F1: MalaysiaGP 2015 Track Talk

Funny shit! they were interviewing Rosberg and he was trying to explain that he uses a womans maxi pad in his helmet for sweat, and he didnt know what to call it in English. Awkward moment of the weekend, "a womans thing, you know for when...uhhh"

This place is a pretty cool designed grandstand:

Yep 20

Hamiltons car just ground to a halt in P1, first sign of Merc having issues...thats the only thing that will stop them.

@BoxOfNeutrals Mercedes reply to Hamilton that they have no telemetry and told him to stop as a precaution.

These lame ass cars have made practice sessions so damn boring! not enough running.

mma-tv channel 29

Its also on NBCSports Live, but no commentating.

‏@LewisHamilton I had a special helmet made to celebrate Petronas & Malaysia. Due to the FIA's new rule, I can't wear it. #Petronas




Thanks FIA, you suck.

750,000 euros for one F1 power unit...DAMN!! That is one of the reasons for only allowing 4 units per car ALL season. (last year it was 5)

Damn Kimi just went freaky fast! .3 behind ROS.

It was the "Seb Vettel" rule, they were tired of him having rad helmets for every race lol

P1 times

I forget the exact regulations for DRS (long day and im half brain dead atm) i know they use to be able to use it whenever they wanted during qualiy, but i thought they changed that rule now?

OK here is the current rule:

As of the 2015 season, the drivers are only able to use the DRS system in the designated overtaking zones.

Hamilton with issues in P2 also, not a good start to the weekend for him.

Vettel had a flying lap going on the medium tires that got botched by a red flag, dammit! Still cool to see Kimi at the top of the list...for now.

Good article here

F1 Malaysian GP practice analysis: Ferrari's eye-opening pace

The Ferrari Formula 1 team showed strong long-run pace during Friday practice that, if repeated on Sunday, could allow it to challenge Mercedes in the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Kimi Raikkonen's headline laptimes caught the attention, as he ended both sessions in second place and exactly 0.373 seconds off the fastest Mercedes.

But it is the Finn's long-run on medium tyres in the Friday afternoon that suggests the car potentially has the pace to race with F1's dominant force.

Raikkonen completed a run of nine flying laps on the medium-compound Pirelli, setting an average laptime of 1m45.080s.

By comparison, Lewis Hamilton averaged 1m45.070s over six laps and Nico Rosberg 1m45.313s over seven laps.

Even more impressive is when you look at comparable length runs, by taking Raikkonen's averages over six and seven laps respectively to compare to the two Mercedes drivers.

Over these adjusted runs, Raikkonen was on average one tenth faster than Hamilton and three tenths quicker than Rosberg.

While Ferrari has tended to show more promising form on Fridays in recent times, and the fact Sebastian Vettel completed his long-run work on the slower hard-compound Pirellis means that only one of the Scuderia's cars can be used for a comparison, this is encouraging for the team.

Technical director James Allison admitted that Ferrari was strong in terms of thermal tyre degradation, but stopped short of declaring his squad was in the hunt for a win.

"I don't know, we'll find out tomorrow and Sunday," he said when asked whether Ferrari could take on Mercedes.

"But we do look like our tyre deg is quite good and we do look as if our pace is reasonably good.

"Everyone uses the Fridays differently, so you never know what the others are doing.

"But it has been a good day."

Allison also suggested that the Australian GP two weeks ago had not allowed the team to show its true pace because it had underachieved in qualifying.

In Melbourne, Vettel finished 43.523s behind racewinner Lewis Hamilton after running fourth behind Felipe Massa's Williams for the first half of the race.

"The delta that we saw in Melbourne was probably a little unkind to us," said Allison.

"We think we probably should have been a little bit ahead of the Williams in qualifying and then driven up the road by 15-20 s more than we did.

"It would be nice to have a clean qualifying here and see what we can do."

I like the gamble they are taking on setup, it was a trip watching practice and compare sector times w/ the Mercs. Seb had a HOT lap going that got aborted, the SkySports commentator said it would of been a 1.39.6 and top of the time sheets.

Hope for some good racing this weekend! Its gonna be a long one with SX, MXGP, F1, MotoGP and NASCAR. Im gonna be smoked by Sunday afternoon.

You should of heard the team managers press conference last night, it was pretty wild! Renault vs Horner, lots of interesting banter between the teams. The F1 press plays hardball! wish we had the same in SX, those jurnos arent scared to ruffle feathers that is for sure.

P3