OT: Racing 2008-2009 (Spoiler Alert)

[Jimmydeicide]

There will be two races in F1 this season:

-- Ferrari vs. McLaren
-- The leader of the mid-pack

The gap between those two races will be massive, at least a half-second per lap, if not more.

Take care,
PK

I agree, with last years setup but its all about least amount of mistakes this year, its gonna be great fun and i dont think a big as a gap as you may think.(i hope anyway)
Watch out for Trulli in the Toyota hes loving his car.

[Zeppo]

Am I a bad fan because I hardly pay attention during the silly season? Does it make me lame because I have next to no clue of most of the new rules? Am I unworthy because I don't hate Ferrari, or, really, any particular team?

All I can say is that last night, after getting home from drinking with friends while watching Freddy and the gang eek out a result against Panama, I fired up the DVR, and those first images of real practice, and more, the sound of those engines roaring through my headphones, put a s***-eating grin as wide as the Hudson on my face! And I was giggling like a school girl!

Man, it feels good that it's back. I am very much looking forward to seeing how much of a difference to the racing in the middle of the field the lack of TC and the changes in engine braking will make, if any. I'm also very curious to see if Brawn can pull some kind of Lazarus action at Honda. And is it me, or do all the drivers seem so young? Maybe I'm just getting old.

[Rodster]

Maybe a question PK or Adam can answer. After F1 changed the engine specs from 10 to 8 cylinders the cars definitely sounded different. For some reason last year the 8 cylinder engines sounded like the 10 based engines of the past.

Is it just me or is there still a noticeable audible difference between the 8 and 10's? And I share Zeppo's sentiments re: the F1 Season and hearing those badass engines once again.

Can't wait for my torrent downloads this weekend.

[Rodster]

Well it most certainly looks like Hammy is the real deal as he starts on Pole and the Gremlins have already started to show the faces for Ferrari as Kimi starts 16th.

[GB_Simo]

Rod, since the engines have different configurations, you should always notice an audible difference between a V8 and a V10. A V8 will always sound a little flatter, a V10 will always have more of a screaming sound. Compare and contrast:

Lewis Hamilton, Melbourne 2007, V8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAadII62 ... re=related

Pedro de la Rosa, Bahrain 2005, V10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXVQ4jUIyL0

Even a lower-revving V10 would be distinguishable from a V8. Rubens Barrichello and a Peugeot V10 at Montreal in 1995, with apologies for the amount of Derek Daly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP-WZdc6dJs


***SPOILERS***



That was remarkably simple for Hamilton. It always helps when the competiton takes care of itself. Bourdais was quietly impressive and deserved more than the car ultimately gave him, and I did enjoy watching Barrichello until his race disintegrated in a crazy 10 seconds in the pits.

DC used some wonderfully ripe language on ITV when discussing Massa's role in their collision, but was he in a position to claim the corner when he turned in? It looked to me that Massa was far enough alongside to be aggrieved that Coolhard tried to claim the corner. Ferrari post-Todt, though, reminded me of Ferrari pre-Todt, gamely snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at every turn. What on Earth was wrong with Kimi today?

[pk500]

Rodster:

I think the reason this year's V8's sound different than last year's V8 is the lack of traction control this year. TC created an AWFUL sputtering sound when it cut the ignition to selected cylinders to prevent wheelspin. That's gone this year.

What an entertaining opening race. Plenty of incidents, controversy and some superb duels for key positions. I really feel bad for Bourdais, who was headed for a superb debut before mechanical fate struck just before the finish.

I was very pleased to see Williams -- my favorite team -- and Rosberg -- probably my favorite driver these days -- on the podium. A very nice start for Sir Frank and Patrick's outfit, especially considering Nakajima scored points, too.

Oh, and masterful drive by one L. Hamilton. That was almost lost in all of the incidents and battles for lower positions.

Really, really enjoyed this race. Hope it sets the proverbial table for a fine season. Roll on Malaysia!

Take care,
PK

[Zeppo]

What mess that race was. Only seven cars finished, which I guess is the fewest since the tire debacle at Indy a few years ago. Very strange.

Adam, David Hobbs on the Speed channel coverage was pretty insistent that Coulthard was to blame, and I would tend to agree with him. What's wild is that the RB car disintegrated into shreds, but the Ferrari seemed to come through with minimal damage in comparison.

What I want to know is what happened to Kovalainen (sp?) on the front straight after he passed Alonso. It was a tremendous pass he made, only to just give the position right back on the straight. If he had some kind of gear box or throttle problem, it went away just as quickly as it appeared. Very, very strange. The Speed guys thought maybe he mistook that for the final lap, but then pointed out that he hadn't made it to the line yet before pulling up. Really odd.

It's too bad what happened to Rubens. I don't imagine that guy will be holding the 'brakes on' board any more, and then I'm willing to bet Rubens was looking in his mirrors to see the mess in the pit and didn't see the red light at the end of the pits.

Too bad for Vettel, too. Amazing qualifying performance, but no chance to race after turn one. And also, it seemed the Toyotas were very strong, but couldn't finish the race.

Is it possible, do you think, that the big race this season will be for 2nd place? Are Ferrari in enough of a shambles that the BMWs and who knows who else may be legitimately fighting for that spot? Or will Ferrari get their s*** together? I tend to think they will, but coming out of Australia with zero points isn't going to help them.

[pk500]

What I want to know is what happened to Kovalainen (sp?) on the front straight after he passed Alonso. It was a tremendous pass he made, only to just give the position right back on the straight. If he had some kind of gear box or throttle problem, it went away just as quickly as it appeared. Very, very strange. The Speed guys thought maybe he mistook that for the final lap, but then pointed out that he hadn't made it to the line yet before pulling up. Really odd.

Kovalainen told Autosport that his right fist hit the pit speed limiter button on the wheel on that final straight as he tried to remove a grimy tear-off strip from his visor. It cut the engine momentarily before he turned the limiter off, giving Alonso the opening he needed to regain the position.

Odd, indeed.

Is it possible, do you think, that the big race this season will be for 2nd place? Are Ferrari in enough of a shambles that the BMWs and who knows who else may be legitimately fighting for that spot? Or will Ferrari get their s*** together? I tend to think they will, but coming out of Australia with zero points isn't going to help them.

Ferrari won right out of the box last season with Raikkonen at Australia, putting to rest immediately that the Prancing Horse would crumble without Ross Brawn. But now is the crisis moment when we'll see just how much Ferrari misses the calm, analytical style of Brawn.

The headline this morning at autosport.com said Ferrari Managing Director Stefano Domenicali is urging calm after the horrible season opener. So that can only mean one thing -- Ferrari is sh*tting its pants internally!

I would really love to see Williams stay in the fight for "best of the rest," but BMW Sauber has the edge because it has a stronger driver pairing and a quicker car. I think Rosberg is a match for either Heidfeld or Kubica, but the Kazman isn't in that league.

Red Bull was plenty quick in Webber's hands, but I question the reliability of that car. Plus I'm tired of hearing about Webber's hard luck. It can't all be bad luck; there must be something about the guy's driving style or racecraft that causes some of these problems even if he does have a knack for joining teams when their cars are at their most brittle (Jaguar, Williams and now Red Bull).

As much as I think last year exposed him as a complete dick, you saw the absolute value and skill of Alonso this morning. He drove the wheels off that Renault, taking it places that I don't think it deserved as a technical package. But the guy just drives every lap to the maximum and never stops fighting, and can pull out special laps when needed, like M. Schumacher did.

Take care,
PK

[GB_Simo]

What I don't quite get is how you'd manage to activate a speed limiter with your fist and not hit several other things on the wheel at the same time, unless you were activating the limiter with a switch. I'm sure the limiter is operated on a button, as Autosport says, so I don't quite get that. If it was so easy to do you'd expect to see it a little more often.

Zep, Ferrari's cars used to fall to bits in Melbourne through the late 90's, and they always came good and mounted a strong title challenge, but as PK says, that was with different personnel who had a reputation for keeping the ship steady. I'd expect them to be absolutely fine but it's worth keeping an eye on.

PK, isn't Rod talking about the note of the engine rather than the lack of a sputtering noise? With the freeze on engine development and fixed rev limits there's surely not an awful lot that could be done to change that. Whatever, there's no doubt that a car on corner exit sounds much nicer without that nasty grinding TC sound.

[GB_Simo]

Adam, David Hobbs on the Speed channel coverage was pretty insistent that Coulthard was to blame, and I would tend to agree with him. What's wild is that the RB car disintegrated into shreds, but the Ferrari seemed to come through with minimal damage in comparison.

Yeah, it did seem to just crumble into pieces, which was a little odd. When DC got pitched into the air there, I suppose the angle the car was at when he hit the grass could have put some force through the car that it wasn't designed for, but it ended up looking like the victim of a much larger accident.

Coulthard is engaged in a long-running battle of wits with the ITV pitlane reporters and tends to be good value in interviews, but today he sounded genuinely cheesed off:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=V_PiFV7i7Kk

DC said that "you have to pass someone, you can't ram into the side of them", but it looked like the reason Massa rammed into the side of him was that he was given no other option but to do so.

Another thought on Ferrari - why did they not bring Raikkonen in under the safety car for the Massa-Coulthard incident? It didn't seem to make any sense, given that the safety car period arrived mid-race and the soft tyres didn't have a huge amount of meat left on them, to leave a one-stopping car out on the circuit and have to bring him in under green flag conditions.

[Rodster]

Yeah Adam I was referring to the note of the V8 engine last year as it had that similar banshee sound like the former V10's. I'm a big Kimi fan regardless of who he drives for but it was a train wreck weekend for Ferrari. I read the same article PK was referring too. I seem to differ with PK re: Brawn. I think Ferrari misses Jean Todt more than they do Ross Brawn.

Todt rallied the troops last year for an incredible finish and they won it without Brawn. I just hope Ferrari can get it together for Kimi's sake.

Also a wonderful drive by Seabass and while it's only one race he outperformed his Toro Rosso and should have had fourth. He put the question to rest, he does belong in F1.

Wow what a drive by Alonzo taking his car to fourth in his Renault. But the weekend belonged to Hammy and it looks like this kid no doubt is very special and is quickly on his way to becoming Schumacher and Alonso all rolled up into one.

I LOL when I read DC's comment regarding Massa, funny sh*t. This year is shaping up to have as much drama as last year.

[GB_Simo]

Rod, you've probably gathered from the links above that I'm hearing a completely different engine note from you When the engine regs changed I couldn't stomach the sound of the V8 after years of V10s and the glorious V12s of times past, but now I don't find the V8 noise anything like as objectionable as I did when they started testing.

I want to reserve any proper judgement on Bourdais until we've seen him in a race that isn't interrupted by a shunt every 15 laps, but whether by accident or design he found himself in a position that he had little trouble keeping until the car failed. His qualifying was as poor as he'd said it would be, though, and in these cars that's going to be an issue until and unless he sorts it - remember Wurz last year, scoring big in the unpredictable races but unable to recover from poor qualiying everywhere else.

[Rodster]

Actually this is the sound I was referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I7tD-N4 ... re=related

[pk500]

And is it me, or do all the drivers seem so young? Maybe I'm just getting old.

Fossil.

Take care,
PK

[10spro]

Great debut for Bourdais. If his engine hadn't gone he easily could've held onto the 5th spot. It's only one race but holding off F. Alonso speaks volumes about his skills. Without the drivers aids, this is going to be a fun F1 season.

[Zeppo]

And is it me, or do all the drivers seem so young? Maybe I'm just getting old.

Fossil.

Take care,
PK

Aren't I young enough to be your kid? Actually, not even close. . .

Anyway, what I'm wondering is what is the ultimate cause of the absurd level of attrition in this race. Sure, we'd expect the Torro Rossos and even the RBs to blow up, and so on, but this level of attrition seems to me to be completely out of whack.

It was similar to Japan last year, in a massive downpour where drivers could barely see 100 yds ahead of themselves, and one would expect cars to slip and slide all over the place. Maybe at Monaco, the land of no run-off, we could see this kind of elimination. But wow, such a beautiful day (though hot), and all but 7 cars knocked out of the race?

Could it be due to my imagined youth movement in the driver's stable, or is it more due to the new regulations with the standard CPU and the lack of TC etc.

I like to see the youngsters breathing new life to the sport, and so many of these guys seem to be absurdly talented (hamilton, Rossberg, Kovalainen Vettel, heck Alonso is still absurdly LeBron James young, etc. etc.). But watching this race, I was thinking how embarrassing it would have been as an example of the sport to an F1 newbie.

It made it seem that the format is simply not tenable, due to how much attrition occurred in what looked to be perfect weather. (You can't really 'see' the heat nor the way it affects every part of the race car including the driver.)

It was entertaining, but I admit I was half asleep, drunk, fading in and out through most of the race and watched it in two sessions, so I'm not entirely clear on how everyone got knocked out.

But, is it more due to young, inexperienced drivers (I don't really think so, because a lot of the worst performers were as veteran as they get; read, Coulthard, Webber); or, more due to a combination of the new technical regulations, and the fact that it was the first race of the season, which can often show starts of trends that turn out not to be trends at all through the course of the long, long season.

Oh, and Adam, the Speed TV guys were saying re: Kimi's lack of pitting under the SC near the end, that it seemed he was due to pit and just about on his way into the pit lane ('just about' being used in the non-Brit meaning of 'not quite,' rather than 'just barely'), and when the car came out the team became very worried that they didn't see a 'pit lane open' signal, so he had to duck right back out. They were rightfully, I think, worried about being penalized for adding fuel and tires in that situation, and it was just bad luck with the timing.

Of course, these rules closing the pit lanes are fairly new (weren't they new last season?), so I'm sure there's a great degree within the teams of not really knowing how they work and what the capricious stewards will decide. But in the end, the man spun more than once on his own volition. He's a better driver than that.

I will say I have always been a fan of Trulli, at least as a personality if not as a driver. But he seems one who will really benefit from the lack of TC and the new engine-braking control regs, plus the Toyota does seem to be a better car, if it can make it through a race without the battery exploding. Is this the year Toyota finally get to where we all think they should be, fighting at the top of the 'also rans,' and maybe stealing a win or two? It will be fun to watch.

[GB_Simo]

I wasn't expecting to hear Crazy Frog when I clicked that, Rod. That was just evil

Zep, a good chunk of the retirements were caused by people driving into the side of each other (Button, Vettel, Fisi, Webber and Davidson at the start, Massa and Coulthard, and Kubica being nerfed by Nakajima, who seems to have inherited certain unfortunate traits from his Pa since he was involved in all of the action at the start too) or in Glock's case, a solo accident. I think the only way you can tie those into the new technical regs is to say that with standard ECUs a few people might have made better starts and not been in a position to be hit in turn one, though since Vettel insists his bad start wasn't his fault, maybe even that is a stretch.

Anything with a Ferrari engine that got far enough retired with an engine problem, which must have set the alarm bells ringing at Maranello but is presumably something specific to them. Take out the crashes and the Ferrari connection and all you're left with is Sutil's hydraulics (presumably getting in there first before his Ferrari engine could take the retirement spoils), Trulli's battery, and Piquet and Sato's whatever they were. What I'm saying, I think, is that a lot of it was down to getting caught in someone else's accident or having a Ferrari motor in the back of your car, and so the attrition was at a rate we shouldn't expect to see again too soon. As you said, most of the bad driving came from the older heads, so I don't think the youngsters are to blame.

I've got a problem with driver ages too. Vettel is two years younger than me. Piquet is 13 days younger than me, Rosberg under a month older. Kubica, Hamilton and Nakajima are all about 6 months older than me. It's really, really stamping on the dreams I used to have of doing their job...


As for Kimi, I saw him just about pitting (by the way, we use 'just about' in both of the senses you mentioned) while the pit lane was closed, but don't understand why he was left out once the lane opened. The regulations are fairly clear on it, in that the safety car was deployed at the time and so any pitstop made between that time and the 'Pit Lane Open' message we see on the TV incurs a 10 second stop-go like the one Rubens got (though Rubens had no fuel and therefore no choice - how exactly are you meant to build a man driving into a wall into your optimum strategy?), so at mid-race and given that he was behind a heavier McLaren at the time, I don't see what advantage they'd gain from not bringing him in at that point. It'll be something obvious, I'm sure, but I'm not seeing it yet.

[Rodster]

The start of the 2008 Formula 1 season has started off in grand style. Ferrari is blaming their reliability problems on the McLaren ECU. Can't wait to hear McLaren's response.

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/n ... 5743.shtml

[pk500]

The start of the 2008 Formula 1 season has started off in grand style. Ferrari is blaming their reliability problems on the McLaren ECU. Can't wait to hear McLaren's response.

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/n ... 5743.shtml

There is validity to this claim, especially since Domenicali isn't suggesting sabotage.

Ferrari had either an exclusive or damn-close-to-exclusive relationship with Magneti Marelli for its F1 electronics systems for years. MM worked hand-in-hand with Ferrari to develop sophisticated electronics systems for the Scuderia's F1 cars, and both parties knew exactly what the other needed.

Now that's gone, and Ferrari is struggling to adapt to a new ECU that's not tailored exactly to its car. It's not McLaren's fault, as every team is forced to cope with the new ECU just like Bridgestone teams were forced to cope with Michelin tires when the tire war ended after the 2006 season.

But Ferrari is struggling with the new ECU, which is all that I think Domenicali is trying to say. Realize that the Ferrari-powered Red Bull and Toro Rosso cars also had mechanical problems last weekend, so I don't see this as a McLaren conspiracy only against Scuderia Ferrari.

Ron Dennis has insisted that the divisions of McLaren that produce the ECU and the F1 cars are separate, giving McLaren-Mercedes no advantage. That may be true, but it is pretty damn convenient to only need to stroll to another part of the Paragon complex or send a quick intra-office e-mail to get information about the standard ECU.

Take care,
PK

[Jimmydeicide]

You knew it was coming and its F1's own fault for allowing Mclaren to make the ECU.
And heres my conspiracy , the ECU unit is sealed and cannot be opened if im correct or else be known to be tampered with.
Whats to say Mclaren hasnt tweaked something inside to mess with Ferrari whos to know especially after the Ferrari/Mclaren inside secret stuff from last year.

Just seem stupid to me to allow Mclaren to make it, so no matter what happens to Ferrari now they can blame Mclaren making it a mockery again.

We can only hope ferrari win the title so its a none issue.

I blame F1 its their own fault. Maybe its a crazy way of keeping F1 in the news, maybe its marketing genius.

Ill be routing for an English driver champion and the best of the rest.

[Rodster]

Jimmy that's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read Ferrari's comment but that would be hard to prove.

[pk500]

I would be less suspicious now of McLaren than ever.

McLaren was fined $100 million by the FIA last year for the Spygate scandal. Do you think it would risk crossing the FIA again? McLaren would be thrown out of the championship for a year or two if it was found to have altered Ferrari's ECU, no question.

Take care,
PK

[Rodster]

I would be less suspicious now of McLaren than ever.

McLaren was fined $100 million by the FIA last year for the Spygate scandal. Do you think it would risk crossing the FIA again? McLaren would be thrown out of the championship for a year or two if it was found to have altered Ferrari's ECU, no question.

Take care,
PK

Oh I agree with you and I made my comments in a joking way but I suspect Ferrari are using last years events to try and stir the pot.

[Jimmydeicide]

Im saying not just Ferrari but made the ECU a certain way .
Knowing it may not be the best for Ferrari.

[GB_Simo]

I knew I'd regret having Lewis and McLaren in my Fantasy Formula One game:

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/66021

If the rain arrives as promised tomorrow, this race could be all kinds of fun.