Giancarlo Fisichella is my next victim of the ‘almost mid season report card’. He was dumped, yes dumped unceremoniously by Renault to make room for Alonso and that’s where I start. Fisichella’s getting on in age, but still has what it takes to be an F1 driver. He’s got excellent car setup skills and his enthusiasm at being with Force India has been quite evident. Jumping from Renault to a brand new team was sort of a gamble for Fisi, but he’s made the best of it and showed he does still have driving talent.

His season started of with a 16th place qualifying in Australia, but ended his debut with a crash on lap 1. Malaysia started the same way with a 17th qualifying position, but finished with a great 12th placing. At this point Force India fans were true believers in Fisichella who’s passion and experience was beginning to show.

Same thing in Bahrain, Fisi qualified 18th but in the race plowed his way up to 12th once again. In a car not as good as 12th place, the reason was simply Fisichella. He drives hard, and stays out of trouble. Something difficult at best starting from the back of the grid.

The same trend continued in Spain when he qualified 19th and finished in 10th. There were quite a few cars that had retired, but nonetheless Fisi missed the crashes and his car was sound. He took hold of the opportunity and proved he can still drive a car.

In Turkey things went sour again with a poor qualifying and a first lap crash ending his day before it started.

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What do you do if you are at BMW-Sauber and Bruno Senna is sniffing around? Senna is the current leader in GP2 and is looking for either a drive in F1 or a test position in F1. Right now we hear Senna is in talks with BMW-Sauber to become a test driver next season. There is also a small possibility that Senna may replace Nick Heidfeld who has just not come to grips with the F1.08 and there seems no reason he will by season end.
The team suggest that Nick is just unable to match this particular car (beast) with his smooth driving style. A style in complete contrast to Robert Kubica who is enjoying the car so far.
Preparation for next season is really a clean sheet in terms of car development with drastic new rules that should result in a more traditional F1 car. This being the case, would it be worth keeping Nick Heidfeld around? After all, he’s just having a hard time with the F1.08 which won’t be around next year.
This may mean Senna’s best chance at F1 is to test and maybe for BMW-Sauber. For him to take a driver seat on a lesser team would mean he wouldn’t be able to show his true talent and may be lost to bigger and better teams for quite some time.
To expand on the test position, BMW-Sauber, if parting ways with Heidfeld could promote Christien Klien into driver status along side Robert Kubica allowing Senna the test seat.

Speculation yes, but the season of speculation is almost upon us. Whatever the case with BMW-Sauber, they are in a position to need 2 front running drivers no matter what, but we won’t know anything for certain for a while yet.

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David Coulthard has to me been hard to figure out. For some races he seemed to be a target for crashes and DNFs were plentiful. Once this run of bad luck was over we could get a clear picture of how his season might go and it seems to be just a cruise for David.

It started in Australia where he made it to Q3 and qualified 8th. With that result, it appeared he was going to be on form for an old guy. The race however ended early when he and Felipe Massa tangled on lap 26. Maybe his fault, maybe Massa’s fault at least according to them. Not much to go on in this race.

After qualifying 12th in Malaysia, Coulthard finished a respectable 9th although that was mostly attributed to Massa and Glock retiring. A steady drive, no mistakes, but not much excitement from Coulthard. Kind of boring if you ask me.

Bahrain was a disaster for Coulthard, but at least he finished. It started with a terrible qualifying attempt where he started 17th. More than his share of race incidents and pit work ruined his race, but even so, the will to keep motivated seemed gone. He finished a lowly 18th.

Once again it was someone getting into David and at the first turn. Not at all surprising because after Australia Coulthard hasn’t been able to qualify out of the danger zone in the back of the field. Team mate Mark Webber has had respectable qualifying results as well as race results, but not Coulthard. 17th on the grid sets you up for trouble and isn’t the David Coulthard of old. He’s more cruising than anything.

Qualifying for Monaco was a little better, but in the race he was taken out on lap 7 by one Sebastien Bourdais. No result here.

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The ever lively Fernando Alonso is having what he considers to be another failed year, at least according to cryptic messages he gives on a weekly basis. We know his comments stem from him desperately wanting to compete at the front and show his championship status. Clearly with Renault he cannot.

In Fernando’s mind, this season may be another personal failure for him, but from the whole team package point of view, I think he’s having a pretty good year and his 9th place in the drivers standings with 10 points really doesn’t do him justice. Always competing, always pushing, and ultimately getting every bit of result out of his car and doing all this in every single race. These qualities are clearly the qualities of a true champion.

Looking at his season so far, results are sort of a mixed bag with a few mistakes here and there clouding what really could be a great first half season given the package he has to work with. His 4th place in Australia was exceptional considering a 14th place on the grid and was also in part due to some pretty timely luck, but in a race with carnage at every turn, luck and staying out of trouble are key. Before his first stop of the race which was a long stint he managed to maneuver into 6th place, but fell to 9th after his first stop. The last safety car he passed Kovalainen and Raikkonen and finished 4th. As I said, luck was needed in Australia, but staying out of trouble was absolute and in true Alonso style, he did just that.

Malaysia saw him qualify 7th making Q3. An outstanding effort and maybe a sign of things to come. The race was not the best, but Alonso once again drove a steady pace staying out of trouble bringing home the car in 8th place.

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Looking toward 2009, the FIA has released the provisional calendar for 2009. The notable difference is the race in Abu Dhabi which takes the place of Brazil as the final race of the year. Other changes see the British Grand Prix moved one race ahead of the French Grand Prix.

Turkey gets bounced back to its original date of August 9.

To refresh everyone’s memory, here’s a little of what is in store for Yas Island Abu Dhabi:

Ferrari Theme Park
Rally Driving Tracks
Drag Racing Tracks
Karting

2009 Provisional Calendar

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

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To say the least it has been a shaky start to Nelson Piquet Jr’s f1 career after finishing an impressive 2nd in the 2005-06 GP2 series.

His season started off badly in Australia with a 21st qualifying position and a first lap collision which ended his day on lap 31. He didn’t look comfortable in the Renault, but really should have had his feet under him being that he tested for Renault the previous year (although not much). I’ll give him Australia though because even the best fell flat on their faces in the first race without traction control.

Malaysia should have been better and it was. He started 13th on the grid and finished a fairly respectable 11th remaining on the lead lap. In Spain Piquet Jr had his best qualifying to date with a 10th grid start but sadly once again his race ended with an accident after only 6 laps. After running off track earlier, Piquet Jr, in trying hard to regain his position tried forcing his way past Bourdais in the Toro Rosso, the inevitable crash occurred and both went out. It was not a good pass opportunity, but rookie enthusiasm and lack of experience got the better of him when patience would have been the name of the game.

Turkey saw a poor qualifying for Piquet Jr in 17th at the start. His race was very uneventful eventually resulting in him being lapped. He brought the car home in a poor 15th. It really isn’t fair to compare Piquet Jr to team mate Alonso, but a 6th place for Alonso should easily have meant that somewhere around 10th would have been possible.

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After a full week of hair pulling, I’ve finally worked out enough blog bugs to be able to consider posting regularly again and start with my almost mid season driver report card.

Lewis Hamilton - McLaren Mercedes

Need I say 2008 has been a tough season for Hamilton? I call it the ’sophomore blues’ and he is certainly not alone. Many an athlete have found themselves in a second year mess after a barnstorming rookie season and all have had to work through it to prove their worth to the sport, media, team, and most of all themselves.
I cannot criticize Lewis too harshly for the mistakes he has made, but I can hope he learns from them. His recent lashing out at the media has caused him even more wide spread criticism and why, because he chooses to give the media what they give him. How unjust is that? Lewis has gone from darling of the sport to ‘goat’ in less than one year, a pill tough enough for anyone inexperienced or otherwise to swallow, but one he must. How ever unjust he feels he is being treated, his emotions must be kept in check.

Hamilton is by no means out of the fight for the championship and if and when he does win, the media and the British will love him once again.

2008

2007

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2008 French Grand Prix Results. My race review later.

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Today was the first attempt at testing the new proposed Safety Car rules. Today’s second practice session was targeted. When the session ended the safety car was deployed and the drivers had their first go at it.

The idea is that the moment the Safety Car is deployed, a calculated minimum lap time is displayed on the drivers dash. They then have 5 seconds to press a button confirming their acceptance and from then on must remain at or below the displayed lap time.

It is a lot to absorb and monitor at the best of times, but when in a technical section of the track or in a passing situation or… you get the picture, it is even more to absorb. Reaction as we expected from the drivers was mixed with of course the exception of Kimi Raikkonen who just seems to go with the flow.

Lewis Hamilton

“It still needs a little more work at the moment.”

Nico Rosberg

“It’s a bit strange because you have to look at your dash quite a lot and at the same time you’re probably going to be passing the incident and everything.

“But we really need to find something to improve the current thing — it could be a step forward, we will see.”

Sebastien Bourdais

“We will see how it plays out.”

Kimi Raikkonen

“I think it could be a good solution because it puts everyone in the same situation and that way, you can’t be penalised just by unfortunate circumstances.”

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There was an interview in the Times Online F1 Blog where Bernie Ecclestone was asked who he thought were the top 5 drivers in F1 so far this year and a few comments as to why. You can see it at the link above, but here’s Bernie’s list anyway followed by mine. You will see I differ from him seeing things a little differently.

1. Fernando Alonso
2. Lewis Hamilton
3. Kimi Raikkonen
4. Robert Kubica
5. Felipe Massa

and another driver from a lesser team who has potential:

Sebastian Vettel

I’m a bit surprised at him putting Massa down the list in 4th after he questions Raikkonen’s desire to win on and off the track. Massa is a driven guy, of that there’s no question this year anyway. Massa’s putting his driving where his mouth is and not only that, he’s driving clean of late. Well, I put him 4th in my list as well.

He thinks Robert Kubica along side Lewis Hamilton and he would blow Lewis away. That’s a competition I’d like to see.

My list does vary a bit from Ecclestone and yes it is objective without favoritism.

1. Fernando Alonso

Despite not liking him too much, I can’t place anyone currently racing above him. He is an electrifying driver always pushing to the limit. He makes any car look much better than it is just like Michael Schumacher did. He complains about his car this year because his hunger to compete is stronger than it is. This year if he was at McLaren, he’d show Hamilton and the others what winning is all about.

2. Robert Kubica

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