F1 BLOG

The BBC is reporting that David Coulthard believes that by giving Hamilton a break into F1 before spending a year as a test driver could destroy his confidence and ruin his F1 career.

I’m not sure that I agree with Coulthard. While it is true that there will be a lot of pressure and attention on Hamilton at the age of 21 and with Alonso as a team mate I’m not convinced that this will by default ruin his career and crush the mans confidence.

Hamilton will also be in the spotlight, for better or worse simply because he is the first black driver in F1. Lewis is going to face alot of pressure and how he handles it could indeed make or break his career but I don’t think that pressure would be any less if he spent a year or two testing F1 first.

I’m looking forward to seeing how Lewis Hamilton performs next season and I think he may surprise a few people, David Coulthard included.

I suspect there is a question that is asked frequently by people new to the F1 world …

How much does it cost to run an F1 team?

As a general rule teams don’t publish their budgets but there are many places where one can find estimates of what the particular teams spend.

While searching around to find answers to this I found several opinions that top teams run on budgets of around $600 Million dollars per season. Others feel that this estimate is a bit on the high side.

Recent reports have claimed that Prodrive will enter Formula One in 2008 with a budget of around $80 million. If a new team, starting at the bottom of the heap needs $80 Million then I don’t find it hard to believe that the big teams could be running in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

There were other recent reports that Williams, despite underperforming in the last of a six-year collaboration with BMW, actually showed record profits of $60m in 2005. I find that interesting because it would seem to indicate that, at least with Williams the entire budget may not be spent and that a team could even run at a profit.

A recent list of spending per team estimated the amounts as follows:

• McLaren Mercedes: $400M
• Toyota: $393M
• Honda : $382M
• BMW Sauber: $378M
• Ferrari: $329M
• Renault: $300M
• Red Bull Racing: $201M
• Williams: $134
• Super Aguri: $95M
• Midland F1: $76M
• Scuderia Toro Rosso: $66M

So I guess for the question …

“How Much does it cost to run an F1 team?”

the answer would have to be … That Depends … But it’s alot of money no matter how you count it.

I was thinking last night about the switch to a single tire supplier in F1.

I’m not sure if this will be a good thing for we the fans. Part of what made last season interesting was the battle between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher as they raced for the championship. One of the things that contributed to that battle was the fact that they were using different tires. From one race to the next factors like weather, temperature and track conditions made each brand of tire perform differently, swinging the advantage slightly one way or another.

With everyone on the same tires next year there will be one less factor that may affect the outcome of the races and thus less of the back and forth as the season progresses from track to track. Time will tell if it is a good thing for the fans or not.

What do you folks think?

It looks like the Imola work has begun. After being dropped from the 2007 F1 Calendar Imola is going ahead with the upgrades to bring the track inline with modern standards. Hopefully the circuit will be back in the schedule for the 2008 season. Imola has claimed the life of more than one great F1 driver so I hope that the upgrades will make this historic track a little safer.

It would seem that dear old Bernie Ecclestone has signed a deal with United Arab Emirates developer “Union Properties” to open a Formula 1 theme park in Dubai. Scheduled to open in 2009, they then plan to open more F1 Theme parks world wide.

I can’t help but wonder what sort of attactions such a theme park would have?

Construction starts next month and plans include conference centres and a hotel.