F1 - Monza Qualifying ONE HD 21:30 AEST 8 Sep 2012

[gary]

The McLarens lead the way in P2 yesterday, closely followed by the Ferraris.

Red Bull have some catching up to do.

After the pile-up at the start of last week's race in Spa (http://www.formula1.com/video/?uid=2012090212R), drivers on Sunday will no doubt be
trying hard to avoid a repeat when they reach corner 1 at Monza, the tight
Variante del Rettifilo chicane.

[Waxing_Gibbous]

Thanks for the heads-up. I'd forgotten about it.
Spa isn't Spa without a pile-up, IMO. :)

Amazing how well the cars are designed and built.
Nary a scratch, thank goodness, whereas if you ploughed your Boss 335 into another one at 180kph, you'd not be so lucky.
Mind you a Boss 335 doesn't cost $30-odd million so I suspect there's some cost/benefit trade-off.

[gary]

Perez overtaking both Ferraris on their homeground and finishing
16.2 seconds ahead of Alonso was one of the most impressive
feats of the season thus far.

Alonso salary €30 million per annum
Perez salary €500,000 per annum

Today's 2nd place on the podium for Perez will certainly assist his future renumeration negotiations.

[Astro_Bot]

Vettel and Button out due to faults was disappointing. Hamilton first is better, though, even with Alonso way ahead in the Drivers' Championship.

[loki78]

I messed up my times and turned it on for the final lap >.<

What happened to each of the red bulls?

[gary]

Vettel originally got a controversial drive through penalty for an incident with Alonso.
Later in the race he had a mechanical problem and was forced to stop to save his engine.

With a couple of laps to go, Mark was in 10th and spun coming out of
Ascari, did well not to hit the wall, but flat spotted the tyres so
badly that he was forced to retire.

[loki78]

How did he find himself in 10th to begin with?

[gary]

Mark polled poorly on the Saturday and was 11th on the grid, behind Alonso
who had some problems and was 10th on the grid and Vettel who was 6th.

Like at Spa, both Red Bulls were really struggling for straight-line speed both in
practice and qualifying.

It was a very clean start with no incidents at the first chicane, but Mark quickly
found himself down at around 14th within the first few hundred meters, where by
contrast, Alonso gained several places up the grid in the same amount of time.

Mark eventually overtook a few other cars, including Ricciardo, to get up into
the points and stuck to a one stop strategy.

But when you watched the live timing, I don't ever recollect seeing the Red Bulls
ever do a purple sector let alone a purple lap like they normally would in times past.

Button was also unlucky and had to retire toward the end with a mechanical
failure.

Singapore is in a couple of weeks time. It will be telling if the aerodynamics
of the Red Bulls help them there as they certainly have not done well on
the faster Spa and Monza circuits. If they don't do better at Singapore either,
then something is really wrong with the vehicles.

If you missed the race, it was a good one and it will be repeated on ONE Monday night at 10:30pm

[loki78]

Thanks v much Gary, yeah I totally forgot the 1 week turnaround between Spa and Monza. I suspected they might struggle a bit with Monza being such a high speed circuit. I'll watch the replay if I remember, Monza isn't one of my favourite tracks really. I love Spa, moreso before they changed it, but still now. Probably that and maybe Interlagos and Montreal. Interesting season thus far though