Last post!

I've been doing some thinking and am going to close this blog down. Frankly, I don't think I'm offering anything special. I also seem to be having problems finding the time to post. Also, while I've always enjoyed F1, I'm not certain I have sufficient passion in the sport to overcome that fairly enormous gaps in my knowledge. 

This is a shame because I genuinely think that there is a space for an F1 blog designed to provide illumination for people who are interested in F1 but would rather not have to wade through all the opinion, punditry and general geekiness that your average F1 blog produces. Unfortunately, I am not the person for this project. Instead, I'm going to post occassionally about F1 on my personal blog. Who knows, maybe in the future I'll revisit this idea.

Thanks to the small number of you who did read this and enjoy the season. It's shaping up to be a cracker.

Kuala Lumpur: Rain stopped play

Remember all that business last week at Melbourne when Lewis Hamilton was passed by Jarno Trulli while under the safety car? Lewis complained to the stewards that he had been wronged and that third place was rightfully his. The stewards agreed and gave Jarno a 25 second penalty. Lewis was awarded a podium finish and the points to boot. The trouble was Lewis didn't tell the stewards that he had been instructed over the Team Radio to allow Jarno through as they believed, at the time, that the place was rightfully his, Jarno's.

Being passed illegally is one thing, letting someone pass you is entirely another and when the FIA found out the truth after hearing the Radio, they disqualified Lewis from the race for deliberately misleading the stewards. Trulli was reinstated to third. The man who told Lewis to pass him is a guy called David Ryan, Mclaren's Sporting Director. He also told Lewis to deny letting Trulli through to the Melbourne Stewards. The team have suspended Ryan and Hamilton was left humiliated and mortified. He issued a public apology to the Stewards and to his fans and claimed that he only said what his boss told him to say. It's been a bad enough start to the season for Mclaren what with the car being slow and all and this has really taken the cake. The event cast a huge cloud over the Malaysian Grand Prix which was to be joined by some more, less metaphorical clouds as the weekend went on. More on that later.

First, qualifying which was a total blast. At one stage , car after car was crossing the finish line in pole position. Q1' s biggest name casualty was Felipe Massa. The sight of a Ferrari missing the cut is incredibly rare. Invariably, a technical fault is to blame when this happens. On this occasion however, it was nothing more that a miscalculation. Massa and his folks thought they had recorded a time fast enough to make it into the top fifteen and therefore in to the next qualifying round and they were wrong. By the time they realised their mistake it was too late and out they went.

Q2's major victims were the two Mclarens of Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen. There was no particular reason for this, they were just slow. This left the final ten for Q3 and it was the Brawn of Jenson Button who had been consistently quick throughout the day who took pole ahead of the unfairly maligned Trulli. Sebastian Vettel took a creditable 3rd followed by Button's team mate Rubens Barrichello in fourth. You had to go back to ninth to find the Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen and two times World Champion Fernando Alonzo put in a token effort and seemed resigned to tenth.

And so to the race. Button had a rotten start lost first place and ended up in fourth behind Nico Rosberg, Trulli and Alonso who shot up from tenth. Button pulled off a fantastic move of the Spaniard to take third back. Alonso had a fantastic race all round even if his final position of 11th didn't reflect this. He was scrapping with pretty much anyone who was prepared to race him and demonstrated why he is such a classy driver, and worthy champion of recent years.

It was as early as the 5th lap when people started noticing the rain clouds. When it rains in Kuala Lumpur it pours, my how it pours. The trouble was that while everyone was waiting for it to piss down, the time had come for some tyre changes, with lighter fuel loads to pit. Switching to wet tyres is not an option in the dry. Staying on dry tyres is fine until it rains and then you're off the track.

Vettel and race leader Rosberg had to pit while it was dry, as did Timo Glock (Toyota), Adrian Sutil (Force India), Marc Webber (Red Bull) and new race leader Jarno Trulli which left Button back at the front. Jenson stayed out for as long as he could, he put in two amazingly fast laps to make sure he was still ahead of the pack when he came in to change his tyres. And that's exactly what happened.

Meanwhile, Räikkönen gambled that the rain was imminent and changed to wet tyres. This proved to be a move that the term "Epic FAIL"was created for, as the rain did not come and Kimi had destroyed his tyres before the first sprinkle from the heavens. As the storm clouds gathered to immerse the track in darkness, Jenson with impeccable timing, was in and out first among the leading pack. Glock drivers switched to intermediate tyres and made hey while the rain held off.

Yet still it did not rain. Gradually, people started coming in to switch to intermediates as they simply could not crawl around on wets when it wasn't actually wet. Glock inherited the lead from Button only for him to head back into the pits to switch to wets. Why? Well the three forks of lightning that hit the grandstand had something to do with it, more accurately it was the deluges of water that burst forth like a waterfall of teased Champagne. The track was engulfed in water and before long it was rooster tails a go-go and anyone on intermediates had better get the hell off the track and so they did.

Within a lap, the Safety Car was out as it was far too dangerous to race. Another lap later the race was stopped. Those cars that managed to stay on the track came to a halt on the start/finish line in order of position and waited for the rain to ease so they could restart the race.

It didn't. The race was abandoned and Jenson was declared the winner. Glock finished second and Nick Heidfeld was third. It was those three who mounted a rather soggy podium to collect their winnings. Because less than 75% of the race had been completed, only half points were awarded. However, it was another win for Brawn and another Podium for Toyota. Next up is China the weekend after next where it promises to be cold.

That's it. Click here to see the full details of the result.

Melbourne: Ball of Diffusion/Reading the rules

In Formula 1, politics comes with the gig. If you are the kind of person who regards in-fighting, bickering, disputes and small minded quibbling over rules a nuisance then Grand Prix racing is not for you.On the other hand, if you're like me, and you revel in that sort of thing then you'll be like a pig in a pooh-cart. Particularly now as a number of teams, argue over the diffuser on the back of the Brawn, Toyota & Williams F1 cars.

Renault, Red Bull and Ferrari lodged an official protest against the diffuser used by the above teams. In short they think it is positioned too far to the rear of the vehicle and should be banned as it's not in the rulebook. The FIA didn't agree and said it was fine. The matter will go to a court of appeal after the Malaysia GP next week. If the court overturns the FIA then the result of the Melbourne and forthcoming race in Kuala Lumpur may have to be revised. No doubt Ross Brawn and his contemporaries will have something say about that and the whole thing could end end up causing a furious ruckus which drags on well into the season... with any luck.

Diffuser or no diffuser, the Qualifying Round in Albert Park on Saturday confirmed what the winter testing and Free Practice sessions were telling us already and that is that the BrawnGP car is fast. The car that Ross Brawn had sacrificed the entire 2008 season did all it promised and their drivers took positions 1 and 2 on the grid at the start of the Grand Prix on Sunday. Sir Richard Branson was in the pit lane when Jenson Button won pole and could celebrate Virgin's new sponsorship deal with BrawnGP in style.

Sebastian Vettel started third in the Red Bull with Robert Kubica (BMW) and Nico Rosberg (Williams) behind him. The current constructors champions Ferrari had to settle for 6th and 7th.

If Ferrari were disappointed to be so far down the grid, imagine Lewis Hamilton's chagrin as his car broke down and ended up at the back. Only the Toyotas were behind the World Champion. Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli finished sixth and eighth respectively but it turns out their rear wings were too bendy and they were relegated to the back.

The race itself was a classic. Button made the perfect start and scampered off round the first corner while Rubens almost stalled and found himself going backwards. He was hit by a McLaren and was pushed into the side of Mark Webber in the Red Bull who in turn clouted the BMW of Nick Heidfeld. After all that Rubens ended up seventh.

Meanwhile, Vettel slotted into second place and kept close order with Button without challenging him. Massa and Raikkonen were third and fifth respectively and had gambled on using the notoriously slow super soft tyres at the beginning of the race in the hope that there would be a crash and resultant safety car. This would mean that the field would close up and help negate the advantage of the faster cars ahead. It was a gamble that paid off... sort of.

Kazuki Nakajima bounced his Williams off a kerb and hit a wall. Out came the Safety Car and it was game on. Unfortunately, Ferrari's strategy did not bear fruit as Massa's car broke down after 45 laps and Raikkonen retired 10 laps later.

With Massa out of the picture, Kubica was able to move into third. He had also used the super soft tyres early and was clearly faster than most of the other cars who had left the softies to the end of the race. With Button still ahead and only three laps left in the race, the Pole looked like he could have overtaken the Brawn and take the Chequered Flag. All he needed to do was get past Vettell which is exactly what he attempted. This is what happened.



Oh dear.

The Safety Car was called out for a final flourish and returned to the pit lane on the final corner to allow Button to accelerate over the line for a remarkable victory. Behind him was Rubens. The Brazilian has inherited the position thanks to Kubica and Vettell's dance of doom. In third was Trulli in the Toyota.

In fourth place was Lewis Hamilton. Yes the same Lewis Hamilton who started at the back. The Champion has learned that part of being a successful Formula 1 driver is knowing when to keep your nose clean.

Things got even better for Lewis when he got out of his car at the end of the race and made his way to the stewards that he was in third place until he was overtaken by Trulli whilst behind the Safety Car and under waved yellow flags. This is also strictly verboten and the Toyota driver was docked 25 seconds and third place was awarded to Hamilton.

By this time of course the podium ceremony was over and Trulli had already drunk the Champers. You get a trophy for third place and the Toyota driver would have been obliged to hand it over to Lewis. Whether Jarno was issued with a stomach pump, an empty bottle of Mumm and a funnel is less certain. But in Formula One you can never be certain.

Honourable mentions must go to this season's only rookie Sebastian Buemi in the Torro Rosso who finished in seventh and in the points by beating his more experienced team mate Sebastian Bourdais in eighth.

However, the day was all about Ross Brawn and his team. Out of the job two weeks ago, Grand Prix winners on Sunday. Rarely will a new team make their bow as dramatically as this. A team 1-2 on debut. Almost unprecedented and richly deserved (subject to appeal).

That's it. Click here to see the full details of the result.

So what do you think of my first race round up? Too long? Too short? Not enough detail? Atrocious grammar? Do tell.

The Story So Far

Previously on Formula 1...

No one, it seems, is immune to the global recession and there has been a degree of ghoulish pleasure derived from watching an uber elitist sport like Formula 1 coping with a troubled off-season full of rule changes, corporate pull-outs, sponsorship shenanigans and regulatory tomfoolery.

The winter should have been all about the design and engineering changes that took effect at the end of last season. That was until the sport took a large and greedy bite of the Credit Crunchie Bar with almost cataclysmic consequences.

The fun started with Honda. No sooner had the team rolled their trucks into their Brackley factory at the end of summer than the word came from corporate HQ that the motor giant was pulling its funding from the team. They had until March to sort out a new owner before the corporation would yank the rug from beneath them, roll it up and discard it in an enormous field full of tens of thousands of unsold Civics.

As the other teams launched their new cars it become apparent the the Formula 1 2009 season was certainly going to look different if nothing else. New rear spoilers and a retro 90's style bodywork has polarised opinion about the aesthetic consequences of the rule changes. However, uppermost in everyone's mind was the fate of Honda. A number of suitors were mooted. Most prominent was Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and inevitably Richard Branson threw his hat in for the sake of a few easy headlines.

Branson had issues regarding the cost and environmental issues surrounding the sport and was keen to see these addressed before investing. The fact that he chided F1 for its poor green credentials while at a launch of the latest Virgin passenger airline route didn't seem to phase him at all. Unsurprisingly, nothing came of it in the end.

Elswhere, there were further problems with team sponsorship. The very public and barely legal misdeeds of the RBS group had its effect on the Williams team. The now state owned bank is the principal sponsor and announced that it would be ending the relationship at the end of their contract. While there are still two seasons left to run, it does make for a few late nights for Sir Frank Williams and his commercial development team as they try to find a sponsor at a time like this.

The winter dragged on and the Honda situation remained unresolved. Finally, a solution presented itself closer to home with Team Principal Ross Brawn buying out the team. With winter testing already underway, they had some catching up to do. Brawn engaged the services of last year's Honda drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello. Under the new name and livery of BrawnGP they stuck a Mercedes engine in the car and hit the track. Brawn and his team had been working since early 2008 on this season's car and while the late start may have disadvantages once the season gets underway, there is no arguing with the performance of the brand new BGP001. Both Button and Barrichello tore up the track while their com temporaries looked on with bemusement.

And so with all their plates spinning at once, the new F1 season was ready to get underway. Then suddenly there was a last minute rule change. Instead of the usual points per place system used to determine championships so successfully in the past, a medal system was introduced. This meant that the champion would be determined by whoever won the most races (gold medals). Such a move was never likely to be popular with the teams and drivers and introducing it within a fortnight of the start of the season only enraged them further. Consequently, the teams kicked up all sorts of fuss and the FIA changed their minds, deciding instead to defer the matter to 2010. What a Palarva?

With that unpleasantness out of the way its time to go racing. I was going to do a preview but time constraints and the existence of superior work have convinced me to leave it. F1Zeitgeist will be back after the race this weekend.

KERSes!

This season, the raft of rule changes to the design and construction of a 2009 Formula 1 car is so big, that it needs a separate raft of its own to stop it sinking into a mire of bafflement. On the design front, the changes are quite apparent. To the left is last year's Renault and on the right it is this year's car.

Note the rear spoiler and nose changes. They are much higher, narrower and stumpier. Also, this year sees the return of slick tyres to F1 after a twelve year absence. However, probably the most significant aspect of the new Formula 1 car lies beneath the bodywork and that is with the Kinetic Energy Recovery System or KERS. This innovation, not only adds an extra, more exciting, dimension to racing but also make a big contribution to 'Green Technology' which, if deployed to its full potential, may revolutionise how automobiles are run and the role they play in our lives.

A KERS device stores all the kinetic energy generated by a Formula 1 car as it brakes. It turns in to something the driver of the car can then use to increase performance in short bursts at the push of a button. So basically it brake, store, convert, push button and whoosh! Very cool for overtaking and indeed avoiding overtaking maneuvers.

KERS was incorporated as permitted technology by the FIA in order to help promote the use of green tech in Formula 1 which gets a fair amount of stick for planet bashing, some of it justified. However, technology developed via F1 has contributed greatly to the planet in other areas and KERS acts as a sort of poster tech for the sport's Green credentials.

There are two main types of KERS device: The purely electrical one uses a battery but the electro-mechanical version, used by Williams, is very exciting as it uses a flywheel and doesn't need a battery.

The implications for road use are also exciting. According to veteran F1 journalist Joe Saward in a recent interview with Sidepodcast, scientists believe that it may be possible for future KERS devices to, not only sustain a road vehicle indefinitely (it would require and initial source of power to get started) but could generate a surplus which, in turn, could be plugged back into the National Grid at the end of its journey and fed back into the network. The prospect of the motor car becoming part of the solution rather than part of the problem is enough to baffle environmentalists and Jeremy Clarksons alike.

The technology is still pretty new and not all the teams have confirmed that their devices are ready yet (although Renault announced today that they will definitely be using it). There have been some safety issues. Last year a BMW engineer got an electric shock off a KERS device while working on it. However, the scope of the technology for racing suggests that we should expect KERS to be a permanent fixture for some time. It should also provide valuable data for pioneers of renewable energy. Not bad for a bunch of racing cars going round and round is it?

Below is a presentation by a very nice man from Williams about their F1 KERS system.

Twitter

Inevitably thoughts turn to how to incorporate social networking into this blog. I don't think it's possible for me to launch any online presence without some sort of Twitter account to go with it. I run, or part run Twitter IDs for The Onion Bag, SPAOTP, SPAOTT, Croydon Watertower and of course my own one which is Redduffman.

I suppose the benefit of setting up a separate Twitter ID is that is I want to get involved in live tweeting GPs as they happen or get really F1 geeky then the option is there without pissing off followers on my regular ID and losing them.

Having said that I still feel a bit odd when I tweet under a Twitter ID that is not @redduffman. Plus of course their is the whole question of managing all these sodding social networking identities. Am I biting off more than I can chew?

*Sighs*! What to do? Well, I'm inclined to set one up anyway as a feed, then I'll take it from there.

Brawniacs

I've never supported an F1 team, ever. Usually I follow drivers: Hunt, Senna, Mansell, Prost, Raikkonen, Vettel (right) and of course Lewis.

But I find F1 teams are way too corporate to actually support. They're companies not like Football clubs are (or used to be). There is no feeling of community associated with them so no feeling of belonging, not in my mind anyway.

I have a lot of time for Williams on account of them being independent of a larger corporate owner and existing for the sole purpose of racing cars. But Toyota? Red Bull? Renault? McLaren? They sell buggies don't they?

I suppose the other problem with teams is that they are run by such intensely dull men who excel in saying as little of interest as possible for fear of upsetting a rival, a driver, Bernie Ecclestone or one of their own or F1's many generous sponsors.

Don't get me wrong, these men are immensely brainy, dynamic individuals capable of producing amazingly powerful and exciting machines that thrill the watching public. However, in many ways, F1 is such a sanitised sport that its almost impossible to have any fun. It is a sport that enjoys very few characters. Thus, my focus of attention has been on the driver's skill less than the team of engineers who build and maintain the cars.

I'm happy to say however, that things have changed.

Last week, BrawnGP was born as an official F1 team from the ashes of Honda who withdrew their support due to credit-crunchary. Ross Brawn (right) was the mastermind behind the Schumacher/Ferrari years and has bought the team out thereby persevering the Bracknell factory and creating a new, independent team with some of the best brains in the sport plus a state of the art facility.


The uncertainty surrounding the team's future is bound to have affected their testing and development in the close season. They were out on the Silverstone track late last week in the new car (left) but it would be naive to assume they'll be up the front of the grid this season. More Genevieve than Herbie.

Still, the important thing is they live to fight another day and with Barracello and Button behind the wheel they have two excellent drivers to help push the team forward. What's more, I think at last I've found a team I can call my own.

Hurrah!