Happy 2008 to you all! Well, its been a while since the last post, and the F1 world has been anything but asleep while we’ve been away. So how about a brief round up:
- After a pointless protest from McLaren (sound familiar!); Ferrari, namely Kimi Raikkonen is officially crowned the 2007 FIA Formula One World Champion!
- McLaren (but interestingly, not Ron Dennis) chose to write a letter of apology to the FIA for their lack of cooperation in the spygate investigations. They admitted that their internal investigations should have picked up on the extent of Ferrari (“the red car’s”) data that was knowledge within the team. The most interesting factor for me was that the letter was not signed by Ron Dennis, but by McLaren CEO, Martin Whitmarsh … a sign that Ron’s days at McLaren are numbered? Apparently not, although the latest rumours suggest a Mercedes buy-out of the Woking, Surrey based team.
- Alonso promptly announced that he was leaving the team, and after assessing his options (or the lack of them), signed with the team that helped him to his two world championships, and the welcoming arms of one Flavio Briatore.
- And in the opposite direction, went Heikki Kovalainen in what could prove to be an inspired move for his career. Being a more cool-headed kinda guy, he should be better placed to deal with the inevitable favouratism that Hamilton will receive within the McLaren team. Expect Heikki to knuckle down and push Lewis hard in the second half of 2008. And speaking of ‘opposite direction’, Hekki miraculously managed to cross the finish line in a spin at this year’s Race of Champions event at Wembley Stadium.
- Ross Brawn is back in F1, but for some strange reason, he’s decided that it would be a good idea to get involved in Japanese politics at Honda. We do wish him good luck, but the move, besides from offering o ray of light at the end of the tunnel for Jenson Button, doesn’t appear to be a fitting return to the supreme racing mastermind that is Ross Brawn.
- Ralf Schumacher is an F1 has been. He remains hopeful of a drive of some kind, but it appears a tad unlikely. The only Schumacher that fans want to see back in an F1 car is a 7 time World Champion!
- There is a new force to be reckoned wth in F1, Force India, the new Spyker team taken over by Vijay Mallya of Kingfisher fame aims to have an Indian race winner by 2012. Now we’ve heard these claims before from new teams entering into F1 for the first time: BAR, Toyota, Red Bull to name but a few, but with access to a growing population of over a billion people, and with half of India’s population being under 25 and over 110m households owning TV sets, the potential of this largely untapped market is immense. Unfortunately, they’ve opted for the perennially slow Fisichella to take them forward. At least the name Schumacher on one of their cars would have earned them some instant kudos, until people realised the name Ralf preceding it!
So, the changes up and down the grid should mean that we are in for another interesting season with hopefully the action on track dominating the off track news in Monday morning headlines.
Join us in welcoming F1 newbies to the circus this year. In particular, the two names that stick out are Bourdais and Piquet Jr. Much will be expected of these two talents once their inauguration is complete.
Finally, in terms of the race weekends, we have two changes of note: the third qualifying segment is to be reduced to 10 minutes removing the pointless ‘fuel burn’ phase, but with it also removing some fun filled antics usually involving Alonso! We also have a night race to look forward to towards the end of the season in Singapore. Which promises to be a must see event.
f I have missed anything out in this review, then please do let me know.
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