Pat W

News Round-Up

I hope everyone had a good New Year! I had a quiet one after spending the last two years in central London, and the previous one in Edinburgh (the Home of Hogmanay and the best New Year’s Eve street party in the world!). This year I just played a bit of Mario Kart Wii before heading into the middle of the little town I live in for the moment itself.

I thought I should catch up on some of the smaller bits of news I missed when I was revising for an exam in December, believe it or not when you summarise it a lot did actually happen even if it seemed very quiet day-to-day. And not all of it was bad, either. I’ll skip the things reported by my blogging colleagues at the time, I mean we’ve all seen that, right?

F1
– Big news in sponsorship as Vodafone takes their primary sponsorship from McLaren to Ferrari for 2009 onwards.

– Allianz will continue with WilliamsF1 for the forthcoming year, however technical partner Lenovo have instead joined McLaren. No word on the plans of RBS after the bank was bailed out by the British government a few months ago, my fellow taxpayers and I now own 60% of the company.

– Teams have been testing the KERS system and new aero package, to varying degrees. BMW, Honda and Williams were among the first to test the new gear, while Red Bull has been running with ’08 systems simulating ’09 rules.

IRL
– 2008 GP2 champ Giorgio Pantano is looking for a ride in the US after the F1 teams showed no interest in him.

– Penske continue to state that an announcement on Helio’s ride – i.e. will he drive or will there be a replacement – will be made ‘in the next few weeks’, although they’ve been saying that since November.

GP2
– Pastor Maldonado has signed with ART Grand Prix for the ’09 European series. His teammate is expected to be Nico Hulkenberg.

– The Asia series is continuing with what is becoming a regularly revolving cast of characters. Seems several teams are using it as an extended driver test for the main series.

– The February round of the Asia series at Dubai has been moved to Qatar, and will become a night event under the floodlights. MotoGP race under the lights there last year.

F2
– At least 20 drivers have been signed up to the revived F2 series for this year and it looks to be oversubscribed, in which case it will be capped at 24 drivers. So far 10 drivers have been officially announced by MSV and more are being added to this page every week, presumably in order to get more PR from staggered announcements which is a good move.

– Great to see Red Bull joining the party and helping legitimise the series further, alongside MotorSport Vision and WilliamsF1.

F3
– Carlin Motorsport have switched from Mercedes engines to Volkswagen, marking a big increase in VW’s presence in both the Euroseries and the British one. Carlin say they are following their backers Red Bull, who announced in November that all teams they are backing in F3 will run with VW.

– VW already confirmed they are dropping RC Motorsport, and will continue with Signature-Plus (both for the Euroseries), while in Britain they’ll join with T-Sport.

Sportscars
– The Le Mans pre-event Test Day has been cancelled to reduce the costs for both competitors and organisers. Wednesday’s qualifying has now become a mandatory practice session.

– Leo Mansell and dad Nigel tested the Ginetta-Zytek 07S LMP sportscar at Valencia. Meanwhile Leo’s brother Greg tested the World Series by Renault FR3.5 car in a group test at Paul Ricard, back in November.

– Barwell Motorsport will not going back to ALMS this year with their bio Aston Martin. They will instead enter the LMS and FIA GT3. I’m not sure if they’ll use that car but they will run Astons.

– BMW have been testing their GT2 class M3 in the US with World Touring Car drivers Andy Priaulx, Jorg Muller and Augusto Farfus. Priaulx says he’d like to take part in some ALMS races in the car, but Sebring clashes with a WTCC event at Puebla. Joey Hand and Bill Auberlen have been announced as the drivers of Rahal Letterman Racing’s M3.

– The Britcar 24 Hours at Silverstone has been reduced to a 6-hour event for 2009 for cost containment reasons. Organisers hope to return the race to the full distance in 2010. It has only been running since 2005.

– Ex-Super Aguri driver Anthony Davidson tested a Peugeot 908 HDi at Paul Ricard and is the running for a race drive. Go Ant!

Other
– Both Subaru and Suzuki have pulled out of the World Rally Championship. Kawasaki looks set to announce a pull-out from MotoGP next week. Seems like the Japanese car and bike makers are in trouble.

– 1998 and 1999 F1 World Champion Mika Hakkinen has become a driver manager, alongside his own manager Dider Coton.

– A1GP has agreed with the Chinese government to run two rounds per season for the next five years. Venues were not confirmed. A1 has raced in Shanghai, Beijing, Zhuhai and Chengdu since the series started in 2005.

– Organisers of the Surfers Paradise street race are building a pit/paddock complex for 40 teams in time for the ’09 event. That should be enough to service all of the A1GP and V8 Supercar teams.

– The Dakar Rally gets under way this week, but in Argentina. The African event was cancelled last year due to terrorist theats which prompted the move over the Atlantic, however a rival series called Africa Race has been set up and will be running at the same time albeit with far fewer numbers competing.

Blog
– Check out the Last.FM radio player in the white sidebar!

– The blog might be quieter than intended between now and June as I am in my final year of an accountancy course. It isn’t quite ‘Accountant’ level, its the level just below it, but that doesn’t make it easy! So I’ll be quite busy doing that.

– It’s New Year’s Day, I didn’t drink stupendous amounts last night yet my head still hurts because I have a cold, only a mild one but I HATE colds. Especially ones I pick up during a stock-take at work on NYE. I need a good rant so might come back soon to tell you all my pet peeves.

All stories shamelessely pilfered from the pages of the last several editions of Autosport magazine and reworded by me.

GP2 Top Ten 2008

For the final instalment in my trilogy of Top Tens of 2008, I’m going to take a brief look at the GP2 Series. Since 2005, GP2 has positioned itself as the official finishing school of F1, despite not having official links with the FIA itself, and being more closely aligned with the commercial arm of F1, the FOM/FOA group operated by a Mr B C Ecclestone. It is the replacement for the then-ailing F3000 International Series which seemed to end up sending most of its drivers to America instead of F1. There’s nothing wrong with racing in America, but this is perhaps not what the official F1 feeder series should be doing. Fans of the IRL might liken it to the Lights frontrunners going off to race in Formula Nippon.

Before we continue let me point you in the direction of the Too Much Racing Sidebar. If you scroll down to the white section you’ll notice a new Last.FM box has appeared above the one that was already there. What does this mean? You can now play my personal radio station! If you’ve ever wondered what crap I listen to when I write this stuff, now you can find out. That’s right, any music I’ve played via Winamp has been noted in Last.FM and is now available to you. Just hit Play and continue reading.
Remember if you navigate away (to write a comment, or visit another blog) it’ll stop playing, so you might want to hit the little icon on the bottom right of the red area to pop-out the player. I highly recommend Last.FM to anyone who listens to music through their computer.

2008 GP2 Series
For the avoidance of doubt I am only considering the main GP2 Series which raced in Europe, starting in Barcelona and ending in Monza. The Asia Series hasn’t been considered.

1. Lucas di Grassi (P3 – Barwa Campos Team)
After finishing the 2007 GP2 season runner-up in points, Lucas spent the winter alongside Nelson Piquet Jr sharing the double-duty of testing the Renault F1 car and doing development work on the new generation GP2 car/engine combo. When the F1 drive went to Nelson and the test role was reduced by the F1 regulations, Lucas found himself without much work. So in June he jumped in to the Barwa Campos Team to replace the underperforming rookie Ben Hanley, and after missing the first three weekends (i.e. six races) goes on to out-score everyone else in the remaining 7 weekends of the season to wind up 3rd in points, just narrowly beaten to 2nd by Bruno Senna and ahead of the highly-rated Romain Grosjean.
Okay so he tested the new car before anyone else, but since then everyone but him had run six races and most of the field had also done the inaugural Asia Series so you’ve got to say they’d caught up by then.
I reckon that’s pretty impressive.

2. Giorgio Pantano (P1 Champion – Racing Engineering)
Pantano had a good season, taking the previously unfancied Racing Engineering team and transforming them in to race-winners – just as he did with Campos the previous year and FMS the year before that. Giorgio seems to have decided that if nobody will take him in F1 or IndyCar, he’ll prove himself by becoming a good development driver as well as a fast racing driver. Okay so his chance in F1 has been and gone which is a shame (2004 feels like an age ago), but what chance an IndyCar ride in 2009? He can’t stay in GP2 yet again, that’s for sure. Perhaps he’ll work on improving the fortunes of A1GP Team Italy, or worse, some team in Superleague Formula. At least the guy with most Feature race wins won the title, as it should be.

3. Bruno Senna (P2 – iSport International)
Bruno had some excellent drives this year, but is still prone to silly mistakes and misjudgements. It won’t take long to knock those out of his system, but didn’t people say that this time a year ago? He’s definitely still improving yet somehow this still feels like a year of unfulfilled promises. If he doesn’t dominate in 2009 I’ll be very surprised.

4. Romain Grosjean (P4 – ART Grand Prix)
Romain was expected to walk this year’s title after his performances in F3 last year and GP2 Asia over the winter break. As it turned out, his ART car was a lot more ‘pointier’ than the opposition and this was something he seemed to struggle with, perhaps his style not suited to those characteristics. The rest of the grid’s cars seemed more docile, with some commentators suggesting this was the key to ART’s dominance in the early years of GP2. With a change of teams on the cards he’ll be good next year. Very good.

5. Pastor Maldonado (P5 – Piquet Sports)
The latest stupidly-quick-but-prone-to-crashing Venezuelan to come off the conveyor belt came on leaps and bounds this year. Last year he and Viso were pretty close, with Viso more consistent while Maldonado showed more long-term potential. This year Pastor demonstrated that potential to great effect with some excellent drives, but had a few too many retirements from races. Fast but erratic, and likes the old Banzai move even if it won’t work, just to show the others that he’ll do it.

6. Sebastien Buemi (P6 – Trust Team Arden)
The highly-rated Red Bull man was fair-to-middling, and perhaps a little overhyped. He was a very good A1GP driver in the Lola-Zytek, and seems to be slowly transferring those skills to GP2. It was a reasonable upper-midfield year and should be a title challenger next year. Seemed to always be around when others hit problems.

7. Jerome d’Ambrosio (P11 – DAMS)
This is a guy I didn’t rate at all going into the season. He seemed to make stupid errors early on which cost him a lot of points, but went on to impress me a lot through the year and if it wasn’t for that early form he’d be much higher in the points ranking and could easily have been 7th. Like Buemi he was one of the guys who was able to find good results when others threw them away, and was often up there on merit too, particuarly in the final rounds at Spa and Monza. One to watch with interest.

8. Vitaly Petrov (P7 – Barwa Campos Team)
Seems to have stopped making errors and has picked up some speed, but not quite there yet. He could use another year and looks like he’ll get exactly that. There’s not much more to say really.

9. Karun Chandhok (P10 – iSport International)
Karun seems to be one of those guys who always seems to be in the wrong place. He’s a fast driver and a professional one, yet seems to get involved in the pack when he maybe should be ahead of them given he’s in an iSport Dallara, one of the two top teams. This is possibly down to not getting enough out of qualifying, but he’s a good racer and runs very well when he qualifies up front. He works for it and goes for moves where others don’t. Perhaps he’s the new David Coulthard? One thing’s for sure: Vijay Mallya shouldn’t be dimissing him so readily.

10. Alvaro Parente (P8 – Super Nova Racing)
Alvaro had always struggled with a budget in every formula he’s raced in, so he knows a good fight. He impressed at the first round in Barcelona with a win in his first race and 7th in the reverse top-8 sprint race, but then seemed to drop back during the year. He’s a fast driver, a good guy, and deserves another year in GP2.

Other Surprises?
Luca Fillipi who should be in this list but fell out with ART, prompting a move to Arden, which didn’t seem to work either. He showed a huge amount of promise in 2007 and was expected to iron out the bumps this year. Didn’t happen. Shame. He needs a stellar 2009.

Mike Conway should have done better although he was with Trident..

Christian Bakkerud fell apart again with his customary back problems, ironic given his name, which is unfortunate because he was an excellent F3 driver.

What of 2009?
The backmarker BCN Competicion team has been bought by the ex-Jordan F1 driver (and now SEAT touring car driver) Tiago Monteiro and renamed as Ocean Racing Technology. With the team relocating from Spain to Portugal you can’t expect much improvement early on, but perhaps in the long-term?

We’re going to have an unmissable 2009 championship with Senna vs Maldonado vs Grosjean the main title fight, with probably Buemi and one or two others sticking their noses in with a few wins. I can’t wait!
In the meantime the ’08/’09 Asia Series is already under way with the 1st-generation cars. When I eventually get around to watching those races I may just post a little top ten as a warm-up to the main season.

In the meantime, have a great New Year, whatever you’re doing!

Cheers!

Happy Christmas (should you celebrate it) to my two or three regular readers and modest handful of occasional stoppers-by. Thanks to you all for making my first experience of blogging a pleasant one. I’ve certainly enjoyed learning about the World of Blogs* and all the racing fans living within it and I hope my sometimes overly-long comments on your blogs haven’t been too intrusive. For those who don’t have a blog but still visit here, thanks for dropping by! Keep coming and feel free to comment from time to time. You might find yourself becoming a blogger before you know it – I did.
*I just can’t bring myself to use the word ‘Blogosphere’.

I will return before New Year with a GP2 Top Ten to close out that little series of blogs. I think as we head into 2009 it will be time to stop looking back at 2008, so I’m thinking about little bits on all the changes coming up. We’ll see if I get around to that!

In the meantime have a great few days, whatever you’re doing. Don’t eat too much turkey or drink too much mulled wine!

F1 Top Ten 2008

Here is my top ten list of drivers for the 2008 F1 season. Disagree? Let me know!

2008 FIA Formula 1

1. Hamilton (P1 – Champion)
The fastest driver over the full season. He made some elementary mistakes such as the Montreal pitlane, on other occasions he destroys the field, such as in the rain at Silverstone. On the whole he was the better of the two championship protagonists.

2. Kubica (P4)
Was consistent throughout the year, the only exceptions being when Heidfeld also struggled which means you can put those occasions down to car or team problems, and not driver. Even after BMW stopped developing the car in order to concentrate on ’09, he took it into the middle of the title fight until a couple of rounds remaining, when most observers tipped the top four points places as a Ferrari/McLaren lockout. He’d have done so even without Raikkonen’s troubles. The BMW wasn’t as good as the McLaren or Ferrari yet Robert managed to keep himself in the title fight until surprisingly late in the season.

3. Massa (P2)
Felipe has improved significantly over the last 12 months and is nothing like the driver he was when at Sauber a few years ago. He’s applied himself to learning from Michael Schumacher and the lessons are paying off. I still tend to under-rate him and have to actively think to include him in any list like this. I wonder if his fellow drivers do the same?

4. Raikkonen (P3)
Kimi didn’t seem to be all there this year. Somehow he made little to no impression in several races yet comes away tying the record for most fastest laps in a season. This points to not being able to run with the car when it has a heavy fuel load or cold tyres (or maybe both). When the car is fast, light, and has hot sticky tyres he’s able to push with the best of them – unfortunately for him he was invariably too far behind by that stage of the race.

5. Alonso (P5)
Had a fair-to-middling first half of the season when you often forgot he was there, then suddenly he came alive to win two races and finish strongly in a host of others. I’m not sure if he’d finally got over the McLaren fiasco in his head, or if Renault made some improvements (or maybe both) but something definitely clicked to once again allow Fernando to look like the champion driver he is.

6. Heidfeld (P6)
‘Quick Nick’ had another good-but-not-quite-good-enough season. He’s had quite a lot of those now, which is a shame as he’s shown a lot of promise ever since he first arrived in F1 all that time ago and I’ve always rated him even when others haven’t. He just struggles to sustain it over a season. Ought to have matched Kubica more often than he did. Perhaps that shows just how good Robert really is?

7. Vettel (P8)
An excellent season! There were times he completely embarrassed the ‘main’ Red Bull team in what is basically the old Minardi team running customer cars. I guess it shows Stoddart was kind of right, the team DID have it (whatever ‘it’ is), when it comes to the operations and strategy side anyway. Sebastian showed his talent throughout the season, even as the other Seb has noted this was as much down to the car suiting the German and not the Frenchman. It doesn’t matter what the car advantage is, you still have to do the job as my next choice demonstrates.

8. Kovalainen (P7)
Very disappointing. He shouldn’t be finishing 7th in points in a McLaren and I’m tempted to drop him further back because of it. As I said above, it isn’t any good just driving a quick car, you still have to put the performances in and Heikki just didn’t manage it. This is a shame as he struggled last year in the Renault too. He had what I’d call a Coulthard kind of year, with Hamilton taking the role of Hakkinen. Just like DC he’s quick on his day but always seems to fall back for some reason, or always have the bad luck in the team.

9. Rosberg (P13)
I’m a Williams fan. The team are not where they should be. Both Nico and Kazuki did a good job in a less-than-great car, and were fighting among the Red Bulls and Toro Rossos quite often. Williams have invested in the flywheel KERS while everyone else has gone to batteries, I think it’ll help them enormously! I’m looking forward to watching their improved progress next year.

10. Barrichello (P14)
Rubens didn’t read the script. After closely matching Button last season, this year Jenson was supposed to come along and wipe the floor with him as he got every more disheartened. In reality Rubens thrashed Button and dragged the shitbox of a Honda to finishing positions it had no right being – the highlight being 3rd at Silverstone which was achieved entirely down to his strategic calls and his right foot. Note that he made the call on the tyres, not the team. Lesser drivers wait for the team to call them in.

Special mentions:
Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato for dragging a turd of a Super Aguri around Albert Park, Sepang, Bahrain and Barcelona all the while wondering if they’d still have a job the next day. After Barcelona they didn’t have a job. Don’t fall into the schoolboy error of assuming these are bad drivers – they are not.

Normally I would include a Red Bull driver in this list. Frankly neither of them did a good enough job, and were regularly beaten by the ‘junior’ team. I expect the big team to trounce the little one next year.

This is a quality field of drivers. We’re lucky in that these days we don’t have the journeyman pay-drivers propping up the field any more, as we did until very recently indeed. No Ricardo Rosset or Enrique Bernoldi now!

2009 will be a very interesting year with all kinds of permutations brought about by the change in rules. Will the slicks and KERS give us more overtaking, will it change the fortunes of any of the teams/drivers? Will more teams struggle to survive? Will Honda get a buyer and if so, who will it be? So many questions!