On Tuesday May 6th, the news broke that Super Aguri had officially pulled out of Formula One. After ignominiously being denied entry into the paddock at the Istanbul F1 track, Honda (through the dog-with-a-bone that is Nick Fry) confirmed that no rescue package would be given the go-ahead to rescue the financially-stricken B-team and that Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato would have to watch from the stands.
Continue Reading 3 comments May 9th, 2008
It’s great to have a race straight after the season opener. Especially when the crazy opener whetted our appetite’s so well. Ferrari will also be relieved to be able to rectify the nightmare that was Australia, and McLaren will be looking to further stick the knife in to their title rivals.
Continue Reading 3 comments March 20th, 2008
So the new season is upon us and as I write we’ve had the grand total of 2 practice sessions to make a first impression of what is up and coming this season. Of course it’s not enough evidence to put any money on any outcomes but hey, as a blogger it’s damn well my duty to jump the gun and make rash judgements so here we go 
It looks like everyone’s worst fears have come true (don’t worry I wont be bemoaning everything !!). It is looking very much like a Ferrari - McLaren cakewalk this season. After the first 2 practice sessions the big 4 cars are head and shoulders ahead of everyone else. And even worse than that, the big 2 (Kimi & Lewis) seem to be head and shoulders above their team-mates.
The Adrian Newey inspired Red Bull’s are looking very racey BOTH coming in as best of the rest in 5th & 6th. If they can combine their rumoured reliability with this speed then expect some mammoth qualifying efforts from Webber this season and some very tidy finishes from both.
The BMW’s, who were expected to be best of the rest, looked a little sluggish coming in 11th & 14th albeit the middle of the pack being separated by very little (7th to 14th separated by only 0.4 seconds).
Fisichella deserves special praise for getting his Force India into 10th place ahead of both Beemers and just behind Alonso’s Renault.
Alonso’s team-mate suffered teething problems and ends up 20th ahead only of the Super Aguri’s of which Sato was on the pace but Davidson was not.
The Honda’s at least look like they have potential. They were not cut adrift as some feared and they came in 13th & 15th and in the mix. Some development could mean a decent season.
Williams were touted as a potential spanner in BMW’s works in pre-season and Rosberg managed to come 8th overall with Nakajima having similar teething problems to Nelsinho eventually coming in 17th.
The Toro Rosso’s were not quite the pain in the backside to the bigger teams that they could’ve been, ending up 16th & 19th overall.
So all in all, the main protagonists have taken their place at the top. The 2nd division looks like it might shape up as expected albeit with a stronger Red Bull, a stronger Toyota and a marginally weaker BMW than expected.
But I think I’ll wrap this up by letting you have a look at the combined session times yourself and letting you jump to your own conclusions
P NAME TEAM TIME GAP 1 Raikkonen Ferrari 1:26.461 - 2 Hamilton McLaren 1:26.559 +0.098 3 Massa Ferrari 1:26.958 +0.497 4 Kovalainen McLaren 1:27.114 +0.653 5 Webber Red Bull 1:27.473 +1.012 6 Coulthard Red Bull 1:28.037 +1.576 7 Trulli Toyota 1:28.292 +1.831 8 Rosberg Williams 1:28.352 +1.891 9 Alonso Renault 1:28.360 +1.899 10 Fisichella Force India 1:28.469 +2.008 11 Kubica BMW 1:28.579 +2.118 12 Glock Toyota 1:28.582 +2.121 13 Button Honda 1:28.632 +2.171 14 Heidfeld BMW 1:28.731 +2.270 15 Barrichello Honda 1:28.849 +2.388 16 Vettel Toro Rosso 1:28.957 +2.496 17 Nakajima Williams 1:29.077 +2.616 18 Sutil Force India 1:29.161 +2.700 19 Bourdais Toro Rosso 1:29.363 +2.902 20 Piquet Renault 1:29.518 +3.057 21 Sato Super Aguri 1:30.663 +3.202 22 Davidson Super Aguri 1:31.527 +4.065
7 comments March 14th, 2008
I take a look at some of ITV’s James Allen’s comments in his pre-season preview.
Continue Reading 17 comments March 11th, 2008
Courtesy of your lovely hosts at Linksheaven we have a nice & easy fantasy competition for you to take part in for the upcoming season.
Continue Reading Add comment March 3rd, 2008
This season sees 4 new pilots on the Formula One grid, Nelsinho Piquet, Kazuki Nakajima, Timo Glock & Sébastien Bourdais. Just like last season, we take a look at each of them and ask if they have the ingredients to be a success in the series. Hopefully, like last season, we’ll be as correct this time around 
Continue Reading 14 comments December 21st, 2007
Whispers around the Interlagos paddock might be suggesting that Lewis Hamilton is planning his biggest rule breach of the season so far for Sunday.
In an attempt to give himself an advantage over his title rivals it is thought that he might now be planning to strap a dirty big turbo to the back of his car to aid it’s performance.
Fresh from escaping his 2nd penalty yesterday for breaching tyre regulations across Friday practice sessions (despite the same punishment costing Ralf Schumacher in 2005), it is thought that the youngster is now fully confident he can push the boundaries that little bit further.
Insiders were allegedly heard saying “We have 3 means of justification for doing this. If we are caught we can use plausible deniability. If we can prove Lewis knew nothing about this then perhaps McLaren will get a fine of, say, $15,000. Secondly if they don’t buy the deniability then we can use the 2 precedents set already this season where clear rule breaches including a blatant safety rule breach in adverse weather conditions have been completely ignored and we’ve got away scot-free. Thirdly if they still don’t go for that we are confident that whatever punishment we get would be put onto our next race, which would be race 1 in 2008, and we’d be deserved champions by then”.
The turbo would give Lewis anything from 3 to 500 extra horsepower rendering his rivals as also-rans. But in this time of relaxed rule interpretations Lewis should be confident that he can get away with it. In fact there is no reason why he shouldn’t. If the FIA have shown anything this season it is that they are 120% behind Lewis Hamilton’s title charge and nothing, it seems, will get in the way of that.
19 comments October 20th, 2007
Hallelujah, I believe. Lewis Hamilton is the name on everyone’s lips these days, and I do mean everyone’s. You see, after coming into formula one in a typical blaze of British hype, you can forgive me and plenty of others for refusing to get wrapped up in Lewis-mania from the off. The reason for this is that Britain has a habit of hyping up mediocrity before it has a chance to expose itself - in the usually vain hope that it will win. Jenson Button, Tim Henman, Greg Rusedski, David Coulthard. All have suffered the fate of being the next [insert yesteryear hero here] only to fall massively short.
Continue Reading 5 comments June 18th, 2007
For only the third time in Formula One history (1950 & 1960 being the other 2), there will officially be no German Grand Prix on the 2007 calendar.
Of course, there will be a Grand Prix held in Germany, but officially it will be called the European GP.
This is because the Automobil club of Germany own the rights to the name “German Grand Prix” and they want to keep using it at the Hockenheim track, and are reluctant to release the title to their rival club Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobilclub who would like to use the name at the Nurburgring.
So the title will return in 2008 when the race held in Germany will be back at the Hock. Germany, as you know, has decided to alternate the location of it’s race each year, as 2 races was affecting the profits of both tracks. But whereas alternating the track was an easy thing to agree on, it seems the title of each race is much more difficult and even official documentation at this late stage is referring to the race as the Grand Prix of Europe.
2 comments April 17th, 2007
Can I just say that you people are all mad. Daft as the proverbial brush. Absolutely foaming at the mouth. Right, now that the personal insults are out of the way I better justify myself before Roy docks my considerable wage packet ! The reason I say this is because since Sunday I have read so many threads on so many forums (fora) proclaiming two things that I find grossly premature (no not that you filthy minded .. oops another insult)…. Read on.
Continue Reading 4 comments March 23rd, 2007
I didn’t know whether to make this a season preview or just an Ozzy GP race preview but I suppose we may aswell make it a little of both…
Continue Reading 3 comments March 16th, 2007
F1 commission president Bernie Ecclestone has come out and said that the points system currently implemented by formula 1 (amongst others) is ‘not working’. We could have told you that Bernie. In fact we DID tell you it wouldn’t work, even before it was brought in. But no-one bloody listened, as usual. It was yet another example in a long line of ill-thought out, knee-jerk rule changes. At the time, it was a short-termism attempt to make Michael Schumacher’s dominance look artificially smaller than it was. Schumacher was never going to be around forever, and the points system should not have been changed.
Bernie has finally acknowledged that “there’s not enough motivation for the driver in second place to go for the win. They weigh up the situation and decide it’s not worth the risk of falling off the road just for two lousy points.”
Exactly!! Eureka !! This points system change almost immediately resulted in the least deserved championship title ever in 2003, when Kimi Raikkonen almost nicked the title from Michael Schumacher despite winning ONE race to Michael’s SIX. Now regular readers know I’m not a Schumacher fan or a Schumacher hater. He is what he is (or was what he was?). But even the most ardent anti-MS fan can appreciate that there is something wrong with the points system when Raikkonen can come second 7 times in a season, only win one race and nearly win the championship ahead of someone with 6 wins & 2 further podiums in a 16 race season. Some will argue “consistency is key” and to a point I agree, but in the face of such a superior win record something has to be done to fix the problem. Racing is, after all, primarily about winning, not about coming 2nd and being safe. For many of Kimi’s 2nd places that season he sat back and could have pushed much harder if there was anything to gain. They should have known then that it wouldn’t work, but they ‘persevered’ (for want of a better word).
If the points system for that season had been 10-6-4-3-2-1 then the Championship would have been MS on 77pts to Kimi’s 67pts instead of the 93pts to 91pts that it ultimately was.
We are, of course, dangerously presuming that Bernie will get it right though; that he will decide on an improvement to the present malaise. They have shown that they don’t tend to go back to the way it used to be - like qualifying for example. Experience has shown that it was perfectly good the way it was, but pride wont let them admit that, and we have the preposterously complex qualifying system that we have today - sure we understand it, but it is complex in a way that qualifying shouldn’t need to be. So will we go back to 10-6-4-3-2-1 or even further back to 9-6-4-3-2-1 ? I doubt it, but I hope I’m wrong.
I think he at least realises the problem, so I think in this case we can assume that he will rectify it in some way. Although on recent evidence of the direction F1 is going, I wouldn’t put it past him to have some sort of ‘more fan friendly’ MotoGP type points system with 20 points or more for the win with an appropriate sliding scale. I don’t want NASCAR type points totals at the end of a season in F1. Getting over 100pts in an F1 season should be an accomplishment. In recent seasons with the >16 race seasons and the 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 pts system we’ve had people sailing way over 100pts, but at least now we can look forward to the prospect of the final few laps of a race being exciting again, just like they used to be before the FIA mucked it up in the first place, rather than the drivers settling for what they’ve got lower down the field.
So it may have taken around 4 years but they finally realised their mistake. It’d be nice if they stopped making them in the first place though.
14 comments March 12th, 2007
In the latest example of Max & Bernie really thinking things through in their quest to lower F1 costs, they actually thought that making Bridgestone make tyre compounds with different coloured sidewalls would go some way to achieving that ? No I lie, in their REAL quest, which as we all know is to attract as many fans (and therefore as much money) to their sport aspossible, they have once again brushed the issue of expense under the carpet, or at least they tried to.
Most of the time they go on and on about lowering F1 costs. That is until an idea that they reckon would appeal to the dumber race fan is presented to them. Then no expense is spared - by that I mean no-one ELSES expense is spared. It doesn’t cost Max & Bernie any money to SUGGEST things to other companies, then have said company foot the bill.
Despite a soft tyre in one track potentially being a medium or hard tyre at another track and thereby being useless as it has, say, a red sidewall and needs a black one - and must therefore be thrown out. This would have caused huge waste both in costs, resources and I presume environmental issues which the FIA are also allegedly pursuing in their own inimitable way. But as I said, no consequences are considered when the prospect of more fans is on the table.
If you ever needed any more proof that these fools really haven’t a clue about what they’re trying to achieve, then there it is. Or even worse, they know exactly what they’re trying to do but are doing it under the guise of cost-cutting. I don’t know which is worse.
If F1 DOES ever become a moderate expense for teams and affordable to the extent that the FIA want then it will have been achieved DESPITE these 2 and not because of them.
Thankfully Bridgestone told the FIA to think again if they thought for a second that BS would be incurring these mammoth costs - especially at such short notice.
The idea however has not gone away, and the ‘brains’ behind the operation are now in discussions over HOW the different compounds will be visually different to the fan.
The thinking is that there’ll be a white-wall mark on the soft compound presumably removable if the tyre is not used.
F1 takes a further step into the ridiculous and follows Champ Car into the dumbing down of racing.
The casual fan does not give a damn what compound a driver is using. The CASUAL fan can’t tell whether it’s Liuzzi or Speed gone by in the Toro Rosso. So this wont enhance their enjoyment of a race. And the hardcore fans will likely not want their beloved sport take a further step away from being the cut-throat world that it is.
Now every team knows what every other team is doing.
The competitive restraints being put on teams in F1 these days are suffocating; from the limited imagination allowed in desiging a car, to the limited materials allowed for construction and now to the secrecy of strategy now being removed by putting a big white sticker on the soft tyres.
The mind boggles (and sheds a tear). It really does.
If F1 thinks it needs this 11th hour modification to the 2007 season then it might actually be in more trouble than I previously thought. And I didn’t think that was possible.
5 comments March 7th, 2007
This season’s rookies - of which I include Heikki Kovalainen, Lewis Hamilton, Adrian Sutil and tentatively include the still-wet-behind-the-ears Robert Kubica - look to be a stronger class of rookie than we’ve come to expect in F1. Usually we have been used to pay drivers buying their way into a seat at the expense of a quicker more qualified driver, and recent seasons have seen the lesser teams become more reliant upon the money that comes from whoring out their 2nd seat than from the performances that might come from it. It might help then that, apart from Sutil at Spyker, the rookies have come in at the sharper end of the grid. One replacing reigning 2 time champion Alonso at Renault, one PARTNERING 2 time champion Alonso at McLaren and Kubica impressing alongside Heidfeld at the also-impressive BMW-Sauber outfit.
So, on the face of it there isn’t a weakling in the bunch. Indeed if you look at the much-maligned pre-season testing times you will see that all of the drivers have beaten their more illustrious team-mates on occasion and have never been miles off the pace that would be expected of their cars. So it looks as though, purely on outright pace, these guys have what it takes to be in F1. None of them are yet so clearly outpaced by their high-profile teammates that they look a shoe-in to be IN one year and OUT the next. Now I fully appreciate that pre-season testing wont give much away if you’re trying to compare the relative merits of one team against another, but over the course of pre-season testing you can get a pretty decent image of inter-team battles between team-mates.
No, I think we can be very happy with our new inductees. I do, however, think that as quick as they all are and as well as they have all been doing in pre-season testing, they will need more than a stroke of luck to out-point their team-mates in this season’s WDC. There will no doubt be occasions when they have the upperhand and there may well be a series of races where they seem to be matching or even beating their team-mate, but I think when all is said and done and we take a look at the table at season’s end I think we can safely say that this year will have been a learning experience for them and that their teammates will have garnered more championship points than they have - but that they will have easily done enough on their own in their debut season to warrant a 2nd shot at it.
I believe Kovalainen, Hamilton & to a lesser extent Robert Kubica will be stars of the future with many season’s ahead of them in the sport (provided the sport is still around). I think early evidence suggests Sutil will do as well as the aforementioned trio, relatively speaking of course - as Spyker’s objectives will be more meagre than Renault’s, McLaren’s & BMW’s respectively - but in the cut-throat world of the lower end of the grid a driver like Adrian Sutil, unless he shows unbelievable speed the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Fernando Alonso climbed into a Minardi, is always liable to be dropped in favour of a pay-driver for next season through no fault of his own if Spyker are having trouble balancing the books. So in that sense I think the life-span of a driver at the lower end of the grid is far shorter or certainly more volatile. If you’re good enough you’ll climb up the grid, if you are the right nationality you might be lucky enough to hang around, but if you’re not quite good enough (or there is equal out there willing to pay for your seat) then because you’re already close to the bottom of the grid the only way is usually out.
So, as we’ve already established, the drivers have the latent ability to make a car go fast when there’s no cars competing alongside it. The next test is the drivers’ racecraft. Put them alongside 21 other drivers all trying to get to the same corner in the least possible time and see how they react to it. It is this ability that can not be tested in pre-season testing. It is this ability that will decide whether they ultimately belong in F1 and whether they sink or swim. Their careers up to this point have shown that they do have the racecraft to get here - that’s why they are IN F1 in the first place, but we have often seen that F1 is a completely different ball game altogether. Some drivers, like Jan Magnusson, coasted into F1 with huge expectations on their shoulders and never quite made it for some unknown reasons. Others, like Nigel Mansell, never excelled in the lower formulae to the same extent as they did in F1 and F1 ended up being the making of them.
We don’t know whether any of these guys will be a Magnusson or a Mansell yet. All we know is they’re quick, and I’m looking forward to seeing them line-up in less than a month’s time. I just wish them all the best and hope they all get a fair chance to show what they can do. They are, in my view, one of the few reasons to be excited about a sport that in my opinion is going down the toilet because of it’s own rule changes and restrictions.
6 comments February 28th, 2007
Heikki Kovalainen brought to a premature end his Tuesday testing in Sakhir as he got caught out on turn 7 and crashed into the barriers on the exit of the turn.
The car was so badly destroyed that he may have to sit out the early part of tomorrow’s test session aswell as he waits for it to be repaired. He is uninjured after the crash and reported that all safety equipment worked properly.
Early reports mentioned that he might have been caught out by a gust of wind.
We don’t know as yet whether the FIA will be attempting to re-model turn 7 to avoid any similar difficulty when the circus arrives in Bahrain to race on 15th April. We also can not confirm or deny whether Max or Bernie will be contacting Mother Nature to ensure no rogue gusts of wind interfere with the cars on said race weekend.
More news when we get it.
1 comment February 27th, 2007
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