Formula 1 2010

[Mike]

Brawn bought by Mercedes Benz. This is a shock bit of news on the F1 circuit, I am quite disapointed that the Brawn GP phoenix story is over so quickly. At least they will take a World Championship and a Drivers Champion from their brief 11 month stint in the sport. The team will now be renamed as Mercedes GP. Not only that but Nico Rosberg as their lead driver?! Disaster.

This news also has implications on the McLaren team who will be ending their engine sponsorship at some point in the next six years.

The BBC have a much better article on their website which describes what could happen to Jenson. He is now linked with Mclaren as Mercedes GP is not interested in retaining his services. Vodaphone are happy to bankroll some of Buttons salary if there is a full British driver line up for the team.

[Mike]

The rumour mill continues with Jenson Button reportedly being offered £18 million to race with Mclaren next year. Interestingly Fry from Mercedes GP has stated their budget is much lower than McLaren and they can not hope of meeting that sort of offer. I think MGP budget for the year is £55 million (about 1/4 of the McLaren budget).

[Mike]

Schumacher does not know if he can win any of the first races in the new Mercedes GP team. They are rumoured to bring a major aerodynamic upgrade to the first race which will start on 12-14 of March 2010.

[Mike]

Excitement starting to build about the new F1 season. Quality is expected from alot of the new teams (but not Lotus!).

[mr_e]

I caught an article about Lotus the other day: will be a bit disheartening when they're dropping five seconds per lap, but they apparently got the car together in six months! At least they're more reliable than the Virgin team (...are those train jokes I hear approaching?).

[Mike]

You don't hear then approaching because they have broken down again! (do I mean train or F1 team?)

[Mike]

The Guardian has a great set of articles about the line up of teams for the start of the 2010 GP season. The engines will officially start in 2 days for the official friday practice.

[BarcelonAl]

Bliss! A weekend of rugby and F1! Almost makes up for missing the football on Sunday...

It should be an interesting season, hopefully the no refueling idea will work.

[Mike]

Fernando Alonso manages to lead Ferrari's to a 1-2 victory. It was at the expense of Vettel who lost the lead due to a faulty spark plug causing a loss of engine power. I turned out to be right about the victor (I was put on the spot by a guy at work) but I am glad to say I would have been wrong if not for the spark plug issue.

All in all the hype at the start of the season and the expectation fizzled slighly on the day. There was little (no) overtaking and except for mechanical failures the race became a bit of a procession. It was good to see Lotus fighting to a full 2 car race finish (even through they finished last) and some good defensive driving by Schumacher to hold off a depressed Jeson Button.

The championship table

James Allen review of the race.

[BarcelonAl]

Yeah wasn't great. Not helped by the track which was not what I'd class as technical OR fast. Places like SPA in Belgium have both and can make for tremendous races, whereas that just seemed designed to show off the cars as pretty objects rather than racing machines...shame!

[Mike]

Australian GP is on this week and following the initial friday practice it looks like M Schumacher came fourth. Not a domination but still a good result for the german. Unfortunately we never know what the fuel loads are so it could be that they choose to run a very low fuel load in the practice (compared with Alonso and the like who were way down the field). The fun will start tomorrow with the qualifying sessions.

[Mike]

Lewis Hamilton gets his car impounded after some impressive wheel spinning in Melbourne (not the race vehicle thankfully).

Virgin Racing have requested permission to change their chasis design after discovering that their fuel tank was too small. School boy error there boys it would be a problem if your cars were reliable enough to finish a race!

[BarcelonAl]

Much better this week, some actual overtaking took place!

Bad Luck for Lewis but hey at least he was trying to be positive and attacking.

Nice to see Button on the top step of the podium AND Schumi get a point!

[Mike]

I liked the race this weekend. The rain started the excitement and during the dry periods the drivers kept overtaking and keeping it interesting. There were a couple of mistakes from Mclaren strategist who brought Lewis in for two sets of tyres but on the flip side Lewis is obviously harder on the tyres than Jenson and paid the price.

All in all much better, it was good to see that Kubica gained a podium finish for Renault and that Lotus finished in 13th place (albeight assisted by the numerous drop outs from the top teams). In perspective though the Mercedes GP car of Schumi finished in 10th place. That was a shame becuase he made a great charge off the line - it was unfortunate that it meant he needed a third stop.

[Mike]

The Malaysian Grand Prix is on this weekend starting at 9am in the morning. We will have to be careful that we don't find out the result because we are traveling to see my Dad for his birthday at about 9:30!

Michael Schumacher has come out as saying he things that Alonso and Hamilton blocked his flying laps in Australia and that he expected to reach at least third (without the first corner shunt that is!).

I hope that Malaysia is as good a race as Melbourne. In the spirit of the 2010 calendar I raced in Malaysia yesterday and won! It was hard to qualify in the rain and then race in brilliant sunshine but still managed to win by 20s overall. On a side note has anyone else noticed that the back runner for each race always finishes about 40s behind the leader? I have yet to pass a backmarker - maybe by racing a full distance I could inject some fun.