Motor Sports February 2008

Back to the track

Total Sport previews what promises to be yet another action-packed year of F1 excitement on and off the track. Philip Moore reports.

What a Formula One season we have in store with new drivers, new rules, new tarmac and old-style petrol-head pride. Last year was a stormer – controversy, awesome racing and a championship that went down to the wire – but 2008 could eclipse it.

The 2008 Formula One season will even feature the first Grand Prix to be held under floodlights, in Singapore, a super sporting coup for the Asian republic.

Not that long after the lights are back on and we’ll be revving up for Abu Dhabi’s epic Grand Prix in 2009 – but let’s not jump the gun even though UAE airline Etihad has snared naming rights for the event and work on the facility is well ahead of schedule.

The 2008 campaign starts as usual in Melbourne on March 16, and concludes at Interlagos in Brazil in November 2.

Bahrain, third on the grid, showed last year that it has an excellent event on its hands. It was the year of the big crowds for the grand prix in the ‘Pearl of the Gulf’ so this year should be monstrous.

And Bahrain was a big winner when the FIA Gala Awards took place in Monaco at the end of 2007, with Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari’s boss Jean Todt both in attendance to collect their 2007 respective trophies. Bahrain International Circuit received the Centre of Excellence Award. The 1978 Formula One world champion Mario Andretti picked up the FIA Gold Medal.

F1 execs reckon the first nighttime grand prix will bring the sport to a whole new audience and we reckon they’re on the mark. Remember when the lights were turned on for night cricket?

The celebrated cat-fight featuring rookie Lewis Hamilton and then-world champ Fernando Alonso captured everyone’s attention. Maybe it was actually good for the sport, maybe not, but it attracted our attention like nothing in years.

A few vets won’t be out there this season. Alex Wurz has retired, while neither Ralf Schumacher nor Giancarlo Fisichella got the results last year so they’ve slipped away. The big move in seat-swapping was, of course, Alonso going home to Renault, scene of his mightiest triumphs.

But it’s the rookie who’s not going anywhere who is generating all the headlines. A couple of years ago who would have expected the name on everyone’s lips to be rookie Lewis Hamilton?

Despite Alonso heading ‘home’ there’ll be no easy ride for Lewis Hamilton this season with Heikki Kovalainen joining the team. He wants equal status, just like Alonso expected of Hamilton.

British Honda driver Jenson Button said at the recent Race of Champions event in Britain: “I’m sure Kovalainen is not interested in just finishing a few races in front - I’m sure he wants to go for the title. He won’t hold back just because he’s got Lewis as a team-mate. I think it’s good for both of them.”

Kovalainen signed for McLaren from Renault in what amounted to a straight swap for the double world champ Alonso. It certainly was a difficult season for Alonso with the Mercedes-powered F1 team.

Alonso had complained about McLaren’s policy of equal treatment for their two drivers; he expected No 1 status over his 22-year-old rookie team-mate.

Hamilton, who has been backed by McLaren for the past decade, is expected to lead the team’s 2008 challenge after winning four races and finishing overall runner-up by a single point to Ferrari’s brilliant Raikkonen. This correspondent did feel that young Kimi had a bit of potential when he did some hot laps with him at Dubai Autodrome four years ago!

Kovalainen had a patchier debut season with former champion Renault. He looked average in his first race but eventually out-drove experienced Italian team-mate Fisichella.

He was still surplus to requirements at Renault who opted to partner Alonso with Brazilian rookie Nelson Piquet son of one of the true greats. Isn’t that a name to savour!

Kovalainen says he expects equal treatment to Hamilton.
“One thing that I wanted to establish before signing was that I’d be treated equally,” he told BBC radio. “I think we can fight on the track as much as we can but off the track we can laugh about it.”
Let’s hope so. We’ll see. We should have a pretty good idea by the time the drivers line up in Bahrain.

There has been news galore leading up to 2008. Ferrari extended their contract with Felipe Massa until the end of the 2010 season. Spyker’s new owners, Indian businessman Vijay Mallya and Dutch entrepreneur Michiel Mol, confirmed they intend changing the team’s name to Force India for 2008.

The FIA plans to freeze engine development for 10 years from 2008.
BMW Sauber appointed Christoph Zimmermann as the team’s new chief designer.

Honda has won two prestigious prizes at the 2007 Green Awards.
Williams revealed that Nico Rosberg and former tester Kazuki Nakajima would race for the team in 2008. Reigning GP2 champion Timo Glock leaves BMW Sauber to join Toyota as a race driver for 2008.

As we told you several months ago, Toyota’s top brass has put the team on notice to get some results this season. We were told in Tokyo that Toyota wants at least one Grand Prix win this season and a batch of competitive finishes. Graham Rahal, son of ex-F1 driver and former Jaguar team principal Bobby, was announced as a driver for BMW Sauber at the team’s Pit Lane Park attraction in Las Vegas, USA.
Red Bull engineers are confident of overcoming the key reliability problems. Mark Webber was happy with his driving form but frustrated at the RB3’s habit of breaking down during races.

The Australian comprehensively out-qualified teammate David Coulthard but the Scot edged ahead in the points chase as finishing became a lottery for the pair.

Coulthard finished 10th in the championship and Webber 12th. Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has promised reliability will be the main target for 2008.

“We learnt many lessons during 2007 and obviously reliability is a key topic that the design and development groups are fully focused on,” Horner told the official F1 website.

With a stable driver line-up and former Honda technical chief Geoff Willis working with design guru Adrian Newey, Horner is confident the team has a good platform to build on its 2007 progress.

“For the first time in our short history, there is continuity within the design group, with our engine partner and with the drivers,” he said.
Meantime, the FIA requested that Renault appear before the World Motor Sport Council in December to answer allegations of unauthorised possession of confidential data belonging to McLaren.

Responding to the announcement, Renault confirmed an engineer, who joined from McLaren in September 2006, brought with him several computer discs containing technical spreadsheets and engineering drawings. The French team, however, maintained that the information was never used to influence the design of their car.

The FIA’s World Motor Sport Council decided not to impose a penalty on Renault after finding the team in breach of the International Sporting Code for possessing confidential technical information belonging to McLaren. The Council concluded that there was ‘insufficient evidence to establish that the information was used in such a way as to interfere with or to have an impact on the championship’.

And McLaren issued an apology after the FIA’s report into their 2008 car concluded that leaked Ferrari data had been more widely disseminated within the team than previously thought. McLaren also promised to halt development of systems that could have been inspired by the Ferrari information.

As a result, the WMSC canned a hearing into the report in 2008 and FIA president Max Mosley says he plans to draw a line under the whole ‘spy scandal’ affair. Ferrari accepted the decision, but said they will continue with existing legal actions.

In housekeeping news, the FIA has published a series of planned measures, designed to reduce costs within the sport. The plans, agreed by the World Motor Sport Council, include a variety of aerodynamic testing restrictions for this year.

After much speculation, it was confirmed that India will host a Grand Prix from 2010.

With two months to go before the start of the new season, new entrants Prodrive admit they will not be able to take up their place on the 2008 grid.