rage2’s ramblings

The house of McLaren is falling apart. The rivalry between Hamilton and Alonso has now caused penalties against drivers as well as the team itself. As I predicted, the 2 McLarens decimated the entire field at the Hungaroring. Hamilton, who was faster than Alonso throughout the first 2 qualifying knockout sessions, refused team orders to let Alonso pass at the beginning of Q3. Alonso responded by sitting in pitlane for an additional 10 seconds, blocking Hamilton’s pit stop, resulting in Hamilton losing his last fastest lap (he didn’t have enough time to pit exit and make the start/finish line before clock ran down), therefore giving Alonso his fast lap and knocking Hamilton off pole into 2nd. On top of this mess, Ron Dennis visibly shows his anger, grabs Alonso’s physiotherapist, who apparently blocked radio traffic to tell Alonso to wait, overriding team orders. And after all this, McLaren comes up with some bullshit story that pin the blame on Hamilton, to try and keep the cars 1-2 for the race.

Well, the stewards weren’t too happy with this, and gave Alonso a 1 second penalty (putting him back into 6th place), and docked ALL constructor points for McLaren this weekend for making Alonso sit in the pits for 20 seconds with no traffic in sight. The 2nd penalty is being appealed now, and will probably be overruled… the stewards simply needed an excuse to penalize McLaren for that BS story.

So, after all this, the top 6 stands as follows:

1. Hamilton - McLaren
2. Heidfeld - BMW
3. Raikkonen - Ferrari
4. Rosberg - Williams
5. R Schumacher - Toyota
6. Alonso - McLaren

A shame, but I think McLaren is strong enough to still pull off a 1-2, unless 1st lap antics take the boys out. Not that it matters anyways, since everyone’s going to be talking about “pitlane-gate”. At least we won’t hear much about “spy-gate” for a week or so.

Blunder of the weekend goes to Ferrari, who forgot to fuel Massa in his Q2 pitstop. Massa runs out of gas in pitlane, tires cold as ice, and mustered a 14th place, getting knocked right out of Q2 and not getting a chance for the top 10 shootout. Funny stuff.

In light of all this, I’ll still make a prediction, for traditions sake.

1. Hamilton - McLaren
2. Raikkonen - Ferrari
3. Alonso - McLaren
4. Heidfeld - BMW
5. Kubica - BMW
6. Rosberg - Williams

Even though you dumbasses brought shame to the team, Go McLaren!!!

McLaren proved once again that they are strong in high downforce configuration today, as Alonso set the fastest overall time in practice. Over at the Ferrari camp, Kimi set 6th fastest while Massa could only muster a 7th place lap. While Kimi was unhappy with his setup, his slower teammate Massa was happy with his. It’ll be curious to see who’s lying as the weekend progresses.

With the Hungaroring similar to the Monaco configuration (slow corners high downforce), the McLaren’s shorter wheelbase will most likely shine in qualifying tomorrow, easily outpacing Ferrari. Renaults are also strong in high downforce configuration, so I’m expecting them to be the top teams after McLaren and Ferrari. So my predictions are as follows:

1. Lewis Hamilton - McLaren
2. Fernando Alonso - McLaren
3. Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
4. Filipe Massa - Ferrari
5. Heikki Kovalainen - Renault
6. Giancarlo Fisichella - Renault

In the McLaren camp, Hamilton and Alonso are pretty much equals, so it’s a toss-up as to who’s going to beat the other. Alonso’s confidence and consistency has been growing as his results have shown over the last few races, while Hamilton struggled a bit no thanks to McLaren’s horrible decisions during the rain soaked race 2 weeks ago. But now we’re back at low downforce tracks, where we’ve seen Hamilton outpace his teammate, so the nod goes to Hamilton.

Over at Ferrari, it’s quite clear that Kimi has found his groove, and that he is clearly the better driver than Massa (although Kimi does make some bonehead mistakes that costs him the races). So that’s an easy choice. Same goes for Kovalainen over at Renault, he’s starting to show why he’s clearly the top driver on the team, as Fisichella struggles to match Kovy’s pace.

As for “spygate”, I’ll save that for after the race weekend, as I’ve got a lot to write there (and I just got back from Holidays).

Go McLaren!

Well I waited until the last minute to talk about the race tomorrow, hoping to see some updates on the Hamilton situation. For those that missed the qualifying sessions, Lewis Hamilton crashed his McLaren heavily into the tire barriers at 260km/h during Q3 shootout. According to McLaren, a failure in the air gun in Hamilton’s previous pitstop caused the right front wheel to be improperly secured. Under load of the high speed corner in which he crashed, the vibration from the loose wheel caused the suspension to fail, with shards of carbon fiber puncturing the tire immediately. As Hamilton ran off into the kitty litter, which offers no help in decelerating the car, he crashed at around 260km/h into the tire barriers.

It took 15 minutes for Hamilton to exit his car. Immediately after the crash, he was moving both his legs… I’m not sure if that was adreneline kicking in or if he was checking to see if anything was OK. Shortly after qualifying, McLaren issued a press release stating that Hamilton suffered no injuries… not even a bruise. He’s still waiting for FIA clearance, but is expected to race in 10th place, since he did advance from Q2 shootout.

In other qualifying tidbits, the McLaren’s are FAST. Hamilton, before his crash, set the fastest 1st sector time. Alonso, even though he made a huge mistake, taking his MP4-22 slightly off the track (my guess would be a 0.5s mistake), still managed to qualify 2nd right between Kimi and Massa. So if the McLaren pace is real, it should be exciting to watch Hamilton climb back up from 10th place.

Many have critisized Hamilton for not really passing too much except for 1st corners… but really, the guy has been so far up top in qualifying and race, there’s nobody for him to pass except for backmarkers. Tomorrow (well, 6 hrs from now), we will see how he manages. Alonso’s done some great passing this year, hopefully, we’ll see some highlight reel quality passes from Hamilton.

My qualifying predictions (other than Hamilton) have been pretty dead on, so I’m going to make my usual bold predictions for tomorrow’s race. From the current weather forcasts, it shows that we’ll have a wet race. But I’ll make 2 sets of predictions… one for wet and one for dry.

Dry Prediction

1. Alonso - McLaren
2. Raikkonen - Ferrari
3. Massa - Ferrari
4. Hamilton - McLaren
5. Kubica - BMW
6. Heidfeld - BMW

Wet Prediction

1. Alonso - McLaren
2. Hamilton - McLaren
3. Raikkonen - Ferrari
4. Kubica - BMW
5. Massa - Ferrari
6. Kovalainen - Renault

You might be wondering about my wet predictions… Alonso has proved himself as a very competent racer in rain conditions, even better than Michael Schumacher in some wet head to head racing the last 2 years. Hamilton also proved to be very fast in the rain from looking at times he has set this year in wet practice and testing, so I see the McLaren boys powering past everyone (wishful thinking right?). Rain is a good way of equalizing the field, so my prediction is pretty much based on what I feel is the ranking in skill level in this year’s field.

Let’s hope I’m right… Go McLaren!

The European GP, aka German GP II. Well not this year, but usually, the crafty boys in Germany get 2 GP’s… German GP at Hokkenheim and the cleverly named European GP at Nurburgring. Well I guess those Italians get the same treatment with the Italian GP at Monza and San Marino GP at Imola… lucky bastards.

First off, there’s been no real updates to the Ferrari vs McLaren spy scandal. McLaren has been summoned by the FIA to appear for charges of having broken the sporting code by possessing confidential Ferrari information. McLaren denied this, and claims only Coughlan had this data, and none was used in the development of the MP4-22. I just hope this gets settled soon, because I hate having to see McLaren having to deal with this crap when they can be dealing with performance of their car (which has been slipping against Ferrari the last 2 races). Not to mention the questionable championship status of Hamilton and Alonso, as the FIA has threatened penalties against both the team and the drivers.

Next big news, Indianapolis lost their 2008 date, so there will probably be no USGP for next year. I’ve always enjoyed the USGP, since SpeedTV and FOX does great full coverage of the event, and in (almost) HDTV this year. Even though Ferrari has typically dominated the Indy track since it’s inception, it’s always a very entertaining race (not counting the tire debacle of 2005). Let’s hope the USGP returns next year, either at Indy or a new venue, but with US F1 fanbase being fairly insignificant, the latter would be a long wait.

Now, back to the European GP. Practice 1 had Hamilton leading the charge, with Kimi only 0.236s behind. Both cars are very close, with Alonso fucking with Massa during first practice session, here’s how it unfolded. Alonso was closing in on Massa, and took a shortcut in the chicane. He let Massa by, and went toe to toe with him through the next turns, side by side, forcing Massa to drive wide. Massa wisely let off and let Alonso go on his merry way. Great stuff for us fans watching the practice sessions. Alonso likes to pull stunts like this late in the year, his way of fucking with the opposition’s head. Hopefully, it works.

Practice 2 was a write off, with the course being wet after rain between sessions. It wasn’t until late in the session when the track dried enough for decent times. Kimi posted a fast time, but nowhere near practice 1 times. McLaren didn’t even bother trying to run.

Hamilton is very comfortable with his car this weekend, having found a good setup early on in Practice 1. Alonso is still struggling a bit with oversteer, but should have things dialed in tomorrow morning. Both Ferrari drivers feel there’s more time to be had, but overall, they’re happy with their cars too. From watching the 2 sessions, it looks like both teams have found a good setup to start with for practice and qualifying tomorrow.

So now, predictions. This will be a tough one, as both teams are performing damn close (as evident by the Spa tests last week). Both are doing well in the rain (again, last week’s Spa tests) so it’ll be a damn toss up. I think the advantage will go to Ferrari, as McLaren is VERY pre-occupied with the whole FIA investigation. Ferrari… not so much, they’re probably laughing right now in their paddocks. Ron Dennis can’t stop complaining for the last few weeks, so the team is definately lacking focus. So I’m going to guess, with Kimi finding his form, and Alonso now just as fast as Hamilton, the pecking order for qualifying will go something like this:

1. Raikkonen - Ferrari
2. Hamilton - McLaren
3. Alonso - McLaren
4. Massa - Ferrari
5. Heidfeld - BMW
6. Schumacher - Toyota

BMW’s of course fighting against Toyota for the 3rd fastest team… Heidfeld has been fast lately, and poor Ralphy is fighting for his job so he’s been very impressive in qualifying. Thus, they will round up the top 6. 

Some say McLaren’s doing bad the last few races because I betrayed them by buying a BMW. McLaren was winning race after race till I bought the car, and have been beaten easily by Ferrari ever since. Let’s just say if this streak continues, I’m gonna sell the car. I’m that dedicated. Go McLaren!

More of an insult IMO.

As all M3 owners know, the M3, both E36 and E46, is famous for it’s exhaust rasp. A few love it, as it’s a distinct M3 sound. I hate it… at high revs, the exhaust tone sounds tinny, and almost to the point where it sounds like it’s going to blow up. With a rev limit of 8000rpm, and the rasp coming on strong at 4500rpm, driving the car hard in my opinion sounds like shit.

I looked around, and most BMW shops sell anti-rasp pipes to get rid of the awful racket. Upon further investigation, it turns out that these rasp pipes are very simple. The stock exhaust midpipe (dual pipes) for some odd reason only has 1 resonator, with the 2nd pipe being a straight pipe. This was the cause of the rasp, so the fix is to add a properly sized resonator to the 2nd pipe.

The guys at e46fanatics found that the Aero Turbine AR25 resonator removed the rasp completely, and was a cheap upgrade at $100 (vs $600+ for anti rasp pipes), so I had one ordered out of North American Diesel Performance in Edmonton. Install was straight forward, done by Jason at Epic Welding. Total cost was around $200.

The Resonator:

 

Stock Exhaust:

Interesting NACA ducts under the car:

Resonator Installed:

The new sound is slightly quieter, but much deeper, giving the perception of a louder exhaust. Check out the before and after video of the exhaust tone. Driving, the difference was a bit more subtle with the top down. With the top up, the car no longer sounds like a toy about to blow up. The tone is much more agressive, low and deep, without any drone. It’s perfect if you want a great tone but want to keep a low key with law enforcement officials near you during spirited driving.

The question now is… do I need an exhaust to make the car sound more ridiculous?

It didn’t take long… only 4 days after getting the car, I had to lower the car and put on some wheels. The majority of M3 owners favor mesh wheel designs, but I personally hate them, and prefer 5 spokes with a lot of lip. Tirecraft hooked me up with a full suspension and wheel setup. Eibach springs, Koni yellow shocks, and 19″ Beyern Type 5 wheels which addressed all my preferences. They wanted me to go 20″, but really, the ride in the M3 was harsh enough (it’s my daily driver), so I settled for 19″ instead. Both 20″ and 19″ have the same amount of lip, so it was an easy choice.

Once I get used to the car in at the track, I’ll be upgrading the stock sway bars with some adjustable sways to nail down handling behavior. Stay tuned!

More pics after the jump.

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I’ve been trying to find a replacement for my SLK32 AMG for over 2 years now with little success. The SLK was a perfect car for me, it was a small 2 seater, hardtop convertible that worked well for winter as well as summer, fast shifting automatic transmission, easily upgradable supercharged motor, and suspension that worked well enough to beat Z06’s on the roadcourse. It did everything, and did it well.

Since the SLK32’s departure (I couldn’t keep the car because it was rear ended twice and the frame was bent), I moved to a ‘99 E55 AMG. While it was a great car, I couldn’t live with the large size of the car, nor enjoy the summer with only a sunroof.  I really missed the convertible experience. Since I’m a Mercedes (and McLaren) guy, I looked through the AMG lineup to hopefully replace the SLK32.

The only convertibles available were the CLK63, SL55, and the SLK55. First off the list was the SL55… the massive size of the car makes no sense for a 2 seater. The CLK63 was OK, but I couldn’t justify spending that kind of money for a soft top convertible, and honestly, it was beyond my budget for what I could afford (no used ones yet). The SLK55, I wasn’t 100% happy with the looks, the engine was blah (same motor as my E55), and upgrading it was expensive. For $10,000 more than my SLK32, I would be getting a lot less car.

I was very reluctant to look at other manufacturers, especially BMW, because in Calgary, the 2 BMW dealerships here (owned by the same guy) has a huge history of poor service. It’s so bad that there’s actually anti-CalgaryBMW websites on the internet with customers as well as employee testimonials. But my good friends at Kulu Motorcars let me sample a E46 M3 SMG coupe, and I fell in love with the car.

The SMG gearbox is awesome… it’s the standard Getrag 6-speed MT transmission, with some fancy hydraulics to control the clutch as well as the shifter, all controlled by computer. In the sequential mode, it rips through each upshift faster than I can power shift a manual box PERFECTLY everytime, and the rev matched downshifts (still requires heel and toe) make the driving experience perfect. As any track whore would tell you, missing a shift at the limit could be an expensive mistake, with SMG, every up or down shift is perfect, so you can drive much harder knowing you’ve taken a factor out that might cost you tens of thousands of dollars. The auto mode is perfect for my rush hour commute. Now if only I could check out a convertible…

A year after that drive, I was fortunate enough to help instruct a BMW track day. As fate would have it, I was paired up with a 2004 M3 SMG Convertible, and I got to drive it on our local roadcourse for a few laps. My worry with the convertible was heavier and less rigid, making track duties unrewarding. BMW makes great cars, I’d hate to admit it as a Mercedes junkie, but on the track, the convertible ate each corner up easily, and the heavier weight only made a marginal difference in straight line speed. I was hooked. Sure it wasn’t a hardtop convertible, but an optional hardtop was available if I decided to drive her in the winters.

I was so impressed with the car that 3 weeks later… I came home with this:

My biggest worry was the soft top, but after driving 2000 miles home, it wasn’t an issue. At 250km/h, wind noise wasn’t much worse than my SLK32 at 250km/h… I guess soft tops have gone a lone way. Even when I washed the car, the leaks from the top was minimal (a few drops near the front edge), nothing serious enough to piss me off.

I’m not sure how extensive of a project this car would be, but I’ll start keeping tabs to document everything from the beginning.

Not only is she strikingly beautiful, but Megan Fox has officially jumped to the top of my Celeb-Top-5-Fuck-List. Let me list the reasons why.

1. She’s as hot as Angelina, but without the baggage.
2. She did Transformers. That’s hot.
3. Tattoos in the right places.
4. Transformers. I’m a geek. Nuff said.
5. And the best reason… She loves the herb!

“I wanted to try several things and make an informed decision, but I didn’t enjoy anything other than marijuana. I don’t even think of it as a drug – it should be legalized.”

That’s my girl! I’m a very simple man, it doesn’t take much for a chick to impress me. The fact that she loves the herb, and has the magical ability to tightens up my pants this quickly is pretty damn perfect in my book.

Tons more after the jump.

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Now that Paris is back in the club scene, I thought it’d be perfect timing to start posting hotties and celebs again. Welcome back Paris, both you and your superbra!

More after the jump.

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Lewis Hamilton has not disappointed us at all this year. The rookie, who came off a race where Ferrari was stronger than his McLaren, walked into the British GP on thursday with the entire nation’s media focused on him. With that much pressure, he still managed to grab the pole while looking slower all weekend. Of course, he has Kimi Raikkonen to thank, who made a mistake on his final lap that would most definately have given him pole.

Looking at the times this weekend, all 4 McLaren and Ferrari drivers are very close to each other, so it’ll be a great race. Alonso is on a heavier strategy and has stated that he had a really good lap. Hamilton also made a mistake on his pole lap, so he also has more speed out of the McLaren than his pole time suggests. McLaren will be doing everything they can to help Lewis win his home GP, so I expect him to finish in front of Alonso. The question is, how will Ferrari slot into the equation? Well, here’s my prediction for tomorrow’s race.

1. Lewis Hamilton - McLaren
2. Felipe Massa - Ferrari
3. Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
4. Fernando Alonso - McLaren
5. Robert Kubica - BMW
6. Heikki Kovalainen - Renault

Like I said earlier, Alonso is definately the #2 McLaren driver for this race, and if he’s going for 1 less stop, he’s going to lose out in traffic, as Silverstone doesn’t really have much passing over the years. Yes I know, Lewis Hamilton has predicted that there’s going to be lots of passing this race, but he’s comparing to GP2, where the guys aren’t exactly perfect, unlike the current crop of F1 stars. Then again… Alonso is damn good at passing (he made that spectacular one at Magny Cours last week) so I could be wrong…

BMW and Renault (and surprisingly, Toyota) has been showing strong form as of late. Finally, Kubica and Kovalainen are finally showing off their true pace that they were hired for, and beating their teammates more often than not, so I expect them to pull up to the top 6 this weekend.

GO MCLAREN!

Alright, after an unusually busy month for me, I’m back for more regular updates. For my regular readers, I sincerly apologize for the lack of posts (and babes!) in the last month.

Before I talk about this morning’s qualifying, I want to address the whole Ferrari-McLaren-Honda scandal that’s going around. Basically, McLaren’s Mike Coughlan’s home was searched and confidential documents were found in his home. These were given to him by Ferrari’s Nigel Stepney around April, and sometime in June, these 2 went to Honda looking for a job. In the top secret world of F1 development, these documents could be worth literally tens of millions of dollars worth of R&D by some of the smartest people on this planet, so as you can see how serious this entire espionage episode really is.

Honda’s part of the scandal was quite minor… the 2 key players in this was Nigel Stepney (Ferrari) and Mike Coughlan (McLaren), and they implicated Honda by contacting Honda’s Nick Fry asking for potential employment with the Honda F1 team. Honda has claimed innocent in this controversy, and FIA had decided not to investigate them. Personally, I think Honda should be part of the investigation (however minimal)… as Stepney and Coughlan spoke with them mid season while under contract with their respective teams, which IMO Honda should have reported to officials (this meeting happened a month ago). From an ethics standpoint, this is unacceptable, as both Stepney and Coughlan are obviously unhappy with the current teams, and coming from 2 different teams, would open up a can of worms once word got out like it did. A good comparison is the Coke/Pepsi espionage case, when a Coke employee tried to sell inside information (in this case, the recipe for new Coke) to a Pepsi employee. Instead of saying no and shrugging it off, Pepsi reported this to authorities and let them deal with it. Sure, they’re just looking for employment and not explicitly selling secrets, but they are under contract, and with that have a LOT of inside working knowledge of both team’s technical data, and would easily bring with them large amounts of information regardless.

On Ferrari’s side, they have the most to gain out of all this. They lost secret information regarding their F2007 car, so now it’s up to McLaren to prove that none of this data was used on the McLaren car, otherwise McLaren will be a BIG loser in all this. FIA has said that they will dock constructors AND drivers points from the McLaren team if it’s found that the information was used on their car. How they will decide would be argued for years to come. So the question is what were the real intentions of Stepney and Coughlan? If Coughlan was unhappy (he did go look for a job at Honda), why would he HELP McLaren with data from Ferrari? Unless he wants all this to happen to piss off McLaren, but it doesn’t make sense, as Stepney and Coughlan will obviously NEVER find employment in anything relating to Formula One. Would one hate a team so much to sacrafice their lives and careers to sabotage a team? It could happen, but they were looking for jobs at Honda. My guess was that both Stepney and Coughlan wanted out of their teams and start new at rebuilding a failing team (Honda), and by stealing data from their respective teams, use that to help Honda actually beat their customer cars (hehe ok ok win a few races) and earn some status within the F1 community, like Newey or Byrne (who worked with Stepney from Benetton to Ferrari). 

At the end of the day, the big losers would be us, the fans, regardless of the outcome. If the FIA does dock points, who’s to say how many points should be docked? This season will be a farce, as the results would not matter, and destroy all the hard work (and records) of Lewis Hamilton, who has nothing to do with all this. If the FIA does NOT dock points, Hamilton’s records will still be questioned, as fans of other teams will use that against the rookie’s hard work. What was supposedly a historic season will forever be tainted in the eyes of fans.

I’ve been out of town picking up my new car (for the first time in 10 years not a Mercedes… ) and just got into the hotel with internet, so I’m downloading qualifying right now to watch before I watch the race tomorrow morning via Internet stream. Yes this road trip of mine has made it really difficult for me to continue my streak, but I will do it tomorrow morning! Basically, I’m at Mount Rushmore in the US. In Canada, TSN has live coverage. In the US, coverage is on Fox, and it’s delayed till late in the afternoon (1pm eastern). So… before the trip I searched for a hotel near here with high speed internet, searched for an online stream I can watch… and thus I’ll be sitting at the desk in my hotel room watching the race because my ethernet cable is not long enough to reach the bed. I almost had it all planned I guess?

Anyways, looking at the results of practice and qualifying, Ferrari has closed the gap with their new aero update during last weeks’ testing. Funny, everyone, including Ferrari was reporting that there was going to be NOTHING in the pipeline, because of wind tunnel downtime. I guess they fooled everyone (again).

Unfortunately for Alonso, he’ll be watching tomorrow’s exciting start from 10th place… his McLaren’s gearbox failed in Q3 qualifying, first mechanical failure for McLaren this year. Hamilton slotted nicely between Massa (pole) and Raikkonen (3rd) so let’s hope Lewis makes another one of his great starts or passes and leads all the way to the end.

I haven’t read up on the individual laptimes for practice yet, so I can’t even predict who’s going to be more consistent on what tire for tomorrow, so therefore this will be simply a shitty preview post, and all I can really do is cheer for the McLaren boys. I promise for next week, it’ll be much better.

As for the new car, it’s a BMW M3 Convertible with the SMG F1 style transmission. Don’t worry, I’ll still (and always) cheer for McLaren! Check out a picture of the badboy here. With that being said… Go McLaren!

Lewis Hamiton was once again perfect in his Q3 qualifying, stealing the pole from his teammate Alonso for a 2nd time in a row. Hamilton made his perfect lap with 5 mins remaining, a lap that held on even after both McLaren drivers came in for fresh soft option tires and of course lighter fuel load. It seems to be a repeat of Montreal…

Kimi put in a better performance than usual, qualifying right behind his teammate Filipe Massa. This is the first time that Raikkonen has qualified really close to his teammate (+0.136s), so maybe he’s finally found comfort in the F2007. If it wasn’t for Kimi’s resurgence (if you could even call it that), my predictions for qualifying would’ve been dead on.

Unfortunately, the F2007 is really beginning to lose pace against McLaren, and now, the BMW’s of Heidfeld and Vettel. Not that they’re getting slower, it’s just that BMW and McLaren are definately getting faster. Word in the pitlane suggests that there’s huge problems at Ferrari, which includes downtime on their wind tunnel… they haven’t had access to it for a few weeks now thanks to maintenence. It looks like this will continue as the teams head back to Europe, because there has been problems getting their wind tunnel systems calibrated. Without the wind tunnel operational, there will not be new developments for Ferrari in 2 weeks at the French Grand Prix. McLaren is expected to have yet another update before the race at Magny Cours.

BMW replacement driver Vettel is doing really well for his first race weekend, qualifying 7th behind Kovalainen in 6th, who also has been impressive at his last 2 place in the Renault. His teammate, Heidfeld, qualified a solid 5th place behind the 2 Ferraris. Expect Heidfeld to have a strong race, as he’s been looking awfully consistent during practice sessions. So with that, my race predictions:

1. Hamilton - McLaren
2. Alonso - McLaren
3. Massa - Ferrari
4. Heidfeld - BMW
5. Raikkonen - Ferrari
6. Vettel - BMW

I still think that Renault is light for the race, and will lose out in the pitstops, so it’s going to be once again another 3 team race. Go McLaren!

McLaren looks to be in charge again during Free Practice 1 and 2, with Alonso once again leading the way for both practice sessions. No surprise here, McLaren utterly dominated the low downforce Montreal track last week, so I’m expecting them to do the same here, as all teams are running the same configuration on a similar track.

What has changed, however, is the pecking order of the top 3. It looks like BMW is ready to challenge Ferrari, and I feel this weekend they will at least qualify higher than Ferrari. So, nothing much to update between the last race and today, other than the fact that Kubica did not get cleared to race, so teenaged test driver Vettel is taking his place, and showing pretty good pace.

Here’s my predictions for qualifying.

1. Alonso - McLaren
2. Hamilton - McLaren
3. Heidfeld - BMW
4. Massa - Ferrari
5. Raikkonen - Ferrari
6. Vettel - BMW

Go McLaren!!!