SofaF1

Not a big points haul really this week compared to the last couple of races where the form for the season had started to establish itself, but despite the problems of trying to predict the results for a wet Monaco race, we collectively managed our third highest result so far this year. Not that I had much to do with it mind.

Everybody seemed to know something about Hamilton, except me, four points for Igor, GrifF1, Alex, Nick and Fourstar, I did manage to get one though by not counting him out completely.

Kubica was in the mix landing a useful point each for Igor, Alex and Fourstar. Igor and Nick were rewarded for their confidence in Massa making it to the end, taking a point each there too. Nakajima was the final inspired call dishing out a point to myself and two to GrifF1.

So what does all this look like? Well that’s me down the bottom there, should have stuck Webber in again.

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

The championship does start to open up a bit now though into some front runners, a midfield chasing pack and some back markers!

1 Fourstar 38
2 Nick 37
3 Alex 32
4 Igor 30
5 Bearded Stew 28
6 GrifF1 27

Monaco, rain and a long weekend, sounds pretty good to me. As usual at Monaco the pages fell out the form guide and were put hastily back together in a completely different order. Vettel finishing and in the points and Rubens matching Button on points with a 6th place, but the results don’t tell the whole story.

Poor Sutil, Hamilton getting lucky with his strategy after he clanged the wall, Alonso in a demolition derby, Webber slipping into the points for a 5th consecutive race, Nakajima with a third points finishing position to take him within a point of his team mate. Coulthard and Bourdais doing some synchronised skating into the barriers, Coulthard demolishing his car twice in 2 days and Rosberg somehow forgetting that it is quite a good plan to avoid the barriers.

Maybe not the race of attrition that Monaco 96 was but pretty eventful nonetheless, and a great result for Hamilton and his championship fight, but I’m left with the feeling that Ferrari probably have the edge in performance terms and McLaren will just be left to pick up an odd win here or there when Ferrari aren’t performing. I’d like to see Kovalainen have a race that works out though!

Hmmm I guess we’ll find out in Canadia in two weeks time.

Sebastian Vettel has a great future. Everyone assures us. I agree personally. I think he could be the next greatest thing. He’s had a bit of an unlucky start to his season this year. There is a bit of an odd thing in Formula 1 where some people just seem to always have the luck (Schumacher) and some don’t (Webber).

Vettel didn’t finish a race all season until Turkey where he finally made it. The reasons for him failing to finish didn’t really seem to be his fault so bad luck.

So he finally finishes a race, outside the points but at least it’s something good right? No. Because this weekend Torro Rosso have brought a new car and the gearbox has to be changed because the old one won’t work in the new car.

Because of the 5 race gearbox rule Vettel will take a 5 place penalty on the grid. And at Monaco that’s bad news.

Meanwhile his teammate who didn’t finish will be fine.

This is obviously a very silly rule. But it points to something. Vettel will have to change his luck if he’s going to become world champion. I don’t know how one does that. Maybe he should ask Michael.

So the long weekend beckons. But slap bang in the middle is the Monaco Grand Prix.

McLaren are usually very good around here and certainly Ron is one of the competitors with heritage enough in F1 to see a win at Monaco to be half a championship.

However it does seem that McLaren might have misjudged it this year. If the twisty sector three at turkey is anything to go by then Ferrari should be faster round the tight corners of Monaco. As Nick said the other day, it’s as though McLaren and Ferrari have traded places this year.

But although Kimi topped the time sheets in Practice 1 it was a very disturbed session. In the more representititve Practice 2 Lewis was well ahead with Ferrari complaining about the super soft tires.

The fuel load and tire wear questions from raise another prospect for this weekend: Strategy.

There is, in theory a strategy that a slower team could employ if they could get one of their drivers to take one for the team. Monaco has some big problems for anyone needing to overtake. This normally means that it’s a race to the first pit stop.

A bold move would be to fuel one driver very very light, and fuel one driver very very heavy. And then task the leading driver with holding up the pack. If you can stop the front runners from leaving your heavy driver behind then you are in a great situation once the pitstops start. You are guaranteed some flying laps if the front runners are being held back in front of you, once they pit. You need to be a real gamer to risk it. But perhaps McLaren or BMW might.

But all of this might be academic. The weather report says that it is likely to rain on Saturday and Sunday…

Anything can happen in Formula 1 and it usually does. What do you think anything means? Let us know your pole prediction and your top eight for the race.

Sorry about the slight delay with this post, just popped off to the seaside to enjoy the sunshine.

I must say I’m very disappointed with the usually pretty good coverage of F1 on Radio 5 this last week, some football build up program, not even a match, getting in the way of the race commentary, I might have been ok if I could have followed the full coverage on 5 Live Extra or something which I kept being told I could do, but that didn’t really help me with my antique portable out in the sticks. Maybe I should stay in more.

Anyway, the trusty VCR did the trick so when returning to civilisation I was able to sit back and watch quite a different race to the one I had been led to believe had happened on the radio bulletins.

Fourstar is really getting going now, landing the third highest result of the year. Cashing in with his confidence in Massa for the pole and win, 6 points in the bag.

Alex, Nick and myself also took 2 points each for Massa on pole, but wavered slightly in the race only managing 1 point each for Massa. Igor and GrifF1 get their points going with Hamilton taking 2 points each for his second place, with Alex and myself just taking one. Raikkonen went cheaply for just one point, which Fourstar swooped on to add to his growing haul.

BMW were a little bit off the pace this weekend, but Kubica did land a point each for Alex, Fourstar, GrifF1 and Igor, while Heidfeld managed one for Alex and two for myself.

Alonso scored pretty well for us this week with GrifF1 taking two and Fourstar, Nick, Alex and myself one more each. Nick and GrifF1 snuck Rosberg into 8th place and were rewarded with 2 points each for the Williams.

I did have to smile when Webber crossed the line in the points again for the fourth time this season, despite Alex’s word of caution in the pole poll, landing Fourstar and myself a final point, but Igor played a slightly better hand and added two to his tally.

So how do the cold facts of Turkey look …

Round 5

1 Fourstar 10
2 Bearded Stew 8
3 Alex 7
3 GrifF1 7
5 Nick 6
6 Igor 5

Which shuffles up the championship again

1 Fourstar 33
2 Nick 32
3 Alex 27
4 Bearded Stew 26
5 Igor 24
6 GrifF1 21

Just goes to show, anything can happen in SofaF1 and usually does, just one race can change the outlook of the whole championship.

Great race for Massa, dominating again. Hamilton will have been relieved to come in second and take some points from Raikkonen. Great race from Kovalainen, it really was good to see him carving through the pack time and time again. What could his afternoon have come to if he didn’t have that puncture at the start of the race? I’m sure his day will come.

BMW in their familiar position, but a way off the leaders at the end of the race. Webber seems to have settled in at Red Bull now and is delivering some good consistent results.

James Allen kept going on about McLaren having the upper hand again at Monaco, but I’m not so sure. Wasn’t Ferrari disadvantaged last year by their longer wheelbase chassis? and this year if my memory is correct its McLaren who has the longer wheelbase. Is that right? or did I just make that up?

Anyway not long till we find out! Keep your ear to the Sofa.

Most predictions for Monaco are that McLaren will be faster than Ferrari – they were last year, and tend to be better in a cool or green track. However, there are some people arguing that because Ferrari have been quicker in the slower parts of Spain and Turkey, they’ll be quicker at the twisting Monte Carlo track. On the other hand, Ferrari use the soft tyre better, whereas McLaren have mastered the harder option – which one will suit the track next Sunday afternoon? Alex and I were discussing earlier how the two teams seem to have switched their strengths and weaknesses since last year. The appear to have tried to be better in the areas that they were lacking, but neglected the areas that they had the advantage. Thus, we have two very close cars at the front of the grid once again, with very closely matched drivers. What to know what I think will happen at Monaco? Then you’ll have to wait until Alex puts the pole poll up on Friday!

In Qualifying I loved Martin talking about how times have changed. After Kovi had his tests to see if he was fit. Martin remembered having had a really bad crash. Ken Tyrrell said, “you’ve got to go out you’ve only got 8 minutes left to qualify”.

Martin said, “okay, no problem what circuit am I at?”

Awesome. Obviously I’m glad we’re not running in that situation anymore, but I’m also glad that Martin is around to tell us what it was like.

Also this is SofaF1’s 500th Post! Happy 500th SofaF1!!!

So Ferrari are flying away at the front. McLaren at first were just worried about BMW but have Renault bridged the gap?

Ferrari aren’t planning on using their new nose cone with the hole this weekend because it only really seems to help on certain kinds of circuits. In the Ferrari camp Kimi is riding high but Turkey has been a Massa circuit for the last two years – he won both times.

Over at McLaren they will have to keep in front of BMW in qualifying if they are going to get on terms with Ferrari. Will Heikki be right back in the saddle or will he be a bit corner shy? Lewis seems to have lost his way. McLaren seem to be about 6/10ths off the pace this year. What they need is a driver who can personally deliver 6/10ths – whoops.

Further back Williams seem to be drifting off as the manufacturers outspend them during the inseason development. Red Bull seem to be having the same problem. Mark Webber keeps nabbing the odd point or two every so often. He scored some in Spain so he might well bin it this weekend. Coulthard is spending too much time practicing his commentating for his rumored job next year and keeps forgetting to look in his mirrors.

A quick note about a rule clarification. With no Super Aguri now the rules for Qualifying it will be 5 out in Q1 and 5 out in Q2. This means Force India’s dream of getting into Q2 is looking more and more tricky (although I wouldn’t put it past Fisi in Monaco).

So who’s on Pole? And who are your top eight finishers? As always we’d love to know before qualifying starts.

Super Aguri have gone bust. Torro Rosso have been put up for sale, and nobody seems to have come forward to buy them. At some point the larger Formula One teams are going to have to ask themselves, “who are we going to beat”.

There have always been three levels of Formula One teams. The elete, the mid-field and the backmarkers. For a long time Minardi were the ultimate in backmarkers and now that mantle has been passed to Super Aguri and Torro Rosso.

But there was a difference with these new teams, they were using customer chasis in all but name. It turns out that the FIA were right, customer chasis are a lot cheaper to run than whole teams. We know this because Super Aguri got close to Honda and Torro Rosso got close to Red Bull.

In the time before customer chasis, a time we’re rapidly heading back to, the backmarkers seemed to know their place. They knew a point every other season was worth shouting about and all the other teams knew that they wouldn’t come last as long as they kept it on the black stuff.

But this new found competitiveness has been their undoing. Suddenly it’s embarrassing for everyone else. It was initially just embarrassing for Spyker and Williams. But suddenly it became embarrassing for the people actually paying the cheque (Red Bull and Honda) and so they had to go.

But what will come in their place? The sport has become more and more expensive and it was an attempt to slow this which triggered the introduction of customer cars. If the teams don’t come up with a way to make the sport cheaper without upsetting the egos of the other nearby teams that were running already then there will be a hard lesson to learn.

The teams will come to realise that there is something more embarrassing than spending all that money and being beaten by your junior team. It’s spending all that money and coming dead last.

Super Aguri have allegedly announced their withdrawal from Formula 1. Are you sad about this? Someone more knowledgeable than me about such topics (Alex?) will hopefully help us out here, but wasn’t the team created merely because of the backlash Honda received in Japan after they fired Sato? I believe people were refusing to buy Honda road cars in protest. Honda then effectively created a team just for Sato. Is that the kind of team we want in Formula 1? Even if this, or worse, is true, however, I myself can’t help loving Super Aguri. They did amazingly well with what they had, and supplied us with one of the greatest moments of last year, if not the last few years, when Sato overtook Alonso in Canada. We have to look now, however, at who might buy the team. Prodrive?

“Might need a bit of rain tomorrow to liven things up a bit, it will probably be a bit boring” declared Nick on Saturday night or something like that anyway. Maybe because the pole sitter generally wins here in Spain or maybe because as Nick already knew the result, the race had lost some of its appeal!

A fair bit of action though this weekend as the 2008 season trundles into Europe. Not least Kovalainen’s massive crash. It seems like he is ok though which is obviously great news.

But what about the action in the SofaF1 Championship?

Raikkonen was bound to win with all the support he had, everyone put him on the top step for 4 points each. Everyone put Raikkonen on pole too for 2 points each except for Igor and GrifF1.

Nick and Alex were really making hay while the sun was shining, each taking another 2 points both for Massa and Hamilton in second and third. Igor also took 2 for Hamilton and myself and Fourstar 1 each. Fourstar kept his toe in with Massa hanging in to 1 point while Nick kept rolling with a further 2 for Kubica, which I also managed to get, while Fourstar and Alex settled for 1 each.

Surprisingly Igor lost out with Button by placing him too low! Who would have thought that on Saturday morning!

Nick is on a roll now, Alex starts to pick up his pace. The old rivalry from 2007 is still alive and well. The points this weekend more than doubled the second highest scoring round so far!

So after Round 4

1 Nick 12
2 Alex 11
3 Bearded Stew 9
3 Fourstar 9
5 Igor 6
6 GrifF1 4

Fourstar is still hanging in there as the points gap widens out leaving the championship looking like this…

1 Nick 26
2 Fourstar 23
3 Alex 20
4 Igor 19
5 Bearded Stew 18
6 GrifF1 14

Interesting race this weekend, the Renaults were much quicker, but Piquet was having a bit of trouble holding on to his. Alonso was hanging on ok but the motor couldn’t take it. I’m not sure if Torro Rosso’s weekend was worth the effort, especially with Vettel. Whats all that about? The results really aren’t showing his supposed potential.

Coulthard again involved in a familiar looking incident but kept going this time. Webber kept it all together to spring into the points with Button, Nakajima and Trulli behind him. Heidfeld ended up out of place when he took the penalty for refuelling under the safety car. Whats going to happen to that rule? How about that for a poll question?

Rosberg disappointingly retired with an engine problem too.

Oh well at least theres only a 2 week gap to Istanbul.