F1 BLOG

After one of the best final qualifying sessions in a while we have a very interesting looking grid for the start of tomorrows race. With Massa, Alonso, Kimi and Hamilton making up the first four places it’s going to be one hell of a start.

While watching the qualifying I found my self wondering about Ferrari. Everyone has been talking about Kimi being the Ferrari number one but the more I watch the more I think that Massa is actually turning out to be a little better than Kimi, perhaps even a lot better.

It also looks like Renault is really struggling these days. I’m not sure what their problem is but they just seem to have fallen on some hard times so far this season. Perhaps they will get their act together but they better do it soon. It was hard to believe that both their cars were out before the finally qualifying session.

I’m looking forward to tomorrows race. It looks like it’s gonna be a real Mclaren / Ferrari battle!

With Coulthard and Barrichello taking an engine penalty the final grid looks like this:

Felipe Massa
Fernando Alonso
Kimi Räikkönen
Lewis Hamilton
Nick Heidfeld
Nico Rosberg
Robert Kubica
Jarno Trulli
Ralf Schumacher
Mark Webber
Heikki Kovalainen
Giancarlo Fisichella
Takuma Sato
Vitantonio Liuzzi
Jenson Button
Scott Speed
Anthony Davidson
Alexander Wurz
Christijan Albers
Adrian Sutil
David Coulthard
Rubens Barrichello

Enjoy the Race!

It seems that Ferrari is concerned that Raikkonen’s engine was running too hot approaching the end of the last GP. It seems the cooling system was leaking as well.

If Ferrari chooses to change the engine they would suffer a grid penalty. The question is, if they choose not to change the engine will it last the duration of another race with the performance it needs.

Ferrari has already said that reliability could be an issue with their car and I guess this is the sort of balance every team has to work on. Push it too hard and it just might break.

I guess we will have to wait until the next race to see what they choose to do. This might end up working in Mclaren’s favour.

An interesting article over at SPEEDtv.com where McLaren boss Ron Dennis is suggesting that the new Ferrari may have some illegal aerodynamic features that are outside the rules. Specifically he is claiming that the new Ferrari has a mechanism that allows the front of the floor to drop at speed which would give it an advantage.

Ron Dennis says that this would be clearly outside the rules. It would seem that people noticed a rather complex arrangement with regards to the floor mounts on the Ferrari and this has caused some people to become concerned.

Ferrari says if people have a complaint the should talk to the FIA.

I can’t wait to see how this turns out.

Can it be true? Are they really testing brake lights on Formula one cars?

According to a report over at F1-Live that is exactly what they are doing.

It would seem that several of the teams were testing brake lights in Bahrain including Toyota, Super Aguri, McLaren, Renault and Ferrari. It looks like they hook them up to the red rain light.

The speculation seems to be that it may be introduced as a safety measure. Does anyone other than me have the opinion that if you need brake lights on the car in-front of you in an F1 race then perhaps you should not be driving a Formula One car?

What’s it gonna be next? Turn signals?

Maybe a baby on board sign?

Lewis Hamilton was fastest on the track for the last day of testing in Valencia. Almost 7 tenths of a second faster than his closest rival Kimi Raikkonen in the Ferrari.

After running for 112 laps his best lap time was 1m11.119s keeping him on the top of the heap.

It continues to look good for the McLaren package but as always we won’t really have a good idea of how the teams compare until the first race.