The Official 2012 F1 Thread. Spoilers possible!

Great crowds again. Pirelli brought the wrong tires, too hard. On the plus side, the cars may be sliding and that might help the passing. On the minus side, you have to think this helps Red Bull, which has the illegal extra downforce, and it means a one-stopper, so less drama in the pits.

Can you please give it a rest? We got your beef, about fifteen posts ago.

- Mark

I have all the respect in the world for you, jenn.

I think you can handle it for another week.

Massa gearbox change? Alonso to clean line? What a team player!

Got here yesterday! Who was the AdvRider on the yellow GS Adventure hauling ass with me down 71 yesterday morning around 9:30? Any of you guys? I was in the orange 1M coupe.


Facility is amazing, but getting to the far side of the track (turns 4-7) is a mess because of the bottleneck at the two bridges you need to cross. Plan on at least an hour from where the shuttle drops you until you get to your seats.

That's Ferrari for ya.

big john right behind him at the start... Alonso better have his belts tight

Massa still did a job of it. It seems as if he has finally woken up from his head injury.

I know why HAM got by VET
VET dropped something...



what was the issue with that pass?

IMO that was the best race of the year. Racing everywhere in the field. The track itself was outstanding, also.

LH and team seemed genuinely happy together. Great way to finish, notwithstanding Brasil.

And the black cowboy hats were a very nice touch. Especially seeing one on smiling Mario.

Gotta love them Texans.

Sounds like it would be worth the trip to see the GP.

Great race, good result for the championship (that it goes to the last race to decide).

Spectacular GP. Well done Austin, well done Texas and well done USA.

It was wonderful to see packed stadia at a new venue, well done to the US F1 fans too.

http://www.autoweek.com/article/20121118/F1/121119829

Those three on the podium wearing cowboy hats....priceless.

I made it all three days. Traffic was only bad on sunday, but still made it from house to seats in turn 12 in an hour and a half. All 3 days you couldn't even tell a race was going on judging by traffic on the north side of town. I was parked at the expo center and got good parking on the GS, was able to duck out the bus entrance on friday and missed a long wait.

Kind of strange the way sound travels, we couldn't hear the longhorn band playing on the front straight, and there wasn't much noise that made it past the track.

Turn 12 was where I was at and it had most of the action. Vettel just didn't have the pace of the mcclaren, but he was able to stay close in the final laps. Alonso had his usual brilliant start and webber had red bulls 3rd alternator failure this year. Schumi started 5th but steadily fell back. Button got 50 laps on his tires and clawed up the field.

I didn't get a chance to tour the whole facility, it was 3/4 of a mile walk from the bus dropoff so I had my walking. Lots of pricey stadium food that sold out saturday long lines, $8 beer, but the silver lining was being able to buy beer before noon on sunday, a stella artois certainly aided my breakfast digestion.


The ferrari on the right tried to dive inside the second one and ended up taking both out. First practice session




They are saying 117k on sunday, up from 65k friday and 82k on saturday. The bleachers were full and well behaved with lots of foreign country flags being shown and worn. Quite a backup leaving sunday, took about an hour to board the bus even after waiting an hour after the race finished. Had a loyal band of sergio groupies, every time the line moved flags and various noise makers along with an accompanying chant; "sergio, sergio, sergio!"

Overall it was a great effort, my only complaint would be the long hike to and from the buses at the track, seem like they could get a bit closer than that. I would like to see more vendors too, generally lines were 20 or more people deep.

They were selling a bunch of team merchandise, but come on, $70 for a t-shirt?

Bought a canon S110 just for the race only to have the memory card go fubar with all of saturday and sundays pics gone.



Line leaving saturday

Any word on what the driver's thought of the track?

Did they like it, hate it?

Not talking about tires, just the track lay-out?

all the drivers quotes said they liked it a lot.
so.. they may be "PC" or they may be genuine.

on an unrelated note: Kubica doing well in world rally!

Photos via NPS Italia