F1-Blog

German Results

Great race today, I’ve only just been able to watch it as have been out all afternoon.

Full race rundown later, but for now a hearty well done to Nelson Piquet especially, and Lewis Hamilton for the win, after having come out of his second pit stop in fourth.

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.

Before we go testing for the second week

Let’s round up all the news from over the weekend.

Honda - The Honda F1 team have finally announced their testing plans. The team were absent from last weeks testing, and look to be coming to this weeks Valencia session to make up for it.

The team will initially run a modified RA107 car, and use that as a base for settings and testing the performance of the RA108 later in the week, this surprisingly before it’s official launch on the 29th. The cars will run in the interim white colour scheme, so we will have to wait for the launch to see the new earth saving design.

Williams - After running the FW29′B’ car in testing last week, Williams today showed off it’s 2008 car, the FW30.

The car was shown in the second of the teams commemorative colour schemes as Nico Hulkenberg (test driver) took the car out on the track at Valencia, on a suitably moody foggy day at the track.

Jerez Testing Day 2

Day 2 of testing at Jerez saw Fernando Alonso take the fastest time. The Spaniard said that he enjoyed the day, and showed that the Renault did have some pace in the right hands.

Fernando also showed off a new helmet design, stating it was so the other drivers could follow it.

Pedro de la Rossa popped the McLaren into the second spot, however the McLaren team were obviously doing extended race distance testing, with the de la Rossa car doing 111 laps and Kovalainen doing 130 laps in the MP4-23.

With that level of lapping, showing no issues, it seems that the team have at least brought some of the speed and reliability over to the new car from last year.

The Ferrari’s also showed decent pace, with the two drivers (Kimi and Felipe) popping the 2008 car’s into third and fifth spots on the time sheets. Nico Rosberg also continues to show form in the Williams ‘B’ spec car, grabbing the fourth spot on the times.

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.