sofaF1

Willy Rampf of BMW has been talking about trying to make his cars more reliable before Australia.

The BMWs do seem to be running very well at the moment. Reliability is the achillies heel for these cars. We could be looking at a McLaren from two years ago situation very fast but easy to break. But like everything it is very difficult to judge.

One of the most positive things about BMW seems to be their own low expectations. Unlike Honda of recent years (and even this year) where they don't seem to be able to contain their desire for the win - and seem to kid themselves into it every year - BMW seem to be playing a more level game. Mainly they seem to be doing quite well in the tests, impressing everyone else but refusing to impress themselves. And this makes me feel quietly confident in them.

How's that for some backwards logic. I rate their chances specifically because they don't.

I found this on another blog, a very funny alternative view of 2007. A short sample click through for the rest.

Pre-season testing continues in Spain. Toyota are one team encouraged by their winter progress and state that they will be looking for wins this season and the title the next. David Coulthard starts to press Red Bull for a decision on his 2008 race contract. Meanwhile, over in the United States, Juan Pablo Montoya surprises everybody by leaving NASCAR for a return to Champcars after an injury sustained playing snooker causes friction with his team.

http://f1.autohtone.net/11/2007-f1-championshipfrom-beginning-to-the-end/

So Scott Speed still hasn't been confirmed as the Torro Rosso driver number 2 because his commitment or lack of it. You can hear Gerhard Berger talk about it here. It seems like Scott isn't very good at taking criticisim which seems reasonably likely.

But I can't help feeling that this is all a smoke screen, for what I don't know, because they appear to be filming Scott Speed in the Red Bull Driver's Mood Movie for 2007, which strikes me as the kind of thing that you'd only do if you've signed the guy. Especially as the movie is going to be broadcast at the Australian GP.

So with less than a month to go until the season starts, the beer is chillin' and here at SofaF1 we're just getting revved up.

We will have a number of new features rolling out over the next month as we countdown to Australia including from today our new poll. (It's over there on the right unless you are looking at this in rss in which case you will just have to imagine it, or you know amble over to the site and take a look).

But as our regular contributors squeeze themselves back onto the sofa, we want to say thanks for sticking with us during the off-season, welcome back, and most importantly write some bloody comments (surely 'feel free to take part' - Ed).

Thanks for reading,

The SofaF1 Team.

Bridgestone are still planning to force teams to use two different tyre compounds during a race. The poll on itv-f1.com suggests that fans simply aren't interested in this manufactured attempt to produce excitement. As much as Formula One is an automated sport, for most of us this is one step too far towards the artificial. With Schumacher gone, everyone's looking forward to close and equal racing (even within the Ferrari team). Bridgestone feel they have to do something due to the lack of true competition from Michelin. Nothing can recover that particular challenge, but I think without the two-compound rule we could still have some interesting results. What has been emerging from the tests is that some drivers, and some teams, are coping better than others getting to grips with the new tyres. In particular Alonso and Kubica, with their aggressive turn-in style, are struggling, whereas Button is enjoying them. Most of the teams knew Michelin were leaving (probably since Indianapolis 2005), but they can't have had the chance to develop their cars around the new tyres as well as those previously with Bridgestone. So, what I'm suggesting is that just the challenge of everyone on Bridgestone will be exciting enough this year. The race-long endruance of new rubber for some of the drivers and some of the teams will create a disparity that will give us good racing naturally. There's no need to force it. And, indeed, this is a problem in general with many of the rule changes coming this year and soon - the engine freeze and aerodynamics etc. They aim to force overtaking and close racing when previous seasons have shown us it is exactly what we can't control that produces these things.

Sorry, especially to Stew, for two video posts in one day but I really thought this was interesting. At Goodwood in 2006 they had Jackie Stewart and Nico Rosberg switch cars and describe what it was like. Nico seemed to have no problems with the old car and descibed it like he was driving in a lower formula. But Jackie explained that the new systems seemed very complicated and non-intuitive to him. In fairness Jackie is more likely to be honest than Nico is at this point in his career. But on the other hand, it is very interesting that the modern Formula 1 car seems so alien to a seasoned professional.

Was he rubbish? Or did he simply have the misfortune to be the top British racer when Michael Schumacher was at the height of his powers:

"He doesn’t give a shit, You can imagine him saying, ‘Okay, I’m done with F1, bye’ for no reason." - Mr Villeneuve has made his pronouncement on Kimi saying that he thinks Massa is more likely to be team leader. You can read all about it here.

The thing is that Jacques is a friend of Massa's so he's probably slightly biased. And, although I can't find it I seem to remember him saying something very similar when Montoya came to McLaren about how Kimi should get ready to see what a real driver was like. At the time I seem to remember thinking that it was less about bigging up Montoya and more about annoying Kimi and especially Coulthard.

But it might all have a lot more these days to do with making sure he gets in the press on what is the launch day of his début album "Private Paradise".

To comfort everyone who is very disconcerted that there are no certainties anymore now that Michael has gone, I am going to accurately predict the order of the teams for the first few races:

Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW, Honda, Toyota, Williams, Red Bull, Super-Aguri, Toro Rosso, Spyker.

If I am right, you all owe me £10 million.

Nick's comment yesterday reminded me of something that has annoyed me for a few years now but came to the fore at the end of last year. It's Martin Brundle's description of Michael when he was asked if Michael was the best. He would always say that he felt Senna was the best but that Michael was the most complete driver.

I do think that there is a difference and I can understand the difference. Some people when they are asking who is the better driver mean who can go fastest round the track if put in the same car and given exactly the same conditions. But that's a failure to understand the sport. The sport contains elements such as strategy, looking after your car at any given moment, fitness and bringing your team with you so they prepare the car you need.

In fact at the moment I would say you can see this being played out between the two men at the top of the sport. Many think that Kimi is faster than Alonso. But that Alonso is the more complete driver. This is why, in part, people are worried about Kimi at Ferrari where they are used to having somebody tell them exactly what they need.

By the way for those who are thinking, "why isn't it the fastest who wins"? The answer is, "there's a reason keep-y-up-y isn't a sport".

So if I agree with Martin about the difference between the two then what's the problem? The problem is first that he describes a less complete driver the best status which seems slightly backwards logic but secondly it is that Martin always then goes on to say that we can never tell how good he really was because he never had a serious rival.

While I agree that by having a serious team mate means that we can see that Senna was awesome and perhaps the fastest driver ever. Surely if you want to win as many world championships as you can you want your whole team focused on you. You want to get them all behind you so you can go out and win. It's part of being the most complete driver. And it's part of being the best.

As I've been looking at the test times vaguely over the last few weeks I keep doing a stupid double take. I keep thinking to myself. Okay those numbers are interesting but we won't know what they mean until we see Michael's time. And then I realise that I'm being silly.

The problem isn't that I'm missing Michael per say but more that I don't know naturally what the baseline is. Michael always provided that. You always knew that Michael had this machine like consistency and to an extent the Ferrari has been the car to beat (even when the Renault was the fastest we knew it was fast because it could beat the Ferrari).

My point is that with all of the uncertainty of this year causing predictions to be difficult this is going to be the main one. We just don't know how they all compare to Michael. The others don't yet seem to have the gravitas.

I have been consulting with some of my non-internet F1 fans and asking them their thoughts for the coming year. One of them is / was a huge Michael Schumacher fan so I thought her opinion would be interesting. One of her friends is also a huge Schumacher fan. And they have both, independently decided to throw their lot in with the same driver.

Felipe Massa.

But surely, I said, you can't expect him to beat Kimi this year?

Her answer was simple, she said nobody knew about this year. That in the fall out post Michael almost anyone could win this year. But that what she wanted was to not have to change horses very often so when she chose Massa she wanted security for the next five years. And she thought that Massa would be the man to win most in those five years.

Now I've always liked Massa. And I don't think he's faster than Kimi now. But you've got to look at the care and attention that Todt is putting into him and think... Actually she might have a point.

I like the colours.

Is this the worst possible answer a driver can give? How degrading is it to the engineers and all the work they have put into that car? You simply can't say that, and Alonso should know. It will not take much for the attitude to change from 'wow, we've got the world champion in our team let's build him a great car' to 'who does he think he is coming here telling us what to do?'

Also, Massa says Ferrari and McLaren are behind BMW at the moment? Has he been eating some special pasta, or could it be true?

I've been reading a very interesting set of posts over at F1Fanatic. (Prizes for places, not points, Places not points revisited and The argument against championship points (III))

The gist is that Keith doesn't think that the points system helps F1. In fact more than that, he reckons it just gets in the way. His system would be to rank people by number of first places, then number of second places etc. So it wouldn't matter if you'd come second every race of the season - you would be ranked lower than a person who had come first once and never scored in any other race.

This system would, as he rightly points out make people push much more for the win. There would be no more situation where Alonso (as he did in both of the last two seasons) could simply ride out his points advantage. He would have had to have gone out and won races.

I think it's a pretty solid idea. What does everyone else think?

I watched the Superbowl last night and was rather disconcerted by something. Once the Indianapolis Colts had won and the podium ceremony was set up, it was the owner of the team who received the trophy first, then the coach, then finally the captain. Clearly, all anyone watching in the stadium or at home wanted to see was the captain, Peyton Manning, lift it. So why the other two guys? Imagine Schumacher winning a race and Montezemelo being given the trophy, then Jean Todt, then Michael. It seems counter-intuitive. I thought it must be a cultural thing, or that American Football is run by corporations rather than sportsmen. But is F1 any different? Or maybe they realised that they have to give the owner something, and no one would be paying any attention after Manning had lifted it. Perhaps they were just saving the best for last.

So remember my post: Most Stupid Decision ever? where I said there was going to be enforced tire changes between one hard and one soft (one of which was painted red on the side so you could tell what was going on) even though they didn't help strategy and was simply a marketing move by Bridgestone to keep people interested in the tyres? And how it was completely stupid.

Well they've listened to me and decided not to have a red rule.

But they are going to force the teams to change tires anyway, between hard and soft and now they just aren't going to have red on them. So you won't even know what's going on.

There is a suggestion that the teams might have to disclose their strategy moments after the race starts which would be something I guess. But why not just not do it? Why not just leave the fact that the tyres aren't going to be relevent this year exactly that way.

Also on tyre related stupidity did you hear the one about a Formuala 1 commission to reduce costs which suggested that there should only be a limited spec of tyres made which means that there are only warm tires because teams only go racing during the summer months - but forgot that teams go testing in the winter which means instead of 1 extra design of tyre all of the teams will be flying out all of their cars, crew and drivers to Bahrain to their testing which... Costs lots more. Well done everyone - trebles all round.