F1-Blog

Singapore Rundown

The Singapore night race turned out to be one of the best of the season so far.

The bumpy road track had something to do with that, as did the strategy from one of the fastest drivers of the weekend, Fernando Alonso.

Alonso had a fuel failure during practice, and started quite a way back in the pack (15th). He took the unwanted, soft tyres at the start, with a very short fuel load, with the hope of slithing through the pack before his early first stop.

It turned out however that it was difficult to overtake, and he got stuck behind Jarno Trulli in the heavy fuelled Toyota.

He stopped on lap 12 and took on enough fuel to switch him onto a two stop strategy. That turned out well as it turned out, as his team mate Nelson Piquet Jr had a decent shunt at turn 17, which brought the safety car out.

Malaysia Preview

The second of our 2008 fly away opening races is upon us, just one week after the Australian GP.

This one is again a difficult, hot race, and cars that had heat issues last week will probably have more of the same.

Sepang is also a challenging circuit for the engines, even if the heat is not too bad as it has a very high percentage of full throttle around the 3.444 miles (5.543km) circuit. It seems that this might be the last of the daytime races, as the organisers have put in to be allowed to run at night from 2009.

This will be the tenth time the teams have been around the track, and it’s always an interesting race as there are a fair few overtaking opportunities  to be had if the drivers are brave enough.

The track used to be dominated by the Schumacher brothers, with Michael winning three times and Ralf having won in 2002 driving for Williams (BMW). Since then Fernando has won twice at the track and his then team mate Giancarlo Fisichella won the 2006 race in the Renault.

Australia a full runthrough

After having a few hours nap, then watching the GP again as it was repeated, then napping. I thought it about time to do my full race synopsis.

The race for various reasons has to be one of the best in the resent past, and I have had quite a few comments from ‘non F1′ friends and colleges stating that they enjoyed the race, and as a result would take more interest in the rest of the season. So from that front, I have to say well done FIA at forcing the standard engine unit on the F1 world.

The race will obviously be remembered for three reasons. First and foremost, it was the race that Lewis dominated, and made look his own. We saw very little of Hamilton during the race footage, and that was because for the most part he had an easy race. He was challenged a little at the start by Robert Kubicca, but besides that drove a mature, well paced race to take the top step of the podium.

Australia Result

And it’s a result for Lewis Hamilton, and McLaren.

Lewis drove a start to finish winning race, however the news is the Ferrari cars.

None of the Ferrari powered cars managed to finish the race, with two engine failures (Kimi and Bordause).

It was also nice to see the BMW and Williams on the podium, Heidfeld took the second spot, and Rosberg took a much deserved third spot.

The race was incident packed, with 3 safety cars out, Kovalinen got caught out in his second stop with the Safety Car that Timo Glock’s big accident brought out, having to stop under the safety car, and join the end of the snake along with Alonso.

David Coulthard had a big accident with Massa into turn one ending Red Bulls day. Rubens was running well in the lone Honda (Button had an incident on the opening lap), with his car running out of fuel, he had to come in to refuel while the safety car was out and the pit lane was closed giving him a 10 second penalty, he then looked to go back out onto the track through red pit lights. So it’s unknown at the moment if he managed to score points or not.

Williams Reveal

The Williams team have unveiled their 2008 colours.

As you can see, the FW-30 looks quite nice in the dark/light layout. This should certainly look good under the light’s in Singapore.