SofaF1

Robert gets Pole position finally and all Peter Windsor can ask him about is his diet!

Perhaps everyone has missed it and at the end of tomorrow we will have seen wins from McLaren, Ferrari and BMW?

If Lewis and Kimi drive into each other off the line then Robert could be sitting pretty* at the top of the table.

I have a funny feeling Kimi has a boatload of fuel on board, but listening to Lewis talk about strategy he might well too!

*Well not exactly pretty – I mean have you seen his conk!

So another race weekend is upon us and as the Times had it yesterday, “Don’t mention the phwoar”.

On the track you’d probably expect the Ferrari’s to go well here this weekend. They often do Massa got pole, fastest lap and won last year and they and Toyota were the only teams to test here during the off season. But actually it looks like Ferrari and McLaren might have traded circuits this year as each have shifted their wheelbases. So all is not certain.

The only thing that is crucial is that Massa get of the marks. If he doesn’t score any points before F1 reaches Europe his credibility will have taken a huge knock. Even Michael Schumacher (normally a fan) has said that Massa has already used up all of his jokers and he kind of reminded everyone that he’s always really preferred Vettel. I’m sure this has made Massa feel no pressure at all going into this weekend.

But where will everyone shake out? That’s the question for all of you. Qualifying is at 11:10 am BST tomorrow and before then we want to know your Pole Man and your prediction of the top eight for the race. Good luck.

The News of the World is reporting today that Max Mosley has been caught in a sex scandal.

F1 boss Max Mosley has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers

Obviously until the facts are in… Well… It’s never been known for the News Of the World to just make something up has it?

McLaren put to back of pit lane

McLaren will have their pit box at the back of the pit lane for the Bahrain grand prix.

“Bahrain organisers had expected McLaren to take a similar position [fifth] at Sakhir but said on Sunday they had been forced to make a late change after being told by Formula One Management that would not be the case.”

Interesting… What with the qualifying changes and this I wonder if it will cause trouble for McLaren on Saturday?

If the first race of the season was hard to predict then the second wasn’t much easier. Our points haul in total was pretty meagre with only 22 points being earned out of a possible 120! Exactly the same as Melbourne!

Alex and GrifF1 hit the big time with Raikkonen’s win earning them 4 points each. Igor had 2 for Kubica’s second place and I got 2 for Kovalainen’s third place but again all the rest of the points were singles picked up here and there.

Fourstar, Nick and myself all got one for Raikkonen. We may have been a bit cautious there! Igor, Nick and Fourstar took one each for Kovalainen, who has had quite a good start at McLaren.

Nick and GrifF1 got one each for Alonso who made it into the points again and Coulthard, who although finishing outside the points was close enough to net Igor and Alex a final point each.

The low points scoring does indicate that the top eight are quite difficult to pick, there isn’t a clear pattern emerging yet with 11 drivers claiming points so far. Which makes the championship pretty tight both for them and us!

So Round 2 gives Alex a boost

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

but not quite enough yet!

2008 Championship

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

A pretty clean race all in all, after the carnage of Melbourne. Disappointing to see Bourdais and Glock out so early in the race, and Vettel too later on. Critical off road excursion for Massa too. He is looking a bit on the back foot for a championship challenge already, especially with Heidfeld matching Raikkonen for points at this stage and Kubica pretty close behind. Good to see Webber in the points too after Melbourne.

Roll on Bahrain.

I think we’ve spoken on this blog several times about what can be done to improve qualifying but I’ve started to realise an underlying nagging problem. I’m not sure I know what qualifying is for?

In the old days qualifying used to be a method for ensuring that all of the cars were suitable for racing on Sunday. It also was a chance to see the cars running at their absolute optimum flat out. The only way to get the cars to run flat out was to give the teams and drivers a something worthwhile to compete for grid position. But what is qualifying for now? It has almost become a separate event and we have lost the principle aims of qualifying. You can no longer fail to qualify, and the spectators don’t get to see an ultimate fastest lap because of qualifying with race fuel.

Why was race fuel introduced? Apparently it was introduced to spice up the show and to make the grid order occasionally erratic. I’m not sure it has been totally effective at this. What seems to happen is that things are erratic and uncertain for the first few races of a season, when these kinds of rules are introduced, and then after a while everything returns to normal.

The simplest option would be to either return to a free for all qualifying format like in the old days – which will result in most of the qualifying session being sat out by competitors. Or perhaps a preferable option for the TV audience which is that we stick with what we have now but have the final session be like sessions 1 and 2 with no race fuel.

The problem is that this leaves us with the grid order being almost certainly fastest at the the front slowest at the back and no overtaking. I must admit to being a fan of the reverse championship grids suggested here last year and most recently by Patrick Head. I understand some people think that they aren’t pure and some people think cars will get stuck behind other drivers but what we have now is non-pure. Race fuel confuses things, Kimi was fastest last week but opted for more fuel. That’s a pretty confusing state of affairs which points to the increased irrelevance of qualifying. And I’m pretty sure that the teams would suddenly wake up to the problems of overtaking a slower car. Aerodynamic simplification would have to happen and quickly because it would suddenly be in the teams best interests.

But what would we do on Saturday? Bernie won’t be able to sell all of those precious tickets – he’d never allow it. Unless…

What if qualifying on Saturday was a pure qualifying, no race fuel. Just the fastest cars going as fast as they can. I personally would still go for the three sessions and just have the third one be without fuel. It means people are racing the whole time.

But why would drivers go quickly? Simple. We’ll give them points:

1st – 5 points
2nd – 4 points
3rd – 3 points
4th – 2 points
5th – 1 point

This would throw up one weird possibility that qualifying well on Saturday could move you backwards on the grid on Sunday. But I think that would be the exception rather than the rule.

What do you think? Too radical?

I believe some of you read F1Fanatic and I spotted this interview (on londonist.com) with the chap who runs it:

Keith Collantine, F1Fanatic

You may or may not agree with him!

For those of you who want to watch the race again and try and work out exactly what happened and when, but can’t quite face all that fast forwarding and so on check out VisionF1 as recommended by Clive (two mentions in a week for him!)

It shows you an overhead view of the track, a blob for each driver and you can play the races at incredible speeds. It’s great for working out what happened to a backmarker the tv pictures ignored.

The BBC have won back the rights to F1 from next year.

Will this mean the end of James Allen?

I hope it won’t mean the end of Martin Brundle. If the BBC haven’t poached him I will be very disapointed.

The lack of adverts will be awesome though!