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Formula One, you are so fickle! Except for the fact that it was required to have one on each corner of your car to race, tires did not play any part whatsoever in who won the Monaco GP (not too much or too little degradation for any of the 22 drivers) but somehow the tire issue is again front and center. Unbelievable. Before I go on one my tangents I will say a… Read More
I don’t have much to blog about right now, that will be right after Qualifying. When we have the grid set. When we have the answers to a couple of the key questions about this weekend. Can Mercedes continue their fastest one-lap form and take another pole? Has Ferrari moved any closer to the Mercedes or Red Bull in Qualifying? Has Red Bull be hiding their true speed? Some of these question… Read More
Today the BBC ran a piece titled Red Bull boss on Pirelli tyres: ‘F1- nothing to do with racing any more‘ and although the boss of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz stops short of calling the racing faked, or false he comes pretty darn close. It seems pretty disingenuous to come out and say that Formula One is not racing anymore right after your clock was cleaned by the competition. Where was all… Read More
I know that makes no sense, there were cars on the track, at the end we had a winner and two runner-ups. So yes, in that respect a race was held at the Grand Prix of Bahrain. But was that the race we all wanted to see? I have a hypothesis: what we wanted to see was the RB9 and F138 go head to head with Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso mano a… Read More
Well not to but to fine a point on it but that qualifying session delivered the goods. It had a little of everything. Some fast laps, a penalty, a tire issue (again). an aborted lap, and a nice surprise. I’ll be the first one to say it, “Not to sure anyone was betting on Mercedes or for that matter Nico Rosberg sticking his car on the pole, given how the weekend has… Read More
“Do you like the old-style F1 or the new tyre-dominated F1 best?” Raikkonen: “Makes no difference. This is what we have and you’d better like it or do something else.” I got this wonderfully deadpan delivered Kimi-ism from Andrew Benson’s twitter feed after the race, which at least gave me a smile as I sadly realized that “the tires” were going to sabotage any conversation about the great drives from Fernando, Raikkonen… Read More
All this talk of team orders has got me thinking about another issue and that is the issue of having #1 and #2 drivers within a team. Not because of the Vettel and Webber affair from the Malaysian GP; clearly Sebastian Vettel is Red Bull’s #1, just as Fernando Alonso is Ferrari’s #1. No, this is in response to the problem with the Mercedes boys. While Red Bull politics were causing all… Read More
Well that was very interesting. Don’t think I have ever seen such little qualifying for a gp. I suppose we all know the reason for the lack of track action (not even the back markers wanted to go out in the beginning of Q1). The impression that one gets is the option tire that Pirelli brought which is the soft tire with the yellow band around the outside is not as durable… Read More
There are many things that the prognosticators were wrong about this past weekend. “Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull will run away with the Australian GP.” Nope, the best they could do was THIRD. “Ferrari and Fernando can’t race at the sharp end of the grid.” Yet there they were, ON THE SECOND STEP. (Another inspired drive by the BEST driver on the grid.) “Kimi Raikkonen doesn’t want it enough to win.” WRONG… Read More
AmerF1can 