THE OFFICIAL FORMULA 1 THREAD 2006
 

THE OFFICAL FORMULA 1 THREAD 2006:

ALL Formula 1 discussion shall take place here.

The first race was pretty good, Nico Roseberg was amazing on debut, he was easily the fastest guy out there after the 2nd round of pitstops, some good moves and the fastest lap.

Alonso and Schumacher fought tooth and nail, but it was the extra bit of fuel Fernando had in the end that made the difference.

Kimi, today for me was easily the man, I bet when Alsonso and Schumi parked their cars, they were "WTF is Kimi doing here?", trust me Renault and Ferrari may have fought for the victory, but Kimi sent them one hell of scare today, he only finished 19 seconds behind them in 3rd AFTER STARTING AT THE BACK, he was held for ages behind JV who was unlucky to go out with an engine failure he was doing quite well, qualified well too.

Button a few good moments, but sucked as usual. Montoya had a surprisingly quiet race as did Webber.

Massa was very unlucky he was doing very well in 3rd easily matching Schumacher and Alonso for pace, but he locked a break and then an air gun failed at his pit stop.

Overall a good race and Raikkonen was the man for me, just think what a race he would have had if his suspension had not failed him yesterday.

Next Race Round 4: San Marino (April 23rd, 1pm GMT)

Well I watched the race today and was kinda surprised that Alonso won because Schumacher was kind of dominating until the awesome boxstop of the Renault team. But anyway, the race was pretty good, hard to say who will win the championship this year. Already looking forward to Malaysia.

Super Aguri were a joke as expected. Schumacher was unlucky I thought, you could see Ross Brawn on camera bang the contol desk in fustration.

This is looking like a fantastic season with 5 teams capable of wins, the Championship is going to be very close unless one team finds a whole lot of speed through the season out of nowhere. Ferrari looked like they'd dominate after qualifying but they were light on fuel, Alonso did very well to overtake Massa and then Schumacher after the pitstop.

What i'm most pleased about is the pace of the Williams! Ferrari are back, but so are Williams! They've finally found some speed in a straight line, which I think the new Cosworth engine has a lot to do with, Cosworth seem to be on top of the engine game at the moment. My hopes for the season are for Williams to beat BMW (shouldn't be hard) for jumping ship and blaming everything on the Williams Team last season but their engine, and Honda (will be very tough) to show Button up for breaking his Williams contract for 06.

EDIT: Super Aguri were as bad as I expected, but i'm happy that Sato managed to finish. Clearly they haven't done the milage and don't have the resources to compete yet, but i'm hoping they'll get there. Each of the early races is like a testing session for them, and they didn't get in anyone's way so they're cool.

Oh yeah there's a typo in the thread title, "Offical"

Yeah well it went pretty bad for them, oh well

#7 for Nico Rosberg was a pretty big surprise, too!

Not too mention that he kept setting fastest lap times.

But Williams won't be podium contenders, which is a problem for him, I think we will have to wait till the 3rd or 4th race to see where everybody is for the rest of the season, McLaren, last year, after the 4th race had the fastest car lets see if they do it again, who knows they may already have it, its hard to judge who has the fastest car at the moment, but I'm sure that Mercedes engine is not that powerful.

If anything's going to cripple Ferrari, I think it's Massa. He may be good but it seems he's a bit too unexperienced to run in a team like Ferrari, aiming for pole position and podiums every race and where every mistake can make you lose a race. Massa did mistakes during free runs, during qualifications and a big one during the race. Perhaps he's got a bit left to learn.

Promising start, anyway. Looking forward to seeing the next races.

Bit harsh, I think he did very well on his debut, the left rear locked which is almost out of his control, once it locks you have no chance to recover. Plus it wasn't his fault he got stuck in the pits for 1 whole minute because the air gun failed. He was fast, he was easily able to keep the pace before the incident, I think schumacher would have won if that didn't happen.

I think its a real big worry for Ferrari and all of the other Bridgestone runners that Raikkonen can just boot on a set of tyres, do a one stop and finish third,what if all the other Michellin runners in Malaysia decide to run 1-2 stop, and still get good performance while ferrari need 2-3 stops, their screwed.

Side note:

I loved Fisi swearing at the car and at the team over the radio "this is fucking shit".

Also Button sucks, I loved the way he said he had a real strong chance of winning only to start 3rd and finish 4th, in future he should just shutup.

True. I can't fucking stand all the praise and love Button gets here. He's second rate, won't win a championship, but may win the odd race if he's lucky.

I'm liking Super Aguri already, F1 needs it's comedy team. They should have the Benny Hill music playing in the background when it comes to their pit stops.

I've got a feeling Raikonnen's the new Stirling Moss - I doubt he's ever going to win a championship. For this year though, same as I say every year - Schumacher. Car's good - needs work but will get better and I imagine he's going to be retiring soon-ish so he's definetly going to have at least one more championship before he goes.

He had a clutch problem at the start and lost several places, not much he could do about that.

Fisi swearing was awesome, an F1 driver with passion, I haven't seen too much of that lately. I'm backing him for WDC, but I think Alonso will win it.

Kimi had a suspension failure and started from the back, nothing he could do about that either, but finished 3rd.

So thats a pretty crappy excuse in comparison, that always seems the way with Button, always some sort of excuse. By the way it probably wasn't a clutch problem, more like poor clutch control, Button is a notoriously bad starter.

Watch if he doesn't win in Sepang from 2nd he will blame it on the tyres, or the car setup. He should just be more honest like Rubens, and say 'I just wasn't quick enough'. But he qualified very well, although it was stupid to do an extra lap and waste those new tyres.


Qualifying:

Well that was a midly good qualifying session, I think it is a bit unreflective of who was actually fastest, seeing as Kimi, Montoya, and Alonso obviously went for longer runs and thus much heavier fuel loads.

Although Fisi looks good where he is sitting if the 3 mentioned drivers don't make it up the grid quick enough, Fisi looks good for a win, but McLaren pose a big threat by the looks of things.

Also a fantastic qualifying by both Williams, they are developing nicely, but they would have been 6th and 7th if the 3 above drivers did not go for the long runs. But still what an excellent job by both Webber and Rosberg who looks the real deal.

Personally I believe thy should get rid of this stupid 10 place drop rule. If the engine fails, you should penalise the team and not the drivers with a crappy 10 place drop, thus I think it would be best that if you change an engine, you should automatically be deducted 5 contsructers points which punishes the team heavily, because the television revenue they earn is based on where they finish in the constructer's championship. Now we are robbed of a duel with Schumacher and the big guns, seeing as he took an engine change.

The Sepang race was a real disappointment with all those engine failures... but i'm glad Fisi won! He didn't crack under the pressure Alonso was trying to put on. I can't believe how fast Alonso got off the line... that Renault just flies from the get go, and it's even more amazing considering he had a full fuel tank.

I find it interesting how much Button is destroying Rubens... Rubens has been saying how hard the car is to drive, compared to his Ferrari which he described was "like a videogame", seeing as though Rubens often matched Michaels pace are the Ferrari drivers really overrated? We'll see how the season goes, maybe Rubens will adapt.

Well actually no they are not overarrated. You have to understand that these cars are very very different, Rubens himself said that the characteristics of a Honda and a Ferrari are very different.

With the Ferrari he could turn in early and be late on the brakes, but with the Honda he can brake early and turn in late, (kinda vice versa). This does not necessarily mean that the Ferrari he drove was better, its just that in his own words 'he hasn't adapted', and he's breaking far too late in the Honda, which is a behavioural trait of the Ferrari's.

I read this in the F1 magazine, but also again he said the exact same thing on TV after the Bahrain grand prix.

But to be honest he should have it sorted by now.

Can someone explain what the hell is up with Toyota?

Idiots. They had Le Mans in the bag with the GT-one.

And until they start winning in Formula One, I don't think they're making a full-fledged super/high-end sports car. Well, there's the LF-A from Lexus, but is that confirmed to be coming out, or just a concept?

They easily have the biggest budget of anybody in Formula 1, with a whopping £420 million/year. But they just cannot pull off the race results, they don't have the right people. With that kind of money they should just lure away as many good design staff from the other teams as possible.

LoL also 3 of their former design staff are being tried for industrial espionage, apparently they tried to get ahold of the design blueprints of the ferrari's back in 2002, as one of their design team worked for Ferrari just before he switched to Toyota back in 2002.

They were on the right track last year, grabbed their first few podiums, and first pole position with Trulli, this year they were pushing to get race wins, but the new developments on the car made it go slower instead of faster, and now they're in a pickle. They've already picked up a bit more pace in Malaysia than in Bahrain (grabbing a point), and I think they'll get better as the season goes on and as they realise what's wrong with the car.

I'm not a big fan of the team but i'm a big fan of Trulli so I hope the car gets better. :)

1. BUTTON Honda
2. FISICHELLA Renault
3. ALONSO Renault
4. RAIKKONEN McLaren
5. MONTOYA McLaren
6. R.SCHUMACHER Toyota
7. WEBBER Williams
8. HEIDFELD BMW Sauber
9. TRULLI Toyota
10. M.SCHUMACHER Ferrari
11. COULTHARD Red Bull
12. LIUZZI Toro Rosso
13. KLIEN Red Bull
14. ROSBERG Williams
15. MASSA Ferrari
16. BARRICHELLO Honda
17. ALBERS Midland
18. SPEED Toro Rosso
19. VILLENEUVE BMW Sauber*
20. MONTEIRO Midland
21. SATO Super Aguri
22. IDE Super Aguri

This will be totally awesome the Mclarens are back, Button obviously won't win tomorrow, Montoya was unlucky not to get pole after the setting the fastest 1st and 2nd sectors of anybody only to lose 0.7 secs in the 3rd, although this is probably because he scuffed his tyres after his spin.

After having to change their front wings, the ferrari's are suffering badly Michael in 10th and Massa 14th.

And good to see Toyota back in top half, very good qualifying by Ralf.

This will be a good one at the front end, start is 4am GMT.

Should be good... i'm really kicking myself for not going this year. Even the practice sessions have been action packed, but if I was at the track I wouldn't be able to hear Murray Walker commentate on Aus TV. :D

Button is going to be under HUGE pressure at the start, he has two Renaults behind him and they are the fastest starting cars on the grid, and he's usually the slowest off the line. It's going to take a miracle for him to stay ahead into the first corner, but if he does that I think he's got a shot at the victory. The battle for the remaining points is also going to be exciting with so many teams being competitive, if I predicted the top 8 i'd probably get none right.

There's a new star over at Albert Park not racing in F1, but F3. Bruno Senna, nephew of the great champion won two races over the weekend. One was in the wet where he started 4th and overtook everyone else to get up to 1st before half a lap had ended, and finished the race with a massive gap between him and P2, definately Senna-like, he's one to watch in the future. Hope to see him in F1 one day!

Looking forward to the race now, go Webber and Fisi! :rock:

EDIT: What a joke, Webber had a HUGE chance at the win then. I hope he's signing that Renault 2007 contract right now.

Alonso FTW once again. He was the man today, not even Raikkönen could catch up with him. Pleasant surprise to see a Toyota on the podium, also.

Sucks to be Button. He's never been known to be the luckiest driver around, but come on... who breaks their engine in the last lap's last turn?

Hahahahaha @ Button.

Kimi was unlucky seeing as he had a damaged front wing for 1/3 of the race which allowed Alonso to get away, but he set the fastest lap of the race on the last lap. I definately believe Mclaren now have the fastest car, when the European season starts their car is getting another overhaul of improvements, even more than the one's that they had for this weekend.

Excellent race by Ralf as well, I was impressed, Toyota definately seem back on track again, good weekend for them.

What a hectic race.

Michael Shumacher is back... at least for one race. Not much of an exciting race overall, with the only pass of the day coming from Webber. Give that guy a Renault and he'd be fighting for the championship.

Quite a disappointment today from the McLaren's... it's really hard for me to cheer Raikkonen on when he churns out sub-standard performances like today. By his standards, I mean.

Next week at Spain is gonna be nuts. I expect a huge performance from Alonso.

Pure masterful performance by Michael, he chucked out some amazing lap times to jump Alonso, Ferrari are definately back.

Also well done to Massa he thoroughly deserved it.

Absolutely. Massa has loads and loads of potential. He's just had a lot of poor luck so far this season.

Two horse race for the WDC. Massa has a chance to catch up with Michael and Alonso, but it'll be tough. Fisi is useless, send him to Midland next year.

Still pissed off with Williams. 3/5 failures for Webbers car this year.

Was Monaco a joke or what?

It was pretty entertaining until Webber got screwed over with no blue flags for 5 laps, then his car exploded, then Kimi exploded and Alonso just walked away with it. Such a shame that cheatmacher managed to get points through other cars failing too.

What Schumacher did was just plain stupid. They should have disqualified him; it's just another proof that he's an arrogant, unfair jerk. Congrats to Montoya, I really hope he will win the next race as well.

What did he do, exactly? Could anyone fill me up on that?

Well apparently he wanted to show us some "F1 meets Hollywood" coolness but fucked up terribly because in the end he just constrained a couple of other drivers and was sent from pole to last row.

Anyway, you can read the story here

He fucking blocked the road intentionally so others wouln't beat his qualifying time. he's a weak dirty scoundrel.

He should have been disqualified and had points docked. There was no need for him to block the road, if he hadn't of done it he would have been on the front row with a chance of winning the race. But, no he has to try and cheat. I'm glad the marshalls did something about him though.

Good to see Coulthard get on the podium for Red Bull. No so sure about the cape though.

Have to disagree. Good on 'im. F1's boring as hell these days because no one (other than Schumacher) causes any controversy.
He tried to take out Damon Hill a few times, had the odd accident with the likes of Coulthard & Hakkinen and then there was Jerez '97 where he drove into Villienueve, not to mention the behind the scenes tactics ot Ferrari. So what?
Senna had his fair share of controversies too, no one seems to mention him taking out his team-mate or punching Eddie Irvine. There's been plenty other examples of this sort of thing throughout the history of F1 but these days everyone expects things to be 'by the book' and so on. The amount of team tactics and intentional blocking during the old style qualli sessions (the hour long format) happened all the time.
So what if he parked on the track? He didn't damage the car, yellow flags were out, no danger to anyone else. Deliberatley or not, it did seem like there was some understeer into the corner, he just seemed to exageratte it a bit more than neccecsary. The whole thing's been blown out of all proportion anyway purely because it was Schumacher who did it. Would anyone give a shit if Sato tried it? No.

Anyway, Silverstone now and my money's on Alonso. The Renault is just far superior to anything else, Raikonnen's qualified well but his reliability leaves a lot to be desired, Schumacher for second place, Massa or Fisi third. It'd be nice to Barricello get some points, just the BAR's seem to be lacking any real race pace.

Hah, Rubens was shit. Button was going forward and there was a chance for some points from Honda from him but alas. Mark Webber also continues his run of being the unluckiest driver in F1, being innocently taken out by Scott Speed and Ralf after a decent start.
He wouldn't do it, that's the point.

the first year i started watchin FL1, one driver struck to me: Mika Hakinen! i was a hakinen fan through that year and when i heard that he was leaving at the end of the year, i thought it was a lost to FL1. but when the iceman, kimi Raikonen came to FL1, i found my new driver and since then, for 4 years now, i have been watching Raikonen in the hopes that he takes his maclaren to the number one spot. he was this close to it the last 2 years and this year, it's too bad for him! i guess he's not going to be going after the 1st place anymore because his driving isn't as good enough as it was last year. his car limits him a lot and he can't do anything about it, hence what happened in monte carlo and made him lose 10 points!!!

Any live feeds for today's race (France)? My TV is being gay. ;_;

It's almost impossible to find live feeds of F1 races on the net, only once I found one and it was just qualifying. I'm out of this thread now to go watch it! Even though it's delayed by half an hour here.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Interne...VUPlayer.shtml

Should be on BBC; maybe you can receive any French TV channels as well, though I have never been able to.

Edit: It's on CCTV-5, so if you don't mind Chinese commentary, le voilà!

who could have imagined that Alonso and Ralph are going for 2 stops? I had my hopes that Raikonen was going for number 3 after alonso and ralph made their third stop but they didn't!!!

Williams are incompetent idiots. That's all i've got to add.

Word. I feel really bad for Webber, once again he showed that he's a great driver with the potential to be among the best, and his car lets him down.

Reminds me of Raikonen.

I swear, McLaren is such a shitty team now.

I can't wait till Kimi goes to Ferrari. He's going to wipe the fucking floor with everyone's faces.

Button owns his critics :rock:
He just wiped the floor with Liuzzis face. I thought it was Montoya the one going to NASCAR? Michaels performance was also embarassing.

Amazing race!

Jesus, Michael is a fucking dumbass. Alonso got out and he wanted too much, so he got out as well =/ I guess this was his last chance to attack Alonso, I am not sure whether he'll be able to attack again...

Man yesterdays race was great, the scrap between Alonso and Schumi was the best driving i've seen all season! Kinda wanted to see Schumi win but i'm glad Massa got his victory, he was flawless!

...wtf is up with the super aguri team!?

Well if anyone may be interested/didn't already hear Schumacher announced his retirement after Monza today, at the end of the season, i'm aware there's not the greatest interest in F1, but figured someone may find it interesting anyway, couldn't find any links for the press release though

Kimi has pretty much been confirmed and Schumie will retain some position in Ferrari afterwards

Great news for the integrity of the "sport"!

This is a sad day for the formula 1 world. It's a really sad day...but it's also the end of the myth of a legend!

Next week is going to be intense. What a season it would be is Schumacher is able to win the championship at the last event of the year. Its too bad mechanical failure last week screwed him over...

Its sad to see him leaving, especially so early (Ok, maybe not THAT early). Would be cool to see him win one last championship.

can't imagine the race season without shummi

Darn, I wish Schumacher had come back to win the championship, but alas, that wouldn't be the case. And too bad there won't be a next year for him.

What do you think he is going to do now? I mean in terms of getting his racing fix?

Gonna be strange without MS. Hate or love him, he had such a huge impact; hell, people who don't know what F1 is about at all at least know of Schumi.

Ah well. Next year should be neat; Spyker in the mix but with some crappy drivers, more Super Best Friends action, and Kimi to Ferrari...that should be good for him. Mclaren's piss poor reliability must have drove him nuts. I'll probably keep my eye on him.

Can't wait for Prodrive to get up in this :)

Hoping for good things from Red Bull with Renault engines, Adrian Newey and Mark Webber.