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Formula 1 2008: the season starts here
By Wolfie | January 18, 2008
And let’s hope its a better one that last year. While the racing was at least slightly better than in 2006, especially with Brit interest at a height with the amazing debut season of Lewis Hamilton, the whole sport became mired in what can only be called farce with the “Spygate” scandal involving McLaren and Ferrari.
This year, hopefully, the FIA will allow all of that to be laid to rest (they’ll have to think up some other ruse to make sure Ferrari win) and we can get on with some proper racing.
There’s been some moving about in the off-season; former champion Fernando Alonso has moved back to Renault - who had a bad season last year without him (and were also found guilty in the off-season of spying, but escaped punishment due to the inadequate nature of the FIA) but good things are promised for 2008. He swaps with Heikki Kovalainen who says that he expects to be treated as an equal to his new team-mate Hamilton at McLaren. Time will tell. Meanwhile Alonso is joined at Renault by Nelsinho Piquet - bringing back one of the all-time great racing names to the Formula One paddock. You can see the full drive line-up on the F1 site.
Not too many of the cars have shown their colours yet, but Hamilton’s been out in the new McLaren and says that “It was fantastic to get my hands on the MP4-23 this morning in Jerez” and he thinks good things will happen. Meanwhile, Alonso called his first drive of the Renault “encouraging”.
BMW Sauber have thrown down the gauntlet to the big two teams, saying that they “are confident we can turn the battle in front into a battle of more than two teams” and challenge for race wins. They scored points at every race last season, but were over 100 points behind false champions Ferrari at the end of the season. It remains to be seen whether they can really do it.
So as usual all the pre-season feather-ruffling is in full swing; lets hope that this year we get some decent races and honest results to bring some credibility back to the sport.
Disclaimer: All opinions in this blog are either my own or else they’re made up just to get a rise out of you and make you angry. Either way, they’re probably not very well thought out or expressed so do yourself a favour and don’t take the world so seriously.
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Subscribe by: Email or RSS :: Read more Howling at The Wolf's Howl @ BlogSpot :: Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. No reproduction without prior permission. :: Disclaimer: All opinions in this blog are either my own or completely made up; you decide.
:: Gareth had this to say:
People seem to forget that McLaren were also let off initially, until it was discovered that they had in fact lied to the FIA about who knew about the Ferrari data. Then they were hauled back to face the FIA and hit with that mega fine. I’m not sticking up for the FIA in any way, but everyone seems to forget about that.
Anyway looking forward to the coming season, I’m hoping for a big improvement from WilliamsF1. I’d love to see them consistently up at the front where they belong. They seemed to get their act together last year, and Nico Rosberg is definitely one of the future stars of F1. Fingers crossed they finish ahead of the Toyota team, who they get their engines off, again.
6:36 pm :: January 18th, 2008:: Wolfie had this to say:
@Gareth:
Depends whose version of events you believe as to whether McLaren lied to the FIA or just weren’t in full possession of all the information at the time. Whichever, let’s not forget that the real problem is the FIA; McLaren were hit with a huge fine and had all their points wiped out yet Renault, found guilty for pretty much the same offense but there was more evidence they actually used the technology they obtained, get no punishment at all. Ferrari ran an illegal car in the first race of the season and also got off scot free.
There’s much speculation as to why this unevenness exists - some reporters say that Moseley has got it in for Ron Dennis, some say that Ferrari have some sort of behind-the-scenes advantage. Personally, I just think that Moseley and Ecclestone have been so used to running F1 as their own little club for so many years that every now and again they like to rattle their sabres and remind everyone who’s really in charge!
12:05 am :: January 19th, 2008:: Peter Parker had this to say:
Formula1 McLaren had a bad 2007 season, It is good that FIA only took its constructor title of that season things might have been much worst if McLaren point has been striped the following year as well, we might have missed a really good team, Thank you.
10:21 am :: January 25th, 2008