ltc

Without getting into the pissing contest of "which teams will and won't benefit from a change in Pirelli tires" ... which is a pointless discussion ..... the mere fact that there were 82 pit stops in total signals that the desire to have the tire play a major factor in "the spectacle" has gone a bit too far.

multi21

BRAVO FERRARI!!!!!!!!

Half of you have missed the point. What happened yesterday is unprecedented. Ferrari said F it!! We're going all out with qualifying laps in the race and use up all our tires and make more pit stops vs. saving tires. They have broken the code and came out with both drivers on podium (it would have been a 1-2 were it not for a BS penalty on Massa).

LOL...Mercedes is the F1 poser of the paddock. They remind me of an autocrosser doing their 1 good lap on a Hoosier A6 and calling it a day. Celebrate all you want on the Saturday, but the points are awarded on Sunday.

RBR looked average for once, but rest assured that they and all the teams will be looking at what Ferrari did an copy it.

flatsics

What a boring race.
Tire management belongs in Endurance racing, not F1.

Larry Herman

I agree 1000%. Great to see Ferrari (or anyone for that matter) just go for it. It will be interesting to see how Lotus responds to this as they can run the option tires (and have more speed) harder and for longer than anyone else. 3 sets of options and 1 fresh set of primes could put Kimi back ahead of the Ferraris. We shall see next month in Canada because I think that all bets are off for Monaco, as mechanical grip will be a much greater factor there.

adrial

Ferrari was conserving tires as well, even with 4 stops. They'd probably have to do 6 stops or more to actually do qualifying laps, every lap.

I think the Ferrari's just had the best combination of speed & tire wear in Spain.

agdamis

I do not disagree with Red Bull, that tires are playing too much of a role, but for a team that is leading the championship they sure complain a lot.

http://www.planetf1.com/driver/18227...-is-not-racing

My993C2

If you watched the Sky Sports post race show, you would see that Red Bull is not alone in terms of teams not happy with the state of F1 and these tires. But if your agenda is to slam Red Bull, carry on and ignore networks such as Sky Sports who are actually on the ground at the races talking to the teams.

agdamis

Red Bull is not near or dear to me yet NO slamming intended, as stated earlier I agree, just saying, they seem to be the most vocal. I would think considering Spain Mercedes would be the most up in arms. Judging by their lead in the WDC they are managing pretty well.

9.5 Degrees

Absolutely loved it!!!!! Finally someone willing to attack and not be so conservative.

Did any of the detractors catch Alonso passing Hamilton around the outside of T3 at the start? And LH didn't make it east for him with FA having two wheels in the green stuff!

All that said, Kimi only finished 9 seconds behind Alonso, if Lotus was on a 4 stopper and were able to run fast laps all race I think Kimi would have been on the top step.

Boeing 717

Mercedes.....any team that has a setup with one rear wheel with positive camber has got one seriously F'd up car. Too bad for Rosberg.

993-CT

The NBC guys called this wrong - to say that Alonso was pushing (other than the first few laps) isn't borne out by the facts. this is what happens when Hobbs and Matchett are so removed from modern F1 - in time and distance.

Alonso's fastest lap on Sunday was 5 seconds slower than his qualy time, and his Friday practice time on a damp track was faster than any of his race laps.. So no, Ferrari were not going flat out every lap, and they weren't even close to running qualifying laps in the race.

multi21

Ferrari used a "sliding scale" method to their race. They ran hardest in the beginning and tapered off as the race went along after they had already built up a big lead -- that's where the lap times are deceiving because Alonso was running heavy fuel at the beginning and managing his huge lead at the end. Massa was actually still on the attack and used a brand new set to try and get 2nd place, but his set were bad....

read here:

Felipe Massa had his sights set on second place in the Spanish Grand Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya on Sunday, but it was not to be.

Massa hoped to used a fresh set of tyres to take the battle to Kimi Raikkonen on the closing laps of the Barcelona race, but when he finally slipped on his new set of boots he found they didn't live up to the hopes he had for them.

"Right to the very end I thought it might be possible to fight with Kimi," he said. "But when I fitted my last set of hard tyres - the ones we thought would be best as they were new - I had oversteer and began to lose the rear much earlier than I had expected."

That meant he was forced to settle for third place after all, no doubt left wondering what would have been possible if he hadn't been penalised three grid spots for blocking Red Bull's mark Webber in qualifying the previous day.

ltc

Comparing race pace to qualifying pace to practice pace to wet practice pace is a waste of time.

When a crowd is running away from a charging lion, it doesn't matter how fast you are relative to the lion; it only matters that you are not the slowest one running.

With a race being more about tire management than driving "flat out", race pace is all relative.