Thread: F1 2012 Season
View Single Post
  #69  
Old November 26, 2012, 08:18 AM
Maysun's Avatar
Maysun Maysun is offline
MLC World Series I
 
Join Date: April 11, 2011
Posts: 5,909

Quote:
Third time's the charm
Laurence Edmondson
November 25, 2012




There have been tears, tantrums and tribulations along the way, but in Brazil Sebastian Vettel finally made it three out of three. Looking back at the record books in 20 years time, young F1 fans may be led to believe that Vettel had it all his own way in the early part of this decade, and while that was true in 2011, it couldn't be further from the truth this year.

For the first time since 2009 Vettel did not start the season with the best car and it took Red Bull 14 rounds to truly nail the performance of the RB8 around the time of Singapore. When it got it right, Vettel duly won four races on the trot, a feat unimaginable earlier in the season and the key to his title success. But it is the period before that that is most telling; the period when Vettel didn't have the best car.

The story starts before pre-season testing when technical directives further limited the team's use of exhaust gases and called for more strenuous tests of flexibility for the front wing. The directives came relatively late and had a significant effect on the burgeoning RB8 in Milton Keynes. The car that turned up to pre-season testing, therefore, was not exactly the car Adrian Newey had in mind when he first laid pen to paper and was, in essence, a compromise. Moreover, it was a big departure from the RB7, which had been based around the team's expertise in exhaust blowing, and had different driving characteristics.
Read More
Reply With Quote