Even two races into the 2012 season, it is pointless to draw up a ‘pecking order’.<\/p>\n
Indeed, the picture in the media is muddled.<\/p>\n
With Ferrari in deep trouble until the Sepang downpour, Fernando Alonso’s surprise win was therefore a “maximisation of misery” for the famous Italian team, according to Finland’s Turun Sanomat newspaper.<\/p>\n
After Australia, and another qualifying lock-out in Malaysia, some elements of the media were already referring to McLaren as the “dominant” team.<\/p>\n
But Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button struggled in Sunday’s race, as did the back-to-back reigning champions Red Bull, and the good qualifying performers, Mercedes.<\/p>\n
“There is no such superiority as in the past year, or the past two years,” agreed Malaysia winner Alonso.<\/p>\n
“Everything seems to be much more open.”<\/p>\n
Now, the keywords are not Adrian Newey or Vettel or blown exhausts, but how individual teams and drivers use the 2012 generation of Pirelli’s tyres.<\/p>\n
“This is probably the most important area at the moment,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner agreed, according to DPA news agency.<\/p>\n
“Different cars are fast at different times,” he said, after Sauber’s Sergio Perez almost won the Malaysian grand prix.<\/p>\n
Horner is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport: “If you are not in ‘the window’, you’re nowhere.\u00a0 And that’s different from tyre (compound) to tyre, and from driver to driver.<\/p>\n
“I think the only good thing is that it will be a really good year for the fans,” he smiled.<\/p>\n
McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh agrees.<\/p>\n
“No one is able to say with confidence how this year is going to pan out,” he is quoted by Germany’s Focus.<\/p>\n
“And that’s as it should be.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Even two races into the 2012 season, it is pointless to draw up a ‘pecking order’. Indeed, the picture in the media is muddled. With Ferrari in deep trouble until the Sepang downpour, Fernando Alonso’s surprise win was therefore a “maximisation of misery” for the famous Italian team, according to Finland’s Turun Sanomat newspaper. After …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,5284,34,114],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15647,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15646\/revisions\/15647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}