He initially qualified 15th, but pulled into pits due to tranny problems, and never came back, setting him in last place. I'm sure there will be penalties to follow. The Toyota wing issues then pushed him up two positions, and Toyota will close the grip staring 19th and 20th.

 

yeah i noticed. there are 3 logos on the entire car (and they are all tiny), brawn, virgin and bridgestone (required by rules). the virgin one was added this week too there are pictures of guys putting the virgin stickers on the brawn stuff at the event

the wins wont be taken away if the diffuser is found to be illegal. reason: the stewards already said it conforms to the rules. if they said it didn't, they would be penalizing the teams before the race starts (or immediately after when they do post race inspections). if something is deemed to be illegal after the race by a rules clarification, when the stewards said it was ok, usually nothing happens to races that have been completed (think renault mass dampers a few years ago). the teams protesting the diffuser, said it does conform to the letter of the rules, but they are protesting the "spirit" of the rules. additionally, 3 teams came to the same conclusions, so its unlikely that the FIA would penalize 3 teams.

a good example of a team clearly cheating was when honda would weigh the car with fuel in the surge tank when it was sopposed to be weighed dry (or something like that) they would have more fuel then everyone else... no one announced it, but when they found it they said it was cheating (and they were underweight so they were cheating). in the case of the diffuser, its in the open, everyone knows about it, the stewards even said it was ok. the protest is only going to make a clarification on the rules, and the teams using it will eeither have to take it off (like mass dampers), or the other teams not using it will have it the next race

 

The way i am looking at things is like this, Brawn had longer to design the chassis and aero of the car then any other team did due to the fact that the Honda car was given up on so early into last season. I don't think the reason they are so fast has much to do with the Chassis but manly there aero package. You would think that the big teams will be coming out with alot of updates for there package. I would not expect Brawn to have this easy of a time in qualifying again this year.

That said i am not taking anything away from what they did yesterday. I loved every second of it.

 

This sticker went on pretty fast, it was not there during the Friday Practice.

 

Pretty good race! The cars looked ugly and unstable I think Sebastien Buemi did a pretty good job considering it was his first race, Button actually won something, and Force India did some OK driving. Granted he got a podium finish handed to him because of Trulli, but Hamilton was pretty solid out there considering not many people had high expectations for the MP24.

 

all i know is i will be at the bahrain race

 

Wow...incredible race. I won't give anything up, but let's say it looks like this season will be an exciting one (relatively speaking of course)!
-Alex@ECS

 

I'm looking forward to it as well. There are going to be A LOT of surprises this year.

 

The new rules really made for a fun to watch race. The new rules like them or not really seemed to serve there original purpose.

 

I agree, but think KERS should be dumped or mandatory...

Scorke

 

I agree

 

I am ok with the KERS rule this year. The off season is really not enough time to full develop a system like this. I do hope that next year when it is mandatory for all cars that they can ether increase the HP output of the KERS you increase the minimum weight to off set the addition weight of the KERS.

 

That's an awesome idea. It would really add a whole new aspect to overall strategy.
-Alex@ECS

 

I believe that the system is somewhere between 60-80 pounds, that is a lot of ballast that the teams are loosing. Not sure what i would rather have 6 seconds a lap of 82 horse or 80 pounds of well positioned ballast. Something should change to make the KERS have a more positive impact and really give the teams a good reason to focus more of there efforts towards it.

 

Go MM. I was watching the race with SF fans and they were going crazy when Heikki's race was over. Then when both Ferraris pulled a repeat performance of last years woes, the SF fans were whisper quiet. Hamilton's performance was awesome. Kubica was a fool for crashing both he and Vettel out. Absolutely outperformed in those last laps and way too aggressive. Driving like an @ss only gets you a win if you DONT crash out. And somehow, FIA found a way to blame, penalize and fine Vettel for the incident. Controversy aside, I must say that this was an awesome season opener. I could have never guessed such a finish. Congratulations to Brawn GP for the one two and Force India for an awesome effort and strong showing.

Also for those who haven't seen F1.com, Trulli lost third place to Hami for passing under a safety condition. Trulli was penalized 25 seconds and bumped out of the points. Not entirely sure I agree with that decision though. The situation was slightly confusing.

Next week should be awesome. Bring it on. MM all the way.