Fun F1

Toyota F1 President John Howett has said some ridiculous things to German magazine Sport Bild.

First of all he has claimed that Nick Heidfeld only belongs in F1’s “upper midfield”. Umm.. were you watching the recent races John? Nick has been knocking on the door of the top 3 for a long time now and cracked it the last time out. I’d call that top of the field, not “upper midfield”.

Could it be that John is badmouthing Nick to lower his asking price so that Toyota can make an offer?

Furthermore John has claimed that changing the Toyota driver line up wouldn’t improve things at Toyota. Ok, Jarno Trulli is doing an oookkkaaayyy job but Ralf Schumacher..!? Jarno Trulli is an ok number 2 driver, but Ralf is so bad you couldn’t even call him a number 3 driver! He’d be like a number 8 driver or something.. Although probably not 8 because many people find 8 lucky and Ralf is definitely not lucky with his tendency to end up in accidents.

If this is Toyota logic then here’s hoping Nick stays at BMW.

Mark Webber often doesn’t get to say much to the media other than things like “it’s not bl**dy good enough” when his car fails to finish almost every race. However, he recently made a very smart and constructive comment regarding holding an F1 race at night.

He raised the question of safety when it rains at night. I must admit, that’s something we didn’t even think of – and we love to be the devil’s advocate

Webber said:

It has never been done before, so how do we know? … I have raced a sports car in Le Mans so I have driven at night – even in wet conditions – and that was fine.

But what we don’t know is a situation where a massive amount of lighting is being beamed onto the circuit through rain and spray. So the lights are above the spray- we are under the spray – how does that work for us? We think that this creates a difficult situation – we think, but we don’t know.

A Grand Prix held in dry, perfect conditions and if the track is lit up like daytime, maybe the event could run well. But there is the million dollar question that we don’t know – what happens if it rains?

This is the sort of thing we want to hear come out of Mark’s mouth. Too many times we only hear his frustrations (which are valid but…). So good job Mark!

In Bahrain, Giancarlo Fisichella was asked when he’ll retire from Formula One. His answer is a really messed up way of thinking if you ask me.

He stated that he wants to stay in F1 until he beats the record for the most number of Grand Prix starts. The record is currently held by Riccardo Patrese, who started 257 Grand Prix. Fisichella has so far only completed 181 Grand Prix.

I want to beat the world record before I consider leaving the circuit.

If there continues to be 17 races per season in Formula One, that means Giancarlo wants to race until at least 2011! Even funnier is the fact that he wants to stay with Renault for the rest of his F1 career. I’m sure Nelson Piquet Jr might have something to say about that!

Seriously though, Giancarlo should be focusing on wins and not on how many GPs he’s been in. If that’s the sort of record he’s after he should stop being a seat warmer and make way for a new talent (we’re going to need it if Lewis Hamilton keeps this up ).

What do you guys think? Will we ever have a wet Bahrain Grand Prix?

The Bahrain Grand Prix was yet another fantastic result for the Championship. It was quite exciting to watch too, with most drivers finding the dusty conditions extremely difficult. It was so sandy you would have thought it was a beach event!

David Coulthard – Was on track to win the race until… Seriously, this was a great drive from the old man, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who was waiting for the time bomb to go off. And of course Mark Webber’s car broke down too in sympathy

Nick Heidfeld – We’ve always liked Nick here, but it just occurred to me that you need to put this guy on 1 year contracts because when his contract is coming to an end, he’s goes from being Quick Nick to just really Quick

Felipe Massa – Really showed Kimi up this time. Top job.

Lewis Hamilton – Wow. The only bad thing about this guy is how much the UK media is hyping him up. I remember them doing a similar thing for a certain Jenson Button… I mean we don’t really care if he’s the first rookie to be on the podium in his first 3 races do we? Jacques Villeneuve had an amazing debut in F1 too but where did he end up? When he wins races we’ll stand up, when he wins the championship we’ll bow down (and yes, could be this season too)

Fernando Alonso – Quite possibly one of his worst performances in.. well.. forever? To be fair though, the guy is so good that we’re always shocked when he’s not on the podium.

Kimi Raikkonen – No excuses really. At least Fernando can use the excuse that McLaren isn’t as fast as Ferrari yet. Could turn out to be a smart drive though because the conditions were very dangerous in Bahrain and Kimi did close on the Championship.

Robert Kubica – Methinks this might be the guy who goes to Toyota next year, not Nick.. Either Toyota or the unemployment line..

Williams Drivers – If these guys spent as much time on the track as they did off it they probably would have beat the Renaults..