f1

[43%burnt 0]

anyone else pumped for the new f1 season? it might actually be interesting this year compared to the previous ferrari dominated dynasty. a lot of driver movements. mclaren is super stacked in the driver seat and will be interesting to watch as long as their engines hold up this year. renault dumped a ton into their wind tunnel testing and alonso always looks like he can win a race. williams is kinda questionable with all new drivers (webber might suprise a little). red bull (jags) will probably lag, although i'd like to see cloutard do good. toyota needs to finally show up. sauber might be interesting just because of villeneuve (his testing so far has been the suck so far though). jordon will probably lag. and minardi might miss races (including the opener). i'm a huge honda guy, so i'm routing for bar all the way. since honda bought a big stake in the team, they have dumped tons and tons of cash into the team. they are in a win or go broke mode. the 007 looks freaking sexy too. their new gearbox sounds trick, and from what i've heard, they went all out on the engine. faster than last year's, but can hold up to the new standards inforced. button should rule, sato will too if he doesn't run into something or someone first (davidson should be driving). ....i'm rambling now. yeah, anyone else?

[gee2626 0]

i'm super stoked about the new f1 season

wish more races was in my time zone though... i hate watching races at 4 in the morning

[Sven 1]

Im German and i dont like at all !

[freq019 0]

Not sure if I like the new qualifying format. Looks like Renault is going to be strong this year, but its hard to tell with everyone else since that race was an anomaly of sorts. It will be interesting to see how the top teams do going in malaysia, that's the next race right?

edit: and what was up with the redbull's both cars in the points, was jag ever able to do that? I mean how close were jaguar before they pulled the plug and what caused the pretty solid performance this weekend.

[hunter4oz 0]

F-1 is great, and im pretty excited about the new season. i just wish they were more agressive with passing in the races it would make it more exciting

[43%burnt 0]

the new qualifing system is a little strage. i think it might be good for the most part, but this weekend's race showed its flaws when the weather took control. second day qualifying was almost pointless because no one could move up. teams like red bull got helped out by that. they are still a little suprising though. jaguar has been getting better the last few seasons, but this is a very good start for them. maybe its the new team boss or coulthard's experience, either way it looks good for them so far. bar/honda looked horrible this week....bummer.

[asdfa 0]

i completely dislike the whole 1 set of tires deal, it doesn't really even up the playing field, since weather can completely screw things up, also it makes pit strategy much less interesting. it also makes it really tough on the drivers, who might flatspot or get punted into the gravel or something totally by accident, it's nto really fair for them

[43%burnt 0]

i'm not a big fan of the tire thing either, but there is an exception to the rule. you are allowed to change one tire for any reason during the race. so if you do flat spot one or mess it up you're safe. the biggest rule change (the two weekend engines) will be the focus now with the next race. let's see who's engine will hold up. also there are a couple drivers who didn't finish the last lap of the race in order to take advantage of another rule loophole. if you don't finish the race, you can change engines for the next race. so drivers like schumy and the bar/honda guys didn't finish, since they weren't going to get any points anyway, to take advantage of that.

[asdfa 0]

i'm definately getting a lot more interested in f1 now, but some things are so confusing.. why is ferrrari using their 04 car? shouldn't they be trying to use their 05 car as much as possible to iron out the kinks?

also, what's with the viper wings that the Mclaren has? just extra downforce?

any predictions on the seasoN?

[43%burnt 0]

ferrari just isn't finished with development of the new chassis yet from what i've heard. since they've been dominating the previous few years, they felt they could get away with using '04s chassis and engine with '05 regulation specs. since barrichello finished on the podium, its not too bad of a choice. its funny because sauber are using the full '05 ferrari engines in their cars already. ferrari is letting them be the ginnee pigs i guess.

the viking wings are just another way of recovering lost downforce from the new regulations. mclaren just tried something more innovative instead of reworking the front wing.

[freq019 0]

yeah the tire thing kind of sucks but I've heard the tire guys talk and they say that the teams can make the tires last, they just choose not to in order to better other areas of the cars. You know you can make the car faster but you'll chew up rear tires for example, so now they have to balance it all out. If you looked at Fisi's car at the end his tires weren't all that bad off, but then again he wasn't really in the thick of things either. I wonder how reuben's tires looked at the end since he was fighting a bit more. It was kind of funny watching the pitstops because you have all these former tire changers just kind of sitting there wondering what to do :D

Predictions:

Renault will be strong but I don't know if they will upset the ferrari domination, if shumi had qualified higher we might be talking about ferrari domination again and could possibly not be as excited about the season. I'm a huge williams fan but I don't think they will make any headway this season, hopefully they will win a race or two but I don't see them competing for the title with two non-winning drivers. I think button will get his first win this season and hopefully bar will be strong but who knows what losing richards will mean. I think the maclarens will steal points from each other and they won't be as strong as people predict for that reason. Toyota, who knows, trulli really didn't do much to prove he's a fighter this weekend it looked like he gave up after a while there.

[Sven 1]

renault owned ferrari big time