sofaF1

Okay, I haven't seen this written joined up anywhere, there are several rumours flying around that if you connect make a perfect storm situation. I'm going to do it first so I can say I told you so.

A bit of history

Years ago Jean Todt said that neither Kimi or Alonso would ever drive for him because they had both snubbed offers of being number 2 to Michael, they both wanted to be number 1 somewhere else. Last year Todt was still desperately trying to persuade Michael to stay at Ferrari, but Luca di Montezemolo had different ideas. He wanted Kimi as Michael's replacement. So against Todt's will Kimi was hired leaving Todt to sort out who the second driver was. Michael bowed out, famously suggesting that he didn't want to ruin Massa's chances of a drive. Fillipe Massa is part of the Todt stable, he is managed by Jean's son.

The current situation

Alonso is being sprung from his contract at McLaren. Both Alonso and McLaren are trying to get the other one to back down, Alonso wants McLaren to fire him, McLaren want Alonso to quit. It's a complicated situation but in the end Alonso doesn't really want to go back to Renault as much as Flav wants him to go. Flav needs Alonso a lot more than Alonso needs Flav. He will go if he can't get to a competitive team however. There is only one other competitive team (I believe BMW is closed to him), and that is Ferrari. Ferrari also have another problem which is that they want to bring Ross Brawn back into the fold.

So what's going to happen?

Jean Todt has decided to go to Toyota. They have problems, he has enough clout to solve them, it will be a new challenge for him, it will be exciting. He's sick the Luca di Montezemolo seems to be so much in charge at Ferrari now. It was too big a betrayal to hire Kimi without his permission. The fact that Montezemolo now wants Alonso to join would be too much.

So:

• Todt will go to Toyota for next year
• Taking Massa with him, replacing Ralf Schumacher
• Ross Brawn will replace Todt at Ferrari
• Alonso will replace Massa at Ferrari
• Jenson will, surprisingly, be with McLaren next year
• Timo Glock will replace Fisichella
• Ralf will join Spyker alongside Sutil (he brought Kingfisher to Toyota, Kingfisher will go to Spyker next year as they now have the same owner)
• Fisichella will be test driver for Renault

The reason that Massa was able to deny that his manager had been at the Toyota garage is that the person had spotted the wrong Todt. Jean was at Toyota not Nicholas.

Okay that's just about ridiculously over-precise.

I was sad to see Mark and Sebastian tangle with each other, I was sad for both of them, but especially Vettel.

I know it was probably his fault, and yet he was doing such a good job, for a rookie. And not just a rookie like Hamilton, a rookie who's third (I think) race this was, who was driving in the wet for the very first time in an F1 car, was facing his first restart from a safety car, was in what most drivers have said was the worst conditions they've ever raced in, and who had the decency to appologise afterwards.

Mark was so pissed off he through his steering wheel clean out of the car. And we saw Vettel sobbing in the back of his garage. He knows how important that mistake was.

And now he's been put back ten places on the grid at the next race.

He's clearly a great talent. He was leading the race, and he's only 20. I wager a world championship for him in the future. He just needs to put this behind him.

I'm sure when they decided to move the Japanese Grand Prix from Suzuka they weren't trying to get a wet race fixture, but once again the wet race does make for some pretty interesting watching and as is often the case the whole field gets pretty mixed up.

I must admit when planning my predictions I did go for a fairly regular combination, with all cars being McLaren, Ferrari, BMW and Renault.

It started great for Fourstar and myself, Hamiton on pole got us 2 points in the bag straight away. Nick got one for Alonso but Alex was left back on the second row.

Unfortunately for me, my points didn't get much further, the mixing up of the field in the wet conditions meant I only picked up one further point for Kubica.
Kubica came good for Alex too, landing him with all his 2 points for the weekend. Nick got a point for Raikkonen, but it was Fourstar and Hamilton who really shone in the wet this weekend, not only bagging maximum points for Hamilton's pole and win, Fourstar went on to add one each for Raikkonen and Massa too.


Round 15

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


Championship

1 Nick 93
2 Bearded Stew 92
3 Alex 83
4 Fourstar 76

The championship closes up even tighter here at SofaF1 this week, with Nick's lead down to just one point!


I must confess I was a bit disappointed the safety car stayed out so long, but there were still some interesting strategic moves being played out, Ferrari did look like they were sitting pretty for a while, but then they kept stopping every couple of laps for more fuel. Raikkonen though had a great drive to come through from the back to finish third.

Hamilton seemed to have all the luck with him today, surviving a collision with Kubica and then Alonso being stuck in traffic after the first pit stops and finally crashing out with nil point to add to his tally while Hamilton went onto win.

Webber looked like he was going to be on for a well earned podium with Vettel, who had been driving great, until he rammed Webber and took them both out. Although I think if I was Webber and threw up in my helmet at the start of the race I would be wondering whether the afternoon was really going to be all that successful.

Qualifying today was quite exceptional (except that ITV edited it too much in their late morning repeat). Despite it going against my personal advantage in the championship, as soon as Lewis started his last lap I found myself rooting for him. If he gets pole, I thought, he really does deserve to be champion. Alonso had been faster than him pretty much throughout the session. Lewis seemed troubled, even Martin Brundle said so. But Lewis was clearly quicker through the first two sectors - he was easily going to get pole - all we needed was some great commentary from James. And we got it! His brilliant 'there's a car on the track!' couldn't help but remind me of the famous 'Some people are on the pitch. They think it's all over. It is now!'.

On a related note, ITV pointed out that Lewis has been one or two tenths slower than Alonso recently. My feeling is actually that Lewis is faster than Alonso, but he's losing perhaps five tenths with set-up problems. This is his first year, after all. So the fact that he's only one or two tenths slower is not bad, but very, very good.

Three races to go. If Kimi is going to have the upper hand over his alleged team mate for next year Alonso then he's got to have the help of the man allegedly being sidelined to make room. Confused? Welcome to Formula One 2007.

So Fuji is a new old circuit and it's going to be an interesting one. This circuit has the longest straight of the year and also has a twisty infield section. That straight away sounds like Indianapolis where McLaren ran away with things but weirdly the teams are going to use the setup from Spa so clearly the teams are thinking it's more like there where Ferrari dominated. Either this is good for Ferrari or everyone has their setup wrong.

The topsy turvy nature of learning the track has been seen on the track. Ferrari topped practice one, McLaren the second. The most interesting thing about this is that that was exactly how things went at Spa.

Massa has been saying some pretty convoluted sentences this week which probably means that he's accepted that he isn't going to win the drivers championship and now try to help Kimi win. He better be pretty subtle about it. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a protest by McLaren.

So who's going to win? Well your guess is on average slightly better than mine. Good luck.

via, Tika, f1network forum:

As commercial rights holder of the SofaF1 Championship via my holding company SofaF One Management (SOM) I must say that while the recent, so called, controversy might seem damaging to the sport on the surface, it has actually meant more people are tuning in week after week to see Nick and Bearded Stew battling it out at the top of the table. I'm sure you appreciate how much it saddens me when people talk of exclusions without thinking what it would do to viewing figures from Spain. By the look of the ip addresses of people voting for Alonso in the poll that's half our audience.

At any rate I have recieved a dossier from the Bearded Stew team titled "Raw Data" and while the incorrectly configured lookup which caused this whole mess saddens me I think we can all just move on.

I for one have got to get on with attempting to cancel the British Round of the SofaF1 championship. I'm thinking of complaining about the out of date google map entered while conveniently ignoring the fact that there hasn't even been one for the last few races and I didn't bat an eyelid.

At Japan in two weeks we'll be at the Fuji circuit which none of the current front runners have ever raced at (I may be wrong but I think Barrchello and Coulthard might just have raced there many years ago).

So is it more important going to a new race track that you have general experience or not?

Some would say that having experience helps you adapt to new tracks like this one.

Others would say that if you are quick at learning circuits, and nobody having experience of the specific circuit means you are able to use your own natural talent more.

Which is it?

After a full investigation into the Championship total points discrepancy I have unearthed a problem.

To clarify where we stand: All the individual race points declared on the reports are correct, therefore the summary that Alex produced is also correct. The problem lies with the total points calculation and was triggered by a change made retrospectively to cope with the fact that Vettel had been driving for 2 teams, BMW and Torro Rosso.

As I'm sure you will remember Nick and Fourstar both scored points with Vettel when he drove for BMW at Indianapolis replacing Kubica after his huge crash.

These were reported correctly at the time. The problem arose when Vettel then joined Torro Rosso and started racing there. As part of the wider function of the SofaF1 Championship system, I needed to be able to track teams points for the constructers title. So I retrospectively changed Vettel's name in the raw data to indicate that he was driving a BMW, but it didn't occur to me to change the name on the predictions table also. Looking back now it was an oversight on my part and I am sorry.

Hopefully when the World SofaSport Council reconvene to discuss this matter it will be taken into account that Vettel drivng for 2 teams in one season is a little unusual and I might be let off with the benefit of the doubt.

Please, Nick and Fourstar, accept my apologies. It wasn't my intention to diddle you out of any points, although I appreciate it does look a bit fishy as it did help my challenge somewhat.

So this what the championship does really look like.

Championship

1 Nick 91
2 Bearded Stew 89
3 Alex 81
4 Fourstar 68

So if we were to characterise our SofaF1 Championship you could see a lot of similarities with the real season. You've got Nick Heidfeld playing Fourstar, underpowered nobody expected too much but he's delivered over the course of the season and kept up with the bigger names. Nick is up there as Lewis Hamilton, plucky Brit (although he's from Ireland - Nick not Lewis), leading from near the beginning of the season finally being caught by Alonso playing Bearded Stew. And then you've got Kimi playing me, could still overturn the whole thing, but it's going to take some misfortune from the others.

Thinking all of this I decided to do us a couple of charts to show how we're all doing. I think it's clear to see we've been improving all year (or maybe the races are becoming more predictable).




Only! Hold On! We seem to have our very own SofaF1 scandal that's bringing the reputation of the game crashing to a new low! Little did we realise the danger of putting Alonso (Bearded Stew) in charge of the championship. There seems to be a points discrepancy! According to that second chart Nick should be two points clear at the top of the table, but according to Stew's last post they are level pegging! WHAT? IS? GOING? ON?

Ahem! I think there's probably just a typo somewhere in one of Stew's post (I checked I hadn't copied it incorrectly about three times). My guess is the total is right but one of results has an incorrect score for the individual races - or something! Anyway - let the repercussions commence.

Here's my version of the scores for handy reference:

Name	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Total
Alex	9	2	4	2	2	0	6	8	13	5	6	6	7	11	81
Bearded Stew	6	0	3	4	7	0	7	6	13	2	7	12	14	8	89
Nick	7	9	0	4	14	4	11	5	8	3	4	4	11	7	91
Fourstar	8	1	0	3	3	2	10	3	6	4	5	7	9	7	68
Average	8	3	2	3	7	2	9	6	10	4	6	7	10	8	6

Hopefully Alex has had a chance to see the race now, (thats the reason i'm a bit late honest!) so we won't be spoiling it for him by revealing the results after 14 races, and some interesting developments have occurred.

Alex, Nick and myself all went for a midfield of Hamilton, Massa, Heidfeld in 3rd, 4th and 5th, it didn't completely work out that way but we did get a point for Hamilton and 2 for Heidfeld, Fourstar was also in on the action with Heidfeld in 5th, it’s the only time so far we have all gone with Heidfeld in this position and he has delivered. Heidfeld has been pretty consistent around 5th in the finishing order, scoring five 4th's, two 5th's and three 6th's so far this season.

Above that Nick and myself both got a point for Raikkonen, Alex one for Alonso and Fourstar 2 for Massa. Alex and Nick, got 2 for Raikkonnen on pole, but only Alex got the win right landing another 4 points! Actually Alex was on a bit of a roll by this stage heading for his second highest points finish of the year so far.

The last couple of points were picked up by Rosberg, one each for Nick and Fourstar and Kovalainen, one for Alex, but I had a bit of a late surge and managed to grab 2 points for both of them. Result.


Round 14

1 Alex 11
2 Bearded Stew 8
3 Nick 7
4 Fourstar 7

I'm not sure about anyone else but I was disappointed to get just 8 points, but actually it’s a pretty good score and our collective 3rd highest score of the season.

This is the good bit for me, with three races to go I have managed to catch Nick who has been leading the championship since Malaysia!

Championship

1 Nick 89
2 Bearded Stew 89
3 Alex 81
4 Fourstar 67


I'd say Spa was a good race for Alonso, maybe not a classic, but he held off Hamilton at the start and seemed to have the advantage over his team mate, gradually chipping away at this championship lead. Great race for Ferrari obviously, and especially for Raikkonen, he needed to win that one to really have a shot at the championship and, with Hamilton finishing in fourth, made up a good chunk of ground.

Great drive again from Heidfeld, he really does seem comfortable and has got into a great groove this year at BMW. How about Sutil? He was really going for it, his car seems to vastly improved, bit late in the season though!

I mean why would they carry on? There are no constructors points for them any more, one of their drivers is almost certain to win. So what's the point?

They just need to keep their reliability. So no new bits and the cars aren't even going to be allowed to drive on their fastest limit - I guess. That's why the Ferrari's were so much faster. Ron needs both of his drivers to finish the rest of the races in at least 3rd and 4th which will be easier if they are both on the limit. This way he can be calmer when they are just racing each other. Under these conditions the reliability should be bullet proof and you don't have to worry about your rival turning the wick up - you control both wicks.

Luca di Montezemolo knows politics, and this comment from him seemed perfectly pitched to piss off Ron Dennis.

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo dedicated his team's Belgian Grand Prix triumph on Sunday to an employee at an English photocopy shop.

"It's a perfect victory, for which I want to thank Raikkonen, Massa, (team boss Jean) Todt and all these guys," he said after Finland's Kimi Raikkonen led Brazilian teammate Felipe Massa across the finish line.

"I want to dedicate it to our fans who believe in the fairness of the sport and to this English gentleman who in the month of June wanted to inform us that someone linked to an opponent team entered into his shop and asked him to copy dozens of pages containing technical information about our car.

"Without him it would never have been possible to shine the light on to one of the worst pages in the history of motorsport," he added.

from Autosport

I really enjoyed it. There was actual overtaking today. Most of the season has seen the boys at the front closer so the pit stops were more exciting. Maybe that's good for Ted from his vantage point. But for me there seemed to be something going on most laps and overtaking through most of the field. Maybe it was just me being strange but maybe the guys at the circuit, James and Martin also called it not a classic, are watching for different things. There were more on track overtakes today than there usually are and that was enough for me. I'm not saying it was the best race of the season, it was just better than it was being painted.

Autosport.com has been getting a bit excited over the last two days. First, yesterday evening it claimed McLaren had been banned from this championship and next year's. Very quickly it printed a clarification (which had now disappeared from the site).

In the last few hours they have put up the 'news' that McLaren may not have to pay all the $100 million. This is only 'news' to them. Yesterday they gave us the full FIA statement which said McLaren had to pay $100 million minus the FOM income lost as a result of the points deduction. Hours late Ron Dennis clarified this for everyone. They'd only have to pay about half the $100 million.

Of course, the world media has grabbed the very nice round figure and run with it. That's what McLaren have to pay, according to them. Thus it is today that it is 'news' that they don't, when really we all knew it yesterday.

FIA blah blah blah McLaren blah blah blah $100m blah blah blah.

That was going to be the only mention of it until I recieved a telephone call yesterday from a mate asking if I thought it was dodgy that Alonso wasn't at the track. I said that I didn't think so. Alonso had to be at the FIA press conference and they fine you massively if you don't show up. No said the friend, he's not at the track he's having a massage or something. It's fair to say I was a bit confused by this information. Only after a minute or two did we happen on the cause of the confusion. The guy had read, or at least thought he had, that Alonso was at a spa.

So on to the main event, you know, the race. Here is the situation:

• Spa is normally known as a McLaren circuit
• But Ferrari's package is more suited to this kind of circuit than others.
• But McLaren normally do well here even in seasons where the car is a dog.
• But Kimi loves the circuit he's won here twice
• He was driving a McLaren
• Ferrari need this win they'll do everything to get it
• McLaren want to prove beyond doubt that they would have won the championship. They want this win too.

And the BMW will be best of the rest. The renault and williams will be close behind but...

• It might rain (watch out for Jenson)
• If it does rain somebody could do a Winklehock by having gambled on a rain setup
• If it does rain it can be raining on one bit of the circuit and dry on another. Somebody could be very brave.
• And regardless of rain you can usually overtake here. And the new modifications might make that easier too.

Good Luck!

>> F1 spygate <<

Fast car merry-go-round

McLaren face more spying allegations today. Gossip behind the scenes says Fernando Alonso is looking to jump ship at the end of the season whatever happens, with a big money move to a lesser team, rather than take a sabbatical. McLaren are looking at bringing in Jenson Button to be the number two driver at the end of next season. Delighted to get back in a good car, Button is unlikely to be any trouble to the McLaren team.

But the really sensational rumour concerns who provided the extra evidence which shopped McLaren the FIA. Initially fingers were being pointed at Alonso but F1 insiders tell us that the smart money is on Hamilton Snr, who was angry at the team for keeping Lewis in second place in the last race. Surely not?

from popbitch

The general feeling around the paddock seems to be that McLaren will be disqualified from this year's championship. One of their employee's, remember, has already been found guilty of holding technical data about the Ferrari. Things can only get worse. What I don't understand, however, is how they draw the line between the constructor's championship and the driver's. Why should the driver be allowed to keep his points? Yes, perhaps they (or Lewis at least) had nothing to do with the spying, but they're still driving a car acquired by that spying. If you disqualify the team, you have to disqualify the driver, don't you?

…and asked the barman for a pint.

"Sure" said the barman "but why the long face?"

What a round that was, our highest scoring round to date, 41 points scored between us out of a possible 80, we finally broke the 50% barrier!

We all did well this week, although myself and Nick did a bit better than Alex and Fourstar, but there were some good points being scored all round.

We all went for Alonso on pole except for Alex who stuck with the Hamilton option, but Hamilton did make it onto the front row so did score him a point.

Hamilton scored 2 points for all of us in the race, which was great but I managed to hold my nerve and keep Alonso in which yielded 4 points for me, Fourstar got one for Alonso too and grabbed another 4 for Heidfeld and Rosberg. Alex had to make do with 4 points from the lower order, with one each for Heidfeld, Kubica, Rosberg and Kovalainen.

Nick and myself also got a point each for Kovalainen, 2 for Raikkonen, 2 for Rosberg, 1 for Heidfeld in my case and 2 for Kubica in Nick's.

All in all a pretty rock n' roll score.

Round 13

1 Bearded Stew 14
2 Nick 11
3 Fourstar 9
4 Alex 7


Which really does make things interesting for the championship, I like Alonso have closed right up on the lead, it looked for a while like it was going to be all over, but now with only a few races left to go, it's wide open still.

Championship

1 Nick 82
2 Bearded Stew 81
3 Alex 70
4 Fourstar 60


Well, a great race at a classic circuit. Alonso really did do the business all weekend and deserved to come away with maximum points. Hamilton too, kept it going strong especially taking back second from Raikkonen. Ferrari had a few issues and never really looked like making much of an impact, except with the wall. BMW again in a strong points finish, although Kubica seemed to have a bit of trouble balancing on his jack! Rosberg too another great consistent finish, but still chasing Wurz on points, Couthard's Red Bull though got a bit stuck with its wing.

The race is still very much on, especially here at SofaF1.

When you have a situation like the one we had Torro Rosa near the beginning of the season you can't tell who is at fault. Is it the car or the driver. Normally when one driver is faster than the other then you blame the slower driver. If the drivers are both slow then it's usually a dog of a car.

Now that Vettel is in the team, we see him going half a second faster than his team mate. So maybe Berger was right to be so harsh on his drivers. Maybe they were just rubbish?

Here is a fact for you, none of the drivers championship hopefuls (all five of them, don't forget Quick Nick) have ever won at Monza. And for this weekend who the winner is might be the hardest to call all year.

Last year Kubica got on the podium and Nick would have if he hadn't had a drive through penalty. And BMW have been closer to the front runners than they were last year so they could cause a few upsets this weekend.

Ferrari were faster at Turkey and in front of their home crowd it might be hard to bet against one of them taking the win.

Lewis has been saying that while Ferrari are taking swings at them in the courts McLaren are going to answer back on the track. So perhaps they will be back at the front.

Like I say, it's going to be a hard one to call. Good luck.

No, not Formula 1, but MotoGP. Ok, so Casey Stoner is actually in his second year, but he did spend most of his debut season falling off his bike. This makes it all the more remarkable, I think, that he's now leading by 85 points (not as big as it would be in F1, as you get 25 points for a win) over Valentino Rossi. He is also one year younger than our own Lewis Hamilton. At least one difference is, though, that Stoner is almost certainly going to win now, whereas Hamilton still has a lot of work to do, under pressure from his own team-mate, and two in another team, where Stoner isn't. Stoner has absolute dominance in his team and with his bike, the kind of combination we're used to seeing in F1 (Schumacher and Ferrari, Alonso and Renault) but just isn't happening this year. We should be thankful, though, as MotoGP races (or at least yesterday's) are now getting quite boring when they used to be exciting. Turkey was hardly a stunner, but I'm betting Monza will be...