One of the biggest stories, for me, before the season began was the intra team rivalries. I posted about it here, near the bottom of the page:

https://www.s2ki.com/forums/index.php?showt...&#entry18062823

Following up on that with some thoughts and discussion points:

McLaren - Button is making Hamilton look bad in the races, maybe not so in quali. I expected Hamilton to eat Button for breakfast, but Button is showing himself to be more seasoned, more mature. Making the tire calls as opposed to have the tire calls made for him is doing wonders for his reputation.

Ferrari - pretty even, but Alonso generally coming up ahead. Pretty forceful with Massa on the pit entry early in the race in Shanghai, it's gonna show the team and Massa that Alonso is The Man. Assert Dominance! Contract rumours with Kubica coming aboard won't help Massa.

RBR - the team and Vettel should be doing better in the points tables. Vettel is probably on course to dominate Webber to a further extent than previous. Webber has to up the pace a bit if he wants a ride with RBR next year, especially if rumours about Kimi coming back get stronger. I like Webber, don't get me wrong, he's pretty cool, but until he had Vettel as a teammate, he was always quicker than his teammates. Vettel is showing himself to be the real deal. They need to convert more quali pace to race finishing pace. Give them another dry race though...

Mercedes - Nico Rosberg's pre-season lack of concern about Schumi as teammate has been proven. None of Schumi's teammates have out qualified and out raced him four times in a row, right? Perhaps Schumi is just getting old. Rosberg is doing what he has to do, and his reputation is not suffering at all.

The other teams...as expected, Kubica is quicker than Petrov, but Petrov is proving to be pretty decent actually. The dice with Hamilton in Malaysia was pretty good stuff. Hulkenberg should be quicker, and needs to be. Barrichello is doing a damn fine job at the moment. I think Sutil has grown up a bit and generally has been quicker than Luizzi. Luizzi has to be scared - di Resta is right there waiting for a shot. Alguesuari is maturing nicely, keeping Buemi honest. Sauber...hard to assess. Bloody car keeps breaking, mucked up my fantasy F1 team well and truly!

New teams - HRT, I think the two are pretty even. Chandok is getting closer to Senna's pace anyway. Virgin has to work on their reliability, pace seems decent considering where they started from. Lotus has been a wonder! Trulli seems to have suffered from all the bad luck, but perhaps the next few seasons will see the rebuilding of Kovalainen's reputation. They were overjoyed to finished ahead of Hulkenberg in Shanghai, Hulkenberg should be ashamed!

 

Agreed that there are some great intra-team battles to go along with the usual inter-team battles. I like how the top 10 seems to be shaping up, with RBR, Ferrari, McLaren & Mercedes seemingly in the mix each week, with guest appearances by Force India, Renault and Williams. Should make for a very interesting drivers championship battle.

And what is the deal w/Sauber? Man, I thought Kobayashi would flirt with the top 10 this year and he's done like 20 total laps this year. Ugh.

 

Great summary. very well said

im really enjoying this season. but im surprised about Sauber too. they are performing very poorly too unreliable + they lack the pace they showed during winter testing. as for Bruno, i hope he joins a real team next year to see how good he is.

 

The only thing I would add is this:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Gs6XEXa1fE [/media]

Button & Hamilton battling it out in McLarens at Goodwood!

Okay - they are not in F1 cars

[Sorry for the temporary change in direction of your original post saaboteur - no disrespect intended]

 

^ Nice clip, thanks.

 

x2. great write up.

the rain has really skewed some of the expectations leading into this season. looking forward to the next round of races... moar rain!!