F1 BLOG

ITV is reporting that their viewership for the end of the last F1 race hit 4.7 Million viewers. This figure means that 48 Percent of the entire available viewing audience was watching Lewis Hamilton race.

This is a staggering number and really shows how Lewis Hamilton has pulled in the U.K. fans. While there seems to be no shortage of opinion on how good or evil Lewis Hamilton is, no one can deny that he has done wonders for the sport/business of F1 in England.

Now if only we could find another great Canadian driver …

Speculation and rumors are flying that Alonso may leave McLaren at the end of the season. After this weekend’s events and reports that Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso are not speaking to each other it is clear that Alonso is really not happy.

Alonso is under contract until 2008 with McLaren but tensions in the McLaren team are clearly running very high at this point. When asked by the Spanish media if he would be staying with the team until the end of his contract Alonso’s reply was simply “I don’t know”.

When the question was put to McLaren team boss Ron Dennis he stated that this sort of speculation is inevitable but that McLaren will honour its contracts with the drivers and he hopes that the drivers would do the same.

The Renault team has said they would love to have the world champion Alonso back. I think Fernando would be unlikely to return to Renault with their current level of performance and I hope that both Lewis and Fernando can work through their differences and get on with making McLaren the best team it can be.

Lewis Hamilton held off Kimi and his Ferrari in the last 12 laps of the Hungarian GP to take his 3rd win of the season. Hamilton increased his points lead over team mate Fernando Alonso to 7 points after Alonso was moved back to 6th on the grid for the pit lane fiasco during the third qualifying session.

Hopefully the two McLaren drivers can put this weekend’s problems behind them and get on with the rest of the season.

It looks like Fernando Alonso has been taking lessons from Michael Schumacher. In a disgusting display of poor sportsmanship it appears that Fernando and his crew deliberately held up Lewis Hamilton to prevent him turning his final fast lap in qualifying.

Ron Dennis appeared livid as he saw this sad event take place, snatching the headphones from Alonso’s pit board man and marching him down pit lane it was clear he was extremely angry.

Lewis Hamilton had been clearly fastest throughout qualifying and it looks like Fernando decided that the only way to get pole was to prevent Lewis from getting his fast lap.

This kind of behaviour reminds me of a certain Ferrari driver of times past and I have personally lost a huge amount of respect for Mr. Alonso after this incident and I applaud Lewis for his typical low key, let the facts speak for themselves attitude during the post quali interviews.

Fernando, I hope you are ashamed of yourself for this pathetic behaviour.

It is being reported that Scott Speed has been fired by Toro Rosso effective immediately. After all the press about team manager Franz Tost assaulting Scott after both Toro Rosso cars were out of the race this weekend it seems his services are no longer wanted.

Scott gives an interview on speedtv.com where he describes the assault in detail …

“He grabbed me from the front of my shirt, jerked me around, ripping my fire-suit a little bit, and pushed me against the wall. After that, my only response was to back up in the middle of the garage and ask him if he wanted to hit me in front of everyone else.”

It sounds like tempers were running pretty high at Toro Rosso. Never mind the fact that superstar Lewis Hamilton went off in exactly the same place.

Ah well, a little drama in the press is probably good for the sport. You know what they say… There is no such thing as BAD publicity.