mad082

Yep. or future significant others, lol

Exactly. Especially with motogp, if the teams are going to pay someone to stand there holding an umbrella then they might as well pay someone who's easy on the eye. You can go on about how tacky it is, etc, but the teams are also in the marketing business and having promo girls would generate more merchandise sales than some sweaty fat bloke with a beard.

I hate rosberg more than hamo, and hamo more than vettel. I stopped hating vettel last year. Felt bad for alonso. Having to retire from a points scoring position. The rbr cars really have some problems, and the engine definitely isn't it. Sure it isn't helping things getting down on power, but even if they had the power they wouldn't be able to get it to the ground anyway. They can't go, they can't stop and they can't turn. All the things they used to have sorted are out the arse with the new rules

True, but I want to see how many cars don't make it to the grid this race.....

I've heard theories that the Renault engines are something like 80hp down on power compared to the mercs. That's a pretty substantial difference. And during the prerace show of the melbourne gp, I'm pretty sure that it was when they were taking the tour of the merc offices in the UK old mate toto was saying that they reckoned they'd found nearly a second of pace compared to last year's car. I doubt any of the others found half as much, so the gap just widened. Oh and Dan Ricciardo came into work today....

Yeah the whole development freeze basically means that for this season (and I think even next season has limited development allowed too) we get to watch the mercs race each other, while the others race to be the first of the losers.

I agree with Horner about it being bad for the sport (they will lose viewers this year if the other teams don't close the gap). But I agree with your "have a cry". Rbr should just ditch the Renault engine and bolt in either a fez or merc engine.

I wouldn't say that Williams will struggle. That is unless bottas can't race for a while. We all know that he's the faster of the 2 drivers both in quali and on race day.

Sauber currently 3rd in the constructors championship with 14 points.

Arnie still did better interviews than alan jones.....

Oh god, arnie doing podium interviews....

Wonder if that commentary was only because it's the Australian gp. Hopefully we'll get sky back for the rest

Make that 11.

2 tow trucks needed before the race start. Going to be an interesting first few laps to see who can just survive. Doubt the mercs will have any issues though

One of the mclarens out on the warm up lap. They might as well pull the engines out and go Flintstones style. Be faster and more reliable

I liked webber's subtle insult of maldanado yesterday. They were showing the lotus garage and webber was commenting on how unorganized it was with the tyre blankets coming off at different times and saying how that will alter the tyre temps left to right, but then added "but he probably won't notice it....."

Will be interesting to see how the qualifying speed of the cars compares to race speed tomorrow. Last year the rbr cars were quicker in race trim than their qualifying speed showed. Mclaren out the arse though, unless they've still not turned the car up to 100% yet, but I doubt that's the case.

Odometers don't mean squat when it comes to imports. Around 70,000kms seems to be the magic number that you see all the time. So don't worry, if your mate did swap out the odometer in Japan, the odometer he swapped out probably wasn't legit anyway. If the car is clean and runs well then that matters more than an odometer reading. No point going on about how low the odometer reads if there's a dent in every panel and the engine runs like a dog

The issue with the engine that you need to address is that for what you will spend on an N.A. to make 200hp, you could buy a turbo engine and mod it to make 350hp+

Rather than starting a new thread, I'll just ask the question here. How can I check for air con leaks? I'm pretty sure that the system had dye put in it when it was regassed a few years back (had work done that required the gas to be vaccines and regassed) and I'm pretty sure that the system has since developed a leak. I know that a uv torch is used, and some yellow glasses, but I'm just wondering if it's a special torch, or any old uv torch/blacklight that I can buy off eBay for a few dollars? Oh and the car is currently unregistered and I'm just in the process of getting it back on the road (so I can't just drive it to an aircon place and get it checked)

They do put numbers on the cars (well some teams do anyway) it's just that they aren't very big, and often on the top of the nose where you can't see them anyway. They need big light up ones like the WEC cars have

Exactly. They may get 30m for showing up, but if it costs them double that then it isn't worth it. It clearly didn't work out for them last year. And it isn't like they can just decide to just run a team for 25m to run at a profit, because then they wouldn't have a car that's quick enough to stay within the 110% range

Are they still investigating the last restart? About the only car that Nissan will get a race win with on a regular basis, cause the Kelly brothers couldn't win a chook raffle

I'm 6'2 and I've owned a 180sx and a r33 and neither of them required me to have the seat all the way back. Still had plenty of room to play with. Even in my daily (Mitsubishi mirage) I don't have the seat all the way back. At 6'4 you shouldn't have a problem

While a $15 fee might not seem like much, it may drastically reduce future growth of the site. For example, someone who purchased a skyline and then has questions can currently jump on here for free and ask questions. If they have to pay $15 upfront a large portion of them will just go to other forums where they don't have to pay. Sure, we all know that it's hard to find a better source of info than here, but someone just getting into skylines won't know that.