sofaF1

Sakon Yamamoto will be replacing Marcus 'the leader' Winkelhock for the rest of the season at Spyker and...

Scott Speed is out to be replaced by Sebastian 'super-sub' Vettel at Torro Rosso.

Now we'll really find out if it's the cars or the drivers who are to blame.

My guess? Liuzzi needs to be pushed to succeed, rather like "Quick Nick" he might need this kick to get going. The car might still be rubbish though.

When Alonso and Massa were having a rant at each other after the European GP, James Allen calmly told us they were speaking in Italian (i think i recall), now my Italian is pretty non existant so i wouldn't really know but wouldn't it make more sense to assume they were speaking in Spanish?

Maybe someone who has a better grip of Spanish or Italian could let me know.

I've never particularly noticed le Tour de France before. Obviously this year, starting as it did in London, there's been a lot more publicity than usual. It also happened that as F1 was engaged in a spy scandal, so cycling was in controversy over doping. The two stories were compared, and run adjacent to each other, in many news programmes.

So, I became interested in how it worked. There are 20 stages, much like there are roughly 20 races. The winner is the person who, on average, does the best. He doesn't have to win every stage, or even the most amount of stages. It rewards consistency. However, the main difference is that there are no points - the winner wins on the amount of time it takes him to complete the whole Tour. For example, this year's champion, Alberto Contador, took 91 hours and 26 seconds. Could we apply this to F1? Could the winner be the driver who took the least time over the season? This way drivers would no longer 'settle for second' and drop back off the leader. They'd push to get as close as possible and minimise the time loss. Conserving engines, and team orders after the second pit-stop, would all go out the window. The only drawback, I can see, is what do you do when a driver fails to finish a race? What time is he given?

Martin Brundle has often said in the past is that all Bernie would have to do to make the races more interesting would be to install sprinklers at the circuits. It certainly was an exciting race.

Although I'm sure Martin was half joking it certainly fits in with one of the most common suggestions for improving Formula 1: lowering the grip level in the car by significantly reducing the downforce generated. This would make the cars harder to drive which is clearly exciting and also make overtaking easier.

In the pub fourstar asked me if this was the best race of the season or was their a purity problem due to the weather?

I throw the question open to all. Also adding a related second question: is the best race always the most exciting?

Well, what a crazy race! I'm sure it had nothing to do with Murray Walker back in the commentary seat, but it does seem fitting that the race he comes back for is a mental one.

It was great hear his tones over the airwaves once again, albeit interspersed with golf and cricket, but as soon as those lights started to come on and the familiar countdown began, culminating in Go, Go, Go! I remembered why I found Formula 1 exciting when I was young. Great stuff.

There were of course a few classic Murryisms, including some confusion about where Winkelhock was as the carnage of the first laps unfolded, but all in all superb commentary for a really interesting and exciting race.

We all suffered here this weekend, Hamilton's accident landing him down in tenth for the starting grid meant Alex and I ended up with nil point for qualifying whilst Nick and Fourstar claimed 2 each for Raikkonen. But then Raikkonen failing to finish and Hamilton out of the points for the first time this season (indeed out of the top three) hurt us all.

Alex picked up 2 for Massa finishing in second and Fourstar got 1 for Alonso. The rest of the points come from Heidfeld, 2 each for Alex and I and one for Nick, Kovalainen just the one for Alex and Kubica gave Fourstar his last point.

So Round 10

1 Alex 5
2 Fourstar 4
3 Nick 3
4 Bearded Stew 2


Which moves the midfield around a bit…

Championship

1 Nick 65
2 Alex 51
3 Bearded Stew 48
4 Fourstar 40


All in all a classic race, the crazy rain on the first lap leading to a massive car park and some red flags, Hamilton starting from the back, Winkelhock in the lead. Alonso kept it going chasing Massa all the way. Massa was quick on the dry track even setting the fastest lap, but when the rain started to fall a few laps from the end, Alonso kept his nerve and took the lead to sprint to the finish to take his third victory of the year, equalling Raikkonen on race wins. The ten points he gets for the championship are much needed and with Hamilton failing to score for the first time, Alonso moves to within 2 points of the championship lead. It's great it's so close, with 7 races to go.

Red Bull came good this weekend, Coulthard did especially well coming from 20th up to 5th, but Webber taking his first podium for a while drove pretty well and managed to keep the car going till the end, which is always important!

The BMWs seemed a bit off in the race but maybe that’s because they crashed into each other at the start and seemed to be just fighting each other all the way round, but still another good points finish for tem in 6th and 7th. Kovalainen seems to be coming good although he had a few problems here and there picks ups the last point.

Wurz has another good run too, adding a fourth place to his previous 3rd and 7th places, it seems like Rosberg does better generally but actually Wurz is leading his team mate on points.

Its going to be close, especially if Ferrari reckon they can win all of the races that are left! Keep it tuned to SofaF1.

Welcome to the Nurburgring-a-ring-a-roses-we-all-fall-off-the-track.

What an amazing race - for once, I watched most of it (and even on the way to B&Q I was listening to FiveLive guest-commentator Murray getting more and more animated in my car. Not that he was commentating from my car; that would of course be mental...)

So as I understand it:

Lewis hit the tyres and then picked the wrong ones; Kimi gets pole then shot down by hydraulics; Massa thought he had it sussed then Alonso bumps him out of the way; Webber a popular third (is he really tall or is my TV losing its aspect ratio?); and it's all wide open again, as far as theNewbie can tell.

(It's also somewhat gratifying that with all the zillions of euros spent on cars and teams and drivers and tactics and fuel and tyres, the weather had the last laugh.)

So as I recline on the beech drinking my whisky mac I can't help feeling that there's a grand prix coming up. The show carries on without me I guess.

So what can we expect from this weekend? Ferrari look to just have the upper hand, but not by much. The circuit isn't particularly obvious biased one way or the other. But rather interestingly Kimi and McLaren both have had bad luck (often together) at the Nuremberg circuit. Kimi has only ever finished half of his races here, and is hoping to overturn that run this weekend.

The key question is: "will it rain"? The forecast says it looks pretty likely. Most of the cars will run extra fuel in the qualifying session for safety, and that might mean an unlikely starting grid.

Anyway, I'm off to Edinburgh today and then I venture into the north of England. I wonder if out of all of the confusion of a wet race Lewis might take the victory? As always, you have all the answers!

According to Piers Morgan, who should probably know unless he's lying, Lewis Hamilton is a "massive Gooner". I wonder if there is anything else Lewis can do to make Adrian like him more?

If you are like P Diddy who was in the same room and didn't know what a Gooner is, then it means you are a fan of Arsenal Football Club.

Well it looks like people here think that Adrian Newey can make reliable cars but that he's just choosing not too. How odd.



So on to the new poll. At the German Grand Prix (or European Grand Prix if you're feeling pedantic) one of the radio commentators is having a child. This is not like the situation in that Arnie movie Junior, his wife is of course having the baby. So BBC Radio Five have decided to hire a big name celebrity to fill his place. Yes they've managed to bag Murray Walker!

So the big question is will you be listening to Murray or James or Neither?

As I'll be up in the wilds of Scotland I personally have no idea what I'll be able to do.

I think Nick Fry is the problem with Honda. F1 is supposed to be at the forefront of technology, the top cutting edge. And we know that Honda are a bit behind the times, maybe it's all Nick Fry's fault. The emphasis in the following extract has been added (duh):

"The thing that I was genuinely pleased about was what Max had to say," said Fry. "I got home late on Saturday night and looked on

teletext

and saw that Max had made comments in our direction that were positive."


Teletext? Really? Join the 21st centuary sometime it's fun!

So despite Kimi winning more races than everyone else Kimi has been said to have been underperforming this season. But here is an interesting stat for you...

Kimi has won every race that Schumacher hasn't attended. (It seems wrong because Michael was at France but he was actually only there on Saturday not on race day).

A clearer signal that Kimi is being put off you couldn't want!

So I was completely off the mark when I suggested the person outside of F1 was Ross Brawn. Apparently it was a bloke in the newsagents that Mike Coulhan's wife Wendy went to to photocopy the 780 page document. Hardly James Bond as been said. But it is quite inspiring that the guy running the shop decided something was amis and decided to contact the authorities / Ferrari.

This has now usurped my previous favourite thing about this story which was that at the event at which Ron Dennis tearfully told reporters that he would never be involved in dodgy dealings like this and so come in and enjoy the new motorhome over a glass of wine. The wine served was Spy Valley.

So we think that despite Ferrari's improvement over the last two weekends there are some more serious problems at the Scuderia.



While we're on the subject of engineers it's hard not to notice the massive improvement in reliability over at McLaren and the sudden lack of same over at Red Bull this year. Is it simply that both years they are teams behind the curve on speed who are trying anything to go faster? Or is it that both of them have been headed up by Adrian Newey? Is he perhaps somebody who makes unreliable cars? It's the subject of this weeks poll, let us know what you think.

Well done to Alex, Nick and Fourstar who picked Hamilton for pole, the Silverstone effect seemed to give him the extra edge to just pip Raikkonen to the front of the grid, or was it a lighter fuel load?

This was the second race this year we all scored points for pole position, although I only got one by going for the Raikkonen option.

Only Fourstar thought Hamilton would be able to convert his pole into a win though (apart from maybe all the British press who may have got onto some bandwagon somewhere)

Mark Blundell again correctly tipped Raikkonen to be stronger in the race and Nick, Alex and myself also thinking that way were rewarded with 4 points each as Raikkonen gets into the grove and becomes the first person to win 3 races this season.

I was pretty pleased to guess all top three correctly, only been done once before by Nick at Monaco, which launched me into my best points haul this year. I picked up 2 more for Kovalainen and one each for Massa and Heidfeld.

Alex too gets his highest score, adding to his pole and win with 2 for Heidfeld and one each for Hamilton, Alonso, Massa, Kubica and Kovalainen.

Nick keeps his championship steadily progessing adding a couple for Kubica and Hamilton to his tally.

Fourstar kept the scoring going too, correctly guessing Alonso for second and Massa in fifth landing him another 4.

So Round 9 the half way race…

1 Bearded Stew 13
2 Alex 13
3 Nick 8
4 Fourstar 6



Alex does close up a bit on Nick, as he was hoping, but it is still neck and neck in the midfield for the championship.

1 Nick 62
2 Bearded Stew 46
3 Alex 46
4 Fourstar 36

Anything is still possible.


Well even Bernie had to admit it was a great GP at Silverstone. The race, again like France, had a bit of strategy coming into play. With first Alonso skipping into the lead after the first round of pits stops and then Raikkonen doing the same thing at the second. Massa though did really well, to start from the back and get into 5th and only missed out on 4th because of Kubica's defensive driving, not any lack of speed on his part.

Webber out again, while both Williams finished albeit behind Coulthard in the other Red Bull. The Honda's seem to be getting slowly better and took 9th and 10th with Rubens coming in ahead of Button for the 7th time this year.

The whole situation with Nigel Stepney seems to have become clearer over the weekend.

What we know:

1) Stepney gave Ferrari information about car design but also about race procedure to
Mike Coughlan (this seemed odd, what procedure could McLaren possibly learn).

2) We know that Stepney and Coughlan are good friends and we now know that they wanted to go and work for Honda together (a team that do need new technical details and procedures)

3) Somebody outside F1 tipped off Ferrari.

My guess is that this person outside F1 is Ross Brawn. There have been a lot of rumours that he has been linked with Honda. I think Stepney and Coughlan heard this and wanted to go and restart a dream team. They probably had the documents collected so that they could then get this package off the ground. They probably then heard the rumour that Ross was actually going to Ferrari, and contacted him to talk about their plans. Ross probably immediately contacted Ferrari and that's where it all started from. Obviously this is just my guess, it seems to make sense though.

Thursday 28th June

We loaded up our trusty Land Rover and headed off down to Dover rather bleary eyed. As usual we left a bit later than planned and then got sent on a bit of a detour as the motorway junction was closed, but we managed to meet up with Rod and Jo ok and checked in for our ferry. It was quite a good feeling to be sitting on the ferry having a cup of tea when usually I should have been at work.

The crossing was pretty smooth and soon we were back in the cars and driving off the ferry onto French soil. We chugged merrily along, not really being able to make use of the French speed limits, but appreciating the smooth roads nonetheless.

I was just getting settled into a groove (about 4 hours later as it turned out) as we left the Parisian sprawl behind us when Rod swept past in a dramatic manner and dived off the road into a service station, evidently it was time for lunch.

Actually it was past lunch and the grill was closed, so Rod had to settle for a crusty baguette and some cheese instead but all was going well, we were on target and everyone was still happy.

The roads got emptier and the last couple of hours soon passed as we skirted around Nevers and onto Magny Cours, the motorway ran out and the dual carriageway was reduced to a single lane and all of a sudden we were hauling off that road onto an even smaller one, then the gates of the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours appeared in the late afternoon glow, we had arrived.

We were guided to a camping spot by the main track onto the site, next to some people with a car stereo blaring and the burger bar with resident DJ, not the best place. Rod tackled the parking dude and said that we wanted to move somewhere quieter, he agreed once he understood, and Rod disappeared into the depths of the site, and picked a much more sensible spot. "There's no point in arriving early if you can't get the pick of the pitches" he declared. The parking bloke probably had the last laugh though as we would later find out.

Rod & Jo bought a gazebo which was an inspired decision and gave us a great central point to pitch our tents around. It didn't take us long to set up camp and have some tea. More and more people poured into the campsite and correspondingly the noise level increased.

We wandered around the campsite later in the evening accompanied by the sound of about a ten thousand stereo's (probably) and saw some people that looked like they were trying to tune up a go-kart engine, but bizarrely looked like they were using the exhaust in some way to create some Jacuzzi bubbles in their paddling pool.

As the sun descended over the yardarm the need for a beer grew, we checked out the beer on site, but a 250ml bottle was going for 4 euros, and a pint for 8! We didn't have too much cash on us and the need for a beer wasn't as great as 4 euros for one bottle.

So we chatted a bit as darkness fell, and the noise level rose still further. The music got louder and louder, fireworks started to go off, and the engines were revved up pretty much all through the night. The notion of finding a quiet spot to camp did start to seem quite ridiculous!

We went to bed and I slept pretty well, Jo felt the noise was a bit too loud so she put her earplugs in, but then she was cool. Rod and Jo didn't fare quite so well and may not have got much sleep.

Friday 29th June

I awoke to pretty much the same noise level as we had when we went to bed, I'm sure there must have been a slight lull, but I really can't remember when. Maybe everyone was just a bit excited about their first night away at the races and they would be tired tonight after a day at the track?

Rod, Jo (Rod's Jo) and I zipped into Nevers first thing to the supermarché for some cash, beer (40 bottles for 14 euros) and meat for the barbeque. When we got back to the campsite Jo had the kettle boiling and we had some breakfast.

The track action had already started with the F3 Euroseries practice and qualifying but we didn't make that and headed over to our seating area just before the Adelaide hairpin for the first F1 practice session.

The speed of the cars was obviously phenomenal and the noise was insane. The actual sound of the engine was really indistinguishable from car to car because of the overall sound level, even with ear plugs in. The only immediately recognisable engine sound was that of the Spyker's which sounded the nicest in the ear pain stakes, it was a much lower pitch grunty sounding car. It may well have sounded the best but was always the slowest, so not so good with racing in mind.
If you apply the same rule to Honda, they should have been the fastest by far, with the most painful sounding engine.

The BMW's were very loud and distinctive on the downshifts into Adelaide, and the McLaren's seemed to use a lot of traction control to get going on the exit. The Ferraris however did seem from a spectating point of view as the fastest, quick into the corner, big stop and making use of good traction to get going again on the exit.

Following this first session was a GP2 practise session, and Rod's first comment was "Slooow". Of course they weren’t, they were still jolly quick but he did have a point, there was a noticeable speed difference visually to the F1 cars, which translated to about a 10 second slower lap time.

The second F1 practice followed after lunch, with the GP2 qualifying after that.

It was a full day of track action finishing up with Porsche Supercup practice and SuperKart practice and qualifying. Compared to F1 and GP2 the Porsches were almost silent, but still great to see and we predicted that the Porsche race would be pretty close.

After the activities had finished on the track the few people that were left drifted back to the campsite which had already disappeared under a cloud of smoke from about a million barbeques.

We again just chilled out and leisurely absorbed the atmosphere while we ate our barbeque. The noise level did not abate one tiny bit, if anything it had intensified with more engines joining in the fray. It looked set to be another all nighter for some people.


Saturday 30th June,

Ian (who turned up on Friday, having not made it back to the UK since the Le Mans 24 Hour some weeks previous) stuck his head out of his tent and captured the moment when he declared "This place is insane!" He may not have slept much either.

The track action kicked off early with an F3 race and a Superkart race before launching into the third F1 practice session, by now though the sun had got properly warmed up and was baking the whole place up, good job I took the umbrella to shade under! We had a great view from our deck chairs, which we basically parked wherever we wanted on the concrete terraces of the Gradins Est area. We were also free to wander down to the hairpin, which was pretty close to the track to see the cars close up.

After lunch the F1 qualifying got underway. We also had a good view of a big screen, which showed the same picture feed as the TV stations get, so we could see all the graphics, useful for following who was in the drop zone. I really felt for Alonso (especially since I picked him for pole) when he ground to a halt in Q3 and was concerned that he was on the wrong fuel strategy for starting in tenth. Again the Ferrari's and Hamilton were visibly quicker so it was no surprise to see them in the top places.

The scene was gradually getting set for the Grand Prix, it seemed a bit crazy that we had been there for 3 days already, just when the usually seen TV coverage was only just getting underway.

Then came the GP2 race, well it sort of got going about 4pm. In some ways it summarized the craziness of the weekend so far. First at the start Timo Glock and Andreas Zuber both from iSport International had locked out the front row in qualifying, but when the lights went out they both drove towards and into each other and crashed out within metres of the start line, they never even got to the first corner!
Understandably the reaction from the team was one of disbelief.

The rest of the pack hauled around to where we were sitting and filed around the hairpin under waved yellows when exiting the hairpin Ernesto Viso touched the back of someone and launched into a terrifying accident of Kubica proportions, landing on concrete wall whilst barrel rolling along it before disappearing over down the other side. My immediate reaction was "That’s got to be a red flag, that's bad" The safety car came out for a couple of laps but then the red flags came out too and the race was stopped for about an hour in the end. The atmosphere was pretty edgy and quiet, everyone straining to catch what the commentators were saying. It was very worrying, made worse by that fact that nobody knew how bad it was. There was a big sigh of relief when the news came through that he was ok, but going to the hospital to get checked out. It transpires that he, like Kubica in Canada, got away pretty lightly.

The race restarted but was a bit out of kilter because most people had completed their compulsory pit stop under the safety car, so it was basically a longer version of the sprint race. Bruno Senna was definitely a noticeable driver on track, fast and pulling some good moves but always seemed to end up overcooking it somewhere and losing places again. Great fun to watch though.

By now we know the sound wasn't going to calm down, everyone was in for the long haul, so we headed back to the campsite and descended into the barbeque smog that had sprung up again and chilled out all evening to the sounds of 4 million stereos, fireworks and revving up engines.


Sunday 1st July


We awoke to the sound of rain on the tent, which filled me with excitement at the prospect of a wet race. Breakfast followed and before long we were heading over to the track, recounting with a smile the sounds of Dreadlock Holiday that emerged over the din about 3 am.

One of the revving engines nearby had either been sabotaged or ceremonially burnt during the night and had been left abandoned nearby all charred and blackened.

The number of people already at the track was quite big but we got a good seat and settled in for the day. The F3 race was a bit damp but the track had basically dried out for the GP2 race which passed pretty much without incident. But just before the Porsche Supercup race the rain fell again prompting a scrabble for waterproof and umbrellas. It didn't really rain for long but it was enough for the whole race to be wet, great to watch the cars sliding around the hairpin though.

The were a few clouds still lingering before the Grand Prix got underway, but as you know the race was dry. The start was really something else, it was the one moment all weekend when all 22 cars (or however many made it round the first corner) arrived at the hairpin at full chat at the same time, the noise was indescribable.

The support for Ferrari in the stands was well beyond any other team, but everyone was getting behind Alonso and certainly entertained by his hacking through the field. It really looked for a minute he could get up to 4th or 5th once he was passed Heidfeld and Fisichella, he had so much more speed in the clean air, the difference each lap made was incredible.

This is where the live experience comes into its own, the TV coverage is great for finding out the big picture but a static vantage point on the race track gives you a great idea of who's on the move by observing where they are in relation the people around them each lap. You get a continual update each lap of everyone's position rather than the TV which sometimes just focuses on one car or battle.

The only real confusion was when Raikkonen snatched the lead from Massa after his pit stop, we must have missed it on the TV, you can't keep your eye on everything, and so it took a minute or two to work out what had happened.

Great race though and quite momentous to be at the last French GP at Magny Cours.

A lot of people had packed up in the morning and left directly after the race, but we took the opportunity to stay another night, again hoping the campsite would calm down.

Jo and I went for a wander around the campsite after tea just to savour the experience, some of the maddest camp setups do deserve a mention, most of them were Dutch. One site, a group of people had arrived on a bus and bought with them, you'll love this, a massive stereo and barbeque (of course), a sofa and a freestanding bar equipped with stools. Another group had a table and chairs set up inside a truck. But the seemingly most chilled out people were also Dutch and bought a van with them with a big TV in the back rigged up to a Playstation or something and calmly played an F1 driving game for 4 days solid, it must have gone to their heads though as on Sunday they went mad and destroyed their camp, gazebo and plastic garden furniture whilst laughing hysterically.

It wasn't a surprise by then that a lot of stuff would get set on fire, so we sat back and watched the show, albeit slightly concerned by a bunch of Scottish blokes nearby who, had somehow been allowed to bring their children with them, got a bit drunk and were encouraging the kids to set stuff on fire, even to the extent of encouraging them to raid the wheelie bins to get more stuff to burn, one comedy moment though, when one child was heard loudly say "Look, I've found a chair" and proceeded to carry abandoned camping stuff over to their fire to burn.

So ended the race day with more noise, stuff being burnt and wayward fireworks.


Monday 2nd July

The weekend was drawing to a close. We packed up camp and trundled out of the site, joining the main road just behind some Ferrari trucks carrying the team's new for 2007 fancy motorhome/media centre. The journey back was pretty smooth and to our great delight the same Ferrari trucks loaded onto our ferry obviously bound directly for Silverstone to get set up for this weekends race. It was great to still be running with the F1 trucks off the ferry and up the motorway until we pulled off to go home, making it really feel like we had been part of the whole event.

Great 5 day weekend, need I say any more? ("No, stop, stop" I hear you say "that really is enough!")

So the British Grand Prix is upon us coming hot on the heels, as it does, of the French Grand Prix. Usually a gap of a week means no new parts but with the British Grand Prix being so close to many of the teams factories you might see some changes. Also McLaren might be ripping a few Ferrari-ish bits off of their car to try and pass the FIA tests. Allegedly, according to the Italian press, this occured before the French Grand Prix which resulted in the win for Ferrari. If that's true then expect those parts to be replaced with new bits this weekend. Also both McLarens will be on fresh engines this weekend so expect that to also help.

Finally Ferrari have done well on high downforce circuits and McLaren have looked better on the low. Silverstone is generally considered a lowish downforce circuit (Silverstone requires a lot of downforce to be faster on some of the high speed corners but the circuit is fast you would loose that with drag - so generally you go for a lower downforce to reduce the drag).

Kimi looks to have regained something. He looks much more comfortable in the car. Massa is still pretty handy though. I expect to see a pattern emerge that when Ferrari are on song Kimi beats Massa and wins the races, but when Ferrari struggle Massa still makes it to the podium while Kimi may get no points at all.

Over at McLaren I think that Alonso took a confidence boost out of his overtaking from the back and Lewis took a slight hit as remarkably last weekend was the first time he was overtaken in a Formula One car. He talked about the passing of this stat as though he almost considered he might be able to survive his whole career without being passed. But Lewis will probably get some positives out of it being the British Grand Prix.

On that note a sign of the return to better sorts of Alonso was the nice bit of needle that he have Lewis. Alonso used to be best at the mind games too until Lewis came along and seems to have been complaining rather than getting even most of the time. This weeks was a beauty though. He mentioned that he thought the team would prefer a win for Lewis in his home race as they had preferred for Alonso to win in Spain. This sounds less like complaining and more like being fair to the unthinking, new to F1 sporting press, but we know better. Hamilton beat Alonso in Spain and his actual message was, "I'm going to get you back".

BMW continue to hold off Renault although it seems harder work than the begining of the season. Then the pack is just a general confusued lump of million pound sports cars with Spiker at the back.

Do your worst (please I want to catch up to Nick)

It was a bit all over the place this one from the points point of view, Hamilton was again a good scorer for most of us, landing Alex and myself 2 points each and Nick 1 point for the 3rd place and Fourstar picked one up for his front row qualifying position. I guess this isn't really surprising given Hamilton's consistency. Alex landed the big one grabbing 4 points for Raikkonen's win, and topped it up with another 2 points for Heidfeld, again his consistency paying off. Nick managed to get 2 points for Massa and Fourstar and I got 2 for Fisichella, but all the rest were a few scrappy 1 pointers being gleaned where we could, Raikkonen and Heidfeld gave me a couple more, and Kubica landed Nick one too. Unfortunately for Fourstar, Sato didn't quite make the points this week.


Round 8

1 Alex 8
2 Bearded Stew 6
3 Nick 5
4 Fourstar 3


Championship

1 Nick 54
2 Bearded Stew 33
3 Alex 33
4 Fourstar 30


The Ferrari's were fast obviously, and bought it all home for a great 1-2 for them, Hamilton didn't really live up to his own pre race predictions and lost out at the start to Raikkonen who would go on to win the race.

Kubica was outstanding, landing 4th on the grid and maintaining it all the way to the chequered flag, just weeks after his horrendous accident in Canada.

Hamilton again on the podium, amazing consistency. Heidfeld too with another great points finish in 5th.

Disappointing to see Kovalainen punted round on the first lap, but fair play to Trulli, he admitted his mistake, but poor Kovalainen was just blatting around in his own little world all afternoon after that. He could have been on for another good result.

Alonso fought hard all afternoon but didn't seem to get too much from it, he was so much quicker in the clean air and as soon as he had got past someone within a lap or two was all over the back of the next person. He had the speed, but was just out of place because of his qualifying. I reckon he could have beaten Hamilton this weekend, but I might need to look at some lap times to see whether there is evidence for that statement!

Just a quick mention of Button, the new Honda does seem to go and Button did well to score his and Honda's first point of the season.

I thought the race was pretty good, seeing it properly live live was great obviously (more to come shortly), especially watching Alonso trying to get past people down into the Adelaide hairpin.

Shame it didn't rain though, but hey there is always Silverstone….

I was mightily impressed with Alonso yesterday - everyone who's ever played an F1 computer game knows you can't overtake at that chicane, but somehow he did it - and Hamilton round Kubica was also incredibly brave. There were two problems with the coverage, however. For the first time this season we had a change in the lead after the first corner, but our commentators were almost completely unaware of it. When Raikkonen came in for his second stop James Allen said nonchalantly something like 'Here's Kimi having his stop. He'll just come out and comfortably slot in behind Massa'. Then Martin Brundle, although he may have been thinking about it for a while this was the first time he said it, countered 'Well, actually, will he?'. So, the crucial change in the race went almost unnoticed. Secondly, after Alonso brilliantly overtook Heidfeld and Fisi, why did he end up behind them? This was never adequately explained, I don't think. Granted that F1 is incredibly complex, and yesterday with the different fuel and tyre strategies especially so, but with the influx of new and inexperienced viewers of the sport due to the success of Hamilton more attention does need to be paid to somehow condensing, explaining and simplifying the strategies of the race.