F1-Blog

Valencia Testing

Looks like Ferrari and McLaren are again the teams to beat if last weeks testing in Valencia is anything to go by. That said there are a few things worthy of speaking about besides the times that the teams set.

BMW - After showing the F1.08 off at it’s launch, with sveldt lines, and one of the most uncluttered looks of a 2008 car, the team seem to have ruined the clean look.

As you can see from the pictures, the car has sprouted a strange wing setup on the front of the car. The design is obviously a re-work of there ‘pillar’ desing from last year, that incidentaly was banned by the FIA because it impaired the forward visibility of the driver. This design obviously get’s around that issue. We shall see if they thought it was a good idea at the next test if both of their cars run the aero changes.

Honda - The new 2008 car has landed, however no sign of the new colour scheme as the car was run in a plain white livery.

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.

Winter Testing Roundup

It's been a while since I posted, Apologies, it won't happen again, I promise.

The winter testing seems to have been a little split. Some teams have shown promise, and some teams that should have shown promise have not.

The fast teams seem to be McLaren and Ferrari. Both have set good times consistently over the winter testing season.

Then there are two shock surprises. Williams seem to have got their head around the Toyota engine, and at the moment seem to be the number 3 team. So that means that Renault are not number one, two or three. No it seems they are struggling to find the pace in the R27. We know the engine is good, as it is essentially the same one they used last year successfully. The team say that they are working on reliability, however they are not really introducing any new technologies (besides perhaps a step on the 'seamless shift' gearbox). If they are 'hiding' pace however it would not be the first time.

Weekly roundup

I've decided to do a weekly roundup for the world of F1. ITV-F1 used to have a column called 'The Mole', well I'm not so much a mole as a Curious Bystander, so that is what I shall name it.

This week we have a good chunk of news and rumours to go through. There is the 'news' that Schumi has signed a $60 million 2 year deal with Ferrari and that Rossi will make his mind up shortly on his future. The news39;s that Toyota and Honda have both 'got their tyre problems sorted', as well as the huge serge to join F1 in 2008.