Originally Posted by grillpt

No shockers after quali... The race should be interesting.

Originally Posted by KPerez

I have tried to remain silent in the past but this latest is" the straw that ....Vettel needs to rethink his victory sign (http://formula-one.speedtv.com/artic...korean-gp-pole)...I get confused as what it means...could it be: "After F1 racing, I am a going to be a great proctocolgist!"or " I have just discovered the most amazing thing on my index finger!"?...I mean come on!... with the finger...can't U come up with something else?...I NO being on that podium is a big deal but...rethink the victory celebration.

Later, Ken

Originally Posted by Planet-F1

WINNERS AND LOSERS OF THE KOREAN GP

Star of the Race

Fernando Alonso, Ferrari, 1st
Alonso made few mistakes in the trickiest of grand prix conditions. He looked after his tyres brilliantly in the latter half of the race, put pressure on Sebastian Vettel and at the end of the race was going two seconds a lap quicker than the next fastest man - even though he didn't really need to.

Clearly it helped that Webber took himself and Rosberg (who looked pretty racy today) out, that Hamilton handed a place back to him and that Vettel's engine expired, but there was no other driver out there better than him.

On a superstitions note: after the race was over and the podium trio gathered in the room traditionally guarded by serious, beardy unsmiling guy who gives out the caps (that must be quite a job, transporting three hats and three watches from race to race), Alonso stopped from towelling his hair and went and hugged the wall. Is this a Spanish tradition, a bit like touching wood or was he reaching out to someone beyond the door who we didn't see? I prefer the former explanation and look forward to some more post-race wall hugging, as will most Ferrari fans. Beautiful. Grande. Avanti.

Overtaking move of the Race
Lap 19, Nico Rosberg on Lewis Hamilton for P4
Rosberg's pass on Hamilton was textbook stuff. Lewis Hamilton is not the easiest guy to overtake but sensibly gave way once he realised that Rosberg had the inside line into Turn 3. This was the place that Lewis was meant to stroll past everyone, but it didn't happen.

Winners

Lewis Hamilton, McLaren, 2nd
Lewis got lucky on a day where he could easily have ended up in fifth place had things not gone his way. As it was, just keeping your car in one piece was the order of the day. Usually in a race it's Lewis who makes things happen. Today he didn't have the car to push anyone. He kept Taz in the box and ended up second. Although he'll probably wonder what might have been if he hadn't gone off-track following the Lap 35 restart.

Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 3rd
Felipe oh so nearly followed Mark Webber into the barrier late on in the race and that would have given MSC the podium that we all predicted he would get in about Race 3 or 4 (on the way to thrashing the pants off Nico Rosberg). That's probably as close as Michael is going to get to the podium this year, but not necessarily Felipe, who is normally guaranteed a bit of a re-soolt in Brazil.

Massa is never at his best in slippy races but held it together manfully, much to the delight of his Ferrari pitcrew. Considering it was his best result after a lot of disappointment Felipe didn't look as thrilled as you might have expected in the circumstances. He gave Fernando a pretty joyless greeting in Parc Ferme and was nit exactly bubbling in the post race interviews.

Michael Schumacher, Mercedes, 4th
First Kubica and then Button, Schumi made some elegant passing moves on his way to fourth place. Tripping over the grass and run-off at Turn 3 on Lap 8 (behind the SC) and converting his silver arrow to a muddy arrow wasn't quite so elegant, but it's in the nature of Michael to explore where all the grip is and he never wastes time behind the Safety Car - Big Blue is always at work.

Robert Kubica, Renault, 5th
A bit of a quiet race for Robert. Good points and rare for him to fall behind Petrov on track. Not quite so rare to see Kubica reach the finish line first.

Tonio Liuzzi, Force India, 6th
Liuzzi finally got the better of Adrian Sutil. He wasn't faultless, but compared to Sutil's performance on track, he was as good as a computer simulation.

Korean GP Track
Considering this was more a regional project than a national one, the oganisers did a fantastic job to get the circuit completed in time.

It looks an interesting track with an immediate character all its own. The few major faults are design ones. If Hermann Tilke is going to design Monaco-style sections to a track on virgin land, where he doesn't need to, then he should design in Monaco-style car recovery solutions.

And if you're going to wall in a very long straight with no run-off either side, then better to do it in a climate where it doesn't rain much during races or else you're always going to have to use safety cars when it gets wet.

Nice to see a lot of Korean children (all photogenic) in the grandstands for the opening race. In generations to come, after the event has become a classic, people will ask them what the very first Korean GP was like and they'll say "...what was that you said?" None of them had ear defenders on and so you fear that the first experience of F1 was frighteningly loud as well as wet. I'd be surprised, though, if everyone got out of the circuit car parks in three hours.

The Stewards
How much better is the stewarding this year now that drivers are getting involved? What Max Mosley resisted for years and Jean Todt implemented has been the single biggest change for the good in 2010. Today there wasn't a single thing you would argue the toss about, despite how busy it got.

Losers

Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull, DNF
You don't get much of a reversal of form as the Red Bull Racing team have experienced in the last two weeks. From a dominant 1-2 in Japan, a 1-2 in Korea qualifying, to a double DNF in the race. Webber's accident was self-inflicted but he made no excuses. He's normally bullet-proof in the wet. Vettel's DNF presumably was a result of running the Renault engine at too high a rate for too long a time, given that fuel consumption was not going to be a factor after all the Safety Cars. The only thing that might comfort RBR is that Alonso is on his last engine and we're just about to go off to one of the most power demanding circuits on the calendar. This race Vettel, next race...?
Actually, now that Alonso has a whole 11 points on Mark Webber, might there be the possibility of Fernando going for a ten-place drop and taking the 9th engine at Interlagos? Because in Brazil he can make those places back, whereas if he's sat at the side of the track with a smoking Ferrari and a blown 8th engine, that's not much of a re-soolt.

Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, DNF
Desperately bad luck for Nico. He would have been on the podium today.

Vitaly Petrov
Vitaly is a cruel guy. He really knows how to torture Renault team boss Eric Boullier. After performing the usual Petrov pirouette in qualifying he lulled Eric into thinking he was actually going to pick up some points in 7th place (which would have been 6th after Vettel's exit) and then he goes and picks the one place that people aren't having a problem with and hurtles off the circuit to put another dent in the rebuilding budget.

Jenson Button
Button was in ginger whinger mode from the moment he emerged for his pit-stop behind a gaggle of cars that included two Saubers, a Toro Rosso and the track sweeping vehicle. Neither McLaren looked much of a threat today and when he did get into a position of having a go at Liuzzi and Kobayashi Adrian Sutil bundled him off the track.

Williams
On Lap 51 of 55, Williams held 5th and 6th positions with a Force India back in 8th. Williams 18 Force India 4. As they crossed the finishing line it was Liuzzi in 6th, Barrichello in 7th and Hulkenberg 10th. Williams 7 Force India 8.

It's a cruel business.

Adrian Sutil, Force India, DNF
Hardly surprising that Adrian Sutil had a brake problem, because he drove - unfamiliarly - like a tosser*. The fact that he was aware he had a brake problem yet carried on trying to makes places with risky manoeuvres, allows us to add the word 'complete'. He was very lucky that he didn't take other drivers out, apart from the blameless Kamui Kobayashi. That Sauber is a pretty robust vehicle. The stewards also took a dim view, deducted grid places and fined him $10,000. It should have been more.

Oh No, It's Tourettes Kravitz!
Tourettes was having a mild time of it this race, but he wasn't as quiet as Coulthard. A pretty graceless David Coulthard skulked around Mission Control in Woking instead of helping out the height difference between Jake Humphry and Eddie Jordan in Yeongam. His absence from Korea wasn't properly explained either. A stupid point, but I've now got this vision in my head of DC as Quagmire from Family Guy and it won't go away. And this race was even worse because they must have been using a wide angle lens to get into the tight confines of McLaren's factory. Thus DC's chin appeared like one of those cheap plastic masks of politicians that demonstrators wear in protest rallies before setting fire to a barricade. More commendable fence sitting from the unofficial Red Bull spokesman.

Brundle, hiding underneath the gullwing of the Safety Car, managed to get a nice shot of the Allianz branding on the bonnet again. With his gold necklace he's increasingly coming across like the (darts godfather) Bobby George, or Del Boy of F1. The PF1 office is trying to buy him a really cheap sheepskin jacket on E.bay.

It was interesting to hear my old mucka Tom Clarkson helping Crofty out with the commentary during pratice on Friday. Clarko accurately predicted that pole would be a 1:35 lap and delivered two great revelations to the viewing public: "in the last 30 minutes they'll concentrate on set-up" and "I think they'll find some of the grass is soft."

And finally, Jonathan Leggard was very complimentary about the fastidious nature of the crowd who had waited patiently for the race. Not only were they polite, JL said they put all their rubbish in the correct bins: "a very tidy crowd, you have to say..."

Andrew Davies

* An old naval term for the rating who runs up the bunting in port.