F1: Melbourne Qualy full of strange things

Question: which Formula One driver is facing charges under Australia's "Hoon Driver" laws?

Answer: Lewis Hamilton. Leaving the track on Friday night, he was cheered on by fans as he tossed the car around, making lots of noise and smoke. Just like the Friday night hoons that Australia is trying so hard to stop. And their Hoon Driver law is very strong - including confiscating the car.

So Hamilton had the ignominy of having to get a lift home after his hire car was taken off him. The company can get it back in a few days, if they ask nicely. The law came into force on 1 July 2006

http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/newmedia.nsf/b0222c68d27626e2ca256c8c001a3d2d/ecf4a535241891daca25719a0080b11b!OpenDocument

Hamilton looked decidedly out of sorts on Saturday and in Q2 did a reasonably quick lap, returned to the pits and sat out most of the session, going out only in the last few minutes and failing to make it into Q3. His team-mate stormed to P4.

It was the storming Red Bulls that most interested McLaren's technical team. Despite Christian Horner's blanket denials, Martin Whitmarsh wants the FIA to take a look at the Red Bulls: he can't understand where their qualifying pace is coming from. And, frankly, nor can anyone else. Whitmarsh suspects that Red Bull have some kind of ride-height adjuster that they can use during Parc Firme conditions that start before qualifying and remain in place for the race. All the other teams are setting their ride height so that the plank under the car doesn't foul the ground (and Albert Park's bumps) under full fuel load. That means that the car is high when the fuel tank is empty and that means that the under-car aero is compromised with a light car. Everyone except Red Bull, that is. In-car footage during coverage of qualifying clearly shows the sound of Webber's car hitting the ground - when it has fuel for only two or three laps. Whitmarsh argues that, if the car is that low when it's empty, then it would be sitting on the floor when it's full. And plainly it isn't. He suspects that there is some kind of adjuster operated from within the cockpit that allows the ride height to be optimised. He, and other teams, think such a device would be illegal.

Clearly, just watching the two Red Bulls around Albert Park yesterday showed a level of grip that was, simply, prodigious.

At the other end of the grip scale was Lotus. Their speed is good, reliability is better than expected and their drivers have got it together remarkably rapidly (although Trulli was moaning that he should have beaten team-mate Kovalainen but his (Trulli's) seat broke and it's hard to drive an F1 car when you are slopping around in the cockpit. A much bigger problem is a serious lack of front and back-end downforce. Footage from car-height cameras in the run-off areas show that the Lotus is barely in contact with the ground with significant lateral movement in twisty sections. That costs several tenths in each set of corners. Mike Gascoigne said recently that his main development objectives were all to do with aero, saying that 90% of time lost would almost always be due to aerodynamics not working well enough. That's clearly the case this weekend. But even so, Lotus is not far off the pace of the next batch of cars: a couple of seconds would have seen them among Renault and Williams by the end of Q1.

Alongside them, Virgin knows it can't get to the end of the race because its fuel tank is too small. The team crowed about its CAD approach to car design, saying that nothing was built until everything had been designed and tested in the computer system. Seemingly, fuel consumption calculations were beyond their system.

Alonso hustled his car around to third - but he was two tenths behind the Red Bulls and Button was two tenths behind him.

But no one expects such differentials in the race: it's expected that Vettel will storm away from pole, with Webber tucked in behind although Alonso will try to get alongside Webber and block his route to Vettel's gearbox. Button will stay wide, let the first three hustle themselves and try to sneak inside as they drift, then block their ideal route into T2.

Behind them, there will be crashes, some even before T1. The safety car will be out before the leaders reach half-way around the first lap. That will mean that those drivers who have started on a used soft compound (including Vettel who did his tyres no favours with two agricultural excursions during his fastest lap) will pit for hard tyres and then simply bide their time in the pack until everyone else has to stop and then they will bolt off.

At least, that's what we think is going to happen.

But as this is written, it's raining in Melbourne but the air and track temperatures are hot enough for the spotting to dry immediately. But if there's a downpour, as some forecasts say, it could be a lottery. That's what happened to the second practice session on Friday and all teams moaned they had not been able to do any useful work.