F1-Blog

The GoodWood Festival of speed has just announced that British Superstar Lewis Hamilton will drive a McLaren F1 car at the event on the Sunday.

This will be the first public F1 drive from Lewis in the UK.

Lewis will drive the 1.16 mile Hill run, in an attempt to break the record currently held by Nick Heidfeld in a McLaren MP4-13 (41.6 seconds) set in 1999.

In theory the MP4-22 should be able to beat that record, and Lewis should be the one to do it.

Lewis will not be the only British F1 driver at the event, in fact all 4 of the British drivers will be there over the weekend.

For tickets and more information pop along to the GoodWood site.

McLaren Mercedes dominated at this weekends Monaco GP. Alonso and Lewis came home 1-2 in a dominant showing from the Grove based team.

The two McLaren’s lead from the start, and never looked like being surpassed all race. The Ferrari of Massa could not hang with the two silver cars, and made the race easy for the two at the front. Lewis had a few extra laps of fuel in the car, but struggled to maintain the race perfect pace of Alonso in the opening part of the race, and therefore could not capitalise on his longer first run.

Behind the two McLaren’s, Massa’s Ferrari showed that the struggling pace of the team was not just merely a practice and qualifying issue. Massa struggled to keep up with Lewis in the first section of the race, and after the first stop the Ferrari team resorted to trying the super soft tyres, in an attempt to give the Ferrari a little more pace. This did not work, and Massa could just not live with the pace of the front runners.

Fisichella brought his Renault home in fourth spot, after the car showed a boost in performance. Whether this is a trait of the car running in the high downforce configuration, or if it’s a genuine boost in performance for the team we will only tell when the car goes to the North American tracks.

The BMW team showed it still is a competitive team, even if they showed small signs of reliability and performance slowdowns. Robert Kubica brought his BMW in to fifth place (with a gearbox or drivetrain issue), his German team mate Nick Heidfeld brought the second BMW in sixth.

The Williams team looked a little more sorted this weekend as well. The car seemed to handle a little better, and looked to have the pace, at least in a high downforce configuration. Alex Wurz drove to seventh for the team.

The last spot in the points was the Ferrari of Kimi Raikkonen. He drove through from the back of the grid for the place, however it was no Michael drive, probably because the car was not as good this year.

So then, Lewis has still not managed to take his first win, however he is still joint top of the drivers championship alongside his team mate.

The American tracks are next on the calendar. Two more new tracks for Lewis. Can he show his talent and take his MP4-22 to the top of the podium. Time will tell, however, this weekend at least he was bettered by Alonso, showing Lewis that he is a two times World Champion for a reason.

So who is looking strong at Monaco for this weekends race (predicted to be wet).

As you would imagine, both of the McLaren cars are running quickly. Both Alonso and Hamilton were running in the 1:17’s regularly, with Alonso managing a fastest time of 1:16:973.

The Ferrari’s of Massa and Raikkonen ran in the high 1:17’s as well, and for this race have switched colour’s so that they are more aligned with there Marlboro sponsor with a darker more traditional red.

The Spyker of Albers went bang quite early on on the session, causing the session to be stopped while the car was recovered.

The Honda RA107’s of Barrichello and Button seem to be a bit better in free practice, they don’t seem to be suffering as badly with the high downforce package on them as they have in previous races. The Honda is still not a quick car, but it looks like they may be able to make the Q2 session this weekend.

The other quick cars are the BMW’s. At the end of the session the order was Alonso, Hamilton, Heidfeld, Fisichella, Raikkonen, Webber, Rosberg, Massa, Kubica and Barrichello

It was a fine race in Spain, not as fine as the Spanish fans would have like though. Fernando Alonso finished the race in third, behind Lewis Hamilton and winner Felipe Massa.

The race was splattered with incidents, with the one into the first corner between Massa and Alonso ruining the race for the Spaniard as he was on a short first stint.

Hamilton could just not keep up with the winning Ferrari early on, and eventually finished 6.7 seconds behind Massa.

Further down the field was where the surprises showed. The Ferrari of Kimi Raikonen showed that the F2007 is not infallible. Kimi retired with suspected electronics issues on lap 9.

Robert Kubica managed to take his BMW into the fourth spot, with his best run this season, the BMW was also not without issues, as Nick Heidfeld’s gearbox failed and he lost a certain fifth spot, this after he had already been involved in a pit incident where the pit crew let him out before one of the bolts was put on his front wheel.

The Red Bull showed that the pace in testing was not all hot air, and David Coulthard had a great race to bring the Adrian Newy RB03 into it’s first points finish of the season after a great battle with Heikki Kovalainen (who stopped three times in the race) in the Renault. Both of the Renault’s had to re-pit after a failure with the fuel filler system during there second stops. Nico Rosberg managed to come in behind David Coulthard and ahead of Kovalainen in the Toyota powered Williams R27. There was bad news for the Red Bull team, as there seamless shift gearbox developed a fault in Coulthards car towards the end of the race, as Coulthard was shifting from second to fourth for the last section of the race. This will be fixed though on the new gearbox’s second outing I’m sure.

The Super Aguri of Takuma Sato managed to get the last point of the race. The first point for the Honda B team.

After a surprise performance in qualifying, the Toyota’s were the let down of the race. First off the start was delayed by the stalled TF106 of Jarno Trulli, later he retired as it was a fuel pressure issue that caused him to stall. It then seemed that the same problem affected Ralf Schumacher who also retired his car.

The result of the race is that Lewis Hamilton’s rise to stardom continues. He is now the youngest ever leader of the F1 Championship (eclipsing Bruce McLaren) he said “I keep saying I am living my dream and it’s really true. I’ve been working so hard, and to come out of my fourth grand prix leading the world championship, driving with top drivers in world, is just incredible.”

Filipe Massa has taken another great pole in Spain. The Ferrari team showed there true colour’s in qualifying after sandbagging all weekend.

The Spanish were happy though as Alonso popped his McLaren onto the second spot of the grid, just a few hundredths of a second behind Massa.

Kimi Raikkonen dropped the second Ferrari into third, with the second McLaren of young Lewis Hamilton popping into the fourth spot.

It seems that the fuel strategy between the teams has been split amongst the drivers. Massa and Alonso seem to have short fueled with Raikkonen and Hamilton going slightly longer.

Behind the front four are the BMW of Robert Kubica and the Toyota of Jarno Trulli. Jarno is the surprise of the group in the top 10, Toyota have been slow all weekend.

Fourth row has the second BMW of Nick Heidfeld and the Renault of Heikki Kovalainen.

Fifth row has the much improved Red Bull of David Coulthard and the second Renault of Giancarlo Fisichella.

The race should be interesting. Will Lewis try a fourth to first move again? will the short filled front two pay because of it, or will they pull away?

It seems that the week of testing at the Spanish circuit of Barcelona has turned up a few new aero tweaks, and most of them are on the front end of the cars. This may mean that the teams believe that they are struggling most with the front Bridgestone tyres, forcing them to try make up for the 2007 rubber. This has been helped by the fact that the teams have had four weeks off between races, allowing their aero teams to really analyse the data from the first set of races.

Honda have been showing a new front end, with small winglets attached to the upper nose cone.

The team is saying that it improves the issues they are having, but is not the solution to all of there problems with the RA107.

Jenson Button should hold out hope though, as if the strange winglets work then he could have more confidence in the front end of the car, one of the things he complains about in interviews.

Toyota have also introduced a new aero package.

The Japanese manufacturer has not introduced quite as radical a change as the McLaren and Honda, although there is significant visual changes to the car.

Jarno Trulli has been testing the package, but the team have not really had a clean run with it to fully evaluate the design changes. He did manage the third quickest time on the day of testing.

Red Bull are another team to introduce some visual upgrades to their car. David Coulthard put the obviously better balanced Red Bull on the top of the speed charts, recording the fastest ever unofficial lap at the Barcelona circuit.

It has to be said thought that this time should be taken with a pinch of salt, as it is well known in the pit’s that the time was set with a very low fuel load.

Red Bull have been testing their car on ultimate pace for the week, trying to work out where the setup for their car is. The Adrian Newey RB03 had also been given significant mechanical upgrades in the way of seamless shift gearbox and transmission.

So what is to be learnt from the testing week? It’s obvious that the teams are all moving the ’saved’ funds from the engine development into their aero departments in an attempt to find pace.

It also seems that all of the teams have taken advantage of the 4 week break to advance their cars significantly.

After all, even the Ferrari team have tested nose modifications this week, so all the teams have decided that is where the most speed can be found.

It seems that the McLaren team may run the radical new wing they have been testing at the Barcelona event.

Pedro de la Rossa was the first of the McLaren drivers to use the new wing at this weeks Barcelona test, and seems he was impressed with it’s performance.

Martin Whitmarsh has confirmed that because of the success of the part at the test, the new design will be available to both race drivers over the forthcoming race weekend.

Whitmarsh said - “There is a continuous program of aerodynamic development on the MP4-22, and during the Barcelona test this week, we had a more obvious one with a high mounted flap on the front wing assembly. It is something that has been developed over the last few months within the team. We were pleased with the results of that test and consequentially it will be one of the options available to our drivers during the Spanish GP weekend.”

It’s up to the drivers if they use the strange new nose, but I would expect both drivers to at least try it at some point over the weekend.