F1-Blog

Let’s leave the 2007 season behind us, let’s rather look forward at what may be the highlights of the 2008 season.

First lets speak about the new team next year. After a battle for the last team place on the grid, Pro Drive won, and the rumor has been that they will run McLaren cars, and use the McLaren test drivers for their lineup.

This has however come to question, as Pedro de la Rossa has publicly stated that he will be with the McLaren team again next year.

So if the Pro Drive team don’t take the grid, will they sell their place? and if so who too?

There is also all the driver lineup that will without a shadow of a doubt change. Who will be at McLaren next year? will Alonso stay with the team? will the rumors of Heikki moving to McLaren with Alonso to Renault come to fruition? Will the 2005/2006 world champion not want to go back to Renault now that Flavio will not be as focused on the team? and hey they have not been the world title team that they were just a year ago this season.

Who will Toyota draft in to replace Ralf? Will they try coax the up and coming Nico Rosberg over to the factory team from Williams? or will Toyota try get hold of a Japanese driver?

Will the Honda team put the 2007 season behind them and come up with a car that Jenson and Rubens can race? After all this seasons car has been a step backwards from their 2006 car that Super Aguri raced so well.

It was announced that the Ferrari squad is staying put, so drivers are not an issue at the Italian team, however it’s highly rumored that Todt is to move on. Will they get Stefano Domenicali to take over, or will Ross Brawn come back? hey it might even be Michael Schumacher in the head seat, it would not be that large a surprise.

How much difference will the Indian multi billionaire Vijay Mallya make to the Spyker team? and will we see Narain Karthikeyan back in an F1 seat?

Both the BMW and Williams cars got better towards the end of the season (especially the Williams), how strong will they be next season, after all it’s not usually long before Williams make a spring back to the front. They have had a season to get used to the Toyota lump and the surrounding management that goes with the Japanese engine supplier. The BMW driver lineup has been concreted, but will their push forward continue, or will the Sauber influence start to wear a little thin and stagnate the team? Who will be the pilots in the Williams cars next year?

Lot’s of questions to be answered, and from this side of the new season, it looks like it will be another cracker. Lets just hope the politics stay out of it, and we can have a nice clean fight for the 2008 championships.

I would love to hear your thought’s and feelings. Let us know in the comments.

And more to the point, should it?

This season has had it’s fair share of FIA judgments that have impacted the sport in a negative way, will the fuel irregularity be the last sting in the tail for the 2007 season?

I’m actually glad that Kimi took the title (as it currently stands), he drove well for the second half of the season, and after all the title is well overdue for the ‘Ice Man’. Yes it would have been nice to see the young Brit Hamilton triumph over the more illustrious competition, but it seemed it was not to be.

However both of the BMW’s and the Williams of Nico showed irregularities, the fuel on board the car at the stop’s was deemed to be outside of regulation 6.5.5, where the fuel has to be within 10 degrees C of the ambient track temperature. It seems however that the stewards of the course could not positively say what the ambient temperature actually was.

McLaren will take this to the FIA court of appeal, however McLaren have not got a good record with the court this year, so will they win the appeal? or is this just ’sour grapes’ on the part of the McLaren team?

Of course the appeal court may feel duty bound to let McLaren have a win this year, after dolling out one of the harshest punishments in F1 history.

Personally I think that Kimi should get to keep the title, after all he did win 6 GP’s this year, so deserves it on merit alone. After all Lewis has got plenty of time left in his career to win the title, and the McLaren will be a good car again next year, as the rules are not changing in any large way, and they have a good base to build upon with the MP22.

What do you feel? should the FIA get involved and overturn the stewards decision? Let us know in the comments.

Kimi Raikkonen is tonight crowned as the new world champion of the F1 world. He takes the title that Fernando Alonso held last year.

The race was not all that interesting from the Ferrari point of view, the two Ferrari’s where by and away the fastest cars on the track.

No all of the interesting things that happened, happened behind the two scarlet machines. First Alonso managed to get past Lewis in the Senna S’s, Lewis obviously did not like that, and tried to get back passed in the next corner, however he ran wide and lost a lot of time.

Then on lap 7, Lewis’s McLaren decided to select neutral in his gearbox, and it took him and his engineers over 30 seconds to get the car to select a gear. Eventually the car did find a gear and Lewis was on his way again, however he was now in 18th position.

Lewis drove well and eventually managed to finish in seventh position, if he could have managed another spot, then it sounds like Ron Dennis would have ‘asked’ Alonso to drop back behind Lewis, allowing him to take the championship. However it was not to be.

Other notable drives are from Kimi, who kept his head and put in a metronomic drive for the win. Nico Rosberg managed to finish fourth in the Williams, in a great race with the BMW cars. Robert Kubica finished fifth, with Nick Heidfeld finishing sixth. Jarno Trulli grabbed a well deserved eighth for the Toyota team.

So we have a new world champion. A deserved world champion, in my mind. Kimi narrowly missed out on two championships whilst at McLaren, so a well deserved win, and a well deserved championship, after all for the second part of the season, Kimi has outscored the other two championship contenders.

This championship will be not remembered however as the season that Ferrari took both titles, rather the season that McLaren had them taken away from them.

It’s going to be an interesting off season, lot’s of driver changes to do. Who will replace Ralf at Toyota? Where will Fernando be next season?

At the end of the Chinese GP, we have the following results.

1. Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
2. Fernando Alonso - McLaren
3. Filipe Massa - Ferrari (Fastest Lap)
4. Sebastien Vettel - Scuderia Toro Rosso (F1-Blog driver of the day)
5. Jenson Button - Honda
6. Vitantonio Liuzzi - Scuderia Toro Rosso
7. Nick Heidfeld - BMW
8. David Coulthard - Red Bull
9. Heikki Kovalainen - Renault
10. Mark Webber - Red Bull
11. Giancarlo Fisichella - Renault
12. Alex Wurz - Williams
13. Jarno Trulli - Toyota
14. Takuma Sato - Super Aguri
15. Rubens Barrichello - Honda
16. Nico Rosberg - Williams
17. Sakon Yamamoto - Spyker
18. DNF - Robert Kubica - BMW
19. DNF - Lewis Hamilton - McLaren
20. DNF - Ralf Schumacher - Toyota
21. DNF - Adrian Sutil - Spyker
22. DNF - Anthiny Davidson - Super Aguri

Also a well done to Ferrari on their 200th race victory.

Full race report soon.

Lewis Hamilton will not walk away from the Chinese GP with the world championship. It seems that his rear right tyre delaminated, and in a strange twist of fate it seems that either the tyre gave up as he entered the pit lane, or Lewis just plane overcooked his entry. Either way Lewis finished up in the gravel trap just in front of the pit lane.

With his race ended Alonso will catch up to his younger team mate with one race to go.

We will have to wait to see where Alonso finishes, at the time of writing he was running in second behind Kimi, and ahead of Filipe.

If it ends in the current way then Fernando will be four points behind Lewis. This means Lewis will have to finish third to take the championship at Interlagos.

Looks like the FIA/FOM will get their last race showdown between the two McLaren drivers.

Lewis Hamilton has for the second time in a row, pulled a marvelous lap out of the bag in the dying minutes of qualifying.

Lewis looked every bit fourth fastest all the way through the 3 sessions, then managed to hook a near perfect lap up in the last moments of Q3 to take the pole spot.

Kimi Raikkonen took the second place, with the Ferrari looking sorted in sectors 2 and 3, but a little out of sorts in the tight sector 1.

Massa sit’s his Ferrari in third spot, with Fernando popping the second McLaren into fourth.

Behind the top four is where the interest starts however. David Coulthard put’s his Red Bull on the fifth spot, and after announcing he wont be driving for Toyota in 2008, Ralf Schumacher put’s his car sixth.

The second Red Bull of Mark Webber is in seventh, followed by the two BMW cars (Heidfeld/Kubica) who’s cars just did not look their usual hooked up self.

Last but by no means least, is the Honda of Jenson Button, who drove superbly just to make it into the Q3 session. He looks to be carrying a lot of fuel for the race.

So what’s the predictions for the race? Well it should be a cracker, there is rain forecast for the circuit, as the tail end of a hurricane is passing not far from the track.

I’m looking forward to the race, and I think that if Lewis takes the championship this season, there will be a national holiday called in the UK.