F1-Blog

Canada Result

Lewis Hamilton ended his race at the first pit stops by running his car into the rear of Kimi’s Ferrari when he did not notice the red light at the pit exit.

However with the two title contenders out the race turned into a good one.

The Race track was quickly repaired before the race, and this caused a fair few issues for some drivers.

The News of the day though is that BMW-Sauber get not only their first win, but a one-two, with Heidfeld finishing second behind the first Polish race winner Robert Kubica.

David Coulthard drove a great race in his Red Bull to get third behind the two BMW’s.

The Toyota of Timo Glock finished in the fourth spot, with Massa and Trulli following in fifth and six.

Barrichello managed to bring the Honda in in the seventh spot and Sebastien Vettel get’s the last point for Toro Rosso.

Full race roundup later.

Spain Qualifying results

OK, so where did Renault come from? Alonso is the talk of the Qualy session without a shadow of a doubt. Yes Kimi took a pole position, and Massa took third, but it’s certain that all talk will be about Fernando, who was pleased as punch coming over the line after setting the pole position time.

The new Renault is obviously a decent step up from what they started the season with, but the question is how much fuel does Alonso have on board.

The BMW of Robert Kubica sit’s behind Massa’s Ferrari in fourth spot, with the two McLarens on the third row of the grid, with Hamilton ahead of Kovalainen.

Behind the McLarens is Webber and Trulli, showing that the Red Bull and Toyota’s are still in the hunt, even if it’s not for the race win.

Heidfeld and Piquet get the last two spot’s in the top 10, showing that their team mates did a decent job, even if they are light on fuel.

Bahrain a full runthrough

The Bahrain GP had a few revelations and showed some issues, so it made for an interesting race from the technical side, as well as a decent race from a racing point of view.

Let’s get onto the disappointing day for McLaren. Not only was their car completely off the pace all weekend, but their Star driver made a complete hash of it, and the team had to rely on the new boy to score points.

Lewis Hamilton had a terrible day, from the start he bogged down his McLaren, forcing Heikki to take a detour around him, this put him tenth, behind Fernando Alonso in his Renault. Then to add insult to the injury he ran into the back of the Renault, destroying both his and Fernando’s race as he destroyed his nose, and took a huge chip out of Fernando’s rear wing (see pic left).

The Sand Bagging debate

There has been a lot of talk recently that BMW Sauber have been sand bagging during testing, and as of yet we have not seen the actual test times for the car. People have said that when they have been testing with the other teams that they ran high fuel runs, whereas the other teams were running on mixed/low fuel runs alongside.

Sand Bagging (or not showing your hand) is common place in F1 testing, and the top teams (McLaren / Ferrari) have got it down to an artform. If you look at the testing times, and equate them to the Australia times for the last 5 years or so you will see that none of the top teams actually showed their true pace in winter.

Some of this pace discrepancy is down to the work done between the last test, and the first race where new aero parts are honed and changed due to the data that has been collected during test. But sometimes it’s down to the mindgames that the teams attempt on each other.

BMW Sauber F1.08

BMW Sauber showed their 2008 challenger off today at their Munich offices today.

The car is quite obviously a very highly developed version of their 2007 car, showing significant aero modifications from the F1.07.

As you can see in the images below, the car has a sculpted aero profile over the front a rear (as is becoming common this season so far). You can also see that the front wing of the car has also been advanced in it’s design, over and above the three tier wing that they ran in some races last season.

The car certainly looks to have kept pace with the McLaren and Ferrari’s, however, have they been able to close the gap to the front two teams?

Mario Thiesen : We have come quite a long way in the two and a half years since the new team was created. We’ve had two strong seasons. We’ve put a lot of effort into the new car and the F1.08 includes everything we’ve learned in the first two years. Certainly we are very confident to turn the battle in front of us into a battle of more than two teams this year.