Today in press conferences the heat has clearly got to Flav and Jean Todt. Flav referred to Fisi as Alonso and Jean Todt referred to Kimi as Michael. Clearly it hasn’t been the easiest thing to adjust to. You can read about it here.
My favourite name thing of the weekend comes from Autosport who, even after all of these years, are still trying to come up with new puns for certain drivers: Trulli mystified by lack of pace. In this race I’ll take a good pun any day!
The first début Ferrari driver to qualify on poll since Fangio, the first Ferrari driver to win his début race since Mansell, Kimi is looking pretty special out there for a man who doesn’t think the car is actually going that well. Once he gets it actually to his liking what will he be able to achieve? But first there is the question of his engine. We won’t know until Saturday Malaysian time. So we all have to take a giant gamble this weekend. What you think will happen with Kimi’s engine determine what you think will happen on Sunday. But remember we do know that Malaysia is a good circuit for overtaking so even if Kimi is charging from the back he should still be able to do very well.
For the rest the McLaren seem to be running well, and may have improved on last time. BMW say they haven’t been affected by the changes to the movable floors. And Renault seem to have improved on their reliability even if they haven’t worked out how to make it go faster!
At the back of the grid we have to ask if Super Aguri will be able to stay in front of Honda, and will Toyota be able to get ahead of the Williams? Supurb stuff!
A short word about Ferrari’s new sponsor, Alice. When Alex pointed it out I said something like ‘Oh, that’s always been there’. The reason for this mistake was because the MotoGP team Ducati are sponsored by Alice (2004 onwards), and since Ducati are the Ferrari of MotoGP, small Italian team all in red and sponsored by Marlboro (although Fiat are in MotoGP too, strangely), you can see how I was confused. So, yes, Alice are the high-speed internet brand of Telecom Italia and I would like to suggest they pronounce it differently to us, but I’m not sure. Ferrari have signed them up for three years.
This post has been on the way for quite some time, but due to a combination of technical issues and time pressure never quite made it.
But anyway, The long and the short of it is this:
Following on from Al and Nick posts and comments about journalists biggin’ up and slammin’ down drivers and/or teams on the back of the latest results, I’m just as excited about the 2007 season now that it is underway as I was before. Watching Raikkonen convincingly win in Australia, taking pole position and fastest lap in the process has not stopped me from looking forward to the rest of 2007, far from it. Melbourne has been a bit of a taster and I’m left wanting more. Waiting to see how McLaren, BMW, Renault and Williams up their game now the marker has been set. This 3 week gap that has been mentioned has just intensified the pain for the F1 fan who having survived the winter, was teased with Melbourne, then thrust back into a three week wait before the next taste of action.
This sensation actually reminds me of listening to the howl of a lone Cosworth V10 rocketing Minardi’s 2 seater F1x2 out of Clark Curve and down Brabham Straight to Paddock Hill bend at Brands Hatch in October last year. Far from being an interim soother till the start of 2007, this experience only served to heighten the anticipation of the new season and made me long for it all the more.
As you can see, the old Ferrari team gathered together at Maranello today to celebrate sofaF1’s first birthday. If you look carefully you can spot Adrian, Alex, Stew and me. We had a great time, much Chianti drunk and much pasta eaten. As I was sipping on my limoncello I asked Michael why he really retired. ‘You know, Nick,’ he told me, ‘It wasn’t Kimi, or Massa. It was you guys on sofaF1.’
So we seem to think that Nick Fry is the man on his way out, and it wasn’t a particularly close one this week either.
Right then, as it’s our Birthday today I think we should examine one of the fundamentals of the sport. What’s more important Nature or Nurture. People say Fisi is naturally talented but doesn’t work at it, same for Kimi. But what about Michael? His hard work was legendary but clearly the man was talented as well. So which is more important? Tell us SofaF1-ites. Actually maybe we need a poll to decide what our collective name is. Maybe as it’s a sofa we should be potatoes? Although then it would have to be CouchF1. Suggestions on a postcard please… (or preferably in the comments section).
SofaF1 is a year old today, we created the blog on 2nd April 2006, and it all kicked off with this post called “F1 from the Sofa“.
Nick contacted me on the bat phone last night to remind me of the birthday and so I did the only thing I could think of to celebrate: made a random video in 15 minutes. And here it is:
I really hope the next year is a good as this one has been, the season’s already got off to a flying start! Now I think about it I was probably a wee bit premature with my post, Sofa So Good.
Anyway, cheers for sticking with us, hope you can stick around for the next one.
I don’t know about you, but I feel that there is something missing from this weekend. It’s been two weeks since Australia, and I’m ready for another Grand Prix. How about you? This whole ‘three weeks’ thing seems to be getting out of hand. I have a vague, and probably inaccurate, memory of there only being one three week break in the summer in the old days. Now there seem to be far too many long breaks: there is almost a month from Bahrain to Spain, then three weeks after Hungary. In place of this we also seem to have more races within a week of each other, when it used to be just Britain and France. I think I’d prefer every two weeks, rather than randomly short and long periods. But what are we supposed to do on weekends like this? The F1 fan’s brain begins to get nervous, he starts to sweat, he sits on his sofa on Sunday afternoon watching a blank screen for two hours. Something needs to be done to help these poor people.
So according to my secret sources Ferrari will announce that they will have to replace Kimi’s engine before the Malaysian Grand Prix. So we will likely see Kimi charging from the back, something we know all too well that he’s very good at doing. Lets not be surprised if this is an opportunity for Massa to win while the McLaren is still bedding down. Also don’t be surprised to see Kimi doing a place or two better at the charging than Massa did.
So the result of our Poll (a day late, sorry about that):
And we can see that the one thing that everyone is agreed on is that Lewis Hamilton isn’t the new Button. Most people think he could be the next Hakkinen which is pretty good for a rookie. This is the most in agreement the readers of SofaF1 have ever been. So we’re probably right. Although I, rather madly, voted for him to be the next Schumacher. We’ll check back in a few years and see if I was right.
Anyway, new question for the season, who is going to be the first to be fired this season?
SofaF1 