SofaF1

So after a seemingly endless break we are back with a brand new circuit. There have been a few races testing the circuit but we really are venturing into the unknown with this one.

Because Valencia is a street circuit and near the water people have been thinking of Monaco but that’s probably wrong. It’s more like the old Long Beach circuit as it has several decent straights and 23 corners! For a modern comparator I saw somebody say “Canada with walls”.

Of the 23 corners Charlie Whiting reckons that three of them will be overtaking opportunities. That’s actually quite a lot for F1. Let’s hope he’s right. He’s been keeping himself busy on the break testing the underwater marshals! Because there is a danger a car could go in the water in the Bridge section the FIA have been testing how they would rescue somebody in that situation. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen, but if it could I’m glad they’ve been practicing.

The race should look spectacular to us but to the drivers it might look a bit boring because they will be looking at a lot of concrete at the drivers level. Expect James Allen to get very confused at some point – the only difference this weekend is that we’ll probably be just as confused.

So what about the race? The track looks to work better on the hard tyres which may well favour the McLarens. And if you were going to pick one driver out of them all who seems to learn circuits the fastest you would have to say it was Lewis Hamilton. He looks the man to beat this weekend. I’m sure the Alonso fans for whome this circuit was built will be thrilled.

Sorry for the slight delay in posting the results from Hungary, but at least it’s kept the suspense going over the 3 week gap till Valencia!

I had most of this written a while ago I must confess, but got distracted by a bloke coming round to fix the roof, and never quite managed to finish it off, but anyway….

…who says stuff doesn’t happen at Hungary unless it rains? Another great race in this thrilling season.

Everyone went for the Hamilton pole, two points all round. I wish there were points for second grid slot too. I could have done with some!

Due to the mixed up finishing order the points were all over the place. Nick and GrifF1 took two each for Raikkonen and Alex, Fourstar and myself one each. Alex and Fourstar both got two points for Alonso while Nick took one.

Kovalainen gave Nick one point. Webber gave Alex and myself a further one each. Kubica gave Igor and GrifF1 two points each.

Piquet’s recent run of form gave Igor, GrifF1 and Nick a further point each and Nick mopped up with a final point for Trulli.

Round 11

1 Nick 8
2 GrifF1 7
3 Alex 6
4 Fourstar 5
4 Igor 5
6 Bearded Stew 4

Championship

1 Fourstar 72
2 Nick 71
3 Igor 58
4 Alex 56
5 GrifF1 52
6 Bearded Stew 50

Another topsy turvey race (the spell checker reckons that should have been tipsy turkey!) keeps the championship hanging in the balance. Hamilton was looking comfortable for the win but tyre problems again didn’t make it easy for him. He did stay in there for a 5th place though to stay at the top of the championship table for another couple of weeks at least. Massa seemed to be on it from the word go, making a decisive move on the two McLarens like never before. He clearly had a good pace and no strategy problems until…. his engine cruelly blew up in the closing stages of the race. So Kovalainen lands a confidence boosting win, even if it was just because he was still there at the end. Good for him, great for the championship and great for us the viewers.

With the formula one season on Hiatus we have to keep ourselves amused. To that end I think we should attempt to discover the driver’s favourite songs.

Drivers can, of course, be from the past or present.

Some examples:
Michael row the boat ashore Schumacher
Abba’s Fernando – Alonso
The Hardest Button to Button – The White Stripes (on the soft tires)

You get the idea. Like those, but actually funny (presumably not writing yours at six am might help).

Although testing is not permitted during the current three week break, I understand that Renault is looking for a breakthrough in aerodynamic design. To reduce costs, power comes from a 1.4 litre turbo engine:

What to expect this weekend? The Hungaroring is hardly used by anyone other than F1 and this makes it very dusty on track at first.

The circuit is essentially like Monaco with run off areas and this tends to mean that there is almost no overtaking during the race. Perhaps this will change with the traction control ban? Hungary has had some pretty eventful races from time to time but only really when it rains. No wonder Martin Brundle doesn’t show up. We will have Anthony Davidson during qualifying (I’ve double triple checked this time – this is a good thing as Ant is very knowledgeable) and for the race we will have Damon Hill (last year’s performance was pretty poor, he really does need to sound slightly more interested).

One interesting problem in Hungary is the strategy call. Tyre degradation is high so you don’t want to put as much fuel in. But on the other hand you can’t overtake so you want to have a big boatload of fuel on board so you can outlast the people you are racing to the pitstops.

The latter is what the back half of the grid will be doing. They will be hoping that some of the faster drivers get stuck behind them too.

The front drivers have a compromise to make. Too much fuel and you won’t be near the front of the grid in qualifying. Too light and you’ll be making too many pitstops.

A tough balance. Lewis has looked mega in the last couple of races.
And looks pretty good this weekend too. McLaren are spending money on car developments like it’s going out of fashion. And he seems to have his head in a much better place. And the McLaren ran really well at Monaco and that’s the best indicator for this track. The only fly in the ointment is the issue of tyre degradation. The silver cars always seem to use up their rubber faster than the rest. This could be a problem. McLaren, I’m sure, would just like to get through the qualifying without their teammates declaring war on each other.

Ferrari have their anvil wing in place this weekend showing they aren’t stopping the development program either. Ferrari do look a bit lost at the moment. But Kimi is usually one of the best at qualifying on heavy fuel loads.

Behind them Kubica, Webber, Trulli and Vettel seem to be either out driving their cars or at least taking apart their team mates. That Webber / Vettel partnership for next year looks pretty potent.

Let us know what your predictions for the race weekend are. Who will be on pole? Who will score points (top eight)? And perhaps we should all go for a crazy prediction?

During this season I have noticed a lot of people saying “that’s it now, that’s the way it will go for the rest of the season”. At one point it was Ferrari to win and McLaren nowhere. Now maybe it’s perceived as the other way around.

It’s always amazing to me how quickly history his forgotten. I have composed a table showing the difference between the current drivers current points in the current season, and their points at the end of race 10.

Maybe Kimi doesn’t seem to care this year? But on the other hand he’s hardly down on last year. I’m not saying Kimi is going to win but he’s only one point down on his position last year, whereas Lewis and Massa have dropped a significant chunk from last year’s position. Remember anything can happen in Formula 1 – and it usually does.

This has been a close season, and it ‘aint over until Bernie sings. And there is one more race this year than last year.

I’ve long been against the two tyre rule for Formula One which forces teams to run for at least part of the race on a sub-optimal tyre.

It was brought in ostensibly to improve the racing but it was pretty obvious right from the beginning that Bridgestone just wanted publicity. They were worried that with the withdrawal of Michelan that nobody would talk about them.

Well it’s pretty much failed on both counts. Now that the teams are used to the tyres you often see teams leaving their least good tyres until the end of the race when the drivers are, usually, further apart on the track.

On the publicity front it has worked even less well. I said before this whole thing happened that all that would happen was that people would just refer to the things as “tyres” rather than “Bridgestones”.

This has happened, and actually this has been pretty lucky for Bridgestone as the only time the tyres are mentioned when the driver says that things were much more difficult on the sub optimal tyres.

It seems that drivers now only say negative things about tyres. This is because when the tyre is good it is only as good as your opponents.
It is never better, but when it’s bad it’s worse than the one you had on a moment ago.

But don’t worry Bridgestone have a plan. They are going to make the difference between the tyres at each race more pronounced. This, they reckon will make the tyres much more important during the race weekend. But hold on didn’t we just discover that drivers will only ever talk negatively about tyres if their tyre can’t be faster than the one everyone else has? Oh yes we did. And so this will cause even more negative talk.

The only thing they could do worse would be to rename the prime and option tyres as Bridgestone and Firestone. That way people would have to mention their brand when they were dissing them. So my guess is that Bridgestone will be doing this shortly.

And if anyone can work out how to paint a white stripe on to a slick tyre without it rubbing off within a few laps please let them know.

As the summer really gets underway, Hamilton continues his recent run of dominant form. It looked like there was going to be a great battle between Massa and Hamilton after the qualifying sessions, but when the race started Hamilton just scampered away leaving Ferrari scratching their heads.

Here in the world of SofaF1 the results have started to pick up again, this was actually our second highest scoring race collectively so far, after Spain.

We all benefited from the 6 point Hamilton pole and win combo except Alex who just went for the 2 point pole option with just 1 in the race and GrifF1 who just took the 4 points for the win.

Massa was good for us all, giving Nick, Fourstar, Igor, GrifF1 and myself 1 point each and Alex two.

A lower than usual finish for Kubica gave Nick 2 points and Fourstar 1. Kovalainen finishing lower than his grid slot would have suggested too gave Alex, Fourstar and Igor a further point each. Heidfeld was looking good for a podium for a while but still gave Alex another point. Which just leaves Alex and Nick, who hung around till the end to hoover up a further two points each for Vettel in eighth.

Guest competitor Bigotez this week put forward a top ten prediction, but no pole option, so within the competition rules the top eight prediction scored 7 points, 4 for Hamiltons win, 1 for Massa and two for Kovalainen. Great start, might have a job to overhaul Fourstar by the end of the season though!

So Round 10, Nick gets into his strides

1 Nick 11
2 Alex 9
2 Fourstar 9
4 Igor 8
5 Bearded Stew 7
6 GrifF1 5

Championship

1 Fourstar 67
2 Nick 63
3 Igor 53
4 Alex 50
5 Bearded Stew 46
6 GrifF1 45

It was great to see Hamilton on a charge this weekend, he really has been very quick over the last couple of races. Piquet with a quirk of strategy did amazingly well to hold on to a second place. Even though he admitted he got lucky it must help with his confidence to be standing up there on the podium, it could be a turning point for him.

Massa was disappointing, not really having the speed in the race after his qualifying battle but not even fighting to hold onto second place, this wasn’t just for a couple of points this was for the championship lead!

Raikkonen couldn’t keep up the pace and slips into third in the championship, his job to win it again this year will be looking tough if Hamilton continues this searing pace.

Coulthard got in a tangle again, a touch reminiscent of his rearview visibility problem from earlier in the year. For Webber this year, retiring has not been the norm, but he was caught out by a mechanical problem. Talking of Webber, it will be interesting to see how he gets on with Vettel next year, he was very vocal with his opinions last year when Vettel took him out in the rain, hopefully he will think that Vettel has grown up a bit since then and they will get on fine. Vettel could be in a good place for a championship challenge in a year or two if the Red Bull car keeps developing like it has.

Other interesting news this week, Santander going to sponsor Ferrari in 2010, where will Alonso be then do you reckon? Could he be heading into the red?

Anyway, whatever happens stay on the Sofa. Anybody Hungary?

I like Silverstone, a classic high speed track, loads of history, loads of British only just hanging in there year after year. As long as the safety stuff is up to scratch, what’s the problem if the pits are a bit ropey? Anyway this year the speculation was over, Silverstone will be giving up the British Grand Prix. Almost as a final protest we are treated to a great race, which closes up the championship again. Halfway through and it’s all square at the top of the table for Massa, Raikkonen and Hamilton.

That’s all well and good but what about here at SofaF1?

Well, I reckon it was a hard one to call anyway but then the rain really mixed it all up, maybe that’s because I didn’t do so well again, Fourstar might disagree!

Nick had some clear inside information on the track, which gave him the edge in Qualifying! Kovalainen taking his first pole position gives Nick 2 points.

In the race Hamilton’s great win gives Fourstar 4 points and Alex, Igor and myself one each. Igor and Alex took two each with Kovalainen and Fourstar one.

Alonso gave GrifF1 her only two points of the race, two for me and one each for Igor and Fourstar. Fourstar had a final point for Rosberg and Nick one for Trulli.

Not the worst scoring race ever, but joint second worst with Australia and Malaysia.

Round 9

1 Fourstar 7
2 Igor 4
3 Bearded Stew 3
3 Alex 3
3 Nick 3
6 GrifF1 2

Championship

1 Fourstar 58
2 Nick 52
3 Igor 45
4 Alex 41
5 GrifF1 40
6 Bearded Stew 39

The rain always serves up a bit of extra excitement, and this weekend was no exception. Ironically Silverstone gave us a great classic race just a few days after it’s confirmed to be heading for the back of the dusty F1 cupboard, for the moment anyway!

Great win for Hamilton, he really did show he has got superb driving skills, especially in the wet where many big name drivers were heading for the grass time and time again.

To win a championship, or a race even, you do need a lot of skill and a good car, Hamilton has both but some things also need to go your way and I don’t want to take anything away from Hamiltons brilliant win, but there were a few things I thought that worked out rather handily for him.

Firstly his collision with Kovalainen right at the start could have worked out differently and he could have taken them both out at the start, which would not have been good. Also the tyre strategy worked out exactly right for him but crucially went really wrong for Raikkonen, which obviously helped. I think Hamilton did spin too somewhere and got away with it unlike Kubica. Clearly Hamilton was fast in the race and I don’t want to put him down at all but I do think he had the rub of the cloth this weekend and it’s important to take all these other factors into consideration too. Next time it might go the other way.

Next time….next time….oh that’s basically tomorrow.