Somewhere on teh intarwebs build wrote:
[snip]
> At this time I'd agree, sort of, Pole between Hamilton and Rosberg
> with Schumacher a possible, sooner or later Michael will do one of his
> laps and he has the car. MS will have a pole this year.
He better make it soon, I reckon the Mercs might lose that qually edge in
the near future.
> As for the race, I need to see practice but a Redbull podium is
> unlikely presuming we had two healthy Macca's and two healthy Mercs.
> *And* I'd go for Webber as Whitmarsh is no fool, he has seen that Mark
> has been turned loose.
[snip]
Yep, the races so far this season have answered the niggling question I had
about why Mark had re-signed with RBR. OK, the money's got to be good but
he's a racer and he clearly wasn't happy with the way RBR was run
previously. I wouldn't have blamed him for staying on just for the payday
but that really doesn't seem like his style. It looked like he spent the
most part of the last two years pretty pissed off and I couldn't understand
why he'd stick around for more of that treatment. I figured that he might
have walked away rather than have that situation carry on so was a little
curious when I heard that he'd re-signed.
I'm thinking that perhaps RBR thought that, now that Seb's got two WDCs
under his belt and seems to have grown up a lot that he could run with Mark
on an equal footing. Seb might be fast but I think RBR needed to keep an
experienced driver in the team for set-up purposes on Fridays and Saturdays.
I mean, perfect example was the last GP - the drivers were given upgrades
but Seb couldn't come to grips with it and so stuck with the old setup - and
had a slower car.
Mark seems a lot happier in interviews this year, a *lot* happier. He was
almost dancing when he was talking with the BBC crew after the Chinese GP.
That's a huge difference to previous years when he was just (gruffly) being
polite on the way to the motor-home. It's good to see and I hope that it
lasts because I reckon RBR are renegging a bit, those clutch bite-points
look like they're still set wrong. ;-)