Felipe Massa in his Ferrari F2008. Image by code_martial
The 3rd round of the 2008 Formula 1 championship took place today. This is how it went down.
Ferrari's Felipe Massa has been the laughing stock of the paddock and the rest of the world after spinning out of the previous two rounds. The Brazilian was still stuck at 0 points, and rumors had him leaving Ferrari early if things didnt improve. Felipe went into this weekend with a lot of pressure on his shoulders, no less from his world champion teammate.
On the other side of the pitlane, the silver McLarens wanted to get their champiobship challenge back on track. Kimi Raikönnen left the field in his wake the previous time out, and the boy wonder Lewis Hamilton and his quiet teammate was under pressure to keep their championship leads.
Things didnt start out well, but only if you are a McLaren fan. Felipe set an omnious pace in both friday practice sessions. On saturday the practice was the usual chaos with the top teams not posting fast times, but come qualifying the red cars were a country mile ahead of the silver ones. The surprise came from the Germans. BMW upstaged the plot when Polish hero Robert Kubica snatched pole away from Felipe in the dying moments of qualifying. The stage was set with Hamilton 3rd, Kimi 4th and McLaren's Kovalainen 5th.
Bring on race day.
As the dessert sand flew, the engines roared and the lights went out, Felipe flew past the polish polesitter and into the distance. His teammate made short work of his foes and was up to second by round three. Lewis Hamilton, the british superstar, was fiddling with his cd changer and managed to lose about 10 places right from the start. Heck, he even drove his McLaren right into the back of Fernando Alonso's Renault, prompting an early stop for a new nose, leaving him right at the back.
And that was it, really. In a rather dull race Felipe drove controlled and calm to collect his 6th career win, Kimi followed him to a Ferrari 1-2, and BMW picked up 3rd and 4th. Heiki Kovalainen for McLaren had an anonymous afternoon on his way to fifth, but nothing compared to Hamilton who did absolutely nothing useful and finished somewhere behind everybody. David Coultard managed to get hit again, this time by Jenson Button. Maybe YOU are doing something wrong somewhere, David?
Next time up is Barcelona, and as usual everybody is talking about their "big update" for the cars. None more than McLaren's Ron Dennis, but it is unlikely to change things. F1 is currently a 3-horse race, but the Prancing one is running the show.
I dont see the meaning of the formula 1, just cars driving really fast, so fast that you cant see them. It's also a pain to the ears. I think its rather stupid, but thats my opinion.
Good to see Raikkonen take 1st place in the championship, he deserved last years title and hopefully he can take this one too. Unfortunately I missed the race
man i remember when schumacher was da big daddy and i used to do f1 bets with some of my high school mates. the biggest guess was obviously the 2nd place, since schumi was too gosu to lose ah those were the days...
On April 07 2008 02:05 samachking wrote: I dont see the meaning of the formula 1, just cars driving really fast, so fast that you cant see them. It's also a pain to the ears. I think its rather stupid, but thats my opinion.
You'd have to get behind the wheels of one to realize how hard it is to drive those things at the speed professionals drive them and stay on the track. The G-forces from turning in a F1 car are greater than what'd you'd experience if you slammed the brakes of any commuter car going 70-80 mph. Which is to say, F1 drivers take turns at those speeds.
Yes, the physical requirements are immense. Braking for a corner subjects you to 3-4.5 G, and they do this for 1.5 hours in immense heat. We're talking 50C or more at times in fireproof clothers. F1 drivers are superfit athlets.
If any of us were put in an F1 car and didnt kill ourselves in the first corner we could probably drive the thing around a track, but it would be absolutely useless. Actually, if you like Top Gear, find the episode where Hammond drives the 2005 renault. Hammond is not exactly a bad driver, and he could not get the thing around in anything resembling a good laptime.
On April 07 2008 06:42 ToKoreaWithLove wrote: Yes, the physical requirements are immense. Braking for a corner subjects you to 3-4.5 G, and they do this for 1.5 hours in immense heat. We're talking 50C or more at times in fireproof clothers. F1 drivers are superfit athlets.
If any of us were put in an F1 car and didnt kill ourselves in the first corner we could probably drive the thing around a track, but it would be absolutely useless. Actually, if you like Top Gear, find the episode where Hammond drives the 2005 renault. Hammond is not exactly a bad driver, and he could not get the thing around in anything resembling a good laptime.
Yeh, I heard Kubica was on a diet just to lose weight.
I now wonder who was driving that R25 around the track where it set 0:59... Damon Hill?
That is the problem with F1 more than ever today. Not to go into too much technicalities, but basicly with the current set of regulations the cars generate very dirty and hot air. This very "dirty" air starts a certain distance above the ground, unfortunately the front wings of the cars, after being raised early in the century, now catches this air instead of the cleaner air below, so running close to another car gets very hard.
Also the cars are too reliant on aerodynamic grip as opposed to mechanical grip. Thank you max for the switch to grooved tyres.
In my opinion what's so cool about Formula 1 is not the raw power, the speed or the heat. To me it's how quickly and precise the drivers have to respond at any second, or better tenth of a second. On TV it looks as if the cars were driving like a train on a track. But actually the cars are drifting at almost any time, especially if they are going slow or at medium speed. That's why the drivers have to be ultra careful to step on the gas, now that the traction control is gone again. And that's why the drivers have to countersteer a lot. No tires that can last for a big number of laps can cope with that amount of torque under such a light car so if you don't know what you are doing you won't be able to do much more than spinning the car.
Edit: TKWL, actually the cars from the late seventies to early nineties were much more reliant on aerodynamic grip. And imo last season showed that 'modern' formula 1 doesn't really have a problem. It might be hard to become successful with a new team because the degree of perfection is so high and the rules are too tight to find new ways, but the race among the top teams is as close as ever. Just too many crybabies who always say one team was ruining the fun because they dominated one race.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/ToKoreaWithLove/felipe.jpg)
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