[Official] Rate the Race : Abu Dhabi GP

[wnut]

Originally Posted by Steven Humphrey

Venue looked amazing but race was quite dull. Cars CAN overtake at the track, look at Kubica's pass round the outside of Kobi plus there was plenty of passing in the Porsche race. Lets hope next years regs (no F-ducts or double diffusers) help improve things. The title implications made things quite tense so a 6 from me.

Cars CAN certainly overtake at this circuit, however F1 cars cannot as they suffer all the dowwnforce and wake turbulence problems we have done to death. Petrov managed to fend off Alonso and Webber for most of the race without even being challenged. Both Alonso and Webber can be extremely aggressive and toward the end of the race would have been frustrated and desperate, and yet nothing happened. Modern F1 cars are just plain lousy race cars that provide zero as a racing spectacle. Fast they may be, but they are just plain incapable of racing.

Rate the race about a one, it was just a parade!

Fix the cars!

[Wims]

GP2 cars couldnt overtake either, but I remember a GT race where there was overtakings. But they should seriously reconfigure certain parts of the track, that chicane after the long straight is not a good solution at all. They should bypass it and go straight into the hairpin. But I think the reason why they have a chicane there for F1 is that the grandstands are pretty close to the hairpin and they need to slow the cars down a bit earlier than what they'd had to if there was a bigger runoff area

[bjohnsonsmith]

Originally Posted by Wims

GP2 cars couldnt overtake either, but I remember a GT race where there was overtakings. But they should seriously reconfigure certain parts of the track, that chicane after the long straight is not a good solution at all. They should bypass it and go straight into the hairpin. But I think the reason why they have a chicane there for F1 is that the grandstands are pretty close to the hairpin and they need to slow the cars down a bit earlier than what they'd had to if there was a bigger runoff area

They ought to make use of those different configurations during tyre testing.

[strider]

Gave it a 5, which I thought was quite generous. Wonderful location, but dreadful circuit. If they put it in less glamorous surroundings there would be an uproar.

[Born Racer]

I was very generous with a 5.

I was cackling like Alonso post-Korea at his and Ferrari's ineptitude, so maybe that fun knocked the mark up a bit.

I'm glad I went to Spa this year though. Watching cars go through Eau Rouge in the spray. Now that's a race track. It may not have the facilities or false glamour, but race fans know what counts. It has an aura anyway.

I did knock up my mark a bit based on the final twist in the championship tale. I didn't knock it up based on Ferrari coming apart at the seams. If I had, it would have got a 10.

[chunterer]

Originally Posted by Born Racer

I was very generous with a 5.

I was cackling like Alonso post-Korea at his and Ferrari's ineptitude, so maybe that fun knocked the mark up a bit.

I'm glad I went to Spa this year though. Watching cars go through Eau Rouge in the spray. Now that's a race track. It may not have the facilities or false glamour, but race fans know what counts. It has an aura anyway.

I did knock up my mark a bit based on the final twist in the championship tale. I didn't knock it up based on Ferrari coming apart at the seams. If I had, it would have got a 10.

Yup I'm with you, 5 was the absolute maximum that race deserved. Imagine how much more interest there might have been had Alonso and Webber not made those pit stops that failed for them? Worth considering...

Spa ought to be the template for all circuits, particularly Eau Rouge upto Les Combes if nothing else. God when I saw Mini's rattling up through there years back it was scary, let alone F1's!

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Gave it a 2, dull as dishwater - only saved by the championship struggle. Not that it mattered much when there was simply no overtaking.

[E.B]

I gave it a 5..... but that was made up of 2 points for the championship position giving it a reason to be watched, and an extra bonus point for being such an appalling track for racing on it facilitated the WDC result I was after of a Vettel win. It also got a bonus point for the fact it wasnt on at 3am.

Which leaves a generous 1/10 for the race itself which (other than MS doing his pirouette on Lap 1) was quite boring and on par with Bahrain.