SofaF1

Well, what a crazy race! I’m sure it had nothing to do with Murray Walker back in the commentary seat, but it does seem fitting that the race he comes back for is a mental one.

It was great hear his tones over the airwaves once again, albeit interspersed with golf and cricket, but as soon as those lights started to come on and the familiar countdown began, culminating in Go, Go, Go! I remembered why I found Formula 1 exciting when I was young. Great stuff.

There were of course a few classic Murryisms, including some confusion about where Winkelhock was as the carnage of the first laps unfolded, but all in all superb commentary for a really interesting and exciting race.

We all suffered here this weekend, Hamilton’s accident landing him down in tenth for the starting grid meant Alex and I ended up with nil point for qualifying whilst Nick and Fourstar claimed 2 each for Raikkonen. But then Raikkonen failing to finish and Hamilton out of the points for the first time this season (indeed out of the top three) hurt us all.

Alex picked up 2 for Massa finishing in second and Fourstar got 1 for Alonso. The rest of the points come from Heidfeld, 2 each for Alex and I and one for Nick, Kovalainen just the one for Alex and Kubica gave Fourstar his last point.

So Round 10

1 Alex 5
2 Fourstar 4
3 Nick 3
4 Bearded Stew 2

Which moves the midfield around a bit…

Championship

1 Nick 65
2 Alex 51
3 Bearded Stew 48
4 Fourstar 40

All in all a classic race, the crazy rain on the first lap leading to a massive car park and some red flags, Hamilton starting from the back, Winkelhock in the lead. Alonso kept it going chasing Massa all the way. Massa was quick on the dry track even setting the fastest lap, but when the rain started to fall a few laps from the end, Alonso kept his nerve and took the lead to sprint to the finish to take his third victory of the year, equalling Raikkonen on race wins. The ten points he gets for the championship are much needed and with Hamilton failing to score for the first time, Alonso moves to within 2 points of the championship lead. It’s great it’s so close, with 7 races to go.

Red Bull came good this weekend, Coulthard did especially well coming from 20th up to 5th, but Webber taking his first podium for a while drove pretty well and managed to keep the car going till the end, which is always important!

The BMWs seemed a bit off in the race but maybe that’s because they crashed into each other at the start and seemed to be just fighting each other all the way round, but still another good points finish for tem in 6th and 7th. Kovalainen seems to be coming good although he had a few problems here and there picks ups the last point.

Wurz has another good run too, adding a fourth place to his previous 3rd and 7th places, it seems like Rosberg does better generally but actually Wurz is leading his team mate on points.

Its going to be close, especially if Ferrari reckon they can win all of the races that are left! Keep it tuned to SofaF1.

Welcome to the Nurburgring-a-ring-a-roses-we-all-fall-off-the-track.

What an amazing race – for once, I watched most of it (and even on the way to B&Q I was listening to FiveLive guest-commentator Murray getting more and more animated in my car. Not that he was commentating from my car; that would of course be mental…)

So as I understand it:

Lewis hit the tyres and then picked the wrong ones; Kimi gets pole then shot down by hydraulics; Massa thought he had it sussed then Alonso bumps him out of the way; Webber a popular third (is he really tall or is my TV losing its aspect ratio?); and it’s all wide open again, as far as theNewbie can tell.

(It’s also somewhat gratifying that with all the zillions of euros spent on cars and teams and drivers and tactics and fuel and tyres, the weather had the last laugh.)

So as I recline on the beech drinking my whisky mac I can’t help feeling that there’s a grand prix coming up. The show carries on without me I guess.

So what can we expect from this weekend? Ferrari look to just have the upper hand, but not by much. The circuit isn’t particularly obvious biased one way or the other. But rather interestingly Kimi and McLaren both have had bad luck (often together) at the Nuremberg circuit. Kimi has only ever finished half of his races here, and is hoping to overturn that run this weekend.

The key question is: “will it rain”? The forecast says it looks pretty likely. Most of the cars will run extra fuel in the qualifying session for safety, and that might mean an unlikely starting grid.

Anyway, I’m off to Edinburgh today and then I venture into the north of England. I wonder if out of all of the confusion of a wet race Lewis might take the victory? As always, you have all the answers!

According to Piers Morgan, who should probably know unless he’s lying, Lewis Hamilton is a “massive Gooner”. I wonder if there is anything else Lewis can do to make Adrian like him more?

If you are like P Diddy who was in the same room and didn’t know what a Gooner is, then it means you are a fan of Arsenal Football Club.

Well it looks like people here think that Adrian Newey can make reliable cars but that he’s just choosing not too. How odd.

So on to the new poll. At the German Grand Prix (or European Grand Prix if you’re feeling pedantic) one of the radio commentators is having a child. This is not like the situation in that Arnie movie Junior, his wife is of course having the baby. So BBC Radio Five have decided to hire a big name celebrity to fill his place. Yes they’ve managed to bag Murray Walker!

So the big question is will you be listening to Murray or James or Neither?

As I’ll be up in the wilds of Scotland I personally have no idea what I’ll be able to do.

I think Nick Fry is the problem with Honda. F1 is supposed to be at the forefront of technology, the top cutting edge. And we know that Honda are a bit behind the times, maybe it’s all Nick Fry’s fault. The emphasis in the following extract has been added (duh):

“The thing that I was genuinely pleased about was what Max had to say,” said Fry. “I got home late on Saturday night and looked on

teletext

and saw that Max had made comments in our direction that were positive.”

Teletext? Really? Join the 21st centuary sometime it’s fun!

So despite Kimi winning more races than everyone else Kimi has been said to have been underperforming this season. But here is an interesting stat for you…

Kimi has won every race that Schumacher hasn’t attended. (It seems wrong because Michael was at France but he was actually only there on Saturday not on race day).

A clearer signal that Kimi is being put off you couldn’t want!

So I was completely off the mark when I suggested the person outside of F1 was Ross Brawn. Apparently it was a bloke in the newsagents that Mike Coulhan’s wife Wendy went to to photocopy the 780 page document. Hardly James Bond as been said. But it is quite inspiring that the guy running the shop decided something was amis and decided to contact the authorities / Ferrari.

This has now usurped my previous favourite thing about this story which was that at the event at which Ron Dennis tearfully told reporters that he would never be involved in dodgy dealings like this and so come in and enjoy the new motorhome over a glass of wine. The wine served was Spy Valley.

So we think that despite Ferrari’s improvement over the last two weekends there are some more serious problems at the Scuderia.

While we’re on the subject of engineers it’s hard not to notice the massive improvement in reliability over at McLaren and the sudden lack of same over at Red Bull this year. Is it simply that both years they are teams behind the curve on speed who are trying anything to go faster? Or is it that both of them have been headed up by Adrian Newey? Is he perhaps somebody who makes unreliable cars? It’s the subject of this weeks poll, let us know what you think.