SofaF1

I’m quite uncertain about the possibility of the cars being fitted with brake lights. Surely it goes against the whole principle of the sport? What I’m guessing, however, is that it isn’t for normal use. During a race a driver won’t need to find out when the car in front of him is about to break. He knows. They all break within a fraction of a second of each other, at the same point of the track, every lap. They know instinctively when to break. I imagine what the lights would be for is an emergency. I remember at Monaco the cars frequently pile into each other when there’s an accident up ahead because they’re not expecting anyone to be breaking then. At a track like that you drive mostly on instinct, not what you can see. So maybe it is a good idea. But then again, like the safety car, maybe it’s just part of being a good driver, being lucky, and getting through tough situations. I don’t know.

Added to this arena are the new lights on every driver’s steering wheel. No longer do we have blue flags. Drivers have a blue light on their wheel. When you think about it, it’s pretty incredible the drivers ever saw the blue flags. Will this change things?

I’m sure Nick will be in with his crazy prediction for the week at some point, but i’ve got a few thoughts i’d like to air before the serious buisiness of predicting the top eight gets under way.

In Melbourne i reckon :-

Webber will be beaten by a Williams

Button will be beaten by a Toyota

A McLaren will break down

A Renault will fall off the track somewhere.

Whatever happens, this race is a bit of a lottery to predict as no one really knows yet how good anyone/any car actually is in full race conditions! Roll on Melbourne!

After reading, hearing, digesting and deliberating all winter about how the 2007 F1 season was going to pan out, I thought I would try to summarise my view on all this info…

…well, that was last week and now the cat is somewhat out of the bag with the championship pole poll being aired on these very pages.

But, here I am anyway, slightly adapted, but hopefully by way of explanation as to my choices for the top places. I’m sorry as you’ve all heard it (or written it) already, this is mainly me trying to makes sense of the vibes in my own head.

I think an important factor this year will be team unity, and from the things I have absorbed I’m left with the feeling that McLaren will present a very united, focussed and determined front, there is no doubt they have the skills and experience within the team and I am sure they will bounce back form this last streak of bad form, but I think with Alonso and Hamilton in place a whole chunk of fresh air has been blasted through the place. Alonso is the superstar driver and coming off the back of double world championships is respected and accepted. Hamilton in his rookie year will be out to learn all he can, could provide solid support for Alonso and being a racer he will be out to prove himself also and go for the wins when he can.

Ferrari on the other hand seems to me to have a very fast, reliable car (always a good thing in F1) but will struggle a bit more within the team. Both Massa and Raikkonnen are superstar drivers and will want to be seen as such, both within the team and to the world. It may well be more of a problem for Massa if Kimi outperforms him. The team too have been used to pulling all the stops out for Schumacher (second driver included) and may well have more issues adjusting to the different setup…

…and no Ross Brawn.

But, whilst dining at a fabulous Italian restaurant in the Channel Islands recently (which just happened to be F1 & MotoGP themed, very Ferrari loyal and full of memorabilia), the waiter tipped Massa for the title, maybe that’s not a surprise! ITV though appear to me to be subliminally rooting for McLaren judging by their new colour scheme on the website!

Bernie has recently said that he thinks the point system encourages drivers to be conservative and content with second place rather than going for the win. I think we’ve known this to be true since they initiated the system. It was developed to reward consistency. As he says, it means there is less overtaking. So it got me wondering: why was it introduced? And who introduced it? I imagine at the time Bernie probably agreed with it. And I think it must have been one of the many anti-Schumacher measures from which the sport is still suffering. Michael was just winning by so much in 2002 that there had to be some way to get the opposition closer. The new points system did do this: remember Raikkonen almost won in 2003, even though he only had one victory. (It would’ve been a catastrophic error if he had won.) Since then we’ve had various other efforts to slow Schumacher down, but what do we do now that he’s gone? Well, we should just go back to the old system. Bernie’s comments are like the first steps in this process (as they always inevitably are).

One of the things that I really miss about the Formula 1 off season is the lack of Martin. I really should get that Martin quote generator up and running (and fix the layout of the site so Murray’s quotes don’t go flying off to the right, and fix the poll so that it doesn’t crash into the text or disappear down to the bottom or whatever, but enough about that.)

Only certain people have that great turn of phrase that means you get quotes like this: Talking about why he usually right foot brakes.

The problem I have is that I knocked my left foot off my leg once [in a crash at Dallas in 1984], so it doesn’t always work so well.

Read the full article here

None of us seem to believe that Honda really do care about the environment. But we’re pretty even stevens about the reason for it! Lots of votes, excellent stuff!

Anyway, A new question for this week: “How many cars will make it to the end of the Australian Grand Prix?”

Welcome to 2007:

Having been quite excited that autosport.com decided to start covering MotoGP*, I’m now very annoyed. Because I was working yesterday I recorded the first race of the season and returned home eager to watch it. However, I made the stupid mistake of checking my email and looking on autosport.com before sitting down to watch it. So, the worst possible thing happened that can happen to a motorsport viewer: I knew the result before I’d seen the race. Some might argue there’s no point viewing a race after you know the result – but not me. I watched it anyway and it was a lot of fun. What was astonishing was the difference in straight line speed between Rossi and Stoner – almost 15km/h, apparently. This sets the season up to be a cracker. It occurred to me, however, what the main difference between MotoGP and F1 is: aerodynamics. On the motorbikes there is very little: in a remarkable way, the rider himself is the most important aerodynamic device (and would be banned in F1 for being ‘movable’).

*Until someone invents SofaMoto, I’m afraid you’ll have to put with me blithering on about it here. Incidentally, the one thing I don’t like about this sport is its name. It seems too modern, and too much of an attempt to be cool, when in fact the sport has been running longer than F1.

Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher considers himself one of the top three drivers in Formula One and insists it is only a matter of time before Toyota wins the F1 title.

I’ll have what he’s having!

On another rules change issue, I was just thinking about one of the tire rules. The rules state that the teams can change their tires at any point up until 3 minutes before the start. Doesn’t this mean that all of the teams will do this. So you will have the teams all suddenly putting the tires on at the last minute on the start / finish line to try and gain some advantage.

I can see this procedure, with a lot of teams stretched because it’s two drivers and only one pit crew, causing some last minute problems at the start of the season. They haven’t had any real experience of it, and it’s going to be all very last minute. I reckon there are going to be some starts with some cars not having all of their tires.