^ I'm still not convinced that Seb Vettel is destined for F1 greatness. Forget his age, he's been driving F1 cars for FOUR years now and has yet to perform like a veteran.

 

Lets Go Bmw Sauber!!!!!!


Kubica All The Way!!!!!!!!!!!

 

(Cross posted on miata.net)

I'm sure everyone knows I'm the biggest Super Aguri fan here. I'm just gutted and in fact am a bit numb; I don't think the feeling has fully sunk in yet. Super Aguri had more passion than the rest of the grid combined, which means it makes perfect F1 sense that they had to go.

I don't think their entry onto the grid was at the best time, with this current economic downturn, getting any company to spend millions sponsoring a back of the grid F1 team was always going to be a hard sell. Nonetheless, I put a lot of the blame on Nick Fry. It seemed that after Super Aguri started to regularly beat Honda in 2007, he turned quite sour on them. It must've been real hard to stomach being beaten by minnows with maybe a 10th of the budget of his team, but he reacted in classic a$$hole fashion by playing power games, not allowing the team to run certain developments, disparaging any rescue effort that wasn't headed by his good friend Martin Leach, and generally saying how poor of a team it was. In three years, Fry destroyed a Honda team that David Richards had built up to be the second best team on the grid and to take out his frustrations he had to destroy Super Aguri as well.

Good bye Super Aguri. You will be missed.

I'm not sure I'll have the motivation to get up in the middle of the night to watch F1 this weekend.

 

LionZoo, I don't think Nick Fry deserves that much blame. Customer cars were going to be outlawed anyway, they would have to find an actual MAJOR CAR MANUFACTURER to stand behind them -- and such entity would rather throw their support behind Williams than unproven, legecy-less Super Aguri. Also, I think 99% of the fans would rather see Williams survive than Super Aguri -- so as far as I'm concerned, it's good that they are gone. Toro Rosso should follow suit. I'd rather see 10 competitive teams that do real R&D, maybe the stupid rules can be relaxed a bit as well to allow more radical/diverse engineering approaches (rotary engine in F1?). If anything is to make F1 more exciting, it's not Super Aguri -- the whole concept must be altered, and customer teams are the first to die off as a result. Just my opinion.

EDIT: for some reason I thought that banning of customer cars includes the ban on engine purchases, while it's only concerned with the chassis. So a good portion of the stuff I wrote above doesn't make sense :| .

 

Actually there were a couple of Spaniards that were working on taking over Super Aguri and turn it into a Spanish team. They had some backing, but that didn't quite work out.

 

That couple of Spaniards would give Super Aguri enough $$$ to R&D their own chassis? Because as far as I know it's expected that customer cars will become illegal. They could probably still purchase Honda engines, but not the last-year chassis.

 

http://www.f1technical.net/news/9033

After the withdrawal of the Super Aguri Formula One Team, the FIA has confirmed that the qualifying rules will be changed. Five cars will now be excluded from the first two qualifying sessions and this following discussion by the race stewards at the Turkish GP.

A statement issued by the FIAsaid: "The Stewards, having received a report from the Technical Delegate note that 20 cars will participate in the 2008 Turkish Grand Prix.

"Therefore under article 33.1 of the 2008 Sporting Regulations, the Stewards have decided that only five cars will be excluded after Q1 and Q2 of the Qualifying Practice."

 

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/67239

By Michele Lostia and Jonathan Noble Friday, May 9th 2008, 11:26 GMT

Felipe MassaFerrari driver Felipe Massa has left the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, saying he did not like the way the body was run.

"I agree with the good things the GPDA does and I was part of it, but I left because I didn't always like the way it was run," Massa was quoted as saying by Gazzetta dello Sport.

Massa's decision comes just days after Jarno Trulli criticised drivers who refuse to join the GPDA for being uncaring about safety.

"I don't want to oblige anybody but everyone who is driving an F1 car should be responsible enough to understand what is happening and why GPDA was born and what it is doing," said Trulli.

"And apparently, there are some who don't really care and this is what is upsetting me because they are ignoring the situation. They get in the car and benefit from the work of everybody else and from the money that everybody else has put in."

Massa joins teammate Kimi Raikkonen, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Force India's Adrian Sutil on the list of drivers who are not members of the GPDA.

 

Interesting race this weekend gone. Hamilton despisers will have to admit that he drove an excellent race considering his qualifying position and his chassis' dislike of the soft compound at that track. Massa was also excellent and deserved the win, as was Kimi who had a relatively weak qualifying performance but drove quite well during the race.

Seal.

 

Kimi's weak start caused him to finish 3rd instead of 2nd. He lost several seconds, after being held up by slower cars, that would have put him in front of Ham after pitstops.

 

Great race yesterday, i thnk hamilton would of won but due to the 3 stop strat, his chances became none.

but wow Massa did awesome . I am not a massa fan, but i find it funny hearing all these speculations of his future with ferrari. Its only 5 races in and only 18 left to go. i hope he keeps doing well (which i find is easy for him).

 

lets also not forget that Kimi drove almost the entire race with a broken front wing. had that not been the case he may have been a step or two higher on the podium.

 

I'm not buying what Hamilton said about Bridgestone. I recall reading somewhere that Heiki was heavy on fuel and was planning a 2 stopper before his run-in with Kimi.

Its kinda lame to blame your race result on something that every other team has to deal with.

 

well hamilton did have a blow out last session on turn 8 . Also Bridgestone did have safety concerns which influenced hamilton team to have a 3 stop strat. but i guess no one will ever know /shrug

 

Two big issues for car development in 2009

BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen sees two key issues affecting the development of the car for the 2009 season: the new regulations regarding aerodynamics and KERS. Great changes are afoot in Formula One next season. Alongside the return of slick tyres, the elite motor sport class will see the introduction of aerodynamic innovations and the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, KERS.

Theissen says: "The two big issues are KERS and the 2009 aerodynamics package. Anyone who has not yet started to work on aerodynamics will really struggle to be ready in time." Theissen also knows what the main focus of development on the successor to the F1.08 will be: "The main difference is definitely the omission of all additional aerodynamic elements. This will result in the bodywork having a different appearance."

The BMW Sauber F1 Team's development work for the coming season is already at full speed. After all, the team from Munich and Hinwil wants to ensure that its upward trend continues over the coming years.


Source BMW Sauber
http://www.f1technical.net/news/9118

 

awesome info aln. makes me wonder how others car will be next session.

 

This whole thing about KERS and greener racing is all BS. If they really wanted to green F1 why are they having 100 tons of equipment flown all over God's green earth? If they wanted to really save energy why not have all the races in Europe, and eliminate all the ridiculous ones, like Bahrain and Singapore.

 

but i like the bahrain track .

 

And from someone in the know...

Hirohide Hamashima - Director of Bridgestone Motorsport Tyre Development, said:

"Today we saw a very interesting race with many strategies and different tyre choices. There was a lot of variation in which order drivers used the hard and medium compounds and this made for an exciting Grand Prix. In the case of Lewis Hamilton's car, Bridgestone and the team had safety concerns which did influence his strategy, however he achieved a very good result. These concerns affected no other car on the grid, and we will be analysing the data to see what we can learn from this. We did see three cars finish the race after making only one stop, so durability was certainly strong for the tyres for these competitors. The track and ambient temperatures did not cause any issues. We have now contested the most severe circuit on the calendar and say goodbye to the difficult turn eight until next season, although our vigilance will, as always, remain high."

http://www.motorsport.com/news/artic...D=288771&FS=F1


Remember last year Hamilton had issues with the right front which finally blew in turn 8. Alonso had none of these issues... same for Heikki this year. I also recall back in 2006 M Schumacher had all sorts of handling issues in turn 8 while Massa's car looked invincible (of course). It makes me wonder if Lewis has adopted an "all on its nose" car set -up like MS used through his carreer. That may possibly explain why he's super quick at point and squirt tracks like Monaco, Hungary, Canada, & Indy.

 

Well, I liked the V10's and active suspension. Back to all the European tracks and leave the way far away races. Team will have more time to tweak the cars then too.

 

Nick Fry doesn't think F1 needs more privateers
http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=42655
While we are at it, why not eliminate uncompetitive teams, like say HONDA. What a unbelievable hypocrite, especially considering they started Super Aguri so their driver that they dumped would have an F1 seat. *******.

 

Maybe this also explains why vids of the HAM at speed qualifying and testing often show a little front lock-up. Just his preferred set-up perhaps.

Seal.

 

in other news, i hope Honda rethink about letting Danica (if they decide to let her test drive their f1 cars ). She might take out the whole pit crew http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/24545743/

 

OUCH.......

 

It's true, in other forms of motorsport racers that took that long to take their first win are called overrated, in Indy car somehow she is a legend.