2008 Formula One

So far in 2008 we have seven out of eighteen Grands Prix completed; the most recent being the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal. Defending world champion Kimi Räikkönen has been doing very well in 2008, but not the point leader. As of late I have had my eye on Lewis Hamilton, who has generally been doing very well and even became the point leader a while back at the close of the Monaco Grand Prix, wherein Räikkönen had a wreck that dropped him back to ninth place for the race. Going into the Grand Prix in Montreal, Hamilton held the pole position and was laying down some fast laps, but when the cars raced into the pits under caution early into the race there was an incident wherein Hamilton collided with the rear of Räikkönen's car, followed immediately by a collision from Nico Rosberg. The collisions took Hamilton and Räikkönen, at that point first and third place in the race, out of the event completely, and Hamilton and Rosberg will be penalized ten grid positions going into the French Grand Prix later this month.

Montreal has left Räikkönen in the number four spot in the points, as well as demoting Hamilton to number two behind new point leader Robert Kubica and tied with Felipe Massa.


In case anyone is unfamiliar with Formula One, think:

No, that isn't from a video game or computer-rendered image of any kind. That's an actual photo, despite the blurring of the ground.

Thats great dear. Racing is boring. I think so anyway.

I created a new board for sports, which includes racing, so I moved this there.

I wish it was in English and from the shots I saw on television days back, but this is the best I could find. It focuses on Hamilton's wreck at Montreal.

The French Gran Prix was earlier today. Kimi Räikkönen, last season's champion, held the pole position going into the race, and he also logged the fastest lap, as he so often does. Felipe Massa came out on top, putting him ahead in the points to stand as the current season leader. Räikkönen took the number two spot, so he currently stands third in overall points, though he may have been higher had Hamilton not wrecked him out of the race two weeks ago. Jarno Trulli took third (7th in points), Heikki Kovalainen took fourth (6th in points), Robert Kubica took fifth (dropped to second in points), Mark Webber scored sixth (8th in points), Nelson Piquet Jr. took a much-needed seventh (17th in points), and Fernando Alonso finished up the point-earners in eighth (9th in points).

Lewis Hamilton would have started in the third position at the starting grid, but because of his penalty for his blunder in Montreal he started in thirteenth and finished out the race in tenth, which earns zero points. This coupled with crashing himself out of the previous race has hurt him tremendously in overall points, but even so he continues holding strong in a respectable fourth with 38 points; ten points behind current leader Felipe Massa.

Interesting is Nelson Piquet Jr.'s scenario, as he was told prior to the French Gran Prix that he has three races to improve his standings or he can search for a new job. This season hasn't gone so well for him, with him ending up retiring from five races (today makes the eighth for the season) and only placing 11th and 15th in a couple events. Today he came in seventh, which is enough to gain points, and hopefully will help convince the sponsors and team management that he isn't worthless, but he still must perform decent enough in the next couple races if he wants to keep his job. It may not help that he is the son of three-time F1 champion Nelson Piquet, as he is likely expected to be walking in his father's footsteps.

Wow, you're holding down this fort single handedly, huh? Sounds like you really like racing. Come to think of it, since you have all those racing game photos in your Myspace and uploaded here and since you often have them in your "now playing" section, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

Well, I've loved playing the racing games for years now, but I'm more recently starting to follow it on television; Formula One, anyway. I just can't get into NASCAR.

We're coming up on the ninth round of the 2008 Formula One season, this time at the Silverstone Circuit at the little village of Silverstone, Great Britain. With just 2,000 people making Silverstone their home, the numbers explode when the Formula One race draws in over 100,000 visitors. They'll be flocking in this Sunday for the British Grand Prix kicking off at 1:00 PM there, which I believe is 8:00 AM EDT around here, but WVAH will be broadcasting it at 1:00 PM Sunday.

Be sure to check it out, folks.

Well, alright. Maybe I will give it a look. Looks like it's going to be on Fox tomorrow, so I will look into it. Can't promise I'll watch the whole thing.

That race will be on tv here in a few hours. I will be in the other room watching something else.

Wow, what a fantastic race that was. Heikki Kovalainen held the pole position going into the race and as always Kimi Räikkönen held the fastest lap, but Lewis Hamilton is back on top again after absolutely dominating the event right from the starting grid. Hamilton started out a few positions back but darted to the lead with great haste and held it through the entire race, finishing a full minute ahead of the second place driver. This victory puts Hamilton into a three-way tie for first with Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen, all tied at 48 points apiece. Unfortunate for Nelson Piquet Jr., whose career has been on the line in recent weeks, despite doing fairly well early on and looking to get back in good standings with the team management he ended up joining the ranks of seven total drivers retiring from the race.

Much of the reason this race was so interesting is that it was sheer chaos until right up about the very end on account of the rain that came and went during the Grand Prix. Remembering that this is a very technical sport and one that isn't afraid of wet weather, drivers are held to strict guidelines involving use of different compound tires, and rain that comes and goes makes it very difficult for race teams to make a call on what tires to use. Later we saw a few drivers make the change to the full wet tires and they saw a tremendous advantage of several seconds per lap as a result, but if the weather had reverted to dry and the track dried up a bit the wet tires would have made for a disadvantage. Regardless, repeatedly drivers spun out and slid off the road, taking several drivers out completely and shuffling driver positions throughout the event. Massa's overall point standings were hurt enough that Hamilton and Räikkönen were able to tie with him for first as a direct result of Massa being spun out on several occasions and ultimately placing thirteenth, the last to actually finish and a full two laps down, which scores zero points.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen. The driver to watch out for in 2008:

Sounds like you enjoyed the race Iceman.

I forgot to post an update as I've been busy the past several days.

This past Sunday was the German Gran Prix at the Hockenheimring circuit, which alternates every other year with the famous (or infamous) Nürburgring as Germany's host to Formula One. I've never raced at Hockenheimring in any of the racing games I've played, but from the looks of the course map it seems deliberately laid out counter-intuitively, kinda doing the opposite of what you might expect at different points along the course.


Lewis Hamilton again dominated the race and is again back on top in overall points for the season, again the 2008 season's leader. Last season's champion Kimi Räikkönen only placed sixth, but Felipe Massa landed third and thusly remains number two overall behind Hamilton. The thing that really stunned my wife and I, besides the fact that my wife actually watched the race with me, is that Nelson Piquet Jr. went from holding eighteenth place early on, and looking to be proving himself incapable of keeping his job, to finishing in second place. Piquet finished seventh in France, eleventh in Malaysia, and fifteenth in Turkey, and in six other races retired altogether, and only the seventh-place finish earned any points for him at all. He went from this poor racing season and holding a solid third-to-last place in the race to finishing in second. I was hoping he would do well enough to keep his job, but evidently God must have been rooting for him, too.

The Hungarian Grand Prix is coming up this weekend. The Hungaroring, near Budapest, is a very twisty course with sixteen turns and little chance for much speed or for passing.

so how come you can post several times in a row? is that not aloud? i thought boards hate people posting many times in a row

boomheadshot wrote:

so how come you can post several times in a row? is that not aloud? i thought boards hate people posting many times in a row

We're getting off-topic here, but I haven't specifically forbidden consecutively posting. I did forbid disruptive posting, which included posting the same thing several times consecutively, but that wasn't the same as consecutive posting.

If someone posts and then wants to add something a few minutes later, I would prefer that they simply edit their post, unless new posts have already followed. So, if for example you make a post and want to add another comment two minutes from now, if nobody has since posted after you then I would prefer that you just edit your previous post and add your new input to that.

However, if it has been some time since a previous thread post, like hours or days, then it's okay to add a new post immediately after your previous post if you wish, as I've done here. The reason is that adding the new post indicates new activity in the thread, which may be of interest to other members. If you just posted a few minutes ago, the thread already indicates recent activity, so an additional post only minutes later wouldn't change that, but adding a post hours or days later could be useful by showing that new content is added.

Today's Hungarian GP was pretty interesting, as there were a few surprise shake-ups. The McLaren-Mercedes team held both the top two starting spots with Lewis Hamilton in first on the pole and teammate Heikki Kovalainen in second, and Ferrari's Felipe Massa rounded out the top three. However, right from the start Massa darted around both Kovalainen and Hamilton to take first and keep it throughout the race, though with Hamilton holding a strong second place.

For many laps there appeared to be hope that Hamilton might be able to recapture first from Massa, but even after the first round of pit stops it just never quite happened. The first big shake-up came farther on when Hamilton suffered a flat front-left tire, for which he had to pit and fortunately was able to make it in, but unfortunately he lost the better part of a minute limping around on a busted tire. This knocked Hamilton back to the middle of the pack, but he managed to climb back up to sixth, unfortunately keeping him off the podium and threatening his spot as the season's points leader.

As Massa continued dominating the race, it appeared that his first-place finish would thrust him to the top of the points for the season, demoting Lewis Hamilton, but toward the end of the race Massa's lap pace seemed to be slowing a bit, and with just three laps to go his engine failed, knocking him out of the race completely, scoring him zero points and taking away his challenge to Hamilton's leadership in this season's point standings. This also promoted all other cars up one spot, moving Hamilton to fifth and promoting Kovalainen to first place.

A big surprise was Timo Glock taking second place, since he had only once scored points this year before today's GP, and this is following a terrible wreck just two weeks earlier at Hockenheim in which he lost a wheel and slid backwards into a wall, spraying parts and debris everywhere. Between his wreck two weeks ago and the GP today in Hungary, he also suffered a bout of food poisoning, so his luck has improved quite a bit this weekend. Nelson Piquet Jr., who I've often mentioned because of his career being on the line, managed to finish in the points today with a respectable sixth-place finish, following his surprise second-place finish just two weeks ago, so hopefully for him the Renault team may be convinced that he still has some game left in him.

Kimi Räikkönen, last season's champion (by a single point over Hamilton) rounded out the podium in third, promoting him to number two in the points only five points behind Hamilton, although Hamilton would have held a slightly larger lead over Räikkönen had he not suffered the busted tire today. Felipe Massa, who would have bumped Hamilton for the number one spot now sits at number three in the points, and despite Heikki Kovalainen's first-place finish he still sits back at sixth in overall points.

After three weeks, it's finally race weekend again. This time Formula One is going to a brand new circuit, the Valencia Street Circuit, which just opened this year and is completely unfamiliar to all Formula One drivers and teams. This means everyone is learning the course with varying degrees of success, and so far as of Friday practice the Ferraris have done very well and the McLarens have lagged behind a few positions in terms of who has recorded fastest laps. The race on Sunday should be interesting, considering that it is virgin territory for everybody involved.

The 3.38-mile Valencia Street Circuit, in Valencia, Spain, has no fewer than twenty-five turns, as well as a span across a bridge. From the sounds of discussion, the bridge has been of some concern to the racing teams who evidently feel that the transition onto and again off from the bridge may cause some issues for the drivers, but as the commentators were mentioning the drivers regularly transition onto and off of berm all the time and should have no trouble dealing with the bridge.

I didn't even bother following up on the Valencia race a couple weeks ago. The course just didn't make for an interesting race. We had some incidents happen in the pits, but an entire GP's excitement shouldn't be exclusive to pit lane. Valencia is a pretty place for a race, but not a good race course.

Fortunately, that's being followed up here in four hours (I think, give or take) by the Belgian Grand Prix taking place at the favorite Spa-Francorchamps circuit. Even Saturday's qualifying was more exciting to watch than the previous event at Valencia, and this is bound to be a great race. Qualifying was an interesting battle between the McLaren and Ferrari teams and their drivers, all four fighting tooth-and-nail for pole. In the end, Lewis Hamilton landed pole position, followed by his talented and capable rival Felipe Massa, Hamilton's teammate Heikki Kovalainen took third after an impressive run, and Massa's teammate and former world champion Kimi Räikkönen landed fourth. An early surprise in the first round of qualifying came when Sebastien Bourdais jumped thirteen places when he set a shocking fastest lap, only to finish with the ninth-fastest lap (out of ten drivers) in the third and final round of qualifying.

Here, I'll let two-time champion Fernando Alonso take you on a lap or so around Spa-Francorchamps from 2007.

Wow, Spa-Francorchamps didn't disappoint! This was a fantastic race from start to finish, and I sent it at the edge of my seat.

Heikki Kovalainen fowled during the first lap of the race, spinning another driver completely around (I forget which one) and ended up dropping about ten places. He regained some positions, but as a penalty had to do a drive-through of pit lane without actually pitting, causing him to lose positions again. This was from third place on the starting grid.

Lewis Hamilton, starting on pole, spun around in lap two, giving ground to reigning champion Kimi Räikkönen who took the lead and held it through the race. Räikkönen has won at Spa during the past few seasons and dominated again in 2008. However, Hamilton fought him tooth-and-nail during every second of the Grand Prix. During the final few laps, with rain starting to show its face as a wild card to mess things up for everyone, Hamilton managed to close the gap behind Räikkönen and battled to reclaim first place.

This battle involved an incident wherein he ended up pinched between Räikkönen and the edge of the track in the middle of a chicane, leaving Hamilton running off the track and cutting across the chicane. Hamilton gained position from this, but gave it back to Räikkönen. He then passed Räikkönen legitimately in a straight stretch. Räikkönen then clipped the rear end of Hamilton's car going into the next curve, but neither car wrecked as a result and Hamilton held his lead. With the track getting slick and the cars driving on the wrong tires for wet road conditions, Hamilton ended up into the grass, but saved the spin and recovered on track behind Räikkönen, who then himself spun out into the grass and recovered behind Hamilton. Kimi Räikkönen tried to catch up with Hamilton but again spun out, this time going hard into the wall and being out of the race completely. Felipe Massa then claimed second place, after spending the race several seconds behind teammate Kimi Räikkönen.

After this amazing race and exciting finish, I later learned that the FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile) later decided to penalize Lewis Hamilton for cutting across the chicane, penalizing him with twenty-five seconds, knocking him back to third place and putting Ferrari's Felipe Massa in first place, although other drivers have historically not been penalized for this. In fact, Formula One drivers often accidentally go off the track without any sort of penalty from the FIA at all. This has outraged many F1 fans, even including Ferrari fans who stood to gain from the FIA's decision. McLaren is appealing the FIA's decision.

You can view a video of the race's climax below. Unfortunately, it's not a good quality video, as it was recorded off someone's television screen, and the volume is a bit low so you'll need to turn your speakers up.



There is a petition going around the Internet regarding the Lewis Hamilton penalty. This petition is contesting it and calling for it to be reversed. Please sign it and send it to friends and family to sign as well, as hopefully you can see that this is a grave injustice toward the McLaren team and obvious bias from the FIA.

petition:

Ice I think you are right. I see what you mean about that being an unfair call. I don't get into F1, but I hope that works out for you. The appeal, I mean. I hope Mclaren wins it.

Hey, at the start of that video it tells how many stops people have. I assume that is pit stops, yes? If so, why does that matter? If not, what else is it?

Sam Dalton wrote:

Hey, at the start of that video it tells how many stops people have. I assume that is pit stops, yes? If so, why does that matter? If not, what else is it?

Yes, those are pit stops. The reason that they matter is that, like with everything in Formula One, there is a lot of strategy that comes into play with pit stops. Different teams use different pit stop strategies, typically revolving around fuel loads. A team using a strategy with more stops means that they carry less fuel than cars making fewer stops, meaning they are lighter and have a bit of a speed advantage, but the down-side is that they have to kill more time in the pit lane.

Positions shuffle whenever cars have to pit. If you see a driver that's typically up front but is now farther back, their number of stops can provide some explanation for why, because he might have recently pitted and rejoined a few positions farther back from where he was before pitting. The number of stops the guys in front come into play there because if they still need to pit it means the guy that has already pitted will likely regain lost positions when the guys ahead make their stop.

How often and when drivers pit can be important if weather is changing. For example, in the recent race at Spa, rain was expected toward the end of the race. It came a bit later than predicted, but came during the last few laps. Rain changes everything, causing real problems for drivers on intermediate tires and especially for guys on "slicks". Indeed, there were several spin-outs at the end of the race, including Kimi Räikkönen going from second place into a wall and crashing out completely. Drivers nearing the end of the race and expecting to pit were hoping the weather would change in time for their stop so they can proceed with a tire change, but it didn't change and they stayed with dry-weather tires. Had the weather changed in time for those late-race pit stops, those drivers would come out with an advantage over the guys that pitted earlier and were running on dry-weather tires.

Well, qualifying for the race in Monza was upsetting, but definitely interesting. The top three drivers did terribly, and Kimi Räikkönen and Lewis Hamilton got no further than fourteenth and fifteenth respectively going into tomorrow's Grand Prix. Felipe Massa didn't do much better, and barely limped into the third round of qualifying, finishing in 10th at the end of Q2. Making it into Q3 gave Massa a chance at getting a higher starting position, and he did, but still only sixth. Then Hamilton's teammate Heikki Kovalainen did an amazing job in all three rounds and ultimately placed second on the starting grid for tomorrow. A huge surprise was Sebastian Vettel taking pole, doing so as the youngest driver ever to do so in Formula One, not to mention team Toro Rosso outperforming their parent team Red Bull.

The problem and the thing that threw everything into disarray was the heavy rain. The cars are to be set up as they will be tomorrow on race day, so evidently the teams are expecting dry weather and set up the cars accordingly, with smaller rear wings to reduce drag, but meaning lower down-force and poorer grip. What killed Lewis Hamilton was a choice to go to intermediate tires into Q2, only for the track to be far too wet for intermediate tires, and though they went back to the full wet tires it was too late and the track got wetter again, ruining any real chance of getting a respectable lap time.

Lewis Hamilton has lead the season and was looking to still have a serious chance at being champion, but the fiasco last weekend left him limping only two points ahead of Massa, and now Massa is sure to pass Hamilton in the points unless something miraculous happens Sunday. Massa is starting in sixth, which would already be in points at the end of the race even if he gained no further positions, and puts him close enough to the lead to realistically take it, while Hamilton starts back in fifteenth and has no real shot of making it to a high point-paying position, and maybe not even into the top eight at all.

Especially if the weather dries up Sunday, Massa really should take the lead and score ten points, taking his total to 84, and if Hamilton can't make it into the top eight then he would remain with a total of 76 points, eight behind Massa. Hamilton would have to magically climb from fifteenth to second just to tie with Massa, if Massa indeed finishes in first. This is a disappointment to me because Hamilton's my guy. However, anything can happen, and Massa could even wreck out completely or rain could come into play again tomorrow and hinder Massa, as the Ferraris seem to be much poorer in wet weather than are the McLarens.

Wow, what a terrific race again from Monza. Hamilton again shown that he's an outstanding driver, starting from fifteenth and working his way to second. Unfortunately, Hamilton ended up making a second pit stop that he otherwise would not have had to make, going for a change of tires from wets to intermediates because rain that was expected to show up didn't show up. Had the rain came, he would have been able to stay in second, or even take first. Following the second stop he ultimately finished in seventh, earning two points for the race. Felipe Massa, a huge threat to his season point standings, finished in sixth, the same position he started from, earning three points for the race but still leaving him one point behind Hamilton overall. Now, if McLaren wins their appeal regarding Spa, Hamilton will broaden that hair-thin lead a bit.

Sebastian Vettel held the race lead and done so beautifully, taking first place and making a historic victory in the process, being the youngest polesitter and youngest race winner ever. Heikki Kovalainen finished in second, where he started, and Kimi Räikkönen climbed only as far as ninth from fourteenth and struggled to get anywhere during the entire Grand Prix. This has been a good weekend for McLaren with their drivers finishing in second and seventh, while rival Ferrari finished in sixth and ninth, closing the gap in the constructors' championship with Ferrari ahead by just five points, 134 to 129.

So I was wondering which was bigger, NASCAR or Formula 1. I know lots of people that love NASCAR, but you are the only one I know that loves Formula 1. I was reading that Formula 1 has 580 million viewers worldwide, and that was 2.5 years ago so it's probably more today, while NASCAR has just 75 million in the US and virtually nothing anywhere else. In 2006 the Formula 1 race in Brazil had an average of 83 million viewers watching it live and 154 million watching at least some portion of the live coverage, and that don't even count folks that watched a delayed taping or were Formula 1 fans that simply didn't catch it.