Australian GP 2007

[Sawtooth-spike]

cool, thans for that allan, i did not see that.

Those tyres must of been a mess by the end of his stint

[manchild]

Whenever someone here criticized Fisichella's poor performance in 2005 and 2006 that was defined as "bashing" and now Flavio does the same to Heikki. It was his first race in a car that is far from top 2 teams at the moment. When Fisichella was flying of track, spinning and making similar mistakes in previous seasons he was never treated like that by Flavio. What happened to team spirit and support in hard times?

Flavio quotes from autosport.com:

"Heikki's performance? I think everybody was watching on TV. I don't need to protect anybody. It was rubbish,"

"What can I say? If I tell you it was good, I am a complete idiot."

"We know the guy is good. Because his performance was so bad, it was not him. Maybe it was his brother. We will try to get the real Heikki for the next race."

"You need to be realistic: he did almost everything wrong."

Excuse me but at least one half of Fisichella's races from 2005 and 2006 were as Hekki's today but there was never a comment from team boss as harsh as this one. That kind of talk is completely counterproductive and can only make things worse for a young and let's face it - at the moment scared and disappointed Heikki. If Fisichella with years of experience can make identical mistakes without being bashed by Flavio than Hekki who had no F1 racing experience at all shouldn't be blamed even for things that have nothing to do with him.

I'm a team fan, not driver fan but I'm not hesitating to say that I get impression that Renault thought it will win in 2007 too with mild changes on the car. If it was logical that Bridgestone tyres would work better on no-keel front suspension than there was no reason to leave V keel. If Red Bull could change it than Renault could too. As things seam now, Renault is back in 2004 with Ferrari, Mclaren and even BMW in front of them without a chance for a title.

To back up my claims... if Fisichella did well today as Flavio said than best thing Heikki could do was to finish 6th, behind Fisichella and he finished 10th. So what? When Fisichella was finishing several places behind Alonso that was described as "good job", "did his best", "helped the team" etc.

Heikki did the same today so there is no reason to attack him. However, if Flavio actually though that Heikki should have finished in front of Fisichella than it means that once again Fisichella is expected to pick points and such driving has nothing to do with fight for championship like it had nothing to do with it in 2005 and 2006.

[FLC]

I could agree that Flavio was a little out of line with his comments on Heikki after the race. Maybe he knows something we dont.
Anyhow, I dont think we've seen such a bad race from any driver in recent years, and that includes Fisi's worst moments. Heikki was all over the place. There were moments during the race today when I tought Yuji was driving the Renault, with Heikki's helmet.

[Tp]

The decision-makers at Honda and Red Bull have embarked on their own two team strategy. They are aech doing in uniquely different ways, but in essence, each as an "A" team and a "B" team. It's a good strategy, that will benefit both teams in the long run. In fact, I applaud SA for taking what is basically last year's superb Honda and making it work well for them.
I just don't like the overall policy of working around the spirit of the rules, especially when it dilutes and hurts the efforts of teams like Spyker and Williams. These guys are the spirit and essence of real racing, where the little guys work so very hard,and spend a lot of money in the pursuit of true motorsport.
The other night I watched a weird thing on MTV, about some spoiled 16year old girl having her parents spend a small fortune on a "Sweet 16" party for her. She got all the attention, and wonderful gifts, but in the end, we all knew she hadn't earned anything, it had all been given to her.
Personally, although I really like DC, I don't want to see any success for Red Bull, STR, Honda, or SA. If this crap isn't curtailed, next year we could see a lot more teams doing the same crap, and in the end, the field will be filled by "A" teams, and "B" teams, and we would all be the poorer because of it.

I think there's two sides to the argument, first being the one you mentioned, that it is against the spirit of the sport. Teams like Williams and Spyker need the facilities, they have to design, to manufacture and to also have the team to carry this out. All of which requires a substantial amount of money and effort.....Or you can just buy previous proven front running car and race it.

The other side of the argument is that if you say 'OK, we'll stop this and have every team design and manufacture there own car.' But this is what we had before with Minardi and Jordan, they were so far off the pace they might as well not be there. They added little to the spectacle of the sport.

So isn't it better to have a grid where they're all more or less similarly paced?

But then we still have a problem. The spirit of F1 is still in jeopardy. So why not (pretty much similar to the idea of customer chassis teams scoring no points) have a different points system, to a degree where teams are massively encouraged to go to the effort to design/build/race their own car by receiving more points. Think about it, everyone wins.

[West]

I have to agree with Tp. Although people may not like customer chassis, what's the point of spending millions on a car that is probably going to finish dead last anyway? They never really get TV time... only except when they get into an accident, or if a front runner is going by. The lesser teams contribute almost nothing to the sport.

It's a hard decision; although the customer chassis issue defeats the purpose of developing and racing your car in a formula, teams aren't here just to run laps. The thing I believe that is killing the sport is the lack of competitiveness up and down the grid. That said, I think everybody here hit the nail on the head when they mentioned Super Aguri outpacing Spyker without having to spend as many millions.

That was the good thing about baseball... a team like the Marlins could win the World Series... the Expos were a contender too in the early 90's.

[manchild]

High res photos from Australian GP, loads of them

Just change number in URL after "diapo_". It starts with 101 and ends close to 700.

http://photos.racing-live.com/f1/photos ... po_101.jpg

[Tom]

Anthony Davidon will aparently spend the night in hospital after hurting his back in his incident with Adrian Sutil on the opening lap. He finished the race (his first finish in four attempts) after completing 56 laps in agony.

F1live.com says:

It is understood that Anthony Davidson, complaining of upper back pain after finishing the Australian Grand Prix, is still at The Alfred hospital in Melbourne following initial precautionary checks.

The Briton's Super Aguri Honda landed heavily after locking wheels with the Spyker Ferrari of fellow rookie Adrian Sutil early in the 58-lap Australian Grand Prix.

"The jolt also winded me a lot making talking on the radio difficult," he said in a post-race statement.


It is believed that Davidson had x-rays and could stay in hospital overnight, after he was taken out of the circuit on a stretcher and apparently in considerable pain with back muscle spasms.

Davidson ended the opening race of the season in 16th position, some 72 seconds ahead of Sutil.

E.A.
Source GMM

[Tom]

What did everyone think of the DC incident near the end?

[zenvision]

I think that for all the plaudits Raikkonen and Hamilton are getting, and rightly so mind, as one dominated the weekend with ease and the other battled with a world champion in his first race, Davidson should deserve as twice as plaudits. He wasn't racing for a big team, he wasn't racing for points; he was just racing for the team and it was clear that he was injured but still he carried on, and finished the race. Would in his place (last, no pressure whatsoever and injured), Raikkonen and co. kept on going? I don't think so.

[vyselegend]

you can add me too. Spyker are fighting like lions to try and do something good on their own. Not to mention their adversaries are a B-team of Honda, because this is legal, but this!?

It's not their car! would you applaud spyker if suddenly they ran a borrowed 248F1 succesfully?

Well funny then why Honda don't use their own car from 2006? Its not like Red Bull/STR where they were both given the same car with a different engine bolt onto the back and you have 4 new cars. Aguri got a old Honda, which logic dictates should be inferior to the cars that's made for 2007, adapted it to run on Bridgestone(and its not like they can transfer knowledge from an Arrows to a Honda for that front, and it wasn't like Honda last year was all that steller, sure it won Hungary, through pure lottery), and they even beat Honda's own effort for 2007. If anyone should complain, it should be Honda itself....

Admitting to Super Aguri having an advantage would be admitting to losing to a year old mid-fielder with your latest effort.....

You've got a couple of points I can't answear to. Why RA107 is that much crap is out of my reach. It should beat SA's updated RA106 you're right. It seems in recent history teams that have lost technical director are suffering for a season's time (appart maybe when MG left Renault). But it can't explain they got it that wrong!

SA on another hand are impressive, and did a great job with the old car, both drivers were good in qualy, all that shouldn't be retired to them.

But as I already said my point is the car they run is not their. They haven't desingned it, they were able to put all their efforts in the suspention adaptation for new tyres, while Spyker had to spend lot of money and efforts to fully construct a car.
They entered a championship because the rules allowed them to encounter fair competition, thus to hope for improving results and satisfy sponsors.
And now three team bend the rules, to leave them 2sec a lap behind. It's all about fairness, the lack of it that is.


Now about the race I must say well done to Mac Laren, Ferrari has the advantage, but Macca is on the pace, and both FA and LH were faultless.
Toyota performed better than expected finally. It was Honda who turned really bad.
Renault is a huge disapointment, even outpaced by BMW. Heikki drove a typical rookie race, while Hamilton was nearly perfect.
Giancarlo did a good job, but the car is surprisingly slow. I agree, manchild, it will be a 2004 like season ...

[Ciro Pabón]

Why does the news here say Davidson had an incident with Albers and not Sutil? Albers was the one that went out of the race, unless I'm mistaken... I did not see the incident, I arrived 22 minutes late to my house to watch the race (I had my own race to arrive to my home;)) and I guess I missed it. Did Principessa make an error? (it would be her first mistake... except for her choosing Tomba as partner Note to Tomba: that was a joke).

About Kovalainen, the commentators of the race down here said "he can use a particular racing line: he almost made his own track, by the many times he went off road"...

Thanks for your comment m3_lover: I tried to join to Quakenet, but the ping times were impossible: I couldn't download the room list and waited forever to join to the room f1technical. I even downloaded mIRC but it did not work... I wonder why. I tried every server on that net with every port to no avail. It says "Software not allowing connection" or something like that, even when I disconnected my firewall. I use IRC frequently with my Opera client (have I already recommended it? ). Does anybody have any idea what could it be?

Finally, did you notice that at podium Hamilton and Alonso, as everybody usually does, spilled their champagne bottles on the public? Meanwhile, Kimi opened it and took a long draught from it...

[allan]

I think those comments were "Typical" for a person like Flavio.
I don't wanna say anything else,because last time i was really pissed off with Flavio's comments on Massa, and said somethings i really regretted saying.. However, i completely support Heikki...I's his first race, right after he finished his first year in F1.. Do u expect him to win the championship right away??
I am actually speechless, the only thing i can say is GO HEIKKI GO!

[joseff]

I just read that only 3 drivers started on softs: Rubens, Heidfeld and Massa. Starting on softs only works in a Ferrari, apparently.

[ginsu]

Thoughts from the race:


I wonder what color Alex Wurz's coveralls are now.

Alex had his head six inches from getting cut off by a 1400 lb race car moving at 50+ mph! I'd say that was close, but it doesn't compare. When he watches the footage he might think twice about stepping back into a race car. I have never seen anybody that close to death!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHrlbiwTVSg

[pRo]

Heikki and Flavio are smart guys, both of them. What we get through the media isn't the truth, definitely not the whole truth and it may very well be nothing but the truth.

Heikki might've been a lot higher, if he was 0.2s faster in Q2. His mistake, no doubt about and he was the first to say it. But if Renault didn't have the mechanical issues they had, he would've gotten more tracktime. Which, on a track he's never been on, would've been very valuable. Worth the 0.2s? Who knows, we can only guess. But lets say it was and he made it into Q3. I think he would've easily been 8th, in front of the Toyotas. Maybe a place or two higher, but lets not go there, assume 8th. He probably wouldn't have tried too much from 8th, like he did now and chances are he would've finished right behind Fisichella. Which would've made him look good and Fisi bad.

Lots of ifs, I know, but something to think about. Lets just hope that Renault doesn't have mechanical issues in the fortcoming new tracks.


Also, Renault is supposed to have a good car and Fisi is supposed to be driving the best season ever. And they were over a minute slower?? Even half a minute to BMW on 4th. Good think that the other BMW and Ferrari had issues and couldn't run a normal race. If they did, the results would look very, VERY ugly for Renault.

I think they have issues in their car. More than we (or at least I) guessed from the winter testing. Or maybe I was just hoping they would've fixed them by now. If you were a newbie in a team which just won two championships, would you say to public that the car was bad?

Heikki is smarter than that.