F1-Blog

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.

Roundup

Ok, so I have to apologise for not posting for a while, but this is the silly season, and I have been caught up in family and work.

That said, it’s also been a good off season so far for F1 news, so with that in mind, lets break it all down, let’s start with the Driver announcements.

Ralf

The younger Schumacher has left the Toyota team, and even though he played with the idea of driving for Team India by taking part in a test, it seems that he was not offered the job.

Ralf is one of those drivers that initially shone, and I have no doubt that if he was in a competitive car could be quick. However he has not got his brothers talent of setup, and overcoming the car’s deficiencies, and because of that cost Toyota not only a lot of money, but also a lot of time.

I’m sure with Timo Glock and Jarno in the driving seats the team has a good base to build a car for the future.

Fernando to Ferrari?

If Nicky is correct in the comments then it seems that Fernando may have signed for Ferrari in 2008!

If this is correct it’s going to throw a whole spanner in the works of the driver market in F1.

Lets see who has got this scoop!
Its now 21.30 hours GMT on Monday the 13th of Nov 07.
It has happened Fernando Alonso has signed for Ferrari to drive in 2008.
This will be announced officially in the next 48 hours.
So you heard it here first

So then, has Fernando signed for Ferrari? who’s car will he drive (Massa is the best bet), and if so, where will Massa go? he has just signed an extension after all.

Have Ferrari perhaps got approval to run 3 cars now that it’s guaranteed that ProDrive will not take their place on the grid?

Only time will tell, but thanks to Nicky for the scoop…. Like he says, you heard it here first.

Fernando Alonso

Ok, so we know now that Fernando (as expected) will not be at McLaren next year. So where will he go?

Well it’s no secret that Flavio would like him to return to Renault, openly stating as much, however Fernando has said that Renault is not his first choice.

Ferrari have got their driver lineup sorted for the foreseeable future, so that’s out, and leaves some of the teams that are not considered front runners.

Toyota obviously have a slot, but it’s known that they are wooing Timo Glock to replace Ralf, however that too does not look good, with BMW blocking Timo’s move to the Japanese team.

Other teams that would be willing to have the Spaniard (and be able to pay his large wage) are Red Bull, Williams and Toyota.

Kimi takes both top spots

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.