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.

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!!!

Where do I begin? Let’s start with the obvious… Mr. Lewis Hamilton. The paddock has been full of talk from ex-champions that this is the boy man who will rewrite all of Michael Schumacher’s records. Honestly, 2 weeks ago, I would’ve thought twice about comments like that, being so early into the season and of course with luck completely on his side… but after today’s performance, there is no doubt in my mind that Lewis Hamilton may in fact be the first rookie to take the F1 championship. Let’s take a look at what he faced today.

• Botched his start, but still ended up leading the first lap.
• Lost his lead margin 4x to safety car (about a minute and a half).
• Drove a calm and composed race with accidents and debris left and right.
• Beat his teammate, 2x WDC, fair and square.
• Made his teammate, 2x WDC, look like an amateur.
• Won the race without even breaking a sweat.
• Accomplished all this in his 6th GP, at a track he’s NEVER driven on before (Playstation doesn’t count)

All in all, a stellar, flawless performance. Every driver today made a mistake or 2 (in some cases like Trulli, a shitload), Lewis was the only one that was literally perfect today. Blisteringly fast, calm and collected, and with godlike consistency. I hate to jump so hard on the Hamilton hype bandwagon, but really, if you watched the race, there is no way in hell you can disagree with the facts that we are witnessing the beginning of something special.

So… other than Hamilton’s dominance, the race was littered with incidents left and right. The biggest was the Kubica shunt, which was incredibly scary to watch. When his car came to a stop and he made minimal movements before he laid motionless, it brought back memories of ‘94 Imola, after Senna crashed and his head moved ever so slightly. Amazingly, after the race, it seems that Kubica was knocked out after the crash, and came out with just a sprained foot, and is being kept overnight for observation. The photos (1, 2, 3) show how scary this crash was, as his feet were completely exposed after the first hit. The video shows how incredibly violent his crash was, as he left that track at top speed, became airborne at top speed (thus losing ability to steer or brake), and bouncing off wall after wall after wall. Incredible that he came out uninjured.

An interesting note about the SC period for the Kubica crash, it came a few laps after the last SC period, and the CLK63 safety car must not have been ready, because the field was led by… ready for this? A 2007 Honda Civic Si. 200hp leading a field of 900hp cars lol. The engineers must’ve been freaking out watching the tire pressures and temperatures drop to pretty scary levels. Luckily for the drivers, the CLK63 was back 2 laps later. Odd indeed.

With all the craziness, it was cool to see Honda and Toyota out of pit sequence throughout the race, and at one point, both teams had a car in 3rd place lol. You’d think a rainy Monaco would be the only place to see such craziness, but never underestimate the lottery of Montreal!

Alonso, well, for a 2x WDC, looked like a rookie. He didn’t hit any walls, but he went off at turn one about… oh… 7 or 8 times during the race? I dunno what his excuse would be this time around, but it was inexcusable. Kimi, the same thing… all over the place. Very lucky they both didn’t clip a wall with their mistakes. Alonso though, after his pitstop penalty (he had to pit during SC period when pits were closed because he was out of gas), led a courageous charge, setting the fastest lap of the race 2 laps in a row and passing everyone left and right, only to lose those hard earned positions going off yet again at turn 1. Inexcusable.

Filipe Massa was having a decent race, considering how poorly the Ferrari’s performed this weekend, and made a stupid mistake along with Fisichella. They both exited the pits when the lights were red, and were DQ’d from the race. Massa was visibly upset, giving the cameras a thumbs down as he exited his car, but really… that rule is a safety rule, not to mention that the rest of the field saw the red light and stopped at pit exit waiting for it to go green (the 2 might’ve blew by a stopped and waiting Kubica). Last thing the CLK63 safety car driver wants are 2 900hp missles battling for position out of the pits and nailing him. Of course, Ferrari fans called it a conspiracy, but let’s not forget Montoya got penalized for the exact same infraction at Montreal 2 years ago… where of course us McLaren fans cried foul lol! All I have to say about Ferrari is that if they don’t improve at Indy, they’re done for the season. McLaren may very well will walk way with both championships.

Pass of the year… with 3 or 4 laps to go, Sato in the Super Aguri on hard tires beats Alonso on softs under braking, and makes a daring clean pass on the 2x WDC. Sure I’m a McLaren fan, and watching a driver who’s usually a back marker pass our top driver FOR POSITION was kinda painful, but kudos to Sato for pulling it off like a champ, and once again showing how a customer car can beat a factory effort. Sorry Honda!

Well, I think that covers all the aspects of this crazy race. Very entertaining indeed! See you all next week at Indy!

I guess I should start predicting that Hamilton will suck more often lol! Lewis Hamilton, on a heavier fuel strategy than teammate and 2x WDC Fernando Alonso, took the pole position from the favorite. Alonso was faster all weekend, but made a mistake in turn 10 on his final lap, giving the pole to his rookie teammate. Ferrari was nowhere to be found, as BMW’s Nick Heidfeld took 3rd spot in his BMW.

The question for tomorrow… will Alonso beat Hamilton to the first corner? The first turn is a right/left kink under braking, into the right hander Senna corner, meaning the right hand side of the track has an advantage into turn 1 if Alonso can get beside Hamilton. For Alonso to win, he’ll have to do just that, be 1st after Senna corner (turn 2), as he’s on a lighter fuel load. If he can’t pass Hamilton off the start, he will have to settle for 2nd.

Ferrari claims to be chasing setup again, but it looks like they’ve been fading back ever since the moving floor controversy. Without their moving floors, they were on par with McLaren. Now that McLaren’s new developments have been proven to work well, Ferrari doesn’t have much up their sleeves… their last aero update, new sidepods to improve cooling, really didn’t do much for the performance of the car. There’s been no big updates that I’ve seen from the Maranello squad, so it’s possible that they have reached the limits (already!) of the F2007, where only small performance gains can be had. With the new McLaren, they seem to be picking up a few tenths every single evolution of the MP4/22, and they’re finding consistency AND reliability, something that can’t be said for McLaren’s last few seasons. They are so confident, Alonso has now publically stated that they are fast EVERYWHERE, so they’re pretty much unstoppable. Perfect timing, as everybody expected Ferrari to EASILY take the Canadian and US GPs. It’s a great year for McLaren fans!

So predictions… barring a first corner accident, it’s going to be another McLaren 1-2. The question is, who will be on the first step of the podium? I personally want Hamilton to win, so I’m going to predict Alonso take this one lol. BMW did not show consistency throughout practice, so expect them to fade back. Red Bull is doing really well with Adrian Newey on the team, finally showing that good old Adrian still has many tricks up his sleeves (remember that since 1990, Adrian Newey and Rory Byrne was responsible for nearly every championship winning car). So here goes:

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

GO MCLAREN!

Even though I am an obviously biased McLaren fan, it shocks me to see Alonso in the McLaren top the first 2 practice sessions. That’s right… Ferrari did not, surprisingly, come close to the McLarens. Alonso set the pace in both practices, with Hamilton close behind in 2nd place for FP1, and 3rd place for FP2. Massa did storm back up in FP2 to take 2nd place from Hamilton by +0.217s. Watching practice was awesome, as we saw Alonso pull of some D1 worthy drifts in the McLaren. Rarely do we see F1 cars slide like that and still stay on track, props to Alonso for giving us some great video clips, especially the drift early in FP2 running over the curb and not nailing the wall.

Monaco was a much different race than what we’ll see this weekend (as well as next at Indy), where the track favored cars with superior mechanical grip and drivability. This time around, top speed and high speed aero rules, so expect the pecking order to revert back to the good old Ferrari, McLaren and BMW top 6. Again, I’m surprised at the McLaren’s pace, as top speed times show Ferrari and McLaren very close to each other. Consistency wise, McLaren’s look to be very consistent, with both Alonso and Hamilton pulling lots of laps close to their best time. Massa’s 2nd fastest lap was a full second behind, while Kimi was consistent, but a lot slower. As for the flying Renaults at Monaco, we’ll see them in mid field trying to make the final qualifying group again.

So my predictions… it won’t be Hamilton’s race, as it’s his first time out at this track and Alonso seemed to have figured out the Bridgestones while Kimi… didn’t. In the BMW camp, Kubica ran into tons of mechanical issues today, but will be blazing fast in qualifying.

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

Go McLaren!

What happened to the rain???

So my predictions were WAY off, thanks to the 80% chance of rain report. Good thing I didn’t lay any bets down this weekend. Alonso, Hamilton, and McLaren took a dominating victory at Monaco as predicted by everyone, lapping everybody except for Massa, who ended up 3rd. The race was pretty uneventful, but the events afterwards was what was really interesting.

It started off with Lewis Hamilton at the press conference, claiming he could’ve won the race if he wasn’t told to back off, or brought in early for a pit stop. One of the journalists asked him if Hamilton felt frustrated that he was always fueled heavier for Q3 qualifying, he responded:

“At the end of the day, I am a rookie. I am in my first season in Formula One and I have finished second in only my first Monaco Grand Prix so I really can’t complain, but to see that I am of a similar pace to Fernando is a positive for me. But it is something I have to live with. I’ve got number two on my car. I am the number two driver.”

This upset the British media, who decided to turn this into a McLaren Team Order debate, saying their golden child Hamilton should’ve won. It was interesting to note that every world press coverage of the event focused on McLaren’s dominance, except for British press, which focused on team orders. The FIA was pressured to investigate McLaren’s 1-2.

Ron Dennis clarified that it is true that he allowed his drivers to race each other up to the pitstops, and to hold positions afterwards, which is what really upset the British media and fans, depriving Hamilton of a potential race victory. In my opinion, this is perfectly OK, especially at a track like Monaco. People seem to forget that there are 2 championships at stake, the World Driver’s Championship (WDC) and the World Constructor’s Championship (WCC). At a dangerous track like Monaco, when your team is leading the next guy by over a minute, you don’t want to chance a collision with each other fighting for position. You tell your team to back off, hold positions till the finish, save the engine for the next race (Canada, which is hard on engines and brakes), and come out with maximum points for both championships. The perfect weekend. It would’ve been irresponsible for Ron Dennis to tell his drivers to go after each other, as taking one or both cars out would give Ferrari an advantage (bumping Massa to 1st and Kimi to 6th), which would’ve changed the championship standings as it sits today.

So the FIA investigated, reviewing all pit to car radio communications, to please the British media and fans. Before the outcome, Bernie Ecclestone, as controversial as usual, suggested that McLaren should be excluded from this year’s championships if guilty. WTF??? Is he serious? He wants to penalize McLaren for trying to win the WCC. You’d think he was a Ferrari fan or something :).

So anyways, FIA found McLaren not guilty (duh!) of any wrong doing, and Bernie looks like an idiot (as usual). The full text of the FIA’s decision, a pretty funny read considering that actually investigated this, is available after the jump.

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The faster man didn’t get Pole today. Lewis Hamilton, on his final blitz, was preparing to secure his first pole position when he caught up to Mark Webber in his outlap, causing him to lose around 0.5s in sector 2. Because of this, he ended up 0.179s behind his teammate Fernando Alonso, who snatched the pole and along with Lewis swept the front row.

1. 1′15″726 - Alonso - McLaren
2. 1′15″905 - Hamilton - McLaren
3. 1′15″967 - Massa - Ferrari
4. 1′16″285 - Fisichella - Renault
5. 1′16″439 - Rosberg - Williams
6. 1′16″784 - Webber - Red Bull
7. 1′16″832 - Heidfeld - BMW
8. 1′16″955 - Kubica - BMW
9. 1′17″498 - Barrichello - Honda
10. 1′17″939 - Button - Honda

Good Call - As I predicted, McLaren owned everyone else at Monaco… qualifying was purely the Alonso and Hamilton show, each ripping one hot lap after another in the top 2 spots making us guess which McLaren would have the pole. Nobody else had a chance. Renault came up 4th place, better than I even expected. When aero is taken out of the equation, you’ll see which team is having Aero problems, which Renault themselves have admitted to. Ferrari? They didn’t have a chance at pole.

Bad Call - I was expecting BMW to be up with the big boys, but that didn’t happen. Looking at laptimes, it wasn’t a driving problem, BMW must be really strong aerodynamically. I guess it helps with Intel being your partner, having built Albert2, Europe’s fastest supercomputer, solely responsible for CFD computation at BMW’s aero department. If BMW can improve mechanical grip and power delivery before the year ends, they could be fighting up top with Ferrari and McLaren.

The Surprises - Kimi Raikkonen makes a mistake in Q2 and nudges the armco in the swimming pool. Under tremendous pressure by both McLaren and his teammate, Kimi pushed a little too hard and makes a costly mistake. Williams and Red Bull moved up the grid, even Honda beat Super Aguri, which goes to show where everyone sits in terms of aero efficiency (these guys obviously has problems). Not really a surprise, but Toyota sucks. They have not excelled in any area, and starts pretty far back. Only 2 teams have cars not faster than Toyota. Spyker and Super Aguri, the smallest outfits in the field. Considering Toyota has reportedly the biggest F1 budget compared to all teams, it’s a huge embarrassment for the Japanese team.

The Unknowns - Weather reports are stating 80% chance of rain tomorrow. We know Alonso is amazing in the rain. How will Lewis Hamilton compare? If it rains tomorrow, expect the results to be a lottery, as drivers will start making small mistakes, which at Monaco, are pretty big race ending mistakes.

What to Expect - Alonso and Hamilton are reported on fairly different strategies. Lewis has been begging for the pole position strategy, so I expect him to be on the lighter fuel load. This makes for an interesting turn 1… will they fight for position? Or will team orders force Alonso to give up turn 1 to Hamilton? Remember, if Lewis is light and behind Alonso, it ruins the chances for one driver. If McLaren’s going for a 1-2 win, they will ensure that both drivers make the best use of their strategies, which means Lewis will be allowed to win turn 1.

The Prediction - Since it’s going to rain tomorrow, it’ll be a lottery as to finishing order, so I’m just going to make some fun and random predictions (except for 1-2, McLaren’s gonna take this one regardless!). Anyways, my top 6 prediction:

1. Hamilton - McLaren
2. Alonso - McLaren
3. Button - Honda
4. Webber - Red Bull
5. Massa - Ferrari
6. Sutil - Spyker F1

Massa’s going to make a mistake in the rain, requiring an additional pit stop to replace a wing, dropping him down to 5th. Button will stay out of trouble and put the Honda on the podium, while everyone else slides around and makes a mistake. Why Button? Well, he’s had 1 win, so it’ll be a funny joke to tease him with 3rd. Webber will drive a consistent race to end up 4th. Sutil’s been compared to Hamilton as being the Monaco master, and in Practice 3, he was the fastest driver on the rain soaked track. Ya I know, the odds of this are way out there, but hey, like anyone can pull odds in a wet Monaco GP.

Go McLaren!!!