sofaF1

Harsh!

What a way to start the season, great result for the Brawn GP team to lock the front row out in qualifying and then go on to take a 1-2 in their first race. Button was obviously pretty happy and drove well to maintain the lead from the start and take his second ever Grand Prix win. Barrichello was less composed and had a few problems on the first lap what with his triggering his antistall and then clanging some people on the way round, but did well to recover to fourth and was in prime position then to benefit from the Vettel Kubica scrap.

So the Brawn car is quick, the Red Bull in the hands of Vettel was pretty impressive too, especially since they haven't got a fancy diffuser on yet and once Kubica got his BMW wound up towards the end he was steaming along pretty nicely, until Vettel ran into him that is. I think all four of these drivers are going to have an important part to play this year.

Hamilton did well to take an eventual third after Trulli was penalised and could still be in contention if they can get the car to go fast enough to win in Spain as I'm sure I heard suggested.

I thought the coverage was pretty good now we are back in the BBC, not really heard much of Legard previously (I don't know what he has done before but I reckon there must be a touch of horse racing commentary in there somewhere), but during the race today he was getting pretty excited and was easy to listen to as he commentated on the action. Good start to the season all round.

Anyway down to the real business, the SofaF1 Championship 2009

We have had a multitude of entrants this year, some however did not post a race prediction and some did not post a championship prediction, so while the SoFIA convenes to discuss how these should be dealt with, only the entrants with race predictions are listed here currently.

Barrichello is rockin' us the most points so far with Alonso and Glock fighting it out behind, Only Christine got Button on pole, and only Nick and Jeremy bag a 4 pointer for Button's win.

So…

SofaF1 Championship Round 1 **

Nick 8
Jeremy 4
Rod 4
Bearded Stew 4
Alex 3
Fourstar 2
Christine 2
GrifF1 2
Igor 2
Mr T 1
RG 1
Jackie 1
Piqued 0



* Please bear in mind this is a provisional result and may well change next week if all the diffuser cars get banned.

**I worked all these out by hand as my spreadsheet needs substantially modifying so please bring any errors to my attention!

*** What was with Trulli's hat in the press interview afterwards? It would look rather jolly on a gendarme.

So the season is underway. Free practices 1 & 2 have already happened and the Australian Grand prix weekend is Go, Go, Go!

So alongside your season's predictions that you need to make here The SofaF1 Pole Poll 2009 - Championship we also need your race predictions. And all of these predictions need to be in before qualifying starts!

So what do we need?

Who is going to be on pole?

And who will be the top eight finishers of the race?

Good luck everyone!

Roll up, Roll up, and make your season predictions here.

If you want to know the rules take a look here:

http://www.sofaf1.com/2009/03/sofaf1-pole-poll-2009-rules.html
But what we need from you now is:

1) A prediction of who will get the most pole positions in the season

2) A prediction of the top eight finishers in the drivers championship

and

3) A prediction of which driver will make a maiden win this year. Your choices are:

• Nick Heidfeld
• Nelsinho Piquet
• Timo Glock
• Sebastien Bourdais
• Sebastien Buemi
• Mark Webber
• Nico Rosberg
• Kazuki Nakajima
• Adrian Sutil
• No-one

We need your answers by the qualifying starts on Saturday. And watch out for the race prediction post which will come on Friday.

If you are having trouble selecting can I strongly recommend the Sidepodcast Debrief preview shows. There are three audio shows which comprehensively deal with:

The drivers

The teams

The calendar

And finally you can watch the shorter but also great video season preview.

With the brand spanking new season almost upon us, we are ready to launch the Pole Poll championship for 2009. We are delighted to welcome a number of new faces to the competition.

What do you have to do if you want to take part?

For each race, before qualifying starts you have to predict who will be on pole and also the top 8 finishers in the race.

You get 2 points if you get the pole sitter correct. You get 4 points for getting the winner right and you get 2 points for each of the other places you get correct.

Also, if you have a 'near miss' eg. the person who you predicted to win comes second, or fifth comes fourth, you get 1 point.

But there is one extra factor.

Before qualifying starts in Australia this weekend you need to also predict the top eight finishers in the whole season and who will have the most polls. This works in the same way as though the season was a race except you get double points, rather like 'playing your joker'. As these points are added at the end of the season, this can become the crucial swing factor in the year (in fact, the last two years Nick has been winning until these points were added).

Finally, we are adding a element to the competition this year. We want you to pick a MAIDEN winner (i.e. someone who has never won a F1 race before). If the driver you choose wins a race at any time during this season, you will get a 4 point bonus applied immediately to your score. You can of course say "nobody" if you expect that there will be no maiden winners; in this case, you would get the points at the end of the season, if that proves to be the case.

And that's it!

I'll open a thread for your season predictions shortly. Use this thread for any questions you have about the rules, scoring, etc.

Last night the SofaF1 founder members met to discuss our site and the future of formula 1. We were joined by a few others but notably absent were Igor and Griff so there could be no prize giving. Or at least that's my excuse.

Key proposals

• We decided to change the links on the left of the site to reflect some other great F1 sites

• We decided that perhaps it was time to finally remove the poll and came up with some ideas of what should go there instead - coming soon

• We made a characteristic last minute change to the rules of the Pole Poll which will be launched later this morning

• We agreed that fourstar wouldn't be allowed to shave until after the Australian Grand Prix.

I submit the following receipt to the treasurer as expenses. What do you mean we don't have a treasurer?

As Bearded Stew has pointed out, the new scoring system won't be introduced this year. Bernie, however, is adamant that it will come next year. Two strange things appeared in these news reports. The first was this statement from the FIA:

"The 'winner takes all' proposal made by the commercial rights holder (who had been told that the teams were in favour) was then approved."

Aren't the words in brackets suspicious? How is information being relayed between the teams and the FIA? Apparently by rumour. Bernie later made this strange analogy:

"It's logic - you go to the athletics and you look at the 100 metres, you're not looking at the guy that's second, you're looking at the winner."

First to spot five things wrong with this comparison wins the sofaF1 championship (I've been told that all competitors are in favour of this new rule).

It seems the scoring revisions are being postponed for a bit, see here

Might be a good thing.

Controversial

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7948455.stm

That is how the BBC are advertising their coverage of F1. You can watch the current advert here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/7911126.stm

Note the hint of Fleetwood Mac at the end, which cannot but get all old F1 fans excited. What else are the BBC going to do for us? From their website they say:

"F1 fans will be able to customise their viewing experience through the BBC's multi-platform offering with options such as: split-screen action; a live leaderboard; in-car cameras; choice of commentary; live online streaming; live text; interactive forums; circuit guides; and blogs."

All sessions will be available online or with the red button. Excited? You should be.

The excitement is starting to build now as we prepare for the start of the 2009 F1 championship. I know some people have been counting down the days to Melbourne ever since Brazil, but for the general public I think this week has been a turning point in the awareness of the new season starting to get underway.

The news websites have been awash with winter testing coverage, radio and television news bulletins have picked up on suggestions that Ferrari might be a bit fragile, McLaren might be a bit slow and the new Brawn car has blasted into the limelight and given a bit of an indication as to why Honda was worth saving.

It is all up in the air again, and so far looks like being another classic season.

On a slightly different note, this week as the spotlight was turned onto McLaren's testing woes, I thought I'd check up on the team history section of their website to see if they had corrected the error which we here at SofaF1.com pointed out to them last year. Not receiving any reply from them that I am aware of it had slipped my mind.

The correction has been made though, so either we did bring it to their attention, or someone else did or they found it themselves. Just in case you had all been worrying about it for the last year!