SofaF1

Okay, I haven’t seen this written joined up anywhere, there are several rumours flying around that if you connect make a perfect storm situation. I’m going to do it first so I can say I told you so.

A bit of history

Years ago Jean Todt said that neither Kimi or Alonso would ever drive for him because they had both snubbed offers of being number 2 to Michael, they both wanted to be number 1 somewhere else. Last year Todt was still desperately trying to persuade Michael to stay at Ferrari, but Luca di Montezemolo had different ideas. He wanted Kimi as Michael’s replacement. So against Todt’s will Kimi was hired leaving Todt to sort out who the second driver was. Michael bowed out, famously suggesting that he didn’t want to ruin Massa’s chances of a drive. Fillipe Massa is part of the Todt stable, he is managed by Jean’s son.

The current situation

Alonso is being sprung from his contract at McLaren. Both Alonso and McLaren are trying to get the other one to back down, Alonso wants McLaren to fire him, McLaren want Alonso to quit. It’s a complicated situation but in the end Alonso doesn’t really want to go back to Renault as much as Flav wants him to go. Flav needs Alonso a lot more than Alonso needs Flav. He will go if he can’t get to a competitive team however. There is only one other competitive team (I believe BMW is closed to him), and that is Ferrari. Ferrari also have another problem which is that they want to bring Ross Brawn back into the fold.

So what’s going to happen?

Jean Todt has decided to go to Toyota. They have problems, he has enough clout to solve them, it will be a new challenge for him, it will be exciting. He’s sick the Luca di Montezemolo seems to be so much in charge at Ferrari now. It was too big a betrayal to hire Kimi without his permission. The fact that Montezemolo now wants Alonso to join would be too much.

So:

• Todt will go to Toyota for next year
• Taking Massa with him, replacing Ralf Schumacher
• Ross Brawn will replace Todt at Ferrari
• Alonso will replace Massa at Ferrari
• Jenson will, surprisingly, be with McLaren next year
• Timo Glock will replace Fisichella
• Ralf will join Spyker alongside Sutil (he brought Kingfisher to Toyota, Kingfisher will go to Spyker next year as they now have the same owner)
• Fisichella will be test driver for Renault

The reason that Massa was able to deny that his manager had been at the Toyota garage is that the person had spotted the wrong Todt. Jean was at Toyota not Nicholas.

Okay that’s just about ridiculously over-precise.

I was sad to see Mark and Sebastian tangle with each other, I was sad for both of them, but especially Vettel.

I know it was probably his fault, and yet he was doing such a good job, for a rookie. And not just a rookie like Hamilton, a rookie who’s third (I think) race this was, who was driving in the wet for the very first time in an F1 car, was facing his first restart from a safety car, was in what most drivers have said was the worst conditions they’ve ever raced in, and who had the decency to appologise afterwards.

Mark was so pissed off he through his steering wheel clean out of the car. And we saw Vettel sobbing in the back of his garage. He knows how important that mistake was.

And now he’s been put back ten places on the grid at the next race.

He’s clearly a great talent. He was leading the race, and he’s only 20. I wager a world championship for him in the future. He just needs to put this behind him.

I’m sure when they decided to move the Japanese Grand Prix from Suzuka they weren’t trying to get a wet race fixture, but once again the wet race does make for some pretty interesting watching and as is often the case the whole field gets pretty mixed up.

I must admit when planning my predictions I did go for a fairly regular combination, with all cars being McLaren, Ferrari, BMW and Renault.

It started great for Fourstar and myself, Hamiton on pole got us 2 points in the bag straight away. Nick got one for Alonso but Alex was left back on the second row.

Unfortunately for me, my points didn’t get much further, the mixing up of the field in the wet conditions meant I only picked up one further point for Kubica.
Kubica came good for Alex too, landing him with all his 2 points for the weekend. Nick got a point for Raikkonen, but it was Fourstar and Hamilton who really shone in the wet this weekend, not only bagging maximum points for Hamilton’s pole and win, Fourstar went on to add one each for Raikkonen and Massa too.

Round 15

1 Fourstar 8
2 Bearded Stew 3
3 Alex 2
4 Nick 2

Championship

1 Nick 93
2 Bearded Stew 92
3 Alex 83
4 Fourstar 76

The championship closes up even tighter here at SofaF1 this week, with Nick’s lead down to just one point!

I must confess I was a bit disappointed the safety car stayed out so long, but there were still some interesting strategic moves being played out, Ferrari did look like they were sitting pretty for a while, but then they kept stopping every couple of laps for more fuel. Raikkonen though had a great drive to come through from the back to finish third.

Hamilton seemed to have all the luck with him today, surviving a collision with Kubica and then Alonso being stuck in traffic after the first pit stops and finally crashing out with nil point to add to his tally while Hamilton went onto win.

Webber looked like he was going to be on for a well earned podium with Vettel, who had been driving great, until he rammed Webber and took them both out. Although I think if I was Webber and threw up in my helmet at the start of the race I would be wondering whether the afternoon was really going to be all that successful.

Qualifying today was quite exceptional (except that ITV edited it too much in their late morning repeat). Despite it going against my personal advantage in the championship, as soon as Lewis started his last lap I found myself rooting for him. If he gets pole, I thought, he really does deserve to be champion. Alonso had been faster than him pretty much throughout the session. Lewis seemed troubled, even Martin Brundle said so. But Lewis was clearly quicker through the first two sectors – he was easily going to get pole – all we needed was some great commentary from James. And we got it! His brilliant ‘there’s a car on the track!’ couldn’t help but remind me of the famous ‘Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over. It is now!’.

On a related note, ITV pointed out that Lewis has been one or two tenths slower than Alonso recently. My feeling is actually that Lewis is faster than Alonso, but he’s losing perhaps five tenths with set-up problems. This is his first year, after all. So the fact that he’s only one or two tenths slower is not bad, but very, very good.

Three races to go. If Kimi is going to have the upper hand over his alleged team mate for next year Alonso then he’s got to have the help of the man allegedly being sidelined to make room. Confused? Welcome to Formula One 2007.

So Fuji is a new old circuit and it’s going to be an interesting one. This circuit has the longest straight of the year and also has a twisty infield section. That straight away sounds like Indianapolis where McLaren ran away with things but weirdly the teams are going to use the setup from Spa so clearly the teams are thinking it’s more like there where Ferrari dominated. Either this is good for Ferrari or everyone has their setup wrong.

The topsy turvy nature of learning the track has been seen on the track. Ferrari topped practice one, McLaren the second. The most interesting thing about this is that that was exactly how things went at Spa.

Massa has been saying some pretty convoluted sentences this week which probably means that he’s accepted that he isn’t going to win the drivers championship and now try to help Kimi win. He better be pretty subtle about it. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a protest by McLaren.

So who’s going to win? Well your guess is on average slightly better than mine. Good luck.

via, Tika, f1network forum:

As commercial rights holder of the SofaF1 Championship via my holding company SofaF One Management (SOM) I must say that while the recent, so called, controversy might seem damaging to the sport on the surface, it has actually meant more people are tuning in week after week to see Nick and Bearded Stew battling it out at the top of the table. I’m sure you appreciate how much it saddens me when people talk of exclusions without thinking what it would do to viewing figures from Spain. By the look of the ip addresses of people voting for Alonso in the poll that’s half our audience.

At any rate I have recieved a dossier from the Bearded Stew team titled “Raw Data” and while the incorrectly configured lookup which caused this whole mess saddens me I think we can all just move on.

I for one have got to get on with attempting to cancel the British Round of the SofaF1 championship. I’m thinking of complaining about the out of date google map entered while conveniently ignoring the fact that there hasn’t even been one for the last few races and I didn’t bat an eyelid.

At Japan in two weeks we’ll be at the Fuji circuit which none of the current front runners have ever raced at (I may be wrong but I think Barrchello and Coulthard might just have raced there many years ago).

So is it more important going to a new race track that you have general experience or not?

Some would say that having experience helps you adapt to new tracks like this one.

Others would say that if you are quick at learning circuits, and nobody having experience of the specific circuit means you are able to use your own natural talent more.

Which is it?

After a full investigation into the Championship total points discrepancy I have unearthed a problem.

To clarify where we stand: All the individual race points declared on the reports are correct, therefore the summary that Alex produced is also correct. The problem lies with the total points calculation and was triggered by a change made retrospectively to cope with the fact that Vettel had been driving for 2 teams, BMW and Torro Rosso.

As I’m sure you will remember Nick and Fourstar both scored points with Vettel when he drove for BMW at Indianapolis replacing Kubica after his huge crash.

These were reported correctly at the time. The problem arose when Vettel then joined Torro Rosso and started racing there. As part of the wider function of the SofaF1 Championship system, I needed to be able to track teams points for the constructers title. So I retrospectively changed Vettel’s name in the raw data to indicate that he was driving a BMW, but it didn’t occur to me to change the name on the predictions table also. Looking back now it was an oversight on my part and I am sorry.

Hopefully when the World SofaSport Council reconvene to discuss this matter it will be taken into account that Vettel drivng for 2 teams in one season is a little unusual and I might be let off with the benefit of the doubt.

Please, Nick and Fourstar, accept my apologies. It wasn’t my intention to diddle you out of any points, although I appreciate it does look a bit fishy as it did help my challenge somewhat.

So this what the championship does really look like.

Championship

1 Nick 91
2 Bearded Stew 89
3 Alex 81
4 Fourstar 68

So if we were to characterise our SofaF1 Championship you could see a lot of similarities with the real season. You’ve got Nick Heidfeld playing Fourstar, underpowered nobody expected too much but he’s delivered over the course of the season and kept up with the bigger names. Nick is up there as Lewis Hamilton, plucky Brit (although he’s from Ireland – Nick not Lewis), leading from near the beginning of the season finally being caught by Alonso playing Bearded Stew. And then you’ve got Kimi playing me, could still overturn the whole thing, but it’s going to take some misfortune from the others.

Thinking all of this I decided to do us a couple of charts to show how we’re all doing. I think it’s clear to see we’ve been improving all year (or maybe the races are becoming more predictable).

Only! Hold On! We seem to have our very own SofaF1 scandal that’s bringing the reputation of the game crashing to a new low! Little did we realise the danger of putting Alonso (Bearded Stew) in charge of the championship. There seems to be a points discrepancy! According to that second chart Nick should be two points clear at the top of the table, but according to Stew’s last post they are level pegging! WHAT? IS? GOING? ON?

Ahem! I think there’s probably just a typo somewhere in one of Stew’s post (I checked I hadn’t copied it incorrectly about three times). My guess is the total is right but one of results has an incorrect score for the individual races – or something! Anyway – let the repercussions commence.

Here’s my version of the scores for handy reference: