Pat W

Preview: 2008 Japanese Grand Prix

Preview: 2008 Fuji Television Japanese Grand Prix

This weekend sees the second visit to the revised Fuji Speedway (owned by Toyota) after many successful years at Suzuka (owned by Honda). I always enjoyed the racing at Suzuka. It was unique for being the only figure-of-8 layout in major motorsport as well as being a demanding circuit for the drivers. This was because it was designed as a test track for Honda in the 1960s by the same guy who did the original Zandvoort (not the current Zandvoort).

F1 visited Fuji twice before, in 1976 and 1977. These races I know very little about except that one of them was held in appallingly wet conditions and that one of them was a title decider between James Hunt and Niki Lauda. It might have been the same race because I remember Lauda pulled out of the wet race saying it was too dangerous.

Fast forward to 2007 and the return to a massively redeveloped Fuji for a race held in appallingly wet conditions. Modern safety rules being what they are, the cars circulated behind the Safety Car for the first 19 laps (yes, 19 out of 67, not a typo!), and it was the right decision – the conditions were dreadful with almost zero visibility. If the 70s guys had the same stuff I don’t blame Lauda for stopping in those pre-Safety Car days.

The conditions were such that we didn’t actually see a lot of the circuit redevelopment on TV, there was just too much spray. I hope we’ll get to see it this time so that we can properly criticise it on Sunday. I mean really, ditching Suzuka? What were they thinking?

The distinguishing features of Fuji are that is has a 1.5km main straight, possibly the longest in F1? I’m not sure because next week we go to Shanghai which also has a ridiculously long straight. The rest of Fuji is made up of unremarkable corners with acres of run-off, from what I recall. To be fair to the designers they wanted to stay reasonably close to the original design, and the topography of the land didn’t offer many options. The track is very close to Mount Fuji so it is in a mountainous region. We didn’t see anything of the mountain last year because of the clouds blocking the view, I really hope we get to see the place at its best this year despite my reservations about the circuit layout.

We’ll see the cars back at Suzuka in 2009 as the two circuits have agreed to alternate, just as Hockenheim/Nurburging do in Germany. I hope this doesn’t set a trend where we’ll alternate the entire calendar in future!

The 2008 Japanese Grand Prix gets under way at 13.30 local time which is 05.30am here in the UK. At this time of year I have no idea what DST is doing around the world, I think that makes it 00:30 Eastern in the US but you should check.
Wherever you are * remember it starts on the half hour *.

Qualifying is at 14:00 local, 06:00 UK, and that is on the hour as usual.

F1 News
Bridgestone have added green grooves to all tyres this weekend to promote eco issues. That’ll work, well done boys. It won’t really mean the majority of fans asking “why is there green paint all over the tyres?”, and “isn’t all this extra paint very much eco-unfriendly?”.
The softer compound will continue to be marked with a white groove as well as the green. We can add this to the long list of reasons why I’ll be glad to see slicks again next season!

Just days after I was wistfully remembering the late 90s and the days of the rumoured engine deals among the mid- and back-field teams, Force India is rumoured to be switching from Ferrari to Mercedes engines! I swear I can see the future in my dreams. I AM Isaac off of Heroes, although I blog instead of paint. Painting with words.

Ferrari has announced they will no longer use their ‘traffic light’ pit signalling system for the remainder of the year – meanwhile Honda have erected a different design at their pit boxes in Fuji for use this weekend, I’m not sure if they are testing it in practice or if they intend to use it in the race too.

Blog News
Sorry for the delay in writing this preview, I was shattered yesterday after a long and boring day learning about tax and financial statements – I will attempt to do the Chinese preview on Wednesday unless I’m still doing homework by then!

I ditched the clock thing because it didn’t work well for this site, and I rewrote the bottom panel. I now have flags of my county, nation, country and continent because unlike most people in this country I am actually proud to represent all of those things rather than just one or two.

See you Sunday.

GP2 Catch-up: Hockenheim

I tell you what, it was really refreshing to watch an open-wheel race without sitting here tapping out a load of notes about it. I did find my concentration lapsing, my short attention span causing me to drift away. I’m not sure if this is because the race was so old (July), because I don’t care enough about the participants this year, or because I’m now used to note-taking during the racing.

This is a short summary of the two races.

Feature Race
This was fairly tedious most of the way through, the drivers just couldn’t make a pass work. I swear there was more passing in the F1 race the next day and that NEVER happens with GP2. There was the odd good move but it was pretty much decided in the pits and a faultless drive from Romain Grosjean – until the rain fell with just 5 laps remaining. Chaos!
Senna and di Grassi, who were running about 5th, took to the pitlane for wet tyres and fell some 25 seconds behind the remaining leaders including Grosjean and Pantano, who stayed out and tried to hang on.
The rain held at one end of the circuit, yet it was fairly dry at the other end (at the pits). The race became a question of whether the guys who stopped would catch the guys who didn’t – and whether the latter would spin out – before we ran out of laps.
Several drivers spun out, most of whom were on dry tyres, but Grosjean and Pantano held on to finish 1st and 2nd respectively. I believe the top wet-shod finisher was Senna in 4th. Parente was 3rd and I can’t recall if he pitted or not.

The result was short-lived as Grosjean was later given a time penalty for overtaking under yellow flags during the wet-weather period – and there were a lot of yellow flags. The penalty reversed the top two positions giving Pantano maximum points (inc. fastest lap).

Sprint Race
Sunday’s race was more eventful with some good moves both at the hairpin, and at the Mercedes… err… bit. It stayed dry throughout so it looks like several guys made some good calls on setup.
The best drive of the day was Mike Conway who after a dreadful Feature race had to start this one from 24th. He finished 9th without the aid of the Safety Car!
Giorgio Pantano was out early with a broken steering arm after a hit with Soucek. Lucas di Grassi was out shortly afterwards when Maldonado used him as a brake at the hairpin. This was time for the others to claim valuable points.

Karun Chandhok put in a very good drive against Andi Zuber to claim a deserved win, with Senna fighting up to 3rd and Grosjean 4th.
There was some pretty good racing throughout the field, which didn’t spread out as much as it often does. I wonder if that was down to the lack of pit stops in the sprint?

I won’t detain you with the points standings for a 3-month old race but I would like to keep posting these little summaries until I complete the season. I’m considering covering A1GP in the same way which I’ll only begin when I’ve done GP2. I haven’t decided on GP2 Asia yet, last year’s Asia series was so dull I’m not too bothered about it.

Come back soon for my preview of F1’s Japanese Grand Prix featuring green grooves!

2009 F1 calendar: Canadian GP dropped!

The FIA has today released the final schedule for the 2009 Formula 1 season. A provisional calendar was announced in June.

The big surprise was that the Canadian Grand Prix has been removed. GrandPrix.com suggests that Norman Legault, organiser and promoter of the CGP, has struggled to meet the $$$ demands made by the F1 Group. This doesn’t surprise me because a lot of F1 promoters are struggling at the moment, such as Germany.

There are also the recurring problems with the track surface at Circuit du Gilles Villeneuve. Year after year they struggle to produce a suitable racing surface and this year things finally came to a head when the track was almost declared ‘unraceable’, before some overnight repair work just about solved things – and there were still concerns throughout the race that perhaps the surface would not last.

I do have some sympathy with them as it must be a hell of a problem to try and beat the temperature fluctuations which are said to be huge, between very low in winter to very high in summer. It causes all kinds of havoc with the asphalt. But still.. you kind of expect that the event organisers would know about the local conditions by now?

On the whole, I think the F1 community was willing to put up with a crappy track surface because they need a North American round, although they might have started to push for an alternative venue if it had happened again. This is why my thoughts return to this being a problem securing the money.

I can’t say it has ever been my favourite venue partly for the annual track surface issues, partly because it seems to breed Safety Cars and carnage. Someone should spend a shed load of money developing Mont Tremblant, the sole Champ Car race there was excellent. I say ‘developing’ not ‘redeveloping’ on purpose! I’d like to see extra run off etc., rather than a complete reworking.

Turkey is moved into Canada’s slot in June, which frees a gap in August for the annual summer break which was largely missing this season. Italy and Belgium jump around a bit so that Valencia and Spa are back-to-back with Monza a fortnight later.

As previously announced, there will be a new event in Abu Dhabi, details of which are sorely lacking. It was supposed to be a race around a marina, part street track and partly on a purpose-built racetrack. That plan was canned a few months ago and I don’t believe their current plans have been announced, I would expect that to change when we get to November and the T minus 12 months marker.

Here is the 2009 calendar from the formula1.com announcement:

29 March – Australia
5 April – Malaysia
19 April – Bahrain
10 May – Spain
24 May – Monaco
7 June – Turkey
21 June – Great Britain
28 June – France
12 July – Germany
26 July – Hungary
23 August – Europe (Valencia)
30 August – Belgium
13 September – Italy
27 September – Singapore
11 October – Japan
18 October – China
1 November – Brazil
15 November – Abu Dhabi

(funny, you’d think the offical F1 site would be all over the event sponsors, oh well maybe they don’t want the publicity)

F1 driver market as at 6 Oct ’08

The driver market is falling into place, certainly in F1 anyway, while IndyCar is getting there and obviously GP2 as usual won’t sort itself out until the weekend of the first race (and we’ve got GP2 Asia to sort out first!).

This is how I see things in F1 right now:

Ferrari – Kimi & Massa (both confirmed to 2010)

McLaren – Lewis & Heikki (is Heikki confirmed?)

BMW – Heidfeld & Kubica (both confirmed today)

Renault – unconfirmed, I think Alonso will stick around now that the other options are dried up. I would tip either Romain Grosjean or Lucas di Grassi to replace Piquet Jr, they’d probably go for Grosjean although I do like di Grassi.

Toyota – Trulli & Glock (not sure if these are confirmed)

Honda – Barrichello & Button (not sure if these are confirmed)

Williams – Rosberg & Nakajima (confirmed last week)

Red Bull – Webber & Vettel (confirmed last month)

Toro Rosso – not confirmed, I’m going to say Bourdais and Buemi.

Force India – not confirmed, I’m going to say Fisichella and the other seat could contain frankly anybody. I like Sutil but I’m not sure he’s matching or beating Fisi enough times.

So there are still some seats to fill. Something I miss about the 1990s is the speculation about which team will have which engines, I always enjoyed that even if the teams didn’t! I miss wondering whether Jordan will have Honda or Cosworth engines.

I’m not going to broach the subject of ‘test and reserve’ drivers, or ‘third’ drivers, at least not until early next year. I’m sure there will some hype about that when winter testing kicks in later in the year when the junior series winners get their ‘reward’ tests and others are evaluated.

Other series:
I’d like to do an IndyCar post like this soon, it is too early now especially with the goings on with Helio Castroneves which could unlock a few moves, but I’m ahead of myself there – I hope Helio stays. Obviously we know about Dixon/Franchitti at TCGR and I’m sure the 4 at AGR will stay the same. Wheldon at Panther. Meira at Foyt. I make that 9 confirmed, or 10 counting Helio. Luczo Dragon are due to make an announcement tomorrow. Actually that’s better than I thought and maybe better than this time a year ago?

GP2: I think half the grid is signed up for the Asia Series, the tail enders won’t get there until race week as is the tradition of GP2 and F3000 before it. Many drivers will have dual-deals, in that they will be signed up for the 08/09 Asia Series as well as the 2009 Main Series. As things stand I have no idea who has done what and I’ll try to get some answers before the first round of GP2 Asia in China alongside the Formula 1 race next week.

I haven’t forgotten about the mini-notes / summaries of the 2008 season, I just haven’t had time to watch the races yet. I may yet can the idea because the races were weeks ago and any blog posts about them will be well out of date, so you might have to wait for a season review post in a couple of months.

A1GP and Superleague operate a revolving door policy so we won’t touch those.

I don’t do NASCAR. I enjoy sportscars but that driver market is way too complicated for the likes of this blog. I’ll catch up again in a few days and let you know what I’ve been watching while we wait for the Japanese F1 race.