least two clearly are doing that. If you add about one second they should have in hand right now, the gap is quite big. Having said that, expect Lotus to make a step forward. They have experienced people in place-including their drivers and anyway for these back of the grid teams, last year was a steep learning curve, with relative rules stability one should expect them to close the gap some what.
I have a question too. Fu***ng geo sports has bought the rights to show world cup matches exclusively and recently went to the Supreme Court to make sure no-one except them showed the matches, i.e, starsports, espn and star cricket etc.
That being the case, what is going to happen in a week's time? Will the cable operators have to take these channels off air? If so, does that mean we will not hear the annoying voice of Steve Slatter in march?