Toyota had their rear wings marked illegal by F1 Stewards due to too much flexibility

Who in their right minds would have bet their money on Brawn GP, a team which until a few weeks ago didnt exist, the erstwhile Honda team whose fate was uncertain after a disastrous season and on Jenson Button who has often been called just another British driver and has been thoroughly overshadowed by McLaren’s own Brit Lewis Hamilton.

Wee this Saturday at Melbourne was not the place to make informed guesses and preditctions, because things didnt go as expected. The McLarens and the Ferraris werent the forces to be reckoned with, but it was the Brawn GP car of Jenson Button which took the pole position. And as if that wasnt enough, forgotten Brazillian driver and Jenson Button’s teammate at Brawn GP Rubens Barrichello was 2nd and will accompany Button in the front row.

Sebastien Vettel was a cool third in his Red Bull Racing car. While Robert Kubica (whom i had considered a favorite) was only 4th fastest. The Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Raikkonen were 7th and 9th respectively. The McLarens were even more pathetic in 15th and 16th place with world champion Lewis Hamilton 16th.

Force India continued their dismal run despite more marketing efforts (that doesnt work, does it ?). Meanwhile Toyota were banned from the qualifying and relegated to last places after their wings were found to be too flexible. In a statement sent to use by their media team, they claimed :

Toyota Motorsport has been informed that the rear wing of the TF109 has been found to demonstrate “extreme flexibility” by the Australian Grand Prix stewards.

The design has passed our own internal test procedures which are designed to reproduce twice the proscribed official load tests. In light of this decision it is clear we must review these procedures to ensure there is no repeat of this situation and we will also review our production processes to ensure there is no variation between parts.

We naturally accept and respect the decision of the race stewards.

We intend to modify the components overnight and we are confident these modifications will not result in any performance drop.

2009 Australian Grand Prix Qualifying result :

Pos Driver Nationality Team Time

1. Jenson Button Britain Brawn GP-Mercedes 1:26.202

2. Rubens Barrichello Brazil Brawn GP-Mercedes 1:26.505

3. Sebastian Vettel Germany Red Bull-Renault 1:26.830

4. Robert Kubica Poland BMW Sauber 1:26.914

5. Nico Rosberg Germany Williams-Toyota 1:26.973

6. Timo Glock Germany Toyota 1:26.975

7. Felipe Massa Brazil Ferrari 1:27.033

8. Jarno Trulli Italy Toyota 1:27.127

9. Kimi Raikkonen Finland Ferrari 1:27.163

10. Mark Webber Australia Red Bull-Renault 1:27.246

11. Nick Heidfeld Germany BMW Sauber 1:25.504

12. Fernando Alonso Spain Renault 1:25.605

13. Kazuki Nakajima Japan Williams-Toyota 1:25.607

14. Heikki Kovalainen Finland McLaren-Mercedes 1:25.726

15. Lewis Hamilton Britain McLaren-Mercedes No Time

16. Sebastien Buemi Switzerland Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:26.508

17. Nelson Piquet Brazil Renault 1:26.598

18. Giancarlo Fisichella Italy Force India-Mercedes 1:26.677

19. Adrian Sutil Germany Force India-Mercedes 1:26.742

20. Sebastien Bourdais France Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:26.964

BMW Sauber though have emerged as a team that might be able to do it. Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica have been having one strong run after another in their BMW Sauber cars. They had 11 podium finishes in 2008 and their run in Canada 2008 was spectacular.

So can they go all the way in 2009 ?  , can BMW Sauber be a serious contender in the in the constructor’s championship which has so far been dominated by Ferrari and McLaren.

When asked this question the drivers expressed a little doubt (though it was coupled with hope).

“The ideal would be to fight for the championship to the end and achieve better results than this year, but it’s difficult to predict.
“Next year is a big challenge with so many changes to the regulations. You have to be lucky to get the right direction straight away.”

Robert Kubica said , he was third in the driver’s championship in 2008.

The main worry seems to be with the new Aerodynamic parts and regulations. Heidfeld was worried with the new front wings which have been widened in the 2009 season. He felt that the increase would lead to more accidents.

“I can imagine that now we will see many more touches,” the German Nick Heidfeld said

“Sitting inside the car, the driver cannot see the wing although, of course, you know it is there. However, in previous seasons, when you knew you could take a chance , now I think there will be more problems, especially at the start.”

I certainly feel that BMW Sauber have the stuff to win the championship, but the drivers do need to be a little more confident, dont they ?

Ferrari’s Felipe Massa silenced a lot of voices today at Bahrain by running an almost perfect race to clinch the 2008 Bahrain Grand Prix. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen was second. Lewis Hamilton finished outside the points and lost the championship lead due to it. The Pole on pole Robert Kubica was third for the BMW team.

Nick Heidfeld claimed a calm fourth place behind teammate Robert Kubica. Young Heikki Kovalainen got� McLaren F1 fifth place.

An interesting point in the race was when Lewis Hamilton ran into the back of Fernando Alonso, it made him pit and eventually this resulted in him being out of points. Some people say Fernando brake tested Lewis Hamilton, but i really dont think it was anything like that. I have seen the videos again and again and they look highly inconclusive. Later on Lewis Hamilton was apologetic to the McLaren F1 team :

“I am really disappointed and feel like I had let the team down”

“You need to pick up the pieces and then deliver points. I didn’t do that. The collision with Renault’s Fernando Alonso cost the race.” Lewis Hamilton said

Meanwhile my best moment of the race was when Force India formula one’s Giancarlo Fisichella held back Lewis Hamilton for 3 laps, closing the door on Lewis countless times. The Force India car does show a lot of promise and hopefully they will be getting some points this season. Giancarlo eventually finished 12th. The final classification was :

Race result of the formula one Bahrain Grand Prix 2008

1 Felipe Massa (Bra) Ferrari one hour 31 minutes 6.970 seconds
2 Kimi Raikkonen (Fin) Ferrari +3.339 secs
3 Robert Kubica (Pol) BMW Sauber +4.998
4 Nick Heidfeld (Ger) BMW Sauber +8.409
5 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) McLaren-Mercedes +26.789
6 Jarno Trulli (Ita) Toyota +41.314
7 Mark Webber (Aus) Red Bull-Renault +45.473
8 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Williams-Toyota +55.889
9 Timo Glock (Ger) Toyota +1:09.500
10 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Renault +1:17.181
11 Rubens Barrichello (Bra) Honda +1:17.862
12 Giancarlo Fisichella (Ita) Force India-Ferrari one lap behind
13 Lewis Hamilton (GB) McLaren-Mercedes one lap
14 Kazuki Nakajima (Jpn) Williams-Toyota one lap
15 Sebastien Bourdais (Fra) Toro Rosso-Ferrari one lap
16 Anthony Davidson (GB) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
17 Takuma Sato (Jpn) Super Aguri-Honda one lap
18 David Coulthard (GB) Red Bull-Renault one lap
19 Adrian Sutil (Ger) Force India-Ferrari two laps
R Nelson Piquet Jr (Brz) Renault 40 laps completed
R Jenson Button (GB) Honda 19 laps
R Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 0 laps

{c} BMW AG

Robert Kubica (POL) on pole celebrating.

Anyway the purpose of this post is to tell you its the first time there is a pole on pole and people have gone crazy with the pole on pole routine. Here are some pole on pole PJs

What do you call it when Kubica goes to visit Santa Claus at his home ?

A pole on pole

Why did one magnet try to get so close to the other ?

He wanted to be a pole on pole before Kubica

And what made Felipe Massa feel so bad in Bahrain today ?

A super cool pole on pole !

Best of luck for the race tomorrow to Robert Kubica ! May you be the first pole on pole to win from pole.

It was straight out of a well written movie script, in the recent races Ferrari had fallen far behind in terms of pace and till last race most people were wondering if this would be an all McLaren season. But thankfully, Ferrari regained form today scoring an impressive 1-2, with Kimi winning the race and Felipe Massa coming second. Lewis Hamilton of McLaren came third completing the top 3. The Ferraris completely dominated the race.

Another surprise was Jenson Button, he finally scored a point in the souped up Honda and thus put Honda on the leader board. Robert Kubica back from injury was an impressive fourth and Nick Heidfeld was fifth scoring two great finishes for the BMW Sauber formula one team.

Fernando Alonso who started 10th made his way upto 7th place. Hamilton now leads him by 14 points in the Driver’s championship.

Toyota’s Jarno Trulli was out on the first lap, but teammate Ralf Schumacher was able to salvage some pride for the Toyota team getting 10th place just 1 short of a point scoring position.

Final Result of the 2007 formula one French Grand Prix

1. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) Ferrari 1hr 30min 54.200
2. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Ferrari +00:02.414
3. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) McLaren-Mercedes 00:32.153
4. Robert Kubica (Poland) BMW Sauber 00:41.727
5. Nick Heidfeld (Germany) BMW Sauber 00:46.801
6. Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy) Renault 00:52.210
7. Fernando Alonso (Spain) McLaren-Mercedes 00:56.516
8. Jenson Button (Britain) Honda 00:58.885
9. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Williams-Toyota 01:08.505
10. Ralf Schumacher (Germany) Toyota 1 lap
11. Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Honda 1 lap
12. Mark Webber (Australia) RedBull – Renault 1 lap
13. David Coulthard (Britain) RedBull – Renault 1 lap
14. Alexander Wurz (Austria) Williams – Toyota 1 lap
15. Heikki Kovalainen (Finland) Renault 1 lap
16. Takuma Sato (Japan) Super Aguri-Honda 2 laps
17. Adrian Sutil (Germany) Spyker-Ferrari 2 laps
r. Scott Speed (U.S.) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 15 laps
r. Christijan Albers (Netherlands) Spyker-Ferrari 42 laps
r. Anthony Davidson (Britain) Super Aguri-Honda 69 laps
r. Jarno Trulli (Italy) Toyota 69 laps
r. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 70 laps

r = retired

Fastest Lap: Felipe Massa, 1:16.099, lap 42.

And this particular one cant be touched by them as its not their copyrighted footage. Robert Kubica had a lucky escape on Sunday as can easily be seen in the video. The crash was phenomenal. Thankfully no one got injured badly in the accident and there was no broken leg. The person in the white must have suffered a heart attack when Kubica’s car came crashing at the corner. Look how fast it came.