Well... What a weekend..
Not long back from the trek home from Melbourne GP.
For those of you that don't know, Fisichella was the victor! I have followed F1 now for 17 years, since Nannini drove his awesome Benetton though the wet(near flooding) in Adelaide, to get second behind Boutsen in his Williams in 1988. Needless to say, thats where half of my name comes from.... Benetton.
After they were bought out, I decided to remain with the team, which was now Renault.
To cut quite a long story short(shorter...) Renaults day in the sun was today my friends, and I baked in all the glory, and soaked up every last ray of success that team could offer me..
best bit for me was when john bowe went out on slicks on saturday in the v8's and won. not coz i like bowe, it was just funny to see the commentators backflipping on their words as bowe and his mate moved up the field...
early 60s beetle for sale - ex bush basher - spares - $100 or offers
nah... definitely the best bit was when schumacher stuffed himself up by trying to cut off someone who was trying to pass him and then they ended up hitting schumacher which put him out of the race.... i had a grin from ear to ear.. :thumb
see.... air and water do mix 😉
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best for me was to see a competitive race & more too come
sick of red always in front, now it looks like renault ,williams,
mclaren, red bull wiil take it to them.
too dominate a sport is too bore the public.
winerot wrote:best for me was to see a competitive race & more too come
sick of red always in front, now it looks like renault ,williams,
mclaren, red bull wiil take it to them.
too dominate a sport is too bore the public.
not a cricket fan then hey
😉im glad to see at least one red car on the podium :P
and im even happier to see webber with a decent points position now that hes finally got a decent car!😀
in the beginning, the universe was created.
this made alot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.
actually done a stint at the syd cricket ground as a groundsman
great job, watched a lot of cricket over the yrs as the groundstaff
would have be on standby in case of rain, was a sightscreen attendant
for a while as well till i fell asleep & dougie walters & lenny pascoe tried
to wake me by throwing balls at me (didnt work) so they came down &
had to move sightscreen them selves, was a sight to see.
seen some good union, league & cricket over the yrs i was their including
the launch of the one dayers, that was great.
Congrats to the Renaults; they were great and very fast and smooth to boot.
I don't know if anyone noticed the little guy from brazil on the podium, I think he started 245th on the grid thanks to the one lap in the pissing rain qualifying, some how he finished 3rd! or was it 2nd?
I think the ferraris are going to have a tough year this year, they will probably only win 2 out of 3 GPs. And my money is on Schumacher to win his next. title
Note:::::: better check this post in November
are we there yet?
Fisichella must be so happy to finally win a GP outright, without it being a rain out and red flagged.
He drove absolutely flawlessly - reminded me of a certain Mr S, the way he dominated the whole race.
The best point for me was to see Toyota qualify on the front row, and run on the podium for almost half the race. They would be disappointed that they did not end up with any points out of the weekend. Stirling effort.
Other little highlights - Webber beating Montoya in a team that Montoya didnt want to drive for......
Rubens incrediable drive to 2nd from 13th. Takuma Sato also had a stellar race - he picked up somthing like 10 positions too.
Red bull racing (AKA Jaguar) getting both cars in the points in their first ever race - thats absolutely unheard of. Actually I'm not sure that Jaguar ever had both cars in the points. I'd love to know what has changed on those cars to get the reliability that Jaguar just couldnt acheive ?
Roll on Malaysia, and we will see how well the 2 rounds for an engine rule works..... Schuey will have a fresh one at least..... could be interesting.
Spot on Doug, great recap. Along with Rubino, Alonso's ladder climb to 3rd was also nice for the team.
Webber had a good race, and something to be proud of. He did however mention that he was disappointed after 'losing the race in the pits'. I think he still did well, but was in thrid at one point.
Toyota.. Great effort, but like Giancarlo, luck gave them most of the second position on the grid, due to Saturdays intermitent downpours. Fisichella is damn lucky, and I will be first to admit it, with his Saturday qualifying time, as he got to about turn 3 on his return lap after his quick time, and down came the rain in buckets, very similar to Massa and Schumacher.... Just lucky he was a few minutes earlier, and look what can come of it. Not denying for a minute the speed on Sunday and the team effort to get him first across the line, but luck is worth a fortune in this sport.. Point being, Toyota would be pissed that they started where they did, ran as well as they did, and then finished way down... big time bummer.
THE LOWEST WITH THE MOSTEST BLING BLING WINS!!
looks like we are going to have some real racing this year. Fizzi was the one who went home with the trophy, so he has no one to apologise to. something about the victors and all glory is ringing in my V10 shattered ears.
another interesting thig to come out of the weekend was, how is a non conformist like paul stoddard going to make ny head way in a conservative right wing organisation like the FIA?
he must have done something right to get "old potato head" walker to tell him to piss off and play with his planes.
sort of reminds one of the george bush/ john howard thing.
swap bush for bernie
and little arse licker jonnie for ronnie
are we there yet?
haha piss off and play with his planes 🙂 I heard that on the news and thought it might not be a bad idea...... nobody like minardi anyway 🙂
FERRARI pit crew fired!!!
Melbourne, Tuesday
The Ferrari Formula 1 Team fired their entire pit crew yesterday. The announcement followed Ferrari's decision to take advantage of the Australian Government's Youth Opportunity scheme and employ people from Macquarie Fields.
The decision to hire them was brought on by a recent documentary on how unemployed youths from the Macquarie Fields area were able to remove a set of wheels in less than 6 seconds without proper equipment, whereas Ferrari's existing crew can only do it in 8 seconds with millions of euros worth of high-tech equipment.
John Howard went on record as saying this was a bold move by the Ferrari management, which demonstrated the international recognition of Australia's employment practices under his Liberal government. As most races are won and lost in the pits, Ferrari now have an advantage over every team.
However, Ferrari may have got more than they bargained for......At the crew's first practice session, the Macquarie Fields pit crew successfully changed the tyres in under 6 seconds, and then within 12 seconds they had re-sprayed, re-badged, and sold the vehicle to the McLaren team for a slab of VB, 200 Litres of high performance fuel, a kilogram of speed and some photos of Montoya's girlfriend in the shower.
Should make for a good race in Malaysia with everyone running "second hand" engines.
That is those that didn't exploit the loop hole in the rules, take the penalty so they can run fresh engines.
Then again, some may say that's a strategy.
At the end of the day millions was spent to make a car go on 1.5 seconds slower around Albert park.
But atleast the racing was closer...money well spent.
Thats crazy, how they are trying to make the cars slower - I mean the methods they choose. If you brought the field back to Albert park at the end of this year, I'm sure they would have shaved that 1.5 seconds off already.
They change the tyres so slicks are not allowed - thus reducing the grip level of the car - to make them slower.
They change the aero rules to reduce the down force on the car, thus reducing the grip level of the car.
Long life engines havent really affected the power out of the engines - there are still over ride functions, and internally I doubt the engines have changed much - just a bit more metal here and there. They limit the max revs to keep engine life up, but on the over ride these cars are just as fast as they were before the rule changes.
So what we are left with is cars that have about 15% more power than 3 or 4 years ago, and smaller tyres with grooves, less grip, less down force - and they expect us to believe that that makes the racing safer ? More power less grip ?
If they were really dinkum about slowing down F1, they need to change the engine capacity rules. In the grim death, capacity = power = straight line speed (if efficiency is the same that is). Limit the capacity of the engine, retain a sensible minimum weight of the car and you have successfully slowed the field down.
Dont think it would do much for costs though........
My view is that F1 is the pinacle of motor sport, the most technologically advanced form of motor sport, and the most expensive.
Let them make them go as fast as they want, have as much down force as they want, have the fatest tyres they want and the most powerful engines they can shoe horn into the space. Let all these aspects be controlled so everyone is on a level playing field.
Of course there is the small issue of money being the dominating factor and tracks to run these mach 1 rated cars.
F1 makes that much money I'm sure they can work these small issues out.
I'd also love to see F1 returned to its roots - where basically the only controls were engine capacity and min weight.
Picture a 1500HP, turbo charged 19,000rpm 4L V10, with ground effects body work. It would have to be about 10 seconds a lap quicker.
Scary fast.
Matt....that's gold.😀😀
if you go through the rules over the last few years, all the changes have been made to slow the cars down, but the boys who make the cars engineer around the changes and they still go faster, that is one of the reasons why the sport is so fantastic. i think the aero changes are almost nulliied already. If there was open slather on engine and ground efect etc I think we would just end up with lots of dead drivers.
As for paul stoddart I hope he continues to give all the arseholes the hardest of times. It is a wonder why he persists. I can't see how he makes any money out of the minardi team. but if we didn't have the minardis and jordans etc it would be pretty dull
and as for all the anti ferrari hysteria, it wasn't all that long ago that they were the prettiest things sitting on the side of the track with smoke coming out of expired motors.
at that time the mc larens were almost unbeatable with laud and prost driving.
so what comes around goes around don't you think?
just sit back and watch the best driver ever to pull on a helmet do his thing I say...
it will be a long time before we see someone like schumy again; if ever.
are we there yet?
Thats it, thats all it is. They now have to slow em down, knowing that we are around the ideal 'safe' speed where we are, however teams are going to make improvements every year, potentially to the value of 1.5 secs per lap, therefore, we have to slow them that much every year.
If it was unleashed power, then good god.. 10 seconds a lap is very much an understatement. It would be more like 30-40, and that would be scary. At the moment there is a 3L limit as far as engine capacity, with no turbo's. skirts, slicks, limited downforce, a limit to 10 cylinders, etc, etc..
1980's were an incredible time in F1, where there was the use of the combination of turbos and skirts. (Skirts for those unaware, are basically bodywork underneath the car, that pulls the car towards the ground, where as the current downforce, such as wings, push down on the car. Big difference.) Anyway, the skirts would pull the car to the ground, and the pulling force increased with speed of the car, and thats where the newly designed turbo's came into it.. a scary time. A few deaths from memory.. Now THAT was out of control..
THE LOWEST WITH THE MOSTEST BLING BLING WINS!!
What's wrong with cars going that fast we need 'G' suits...man, close the cockpit if you have to.
OK here's something else...what about thinking outside the square...like the old "john Player Special" of the '70's (I think) with the dual front wheels.
No one these days is willing to go out on a limb and try something new...or is it the reg's are so tight it doesn't allow for that.
