SofaF1

So, after three races we have three drivers tied on 22 points, one of them being the rookie Lewis Hamilton, who is 22 years old. Only he and Raikkonen have been on every podium – and no team other than McLaren or Ferrari has made it there yet. We’ve had three different winners, and Ferrari have locked out pole position so far. What, then, in this four week break, are we to make of what’s happened? Are Ferrari as dominant as they seemed in Melbourne? Could BMW really start winning races? Is Hamilton the next Schumacher? I had the feeling after Bahrain that people are now going to begin saying F1 cars are too easy to drive. A rookie shouldn’t be able to succeed as well as Lewis has. He should make mistakes. Maybe the car is driving him? You could deconstruct his races: in the first one he held up Alonso; in the second he held up Raikkonen; and in the third he drifted around between the two Ferraris. Were his drives really that impressive? Was he out-performing the car and himself, stretching the limits of speed? Or was he just doing an ordinary job? He was throughout qualifying in Bahrain half a second quicker than Alonso, and we know Alonso’s fast, don’t we? Because Hamilton hasn’t made any obvious mistakes, viewers will remain suspicious of him.

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Famously a week is a long time in politics. For F1 four weeks feels like a lifetime. And because the teams will have all of this free time they will be spending it relentlessly improving the car. Will it make any difference? Well we simply don’t know.

So why does this big gap exist when it never used to happen? I believe the answer is, as usual, Bernie.

Bernie wants twenty races a year.

The teams are happy with seventeen.

He points out how the new circuits pay much more money than the old circuits.

But say the teams the old circuits have character and class we don’t want to loose them.

Bernie says exactly, why not have both.

They say, yes but it would mean being away from home too long.

He says is that your only concern?

Well yes and that if we are away that long we’ll have to have two race teams and that could get more expensive than a few extra races.

But, says Bernie we’ll ban testing. There won’t be time between all of the races, and winter testing is pointless anyway, and it makes the races more predictable. It detracts from the spectacle. Just use that team.

But say the teams the season will still be too long.

Well, says Bernie, you forget. I control the calendar. So I can make the season as long as I like.

But if you make the season longer and don’t have any races to fill in there will be all of these annoying gaps in the season.

All the better to fill them with races.

But won’t the fans hate the gaps?

Well, says Bernie, when they complain I’ll blame you.

So I gather there is a bit of a gap until the next race? As a small diversion to fill the time, I saw this near our house the other day. Who wants to tell Bernie (I presume he owns the copyright on the logo?)

Anyone else have any examples of such blatant plagiarism? I bet there’s an “F1 Chicken” in Neasden…

Things seem to be going from bad to worse in the points scoring stakes here at SofaF1. This is the lowest scoring round to date with a total of 7 points being scored from a potential 80! Nick and Fourstar fared the worst with a massive nil point between them.

Alex and myself take 4 and 3 points respectively but none of those were from getting anyone in the right place!

Alex grabbed his points for Massa, Hamilton, Alonso and Kubica, putting Alonso behind Hamilton even seemed to him to be a bizarre move but it paid off.

Mine were a bit more sporadic with Hamilton, Heidfeld and Fisichella each contributing a point.

A bad scoring race,

Round 3

1. Alex 4
2. Bearded Stew 3
3. Nick 0
4. Fourstar 0

but it tightens the championship up a bit though

Championship

1. Nick 16
2. Alex 15
3. Bearded Stew 9
4. Fourstar 9

Well the general feeling about race was pretty good, loads of overtaking on the dusty circuit, Rosberg all over the shop, Coulthard on a charge and Webber in a flap.

Both Williams’ finished this time albeit out of the points, both Red Bull’s didn’t.

Rubens once again finished ahead of Button, but to be fair Button never really got going this week.

Heidfeld was awesome, His third 4th place in a row. He finally seems to be able to show his talent and use his experience in a car that goes fast enough and keeps going!

Trulli again scores 7th and Fisichella with his third points finish takes 8th.

The race was great, with lots of overtaking, but at the end of it a very interesting thing happened. They went, in vision, to James and Martin for the announcement of driver of the day and James said, “I need nearly not ask you, but who was your driver of the day”. But clearly he did need to ask him, James thought Martin would go for Lewis, but Martin went for Massa.

To be honest, Massa did a better job than Lewis. Lewis was in danger of being caught by Kimi I thought. I was mega by rookie standards of course. But I had thought the driver of the day would go to Coulthard. I remembered, however, that Martin will never give a driver who doesn’t finish driver of the day.

The person who was robbed though was identified by Mark, and me, it was clearly Heidfeld. He was mega. That overtake on Alonso was supreme, and as Mark said, he’s driving a BMW and the McLaren had no visible problems. It’s not one of those fake overtakes when the other person blows up a lap later.

James’ point, no doubt, is that Lewis deserved it because he beat his world champion team mate, and yes it was mega. But it was a topsy turvy race. To my eye, Kimi and Alonso did badly, Massa and Lewis drove to the performance of the car, and Heidfeld and Coulthard drove the wheels off of their car. Sadly Couthlards wheels fell off a few laps too early.

Famine, feast and back to famine again we better enjoy this double hitter while we can before the sport takes a whopping month off!

This weekend has three big factors which may sway your decision. First is that it’s only been a week since the last grand prix which often means you get a replay effect especially because there has been no time to fit any new bits to the cars. And added to which there was a major test at Bahrain in the off season which tends to mean that the cars line up two by two because they have had so much more time getting their cars set up.

Second, there are strong indications that Kimi was running with his engine turned down last weekend so perhaps it might be a different weekend right at the sharp end.

The one thing that might change all of that is this, factor three, it’s supposed to rain during qualifying.

Or maybe you don’t subscribe to any of this. Maybe you think that a certain Lewis Hamilton is due to go 3-2-1?

As always, let us know what you think!

So I’ve been watching formula one for a long time now. And one of the strange things about formula one is that in that time I’ve mainly felt pretty much impartial of the result. I always want the more interesting result rather than one particular driver or another. But that changed last week.

What could it be that caused my change of heart? Perhaps you are thinking that my true patriotic colours suddenly started to show now there is somebody worth supporting. But no. It was something far more sinister, it was SofaF1 itself. When I was watching Lewis falling further and further into Kimi’s clutches I was initially rooting for Lewis. He’d done a superb job to get himself into second place and didn’t deserve to loose it on the last lap. I always enjoy a good overtake but yeah I thought this might be the more interesting result. But then something occured to me. If Kimi and Lewis swapped places I’d get three whole points in the pole poll championship. Suddenly my whole view of the situation changed and for a moment there I was hoping for the overtake.

It was just a moment, but I didn’t like it. Perhaps if I had had a favourite then it wouldn’t matter so much, I’d still be rooting for my team rather than a fantasy championship. Perhaps my fragile method of deciding who to support at a given moment is too weak to cope with such radical bias as having my place in a championship to think of as well. Anyway, it was a strange moment, the only way forward is to see if it happens again this weekend.

Sofaf1 has been strangely quiet this week. I’m not sure why – personally my browser has been having problems with Stew’s posts, though I know Firefox can handle them. Anyway, what’s the problem with Kubica? My question is twofold. Firstly, is there a problem? I hadn’t thought so. I thought, as usual, he was doing amazingly. Then Martin Brundle said during last week’s race ‘he seems to make a lot of mistakes’, and now Mark Hughes on itv-f1 is writing an article about his problems. The media have started creating an issue. As Hughes eventually admits, though, there isn’t actually a problem. Kubica is still faster than Heidfeld, he’s just had problems, probably beyond his control, in the two races so far. Perhaps me talking about it is making the matter worse, but it hadn’t even crossed my mind there was an issue until Martin said so. He does make mistakes, but that’s because he’s right on the limit virtually all the time, and this is still his first season – although people are thinking of it as his second. Perhaps his biggest problem (like every other driver on the grid at the moment) is Hamilton. Once, or if, Lewis makes a mistake they’ll all feel a lot happier about themselves. Mind you, Lewis quite clearly couldn’t keep up with Alonso last week, and he couldn’t adapt to changing tyre circumstances. Everyone was excited he came second, but maybe what we saw was the first sign of a weakness?

Well ……

somehow I netted zero from that race, Fourstar and Alex did marginally better scooping 1 and 2 points respectively but Nick’s inspired selections puts him firmly in the lead after round 2.

Massa on pole, Alonso to win and Raikkonen taking third provided 8 out of his 9 points from this weekend.

Round 2

1. Nick 9

2. Alex 2

3. Fourstar 1

4. Bearded Stew 0

Which leaves the championship looking like this.

Championship

1. Nick 16

2. Alex 11

3. Fourstar 9

4. Bearded Stew 6

Massa on pole was probably not a shock result, although all of us bar Nick failed to capitalise on it. Massa’s attempts at trying to get past Hamilton however may well have caused some surprise. He is obviously pretty eager to show the world (and maybe himself) that he can do as well as Raikkonen, but maybe he is doing too much driving with his fiery spirit and not enough with his head. So far his points tally equals Fisichella (and both of them are being beaten by Heidfeld) while Hamilton, Raikkonen and Alonso have dominated the podium positions. Where Massa goes from here will provide a good indication of how he copes with the pressure of driving towards a World Championship.

Alonso and Hamilton are looking pretty good as a team unit so far though and I’m sure Ron is not regretting putting Hamilton into the race seat.

Toyota has scored some points again this race, with Trulli taking seventh position, adding to Schumacher’s eighth place in Melbourne, but is it just me or do we hardly ever even see the Toyota’s in the race?

Shame about Rosberg not making it to the finish again this year after running so strongly in the race, the other Williams of Wurz though just pipping Webber to ninth place must be pretty hard for him to see, especially as Wurz came up from 20^th and Webber finished exactly where he started.