F1 » Vettel dominates opening day at Jerez

Red Bull will know where they really stand when Mark Webber gets fully fit - very exciting - hopefully a good year for F1 proving that reducing costs can still produce great racing which is the most important factor of F1. The pinnacle of engineering thing does nothing for me - counts for little to todays road cars - eg the wings. the wings would not be allowed on a road cars hence should be banned in the current form. I can see why Branson did not want anything with F1 as is - F1 engineering is out of touch with todays road car requirements.

Branson did not want anything to do with F1 was because he did not have the money if anybody is willing to put his money forward he will be willing to set up an F1 team

Because Webber is better than Vettel? ..... yea right.

Great driver and Newey design magic is superfast car?

Vettel set his time on a qualifying simulation run. As Webber said, all teams can pull 1-2 sec off their times if they want to at this stage. However if the RB5 continues to top timesheets through Jerez and then Catalunya, they will win the world championship, because their car is so radical that no other team can copy their aero concept. They have such tight packaging at the rear of the car that they are running two very large rear wings. No one can duplicate that degree of downforce without a complete redesign of their cars. Look at the problems McLaren are having with their rear wing downforce. They are in real trouble with their car.

SimSym.
If what you thought about McLaren is right and they cannot fix it as fast as possible. Then Hamilton is in trouble this year. And if simulation of Q laps maintain by Vettel is close to real race pace then the top three should worried (Ferrari, McLaren, BMW). Excellent Vettel, I believe Webber also will surprisingly fast through out the session.

The scary thing is that they can pick up more downforce once they copy the Toyota/Willams diffuser concept. If they are reliable the season will be like the domination of Williams or McLaren where no other team got a look in.

Webber better than Vettel? Maybe. Lets wait and see. This year he finally gets a team mate who may be able to challenge him. Vetter is a supreme talent, no doubt, but you can't deny that Mark is very fast. He has been quicker than Heidfeld, Rosberg and Coulthard all in the same machinery. Mark hasn't had the best relationships with his team mates but he seems to get along well with Sebastian. I hope Red Bull become a dominant force with their radical new car.

there is a chance that Simsym will be proven right all we have to do is wait a bit longer, if simsym is proven right it will not be possible for any body to catch them having over one second advantage

i know that we cannot read too much into testing times, but it does look as if mclaren and ferrari will have tough opposition from vettel/RBR. RBR have good reliability whereas the other two are having problems. maybe in melbourne we will see mclaren and ferrari "crash and burn" (not literally!) and RBR and BMW picking up the points instead. but things should revert to normal by the middle of the season. it will be nice to have a few extra contenders for victory.