BMW_Dude

The Malaysian Grand Prix Preview:

Will Ferrari maintain their dominance at Sepang, or can McLaren and Renault catch up? If you were to look at the times from the recent test at the Malaysian circuit, you might form the view that virtually everyone has a chance, for most teams put in competitive lap times at one stage or another. The difficult thing is knowing who was running what set-up or configuration when those times were done. Put it another way, Ferrari, McLaren and Renault seem genuinely pleased about their performance, while BMW Sauber, Williams, Honda, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Super Aguri and Toyota all believe they have made progress.

The fact that 10 of the teams tested here is likely to create the sort of situation we often see in Barcelona, where everyone has an early handle on set-up, and the true respective performances emerge as a result.

Kimi Raikkonen believes he is well placed to repeat his Melbourne performance, provided his Ferrari does not require an engine change following a water leak towards the end of that race. Team mate Felipe Massa will be going all-out to avoid the sort of problems he suffered in Australia, and to close the points gap to the Finn.

If his McLaren is again unable quite to get on terms with the red cars, world champion Fernando Alonso is determined to maximize his points score so that he remains in play until the silver arrows can compete with the Ferraris, but the team will have some new parts for the race. Team mate Lewis Hamilton is also keen to repeat, perhaps even better, his extraordinary debut in Australia.

"I thought Sepang looked like a great circuit and I was not disappointed,” he said. “Its layout means you can build up a great rhythm, with all the corners running into each other. It is also really wide, which I imagine will lead to exciting racing. The four days of testing were really useful on two counts. We had a number of developments to the car that we ran and will now bring to the race, and I was able to learn the track prior to the event. I am now looking forward to competitive action here. As I said at the time, it was a dream start for me in Australia, but I am realistic that motorsport is unpredictable and things don’t always go so well. We have all been working to reduce the gap to Ferrari and I will do my best with Fernando and the team towards this in Malaysia."

Last year’s winner, Giancarlo Fisichella, admits that Renault weren’t fast enough in Australia, but says: “Without a doubt, this is the toughest race of the season - not just physically, but mentally too. The high temperatures and humidity make things very tough for the drivers and the cars too. For me personally, though, there are very good memories from my win last year, and I am prepared for the race this time round. I trained hard over the winter, I am in peak condition - and ready to go.”

As one of the hottest races of the season, the Malaysian Grand Prix will exact a heavy toll on drivers and machinery. Temperatures are expected to be around 34 degrees Celsius all weekend, and the humidity will take its own toll, making the cockpits feel like saunas. The most important thing for each driver will be to keep fully hydrated.

The tortuous circuit is tough on every element of the car. The high temperatures place heavy demands on cooling systems, brakes and tyres, and the mixture of corners makes it tricky to achieve an optimum set-up for the high and slow-speed corners. However, the temperature will be beneficial in one way since nobody should have any of the problems some experienced getting heat into their tyres in Melbourne. The weekend should thus paint a more accurate picture of precisely where everyone is in respect to each other.

Bridgestone will bring their medium and hard compounds (rather than the soft and medium used in Australia) and telling the difference between the two will be far easier than in Melbourne - on each of the medium tyres, one groove will be painted white, making it clearly visible whether the car is stationary or at speed.
Source = F1.com

Alfie

Mclaren will be a threat, but I have my money on Ferrari.

It's rained alot in Malaysia this past week so it will be interesting to see what the race weather will be like.

BMW_Dude

Practice 1: First blood to Massa

Felipe Massa got straight down to business at Sepang on Friday, topping the timesheet in the opening practice session for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

The Ferrari driver was the only man to dip beneath the 1m35s mark as he edged out nearest rival Fernando Alonso by a quarter of a second.

After playing second fiddle to Lewis Hamilton for much of the Melbourne weekend, the world champion put his rookie team-mate in his place at this early stage of the proceedings in Malaysia, outpacing him by 0.5s.

Kimi Raikkonen completed a Ferrari-McLaren sandwich in the top quartet, as the form at the front of the field followed the pattern established through winter testing and in Australia.

Massa signalled his intentions by vaulting to the top of the timing charts on his first flying lap and knocking team-mate Raikkonen off the top spot a third of the way through the 90-minute session with a lap of 1m35.265s.

On his next circuit he upped the ante to 1m34.972s, which would stand as the quickest time of the morning.

The only blemish on an otherwise perfect first foray for the Brazilian was a pit lane speeding penalty.

Of potentially greater concern to Ferrari will be the smoke that was seen emanating from the back of Raikkonen’s car early on in the session.

Reliability appears to be the only slight chink in the Maranello squad’s armoury at present, with Massa falling victim to gearbox problems during qualifying in Australia and Raikkonen having to protect his engine en route to victory.

Raikkonen’s car was fitted with a different engine to the one he used in Melbourne, since the three hours of practice on Friday are now exempt from the two-race engine rule.

Even so, Ferrari faces a difficult decision whether to change the power unit in the Finn’s F2007 overnight as a precautionary measure, which would carry a 10-place grid penalty.

The McLaren team-mates traded times early on in this morning’s session and both had off-course excursions as they explored the limits.

Alonso went off the road after getting out of shape at turn four, while Hamilton took to the grass in the pit lane entry on one occasion.

Behind the Ferraris and McLarens, Williams was ‘best of the rest’, with Nico Rosberg an excellent fifth fastest and test driver Kazuki Nakajima again impressing in P8.

The Japanese driver provided the only significant incident of the session when he spun off at the final hairpin and then could not select first gear due to a software problem.

The two FW29s were split by sixth-fastest Mark Webber, who again showed the potential of Adrian Newey’s Red Bull RB3, and the lead Toyota of Jarno Trulli.

Ralf Schumacher was ninth quickest in the sister TF107 ahead of BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica, the second Red Bull of David Coulthard and BMW test driver Sebastian Vettel.

Meanwhile two big hitters continued to struggle to extract pace from their new cars.

Renault could manage only the 14th and 15th best times, with Heikki Kovalainen marginally quicker than Giancarlo Fisichella.

The Finnish rookie reported over the radio that his car was understeering badly and could not be coaxed into the corners even with an aggressive approach to turn-in.

But Renault’s problems seemed mild compared to those of Honda, which was marooned near the bottom of the timing charts all morning.

Rubens Barrichello (19th) and Jenson Button (20th) found themselves outpaced by Takuma Sato’s Super Aguri, Adrian Sutil’s Spyker and both Toro Rossos.


Friday free practice session 1 times from Sepang

1. MASSA Ferrari 1m34.972s
2. ALONSO McLaren 1m35.220s
3. HAMILTON McLaren 1m35.712s
4. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m35.779s
5. ROSBERG Williams 1m36.308s
6. WEBBER Red Bull 1m36.522s
7. TRULLI Toyota 1m36.597s
8. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m36.885s
9. SCHUMACHER Toyota 1m37.052s
10. KUBICA BMW 1m37.121s
11. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m37.484s
12. VETTEL BMW 1m37.837s
13. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1m37.882s
14. KOVALAINEN Renault 1m38.143s
15. FISICHELLA Renault 1m38.300s
16. SUTIL Spyker 1m38.720s
17. SATO Super Aguri 1m38.966s
18. SPEED Toro Rosso 1m39.130s
19. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m39.234s
20. BUTTON Honda 1m39.331s
21. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1m39.357s
22. ALBERS Spyker 1m40.074s

BMW_Dude

Practice 2: Massa still in control

Felipe Massa completed his domination of Friday practice in Malaysia, setting the pace in the afternoon’s 90-minute session just as he had in the morning.

The surprise was the pace of the two Renault drivers, who vaulted up the timing charts in the dying moments to finish second and third fastest.

Giancarlo Fisichella edged out rookie team-mate Heikki Kovalainen by 0.2s, leaving the second Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen in fourth place, 0.4s adrift of the flying Massa.

Nico Rosberg was fifth fastest, as he had been in the morning, with team-mate Alex Wurz – who had sat out the morning session while the team ran test driver Kazuki Nakajima – right behind him in sixth.

The McLarens set the initial pace but thereafter kept a low profile and wound up only ninth (Lewis Hamilton) and 12th (Fernando Alonso).

BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica set the first real benchmark time, a 1m36.717s, before the Ferrari duo got into their stride and took control of the proceedings.

Half an hour into the session, Raikkonen clocked a 1m36.669s, and a few minutes later Massa put that in perspective with an impressive 1m35.780s, which remained unbeaten for the rest of the afternoon.

Raikkonen later improved to 1m36.160s but, as in Melbourne, appears to be playing catch-up to his Brazilian team-mate after the first day.

Kubica was shuffled back to seventh behind the two Williams cars, three places ahead of team-mate Nick Heidfeld on a slightly low-key opening day for BMW.

Ralf Schumacher was eighth fastest for Toyota and the last man within a second of Massa’s time.

McLaren’s lack of pace was surprising but the Woking squad is doubtless playing its usual long game and it would be no surprise to see the silver cars return to the sharp end in qualifying.

Mark Webber set the 11th best time but stopped on track in the middle sector with around five minutes of the session remaining.

That was shortly after a red flag interruption triggered by a spectacular right-rear tyre blow-out that befell Christijan Albers as he braked for the first corner.

Super Aguri again won bragging rights in the Honda camp by outpacing the works cars, with Takuma Sato 14th and Anthony Davidson 18th while Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello languished in 15th and 21st respectively.


Friday free practice session 2 times from Sepang

1. MASSA Ferrari 1m35.780s

2. FISICHELLA Renault 1m35.910s

3. KOVALAINEN Renault 1m36.106s

4. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m36.160s

5. ROSBERG Williams 1m36.523s

6. WURZ Williams 1m36.621s

7. KUBICA BMW 1m36.717s

8. SCHUMACHER Toyota 1m36.760s

9. HAMILTON McLaren 1m36.797s

10. HEIDFELD BMW 1m36.862s

11. WEBBER Red Bull 1m36.906s

12. ALONSO McLaren 1m37.041s

13. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m37.203s

14. SATO Super Aguri 1m37.282s

15. BUTTON Honda 1m37.578s

16. TRULLI Toyota 1m37.712s

17. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1m37.855s

18. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1m38.334s

19. SUTIL Spyker 1m38.419s

20. SPEED Toro Rosso 1m38.650s

21. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m38.713s

22. ALBERS Spyker 1m39.807s

BMW_Dude

BMW Sauber struggles for speed

The BMW Sauber drivers believe that they have a lot of work to do after struggling for balance during opening practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Although Robert Kubica was fastest for a period early in the second session, he ended the session back in seventh and was far from happy.

"We have had many problems today," said the Pole.

"Some we were able to fix in second free practice, but there is still some more work to do to fix the rest."

Nick Heidfeld was similarly downcast after ending up three places below Kubica on the timesheets.

"I am not happy with my car yet," he said.

"Especially at the beginning of the session the balance was not good at all, and the car was difficult to drive.

"Although later we made a step in the right direction, there is still a lot of work to do."

BMW technical director Willy Rampf admitted that the problems had caught the team off guard.

"Despite several modifications to the set up of the car, we were not able to make a significant step forward," he said.

"We now have to analyse all the data in order to understand where this problem comes from."

Source = ITV F1

The Emperor

Williams seems pretty fast so far...

BMW_Dude

STR "paying price" for late launch

Scuderia Toro Rosso's drivers admitted after free practice in Malaysia that the team still has work to do to unlock the potential of the STR-2, despite the four-day test in Sepang last week.

Vitantonio Liuzzi ended the day 17th overall, just under 0.8s faster than his team-mate Scott Speed (20th).

And while the Italian reckoned some progress had been made, STR's late launch for its controversial car (the subject of protests and arbitration in the continuing customer chassis row) has hit the team hard.

“We have found some improvements on the car in the slower sections, where the car is beginning to react quite nicely," said Liuzzi.

"We tried various mechanical changes that seemed to work.

"As we have said a few times already this year, we are still paying the price for not having tested much in the winter, but I am sure that the arrival of [new technical director] Giorgio Ascanelli brings us a plus and a lot of information and so I think we should be able to make a step forward quite soon.”

Speed added that he was glad to have had last week's test, after a day of problems mired him down in 20th.

“First off in the morning, I had to run the T-car, because it had never been used before today and that meant the usual stuff with a new car, like sorting out the pedals and the driving position," he said.

"Then I had to sort out my own race car so I only really ran properly at the end of the second session.

"At first sight, my prognosis for here is the same as in Melbourne, meaning we are still quite a bit off the pace.”

Source = ITV F1

BMW_Dude

Williams duo not yet satisfied

Williams drivers Nico Rosberg and Alex Wurz insist they need to improve the balance of their cars despite showing promising pace on the first day of practice at Sepang.
Rosberg was fifth fastest in both 90-minute sessions, and team-mate Alex Wurz was sixth quickest in the afternoon after sitting out the first session while the team gave test driver Kazuki Nakajima some mileage.
But neither driver is yet sure how competitive the team will be over the balance of the weekend.
“We have found a couple of reasonable set-ups over the two sessions today, but it’s hard to say where we really are at the moment,” said Rosberg.
“We will know a little bit more by tomorrow after the last free practice session.”
Like several other drivers, Wurz was taken by surprise by the track conditions at Sepang on Friday.
“I only drove in the afternoon today and the car felt very different from how it was in last week’s test, so we had to do a lot of work in the session to find the performance we had last week,” said the Austrian.
“We are still not completely satisfied, but we have practice tomorrow to improve upon where we are.”



Source = ITV F1

The Emperor

Analyse that thing ASAP!!! I want you guys in the top 5!

Imhotep Evil

Renault admit pace flattered by low fuel
06 aprile 2007


Renault's Pat Symonds has played down suggestions that the reigning world champions might pose a challenge to the frontrunners at Sepang this weekend.

Mere tenths slower than Felipe Massa's pace-setting Ferrari, Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen were second and third quickest in the second practice session on Friday.


But Italian Fisichella, who has the 'flu, reported that his R27 is still "lacking grip".

The team's veteran engineering director Symonds explained: "It is relatively obvious that we were running lower fuel and new tyres at the right time of the session."

The Renault duo's quick times were also set with the softer tyres, which are clearly distinguishable at Sepang thanks to a stark white strip painted inside a groove.

Meanwhile, while Renault looked a little more competitive in Malaysia, Honda runners Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello failed to deliver the small improvement that was promised after last week's test here at Sepang.

The pair languished near the bottom of the timesheets on Friday, and Barrichello in the second session was even slower than runners for Toro Rosso and Spyker.

"It's simply the case that we have had a very bad day," the Brazilian said.

Source: GMM/ duemotori