SofaF1

What a round that was, our highest scoring round to date, 41 points scored between us out of a possible 80, we finally broke the 50% barrier!

We all did well this week, although myself and Nick did a bit better than Alex and Fourstar, but there were some good points being scored all round.

We all went for Alonso on pole except for Alex who stuck with the Hamilton option, but Hamilton did make it onto the front row so did score him a point.

Hamilton scored 2 points for all of us in the race, which was great but I managed to hold my nerve and keep Alonso in which yielded 4 points for me, Fourstar got one for Alonso too and grabbed another 4 for Heidfeld and Rosberg. Alex had to make do with 4 points from the lower order, with one each for Heidfeld, Kubica, Rosberg and Kovalainen.

Nick and myself also got a point each for Kovalainen, 2 for Raikkonen, 2 for Rosberg, 1 for Heidfeld in my case and 2 for Kubica in Nick’s.

All in all a pretty rock n’ roll score.

Round 13

1 Bearded Stew 14
2 Nick 11
3 Fourstar 9
4 Alex 7

Which really does make things interesting for the championship, I like Alonso have closed right up on the lead, it looked for a while like it was going to be all over, but now with only a few races left to go, it’s wide open still.

Championship

1 Nick 82
2 Bearded Stew 81
3 Alex 70
4 Fourstar 60

Well, a great race at a classic circuit. Alonso really did do the business all weekend and deserved to come away with maximum points. Hamilton too, kept it going strong especially taking back second from Raikkonen. Ferrari had a few issues and never really looked like making much of an impact, except with the wall. BMW again in a strong points finish, although Kubica seemed to have a bit of trouble balancing on his jack! Rosberg too another great consistent finish, but still chasing Wurz on points, Couthard’s Red Bull though got a bit stuck with its wing.

The race is still very much on, especially here at SofaF1.

When you have a situation like the one we had Torro Rosa near the beginning of the season you can’t tell who is at fault. Is it the car or the driver. Normally when one driver is faster than the other then you blame the slower driver. If the drivers are both slow then it’s usually a dog of a car.

Now that Vettel is in the team, we see him going half a second faster than his team mate. So maybe Berger was right to be so harsh on his drivers. Maybe they were just rubbish?

Here is a fact for you, none of the drivers championship hopefuls (all five of them, don’t forget Quick Nick) have ever won at Monza. And for this weekend who the winner is might be the hardest to call all year.

Last year Kubica got on the podium and Nick would have if he hadn’t had a drive through penalty. And BMW have been closer to the front runners than they were last year so they could cause a few upsets this weekend.

Ferrari were faster at Turkey and in front of their home crowd it might be hard to bet against one of them taking the win.

Lewis has been saying that while Ferrari are taking swings at them in the courts McLaren are going to answer back on the track. So perhaps they will be back at the front.

Like I say, it’s going to be a hard one to call. Good luck.

No, not Formula 1, but MotoGP. Ok, so Casey Stoner is actually in his second year, but he did spend most of his debut season falling off his bike. This makes it all the more remarkable, I think, that he’s now leading by 85 points (not as big as it would be in F1, as you get 25 points for a win) over Valentino Rossi. He is also one year younger than our own Lewis Hamilton. At least one difference is, though, that Stoner is almost certainly going to win now, whereas Hamilton still has a lot of work to do, under pressure from his own team-mate, and two in another team, where Stoner isn’t. Stoner has absolute dominance in his team and with his bike, the kind of combination we’re used to seeing in F1 (Schumacher and Ferrari, Alonso and Renault) but just isn’t happening this year. We should be thankful, though, as MotoGP races (or at least yesterday’s) are now getting quite boring when they used to be exciting. Turkey was hardly a stunner, but I’m betting Monza will be…

So if the rumours continue to say that Alonso is going Renault next year, at some point next year somebody will say, “well, where’s that half a second that Alonso said he carried with him to McLaren? He seems to have left it at McLaren”. Even if it’s not true for the whole of the season Ron or Martin Whitmarsh will say it at some point.

My guess is that Fernando really pissed them off with that comment.

Formula 1 has been accused of being boring so many times, that the argument almost seams boring. But what are we going to do about it?

Here’s Alex’s Six point plan to fix F1:

1) Qualifying has three sessions. First two same as current. Before the third starts the teams determine the starting fuel load and submit it to the FIA in secret (not revealed until after the race). Then qualifying takes place, in low fuel, and the order of the fastest cars is the order that the drivers start in. The drivers then start the race with the fuel loads they picked before the session.

2) The cars are to have no pieces of bodywork which allow air to pass between them and the car or that deviate from the form of the car, with the exception of allowing air to pass through the engine, or to exit after passing through the engine.

3) No engine or gearbox penalties, or rev limits (it’s not saving money anyway) the penalties get in the way of the sport.

4) The standard points per race are as follows:

Pole – 2 points (to keep people wanting it, see point 5)
1st – 15 points
2nd – 10 points
3rd – 7 points
4th – 5 points
5th – 4 points
6th – 3 points
7th – 2 points
8th – 1 point

5) You get 2 points for every person that you overtake for position on the track (literally passing manoeuvre) if you simply have a faster pitstop than somebody then you don’t get any points. If that doesn’t get people wanting to overtake then I don’t know what will.

6) The person who finishes the full race distance and used the least fuel gets 5 points. This balances out point 4 in a much more effective way.

As we head into the final third of the 2007 season the SofaF1 championship, like the F1 Drivers championship, could still go 4 ways. Nick like Hamilton still leads but the rest of us like Raikkonen, Massa and Alonso have eaten into his lead.

I almost smiled in amazement when Massa got the pole and Nick seemed to be onto it again, ready to increase his lead still further, but…

Nick only got 2 more points, for Raikkonen taking the second place, points which Alex, Fourstar and myself also got. The race was on.

Fourstar and myself managed to bag one for Hamilton starting on the front row, Alex picked up a couple of loose ones for Massa and Alonso, and got Rosberg spot on. Fourstar did the same with 2 for Heidfeld in 4th and one each for Rosberg and Kubica.

It was up to me though to really keep the scoring going, I managed to land 6 for Kovalainen, Rosberg and Kubica down in 6th, 7th and 8th and with 2 more for Alonso and one for Heidfeld I landed my second highest points tally of the season.

So

Round 12

1 Bearded Stew 12
2 Fourstar 7
3 Alex 6
4 Nick 4

Which really tightens things up …

Championship

1 Nick 71
2 Bearded Stew 67
3 Alex 63
4 Fourstar 51

Good race for Massa, but Raikkonen lost out in qualifying, Hamilton hampered by a puncture, but not hurt as much as he could have been. Alonso closes the gap up, slowly but surely.

What was surprising though, wasn’t that Webber retired, but that only he retired, easily the race with the most cars still going as the winner crossed the line.

F1 is back. And amazingly this year the story that F1 left us with when it went on holiday was so juicey that it was still running right up until this weekend. That’s right we all want to know whether Sebastian Bourdais will be allowed to wear glasses next year (is this right – Ed).

So we find ourselves in Turkey. Already established as a great track even only two years in and this year looks set to be a cracker. Not only will we have the awesome rivalry of Alonso and Lewis fighting it out, but also Ferrari suit this track much better than the last bringing all four of the top flight drivers into the equation this weekend.

At McLaren we have open hostilities between the drivers which might mean one of the driver’s leaving the team come the end of the season but might also mean one of the drivers leaving the circuit this weekend. I’m all for this rivalry playing out because rivalry like this is what makes the sport interesting to me and lots of others. Casual viewers don’t care about the rivalry of the mechanics back in the factories or the rivalries between agents as they try and get their drivers into the best team. They want to see drivers spitting feathers before the race and then go out and push each other to the limit on the race track.

Note to Alonso and Lewis (who I’m sure are keen readers of SofaF1) if you need to stop the other one by way of dirty trick that means you aren’t fast enough and don’t deserve it. At the very least, if you need to push each other off of the track can you wait until the race because a) it’s a lot more subtle and b) we’ll get to see some racing between the two of you on the track.

Over at Ferrari the desperation gong has been sounded and they want nothing less than first and seconds in every race for the rest of the season. It’s possible of course but unlikely. More likely is that they can do this quite a bit in the next six races while MaLaren get tangled up with themselves and fail to finish the race. The key question is whether Jean Todt has taken Massa to one side and asked him to fall on his sword. He might have said something like, “even Michael was a team player in this way in the season when he broke his leg”.

So the key questions you have to consider when thinking of your top four order are is Ferrari faster than McLaren? Are the two McLaren’s going to crash into each other? Are Ferrari going to deploy Massa tactically?

Behind them we find BMW and Renault who have both stopped development on their cars. Renault look in a more precarious position to have started doing that. Red Bull have been trying hard to get on terms with their car finally. Williams and Rosberg finally seem to be getting into their stride too.

Behind there we have Honda who have finally admitted defeat and gone back to last years car (doesn’t that mean that their cars are now customer chassis from Super Aguri?) and we’ll have to be watching to see if Vettel’s three weeks of experience have put him ahead of his team mate.

So your pole and top eight please. And Ron when you’re playing at home you can’t have this:

1 Lewis / Alonso tied
2 All of the other drivers except
DNF Massa / Kimi

Because even then you’ll have to put one of their names first and we’ll know your secret!

At a press conference today DC said what a few have been thinking. He accused Ferrari of deliberatly messing up Massa’s chances at Hungary to favour Kimi. Presumably he was asked to bring it up by his old mate Ron. If Ferrari are found to have deliberately interfered with the qualifying they could face a similar ban of constructors points from Hungary to McLaren.

It was the way he asked the questions that was brilliant though:

“How do we know that Ferrari didn’t deliberately not put fuel in Felipe’s car?” asked Coulthard, adding a mischievous twist to a discussion about team strategy.

“Maybe that was a team decision to benefit Kimi. How do you forget to put fuel in a car?”

Massa, sitting in front of the Scot, smiled uncomfortably and replied: “Yes, but it was not on purpose. It was a misunderstanding.”

“A pretty fundamental misunderstanding,” retorted Coulthard, who was Raikkonen’s teammate at McLaren from 2002 to 2004. “I think it’s a conspiracy to favour Kimi. Good luck.”

How to cause team strife in 4 simple sentences. It’s the “Good Luck” I really like.

I don’t know about you but i had forgotten about Prodrive entering the fray next year. Also i am reminded of the talk all over the place in the last few weeks about whether Alonso will stay at McLaren and what his options would be if he didn’t, well what if Prodrive do go for the McLaren partnership, actually even if they don’t they will still need some drivers, could this be an oppotunity for Alonso to have a team built around him?