Jag funderade ytterligare en vända och tänkte att jag skulle ta på mig glasögonen för sinkade Hamilton-stopp och se om jag kunde gå tillbaka och läsa något från racet som kunde ge stöd för en sådan spekulation om att McLaren medvetet förlängde Hamiltons stopp så Alonso kunde passera. Jag förväntar mig inte att finna det i klartext givetvis, men tolkningar av olika citat borde man kunna göra.
Och en sådan grej borde ju framskymta hos citaten också - oftast går det ju att framskymta någonting. Har kikat på Autosport för att hålla det lite enklare, det mesta brukar ju finnas där av värde.
Först de officiella kommentarerna efter loppet:
Fernando Alonso - 2nd: "What a great way to start the season and my career as a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes driver. Of course it's always better to win but Kimi was a little bit quicker than us today, however we scored the maximum points that were possible, and I'm really pleased.
"My start was a bit strange with both BMWs being very quick off the line, and I was so busy defending my line from Heidfeld on the outside that it was not possible for me to stay ahead of him. I was then behind Lewis for a while and was just focusing on keeping up with him and sometimes dropping back to allow the car to cool down.
"I took second after the second pitstop as I was able to stay out for an additional two laps. Originally it was meant to be one lap but because I was behind Lewis I managed to save enough fuel for one more lap. Both of the Bridgestone Potenza tyre options worked well. We will now continue to work hard to give us the best opportunity to beat Ferrari at the Malaysian Grand Prix."
Lewis Hamilton - 3rd: "I'm absolutely ecstatic - today's result is more than I ever dreamed of achieving on my Grand Prix debut. A big thank you to the team who have worked so hard during the winter to make sure I was as prepared as I possible could be.
"I made a good start but the BMWs were quick off the line and Kubica managed to get past. There was no room on the inside so I got on the left and managed to outbrake both Kubica and Fernando coming into the first corner to take third. The race was intense, and I was working very hard. I made a few mistakes but nothing major and really enjoyed myself.
"It was great to lead the race for a few laps, but I knew it was only a temporary thing. Fernando got past me at the second pitstop as he was able to stay out a bit longer and I lost some time behind backmarkers. We now have a lot of work ahead of us with the Malaysia test and the rest of the season, but there is no doubt that we can build from what has been achieved today."
Ron Dennis: "Of course as always we came to Australia to win, but a somewhat unexpected strategy adopted by BMW was very disruptive to our race. Following Heidfeld's first pitstop the gap was just too big to realistically close it and the additional range from our strategy was subsequently wasted. Both drivers did an excellent job giving us a narrow lead in the Constructors' Championship.
"A special thank you to the test team and the workforce back at the McLaren Technology Centre who have worked so hard during the winter and contributed so much to the faultless reliability that we have enjoyed throughout the weekend. The coming Malaysian test should give us every opportunity to further improve the competitiveness of our cars."
Norbert Haug: "The season started well with Fernando and Lewis scoring 14 points out of 18 possible on their debut race for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes. Fernando showed with his performance exactly why he is the double world champion whilst Lewis made a perfect start to his Grand Prix career and proved absolutely worthy of the confidence we have had in him for the past ten years.
"Although we still have to work hard to further improve our technical package we showed today that throughout the winter we have made improvements. We will now focus on the Malaysia test and are looking forward to the next race. Thanks to everybody in the team in Woking, Brixworth and Stuttgart, all their efforts will pay off."
Kanske inte så förvånande att det gav så mycket, men jag tycker inte man någonstans kan framskymta att det skulle vara frågan om en uppgjord placeringsordning mellan McLarenförarna av teamet i det ändå. Jag kan ialla fall inte göra den tolkningen.
Damien Smith på Autosport verkade inte heller göra den tolkningen eller analysen/psekulationen kring racet:
Now on to a Brit with something to smile about. Will Lewis Hamilton win a race? Olivier Panis reckoned Lewis would be the first firing - then said he didn't rule him out for a win! Perhaps, as an ex-McLaren tester, his first answer was tongue-in-cheek?
My answer to this one was yes, but not before mid-season. It looks like I might have to revise that opinion. But then again, despite the incredible debut performance for which he deserved every word of praise thrown his way this week, Lewis might still be made to wait for that first win.
Yes, he led Alonso for much of the race. But Fernando showed the advantage of his experience as he bided his time, then pounced at the final stops to take second place.
In any sport, they say that finding the extra nth of performance required to make you a winner is the hardest part. This is certainly true in motor racing, and so it will be for Lewis. He will get there, but outpacing Alonso over a whole race distance is a huge task. And that's without even mentioning Kimi and the Ferrari.
Adam Cooper gör en del spekulationer eller observationer, en är att det verkar som man hos McLaren har ordningen att den som är snabbast i Q2 får bestämma först om rätt bränslemängd i sista kvalet:
That ensured Fernando set a quicker time and ended up ahead of Hamilton going into the top 10 session.
Did Alonso go out again for any practical reason other than that he was a little rattled by his novice teammate's pace? Of course, it may just be that McLaren operate on the basis that whoever is quickest in Q2 gets first choice of the optimum fuel strategy for final qualifying, and Fernando wanted to guarantee priority...
Anyway, he was to prove quicker in the crucial top 10 session. However, after the race it became apparent that Hamilton was carrying two laps' worth of extra fuel, and that pretty much accounted for the difference in lap time.
Melbourne may not be the most challenging, technical track, but the bottom line is that on his very first appearance Hamilton bettered or matched Alonso over one lap on equal terms, and even his biggest supporters within the camp hadn't expected that. Nobody, that is, except one man.
Sen vidare om racet, först en genomgång av hur Heidfeld tog starten men inte hängde med Kimi vilket bromsade McLaren bakom och sen detta:
Back in the McLaren pit, there was some serious frustration.
"I think from an outcome of the race perspective, our race was very much damaged by the Heidfeld strategy, which we just didn't understand," said Ron Dennis. "Twelve laps (it was actually the end of lap 14 when he came in) as the opening part of the race was not the way to go. Once we were boxed in we just lost touch with Kimi.
"All the time you're behind Heidfeld you're struggling in dirty air, and the cars are so sensitive to that. Unless you've got a good one-and-a-half-second advantage you are not going to be able to take them on, or you have to wait for the tyre situation to deteriorate and then attack. We didn't have to wait too long, because Heidfeld was in the pits in 12 laps. Twelve laps versus 22, he was carrying 10 laps less fuel. That's well over a second a lap."
By the time Heidfeld came in on lap 14, Hamilton was 14.4s down on the leader and Alonso was a further 1.6s behind. Only a recurrence of Massa's qualifying gearbox failure could halt Kimi now, but the McLaren fight was just getting interesting, and we eagerly awaited the first stops.
Fernando had cut the gap to a second when he came in at the end of lap 21, and Lewis followed a lap later. Fernando's in and out laps were quicker - this stuff is still new to Hamilton but traffic may also have played a part - but that single extra lap with a light car was enough to ensure he stayed ahead.
Så långt verkar det handla om en vanligt fight med depåstopp som medel för att köra om/behålla placering.
here's a little more to that first stop sequence than meets the eye. Intriguingly, Fernando was supposed to stop two laps ahead of Lewis, when traditionally the difference between teammates has been one. The new safety car rules, and the penalty inherent in being caught out when you are about to refuel, caused the team to spread the risk.
"We had already agreed that we would keep them apart," said Whitmarsh. "You don't ordinarily want the drivers on the same lap and in fact with the new safety car regulations having them on successive laps is not a good thing. So we wanted them apart by a couple of laps.
Nu däremot komemr vi in på området där det kan hävdas att McLaren med flit vände på positionerna, men det verkar mer vara ett utslag av att Fernando och ingenjören på hans bil arbetade bättre med bränslet och behövde tanka mindre än vad Hamilton och hans ingenjör kunde göra - därför tog Hamiltons depåstopp de kritiska sekunderna extra att göra - han hade mindre bensin kvar i tanken när han gick i depå för sista stoppet:
Anyway, as far as McLaren was concerned the race fuel decision was made on the assumption that Fernando would be in front of Lewis from the start. Now that he was behind, the Spaniard knew that he would have very little chance to reverse the situation at the first stops.
He did his best to improve his chances by cutting the fuel deficit from two laps to one by dint of some economical driving and fuel mode knob twiddling - adding that one lap to his original 20 equated to a 5 percent gain.
"Lewis was going to be a couple of laps later," said Whitmarsh. "But we were able to make a bit of fuel on Fernando's car. It's a combination of the driver and the engineers working together.
"Fernando is very intelligent, very confident in his own ability. He knows how long F1 races are, he knows how you win F1 races, and sometimes you've got to have the intelligence to bide your time, conserve tyres, conserve fuel, and do what you have to do. Fernando's got that strength. But Lewis has demonstrated that he's got all those attributes, and he's well able to run his race in a super intelligent way as well."
Fernando stopped on lap 21 only one lap ahead of his teammate, still not enough to get him in front, but worth a try. However, the race was effectively decided by what went in the cars at those stops. Fernando took enough to get himself to lap 45 (with some more economy driving helping out), while Lewis could go only to lap 43. As usual, the last man in had the advantage, and Fernando easily jumped ahead at the second and final stops.
In effect McLaren had decided which of the two drivers was going to finish second, assuming no mistakes by either of them, and Fernando got the nod. It could be argued that this was a 'correction' that made up for Lewis unexpectedly getting ahead at the start, but Dennis insisted that the stops panned out for Alonso simply because they had always been planned that way
Avslutningsvis:
"Our strategy was pre-set, we didn't vary from it," he said. "The three or four laps covering the last stops, it was a little like Michael at Silverstone last year, where he was on the tail of Kimi, then the pit stops took place, and he was something like four seconds ahead. Fernando just pushed very aggressively. He conserved his tyres, knew he had a fuel distance advantage and used it to overtake his teammate.
"You've just got to have a realistic approach. You're not going to close that gap (to Raikkonen) and therefore you're then into engine and tyre conservation. Fernando was sat patiently behind Lewis, dropping back occasionally to ensure that the engine stayed cool. And really the outcome was as good as we could have expected given the circumstances."
Whitmarsh added: "What happens as the race progresses is that you can tune by getting an opinion on what the pace is. You can lean off, and whatever. So we already had an outlined strategy. The race didn't pan out that much differently. We hoped to have got Heidfeld and been closer to Kimi, but we didn't really change that, it was how we wanted to run the race."
Hamilton dropped away from Alonso in the latter part of the race, but he had a huge margin on Heidfeld and nothing to gain by staying right behind Alonso, especially as everyone now has to take their engines to hot and humid Malaysia.
"All three of the lead drivers were leaning off there and taking it easy on their engines, which is sad but true in F1 these days," said Whitmarsh. "After the second stop you start thinking about the next race, which personally isn't something that I enjoy, but that's how it is. Thereafter it was a question of how easy they wanted to be."
There was another reason why Lewis lost a bit of performance relative to Fernando. He had a spare new set of soft tyres left after qualifying, whereas Alonso had used up all of his because of that extra run he'd made in Q2.
So for the last stints, Hamilton took his remaining new set, and Fernando had no choice but the take a set that he'd used on Saturday. As it happened, those scrubbed tyres proved more consistent, so Fernando had an easier final stint. All part of the learning curve for team and drivers as they get used to the Bridgestones.
Allt detta är en tycker jag bra spekulation av Adam Cooper som spekulerar men med välgrundade fakta och med intervjuer av de som faktiskt vet något om det. Och där verkar det helt enkelt som Alonso offrade ett set däck till i kvalet för att vara säker på att få välja bränslemängd först i Q3. Det gjorde att han i loppet hade ett set mindre men det visade sig bli en fördel. Dessutom kunde han spara mer bränsle än Hamilton under loppet som gjorde att han i sista stoppet inte behövde tanka lika mycket, och därför kunde tillbringa kortare tid i depån.
Jag försöker läsa de här texterna på olika sätt, men ingenstans kan jag framskymta att det skulle röra sig om det du spekulerade om: att McLaren med vilje skulle ha förhindrat Hamilton i depån så Alonso kunde sluta före honom i loppet.
Det finns ett ställe där möjligheten tas upp, men den konstateras istället bero på att Alonso helt enkelt kunde tanka kortare tid och därmed tjäna den tiden han behövde.
Så nej - jag kan fortfarande inte se hur man kan spekulera med någon slags torvärdighet eller med kända fakta som grund att McLaren medvetet förlängde depåstoppet för Hamilton i Melbourne för att Alonso skulle sluta före .... är jag blind som inte kan se det? Eller vill jag inte se det? Elelr går det helt enkelt inte att se?
