1. Lewis Hamilton got the pole position, but the commentators made it sound like it was a long shot for him to win. Hamilton himself seemed doubtful. Why?
Essentially it comes down to tires. The cars are all filled with enough fuel to make the entire race, so the strategy comes in whether or not you qualify with the soft or medium tire. That choice is up to the team. The reason why Hamilton is doubtful is while his car is fast enough to run a pole position lap during qualifying, it does have good longevity in terms of tire wear. He would potentially have to pit sooner and more often, and his overall lap times would be slower throughout the race because his tires will wear down faster.
2. Qualifying times determine where you are on the starting grid, right? Mark Webber was 10th on the grid at the start, but it appeared that he didn't have a qualifying time. Why, then, wasn't he gridded in last place?
They are determine through three knockout rounds of qualifying. In this case, Webber may have chosen to not run in the 3rd knockout round of qualifying, perhaps to save tires. So he was fast enough in the 2nd round to make it to the 3rd and by default he gets 10th place.
3. How different is each car allowed to be? Obviously this isn't NASCAR where each car has to be pretty much the same, but how much can a team deviate from the rules? I guess what I'm asking is, how much of a team's performance is determined by their drivers versus the money they've poured into the car? Is Red Bull the Yankees?
This is probably best answered by looking at one aspect of a car. Here is my understanding - the specifications say a front wing can exist in a specific area within certain parameters (imagine a cube laying out the dimensions of 10x10x3 inches and teams can design whatever shape wing they want within that box. There are, of course, thousands of rules, but there is a lot of freedom in wing design, airflow design, undercarriage design, etc.
As for how much performance is determined by money that is also difficult to say. I'd be fantastic to put Sebastian Vettel in every car on the grid and see what kind of lap times he could run in each, but that will never happen. The easy answer is it's a combination of both, but the larger teams like Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars for their car and they can also pay the best drivers.
4. What are the rules regarding defensive maneuvers? Can you just continue to block a guy all the time to prevent him from passing you?
The rule is one defensive move to protect your position. You can move to block the inside, but if you move back to block the outside that is technically not allowed and could be punished.
5. You can only use DRS if you're close enough to the car ahead of you, right? How is this determined? Sensors on the cars? What if you press the DRS button outside this range? Will it still activate and give you a penalty or does it automatically lock you out when you're out of range?
You have to be within 1 second of the car in front of you at the last timing indicator and you have to be in a DRS zone (typically a straight away). I don't know how it is regulated, I've only seen 1 penalty for using the DRS in the DRS zone but the officials had "disabled" it because of a caution. Since the DRS was allowed, I have not seen any penalties or anyone using it outside of the authorized times and sections.
6. I saw teams switching from soft tires to medium tires. Are they accounting for the fact that the track heats up as the race goes on, and thus they can use a stiffer tire?
No, they are simply accounting for the rules which stipulate that a driver has to use at least 1 set of softs and 1 set of medium tires during the race. So far this season the medium has been the better tire because it lasts longer, the softer is usually "gotten out of the way" because it only has good grip for 2-3 laps. Some drivers start on mediums and only use the soft tires for their very last stint in a race. Track heat is certainly one consideration, but it's much more complex than that.
7. Anybody know how they get their onboard audio for the broadcast? I'd love to know what mic can withstand that decibel level.
No idea, sorry!
8. A couple of times drivers had to go outside the course to avoid crashing, once on the outside of a turn and once in a chicane, cutting the course. Are they penalized for this? I mean, sure, you were going to crash if you didn't do something, but you DID cut the course, giving you an advantage.
There seem to be some loose rules around this, but typically there are no penalties and drivers are usually advised by their teams to give back any positions gained by being forced off course. I have seen a few drive through penalties for this happening, but for the most part the driver will slow down or give back a position to avoid being penalized.
9. Red Bull said the phrase "fail 22" over the radio to Vettel and Webber near the end of the race. What does that mean?
Hard to say, each team has special codes and phrases. If I remember correctly something had failed on Webber's car and they wanted Vettel to know about it. The drivers have a lot of controls on their steering wheels and can sometimes make changes that could prevent a failure if they know something could go wrong.
10. How do the points work? It looked like the guy in 6th place got zero points but the guy in 7th got four.
I'm sure others have posted the points breakdown already. There have been times when points are stripped for a serious infraction, but nothing that I've heard about recently. Usually, the first ten drivers get points.
Hope that helps, I'm glad to see someone at Giantbomb getting into racing, especially iRacing and Formula 1.
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