F1-Blog

Following the Ferrari shakedown picture’s, here are the McLaren launch pictures from today (Quick warning, some of the images are quite large 2+Mb when opened).

More pics after the jump. Read more

I t seems that the young Brit Lewis Hamilton has signed a $10 Million deal with gaming Giant Electronic Arts (EA Sports).

This has lead to speculation that if the EA brand has invested so heavily in an F1 heavyweight for marketing of a game, then they are also in talks to purchase the F1 right’s, currently held by Sony.

If this is true, it’s excellent news in one way, and not so good in another. It would mean that the F1 games would be multi platform (XBox 360, PS3 at least) and people who are not on the Sony platform would again be able to play F1 games.

However it’s possibly not all good news, the current F1 game available on the PS3 is decidedly arcade’y and very easy. If EA bring the F1 franchise in house, then perhaps they are also looking to purchase the Sony Liverpool Studio’s (the current developers of F1), and if so the game would stay in it’s arcade form. It is possible though that the game would be taken over by one of EA’s plethora of in house development studio’s and get the treatment it deserves, and with a little luck, we could get back to something resembling Geoff Crammond’s greats (F1GP 1/2/3/4 from MicroProse).

Here’s hoping, as I can see the value of dumb’ing the F1 game to a level where it can be picked up by many, but us F1 fans would like something more, something that mirror’s the trials and tribulations of the F1 world a little more closely.

Hey we may even get a management part to the game, that would be fun, we can go through Stepneygate for ourselves…..

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.

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.

Well done to all those that watched the race live. I will do a full race report later (after a nap), but for now I would like to say well done to all of the drivers, and a special thank’s to Charlie Whiting for letting the drivers race.

The championship too a big turn in the favour of Lewis Hamilton, Lewis won the race with a sublime drive, and Fernando Alonso had an accident and did not finish.

That leaves Lewis 12 points ahead of his team mate. Fernando can still win the championship, however the result makes it more difficult for Fernando to take a third title.

Mathematicaly Fernando can still win, however he needs to win the next race, and hope that Lewis does not score points.

More later after I have had a chance to have another watch of the whole race.

The Italian GP was quite a standard affair this year, one of the few races this season that did not live up to it’s possibilities.

Fernando Alonso lead from the first corner all the way to the end of the race, making it look easy. Lewis Hamilton followed him home, for a 1-2 for McLaren.

The best race on the track was with Honda and Williams battling it out between Button and Rosberg in the first part of the GP.

Lewis showed his steel by overtaking Kimi Raikkonen after he was relegated to third when he exited from his second pit stop. The move took part at the first chicane, and was one of his best moves of the season. He braked massively late, and took Kimi on the inside into the chicane.

This was because the Finn only pitted the once during the race, and during the second stint of his race, Lewis Hamilton just could not match the pace of his team leader.

Other notable happenings on track where David Coulthard’s failed front wing, allowing him to fly off the road and into the barriers at 170mph while in the middle of the first Lesmo, this brought out the safety car for a few laps.

Jenson managed to hold onto 8th spot for his second point of the season, for all intense and purpose a win for the Honda team.

So we look forward to Spa-Francorchamps for the Belgian GP. The Spa circuit usually creates a great race.

Results

1 F. Alonso Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
2 L. Hamilton Vodafone McLaren Mercedes
3 K. Raikkonen Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro
4 N. Heidfeld BMW Sauber F1 Team
5 R. Kubica BMW Sauber F1 Team
6 N. Rosberg AT&T Williams
7 H. Kovalainen ING Renault F1 Team
8 J. Button Honda Racing F1 Team

Massa made it two in a row at Turkey this weekend, by beating both of the McLaren’s and his team mate.

He actually made it look fairly easy in the end, Kimi got close a couple of times, but really didn’t seem to have the edge over his Brazilian team mate.

The race was quite a boring one as a result, with the only real action taking part on lap 43 with Hamilton’s front right tyre exploding, and him having to nurse the car back to the pits for a change. He did a good job and did not damage too much of his car, and still finished 5th.

The Turkish people did not turn out in the numbers that they have in previous years either, perhaps they thought F1 was dead now there is no Schumi to go and watch?

Kimi drove a decent race, managing to get into second spot before the first corner, as it seemed the Ferrari’s were capable of running the softer tyres on the longer stints, giving both of the scarlet cars a slight advantage off the start line.

Alonso grabbed third spot for the McLaren team, with fourth going to Heidfeld in the BMW, proving that not only is the car keeping up with the front runners in development (i.e. they are not loosing ground, but likewise unable to gain any), but also that BMW have decided the right way in keeping both him and Kubica in race seats for 2008.

Kovalainen had another good showing in the Renault, making his more illustrious team mate look bad, with Nico Rosberg brought the Williams in for 7th spot, with the last points spot going to Robert Kubica in the second BMW.

The Toyota’s after having a decent pre-race pace (ignoring Ralf’s mess of Qualifying that is), had a bit of a bad day. Jarno was tagged in the first corner by Fisi, putting him last, Ralf also had a hit and miss race, showing pace at times, then none at others, very odd from a driver that needs a seat for next year (and will doubtfully be at Toyota, with the name of Timo Glock being banded around for his seat).

So all in all not a particularly great race. It was nice to see the performance advancements from the ‘holiday’ break, but it’s also proved that neither of the top two teams have any advantage over the other.

It should be close for the drivers title though at the end of the year, and that always adds excitement to the last races.