Formula 1 chit-chat

Felipe Massa sent the partisan Brazilian crowd into delirium at Interlagos on Saturday as he claimed pole position for the third consecutive year at his home circuit and kept his title hopes alive.

To compound Massa’s joy, championship leader Lewis Hamilton managed only fourth on the grid as Toyota’s Jarno Trulli took a shock second place and Kimi Raikkonen grabbed third in the second Ferrari.

Massa’s smooth and composed final lap outpaced Hamilton by nearly half a second – suggesting that Ferrari may well have given him a light fuel load to guarantee pole.

In any event, fourth place in the midst of the pack will not be where Hamilton wanted to start, even though it means he is still on target for his first world title.

The Briton needs only a fifth-place finish to secure the crown on Sunday.

Sporty1 wrote: Hope Mad Max hasn't seen that.

or he'll propose it as the "2010 cost-cutting project"

The F1 car of the future?

With cost-cutting high on the agenda, it has fallen to the Chinese to come up with what they think is the ideal solution to save F1 from itself – a car that costs only $400 to build and is made up of recycled materials.

Cheap and green – at least it ticks most of the boxes required these days.

Brothers Zhao Xiushun and Zhao Xiuguo from Tangshan, near Beijing, have shown that it is possible to knock together your own F1 car using scrap metal and old dishwasher parts (hang on – didn’t Andrea Moda do that in the early 1990s?) – and the resulting ZX01 is now nearly ready for winter testing.

All the intrepid duo need to make the 2009 grid is the small matter of an engine and a bit of technical help, so they are hoping that should the mooted McLaren-Force India tie in not happen, they could be in pole position to step in.

source - http://www.itv-f1.com/Feature.aspx?Type=Gravel_Trap&id=4 4420&PO=44420

Ferreari 'quit' threat........

http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=44417

Brazil to pose championship dilemma for McLaren

McLaren could find themselves facing some tough calls at next weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix, as they look to balance the respective needs of their drivers’ and constructors’ title campaigns.

Lewis Hamilton requires only a fifth place to be sure of securing his first drivers’ title at Interlagos. However, to stand any chance of overhauling Ferrari’s 11-point advantage in the team standings, McLaren would almost certainly need a one-two finish.

“Clearly, we can afford to be more conservative than normal in our approach to Lewis’s race, but we are still pushing to win the constructors’ championship and it would be wrong of us as a team to overlook this fact,” said McLaren’s Formula One CEO, Martin Whitmarsh.

And with another 18 points up for grabs, Whitmarsh is not only confident of taking McLaren’s impressive China pace forward to Brazil, the team could even add further new developments to the MP4-23.

“We do have a number of minor aerodynamic upgrades in the pipeline that we are evaluating for inclusion on our Brazil-spec car,” he said. “As with every race this season, we have brought something to the car - even if it has only been generating a few extra hundredths of lap time - and it would be wrong of us to close down that option for Interlagos.”

With no ‘joker’ engine changes allowed at the final round, McLaren will also have to keep a keen eye on Hamilton’s Mercedes V8, which will start its second race in Brazil. However, having turned the engine down in the latter stages of his Shanghai win, the team are not expecting problems. Kovalainen, who failed to finish in China, will have a fresh engine for the season finale.

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/10/8581.html

steven.seed wrote: How did such an ugly little dwarf produce such a sweetheart

He was helped...

meet the wife!

The motorsport authorities in France have announced that next year's French Grand Prix will be cancelled.

French racing federation the FFSA issued a statement saying that it had decided not to promote the 2009 race for financial reasons.

full text here > http://www.itv-f1.com/news_article.aspx?id=44290

So that's the Canadian & French GP's gone in 2009 (probably forever?) - who's next ??

Jack, you may well be correct, I just didn't want to seem like I was siding with the reds! lol.

It could be taken either way, whether Massa did it deliberatley or not but as you rightly pointed out, Hamilton outbraked himself and cocked up whereas Massa either 1) panicked and tried in vain to regain his place or 2) deliberatley tried to cut off Hamilton which when you look at it either way, it was different to what Hamilton did.

Infact, I agree that there should have been no penalty for Hamilton at all. If you look at the incident of old, i.e. Prost/Senna or Hill/Schumacher, there were no such penalties even though there were blatant ramming incidents.

F1 has gone stupid and something needs to be done before they lose a large quantities of fans and sprucing up the laws governing how the cars run i.e. downforce, turbo's, engine sizes etc will not work this time.

Fans want to see racing not cars driving. It's like the difference between football and rugby, football being for men who get paid too much to fall over and rugby being for real men who take knocks and the odd grab to the balls! 

F1 needs to unsure it is all about racing and racing is fighting for your place in the race without blatant cheating. Anything else should apply. The cars and tracks are safe enough now to enable drivers to take more risks so why not let them.

We don't wrap boxers up in bubble wrap before they fight and in touring cars they are allowed the odd 'rub'against the opposition.

Anyway, I digress, nuff said!

Mike

Replays of the incident show Bourdais tucked in to the right-hand side of the track as he left the pits. With his wheels on the edge of the track, Bourdais was then struck by Massa's Ferrari as the Brazilian sought to overtake. Branding the decision to punish Bourdais as 'ridiculous', ITV's James Allen revealed in his post-race commentary that 'the team managers I spoke to after the race all said that FIA race director Charlie Whiting had briefed them in Singapore and again in Fuji that the car exiting the pits has right of way.'

http://www.planet-f1.com/story/0,18954,3213_4306491,00.html