F1 musical chairs..

With news that Alonso and McLaren have officially parted ways, the game of musical chairs between drivers and teams is about to start. Which team has the budget to bring Alonso aboard? Which driver will McLaren pair up with "boy wonder" Lewis Hamilton? Will Ralf Schumacher stay in F1? All this questions and more would be unravelled in the coming weeks as teams try to finalise their driver line-ups ahead of the winter testing at the end of the year.

I'm personally quite interested as to where Alonso actually ends up. With Ferrari's driver line-up for next year settled - i don't see either Raikonnen or Massa moving next year, there are only 2 or 3 teams at the most that can afford Alonso's wages and match his ambitions of challenging for the driver's title. I think the teams are Renault, BMW-Sauber and Toyota. BMW-Sauber might have a chance of helping him challenge for the driver's title given their performance this year but Alonso's wage demands might stretch their budget. The situation with Toyota, I think, is the reverse of BMW-Sauber. They might be able to afford Alonso's wages but I don't think they can match his title ambitions. That leaves him with Renault, his former team. The big question is, does Renault want him back?

Aussie GP review

The Aussie GP was a boring race as far as action is concerned - at least that's what i think....there were no major accidents that needed the safety car to come out...that meant that raikkonnen was able to cruise to a comfortable 7 second win over alonso... the only big accident of the race happened when coulthard attempted to overtake wurz but only managed to 'fly' right across wurz....

the super aguri's were disappointing given their qualifying positions.....having started the race in 10th and 11th, they ended the race in 12th and 16th....another team that disappointed me was Honda...after their performance last year, i was expecting a similar sort of performance from them, but that didn't come...

however, the bmw team, i think, did quite well as both cars were on course for a top 5 finish before a gearbox problem for kubica meant that only heidfield scored points for the team...he managed to finished in 4th place ahead of cars like renault and the ferrari of felipe massa....

overall, i think ferrari would be favourites to lift both titles but they would face stiff competition from mclaren on both fronts....bmw could challenge renault for the 'best of the rest title' but i think that it would come down to reliability for them....i don't see any other team except spyker finishing in last place.....as for the rest of the places in between, i think it's still early to call....

F1 preview...

the first qualifying round for F1 for this year has ended and there has been some surprises thrown up already.....to start up my predictions for this race and for the season ahead, i'll start with what's not surprising....

alonso is on the front row, although in a mclaren and alongside him in pole position is a ferrari of raikkonen....given the pre-season test results, i am not surprised to see that the first row is a what it is....in fact, i am predicting both teams to battle for the constructors title.....another result which wasn't surprising is that spyker is propping up the qualifying times.....i don't think that they will score points this season although they're running ferrari engines....

but one of the huge suprise of the qualifying sessions is that super aguri has qualified in 10th and 11th position....considering they almost always finished last or DNF last season, i certainly am surprised they actually qualified this high.....if they can do well in the race itself, i think they may have an outside chance of pulling a couple more surprises as the season progresses...also somewhat of a surprise is bmw-sauber's qualification....they have managed to out-qualify some of the more fancied teams like renault and toyota....another surprise is webber bringing the red bull car to 7th on the grid.....considering they didn't do well last season, it is surprising to see one of their cars this high.....

as for my predictions for the australian gp, i think it will be a close fight between raikonnen and alonso....could come down to pit stop strategy.....wouldn't rule out hamilton who's in a good position and massa though....both have fast cars with pre-season timing to back it up......but i think massa could just edge out hamilton for 3rd place as he has more experience......

over the course of the season, i see ferrari and mclaren battling out for the constructors title with the main man in both teams - namely raikonnen and alonso - battling out for the driver's title.....i think massa will get 3rd place and perhaps and outside chance at 2nd if he races well this season and alonso falters at some point - assuming that the ferrari doesn't run into mechanical problem......i'm not sure if hamilton has enough to secure 4th place due to is inexperience.....i think he may finish in 5th with fischicella probably finishing in 4th....but i wouldn't be surprised if, button can finish around 4th or 5th in table come the end of the season if he can get some good results over the course of the season.....

more to come once the aussie gp is over.....the review of the race plus updated predictions on how the season will progress....

NB: the predictions above are just my views. i hold no responsibilities if you decide to take my predictions seriously.

Shake up at Ferrari....

After Schumacher's announcement that he'll be retiring at the end of last season and that there'll be a shake up in the team....a few days ago, those new team roles were announced on the f1 website....Jean Todt, who has taken up the CEO, wil continue to attend races although not necessarily for the entire race weekend.....Stefano Domenicali will now be taking over Todt's role of overseeing the team over the race weekend....Ross Brawn's role as technical director has now been taken over by Mario Almondo...he would only be attending races if and only if his presence at the track is required, prefering to concentrate on his technical role at the factory...Brawn's trackside role will instead be handed over to Luca Baldisseri......MS on the other hand, will be giving regular technical input into the development program although not necessarily attending the test itself....the reason given is that he would be able to intepret the feelings of a driver.....

With the new roles within the team cleared up, how will the team perform?Would Raikonnen do as well as Schumacher since the 'force' behind his dominance has since moved on?Will Raikonnen be the dominant driver at Ferrari as Schuey was or would Raikonnen and Massa start on level footing?Could the changes help Ferrari regain both titles back from Renault? or will Alonso keep the driver's title for himself and help McLaren to an unlikely Constructor's Championship? I doubt that either McLaren or Alonso will get either title based in their performance last season...As for Renault, they may have a shot at retaining the Constructor's title but the fight will definitely go down to the wire....I feel that Ferrari and Raikonnen could get the Driver's title considering how strong Ferrari were last season.....I can't wait for the new season to start and see how Raikonnen, Alonso and Fisichella performs for their respective teams considering that the three of them are unofficially their team's no1 driver and 2 of them are in new teams......

On another note, summer school is going fairly well......workload is as expected of summer school subjects....would be having two test next week - one is a mid-sem test while the other is the 2nd test out of 3......the mid-sem test is for stats 301 while the 2nd test for phil 101 will be worth 30%....considering that phil 101 marks will depend wholly on how well or badly we do in our 3 tests, i would have to do well in my 2nd test to mantain my chance of getting at least an A for the paper......the stats test will be worth 20% with assignments covering the same amount and remaining coming from the final exam.....

i guess that's all for now.....will hopefully put up a post towards the end of next week....

F1...

The Hungarian GP yesterday was definitely one of the most exciting races i've seen in quite a while...

button getting his first ever GP win in 113 races, button ending a losing streak for british drivers, both renaults failing to finish for the first time in over 20 races - alonso actually retiring due to some mechanical problem, schumacher getting involved in some very close battles with some of the drivers and eventually retiring with 3 laps to go, raikonnen involved in a spectacular crash, a sauber DQ'ed resulting in schumacher getting a point, heavy rain before the race forcing a change in strategy for all the teams and much more....

the action started long before the race started....heavy rains forced teams to look at a different tyre strategy with some starting on full wets while others started on intermediates....it continued right from the second the five red lights when off....massa made a poor start dropping a few places while schumacher made up seven places - from 11th to 5th - by the first corner with alonso and button also making up quite alot of places by the first corner....for schumacher, he continued his fast start by making his way up to 3rd by the end of the 2nd lap but quickly fell down the order as the bridgestone tyres were having trouble adapting to the conditions....teammate massa was also facing similiar problems as he too continued to fall down the order from his starting position of 2nd....

on the 20th lap, schumacher was forced to pit earlier then he would have wanted to when his front right wing broke, forcing him into the pits for a nose change....then in the 26th lap, alonso's chances of winning got a boost when raikonnen ran into the back of luizzi taking out both drivers and nearly taking out teammate de la rosa....the incident brought out the safety car which saw alonso's lead over button cut...as the circuit began to dry and schumacher's tyres began to wear out, he beagan to set fastest laps and closing his gap to alonso.....

then, on lap 51, alonso came in for what seemed to be a routine stop, changing from intermediate to dry tyres despite the track not being entirely dry....but as he came out of the pits, he seemed to lose control of his car slightly - seemingly due to his dry tyres not being up to it's operating temperature and hitting the wet part of the track....and a couple of corners later, after what looked like a wheel nut came flying off, he spun off into the gravel trap, which he later said was something broken in the rear...all this while, schumacher continued his charge knowing that with alonso's retirement, he had the chance to really close the gap at the top....

but as the race wore on, so did the tyres of schumacher's intermediate tyres - to the point that his tyres looked like slicks....with 4 laps to go, pedro de la rosa - standing in for juan pablo montoya - exposed the worn out intemediate's of schumacher by overtaking him after hounding him for just over a lap.....as heidfeld tried to take advantage of schumacher's tyres on the next lap, schumacher's car finally gave up as the car had to limp back to the pits to retire....

alonso, raikonnen and schumacher were not the only big names to retire....fisichella made it a day renault will want to forget as he to crashed out while mark webber and nico rosberg both made it a season williams will want to forget quickly as both cars had DNF recorded next to their name once again this season - their fourth double retirement of the season and second in a row...at least one of the williams have failed to finish in 10 of the 13 races so far, with webber failing to finish his fourth race in a row and his 9th DNF of the season.....

p/s: david, although it was a win for honda, their car does have the colour red.... :-)