F1-Blog

A day for the ‘number 2′ drivers

The number two drivers in each of the front running teams had a good day at Bahrain.

The race winner Filipe Massa managed to stop the eventual second place driver Lewis Hamilton from passing into the first corner.

Massa lead then all the way through the race, with the Ferrari proving that the car had just a little more pace than the McLaren cars.

Surprisingly however the Ferrari’s where both slower in the last stint of the race on the harder compound tyres, with Lewis Hamilton taking nearly 10 seconds out of the lead that Filipe had built up.

Raikkonen had a disappointing race, he seemed not to have the front running pace all weekend, and is obviously struggling to set the Ferrari up to his liking.

Nick Heidfeld had a good race coming in in fourth behind Kimi, with the world champion and joint championship leader Fernando Alonso bringing the second McLaren in for fifth.

Customer cars under fire

Spyker GP have launched arbitration proceedings against the two ‘customer’ chassis teams.

The Dutch (English) team have said that they believe that the Super Aguri SA07 is a clone of the Honda RA106 (from last year). They have also said that the Scuderia Toro Rosso STR2 is a repackaged version of the Red Bull RB3 designed by Adrian Newey.

They say that because of this both teams are in violation of the 2007 sporting regulations.

This is not the first time that Spyker have complained about the two teams. They complained to the stewards at the Australian GP after qualifying, the stewards however threw the complaint out on procedural grounds.

The case will now go to the Swiss court that judges Concorde Agreement cases. Both of the teams involved say that they comply to the Concorde Agreement, as they own the intellectual property for the chassis they are using.

If Spyker actually get this through, the probable outcome would be that the teams would not be eligible for constructor points, this would not affect the drivers points however.

Bahrain last day

Today was the last day of testing at Bahrain, and the last official day of testing for the teams before the opening race in Australia.

Massa was once again the fastest man on the track, he lapped in an incredible 1m29.989s to set the fastest time all week with the new aero package on the car.

Renault had a bit of a hit and miss day. Heikki showed that the team have certainly started to find pace in the car by lapping the second fastest time with a 1m30.384s and Fisi doing a 1m30.498s. That however was not the whole story as both cars had failures that caused less track time than the team were hoping for.

Kimi was running the revised aero package from Massa’s car in the afternoon and managed to get himself into fourth spot.

The McLaren cars both seemed a little off the pace of previous days, Alonso managed fifth and de la Rossa managed seventh.

Red Bull not so Rosy?

Anton Stipinovich has been announced as leaving the Red Bull fold. Anton has been working as the head of development at the team since the beginning of 2005.

The reasons for his departure have not been announced, however it may be that the public facing ‘fun place to work’ image the team shows may not be true.

It may be that he has been pressured out of the team after the arrival of there ’superstar’ designer Adrian Newey, however the two have worked in the same team before and not had issues.

It is probable that Anton may move to Williams, and perhaps take over the running of the test team from Dickie Stanford, as it’s rumored that he wants to step back from the active testing team manager position he now holds.

More 2007 drivers announced

It seems the rumour was true, Mark Webber and David Coulthard have been announced as the 2007 Red Bull F1 Drivers. This will re-unite him with his old 'Jaguar' team, all be it with a few new faces, and an Adrian Newey chassis, with now an almost definate Renault engine (I would assume it's part of the Webber deal).

The other announcement today was the departure of Jacques Villeneuve from the BMW Sauber team, it seems that unless he gets39;s a drive for next year, his German off will be his last in F1.

F1Fanatic have a roundup of the driver line-up so far. The only one however that we are really waiting for is the Michael Schumacher announcement, will he stay? Well his performance at this weekends Hungarian GP was not exactly one of his best, he should have let the two faster drivers past and settled for fourth. So will he call it a day if he believes he can win this year's driver title? I believe he may just do that, if he can go out on the top he will. There is also the belief that Ross Brawn wants to take time out for a break.