sofaF1

A town in Sussex has renamed itself Lewis in Lewis Hamilton's honor because of his unique contribution to Formula 1. And they say the hype's gone too far? I say not far enough. I think we should rename Britain.

Okay so I may have made some of that up. The other week I was predicting to some of my non formula one fan friends that by the end of the summer they would all be drinking Bulmers instead of Magners and watching Formula 1 instead of cricket. I even made a bet about it.

After the grand prix the friend I'd laid my five pence bet with contacted me to say, "you b@rstard you didn't tell me one of the English chaps was actually quite good".

This told me two things first that this friend doesn't listen very well because I had actually explained my reasoning at the time of the bet. And second that I was right. If this guy knew that an Englishman was doing well in Formula 1 then the story had properly broken out.

Often a formula one season can come and go and some of my friends won't know who won. But this was just an individual race, Lewis hadn't even won and yet he was on the front page of all of the news papers*.

So yes I think Ron does have to be careful with him. Lewis is fast and people seem to be fascinated by him. And if he says, "I need to concentrate on the grid" then I can see why Ron will let him. I wish he did force him to talk to the fans because I too love the grid walk. But if he doesn't want it then I can understand why Ron would let him off.

*As a little aside sport should never be on the front of a newspaper. On the day that England won the World Cup of Football back in 1966 the story didn't make the front page of any of the newspapers it was on the back like normal.

Except for MotoGP, the only other sport besides F1 that I watch with any modicum of regularity is Baseball (that of the 'cap' fame). It occurred to me that our two sports are similar in many respects. The amount of money spent on players, teams, and branding is phenomenal. More interesting is the level of secrecy. As in F1, Baseball teams attempt to maintain the secrecy of their performance as long as possible. I was reminded of this by the new Boston Red Sox signing Daisuke Matsuzaka: apparently he throws a 'gyro' ball, but no one has really been able to figure it out yet. Is it a change up? A fast ball? A slider that doesn't slide? Or a nothing ball? The bluff and counter-bluff that went on pre-season about this seemed pretty similar to some of the stuff we hear from F1 teams. Beside this rivalry, however, is also a friendship between all the teams, in the same way you'll see F1 mechanics and team managers mingling indiscriminately. Players will leave their dugout pre-game to go say hello to players on the opposing side, and runners on base will chat and joke with fielders in-between pitches. Of course, you could say that all sports are like this, or all people, but then that wouldn't make a very interesting post. For no other reason than I like the colour green, I support the Oakland Athletics.

Well, not really, but it's interesting what Eddie Jordan says about Ron Dennis being over-protective of Hamilton. This is exactly what I thought when I saw Dennis huddling round Hamilton on the Melbourne grid, and Martin being forced to keep his distance. I think, in fact, I laughed: what tips did Dennis have to offer about driving Albert Park? Yes, Dennis could help him with managing the media, but does he know how to drive a current F1 car? That was my main problem with the situation: Hamilton needed to be talking to his mechanics about how the car will behave, or an ex-driver (like Martin), not a team manager. But Jordan's point is good too: it isolates the fans. If Martin Brundle can't speak to Hamilton, it feels like no one can. I think his grid-walk is one of the greatest things about the media coverage of the sport. When he talks to drivers on the grid it is literally minutes before they start racing - and you sense that immediacy, and often the friendship between him and them, which radiates onto the audience. Schumacher would never do it, and it was always like a silent, bitter place on the grid. Now, I think, Alonso is starting to do the same thing, which is a shame. Anyway, the better thing is surely for Hamilton to be exposed to everything and see how he copes. Everyone else has had to. It's part of being a driver.

So, after three races we have three drivers tied on 22 points, one of them being the rookie Lewis Hamilton, who is 22 years old. Only he and Raikkonen have been on every podium - and no team other than McLaren or Ferrari has made it there yet. We've had three different winners, and Ferrari have locked out pole position so far. What, then, in this four week break, are we to make of what's happened? Are Ferrari as dominant as they seemed in Melbourne? Could BMW really start winning races? Is Hamilton the next Schumacher? I had the feeling after Bahrain that people are now going to begin saying F1 cars are too easy to drive. A rookie shouldn't be able to succeed as well as Lewis has. He should make mistakes. Maybe the car is driving him? You could deconstruct his races: in the first one he held up Alonso; in the second he held up Raikkonen; and in the third he drifted around between the two Ferraris. Were his drives really that impressive? Was he out-performing the car and himself, stretching the limits of speed? Or was he just doing an ordinary job? He was throughout qualifying in Bahrain half a second quicker than Alonso, and we know Alonso's fast, don't we? Because Hamilton hasn't made any obvious mistakes, viewers will remain suspicious of him.

Pole Position Commercial! (Atari)
via AutoBlog via F1Fanatic

Famously a week is a long time in politics. For F1 four weeks feels like a lifetime. And because the teams will have all of this free time they will be spending it relentlessly improving the car. Will it make any difference? Well we simply don't know.

So why does this big gap exist when it never used to happen? I believe the answer is, as usual, Bernie.

Bernie wants twenty races a year.

The teams are happy with seventeen.

He points out how the new circuits pay much more money than the old circuits.

But say the teams the old circuits have character and class we don't want to loose them.

Bernie says exactly, why not have both.

They say, yes but it would mean being away from home too long.

He says is that your only concern?

Well yes and that if we are away that long we'll have to have two race teams and that could get more expensive than a few extra races.

But, says Bernie we'll ban testing. There won't be time between all of the races, and winter testing is pointless anyway, and it makes the races more predictable. It detracts from the spectacle. Just use that team.

But say the teams the season will still be too long.

Well, says Bernie, you forget. I control the calendar. So I can make the season as long as I like.

But if you make the season longer and don't have any races to fill in there will be all of these annoying gaps in the season.

All the better to fill them with races.

But won't the fans hate the gaps?

Well, says Bernie, when they complain I'll blame you.

So I gather there is a bit of a gap until the next race? As a small diversion to fill the time, I saw this near our house the other day. Who wants to tell Bernie (I presume he owns the copyright on the logo?)

Anyone else have any examples of such blatant plagiarism? I bet there's an "F1 Chicken" in Neasden...

Things seem to be going from bad to worse in the points scoring stakes here at SofaF1. This is the lowest scoring round to date with a total of 7 points being scored from a potential 80! Nick and Fourstar fared the worst with a massive nil point between them.

Alex and myself take 4 and 3 points respectively but none of those were from getting anyone in the right place!

Alex grabbed his points for Massa, Hamilton, Alonso and Kubica, putting Alonso behind Hamilton even seemed to him to be a bizarre move but it paid off.

Mine were a bit more sporadic with Hamilton, Heidfeld and Fisichella each contributing a point.

A bad scoring race,

Round 3

1. Alex 4
2. Bearded Stew 3
3. Nick 0
4. Fourstar 0


but it tightens the championship up a bit though


Championship

1. Nick 16
2. Alex 15
3. Bearded Stew 9
4. Fourstar 9


Well the general feeling about race was pretty good, loads of overtaking on the dusty circuit, Rosberg all over the shop, Coulthard on a charge and Webber in a flap.

Both Williams' finished this time albeit out of the points, both Red Bull's didn't.

Rubens once again finished ahead of Button, but to be fair Button never really got going this week.

Heidfeld was awesome, His third 4th place in a row. He finally seems to be able to show his talent and use his experience in a car that goes fast enough and keeps going!

Trulli again scores 7th and Fisichella with his third points finish takes 8th.

The race was great, with lots of overtaking, but at the end of it a very interesting thing happened. They went, in vision, to James and Martin for the announcement of driver of the day and James said, "I need nearly not ask you, but who was your driver of the day". But clearly he did need to ask him, James thought Martin would go for Lewis, but Martin went for Massa.

To be honest, Massa did a better job than Lewis. Lewis was in danger of being caught by Kimi I thought. I was mega by rookie standards of course. But I had thought the driver of the day would go to Coulthard. I remembered, however, that Martin will never give a driver who doesn't finish driver of the day.

The person who was robbed though was identified by Mark, and me, it was clearly Heidfeld. He was mega. That overtake on Alonso was supreme, and as Mark said, he's driving a BMW and the McLaren had no visible problems. It's not one of those fake overtakes when the other person blows up a lap later.

James' point, no doubt, is that Lewis deserved it because he beat his world champion team mate, and yes it was mega. But it was a topsy turvy race. To my eye, Kimi and Alonso did badly, Massa and Lewis drove to the performance of the car, and Heidfeld and Coulthard drove the wheels off of their car. Sadly Couthlards wheels fell off a few laps too early.

Famine, feast and back to famine again we better enjoy this double hitter while we can before the sport takes a whopping month off!

This weekend has three big factors which may sway your decision. First is that it's only been a week since the last grand prix which often means you get a replay effect especially because there has been no time to fit any new bits to the cars. And added to which there was a major test at Bahrain in the off season which tends to mean that the cars line up two by two because they have had so much more time getting their cars set up.

Second, there are strong indications that Kimi was running with his engine turned down last weekend so perhaps it might be a different weekend right at the sharp end.

The one thing that might change all of that is this, factor three, it's supposed to rain during qualifying.

Or maybe you don't subscribe to any of this. Maybe you think that a certain Lewis Hamilton is due to go 3-2-1?

As always, let us know what you think!

So I've been watching formula one for a long time now. And one of the strange things about formula one is that in that time I've mainly felt pretty much impartial of the result. I always want the more interesting result rather than one particular driver or another. But that changed last week.

What could it be that caused my change of heart? Perhaps you are thinking that my true patriotic colours suddenly started to show now there is somebody worth supporting. But no. It was something far more sinister, it was SofaF1 itself. When I was watching Lewis falling further and further into Kimi's clutches I was initially rooting for Lewis. He'd done a superb job to get himself into second place and didn't deserve to loose it on the last lap. I always enjoy a good overtake but yeah I thought this might be the more interesting result. But then something occured to me. If Kimi and Lewis swapped places I'd get three whole points in the pole poll championship. Suddenly my whole view of the situation changed and for a moment there I was hoping for the overtake.

It was just a moment, but I didn't like it. Perhaps if I had had a favourite then it wouldn't matter so much, I'd still be rooting for my team rather than a fantasy championship. Perhaps my fragile method of deciding who to support at a given moment is too weak to cope with such radical bias as having my place in a championship to think of as well. Anyway, it was a strange moment, the only way forward is to see if it happens again this weekend.

Sofaf1 has been strangely quiet this week. I'm not sure why - personally my browser has been having problems with Stew's posts, though I know Firefox can handle them. Anyway, what's the problem with Kubica? My question is twofold. Firstly, is there a problem? I hadn't thought so. I thought, as usual, he was doing amazingly. Then Martin Brundle said during last week's race 'he seems to make a lot of mistakes', and now Mark Hughes on itv-f1 is writing an article about his problems. The media have started creating an issue. As Hughes eventually admits, though, there isn't actually a problem. Kubica is still faster than Heidfeld, he's just had problems, probably beyond his control, in the two races so far. Perhaps me talking about it is making the matter worse, but it hadn't even crossed my mind there was an issue until Martin said so. He does make mistakes, but that's because he's right on the limit virtually all the time, and this is still his first season - although people are thinking of it as his second. Perhaps his biggest problem (like every other driver on the grid at the moment) is Hamilton. Once, or if, Lewis makes a mistake they'll all feel a lot happier about themselves. Mind you, Lewis quite clearly couldn't keep up with Alonso last week, and he couldn't adapt to changing tyre circumstances. Everyone was excited he came second, but maybe what we saw was the first sign of a weakness?

Well ……

somehow I netted zero from that race, Fourstar and Alex did marginally better scooping 1 and 2 points respectively but Nick's inspired selections puts him firmly in the lead after round 2.

Massa on pole, Alonso to win and Raikkonen taking third provided 8 out of his 9 points from this weekend.

Round 2

1. Nick 9

2. Alex 2

3. Fourstar 1

4. Bearded Stew 0

Which leaves the championship looking like this.

Championship

1. Nick 16

2. Alex 11

3. Fourstar 9

4. Bearded Stew 6

Massa on pole was probably not a shock result, although all of us bar Nick failed to capitalise on it. Massa's attempts at trying to get past Hamilton however may well have caused some surprise. He is obviously pretty eager to show the world (and maybe himself) that he can do as well as Raikkonen, but maybe he is doing too much driving with his fiery spirit and not enough with his head. So far his points tally equals Fisichella (and both of them are being beaten by Heidfeld) while Hamilton, Raikkonen and Alonso have dominated the podium positions. Where Massa goes from here will provide a good indication of how he copes with the pressure of driving towards a World Championship.

Alonso and Hamilton are looking pretty good as a team unit so far though and I'm sure Ron is not regretting putting Hamilton into the race seat.

Toyota has scored some points again this race, with Trulli taking seventh position, adding to Schumacher's eighth place in Melbourne, but is it just me or do we hardly ever even see the Toyota's in the race?

Shame about Rosberg not making it to the finish again this year after running so strongly in the race, the other Williams of Wurz though just pipping Webber to ninth place must be pretty hard for him to see, especially as Wurz came up from 20^th and Webber finished exactly where he started.

Today in press conferences the heat has clearly got to Flav and Jean Todt. Flav referred to Fisi as Alonso and Jean Todt referred to Kimi as Michael. Clearly it hasn't been the easiest thing to adjust to. You can read about it here.

My favourite name thing of the weekend comes from Autosport who, even after all of these years, are still trying to come up with new puns for certain drivers: Trulli mystified by lack of pace. In this race I'll take a good pun any day!

The first début Ferrari driver to qualify on poll since Fangio, the first Ferrari driver to win his début race since Mansell, Kimi is looking pretty special out there for a man who doesn't think the car is actually going that well. Once he gets it actually to his liking what will he be able to achieve? But first there is the question of his engine. We won't know until Saturday Malaysian time. So we all have to take a giant gamble this weekend. What you think will happen with Kimi's engine determine what you think will happen on Sunday. But remember we do know that Malaysia is a good circuit for overtaking so even if Kimi is charging from the back he should still be able to do very well.

For the rest the McLaren seem to be running well, and may have improved on last time. BMW say they haven't been affected by the changes to the movable floors. And Renault seem to have improved on their reliability even if they haven't worked out how to make it go faster!

At the back of the grid we have to ask if Super Aguri will be able to stay in front of Honda, and will Toyota be able to get ahead of the Williams? Supurb stuff!

A short word about Ferrari's new sponsor, Alice. When Alex pointed it out I said something like 'Oh, that's always been there'. The reason for this mistake was because the MotoGP team Ducati are sponsored by Alice (2004 onwards), and since Ducati are the Ferrari of MotoGP, small Italian team all in red and sponsored by Marlboro (although Fiat are in MotoGP too, strangely), you can see how I was confused. So, yes, Alice are the high-speed internet brand of Telecom Italia and I would like to suggest they pronounce it differently to us, but I'm not sure. Ferrari have signed them up for three years.

This post has been on the way for quite some time, but due to a combination of technical issues and time pressure never quite made it.

But anyway, The long and the short of it is this:

Following on from Al and Nick posts and comments about journalists biggin' up and slammin' down drivers and/or teams on the back of the latest results, I'm just as excited about the 2007 season now that it is underway as I was before. Watching Raikkonen convincingly win in Australia, taking pole position and fastest lap in the process has not stopped me from looking forward to the rest of 2007, far from it. Melbourne has been a bit of a taster and I'm left wanting more. Waiting to see how McLaren, BMW, Renault and Williams up their game now the marker has been set. This 3 week gap that has been mentioned has just intensified the pain for the F1 fan who having survived the winter, was teased with Melbourne, then thrust back into a three week wait before the next taste of action.

This sensation actually reminds me of listening to the howl of a lone Cosworth V10 rocketing Minardi's 2 seater F1x2 out of Clark Curve and down Brabham Straight to Paddock Hill bend at Brands Hatch in October last year. Far from being an interim soother till the start of 2007, this experience only served to heighten the anticipation of the new season and made me long for it all the more.

As you can see, the old Ferrari team gathered together at Maranello today to celebrate sofaF1's first birthday. If you look carefully you can spot Adrian, Alex, Stew and me. We had a great time, much Chianti drunk and much pasta eaten. As I was sipping on my limoncello I asked Michael why he really retired. 'You know, Nick,' he told me, 'It wasn't Kimi, or Massa. It was you guys on sofaF1.'

So we seem to think that Nick Fry is the man on his way out, and it wasn't a particularly close one this week either.

Right then, as it's our Birthday today I think we should examine one of the fundamentals of the sport. What's more important Nature or Nurture. People say Fisi is naturally talented but doesn't work at it, same for Kimi. But what about Michael? His hard work was legendary but clearly the man was talented as well. So which is more important? Tell us SofaF1-ites. Actually maybe we need a poll to decide what our collective name is. Maybe as it's a sofa we should be potatoes? Although then it would have to be CouchF1. Suggestions on a postcard please... (or preferably in the comments section).

SofaF1 is a year old today, we created the blog on 2nd April 2006, and it all kicked off with this post called "F1 from the Sofa".

Nick contacted me on the bat phone last night to remind me of the birthday and so I did the only thing I could think of to celebrate: made a random video in 15 minutes. And here it is:



I really hope the next year is a good as this one has been, the season's already got off to a flying start! Now I think about it I was probably a wee bit premature with my post, Sofa So Good.

Anyway, cheers for sticking with us, hope you can stick around for the next one.