The season will be the most exciting ever, but the title of the DVD will make it sound like a wet Wednesday

In 2006, Fernando Alonso took his second World Championship in scintillating style that went down to the wire. The title of the official Formula 1 season review DVD was “Once Again”, making it sound like your drunk uncle has just wet himself for the umpteenth time.

In 2007, after a tense season-long battle between McLaren team-mates Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen amazed the world by snatching the title from both of them in the final race of the season, overcoming a 17 point deficit with two races to go. The DVD was called “Kimi made it at last”, as though he had just come home late from a heavy night.

In 2008 Lewis Hamilton took the Championship in heart attack-inducing style on the last corner of the last lap of the last race. The DVD was called “Luck does not come into it”, which I still haven’t worked out the meaning of.

And the DVD really sold the 2009 season well by calling it “Not in a hurry…”, as if Jenson Button did not have a record-breaking winning streak at the start of the season.

Even if the Championship showdown is host to the first ever alien visit to this planet and is settled with a massive 200mph laser gun fight involving seventeen drivers from the planet Q’txxp’he, it wouldn’t surprise me if the DVD was given some madly dull title like, “I’d rather be watching paint dry”, “Isn’t Corrie on the other side?”, or “I’d stick with watching lawn bowls if I were you”.

Confectionery diffuser face-off

2009 was the year of the Double Decker diffusers. The 2010 pre-season testing period has seen a similar curiosity surrounding the rear end of F1 cars, with teams being notably coy about showing off their behinds.

The concept has now moved way beyond Double Decker diffusers. Among the new types of diffuser will be Red Bull’s Drifter diffuser, McLaren’s Mars Bar diffuser, Toro Rosso’s Curly Wurly diffuser and USF1’s Snickers diffuser. However, once again, Ross Brawn will find the upper hand when he reveals Mercedes’s Boost diffuser.

FOM will fail to improve television coverage

Although Bernie Ecclestone’s FOM is supposedly covering the world’s most technologically advanced sport, the television pictures will still resemble a smudgy YouTube video. Bernie Ecclestone will insist that there is no need for HD coverage because, “my IT guy told me he swears by his old CRT television”.

Despite the decision to give HD the cold shoulder, FOM will stick with their existing on-screen graphics, which are so small that they are actually bloody impossible to read on any 4:3 display. They may be declaring the start of World War III on those captions for all I know.

Intense McLaren Championship rivalry

The title will come down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, with the main protagonists being McLaren team mates Hamilton and Button.

Towards the end of the race, John Button will think he has the upper hand by unleashing his killer move – undoing the last button on his shirt. Little will he anticipate that Anthony Hamilton will win the Championship by staring even more intensely.

Michael Schumacher will be the world’s most superstitious man

Following on from the revelation that Michael Schumacher has a mad superstition for odd numbers, the German will reveal a litany of hitherto unknown superstitions. Among these will be an insistence that his team mate runs with an inferior set-up because “it makes me feel a bit better about my car”.

He will also reveal that he has a special form of OCD that means he just has to brake-test any drivers that are behind him, and cannot stop himself from driving straight into anyone who has just overtaken him. He also has a strong superstition for getting to choose his own parking space, and will park his Mercedes car in Race Control, where he can literally control the race by tampering with the timing system.

No-one will think to point any of this out, because nothing is allowed to get in the way of Princess Michelle’s Fairy Tale Comeback.

Cosmopolitan Valencia will continue grid boy tradition

Valencia’s tradition of having grid boys in addition to grid girls at the European Grand Prix will continue. Coincidentally, Flavio Briatore will make his F1 comeback at the very same race.

New teams to struggle

New teams will be unable to shake off speculation surrounding their ability to see out the season. While the early focus will be on USF1 and Campos, the spotlight will soon switch to Virgin Racing.

Suspicions will be raised mid-season when the Virgin team mysteriously re-brands with a green livery and makes a formal application to change its name to ‘Zavvi’. A few months later, the team will run out of money and close down, but not before a special fixtures and fittings sale where fans will have the opportunity to buy the screws that once held the car together.

The bearded beggar who appears at races is not homeless

Having made a tactical error by trying to get a drive at Mercedes only for some seven time World Champion or other to get in the way, Nick Heidfeld will begin the 2010 season without a job. He will resort to sleeping on the floor in the paddock and begging.

If you see a suspicious-looking bearded man in the paddock, it is probably Mr Heidfeld, the world’s greatest ever second place finisher. Although he might speak as though he is slightly drunk, he is not homeless and is perfectly harmless.

You may know that for some time I have considered separating the Formula 1 content from this blog and posting it in a separate blog. I know that a lot of readers here are not very interested in Formula 1. And at times — particularly towards the end of an exciting season — this place becomes almost exclusively an F1 blog.

In the end I have decided that it would do no harm to set up a new blog. So I have gone ahead and launched it at vee8. Check out the introductory post here for a full explanation of my plans for the blog.

You won’t find me mentioning Formula 1 here very often from now on. So for the F1 fans among you, I encourage you to keep on reading here — but check out vee8 for my Formula 1 posts from now on.

I’m taking a brief break from my break because I think I can afford to now.

When I last wrote about the racism issue in F1, it was to bemoan the media’s role in fuelling the fire. If you have been reading for a while you might know of the distaste I have for some of the coverage found in F1 Racing over the past year or so.

I am not the only person to have noticed a decline in the standard of the journalism in F1 Racing. For instance, Clive has spoken about “the abandonment by the magazines of the high ground.” Alvin in the comments here has said he is currently boycotting F1 Racing.

Craig at craigblog has posted at least twice on the subject of cancelling his subscription to F1 Racing. And there are a few people in the comments saying the same thing time and again — “I have been buying F1 Racing for around ten years, but now I have to stop”.

Speaking as someone who is sitting just yards in front of a huge pile of eleven years’ worth of issues of F1 Racing, I have to say I am in the same position. This is not the result of some kind of mass internet campaign against the magazine. But I can’t help but notice for a lot of people that at some point in the past year came a few straws that broke some camels’ backs.

One particularly low point came when the editor Matt Bishop wrote a poisonous piece about Ralf Schumacher. It was little more than an excuse for “The Bish” (as no-one but Mr Bishop himself calls him) to use up four or five pages to explain how he told Ralf Schumacher to “off you fuck!”

Now, Ralf Schumacher was not the most popular driver in the paddock and you would struggle to find many fans of his. But for me, Matt Bishop’s piece was highly unprofessional, particularly for an editor as experienced as him. It was just so childish. “Ooh! Look at me! I told Ralf Schumacher to fuck off!” It’s like a small child saying, “Hahaha! I called the teacher a fanny!”

Last year there was also a heavy dose of unbearable Hamilton hype (or should that be “Lewis hype”, seeing as the whole British media is apparently on first name terms with him?). Then of course there is the fact that it is much more convenient and quicker to get all of the news on the internet rather than waiting every month for a dead tree to pop through the letter box. By the end of last year, it is fair to say that quite a lot of us were bashing The Bish.

And then The Bish left. In retrospect, that is probably why he felt free to write that terrible Ralf Schumacher article. His new job is as an apologist for Lewis Hamilton–no change there then.

But it begged the question–would F1 Racing improve again with someone else at the helm? The first couple of issues sans-Bish did not promise much. But what a pleasant surprise I had when I read this month’s editorial, written by the magazine’s deputy editor Stuart Codling.

I sorely want to quote it in full, but out of respect for the publishers I will summarise it. Mr Codling writes about how the phone was ringing off the hook after the racism story broke as radio producers went on the hunt for “experts” (those are Stuart Codling’s scare quotes, not mine). He writes about this poisonous era of 24 hour radio and television which is making coverage of anything increasingly confrontational and shrill. “Complex issues become a shouty amalgam of ‘Us’ vs Them’.”

He continues, racism does not solely exist in Spain. The aggravation that Lewis Hamilton faced was as a result of his rivalry with Fernando Alonso. As I wrote a couple of weeks back, we all know that the racists would be out in force no matter what country was involved, and British people especially are not in a position to lecture others countries on how their sport fans should behave.

Mr Codling’s next sentence is such a breath of fresh air–it actually felt like a relief to read it.

But who stoked up this grudge that has so publicly become a vehicle for xenophobia and racism? Well, we all did — both writers and readers, supply and demand.

He goes on to bemoan the goading that Alonso received from a British press eager to get an anti-Hamilton comment from the Spaniard. It has to be said, that Alonso’s behaviour in the media has been absolutely faultless, and you seldom hear him commenting on Hamilton in negative terms, and certainly not on anything other than his on-track actions. This is certainly a great deal more than can be said for Lewis Hamilton, who cannot seem to resist constantly making snide comments about Alonso.

Stuart Codling clearly has his head screwed on. He has a sense of morals, unlike most in the media. The way his editorial ends basically sums it up. Hearing that Mr Codling speaks with a modicum of balance, the radio producer ended the call “to find someone ‘better’.”

Three cheers for Stuart Codling. His behaviour was certainly much better than that of Matt Bishop. Mr Bishop had no qualms appearing on Radio 5 Live to say one of the most ridiculously overblown things I have ever heard someone say about Formula 1:

Lewis Hamilton is in the same chapter only as Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher. And that’s it.

This was made after Lewis Hamilton had completed his third race. No-one has a career after three races. Not even Michael Schumacher was Michael Schumacher after his third race. To compare Lewis Hamilton with names like Ayrton Senna after just three races does justice neither to Hamilton’s talent nor Senna’s legacy. If that needs explaining, as it did for one commenter* on this blog, please read this.

So I will not be cancelling my subscription to F1 Racing just yet. Unfortunately, this month’s issue is the last of Stuart Codling’s short tenure at the helm of the magazine as Matt Bishop’s replacement has been hired. For those who are worried about the increasing tabloidisation of F1 Racing it could be bad news. The new editor is Hans Seeberg. Is that the same Hans Seeberg who has recently been deputy editor of Nuts And / Or Zoo Magazine? Oh dear…

*Quite ironic when you look back on that actually. Lawrence says that Hamilton deserves comparisons to Fangio and Senna on the basis of his drive in Fuji. Hamilton was later to be investigated for dangerously bad driving during that grand prix.

On Sunday when I wrote about the racist crowd members at the Barcelona test, I said that part of the problem was the media’s debased, distorted coverage of Formula 1. Sadly, their coverage of the racism issue itself does not make me confident that the situation will get any better. The News International stable in particular should be hanging its head in shame — although of course it won’t be.

The Sun has taken the opportunity to drive traffic to its website by buying Google Ads on Formula 1 websites — including this one. As I pointed out in the comments yesterday, the language used is rather inflammatory:

Lewis Hamilton in racism storm. Spanish yobs vile attack on F1 ace

Granted, subtlety has never been a strong suit of The Sun, being as it is a bastion of demagoguery. Read the article itself and things don’t get much better. There are some rather thinly-veiled racist comments in here as well including:

Spanish fans — notorious for racism at football matches…

Not a word of course about English football fans who have been notorious for their hooliganism, as peterg pointed out in the comments.

Too many people have been trying to make it out as though Spain in particular has a problem with racism. One person commenting on The Sun’s website called the racism incident “Typical Spanish attitude” without a hint of irony.

As Pink Peril said in the comments yesterday, wherever you go, sooner or later racism will rear its ugly head. The only reason this has become a “Spanish” problem is because Hamilton happens to have a rivalry with someone who happens to be Spanish.

If Hamilton had had a rivalry with a driver of a different nationality, he would still be at the receiving end of racist taunts. And even if a British driver had a rivalry with a non-British black driver, British racists would soon enough be out in force.

Besides, the last place anyone should go to learn about issues surrounding race is The Sun. This is the paper that once ran a spoof Mr Men strip featuring such culturally-sensitive characters as “Mr Asylum Seeker” who wants everything for free, “Mr Albanian Gangster” who invites people to visit his friends’ sisters and “Mr Yardie”, a gun-wielding, joint-smoking Rastafarian.

When did The Sun run this insightful story? The 1970s? The 1980s? No, it was 2003.

We all know that the only reason The Sun is even paying attention to this story is because Lewis Hamilton is British. They wouldn’t give two hoots if the racism was directed at somebody else.

And this is the thing. The Sun’s nationalism is a symptom of the same problem that the racists in the Barcelona grandstands have. The media here bases its entire Formula 1 coverage on the notion that you should support Lewis Hamilton because he is British and vilify Fernando Alonso because he isn’t British.

The Sun says you should support drivers on the basis of where they come from. Racists taunt drivers on the basis of where they come from. They are both the same thing.

Meanwhile, The Sun’s sister paper, The Times, has written a story today blasting, “Spanish media chose to overlook latest incident” (via F1Fanatic). This is despite the fact that we probably wouldn’t even be aware of many of the incidents were it not for the reporting of Spanish newspapers such as Marca. In addition, El País, El Mundo and ABC have all reported on the issue (via Samuel at F1Fanatic).

The distorted perspectives from gutter newspapers like The Sun and The Times will do nothing to prevent racism. In fact, I am convinced that these newspapers are using the opportunity to tap into the racist attitudes of their readers by making yet more anti-Spanish comments and telling yet more lies about the situation.

I have written before about the dangerously partisan, disgracefully nationalistic coverage of Formula 1. There is only one logical conclusion to taking a nationalistic angle in coverage of sports that have nothing to do with nationality.

Some British media outlets are guilty of putting an anti-Spanish angle into elements of their F1 coverage last year. It reached an all-time low when some papers insinuated that McLaren’s Spanish drivers Fernando Alonso and Pedro de la Rosa were “at the centre” of the Stepneygate scandal. This completely ignored the fact that the real protagonists of the scandal — Nigel Stepney and Mike Coughlan — are both British!

Now Pitpass is reporting that the partisan crowd during testing in Spain has taken a nastier turn:

Yesterday, according [to] the Spanish newspaper Marca, shouts of “puto negro” (fucking black) and “negro de mierda” (black shit) were clearly heard, and that large sections of the crowd were involved.

Pitpass also has photographs of a group of people tastelessly “blacking up”, wearing t-shirts bearing the words “Hamilton’s Familly [sic]”. This is absolutely disgusting. A lot of people find it far too easy to pluck out an accusation of racism whenever it is suggested that Hamilton might not be the messiah, but there can be no doubt about the nature of these people’s demonstrations.

The article also notes that “such insidious behaviour has never been part of Formula One” — although a cynic could say that this was because of the paucity of nonwhite drivers in F1 historically.

There have been growing concerns about the nature of the “supporters” who have been turning up to test sessions in Valencia, Barcelona and Jerez. For instance, yesterday Keith Collantine wrote:

But what I do find odd is that there are some Alonso fans who got up this morning, and decided to make a banner because they were going to an F1 test. But instead of making a banner supporting Alonso, they made one attacking Hamilton.

There are a billion reasons to like F1. I don’t like the thought that some people who buy Grand Prix tickets are in it for the hate.

There have also been reports that some people have been throwing missiles at the McLaren cars. This is totally unacceptable in Formula 1 for obvious reasons.

I don’t necessarily mind some of the more humorous anti-Hamilton banners that have been on display. My personal favourite read “Lewis, have you learnt to pee by yourself, or does daddy still help you?” — mocking the overbearing presence of Lewis Hamilton’s father which has seen Anthony Hamilton become a minor celebrity in his own right.

But there is a difference between this kind of teasing and the kind of outright racism that is beginning to be reported. Pitpass calls on Fernando Alonso “to publicly distance himself from these so-called fans”. But this isn’t Fernando Alonso’s fault. He has nothing to do with these racists, and has never spoken about Hamilton in terms of his race.

But the media should immediately stop its disgustingly debased coverage of Formula 1 — in the UK as well as in Spain.

A lot of people are scratching their heads about the FIA’s latest plan when it comes to race stewards. One of the most common complaints you will hear an F1 fan make is that the decisions made by the stewards are not consistent enough. For the past couple of years there has been a permanent steward, Tony Scott-Andrews, who has presided over every race alongside two others who are appointed on a race-by-race basis.

The presence of a permanent steward greatly improved the image of the process. Although there were still perceived inconsistencies, you couldn’t really lay the blame on anything in particular because of Tony Scott-Andrews, who most seem to agree did a good job.

Tony Scott-Andrews has decided not to continue in the role in 2008. So what would you do if you were the FIA? Would you continue the successful scheme of having permanent, independent stewards? Or will you hire a lackey?

Of course, you are not President of the FIA. Unfortunately, Max Mosley is. And so apparently his good buddy Alan Donnelly “will be involved in the process”, alongside three stewards who will be appointed on a race-by-race basis.

The three stewards will be “neutrals” in that they won’t come from the same country as anyone else involved in F1. Given that nationality shamefully played such a big role in the Hamilton / Alonso hoo-ha last year, this is understandable. But I can’t help but worry that it means the best people for the job will be overlooked.

The real worry though is that Alan Donnelly will apparently have a major influence in the decision-making process this year. According to GrandPrix.com:

If Donnelly takes up a role as the permanent F1 steward it is going to be very hard for him to establish any credibility as an independent. This in turn will reflect on the FIA and will not help improve the perception – whether true or not – that everything is controlled by Mosley.

The problem is that while Donnelly is clearly an intelligent and capable individual he has been a close ally of Mosley for eight years and before that worked with the FIA President as a member of the FIA-funded Automobile Users Group at the European Parliament. Today he is paid as an FIA consultant.

And Sidepodcast has revealed more:

His company Sovereign Strategy currently list Formula One Management Ltd as a client. It’s not hard to imagine the sport’s commercial interests being taken into consideration when looking at future rule infringements…

Of further interest a quick perusal through the Internet Archive, sees Sovereign Strategy at one time listing Ferrari as a previous client…

It’s not clear when the Italian manufacturer was removed from the client list (the archive displays the page as recently as June 2007), but one could speculate it was probably very recently. One also wonders whether the Scuderia have completely severed ties with Sovereign, and what bearing that may have on future ‘difficult’ decisions?

So the new permanent steward is not only an FIA / Max Mosley lackey, he is a Ferrari lackey as well! But this should come as no surprise given that FIA stands for Ferrari International Assistance and all.

In all seriousness, this is the last thing Formula 1 needs. At a time when so many people see Max Mosley as wielding too much power over F1 (to put it very politely indeed), to have a chum of Mosley’s become the new permanent steward is a recipe for disaster. Worse still, when so many people see the FIA as blatantly favouring Ferrari, is it really so wise to bring in a man whose company very recently listed Ferrari among its clients, one position below the FIA (Max Mosley’s organisation) and two above FOA (Bernie Ecclestone’s company)?

Max Mosley is truly in cloud cuckoo land. He must realise that this move is highly provocative. It will not be long before people start pointing fingers and suspecting bias.

The FIA has a major image problem among F1 fans as I recently pointed out. It is worrying enough that Max Mosley should install someone with such blatant Ferrari links in a position of such authority. What is even more worrying is that Mosley no longer even seems to be interested in pretending that the FIA are not just a bunch of Ferrari lackeys.

The sooner Mosley is replaced, the better. He is a rotten man who brings far too much politics into Formula 1 just because real politics was a no-go area due to his lineage. After the events of last year, more politics is the last thing F1 needs. But given this provocative appointment, it is obvious that Mosley doesn’t give a damn about this fact.

Ferrari personnel are well-known for making ludicrous statements about their opposition, particularly when they are talking about anything to do with a certain team that begins with ‘M’ and ends with ‘cLaren’. But I think Luca Baldisserri has come out with a corker today. I do think this comment could come back to bite him on the bum.

“I think that, with these new regulations [banning traction control], Lewis Hamilton may have a rough time,” Baldisserri was quoted as saying by Gazzetta dello Sport.

“For sure he won’t be able to carry on driving the way he has, and even though he raced and won in GP2 without traction control, he was on different tyres.”

Is he sure?

Lewis Hamilton blitzed the GP2 world when he raced without traction control. Luca Baldisserri has a point with the fact that they were different tyres. But Hamilton raced on those different tyres last year, so he has experience with both F1-spec tyres and cars without traction control. It’s probably not too much of a leap for him to work out how to drive a car that combines the two.

Perhaps if he is looking for someone who might struggle under the new regulations, Mr. Baldisserri could look a little closer to home. Felipe Massa is already hopeless in the wet, and he is bound to be hurt further by the lack of traction control given that he has been mollycoddled with cars that do all the work for him throughout his eight-year-long F1 career.

I’ve done a quick search on the series Massa has raced in prior to F1 — Euro F3000 and Formula Renault 2000. And although I have failed to find detailed technical regulations for Euro F3000 in 2001 or Formula Renault in 2000, my hunch is that they probably ran without traction control.

But 2001 is a mighty long time ago. It is certainly much longer ago than 2006, when Hamilton last raced without TC. And Massa did not compete in series that are specifically designed to be ‘feeder’ series for Formula 1, as GP2 is.

Massa has been a critic of the removal of traction control. It’s not difficult to see why. Okay, so he is citing the expertise of his mentor, Mickey Schumacher who says that the lack of traction control will make wet races more dangerous.

But for how many years in history have grand prix cars successfully raced in wet conditions without traction control? Even if we ignore the early years of grand prix motor racing and concentrate on the modern era, the years 1994–2001 were TC-free (unless you believe that every single car in every single race in that period illegally ran traction control without being caught). I don’t recall wet races being a particular problem then.

I think the real reason Massa is criticising the new regulations is because he reckons it will eradicate his already slim chance of ever winning the World Championship. The same goes for David Coulthard as well, by the way. He was always one to want the lazy route to winning (I still won’t forgive him for complaining about Enrique Bernoldi not letting him past in Monaco 2001).

I might be wrong. Maybe Massa will excel without traction control. But I just don’t see it somehow. Regular readers know that I am not a big fan of Hamilton, but I feel certain about this. Hamilton will cope much better without traction control than Massa will.

I am making this the last in my series of posts looking back on the 2007 Formula 1 season. Truth be told, I’ve become a bit sick of writing them every Sunday. I skipped last week. Anyway, next Sunday is in a different year, and it’s a bit off to be looking back when everyone else is looking forward.

Anyway, I promised I would review Formula 1 websites, so here goes. Again, this is all in alphabetical order.

Autosport.com

A reliable source of Formula 1 — and other motorsport — news. It is also the most frequently updated of the F1 RSS feeds I subscribe to. So chances are that if something has happened, Autosport will have the story.

There is also a neat ‘Autosport TV’ feature, containing highlights of certain motorsport events. Bernie take note — this is how things will be done in the future, so don’t leave F1 lagging behind every other series!

Unfortunately, not all of the content on Autosport.com is free. But you can’t have it all. The website also performed badly on the day of McLaren’s WMSC hearing, when the website was down for huge parts of the afternoon, and then when it came back up it got the story wrong. Oh dear.

BBC Sport | Motorsport | Formula One

The BBC’s F1 news website is as you would expect — solid, but not really in-depth enough for obsessives like me. Only the very biggest F1 stories appear on BBC Sport Online, and they seldom contain anything revelatory.

Having said that, there are some neat features from time to time. Heikki Kovalainen wrote a regular column. I also particularly enjoyed reading an article about Kimi Räikkönen’s playboy image! There is also some good video and audio content collected from the BBC’s output.

However, the stories and features also concentrate too much on Lewis Hamilton. I guess this is to be expected from the BBC, but it’s all a bit fawning and not very balanced.

As for the other features, again they are pretty good, although they haven’t changed much for several years. I would imagine that features such as the pitstop guide are excellent resources if you are just getting into the sport.

BlogF1

Ollie White’s BlogF1 was the first Formula 1 blog I started reading regularly. The posts strike a neat balance between news and opinion, although I personally prefer more opinion-heavy pieces.

I have to confess that nowadays my favourite feature of BlogF1 is the weekly caption contest. However, there are some other neat features hidden away from the main blog area.

There is a particularly comprehensive section on racetracks from around the world, complete with images from Google Maps. There is also a stunning complete list of championship statistics going all the way back to 1950, the inception of the Drivers World Championship.

F1 Insight

This excellent blog is, as its title suggests, very insightful. What I love about it is the fact that Clive doesn’t just churn out banal posts about the issues of the day. Instead, he finds an interesting angle and then writes about it, bringing to the reader’s attention an aspect that he may not previously have thought about.

To take some recent examples, there is a post questioning Sebastian Vettel’s reputation as a promising driver. And here is an interesting take on Fernando Alonso — is he going to be the greatest reputation-maker of all time?

In sum, F1 Insight is guaranteed to challenge the conventional wisdom, making it an essential read.

F1Fanatic

Without a doubt, the best Formula 1 blog around! What astonishes me is that you can visit the website every single day and there will be something new — even in the depths of the off-season. There was even a new post on Christmas Day, but you are just as likely to find three or four new posts per day even at this time of year.

The breadth of features is also breathtaking. Book and DVD reviews often appear. The Lapped Legends series takes a look at some of the less talented drivers and teams in F1’s history. And the ‘F1 in the Blogs’ feature is a must-read roundup of the best F1 blogging. The blog has also been known to hold competitions which I have been lucky enough to win!

Main writer Keith Collantine is clearly very dedicated to the website and infinitely knowledgeable about the sport. It could so easily fall into the trap of being a haven for stattos, but it actually strikes a perfect balance between geek heaven and accessibility.

Ah, and I have also had a guest post published on F1Fanatic. So obviously it’s a must-read!

Formula 1 Blog

This is the Formula 1 Blog as in Negative Camber and Grace, whose podcast I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. The blog is rather different to their podcast. You would never guess that it was the same thing. The long, in-depth podcasts are accompanied by very concise, brief, pithy blog posts.

Despite the difference in style, the blog is great for all the same reasons as the podcast. Priding itself on being a “journal of opinion”, forceful opinion is certainly what you get.

One problem is that you have to be registered to comment. This is okay, and understandable in an age where upwards of 95% of blog comments are spam. But I tried to register and never got my confirmation email, so I am locked out (well, not really, but I can’t be bothered going through the rigmarole of registering again). Okay, so it’s not the end of the world, but it is a bit off-putting.

As well as the blog, there is a forum which I hear is buzzing. But forums are not quite my thing.

Formula1.com

This is the big daddy — Bernie Ecclestone’s Formula 1 website. It has come on leaps and bounds in the past year.

The best bit is still the Live Timing facility. If you have access to a computer during a grand prix, having Live Timing open will keep you up to date, with access to pretty much all of the information you would want, updated in real time.

The news section is so-so, but this is more than made up for by the site’s other features. A particular joy is the technical section, which looks in detail at the developments each team makes throughout the season. There is also great information on each circuit, a fine image gallery, profiles on all the teams and drivers and — for the bravest among us — a good section on F1’s Byzantine rules.

Perhaps the strongest part of the website, though, is the database of past races results, stretching right back to 1950. An excellent, in-depth resource if you want to look up old race and Championship results.

However, this section suffers from a frustrating navigational quirk. Say I want to look up the past results of a driver. I can select the driver, say Kimi Räikkönen. Now I want to look at his results from 2002, so naturally I select 2002 from the drop-down menu. But this takes me straight to the Championship Table of 2002, not the results of Kimi Räikkönen. What a pain!

Little annoyances aside though, Formula1.com is better than you might expect. It is finally catching up with other motorsport series. Now FOM needs to move into offering video on the website urgently. An insipid, 30 second long ‘highlights’ clip (which inevitably focuses on the crashes rather than the racing) will not do. Bernie needs to offer more video content online in future. If he is going to take all the interesting videos off YouTube, he had better offer them on Formula1.com.

Fun F1

A fair attempt at an F1 humour website, although not the best.

GrandPrix.com

One of the best F1 news sites going. This website might not have the budget or the big-name status of, say, Autosport, but it undoubtedly has the contacts.

Often the stories are as much about rumours as they are about hard facts. But this is often to its advantage. I seem to remember that GrandPrix.com was the first website to announce that Kimi Räikkönen had signed for Ferrari. Some other websites laughed at the suggestion at the time, but GrandPrix.com was proved right.

It was also consistently ahead of the curve in the reporting of the Stepneygate scandal. You simply had to read GrandPrix.com to keep on top of the facts surrounding the issue. Remarkable reporting.

ING Renault F1 Team – Weblog

A fine companion to the Renault podcast. Once again it demonstrates that Renault are serious about reaching fans in ways that other teams don’t consider. The blog is properly done as well, not half-hearted and with a buzzing comments section.

The design is rather busy for my liking, but to be fair I am not the biggest fan of the content either (unlike the podcast, which is excellent). Nevertheless, this is a lesson to the other teams: this is how it should be done.

ITV Sport – F1

This season saw the ITV-F1 website turn from a reasonable, accessible guide to Formula 1 into a central cog of the Lewis Hamilton hype machine. No doubt it is good for raking in the advertising money, but it is awful for genuine F1 fans.

Nevertheless, there are some top features on the ITV-F1 website. For instance, there are regular columns from Peter Windsor and David Coulthard. And Ted Kravitz’s notebook is often worth a read.

Next year I expect nothing less than a Lewis stalking feature which will plot on a Google Map where Lewis Hamilton is at this precise moment in time.

Linksheaven

A reasonably good Formula 1 group blog.

Pitpass

A fine independent Formula 1 website. Like GrandPrix.com — a reliable news resource, although Pitpass has a much slicker design! I have to say though, it is rather annoying that you can’t copy any of the text if you want to quote it. I can’t think of any other websites that persist on using this user-unfriendly technique that treats normal users — even people like me who want to approvingly link back — as criminals.

I would also rather that the news feed did not contain stories about that awful tripe known as A1 Grand Prix. Yeah, that toytown motor racing series where drivers don’t win, nor do teams — but countries do. What a load of nationalistic gash!

Apart from that, the news reports are good. The opinion pieces are fine, but often come across as a bit curmudgeonly. And the endless predictions of the imminent death of Formula 1 do get tiresome after a while.

Sidepodcast

A great blog to accompany a great podcast! They have recently had a new lick of paint. That’s all I can say. A cracking read, just as much as the podcast is a cracking listen.

Sniff Petrol

The best attempt at a Formula 1 humour site. This site provides some much-needed light relief amid the turmoil and politics of an F1 season.

Highlights include Crazy Dave Coulthard (complete with entertaining descriptions of what Red Bull tastes like), D.I. Blundell’s latest report and the latest advice Michael Schumacher has given to his brother.

Times Online Formula One blog

Ed Gorman’s Formula 1 blog is easily the best of the MSM F1 blogs. I do hope it returns for the 2008 season. I imagine it will because apparently it has been very popular indeed.

I can vouch for that. I think I can thank the comments section of Ed Gorman’s blog for a few of this blog’s readers nowadays. It is still to this day one of my top referrers. Infact, it is the top referrer to this blog all year apart from Google Images UK. And this is all from the comments sections of two posts from October. Blimey.

One problem was that it came to be defined in terms of its (oddly) mostly Spanish readership clashing with Ed Gorman’s British perspective on events. Thankfully in the end the relationship appears to have become the more respectful, ‘agree to disagree’ type, rather than the antagonistic relationship it could have been.

I think that’s about it, mostly because I am losing the will to live. As are you, most likely. Er, any other suggestions, blah blah, etc.?

I hope you all managed to have a good Christmas. I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed Christmas so much.

In recent years I have enjoyed it just as a nice day off with a big meal. But beyond that I didn’t enjoy them much more than a normal day of leisure. So maybe I’d watch my new DVDs, but I would probably spend a great deal of the day on the internet anyway.

Perhaps it is because I have had such a tough year (not emotionally tough, but physically and mentally). Maybe it was because last year my brother wasn’t here, but it was probably mostly because I have become older, jaded and cynical.

Of course, when you’re young, Christmas is probably the most exciting part of the year. All those presents! Unfortunately as you get older this wears off. One day you find that you have the responsibility to give presents as well, with all the shopping hell that entails. And soon enough you might be earning enough to buy pretty much all of the luxuries you want.

For that reason, I always tell my parents to try and surprise me. They still want me to write them a list of what I want, but that is rubbish. Normally if I want stuff I can just buy them anyway. So I find myself not buying things just so that I can put them on my Christmas list. What a load of old bum. What is the point of knowing what you are getting anyway?

So I was quite pleased when my parents decided to buy me a poker set, which I completely didn’t expect. I didn’t even realise the big box was meant to be for me, so I just left it at first.

Apparently my father didn’t really want to get me it in case it encourages me to gamble. I think that’s a bit rich coming from someone who spends £2 on the lottery every week, but there you go! I doubt I’d ever gamble myself. I am pretty risk-averse and the odds are always stacked against you.

I have kind of hinted at getting a poker set before, but only as a sort of “ooh, wouldn’t that be amusing” kind of thing. I wasn’t dead serious about getting one. But I found myself getting quite excited about it, and we all played a game later in the evening.

I had never played a game of poker before, and I knew very little about it. All I knew was whatever I gleaned from watching Late Night Poker back in the day, which was very little. I only ever watched that because there was nothing else on, and I was mesmerised by the amazing under-the-table cameras.

My brother led us all by the hand, explaining the rules as we went along. My parents were knocked out quickly, and it was just the young’uns — me, my brother and his girlfriend — left. Time flew by really quickly. Before we realised it, three hours had passed and it was after midnight.

And in the end, I won my first ever game of poker! Muhahah!

And this evening, I won at Scrabble. This is in stark contrast to my record on Facebook Scrabble (won 2, lost 8). This winning streak is unusual, because normally I am just one big loser. I should ride the wave and carry these optimistic feelings with me into 2008. It’s a big year, so being optimistic is probably the only way I can get things done from now on, even though it goes against my instincts.

What else did I get for Christmas? Well, most of the other stuff was on my list. A few books to add to the ever-growing pile of books I haven’t yet got round to reading. Jackie Stewart’s autobiography (very hefty looking and thorough — unlike Lewis Hamilton, Jackie Stewart has lived a life), The Long Tail and Dead Children Playing.

My brother got me Dead Children Playing, although I had already bought it for myself and had got it wrapped up. Amusingly, I bought it partly as a backup for my brother in case I couldn’t find him anything better (eventually I got him this). That we both got it for each other is a sign that it was a good present, I think. We are keeping a copy each.

I also got a few DVDs — the F1 season review, 30 Century Man (a documentary about Scott Walker) and Taking Liberties (a documentary about Tony Blair riding roughshod over the constitution).

I have just watched Taking Liberties and I can very much recommend it. It concisely documents what is happening to this country under the Labour government and why it matters. It demonstrates that this affects a wide range of people and includes interviews from critics of the government across the political spectrum, from all of the major parties. If you don’t recognise the loss of freedoms that is happening in this country, you should watch this film and you will soon enough understand.

The film looks as though it’s only half of the story as well, because taking a look at the list of DVD extras, there is lots more to get through.

Back to normal tomorrow I think. I decided — two days off: Christmas Day and Boxing Day. But deadlines loom. Back to writing essays and dissertations tomorrow.

In case you were wondering, I have decided against writing a review of F1’s ‘bigwigs’ — for the sake of my health. I just wrote a big rant about Max Mosley the other day anyway.

My next post was going to look at F1 websites. But this week Ollie White wrote a post about podcasts, so I thought I would move my post on podcasts to this week.

I’m a relative newcomer to podcasts. As a concept, they have grown much more quickly than blogging and I would bet that ‘podcast’ is more of a household word than ‘blog’ already. But they never really grabbed my attention because, for me, they are rather inconvenient to listen to, as I wrote a few months back.

Since I wrote that post, I have transformed into a big fan of podcasts though. This was partly because I replaced my ageing iRiver with a brand spanking new iPod.

I have to say, mega thumbs up to the people at Apple who have made keeping up with podcasts so easy! The iPod takes away so much of the hassle that existed with my old iRiver.

At first I only listened to podcasts on my commute through to university. But soon enough I found myself subscribing to more and more podcasts and not having enough time to listen to them all. Now I am such a podcast addict that I actually set aside some time every day to listen to them by going out for a walk (with the added benefits of exercise and fresh air that this brings).

So, from my mild scepticism in the late summer, I have turned into a full-on podcast addict. And right at the top of the list comes the F1 podcasts that I have gradually discovered. This post will review my favourites. They are listed in alphabetical order, in case you’re wondering.

AT&T Williams Podcast

As far as I know, Williams is one of only two Formula 1 teams who produced podcasts this year. Maybe it’s just me, but I would never have expected Williams to be so hip. They always seemed like a team that is mainly supported by middle-aged men, the kind of people who prefer Fifth Gear to Top Gear.

Maybe this is actually the case, because for me the Williams podcast is the least fulfilling of my regular listens. It is produced by USP Content — the same people who produce the excellent programmes for Radio 5 Live and Renault’s podcast. But the Williams podcast misfires a bit.

So what’s the problem? It’s just a bit too cheesy. It is a bit like a local radio programme. An example regular feature is ‘2007′ (pronounced ‘twenty-oh-seven’) where presenter David Croft talks to Alexander Wurz at 8:07 PM on the Saturday before the race. I don’t know, but that is quite a hollow feature to me. Yeah, neat pun, but it’s a bit meaningless when you’re listening at whatever time you choose. Besides, we don’t even know that the interview was conducted at 8:07 PM and apart from that there was nothing much to the feature.

The interviews, conducted by Tom Clarkson, were normally a bit too fluffy for my liking. I can remember actually cringing at some of the questions. It is probably reasonably entertaining for some fans. But if you’re looking for insight and analysis it is best to look elsewhere.

Worst of all, some kind of glitch towards the end of the season meant that the podcasts weren’t getting delivered (at least to me — and I remember Sidepodcast mentioning a similar problem). The podcasts for Japan, China and Brazil all arrived on my iPod weeks after the season had finished. Does this mean that they were not getting published? To think about all the work that must have gone into producing them, only for them to be inaccessible until they were completely out of date.

All evidence that the Williams podcast existed seems to have been removed from the Williams website, which perhaps suggests that the podcast won’t be making a return next season. A list of old episodes is available on USP Content’s website though, and the iTunes link is here.

Chequered Flag Formula 1

The BBC’s Formula 1 podcast is one of the best for my money. The centrepiece programme is The Chequered Flag, which provides analysis soon after the end of every race. But when you subscribe to the feed you also receive other F1 programmes broadcast on Radio 5 Live including the race preview show and occasional editions of the 606 phone-in.

There is not much else to say apart from the obvious. I already covered Radio 5 Live’s coverage in last week’s post, and the same applies to the podcast. They contain excellent interviews and top-notch analysis. The kind of quality you expect from the BBC. Great stuff.

F1 Rejects

Direct from Australia comes the funniest F1 podcast I have come across.

The website is dedicated to the “heroic failures” of Formula 1 — the people at the back of the grid who regularly put their lives at risk despite the fact that they have no hope of achieving any success. The podcast has a similar vibe, with a kind of attitude towards bad drivers that is a curious mixture of disgust and awe — an attitude that I broadly share.

But while the podcast revels in its celebration / castigation of F1’s rejects, it has plenty to say about the world of F1 in general. If you are looking for a humorous take on the world of F1, look no further. I have only been listening for a couple of episodes, but already F1 Rejects is one of my favourite podcasts.

Formula 1 Blog

On balance, this is probably my favourite Formula 1 podcast. It is American, which is an advantage because it doesn’t fall into the trap that Brits have fallen into by dividing into two camps — pro-Hamilton and anti-Hamilton. Formula 1 Blog is more neutral in this regard — a great dose of reality in this world of Hamilton hype and anti-hype.

But Formula 1 Blog certainly isn’t a neutral podcast, and it prides itself on being a journal of opinion. Negative Camber is a Ferrari fan (no, I don’t understand either) and his sidekick Grace is a McLaren fan. As a result, the banter between them is fantastic to listen to!

Negative Camber is also quite nifty at doing impressions. His impression of Patrick Head’s grumpy expression is hilarious and a couple of weeks back he did an impression of Ross Brawn that had me in stitches on the train. I do worry about his strange obsession with Matt Bishop though. Any discussion of a McLaren press release soon turns into a discussion about Matt Bishop and how he copes with wearing the grey McLaren uniform instead of his normal loud shirts.

The podcast also touches on other motor sports, particularly MotoGP and WRC. But the centrepiece of the podcast is F1.

The podcasts are a tad on the long side — typically lasting almost an hour. The long idents also grate a little bit. They are an entertaining listen the first time round, but after that it takes about two minutes from the start of the podcast until the actual discussion begins. Nevertheless, it is always an entertaining listen.

ING Renault F1 Team Podcast

Note to Williams: this is how you do an F1 team podcast!

The most astonishing thing about the Renault podcast is the fact that important people who probably have a lot on their plate take a great deal of time to appear on the podcast. After every race, Radio 5 Live presenter Holly Samos visits the Renault factory to make the podcast. It is a brilliant way for an F1 team to reach the fans.

Pat Symonds in particular should be applauded for his dedication. It is always worth listening to what he says, and he provides refreshingly honest answers. He has held his hands up and said that Renault produced a bad car this year, and he has been completely open about these faults on the podcast.

The interviews with the drivers are also worth listening to, as they manage to avoid the fluff and cheese of the Williams podcast. It is strange that both podcasts are produced by the same company, USP Content, as the difference in quality could hardly be more stark.

I really do hope that Renault continue the podcast next season. More teams should follow suit, and the Renault template should guide them because it really is top-notch stuff.

Sidepodcast

This was the first F1 podcast I started listening to regularly, and I still loyally follow it.

I am in two minds about Sidepodcast, because I really like it when Christine and ‘me’ have an opinionated discussion, but the more factual and newsy elements of the podcast are not my cup of tea. For instance, a lap-by-lap review of the race sends me to sleep because I already know what happened. After all, I watched the race. However, I can see how it could be useful for those who missed the race.

Sidepodcast should be applauded for its experimental variants on the format. From time to time, for instance, short series are produced. For instance, last week there was a series called ‘Days that Shook the F1 World’ — a short daily podcast, each one focussing on a different pivotal moment in F1 history. Again, for me, these series are not so entertaining because I am personally the type who would rather delve into Wikipedia and books to find out more about such events.

There is a spin-off podcast called F1 Minute. It is a daily, 60 second long podcast rounding up the day’s F1 news in brief. Again, for me, it is not very useful because I usually keep up with news using RSS feeds and I already know most of the stories featured in the podcast. Nevertheless, it must be an excellent resource for those who are unable to keep up with the news as much.

However, I am in awe at the Sidepodcast video podcasts, which are top quality previews of each race. How do they do it?

Sidepodcast should also be congratulated for offering podcasts in the ‘enhanced’ format. These divide podcasts into DVD-style chapters. They also have the capacity to display images as the podcast is playing, which can be quite good if your are sitting around or in the train or something, although rather more off-putting if you’re going for a walk!

All-in-all, the content of Sidepodcast is not all my cup of tea. But in terms of effort, there is no doubt about it. Sidepodcast takes the crown.

That’s it for my review of my favourite F1 podcasts. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I have already mentioned Ollie’s post which contains some other suggestions that I will be trying out in the future, so take a look at that as well.

The “confession” by McLaren yesterday looks rather damning on the face of it. But it is well known that to stop getting punished you have to confess, even if you didn’t do it. When you read between the lines, McLaren have actually confessed to very little.

In terms of “copied” Ferrari information, the smoking gun is there — but for stuff that everyone had access to. So the 2008 McLaren has a longer wheelbase? Big deal — it wasn’t exactly top secret that the F2007 had a long wheelbase. It was well known long before the start of last season.

And reading between the lines, it looks as though McLaren’s new braking system employs the famous double-rear master cylinder with spring — information that the FIA leaked!

What is really telling about all of this is the way the two branches of FIArrari (the racing team that masquerades as the FIA and the governing body that calls itself Ferrari) have reacted to this — in complete tandem, would you believe! You couldn’t make it up.

Every single movement by Max Mosley, the FIA and the World Motor Sport Council on this Stepneygate scandal since June has been calculated to maximise the embarrassment of the McLaren team as an organisation and Ron Dennis as an individual.

The first WMSC meeting stuck the knife in. Then in September Mosley inserted it further. Last week he gave the knife a jolly good twist when it was revealed at the last minute that they weren’t going to clear the McLaren car until February. They had said they were going to judge on it last week. “Just kidding Ron! We’re going to make you suffer for a few months yet.”

By then, it had become obvious what game the maFIA was playing at all along. There was no way McLaren could risk waiting until just a few weeks before the start of the season to find out if their car would be given the all-clear — particularly given the FIA’s hostile attitude towards the McLaren team. There was every chance that the car would not have been cleared, McLaren would have been thrown out of the Championship.

In the end, McLaren were faced with no choice but to fall on their own sword rather than go through Max Mosley’s bizarre torture methods. The fact that the FIA have now offered to close the matter as a result of this apology speaks volumes. The FIA and Ferrari were not interested in justice one iota. If they were, they would not seek to close the matter just because McLaren said sorry. They would continue to investigate the car and meet in February as promised.

Rather, the FIA and Ferrari’s main goal was to embarrass McLaren in the most public, torturous, long-winded way possible. Having now maximised that embarrassment, they have decided they have had enough of their games and are now “graciously” offering closure.

Pathetic.

Is it ‘Nelson Piquet Jr.’ or ‘Nelsinho Piquet’?

Today’s post in my series reviewing the 2007 Formula 1 season was going to be about F1’s bigwigs — Max Mosley and the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone and FOM. However, events in this area are continuing and show no sign of stopping yet, so I’ll leave it for later.

Instead, I’ll move on to what I was going to write about next week — the television and radio coverage. Because I live in the UK, this means ITV and BBC Radio 5 Live. But I’ll also have a look at the most important aspect of the television coverage, the FOM-controlled “world feed”.

ITV

It was a bit of a depressing year to watch ITV coverage. In previous years they hopelessly talked up the prospects of Jenson Button’s success but they realised they were flogging a dead horse so let other drivers get a word in edgeways.

Now that a Brit who can actually win regularly has come on the scene, the coverage has become completely myopic. “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” (© Steve Rider 2007) was impossible to avoid and you would be forgiven for somtimes thinking that he was the only driver competing.

Even interviews with other drivers were littered with questions about Lewis Hamilton. I remember one particularly uncomfortable moment early on in the season during an interview with Robert Kubica. The question — if I recall it correctly — was something along the lines of, “What do you think of Lewis Hamilton? He hasn’t made any rookie mistakes yet.” Tough luck if you wanted to learn anything about Kubica.

I never thought I’d say this, but I think I would rather have Jim Rosenthal back in place of Steve Rider. The way he goes all gooey at the thought of precious Lewy-Lew-Lew is embarrassing to watch.

Next to him stands Mark “‘Ello guv” Blundell. He would make an excellent pet parrot. “Absolutely Steve” is all he ever seems to say. He would agree if Steve Rider said the world is run by lizards.

Ted Kravitz has his fans, but I don’t see it. He is supposed to be a pitlane reporter, but he seems more like the Correspondent for the Statement of the Obvious. “They’re putting some new tyres on… And, is it? Yes! They’re putting some fuel in as well!” Yes, I can see that Ted.

What’s really worrying is the fact that once or twice this year he has got confused between hard and soft tyres. This is despite the fact that James Allen goes over the tyre rules roughly every five minutes. It beggars belief.

As for James Allen himself, I still don’t like him as a commentator and it appears to be the majority opinion wherever you turn. He has had the job since 2001 now though, so I’m not holding my breath for a change.

He has improved a lot though. Compare two videos — one from 2006, one from 2007. The first is Jenson Button’s first win in Hungary. You can see a glimpse of the desperation of ITV’s bias:

Will the floodgates now open for Jenson Button as they did for Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill before him?

Well I think we all know the answer to that now. But the really scary bit comes after that. He sounds like he physically shits himself as Button crosses the line. Does a Button win make him turn into The Incredible Hulk?

I guess he must have been embarrassed when he watched it back, so he knew to moderate his excitement a bit for the next Button, er, I mean Hamilton win. But he got his timing all wrong and it came out as:

Lewis Hamiltoooon………

…

…

……

…

WIIIIIIINS!

The video isn’t the real coverage — it’s a loving recreation made by somebody on Grand Prix 4. You need to fast forward to around 3:35.

There are also the usual grumbles about adverts. I see them as a necessary evil, but it is just as well grands prix are broadcast on the radio as well because otherwise we would miss a lot of important events. I hate it when football fans complain about ITV’s adverts, because at least in football the actual action is never missed!

When Lewis Hamilton’s car ground to a halt in Brazil, ITV was showing adverts. A similar pivotal moment was missed under exactly the same circumstances last year, when Michael Schumacher’s engine blew in Japan.

Of course, ITV and the people who make the decision to go to a break cannot be expected to predict the future. But the presence of adverts will always count as a major black mark against ITV’s coverage of Formula 1.

Credit where it’s due though: Martin Brundle. What an excellent commentator he is. Some see him as biased in favour of certain drivers, but I don’t see it myself. He knows, for instance, when his client David Coulthard is in the wrong and says so (for instance, the incident in Australia springs to mind).

Brundle also knows how to praise Lewis Hamilton without completely crawling up his arse. And — most importantly — he never forgets that there are 21 other drivers racing as well.

In sum, though, I am seriously considering just turning the volume down on the television and listening to Radio 5 Live for commentary. I would miss Martin Brundle though. Mind you, at the rate things are going, Martin Brundle might have his accreditation snatched away by the increasingly totalitarian Max Mosley anyway!

BBC Radio 5 Live

I mentioned above that I am considering listening to Radio 5 Live’s commentary with ITV’s pictures next year. So what has BBC Radio got that ITV hasn’t?

Well, the BBC is free of adverts. However, Formula 1 isn’t the only sport covered by Radio 5 Live, so coverage usually isn’t interrupted. So it doesn’t trump ITV in that respect.

But the commentary is pretty good. David Croft is obviously very passionate about the sport and there is usually some sensible analysis from whoever his co-commentator is (usually Maurice Hamilton). It is not completely immune to Hamilton hype, but it is a whole lot better than ITV.

The BBC also often provides coverage of practice sessions as well on Sports Extra. So if you are at a loose end on a Friday it is often worth switching the radio on and getting the live timing on your computer.

In addition, there are excellent race previews and reviews available as podcasts. The features on these programmes are usually of a much higher standard than the drivel (cookery lessons with Kovalainen and the like) served up by ITV.

I notice that Radio 5 Live’s Formula 1 coverage gets a bit better every year. It has come on leaps and bounds over the past few years and it’s difficult to find fault with their coverage (at least in comparison with ITV).

FOM

This year saw a big improvement in FOM’s television coverage. It finally made the leap to producing the coverage in anamorphic 16:9 format and started filming (but not broadcasting) in HD.

There has also been the usual trickle of new graphics to display more information. One that particularly surprised me was a graphic that showed the temperature of the tyres on Lewis Hamilton’s car during the formation lap! It was only used once, and the needle was fluctuating all over the place which suggests it might not be quite up to scratch. Nevertheless, how does it work?! Amazing stuff from FOM yet again.

Another graphic that I liked plotted a car’s position on a circuit map while a competing driver was in the pits. A great idea, and pretty well executed (if a bit large). But as far as I know it was only used once in the entire season! More please!

I’d also like to hear a bit more team radio. It feels like this varies from race to race, which I don’t really understand. It also depends on the teams opening up their radio communications. Only Renault seems to have the right attitude in this regard, and McLaren and Ferrari are both obviously so paranoid that we only ever get fleeting snatches of conversation.

FOM also took control of the world feed for all but three of the races. This meant that we no longer had to suffer as much of the dire direction that used to be the norm in F1. It’s good to see FOM finally sorting it out, but why do Monaco, Brazil and Japan still have local directors?

The Japanese Grand Prix coverage was particularly atrocious. It normally is. It’s famous for focussing rather heavily on Japanese no-hopers. This year several important incidents were missed by the director — including Alonso’s crash and the collision between Webber and Vettel. Not even a decent replay was shown, even though the footage exists (it is included on this year’s review DVD)!

Aside from these little mishaps though, I’m finding it difficult to fault the FOM coverage this year. It seems to get better every year.

This is the latest in my continuing series of posts reviewing the 2007 Formula 1 season. You can check out the other posts in the nifty new table of contents on the right (thanks to the In-Series WP plugin). This post will look at my top five constructors of the season.

5 — Ferrari

As always, Ferrari proved themselves to be among the very best on the track. They took a bit of a risk with their long wheelbase which clearly disadvantaged them at several circuits — most notably Monaco, Hungaroring and Monza. Maybe there should be a rethink on that front, but they won the Constructors’ Championship which shows something.

There were some really uncharacteristic mistakes in the pit lane as well. You could tell they were missing Ross Brawn. When they started the Japanese Grand Prix on intermediates instead of full wet tyres, it was not only going against an order from Charlie Whiting, but it was also completely barking mad. Even behind the safety car the Ferraris were struggling to keep it on the island (if you could call a circuit that wet an island) and could have completely ruined their race.

Then there was that time in Hungary when they sent Felipe Massa out to qualify without any fuel in his car. I don’t know how they managed that. Quite shocking for what is supposed to be the best outfit in the pit lane.

However, the big story of Ferrari’s year was — surprise, surprise — not on the track. Yet again Ferrari’s distasteful actions off the track left a sour taste in the mouth. When a rogue employee of theirs, Nigel Stepney, started to cause them bother, Ferrari managed to leverage it so that it was all somehow Ron Dennis’s fault.

Knowing full well that the FIA would take their side, Ferrari got McLaren thrown out of the Constructors Championship. This was even though it was a Ferrari employee who instigated the entire sorry episode.

Throughout the season Luca di Montezemolo and Jean Todt (the personification of wee man syndrome) made a series of ridiculous remarks that made Ferrari come across as desperate and underhand. Di Montezemolo’s constant claims that McLaren cars had “a lot of Ferrari” in them were especially childish because there has never been a shred of evidence that this was the case.

Ferrari even contradicted themselves with their nonsensical claims. It wasn’t a surprise when they said that they would be happy to win the title in court because this is the normal way for Ferrari to go about things.

Of course, when the boot is on the other foot it’s all a different story and winning the title in court is “grubby manoeuvring”. If this is true (which it is), then Ferrari is a pig that loves to swim in its own shit.

Putting aside the honking court cases, Ferrari also appear to be embroiled in a period of nasty internal politics. The management restructuring has obviously disillusioned a lot of people. It is widely seen as one of the reasons that led Nigel Stepney to say “psst!” to Mike Coughlan. It has also led to the permanent departure of Ross Brawn. Even Jean Todt seems quite indifferent these days. What a mess.

And why have they extended Felipe Massa’s contract until 2010? Especially with the traction control ban coming into force, this has ‘disaster’ written all over it (not to mention ‘nepotism’).

4 — Red Bull–Renault

2007 must have been disappointing for the Red Bull team and they will be looking to treat it as a transition year. The Adrian Newey-designed chassis was reasonably quick, but one may have expected more to come from such a highly-regarded designer.

More worrying will be the fact that the reliability of the Red Bull car was so awful. Given the reliability problems McLaren suffered when Adrian Newey was working for them, this is beginning to look a bit like Newey’s Achilles’ heel.

However, I doubt the problems with the seamless shift gearbox — Red Bull’s biggest problem — can be blamed on Newey’s tight, uncompromising chassis designs, as some do. Whatever, there were an unacceptable number of mechanical failures this year for Red Bull. In this era of super-reliability, it’s not enough. Red Bull went away from an astonishing 11 races pointless.

Overall, 2007 was more successful than 2006, but they must have been expecting better results by now. Mark Webber in particular has been let down time and again by the car’s poor reliability. But they also lack the speed to regularly compete with the front runners.

They have hired ex-Honda designer Geoff Willis which bodes well for the future. If they had a bit more speed, Red Bull’s only weakness would be reliability. If this is ironed out, it surely won’t be long before they win a race.

3 — McLaren–Mercedes

I am normally quite sympathetic to McLaren (admittedly this is mostly because I can’t stand Ferrari, but hey). But it was difficult to defend some of the things that happened in the McLaren team this season.

It is difficult to know where to begin, as so many things went wrong for McLaren this year. So I’ll start with the good points.

First of all, they built the best car. And no, Mr. di Montezemolo, it was not because of Ferrari documents. In fact, I struggle to remember a time when two front-running teams had such obviously divergent designs to the point where McLaren could have a 1.5s advantage on one circuit and a 1.5s deficit on the next.

The height of their season — (just) before any hint of internal strife became apparent — came at Monaco. It was such a dominant performance from McLaren. I was utterly in awe. They lapped everyone bar Felipe Massa who was 69s behind. It was probably the most dominant outing for a team since Australia 1998.

Before I go onto post-Monaco shenanigans, there is one other thing that went well for McLaren. They had the best driver line-up imaginable. This caused its own problems which we all now know about, but you have to say it. Fernando Alonso’s skill — as a double World Champion and the most successful rival of Michael Schumacher ever — is not in doubt.

What was in doubt was Lewis Hamilton. We knew he had pace from GP2, but no-one could have expected him to achieve what he did. He still has a few rough edges, but you can’t expect anything else. Hamilton was astonishingly quick. So full credit to McLaren for investing in that talent for all those years.

Now the downsides. And since I’ve just alluded to it, I might as well dive straight into the trouble between Alonso and Hamilton. McLaren’s equality stance has always been admirable. But in this post-Schumacher era it is probably now, sadly, a relic. Michael Schumacher has set the bar on this so when a driver has a Schumacher-sized ego he will demand Schumacher-style treatment. After all, seven World Championships don’t lie.

Ron Dennis’s complete inability to manage the tensions that Alonso was feeling has probably delivered the final nail in the coffin of the ‘equality’ policy in every F1 team’s book. It would have been so much easier if Lewis Hamilton began the season as a number 2 to Fernando Alonso. Then, without a shadow of a doubt, we would be sitting here talking about three times World Champion Alonso and sure-fire champion of tomorrow Lewis Hamilton. Instead, we are sitting here today talking about a McLaren team reeling from the year’s events, finding itself having to sack the best driver on the grid, and Ron Dennis licking his wounds.

Of course, Alonso’s behaviour was not the only reason why McLaren find themselves on the back foot. There is the small matter of Stepneygate (I still refuse to call it “spygate” because no spying was involved).

Sure, the whole thing was Max Mosley making an example of Ron Dennis. But ultimately, there is no getting away from the fact that a McLaren employee was caught red-handed with Ferrari documents. Either you believe that Ron Dennis knew about it all along, in which case he is a liar, or Ron Dennis is telling the truth and it exposes flaws in the management of the team.

On top of all that, the season was just generally a PR disaster for McLaren. You could see this in just about everything that happened to them this year. It started off with a row that somehow built up out of nothing after the Monaco Grand Prix. McLaren were unable to explain Lewis Hamilton’s comments about not being allowed to pass Fernando Alonso, and a row in the press about team orders duly ensued.

Stepneygate and the Alonso problem were also both horrifically badly handled. Even after the season was over they made a complete hash of appealing the Brazilian Grand Prix result. McLaren tied themselves in knots on all of these issues. For all of Ron Dennis’s supposed honesty and integrity, I was often left with the impression that he was not telling the whole truth at points during this season. I have been disillusioned by McLaren this year.

This PR problem is a downside of having Lewis Hamilton in their team. Being a Brit, and the British press being what it is, the magnifying glass is on McLaren like never before. This is going to happen on a regular basis from now on. It’s no wonder they’ve hired Matt Bishop to try and keep them on the right track PR-wise from now on.

What a horrible irony though. At last, after too many years to bear thinking about, McLaren had produced a car capable of winning the World Championship. But their season fell apart in every single other respect.

2 — Williams–Toyota

Believe me. I never thought I would rank Williams so highly. I am not usually a fan of Williams, and I don’t really understand the appeal. But now, with this customer car issue, I think I finally get it.

Williams is a proudly independent grand prix team. It is clinging onto the traditional way of doing things — entering Formula 1 out of a love for motor racing, and not as a platform to advertise your business. All of the other teams are either heavily tied to manufacturers or outright owned by manufacturers, soft drinks companies or Vijay Mallya and Michel Mol (who, in fairness, both at least seem to have a real interest in the sport).

It is a tough environment for a team like Williams nowadays. It is difficult to envisage a team like Williams achieving domination in the way they did in the mid-1990s.

Their subsequent history has been patchy at best. A brief flirtation with BMW ended in tears. Williams tumbled down the timing sheets and — just to rub salt into the wound — BMW climbed up them. After coming close to winning the Championship in 2003, they produced a mediocre car in 2004, a dog in 2005 and a shitbox in 2006. It looked like Williams had completely lost the knack of winning or even regularly scoring points.

This year saw Williams in the ascendancy for a change and I would say they look strong for the future. There are also signs that Williams are learning from old mistakes.

Williams’s usual approach to drivers is to unceremoniously dump them. But they obviously see something completely different in Nico Rosberg, whom they seem determined to hang on to. It was perhaps a mistake to give Alexander Wurz that race drive, as he was a little bit rusty (although delivered in Canada with an astonishing drive to the podium from plum last). There is a big question mark over their decision to hire Kazuki Nakajima… but that’s for next year’s list.

Second place might seem a bit high. In terms of out-and-out on-the-track performance, Williams shouldn’t be this high. But given the woes that have faced McLaren and Ferrari, Renault’s fall from grace, Red Bull’s chronic unreliability and the mediocrity of the lower-down teams, Williams is just about the only team that can look on the 2007 season and be proud of what it has achieved. But there is one team that can perhaps feel prouder…

1 — BMW-Sauber

I think that what BMW achieved this year was astonishing. When BMW bought the Sauber team, they were hoping to win races within three years. And it looks like they might just manage that.

Under the expert leadership of Super Dr. Mario Theissen (pictured), BMW are going from strength to strength. They might have only had the third-best car this year, but they also comprehensively outperformed last year’s World Champions. With the turmoil that both Ferrari and McLaren have been facing, who’s to say BMW won’t improve further next season?

BMW are also helped by the fact that their championship position was tied up easily. Second place was theirs, so they concentrated on their 2008 car.

I say second place, but BMW still maintain that they were actually third. This is true, because McLaren were only thrown out of the championship on rather dubious grounds. As has been pointed out elsewhere, the fact that BMW are not going around beating their chest about this dubious second place speaks volumes about their grounded attitude. They had the third-best car and they know it.

The car was great. Not the fastest, but comfortably the ‘best of the rest’. The other teams know it, because BMW personnel have been lured away. I doubt this will deter BMW though. Mario Theissen seems to know exactly what he’s doing.

Theissen also has a good eye for great drivers as well. Robert Kubica, Sebastian Vettel and Timo Glock have all been given a helping hand by BMW in the past couple of years, so it’s well worth looking at whatever drivers BMW brings on board as test drivers.

All-in-all, I was thoroughly impressed with BMW. Notice to Toyota: this is how a manufacturer should run a Formula 1 team. The team has been pulled out of the terminal mediocrity of the Sauber days and looks set to begin winning races any time now. I’ll be celebrating when they do.

I read on GrandPrix.com that FOA has signed a deal with a firm called Kitbag to operate the merchandise section of the Formula 1 website. I’m not sure what it means for the current F1 store. But I certainly hope it means that it will start selling much better products.

Whenever I take a look at the F1 store, I am flabbergasted. This is surely the biggest mistake Bernie Ecclestone has ever made. I can’t imagine many sales are made at all.

I remember a few years back filling in a survey for Formula1.com. One of the questions asked if I would buy official Formula 1 baseball caps and the like. I said no and it asked back, why not? All I could write was, “Why would I?” I mean, why would you?

To the extent that people want merchandise, it is usually to express their support for a team or driver. The same goes for any sport. It’s not too often you see anyone walking down the street wearing an official FA Barclays Premier League t-shirt or any other generic football merchandise.

So quite what possessed Bernie Ecclestone to think that people would be prepared to pay astronomical prices for Formula 1 merchandise is beyond me. T-shirts, for instance, are £30. But that’s just the start of it.

How about £250 for a mousemat? Hell, throw caution to the wind and buy the premium version (!) — £260 for one made out of leather.

How about a £50 keyring? A £24 poster? An £85 photo frame? A £250 ringbinder (“Comes with complimentary Formula 1™ pad” — how generous!)?

The worst product, which I have featured on this blog before, is this baseball cap which features an F1 logo made out of Swarovski crystals. It looks rather chav-tastic to me. The pink one really is the sort of thing an eight year old girl would wear, rather than anyone who’d like to be taken seriously. But it will take a long time to accumulate £125 out of pocket money.

Credit where it’s due though. While the most expensive wallets are £120, Bernie does offer a reduced-price wallet… at £50.

I understand that Formula 1 likes to be seen as a cut above. And this approach does avoid the tackier Nascar products such as Nascar meat snacks (more at Boing Boing). But by asking for £250 for a ringbinder and £260 for a mousemat (not to mention the £390 watches, although they actually look rather nice), it just makes F1 look like it has its collective head up its arse.

This is the third of my posts looking at different aspects of the 2007 Formula 1 season. I have discussed the drivers here and here.

This post is the first of two in which I will assess the constructors. Or is that teams? Toro Rosso and Super Aguri barely deserve to be called constructors. Nevertheless, this post will rank the teams on all aspects of their performance — on the track, in the pitlane and beyond. So don’t expect this list to mirror the Constructors’ Championship!

11 — Spyker–Ferrari

This is becoming a familiar story. Once again Spyker struggled all season to lift itself from the back of the grid. And once again it changed owners. Spyker Cars ran into major financial difficulties this year meaning that it been sold yet again. The team that was once called Midland and was once called Jordan is now called Team Force India. This makes it four name changes in as many years.

They seem to be in competition with Super Aguri to see who can have the most ridiculous sounding name. Super Augri and Team Force India both sound like bad super hero characters from a Japanese comic.

Anyway, back to this year’s performance. There is not much you can say really. They came up with an under-performing car, and hired largely under-performing drivers. Some people rate Adrian Sutil, but Christijan Albers, Sakon Yamamoto and Markus Winkelhock were never going to set the world alight.

The team worked hard to bring out a new chassis for mid-season. Embarrassingly, however, it failed its crash test so had to be delayed still further. Even so, when the car was eventually brought to the race track, it wasn’t much more competitive.

There were a few flashes of promise for the car. A particular stand-out was the Belgian Grand Prix, where Adrian Sutil spent a considerable amount of time in 12^th position before eventually finishing 14^th. However, even here the only other cars running behind Sutil at the end of the race were Super Aguris, and Sakon Yamamoto still managed to finish last of the classified runners.

At least at the following race, the rain-soaked Japanese Grand Prix, Adrian Sutil managed to score a point. Even this was a bit of a fluke though, as it was awarded in the stewards room after it was judged that Vitantonio Liuzzi passed him under yellow flags. In the following two races, Spyker were back to their usual positions on the back row.

Still, a point is a point and this was enough to save Spyker’s blushes. They didn’t finish at the bottom of the table. Even this is a pyrrhic victory though. The only team that finished behind them was McLaren, who built arguably the best car this year and had their points taken away by an over-zealous FIA.

They have taken Minardi’s place as Formula 1’s perennial under-achievers. But thanks to their status as a temporary home for naive businessmen, they completely lack the romance that made Minardi a fans’ favourite.

10 — Honda

Oh dear. What an embarrassingly bad season Honda have had. Even Nick Fry sounded pretty pessimistic at times. I thought I’d sooner see the apocalypse.

It started off with a cheesy PR stunt to paint the Earth on the car in a supposed bid to highlight environmental concerns. While this is a laudable enough idea, it came off badly. Those in the know observed that Honda probably only did this because they couldn’t find any sponsors. Meanwhile, the reaction from non-F1 fans that I saw invariably pointed out the hypocrisy of a energy-greedy F1 team trying to boast about its environmental credentials.

Then there was the car itself, which was about as disastrous as it could get. Early in the season the drivers reported that the car had a tendency to behave unpredictably under breaking, which is hardly going to give the driver the confidence to push to the limit.

While this problem was seemingly ironed out, the car had a more fundamental issue: a lack of speed caused by fundamentally flawed aerodynamics. Undoubtedly part of the reason for this must be the inexperience of the car’s designer, Shuhei Nakamoto. Nakamoto’s experience is in motorcycles, and apparently he had never designed a car in his life. It also seems that there is a serious flaw with Honda’s wind tunnel.

The result was an embarrassingly awful car. Good reliability, but precious little speed. Honda’s RA107 chassis was regularly outpaced by the Super Aguri SA07, which was essentially last year’s Honda car. It really is something to think that Honda would have been better off with last year’s car. Every time the drivers were interviewed they sounded utterly demoralised. And who could blame them?

Thanks to some heroic performances from Jenson Button, Honda managed to score 6 points, and it could have been more at Japan. Given how bad it all looked at the start of the season, that is pretty good going. But it is a far cry from the 86 points scored in 2006 or the 119 points they scored when they finished second in the Constructors’ Championship just three years ago.

At least Honda are now doing the right thing to rectify the problem. Hiring Ross Brawn — one of Formula 1’s greatest talents — was a master-stroke. Results might not come as early as next year, but undoubtedly Honda will be on their way up again (not that they could possibly go much further down).

9 — Scuderia Toro Rosso–Ferrari

If you are a naive businessman looking to buy Team Force India in around ten months’ time, look at Toro Rosso for an example of how not to run your team.

The first thing to point out is probably the disgraceful treatment of the drivers. They refused to confirm Scott Speed as one of their drivers until about 5 minutes before the flight for Melbourne was about to leave. This is hardly the way to get your drivers in the right frame of mind.

Things went from bad to worse as it became clear that team bosses Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger were none too pleased with their drivers. Barbed comments were constantly being made about driver performances through the press and even in the team’s own press releases.

Things came to a head at the European Grand Prix where it was rumoured that Franz Tost had physically attacked Scott Speed during an altercation. Tost had blamed Speed for spinning in the rain, even though several other drivers — including the much-lauded Lewis Hamilton — had done exactly the same thing. The row was the end of Scott Speed’s relationship with Toro Rosso, and Formula 1.

It seemed as though Vitantonio Liuzzi was not in favour with his bosses either. It was obvious by mid-season that they didn’t want him there. How Berger and Tost expected Liuzzi to get better under these circumstances is still unknown.

On the track, Toro Rosso’s performance leaves a lot to be desired as well. With this year’s Adrian Newey-designed Red Bull chassis and this year’s Ferrari engine, you would expect them to be running a lot higher than they were.

Despite those woes, the team showed considerable improvement towards the end of the season. The Toro Rosso car seemed particularly strong in the wet, and Sebastian Vettel in particular put in some great performances towards the end of the season. They came close to scoring in Japan, and scored a massive 8 points in China.

8 — Toyota

Ugh, who cares any more? Really. It is the same old story. Gigantic budget, precious little to show for it. The team is run by committee. The management has its head in the sand. We all know the story. It shows no sign of changing.

How long will it take before the Toyota big wigs start properly taking notice? My hunch is that they would sooner pull out of the sport altogether rather than make any real changes.

For once, Ralf Schumacher is right. The fact that Toyota refused to speak to Ross Brawn says it all.

7 — Super Aguri–Honda

They might sound like the title of a discount NES game, but Super Aguri are in fact a wonder of Formula 1. They might have their chassis made by Honda. But let’s not forget that it’s last year’s Honda. And beyond that they seem to get very little help from Honda at all.

The odds are against them, yet they still manage to put in highly respectable performances. Regularly outpacing the Honda ‘A’ team, Super Aguri have been hard done by in the Constructors’ Championship. In the end they only scored 4 points to Honda’s 6. But the reality was so different.

The highlight of the season came in Canada where Takuma Sato pulled off a brilliant pass on Fernando Alonso to net Super Aguri 3 points. Delightful.

Apart from the odd sponsorship difficulty, they are fairly anonymous off the track. Especially given the events of this year, that is how it should be. In this era of big budget manufacturers and drinks companies crushing the privateers, Super Aguri have become the small team that everybody loves.

I just hope they don’t have to put up with that dire Honda car next year.

6 — Renault

I don’t like to see Renault doing badly, but 2007 was a bit of a stinker for them. The team has looked exceptionally strong since 2004, and it has taken two Drivers’ and two Constructors’ Championships in the process. But this year’s car was obviously not up to those standards. Pat Symonds said that in Australia the car was almost as bad as the Honda.

I don’t things were quite that bad. But for a Championship-winning team, it is shocking that they were never in a position to win a race all season (except, arguably, in Japan). They were comprehensively outpaced by BMW all season long.

The departure of Fernando Alonso clearly hit them hard. Indecision left them lumbered with the increasingly sluggish Giancarlo Fisichella and the wet-behind-the-ears Heikki Kovalainen. Kovalainen had a disappointing start to the season and later on in the year Fisichella was becoming badly covered in cobwebs.

Now Renault once again can’t seem to make their mind up about drivers. Despite impressing, Heikki Kovalainen seems to be left without a drive as the team seems set on promoting Nelsinho Piquet and wooing back Fernando Alonso.

Worst of all, events since the end of the season have been highly damaging. With McLaren having been put through the wringer for so-called “spying” allegations, Renault now face allegations which are every bit as serious as (if not more so than) what McLaren faced. Moreover, Renault have already confessed that more engineers knew about the drawings than McLaren.

It’s difficult to see how it could be worse for Renault. They won’t succeed in wooing Alonso under these circumstances, especially since Alonso has just escaped a similar mess at McLaren. And if the FIA is consistent (I know, but bear with me), Renault are headed for a huge penalty. And if that happens, chances are that Carlos Ghosn will pull the plug.

Those are my thoughts on the not-so-good six constructors. Check back next Sunday to see my top five ranking.

I don’t have time to do a proper post today (partly because I am still recovering from the cold I got last week). So in lieu of a proper post, here is a fun game that I saw on my favourite Formula 1 blog, F1Fanatic. (Even in November, Keith Collantine is managing to write several F1-related posts every day!)

Describe each driver in one word.

I managed to mess up my comment a little bit — I forgot about the last two drivers, so those answers remained from the list I copy-n-pasted from. So here are my answers.

Fernando Alonso – Winner
Lewis Hamilton – Impatient
Giancarlo Fisichella – Ageing
Heikki Kovalainen – Promising
Felipe Massa – Nepotism
Kimi Raikkonen – Playboy
Jenson Button – Plucky
Rubens Barrichello – Slowing
Nick Heidfeld – Quick
Robert Kubica – Fortunate
Ralf Schumacher – Rubbish
Jarno Trulli – Train
David Coulthard – Trusty
Mark Webber – Unlucky
Nico Rosberg – Potential
Alexander Wurz – Rusty
Kazuki Nakajima – Fore!
Vitantonio Liuzzi – Overlooked
Scott Speed – Misnomer
Sebastian Vettel – Fast
Adrian Sutil – Unknown
Christijan Albers – Nice
Markus Winkelhock – Leader
Sakon Yamamoto – Loadsamoney?
Takuma Sato – Kamikaze
Anthony Davidson – Anonymous

This is part two of my series of posts reviewing the F1 season gone by. Last week I wrote about F1’s backmarkers. This week: my top 13 drivers.

13 — Alexander Wurz

When Alexander Wurz burst onto the scene in 1997, he was talked about as a hot prospect. I’d say he was the Nico Rosberg of his day. So the way his career panned out must be seen as a disappointment. He was unfortunate enough to fall into the trap of becoming a test driver, then becoming too good at being a test driver to be considered for a long-term drive.

His occasional races with McLaren were typical. He came across as a bit rusty, as though he had forgotten how to race as opposed to just drive the car. However, when he was on form he shone brightly.

The story was much the same this year with Williams — his first full-term drive with a team since 2000. Most of the time he looked off the pace, and was outclassed by team mate Nico Rosberg. But he had two or three stunning drives, which is why I have placed him so far up the list.

His drive in Canada led to a well-deserved third place. Of course, an element of luck was involved as the multiple safety car periods probably worked to his advantage. But even with luck playing a role, to have qualified 19^th and finish on the podium is good going.

More impressive in my view, though, was Wurz’s drive at the Nürburgring. He adapted to the fiercely changeable conditions better than most. Some said this was in part due to his knowledge of the local microclimate, as he used to live just opposite the circuit. But his immense experience was also at play as he got his Williams ahead of better cars.

12 — Sebastian Vettel

In a year of excellent rookie performances, Sebastian Vettel has been overshadowed a little bit. Drafted in at short notice to deputise for Robert Kubica at Indianapolis, Vettel got a little bit spooked at the first corner, but held his nerve for the rest of the race to grab a point.

It was to be his sole race for BMW. But a few races later a vacancy appeared at Toro Rosso, and Vettel took it. Some joked that, while Vettel scored a point in his F1 début, by signing for Toro Rosso he ensured that he wouldn’t score another point until at least 2009.

Those wags turned out to be wrong. On the one hand, he did not comprehensively outperform team mate Vitantonio Liuzzi, although it looked to me as though he did a bit better than Scott Speed. But undoubtedly the Toro Rosso was handy at some circuits towards the end of the season (perhaps sometimes due to rainy conditions) which helped Vettel.

Liuzzi as well as Vettel looked good towards the end of the season, but Vettel was able to capitalise on the opportunities more. He was running in third at Fuji until his infamous collision with Mark Webber, who was effectively his team mate. It was an unforgivable mistake, no matter what the mitigating circumstances were and Vettel obviously knew it. However, he went a long way to burying the memory of that incident by finishing an incredible fourth place at the next race in China.

A lot will hinge on the competitiveness of next year’s Toro Rosso. But given a semi-decent car, Vettel will have the capability to grab highly impressive results from time to time.

11 — David Coulthard

The thing that impresses me about David Coulthard is not so much his driving ability, but the fact that he shows no sign of running out of steam. He is F1’s oldest driver, and of the current crop only Rubens Barrichello has more experience. Usually that would be a sure sign that you’re off — even if you are Michael Schumacher. But DC just keeps on going.

Results this year were mixed, but mostly impressive. He started the year badly with a ludicrously over-ambitious move on Alexander Wurz which almost decapitated the Austrian. As accidents go, it was probably even more shocking than Robert Kubica’s because it demonstrated just how vulnerable drivers still are in that open cockpit.

Coulthard also other race-ending accidents, and of course he was also often the victim of the Red Bull’s dire reliability. But when he was able to finish, it was often in an impressive position. The end of the season was particularly strong, topped by a fourth place in Japan. No podiums like in 2006, but you can’t win them all.

10 — Mark Webber

What has Mark Webber done to deserve such terrible luck? While David Coulthard had his reliability problems from time to time, Mark Webber seemed to suffer all the time. Formula1.com reports that all but one of his seven retirements was caused by either gearbox, transmission or hydraulics.

When he managed to finish a race, though, it was more often than not in a high position. He was particularly impressive in the wet, as he grabbed a podium at the Nürburgring and was lining himself up for a win at Fuji until Vettel smashed into him.

Webber was also excellent at qualifying. He is a surprisingly high seventh on this year’s ’supergrid’ (where drivers are arranged according to average grid position).

9 — Robert Kubica

In a lot of ways Robert Kubica was a disappointment this season. There were a lot of good results — a slew of fourths and fifths. But his BMW car was handy and he was comprehensively outperformed by Nick Heidfeld.

Unfortunately, Robert Kubica’s 2007 season will mainly be remembered for that shocking accident in Montreal. For me, it was the lowest point of the season as there was a period of time where I feared the worst. It was a truly sickening accident to watch, and at one point Kubica experienced a force of 75g. Kubica was lucky to escape without any major injury (particularly since, by the end of the accident, his feet and ankles were completely exposed).

Kubica did not let the accident deter him. He was eager to take part at Indianapolis, but was ordered to take the week off by doctors. He bounced back at Magny-Cours, though, to finish fourth and went on to score in all but two of the remaining races. That is what makes people like Robert Kubica different to the likes of you and me.

8 — Nico Rosberg

I get the impression that people weren’t really sure what to make of Nico Rosberg at the end of 2006. This year he really cemented his reputation as a solid, reliable driver. Overall, he outperformed Alexander Wurz and Frank Williams seems rather keen on retaining his services. This is odd for Mr. Williams, who usually sees his drivers as disposable commodities.

Despite this, we are yet to see any real result from him. Yes, he is in the Williams which is not the best car. But even Wurz was seen towards the front of the field once or twice this year. Rosberg seems more comfortable in the midfield, and his best result is a solitary fourth (at Brazil, an awesome drive), although you’d be most likely to see him finish seventh.

Nico Rosberg is one of those drivers who is on the borderline for me. A lot will hinge on next year and how he adapts to the removal of traction control.

7 — Jenson Button

Okay, hear me out. A lot of people mocked Nick Fry when he said that this was Jenson Button’s best ever year. Indeed, Nick Fry’s unflappable optimism is often rather laughable, but I think he had a point on this matter.

Let us face facts. We all know that the Honda car was awful. And yet, Jenson Button has six points to his name this year. That is six more than Rubens Barrichello scored. In fact, Button largely outperformed Barrichello in every area this year. Button fought hard to wring results out of that car — and he managed it, particularly towards the end of the season.

I am not usually a fan of Jenson Button. However, this year has made me really appreciate how good he is in the wet. He put in an amazing qualifying performance at Fuji and was really unlucky to walk away from that race with nothing to show for it after getting involved in an accident during the race. Still, he came back in China to score an amazing fifth position.

But it was not just rainy conditions that allowed Button to score points. He broke his duck this year at the bone-dry Magny-Cours circuit. This year, Button has gone up in my estimation a great deal.

6 — Heikki Kovalainen

Kovalainen didn’t start the season too well. His Australian Grand Prix was so disastrous that Flavio Briatore said it couldn’t have been Heikki — it must have been his brother. Ouch!

But as Kovalainen got comfortable in the Renault, he began to put Giancarlo Fisichella in the shadow. His first truly great moment was in Canada. There he survived a race of attrition to finish fourth, leaving Kimi Räikkönen’s Ferrari behind, having started plum last.

Arguably better was his race in treacherous conditions in Fuji. He was helped out a bit by the collision between Webber and Vettel, but you wouldn’t begrudge Kovalainen the second position.

It really was a year of excellent rookie performances! Kovalainen came within a whisker of beating Tiago Monteiro’s record of most rookie race finishes in a row. Kovalainen finished every single race of the season bar Brazil, so the record — finishing his first sixteen races in a row — must be shared with Monteiro.

It is difficult to believe that Kovalainen is still uncertain to get a drive next season. He is undoubtedly talented, but it looks as though only McLaren would be willing to hire him next season — but would they want two relatively inexperienced drivers? Renault are too busy trying to woo Alonso, and reading between the lines it seems as though Kovalainen does not want to be team mates with Alonso.

5 — Felipe Massa

I still find it difficult to understand where Felipe Massa is at. He does have the ability to pull the rabbit out of the hat. He is a proven race winner, a deserved race winner indeed. And let us not forget that for the majority of the season he was McLaren’s closest rival in the Championship.

It is possible to say that the only reason he fell behind Räikkönen was because of an unlucky patch where the team messed up his qualifying chance in Hungary and a DNF in Italy due to suspension troubles. For a long time, Felipe Massa was being seriously considered as a potential World Champion.

But Massa yet again revealed himself to be far from the complete driver. He was made to look rather silly by Lewis Hamilton at Sepang. And his performance in the changeable conditions at the Nürburgring was embarrassingly bad.

You could also say that the only reason Massa was able to seize the initiative in the first place was due to the teething problems Räikkönen had at the beginning of the season. Two of his three wins were during this phase.

A lot of people were astonished that Felipe Massa had managed to extended his contract with Ferrari until 2010. I have heard that the tifosi prefer Massa to Räikkönen, but I cannot fathom why. Massa is just the sort of driver who I’d imagine would struggle without traction control, so next year will be very interesting indeed.

4 — Nick Heidfeld

It is amazing to think that a few years ago Quick Nick was almost finished in F1 terms. His lifeline came in the form of the Jordan team, which was by then deep into a trough. He impressed enough in that dire car for Williams to pick him up, and ever since he been associated with BMW.

Those years of perseverance have really paid off as he is now in a great car, with a team on the ascendancy and he has comfortably outperformed his head-turning team mate, Kubica. Who would have thought back in 2004 that Nick Heidfeld would ever rake in a points haul of 61? This is about twenty times what he got at Jordan!

Heidfeld had a slew of excellent results. He finished fourth five times, but he also scored two podiums. One was an impressive drive at Hungary where he fended off the threat from Fernando Alonso. Indeed, in Bahrain he made an amazing pass on the outside of Alonso. But he went one better at Canada to finish second in that hectic race. Nick Heidfeld comfortably established himself as the ‘best of the rest’.

3 — Lewis Hamilton

Undoubtedly the surprise of the year. Even those who raved about Hamilton’s GP2 performances were flabbergasted at just how well he was able to cope this season.

For me, his trademark is his audacious overtaking manoeuvres. At the start of the year his lightning starts were fearless as he made his way round the Alonsos and Räikkönens of this world as though they were little kids. Rivals ran wide as Hamilton drove the corners as though he were in a slot car. He psyched out Felipe Massa in Malaysia. He surprised Räikkönen at Monza with perhaps the move of the year.

Some have criticised Hamilton for being over-ambitious when overtaking. His move on Barrichello at Brazil, for instance, was derided as dangerous and stupid. But part of the art of overtaking is trying to work out if the other guy is risk-averse enough to get out of your way. If Hamilton had tried the same move on, say, Nakajima, it would be a legitimate criticism. But you have to look at the situation and say that Hamilton’s audacious overtaking moves have never yet resulted in an accident.

Lewis Hamilton’s other major strong point is his qualifying, particularly towards the end of the season. I could scarcely believe some of the lap times he managed to put in. Alonso was definitely put in the shade several times by Hamilton this season.

However, there is the bad side of Hamilton’s driving. He took several questionable actions throughout the season. His driving behind the Safety Car in Fuji was widely criticised, and was a contributory factor in the famous smash between Webber and Vettel. The employment of a crane to get his European Grand Prix going again was arguably illegal.

But his lowest moment came during qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix. His refusal to follow team orders and give Alonso his legitimate chance during qualifying (as per internal McLaren rules) set off a chain of events that essentially resulted in the breakdown of the relationship between Alonso and the rest of the McLaren team. Most sickeningly, the whole situation subsequently worked in Hamilton’s favour, so he felt no real punishment for his actions.

On track, too, Hamilton disappointed at the end of the season. To lose a 17 point lead in just two races when there were no mechanical problems, in a car as fast as the McLaren, just beggars belief. Hamilton’s cool head impressed at the start of the season, but clearly by the end the pressure was just too much for him.

Many will point out the fact that McLaren should not have left Hamilton out on shot tyres for so long at Shanghai. This is true, but it also ignores some important points. First of all, Hamilton was the only driver whose tyres were so badly worn out in the first place. This was due to his impatient start and his desperation to win at all costs (when he only needed fourth). Secondly, if Hamilton knew he needed new tyres he could have just pitted anyway (we all know how Hamilton likes to ignore team orders anyway!). Thirdly, it was Hamilton’s fault for entering the pits too quickly and spinning off.

Some also ask why McLaren put Hamilton on a three-stop strategy in Brazil. But the reality is that Hamilton blew his chances himself by going on the grass on the first lap. Once again, this was down to his impatience, and a desperation to take a position that he simply did not need to take.

Even leaving aside the question of whether or not Hamilton pressed the wrong button on the steering wheel, his chances were blown at that moment on the first lap. Even after that, his entire Brazilian Grand Prix performance was, in my view, quite nervy.

Overall, I would define Hamilton’s style this year as ‘impatient’. Sometimes this has worked to his advantage, as it did with his great overtaking manoeuvres at the start of the season. Sometimes it worked against him, as it did in China and Brazil. To become World Champion, Hamilton needs time to mature a bit in this respect. Perhaps he will tone down the exciting nature of his driving in order to do this.

2 — Fernando Alonso

Off the track, 2007 was a bit of a nightmare for Fernando Alonso. Even on the track it was quite bad, as his rookie team mate got the better of him on several occasions.

However, overall, Alonso’s performances were more consistent and demonstrated his extra experience. He had a few bad races. In Bahrain he was unable to fend off Nick Heidfeld, although seemingly Alonso’s car was damaged in transit, compromising grip levels. In Canada he was overtaken by Takuma Sato of all people (although Alonso was disadvantaged badly by the new Safety Car rules).

Alonso was also unusually off colour at Fuji. He spun off in the wet. It was a far cry from the Alonso we saw at Hungary in 2006.

By the end of the year it seemed clear that Alonso did not particularly want to win the Championship with McLaren. This was most obvious in Brazil. So we won’t know what he was capable of.

This year has damaged Alonso’s reputation because of certain off-track events. But on the track, Fernando Alonso is still, for my money, the best driver on the grid. However, this year he was outperformed by one driver in particular.

1 — Kimi Räikkönen

When Kimi Räikkönen burst onto the scene in 2001, who would have thought it would have taken him eight season to win his first World Championship? Räikkönen is the most experienced first time World Champion since Nigel Mansell. The debate will rage on about whether Räikkönen was unlucky with reliability at McLaren or he is a ‘car breaker’.

There are also constant question marks and innuendos about Räikkönen’s commitment to winning the World Championship and off-track antics of a different sort to what Alonso got up to. Let us not forget, though, that Räikkönen came unbearably close to winning the World Championship twice when he was at McLaren. So Räikkönen’s ability and willpower can not be in doubt.

A lot of people love Räikkönen for his cool attitude. He doesn’t give a hoot. He just gets in the car and drives the wheels off it. Meanwhile, he likes to have fun off the track. He is the closest contemporary racing drivers get to the ‘playboy’ model of the stereotypical 1970s grand prix driver.

But on race weekend his approach is laid back, not reckless. At Brazil in 2006 he famously told Martin Brundle that he couldn’t be bothered watching Pelé present Michael Schumacher with a special trophy because he was taking a shit. You really can’t get much more relaxed than that, and I’m sure he was every bit as relaxed at this year’s Brazilian Grand Prix.

In this context, it is easy to see how Räikkönen just capitalised on the spat between Hamilton and Alonso. Räikkönen was not being put off, so he just drove ahead of them, pulled back a 17 point deficit and waved goodbye to the McLarens. Brilliant.

Räikkönen has the right attitude, and when he gets in the car nothing deters him. He won six races this year, more than anyone else.

However, even Räikkönen’s season was not perfect. He had a very bad patch at the beginning of the season. The blame was put on the transition to Bridgestones and the new Ferrari car, although if this was the case then it doesn’t explain why he won so easily at the very first race in Australia.

Luca di Montezemolo had to give Räikkönen a kick up the arse via the press. It worked — and from the French Grand Prix onwards it is impossible to find fault in Räikkönen’s season. A well-deserved Championship win.

I can’t believe that the fact that Lewis Hamilton is moving is still in the news. They were talking about it on the radio last night. I mean, when was this announced? Two, three weeks ago? And the media is still yammering on about it.

I will actually defend Lewis Hamilton here. It is not as if “rich person moves to tax haven” is exactly shocking news. Loads of F1 drivers move to Switzerland. Motor racing is illegal in Switzerland, so an F1 driver can declare himself unemployed. Ka-ching!

But this just underlines how obsessed the media is with Lewis Hamilton. I was just going to let the whole thing pass without commenting on it, but this story has been in the news for weeks now, and there is little sign of it running out of steam.

It is not even the fact that he is British, because Jenson Button and David Coulthard both live in Monaco and I don’t remember the media going on and on about it then. Nigel Mansell has lived in the Isle of Man and Jersey as well.

Moreover, the very fact that the media keeps on banging on about it kind of proves the point that Hamilton has been making — that he can’t get enough privacy in Britain. I can well believe that. The man probably can’t even take a shit in peace.

This is a country with a skewed culture that thinks it is newsworthy if a celebrity has a wardrobe malfunction. If a contestant on Big Brother from five years ago gets a wedgie it makes it onto the front cover of Heat.

And with the tabloids’ relentless obsession over every single female that stands within 100 yards of Hamilton, I would not be surprised if he is rather fed up with it.

And here is the thing. Only two out of 23 F1 drivers currently live in their home country, according to the August issue of F1 Racing, which coincidentally ran an item about F1 drivers moving country. Only Giancarlo Fisichella and Anthony Davidson have stayed at home.

But, it’s not all for tax reasons, as some may believe. While 15 drivers currently live in either Switzerland or Monaco, some prefer to live in the UK, even if they aren’t from there. Mark Webber, Vitantonio Liuzzi and Heikki Kovalainen all live in the UK. Presumably this is for work reasons, as the vast majority of F1 teams are based in Britain. Meanwhile, Rubens Barrichello lives in Portugal. I would guess this is so that he can be based in Europe while still speaking his native Portugese.

What I am worried about now is that the near-inevitable backlash will be every bit as unbearable as the hype. Jenson Button was right yesterday when he said that 2007 was possibly Hamilton’s best chance to win the Championship.

It is conceivable that McLaren will produce a bad car next year. Going by recent form, they are not likely to strike gold twice in a row. And with the FIA getting in the way of the process this year, it’s easy to see how they might get put off for 2008.

Today Hamilton is talked about as a near-certain future World Champion. But say McLaren go into a slump for a few years. Hamilton may be loyal to McLaren now, but that’s what Button said when he was at Williams. Hamilton will get itchy feet if he isn’t given a car that can win. He could move to another team and end up in that classic situation — always being at the right team at the wrong time. Good cars aren’t easy to come by, as Button knows all too well.

All of a sudden, Lewis Hamilton gets a touch of the Buttons. No longer will he be future World Champion. He will revert to Plucky Brit status and the media will start to hate him for blowing his opportunity.

It could happen, although I hope it doesn’t. But if the media is this bad when Hamilton simply moves house, imagine how bad it would be if he stops winning races.

At last! I have got round to starting on my review of the Formula 1 season. Because it has taken so long for me to get round to it, I have had enough ideas gestating around for me to write several posts on this. So I will write one post every Sunday for a few weeks. Hey, somebody has to provide some F1 action on a Sunday!

Each post will focus on a different aspect of the season. Future posts will look at the performances of teams. I will also assess the various F1 media outlets — ITV, FOM, websites, blogs and podcasts.

But today I’ll start with a look at the drivers. This is the first of a two-part run-down.

It’s not easy to rank drivers. As I said a few weeks ago, they are all heroes really. But we all know that some drivers are better than others. No doubt there will be plenty of disagreements, but that is what it’s all about, huh?

26 — Sakon Yamamoto

I have seen some people say that Yamamoto compares favourably to Adrian Sutil. I just don’t get it. Why is he even in F1? He was rubbish last year at Super Aguri, and he didn’t do very much interesting this year at Spyker. Perhaps part of this is the fact that he is tootling round at the back pretty anonymously, and has therefore been overlooked.

But looking at the figures, Yamamoto was outqualified by Sutil in every single race. The books will say that Yamamoto started ahead of Sutil in Brazil, but only because Sutil started in the pitlane, presumably due to mechanical problems. In fact, looking at the qualifying times, Yamamoto set the 22^nd-”quickest” time in every single qualifying session. His blushes were only ever spared by other people’s mechanical failures.

He must have some really good sponsors.

25 — Christijan Albers

It’s a shame for Christijan Albers. He seemed like a really nice guy. Unfortunately, he simply caused too many embarrassing incidents. He was warned midway through the season by the Spyker team to clean up his act. Not long afterwards, he dangerously drove out of the pitlane with the fuel hose still attached. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

24 — Ralf Schumacher

Oh my goodness. What an awful season Ralf Schumacher had. Seemingly everyone had it in for him this year. The Toyota team finally lost patience with him and he appears to be out of a drive for next season.

Ralf Schumacher himself is going around telling everybody that he will be in F1 next season. If he’ll be in F1 next season, it will be driving in the Safety Car, although I’m sure the FIA would rather find someone faster.

Part of the problem with Ralf Schumacher is the fact that he is just so damn deluded. At the start of the season he declared himself to be one of the top three drivers (!) and the Toyota the fourth fastest car (!). So where were the results to back it up? Only five points all season.

And all too often he failed to cross the psychological barrier of Q1. For a team with such a huge budget and a driver with such a huge pay packet, that is simply unforgivable. Tragic. Once upon a time Ralf Schumacher was a steady pair of hands, and a proven race winner. That feels like a very long time ago now.

23 — Anthony Davidson

At last, Anthony Davidson finally got a full season in F1. What did he do? I can’t remember. A couple of impressive moments. I seem to remember one particularly unlucky qualifying session. Bad luck dogged him actually, most notably when he hit a groundhog while running 3^rd in Canada.

But he also had bad moments of his own making, like spinning during qualifying at Silverstone. Otherwise, Davidson was too anonymous for me to place him any higher.

22 — Markus Winkelhock

Markus Winkelhock’s début grand prix will surely go down in history as one of the most eventful débuts ever. The son of Manfred Winkelhock made his début where his father made his exit from F1, at the Nürburgring. It looks as though it will be Markus’s last F1 race too.

Were it not for Lewis Hamilton, Markus Winkelhock would have been the only person to lead in his début this year. In a way, Winkelhock’s achievement is all the more impressive given that he did it in the Spyker (the worst car) rather than the McLaren.

Of course, in reality luck played a huge part in Winkelhock’s race. A risky strategy was employed by Spyker as weather conditions worsened, and luck played straight into their hands. At one point, Winkelhock led by over 30 seconds and had made Kimi Räikkönen look rather silly. But it was all because of that risky strategy to put Winkelhock on extreme wets.

It was a decision that only Spyker — at the back — could afford to take. In the end, it wasn’t much more than good PR. The race was stopped because the conditions were so atrocious, and at the restart Winkelhock was swamped by faster cars. In the end, he was in the sort of position you’d expect a Spyker to be. Then in another position where you’d expect a Spyker to be — in the grass, smoking.

Still, it’s a neat thing to put on your CV. Winkelhock is the only driver in history to have started the same race at the back of the grid and at the front!

21 — Kazuki Nakajima

Another F1 son, Kazuki is the son of Satoru Nakajima. Drafted in at the last minute to replace Alexander Wurz, who went on early retirement, Nakajima had a pretty mixed Brazilian Grand Prix.

Most notably, he was involved in a horrendous accident in the pitlane where he basically crashed into two of his mechanics. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. Perhaps it can partly be explained by nerves and the fact that it was his first ever F1 pitstop. But it was nevertheless an unforgivable accident. He didn’t shine too much in qualifying either.

However, his race driving was pretty hot. He set the fifth fastest lap of the race, ahead of Fernando Alonso and fancied team mate Nico Rosberg. He powered through the field to finish 10^th. This has been a year of notable rookie performances, and for me, Nakajima’s Brazilian Grand Prix is up there.

20 — Rubens Barrichello

I know that the Honda was a shockingly bad car. But let’s face facts here. Jenson Button outperformed Barrichello all year. Whereas Button fought to get fast, Barrichello let the car’s poor performance get him down. It’s a far cry from his heroic days at Stewart. If he’s not over the hill, he’s certainly given up climbing it.

19 — Scott Speed

An F1 career wasted. Either Scott Speed simply wasn’t fast enough, or his career was ruined by Red Bull / Toro Rosso bosses. He had a few good drives, making a particularly good attempt at Monaco where the Toro Rosso car worked well. But of his retirements, more were down to accidents and driver error than mechanical failure.

It’s all water under the bridge now though as Scott Speed heads off to forge a new career in stock cars in the USA.

18 — Vitantonio Liuzzi

As Scott Speed, but with some points. Liuzzi also shone at Monaco. At one point in qualifying he was running among the front-runners — setting the fourth-fastest time in Q1 — until a set-up change ruined it all. He eventually qualified 13^th and had an unlucky race, being crashed out by Coulthard.

Things looked up a bit towards the end of the season. It became clear that the Toro Rosso was pretty handy in the wet, and Liuzzi was able to wring out some respectable results — almost scoring in Japan and finishing 6^th in China. However, he was still outperformed by team mate Sebastian Vettel towards the end of the season. Overall though, Liuzzi’s qualifying performances tended to outshine those of his team mate, whether it was Speed or Vettel.

Midway through the season it was clear that, as with Scott Speed, Liuzzi’s relationship with the management at Toro Rosso had broken down. So he won’t remain at Toro Rosso. Is this the last we’ve seen of Liuzzi? I feel as though he’s had a lot of bad luck in his career. It is only a few years ago that the F3000 champion was being talked about as a future Ferrari driver.

17 — Jarno Trulli

Toyota is like an old folk’s home. But a one where they pay you to stay there. I guess this was just like 2006 for Jarno Trulli, but with fewer jibes about the “Trulli train”, the phenomenon whereby everybody gets stuck behind Jarno Trulli and the leaders disappear off into the distance. I give him one more year in F1.

16 — Giancarlo Fisichella

It’s much the same with Giancarlo Fisichella. In fact, when you look at it, the careers of Trulli and Fisichella have followed extraordinarily similar paths. The broke onto the scene with Minardi, then had some promising stints at Benetton / Renault and some wilderness years at Jordan.

Since then they have diverged a bit, with Trulli going to the Panasonic Toyota Retirement Home and Fisichella constantly being given the benefit of the doubt by Renault. It is clear that Fisichella is not as fast as some people once thought. Outclassed entirely by Alonso and now by rookie Heikki Kovalainen, it is obvious that Fisi is on the wane, big time.

He lucked in to an extension of his Renault contract with the departure of Alonso. Now it might happen again if Kovalainen moves. Expect Nelsinho Piquet to give him a pasting in 2008.

15 — Adrian Sutil

I am not sure if my placing of Adrian Sutil is a little on the high side. It is difficult to tell when a driver is in the worst car. But in a way, it is this very fact that makes me place him so high.

Sutil is a bit of a question mark. Some people seem to be quite impressed with him, while others think he is nothing special. But for me, the facts speak for themselves. He was only outqualified twice all year, and three different drivers were up against him in that Spyker.

It would be fascinating to see how he measures up in a better car. My gut feeling is that Sutil is a competent driver like, say, Button rather than a truly fast driver like Alonso.

14 — Takuma Sato

Takuma Sato has further cemented his reputation as the greatest driver ever to come out of Japan. He has outshone Anthony Davidson for most of the year, if not in qualifying then certainly in the races. Who could forget the moment when Sato overtook Alonso in Canada? I was jumping with joy. Certainly one of the best moments of the year.

That’s my view on the back half of the field. Next week I’ll post my thoughts on the other 13 drivers who competed this year.

Fernando Alonso’s departure from McLaren is kind of old news now. But Ponzonha asked me to write about it, and I still have some views on it, so here they are.

I guess the first thing to point out is that Alonso’s departure from McLaren is not much of a surprise. There was still a cheeky part of my brain that was saying, “maybe Alonso can stay at McLaren after all.” But clearly the relationship between Alonso and the team had broken down irreparably. Despite a contract that said Alonso was going to be around for two more years, there was no way that was in the interests of either Alonso or McLaren.

The question then turns to what actually happened in the negotiations. Given that a contract existed, there must have been some kind of deal. Of course, McLaren and Alonso are trying to give the impression that they just discussed it and mutually decided to part ways. But few seem to believe that.

I doubt, however, that any deal involved money. A common theory is that Alonso is either not allowed to move to a “competitive” team or not allowed to move to a manufacturer team. I suppose another possibility is that Alonso will go on gardening leave for the two years until his McLaren contract runs out. But I doubt Alonso would want to sit out for two seasons.

Fernando Alonso’s difficult decision

Of course, the most obvious team for Alonso to go to is Renault — assuming this hasn’t been ruled out by Ron Dennis. He has reportedly already been offered a seat there, but seemingly Alonso has not (yet) accepted it.

One possibility for this is that Alonso does not see Renault as a competitive enough proposition. But what other options are there? BMW and Ferrari are both locked out. No-one else is as competitive, except (arguably) for Red Bull.

Another theory that I have heard is that there is “something up” between Alonso and Renault. Perhaps they had some kind of falling-out and they were just much more successful at keeping it a secret than McLaren were. Don’t forget that towards the end of the 2006 season Alonso was talking about how lonely he felt in the team. I had always thought of Alonso as a real Renault guy. But putting the pieces together, it seems to make sense that he perhaps fell out with the team.

The next most popular rumour is a move to Toyota. This has a lot going for it in one respect. There is a big Ralf Schumacher-sized vacancy and Toyota is probably the only team with the willingness and ability to pay the big bucks that Alonso no doubt demands.

Alonso is also good friends with Toyota driver Jarno Trulli. Also, if Alonso really has the ability to give six tenths to a team, who better to give it to than Toyota? This would allow them to mix with the front runners more regularly.

But I just don’t see it. Firstly, the rumours linking Alonso and Ross Brawn with a joint move to Toyota (or any team for that matter) seem too far fetched to me. Why would they join forces like that?

Also, the Toyota team is a disaster. I doubt even Alonso could make the team competitive — the bureaucracy is too overwhelming. Maybe he would want to do what Michael Schumacher did in 1996 and move to a mediocre team and “build” it into something much more successful. But it is one thing to resurrect a team as romantic as Ferrari. Toyota? It has no history, no passion, no tifosi… Just nothing going for it.

This all appears to pave the way to Red Bull. Firstly, they will have enough money to pay for Alonso. Secondly, they have the potential to become a front-running team. Geoff Willis and Adrian Newey are more than capable of building a seriously fast car. As long as they can get the reliability sorted, Red Bull ought to be a serious proposition. Also, it is not a manufacturer team, so if Alonso is forbidden to join one then Red Bull by default becomes obvious choice.

The only thing is that Red Bull already has two drivers for next season. However, it is not totally inconceivable that Red Bull could pay one of them off.

For me, the Red Bull rumour seems to stack up the most. It is not a manufacturer team, so it does not seem to be obvious at first. But there aren’t any major obstacles to the idea. But even if I was a gambler, I would not put any money on it. Everything is too uncertain.

Fernando Alonso seems to have a difficult choice ahead of him. But it looks easy in comparison to the awful choice McLaren has to take! Who shall they choose to replace Fernando Alonso?

McLaren’s difficult decision

McLaren have a really difficult juggling act to perform here. First of all, I imagine that McLaren would be wary of hiring anyone who is remotely as talented as Lewis Hamilton in an attempt to avoid the awful events of the past six months or so.

But they also want to hire somebody who has some experience. As awesome as Lewis Hamilton is, he does not have the same kind of experience that is required in terms of car set-up and whatnot. Teams tend to want to balance fresh talent with experience.

Also, they won’t want to hire another Brit. The media keeps on suggesting that Jenson Button is a possibility, but this is arrant nonsense. It doesn’t make commercial sense for them, because having drivers of two different nationalities encourages sponsors from both of those countries. McLaren is a British team with a British driver. It certainly doesn’t need another one. There is also the fact that Button just isn’t talented enough to driver for a team as good as McLaren.

All in all, it’s difficult to see who could be suitable for the McLaren drive. It is not just the three problems I have outlined above. The fact is that all of the feasible options are either inexperienced or past it.

So, who are the options? Up until today I would have said Nico Rosberg was a possibility. But today he was confirmed as a Williams driver for 2009.

Who else? Heikki Kovalainen appears to be the most obvious candidate. If Alonso moves to Renault, it would be a straight swap. Kovalainen has been quite competent at Renault this year.

I do remember once reading someone say that Kovalainen is an obvious choice for McLaren. Why? A Brit and a Finn — how could Ron Dennis resist?

It is potentially dangerous for Kovalainen though. His reputation has been built on the line that if he was in the McLaren and Hamilton was in the Renault, then everybody would be talking about Kovalainen and not Hamilton. That reputation could be lost if he turns out not to be so hot! However, I don’t imagine Kovalainen would turn down a drive at McLaren, especially with his future at Renault looking (inexplicably) so uncertain.

Lewis Hamilton himself has said he wants his team mate to be either Rosberg (now out of the question), Kovalainen or Adrian Sutil. Hamilton was team mates with Sutil in GP2 and seems to get along well with him. Hamilton has also been favourable about Sutil’s driving ability this season. Many people do think that Sutil is due a drive at a better team. But is he really McLaren material? I doubt it.

Patrick Head has cheekily suggested that it could be Michael Schumacher. This is obviously just Patrick Head being a little bit playful, so shouldn’t be considered too seriously. However, I wouldn’t rule out a Schumacher comeback in the future.

People say that Schumacher is a Ferrari guy through and through. I am not so sure about that. Ferrari post-2006 is a very different beast, and we’ve seen that partly with the whole Stepneygate issue. There is some nasty politics in that team, and a lot of senior figures seem very disgruntled.

I think that rather than being a Ferrari man, Michael Schumacher is a Ross Brawn / Rory Byrne / Jean Todt / etc man. As such, I don’t think it’s unthinkable that Schumacher could make a comeback in a non-Ferrari for a one-off season. Of course, Mercedes would probably love that!

Who are the other options? Ralf Schumacher is so bad that he has already been ruled out by McLaren, even though they won’t say another word on the driver issue at the moment. Giancarlo Fisichella is similarly falling out of favour, and is starting to look very past it.

Pedro de la Rosa is another possibility, and he seems to be advertising himself a bit. He clearly wants the drive. He is trusty, but also rusty. De la Rosa knows his stuff and is an excellent test driver for McLaren, but his occasional race performances haven’t set the world alight (except for Bahrain 2005 — wow!). There also may be a question mark in Ron Dennis’s mind due to de la Rosa’s apparently heavy involvement in the row concerning Ferrari documents this year.

Another test driver is Gary Paffett. He is held in high regard, but is effectively ruled out because he is British.

Perhaps not quite over the hill yet are Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard. Honda have been saying some astonishing things about Barrichello since Brazil, and the sword of Damocles seemingly hangs over him. Coulthard, meanwhile, may well get the heave-ho should Alonso join Red Bull.

It’s a bit of a shame really. There has been a bit of hype about Barrichello and Coulthard both surpassing Ricardo Patrese’s record as the most experienced F1 driver ever if they complete the 2009 season. All of a sudden, by the looks of things, it seems as though neither of them might make it!

But are they possibilities for the McLaren drive? David Coulthard has already driven for McLaren, and he’s not always spoken about them in glowing terms since he left. But it would make the transition smooth and everyone will know where they stand. Coulthard would surely also be an excellent mentor for Lewis Hamilton.

Similarly for Barrichello. He has not driven for McLaren in the past, but I don’t think he is quite that rusty yet.

All-in-all, McLaren really have a tough choice. They either choose somebody who is not experienced enough, or they hire someone who is on the last legs of their F1 career. I’m glad I’m not responsible for making that decision.

Spot the difference.

• Pitpass: Honda to test three hopefuls
• Autosport: Honda to give test to GP2 trio
• Formula1.com: Honda to test young GP2 drivers
• ITV-F1: Honda to test Conway at Barcelona

Oh yeah, ITV. And what about the other two? Oh wait, I forgot. They don’t count because they’re not British.

It makes me sick!

Over the past couple of days there have been rumours that McLaren’s explanation for the sudden loss of drive in Lewis Hamilton’s car is not true. Seemingly, Lewis Hamilton actually let his finger slip on the steering wheel. Apparently he hit the ’start’ button, which forced Hamilton into rebooting the system, a process which took around 20 to 30 seconds.

McLaren are denying this, just like they denied the incident where Lewis Hamilton swore at his boss in Hungary. Similarly they fell on their own sword in China when Hamilton retired with shot tyres, even though there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Hamilton himself was pushing the tyres way too hard.

Pitpass appear to be standing by their source with careful wording, adding, “you would not believe who it was that told him about Hamilton’s ‘error’.”

Meanwhile, the peerless F1Fanatic blog has come up with the goods that suggest that Hamilton’s problems were all of his own making.

Firstly, a quote which rather gives the game away. This is from Eurosport.

My finger slipped on the steering wheel and I accidentally pressed the button used for the starting sequence. The car went into neutral and I had to reinitialize the system, that is, reload the gearbox management program.

(Update 25/10/2007: The journalist who originally broke the story says that the quote did not come directly from Lewis Hamilton, but stands by his report.)

Then, F1Fanatic dredged up a video that shows Lewis Hamilton pressing a button just as he slows down. The replay is in slow-motion, so it is a little bit difficult to tell what speed he is going at. But note how going into the corner he keeps up with the cars in front. As he goes through the corner his hand slips over a button second from the left on his steering wheel. Soon afterwards, cars start whizzing past him.

Of course, the British mainstream media will completely ignore all of the evidence, preferring to believe that only bad luck and unreliable machinery robbed “our Lew” of the World Championship.

I can envisage Lewis Hamilton on the stage at Sports Personality of the Year. Sue Barker says, “And of course, if it wasn’t for that gearbox problem in the last race you would have been World Champion this year.” Hamilton smiles guiltily.

A full race review will come later. But I have to talk about the stewards’ investigation because it is so pressing.

I was hoping — as was everyone else who loves sport — that the World Championship would be decided on the track. I was hoping that there would be no irregularities found after the race. After the year Formula 1 has had, to have the World Champion decided in a private room between three men was the last thing we needed.

Unfortunately, the nature of the sport means that it is not always that way. Sometimes the scrutineers find something on the cars that causes a result to be changed after the fans have left the circuit. It happens a few times a year. This is a regrettable reality of Formula 1, but it is the reality. It was just unfortunate that it had to happen on this of all days.

Once it was announced that the Williams and BMW cars were being investigated for fuel irregularities, it was clear to me that the FIA were stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they disqualified the four drivers, they would be accused of handing the Championship to Hamilton. If they didn’t (as they haven’t), then they would have been accused of stealing the Championship from Hamilton.

Surprise, surprise, now that the decision — that the drivers will not be disqualified — has been confirmed, sure enough I can hear Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live doing his nut about it (luckily David Croft is rather more balanced). There is no doubt in my mind that the reaction from some other people would have been equally angry had the decision gone the other way.

Earlier on this evening I was listening to the 606 phone-in, and everyone seemed to have a different conspiracy theory about the race. Depending on who you listen to, the FIA are pro-Ferrari, pro-Hamilton, anti-Hamilton, anti-McLaren. McLaren are pro-Alonso, anti-Alonso, anti-Hamilton, pro-Hamilton.

It is a sign of the bad management at the FIA that this could happen. Here we were in a situation where the stewards’ decision, whichever way it went, would have been criticised. And whenever anything slightly abnormal happens there is somebody out there ready with a conspiracy theory about it.

Murray Walker always used to say, “Anything can happen in Formula 1 — and it usually does.” Today it would be better to say, “Anything can happen in Formula 1 — and when it does, point the finger at the FIA.”

This has come about because Max Mosley has politicised the sport to a poisonous degree. The FIA has created far too many ridiculous rules, making the sport more convoluted than it should be. And Max Mosley does business on the basis of personal grudges rather than what is good for the sport.

It is sad — but understandable — that people can not have confidence in the decisions made by the FIA. It is yet another sign for me that the sooner Max Mosley is removed from his post as President of the FIA the better.

For me, the worst aspect of this Formula 1 season has been the hopelessly biased media reporting. I have railed against the British media’s love affair with Lewis Hamilton many times. But it is worth pointing out that, if anything, the Spanish media are probably even worse when it comes to Fernando Alonso.

Let us not forget that before Alonso burst onto the scene, Formula 1 was not even televised in Spain! (Apparently this is inaccurate — see the comments.) At least prior to Hamilton F1 was a regular fixture on British television screens. So it should be no surprise that some Spaniards are pretty rabid Alonso fans. This has led to some rather colourful goings-on on the internet.

One of the strangest was the mass invasion of nationalist Spaniards on Ed Gorman’s rather good blog for Times Online. The rabid one-sidedness of the Spanish commenters was quite a sight to behold, and it became all the more entertaining when they began to adopt Anglophone names in a bid to disguise their favouritism.

I suppose it is always possible that someone called George posting on the internet can have terrible English. Have Your Say is testament to this. But seeing Victor screaming to Ed Gorman, “I WANT TO SEE THE EVIDENCES!! GIVE TO ME THE EVIDENCES!!” doesn’t quite convince.

Of course, Ed Gorman did not help himself much by being so blatantly biased (in the opposite direction) himself. And this is the very problem. The British media talks through its arse on one end, and the Spanish media talks through its arse on the opposite end. It is no wonder that different groups of people have ended up with such radically differing views as to what has happened during the season.

In Britain, Fernando Alonso is viewed as a moaner, while Hamilton’s own moans (post-Monaco and post-Belgium) have been downplayed. While Alonso’s comments about not getting equal treatment at McLaren have often crossed over into the realms of the ridiculous, let us not forget that Hamilton was the first to run crying to the media about his treatment at McLaren following the Monaco Grand Prix, long before Alonso hinted at any such levels of discontent.

Meanwhile, in Spain, this season has been viewed as one massive conspiracy against Fernando Alonso. As Keith Collantine notes, the claims are easily debunked.

Why would McLaren want to sabotage the efforts of their own driver? Moreover, why would they go out of their way to upset him when he is a double World Champion? If McLaren were acting in their own self-interest to sabotage the season, it’s not exactly worked out well for them, has it? This season has been one long PR disaster for the team.

This is why I have such a short fuse when it comes to nationalistic sports coverage. I suppose being a Scot I am naturally wired up to have a sensitive bullshit detector when it comes to nationalistic sports coverage. But while for most of my compatriots it stops at pro-English bias in sports commentary, I find myself equally exasperated by all biased commentary — pro-Scottish, pro-British, pro-Spanish, pro-whatever.

Part of me really hopes that Lewis Hamilton fails to win the Championship today just to burst the ridiculous bubble that the British media has blown up. The ridiculous “weekend of British supremacy sporting success” was already dealt a blow yesterday with England’s failure in the Rugby World Cup. With all eyes on Lewis Hamilton today, I really hope the media ends up with egg on its face.

The bias exists in team sports as well. Holyrood Watcher wrote about it today in relation to the rugby. But at least I can understand it with team sports. International rugby is one sport where a team is set up specifically to represent a country.

Formula 1 is a team sport — but the teams do not represent countries. It is also an individual sport, and in no way does it make sense to constantly make references to “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” or “Spain’s Fernando Alonso” as though their nationality made a blind bit of difference to anything. You might as well talk about “blond Kimi Räikkönen” or “the right-handed Felipe Massa”.

Because you can bet your bottom dollar that Lewis Hamilton doesn’t want to be World Champion “for Britain”. He wants to be World Champion for himself. For an explanation, I wrote here about sportsmen and nationality some months ago.

The recent obsession with F1 drivers’ nationalities particularly saddens me because every single one of the drivers who will be racing at Interlagos this afternoon is an absolute hero. They all do extraordinary things, putting their lives on the line. I can never get my head round how these drivers can travel at 200+ mph, routinely experiencing forces of 5+ gs, yet still manage to hit the apex of a corner, inch-perfect, and complete lap times consistent to a couple of tenths of a second.

It astonishes me. These drivers are super-human. Extraordinary achievements are being made routine. Yet, what is the media coverage reduced to? “Let’s support Lewis Hamilton because he’s British, and let’s throw stones at Alonso because he’s foreign.” It sickens me. To do certain drivers down because of where they happen to come from, when they are every bit as much of a hero, is just not on.

The media’s fixation with nationalities offends me. To me, “Britain’s Lewis Hamilton” (as the media apparently has to call him, by law) does not exist. Nor does “Spain’s Fernando Alonso”, “Finland’s Kimi Räikkönen” or even “Japan’s Sakon Yamamoto”. They are Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Sakon Yamamoto: extraordinary, super-human, heroic motor racing drivers. Every single one of them. No matter where they came from.