Posted by ashleigh on
March 1, 2007
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.
Posted by ashleigh on
October 24, 2006
Goodbye F1, Hello new F1
It was a sad day for the F1 paddock on Sunday. So many goodbyes, to long and well established names.
Michael Schumacher drove a fine last race, coming through from the back of the pack to finish fourth, and Jenson Button did well, finishing third after starting fourteenth.
However there are more goodbyes than that of the great Michael. Yes Michael is leaving, and we will all be sad to see what is possibly the greatest driver of recent history (some would argue ever) leave the sport, but we have even bigger and more historic names leaving as well. Possibly the biggest of which is the mighty Cosworth.
Cosworth have not managed to find a team that will run their engine next year. This is a bad state of affairs, as Cosworth used to be the greatest. It shows how ingrained Cosworth were that all of the major drivers that can be thought off have won with a Cosworth in the back of their car. I'm sure that Cosworth will manage to struggle through and we will see them again in the back of an F1 car, it is after all where they deserve to be.
We are also loosing the Tobacco companies, the familiar liveries of Marlboro, Mild Seven and Lucky Strike will be leaving the sport. These are some of the strongest supporters of the sport throughout it's history, and it will be a sad to think that there will be no possibility of ever seeing the glorious liveries of the JPS Lotus and the likes again
The final goodbye we have is to Michelin. The French tyre giant will bow out at the end of the season due to the FIA instigating a one tyre manufacturer policy. Whether this is a good decision or not is still to be seen. A lot of the advancements that have come to F1 in the recent past is due to the tyre war. And it will be a shame not to see a challenger from Europe for tyre superiority. Perhaps we will see them return at some point, or even better them and Dunlop return, as it has been too long since Dunlop was involved in the sport.
The race turned out to be a good end to a good racing season. The first issues for Ferrari and Michael happened during qualifying. Due to the fact that all of the engine suppliers had to use the engine that would be used for the next 3 years, there where some niggles with a few of the teams.
Ferrari had an issue with Massa's car early on in the session, which was fixed. However Michael's car developed an issue during session three of qualifying, and the team could not fix it before the end of the session, this relegated him to the tenth spot on the grid as he did not set a time in session three.
Button in the Honda also had issues, his were with the traction control systems, on his run in session one the TC system was not coming on at all, forcing him to control wheel spin manually and not allowing him to power out of the corners. In session two they thought the issue had been resolved, however the TC had dropped into failsafe mode, this too did not allow him to power out of the corners, and relegated him to starting fourteenth.
The weather on Sunday came to the Bridgestone cars, with the track temperature increasing it meant that they where even quicker, whilst it seemed that Michelin and their teams had been conservative on there choices.
The start of the race was not without incident, and it seemed that Michael was on a mission in his last race, and started his run through the field, he made easy work of the two BMW Sauber cars and had started his run. The front however stayed the same, with Massa followed by Raikkonen, Trulli and Alonso.
However it was not all happy in the Williams camp as Nico Rosberg tail ended his team mate Mark Webber into the first corner. Mark managed to limp around to the pit's where he retired with damaged rear suspension caused by the impact.
Nico however caused the story of the race. Whilst returning to the pit's his front suspension gave out while he was traveling at 130Mph and Nico spun off into the barriers coming onto the main straight.
The safety car was called out while the debris from the crash was cleared up. Racing resumed with Massa pulling away from Kimi. Michael however was getting into his stride, overtaking both his brother Ralf in the Toyota, and his old team mate Rubens Barrichello in the Honda.
Next car to overtake was Giancarlo Fisichella's Renault. Michael got close to him in the final corner, and managed to draft him into the Senna S's, taking the Renault on the outside into the left hander. All however did not go well, as Michael was turning into the right hander of the S's his car violently lost control, with Michael just managing to hold onto the lurid slide. It was however obvious to see that one of his rear tyres was deflating rapidly. It seems he had picked up a shard of debris from the Rosberg incident causing a deflation. Michael limped round the rest of lap eight to the pits, and change tyres. This however put him at the back of the field, and close to being lapped by his team mate.
Whilst this was happening, both of the Toyota cars slowed, pitted and retired from the race. It seems there was a design or manufacturing flaw with the rear suspension. A pity really as Trulli was doing well in third spot at the time.
Cars started to pit, and after the stops Alonso and Button seemed to be the winners. Alonso managed to overtake Kimi, and Button managed to get in behind Kimi in fourth.
Michael however was determined to show that just because he was retiring, he was not past it. By half distance he had clawed his way back up to eighth place. He came up behind the BMW Sauber of Robert Kubica, and made the pass into the Senna S's look easy. Michael then set off up the road to pass Barrichello for sixth place.
The second round of pitstops allowed Michael to catch and pass Barrichello. Michael was now chasing down Fisichella for fifth place. It seemed that Fisichella was paying more attention to the fast approaching Michael, and not on the fast approaching corner. Because of this he left his braking into the Senna's far too late, and ran wide.
With three laps of his final GP left, he managed to catch and pass his successor at Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen into the Senna's, giving him fourth place. Even though Michael tried to catch Button, he could just not seem to take enough time of the Englishman, which meant he ended his career in fourth spot, although certainly deserved the driver of the day award.
Another notable performance was had from both Takuma Sato, and his Honda powered Super Aguri. He managed the teams best finish yet, coming home in tenth place ahead of a Red Bull, a Toro Rosso and a Spyker-Midlands.
Alonso took his second World Championship in a row, and managed to seal the Constructors title for Renault with his finish. How he will get on in the new atmosphere at McLaren is to be seen, but with a competitive car he may go on to set some records of his own, as after all even this second title would have been the youngest title winner, if he had not already have won it the year before.
So we say goodbye to the old F1, and say hello to a new interesting F1, without the shadow of Michael over everyone. With some luck the new talent in the paddock can now shine brightly. The likes of Kimi and Alonso are already well proven. But we have the new wave of young and definitely talented drivers coming through, Kubica has already shown his abilities, and Alonso is the youngest ever World Champion. But we have the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Heikki Kovalainen and Nelson Piquet Jr coming into the sport. I think F1 is in very good hands for the future.
Results
Posted by ashleigh on
October 21, 2006
Last one
Yup it’s that time of the year again, another last GP.
This is however going to be a cracker, the title fight comes down to this last GP. Can Michael take his 8th and last career championship, or can Alonso take his second in a row for the Renault team.
Fillipe Massa has stated openly that he will do all in his power to help Michael win the title. Can the same be said for Fisichella? will he help out Alonso in the same way? Fisichella has already signed his deal with Renault, so should he need to help his current team leader.
The Brazilian GP will certainly turn out to be a showdown, lets hope it turns out to be a clean race.
Posted by ashleigh on
June 25, 2006
Alonso wins, Kimi makes mistake
Alonso finishes first in this years Canadian Grand Prix, however the big story is that Kimi Raikkonen made a mistake with 2 laps to go at the hairpin, this allowed Michael Schumacher to overtake and finish the GP in second place.
Kimi however was obviously running short of luck in the GP, as both of his pit stops had problems. A stuck wheel in the first stop waisted around 5 seconds, and the engine shutting down in the second stop lost him time as well.
Top 10 Results
- F Alonso Renault
- M Schumacher Ferrari
- K Raikkonen McLaren
- G Fisichella Renault
- F Massa Ferrari
- J Trulli Toyota
- N Heildfeld BMW
- D Coulthard Red Bull
- J Button Honda
- S Speed Toro Rosso
Full review to come shortly
Posted by ashleigh on
May 28, 2006
Monaco GP
Alonso has added another achievement to his increasingly impressive repertoire with a win at Monaco.
It was a fairly interesting race by Monaco standards, there where bumps, bangs, and politics aplenty, and to add to it all some overtaking!
I'll lay out the podium order first, just to make those who missed the race wonder exactly what happened.
In first place was Fernando Alonso, second we have Juan Pablo Montoya, and incredibly in third we have David Coulthard.
The end results do not represent the whole race however, the race started fairly uneventful with just the Midland cars bumping each other. However on lap 2 Mark Webber made a mistake at Sainte Devote that allowed Kimi Raikonen to get passed into second place, he then set about catching the front running Alonso.
For the next 10 laps or so the first 4 cars ran within 4 seconds of each other, one of the tightest races we have seen this year in the championship. Michael Schumacher who had started from the pit lane after the steward decision and an engine change was caught up behind the struggling Jenson Button.
However on lap 21 things started to happen, Michael Schumacher passed Jenson Button and proceeded to pull away from the ailing driver. Then the front runners started to pit, first up was Juan Pablo Montoya who took on around 10 seconds of fuel, then a lap later his team mate and then second place running Kimi Raikonen stopped for around the same amount of fuel.
We believed at that point the Renault team could probably go further, as we had expected the McLaren team to do as well, however on lap 24 and 25 the two Renault’s and Mark Webber pitted. However Kimi had upped his pace on his out laps from the pit and Renault had to short fill Alonso with just 7 seconds of fuel to maintain track position.
This then seemed to put the next set of stops into the hands of the McLaren’s, as the Silver cars could run longer than the Renault’s and hopefully get track position.
This strategy was however ruined for the McLaren team as Webber still running in 3rd position seemed to struggle and loose power down the main straight on lap 47, his engine was then seen smoking and the exhaust’s caught fire forcing him to stop just passed the pit lane exit around the Sainte Devote corner. This caused the safety car to be deployed and all the front running teams to call their drivers into the pits for a fill up.
More bad news for the McLaren team, on lap 51 whilst still under the safety car pace, Kimi’s car overheats and sets fire at the Loews Hairpin , he pulls off the track just before the tunnel at Portier corner.
This then leaves the podium as Alonso, Montoya, Barichelo. Nico Rosberg understeers into the barrier at the Anthony Noghes corner, cementing a bad day for the Williams team. The unfortunate Klien has gearbox failure ending his day early, however this promotes David Coulthard to fifth behind Jarno Trulli.
Barichelo is then penalised and has to take a drive through penalty, promoting Trulli to 3rd and Coulthard to fourth. However more bad luck for the Toyota team as Trulli’s car is the third of the day to have a smoky engine failure. This promotes Coutlhard to his final third place podium spot.
What can be deemed from today’s race? Well the Renault’s are still strong, fast and reliable cars, as even Fisichela showed signs of speed in both qualifying and the race. We can also take it that the improvements to both the McLaren chassis and the Mercedes/Ilmore engine have helped both the McLaren cars, as they both looked fast all weekend. The Red-Bull car of David Coulthard finishing third, may not be because of the car necessarily, however a mature drive from Coulthard has lead to the teams first podium, that will boost the team in more than one way.
Other things to note, Toyota showed that the new TF106B car can be quick, it took some setting up as it showed little sign of speed all weekend up until the Qualifying session, but hope is there for the team. Michael Schumacher will be stinging from the decision in qualifying, and depending how the press respond to it could ring the end to his career at the end of the season.
The Cosworth engine in the Williams cars proved again that it can be quick, given a chassis that it can show itself in. I would not be surprised if the Red Bull team announced the purchase of the engine manufacturer, possibly alongside VW group sometime soon.
