Kimi Raikkonen opened his 2013 campaign with a victory at the Australian Grand Prix, making use of a two-stop strategy to beat Fernando Alonso to victory by 12.4s.
Raikkonen's long second stint was the key to his race as he kept in touch with Sebastian Vettel and the two Ferraris, who led the race early on. Raikkonen remained out on track preserving his tyres as the cars around him adopted three-stop strategies, while Alonso managed to shuffle his way ahead of team-mate Felipe Massa and Vettel.
As Alonso emerged from the pits after his third and final stop, Raikkonen was sitting pretty with a 7.7s lead which he was able to extend on his way to victory. Behind him Alonso finished 9.8s ahead of Vettel in third, with Massa fourth, Lewis Hamilton fifth and Mark Webber recovering from a poor start to take sixth.
Adrian Sutil led large chunks of the race after running a reverse strategy to the top six and went on to finish seventh. Paul di Resta, Jenson Button and Romain Grosjean took the final points positions.
Fears that Vettel would disappear in to the distance after Red Bull's qualifying performance appeared to be well-founded as he opened up a two-second gap on Massa on the opening lap. Webber's start problems returned as he dropped back to seventh place, while Alonso passed Hamilton out of turn three to take third. However, the Ferraris immediately pegged back Vettel and once Raikkonen cleared Hamilton around the outside of turn 13 on lap two he started to catch the leading trio.
First stops were early as drivers struggled with graining on the super soft tyres, and it was actually the Mercedes pair of Hamilton and Rosberg who went longest before finally pitting to leave Sutil - having started on mediums - leading. Sutil had Vettel for close company with the Ferraris immediately rejoining the battle, but then Sutil started to pull away before his first stop.
Raikkonen caught up with the back of Alonso, who pit for a second time before Sutil's first. The following lap Sutil and Vettel came in together and the undercut allowed Alonso to jump them both, while a slightly later stop for Massa dropped him behind the pair and left Raikkonen clear in the lead.
Again the Mercedes were running longer and as the Alonso-Vettel-Sutil train caught Rosberg he pulled off the track with a suspected electrical problem. Hamilton was ahead and trying to make a two-stop race work but was forced to pit after locking up heavily in defence after a good scrap with Alonso.
Hamilton's stop was only two laps before Raikkonen's second but the Mercedes couldn't preserve the tyres enough and he was forced to switch to a three-stop, dropping him out of contention. Raikkonen, however, enjoyed some clear air and as all of those ahead of him pit he was left to retake the lead from Sutil.
Alonso threatened to close the gap at the start of his stint but Raikkonen was nursing his tyres and soon responded to the threat to cruise home. Sutil dropped behind Alonso before pitting early for super soft tyres and dropping back behind Hamilton and Webber as his tyres went off in the closing laps, though he did manage to hold off a late charge from team-mate di Resta as the team prioritised solid points.
While his team-mate crossed the line to win, Grosjean was forced to hold off Sergio Perez on the final lap to keep tenth place, while Jules Bianchi impressed for Marussia to finish 15th ahead of both Caterhams and team-mate Max Chilton.
Australian Grand Prix 2013
| Drivers | Teams | Points | |||||
| 1 | KM Räikkönen (FIN) | Lotus | 25 | ||||
| 2 | F Alonso (ESP) | Ferrari | 18 | ||||
| 3 | S Vettel (GER) | Red Bull | 15 | ||||
| 4 | F Massa (BRA) | Ferrari | 12 | ||||
| 5 | LC Hamilton (GBR) | Mercedes | 10 | ||||
| 6 | M Webber (AUS) | Red Bull | 8 | ||||
| 7 | A Sutil (GER) | Force India | 6 | ||||
| 8 | P di Resta (GBR) | Force India | 4 | ||||
| 9 | J Button (GBR) | McLaren | 2 | ||||
| 10 | R Grosjean (FRA) | Lotus | 1 | ||||
| 11 | S Perez (MEX) | McLaren | - | ||||
| 12 | JE Vergne (FRA) | Toro Rosso | - | ||||
| 13 | E Gutiérrez (MEX) | Sauber | - | ||||
| 14 | V Bottas (FIN) | Williams | - | ||||
| 15 | J Bianchi (FRA) | Marussia | - | ||||
| 16 | C Pic (FRA) | Caterham | - | ||||
| 17 | M Chilton (GBR) | Marussia | - | ||||
| 18 | G van der Garde (NED) | Caterham | - |
'It was one of the easiest races' - Raikkonen
The key to Raikkonen's victory was his two-stop strategy which gave him a vital edge over the other leading drivers who all opted to pit three times. "Our plan was to do two stops and though it's always difficult in the first races to know when to stop and not to, we got it exactly right. We followed the plan and it worked out perfectly. I could save the tyres and go fast if I needed.
"It was one of the easiest races I have done to win. Hopefully we can have many more of these races."He had enough in hand to ease off towards the end to preserve his tyres, and as Fernando Alonso closed he upped his pace and set a new fastest lap.
"Fernando was catching me at some points when I was taking it a bit more easy and I had some traffic, so I just wanted to make sure that if the rain came or anything I had a bit more of a gap. It was a pretty nice race, not so difficult."
He said he was disappointed to only qualify in seventh and admitted he had "taken it a bit too easy … it wasn't ideal but it was still ten places better than last year".
But typically he refused to get carried away. "It feels good but it's only one race so it doesn't really change our aim or our work. We're happy with he win and there's a lot still to do to try to win the championship."
Hamilton 'really happy' after finishing fifth
Following his switch from McLaren, Hamilton has been keen to play down expectations at Mercedes despite some impressive times set during pre-season testing. Having allowed himself to admit the team was competitive on Friday, early pace saw Hamilton drop away from the leaders and out of contention when he was forced to switch to a three-stop strategy, but he said it was still a much better result than he'd expected.
"I think it's great, I'm really happy," he said. "I think it's way better than we probably ever expected in the first race of the season so it's a good place to start. We didn't expect to have such a competitive car. Some people will be like, 'Oh, it wasn't great' but I think fifth's good.
"The car was feeling really good so I don't really know how the other guys were pulling away so quickly but we will keep pushing and hopefully we'll get there eventually.
"We're going to have to go back and try and figure out why we were losing time to other people but I think the guys have done a fantastic job for us to have the pace that we did. I just don't know where we lost out so we're going to have to go back and look at it."
He said that the team had planned a two-stop strategy but that has to be switched during the race. "I had to come in and change tyres but 27 laps on that tyre [was not possible] so we had to covert to a three-stop strategy. I think we'll have a good race in Malaysia."
Alonso 'optimistic' after 'fantastic' second
Sebastian Vettel's dominant pole position saw the reigning champion start the race as heavy favourite, but it was Kimi Raikkonen who came through to take victory ahead of Alonso and Vettel. Alonso described second place as "fantastic" and with team-mate Felipe Massa finishing fourth he believes Ferrari has proven itself to be primed for a title challenge.
"Obviously it was a fantastic race for us, fighting all through the race," Alonso said. "Today we had to put on a show for everybody and I think we did it because the race was action every lap. I personally enjoyed it, it was at the end a bit sad to not be able to win the race but Kimi was fantastic today, the Lotus car as well, and we need to congratulate them for a fantastic race.
"It was not an easy race. At the beginning traffic with Sebastian and Felipe, then traffic with Sutil, some backmarkers as well. There was some tricky moments but as I said I'm extremely happy, we had a very difficult start of the season two years ago and last year as well and this year is very different. We feel much more optimistic, the car is responding well, we are competitive, so we have a very interesting season ahead of us."
Alonso added that he felt doing a two-stop strategy might have been possible but that it wasn't a call Ferrari could have made during the race.
"I think it's difficult to know if we could do two stops today. You have to commit more or less to one strategy before the start of the race because you race differently. Obviously we were attacking; we tried to pass Sebastian in the first part of the race - Felipe and me - we could not do it in the first stint. In the second stint we also were behind Sutil at that stage of the race so all these ingredients maybe you can go a bit longer in the stints but we had to stop, try to overtake these people that we felt were slower than us in the race and if you commit to that there's no other way to find the two stops."
Webber suffers ECU glitch
The start of the race saw Webber get another poor launch off the line and drop back to seventh place from the front row, leaving him stuck in traffic for the majority of the race. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner revealed that the McLaren-supplied ECU had stopped telemetry getting back to the race engineers and as a result Webber wasn't given an ideal clutch bite point and then suffered a KERS failure.
"Mark's problems were hugely frustrating because it was an ECU issue and that is supplied by a third party," Horner said. "We lost all telemetry on the formation lap and then you can't do the preparation you need to at the start. That meant he was blind for the start and that ECU issue shut the KERS down as well. By the time we reset the whole system he'd lost the ground at the start. It's something that they need to get on top of because there has been a lot of issues during testing."
Webber added: "We didn't have too much of an idea in terms of getting information back to the guys in the pits," Webber said. "We lost KERS as well for the majority of the first part of the race so that made it very difficult. We had a very, very difficult first pit stop, which was slow, so wow we ticked a lot of boxes in the first half hour of the race unfortunately in a negative fashion.
"But that's Formula One, it can go like that. Today, even if we got everything right I think that we showed we were probably going to get outdone two-stopping - I think Kimi two-stopped - and the race was going to be very difficult for us to win even if we had a smooth day. I think Seb might have had a reasonably smooth day but at the end of the day we weren't quick enough."
Asked if Red Bull expected to be quicker in race trim than it was, Webber admitted that was the case.
"Yeah, we probably did, but we'll analyse that and go through it. Fair play to Kimi and his guys, you've got to take your hat off when somebody wops you and they did a good job."
'It couldn't be a better start' - Sutil
Having been dropped for 2012 in the wake of being found guilty of grievous bodily harm, Sutil returned to Force India during the final pre-season test in Barcelona earlier this month. He showed no sign of rustiness as he led the race on two occasions and eventually finished seventh to just beat team-mate Paul di Resta and Sutil said he was delighted with his comeback race.
"Leading the grand prix was a great feeling, absolutely," Sutil said. "First race three weeks after I knew I was back in Formula One, just had three test days in Barcelona, it couldn't be a better start really. It showed that everything is possible and you just have to believe in it."
Having switched to super soft tyres late in the race, Sutil was able to weather a period of graining to hold on to seventh but he admitted he feared he would have to pit for a third time.
"I knew it was probably a little advantage to start on the medium tyre compared to the other ones - they grained up the tyres in qualifying already - so I was expecting to go in front but of course leading the race I didn't expect, it's even better that it happened.
"In the end the super soft was very difficult; two laps was OK and then they fell off by about five seconds where I lost my positions and then I thought 'I'm never going to end this race on these tyres!' But then it came back and to a reasonable pace actually."
πηγη
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια :
Δημοσίευση σχολίου