Rediscover Formula One

Well Honda’s (Nick Fry ?) arrogance to selling the team combined with a financial crunch has helped reduce the grid by 2 cars. The Super Aguri team were not allowed to access the Istanbul track facilities quite embarrassingly with the team and trucks being turned away as i have heard.

A while ago there was talk of Spice Energy buying the team given the condition that Indian drivers be given a chance. At that time super egoistic Nick Fry had rubbished the condition and now he has infact rubbished the team which was looking more promising than Honda’s own team. The statement from the team read ::

“We find it difficult to establish a way to continue the activities within the environment surrounding F-1 and as a result Super Aguri have concluded to withdraw from the championship”

Magma group of Dubai and Weigl AG also couldn’t save the ailing team in last-minute efforts.

Aguri Suzuki who was a racer himself had the following to say :

“Super Aguri will be ceasing its racing activities as of today,”

“It had always been my dream to be a Formula One owner. The past two and a half years have flown past but I have no regrets.”

“Magma pulled out suddenly, and without any explanation, and since then I have been flying all over the world talking to other companies but was unable to secure a deal.

“Financially it was just impossible to continue in F1 with the enormous budgets needed today. We did reach a basic agreement with Weigl but were always battling against time.”

He also criticised Nick Fry :

“I don’t understand how suddenly Nick Fry needs to be commenting on everything,” said Suzuki.

“Honda were our backers and he’s not the CEO of Honda. I have no interest in Nick Fry whatsoever and have no idea what he was talking about.”

The references are to Nick Fry’s criticism of all companies which tried to save Super Aguri, its also rumoured that it was Nick Fry who had told the FIA that Super Aguri will no longer participate in formula one.

The withdrawal leaves the future of Anthony Davidson and Takuma Sato uncertain.

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

Ferrari came back with a bang this weekend bagging a cool 1-2 to get back into the game. Felipe Massa got the pole position with Kimi Raikkonen coming in behind his teammate.

Meanwhile McLaren on the other hand had a super bad session with both of its drivers being penalised for impeding other cars. Heiki Kovalainen was penalised for impeding Fernando Alonso’s Renault and Lewis Hamilton was penalised for impeding Nick Heidfeld’s BMW. Heidfeld was pretty open in his criticism of Lewis Hamilton , after hearing McLaren’s argument that they did the best they could, he had this to say to them :

“If they did the best that they could do, they didn’t do very well.”

“I was approaching my last lap on the option tyre and it would have been my quickest lap if not for the McLarens driving in the middle of the racing line at 80kmph.”  Heidfeld said

Earlier the FIA had released a statement that the McLarens were running slowly on the racing lines while other cars were on their flying laps and thats why they had been penalised.

As far as Force India goes, the difference between Sutil’s and Fisichella’s class was apparent, Fisichella clocked approximately one second faster that his teammate, Vijay Mallya’s decision to hire Giancarlo Fisichella seems to be a good one now.

The starting grid after the various disqualifications was :

I had an exam today, so was really divided on whether to watch the Qualifying or not, but better sense prevailed and i watched it anyway. Ferrari bombed big-time with Kimi facing problems early on in his qualifying and having to settle for a dismal 16 – the topmost position in the Q1 qualifying session. Kimi’s car got stuck in the 1st session and hence could not compete further due to qualifying rules.

It was a different story for Lewis Hamilton though, his car was faster than Felipe’s Ferrari by a good margin. Robert Kubica qualified second for the BMW team while Lewis’s teammate will start right behind Lewis on the grid in the race as he qualified in third place.

Toyota did well to get 6th and 9th place for Trulli and Glock respectively. It was a good session for them.

Force India was as expected towards the bottom, Fisichella managed to beat a Torro Rosso alongwith 2 Super Aguris, and got 17th place.

1. Lewis Hamilton Britain McLaren-Mercedes 1:26.714

2. Robert Kubica Poland BMW Sauber 1:26.869

3. Heikki Kovalainen Finland McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.079

4. Felipe Massa Brazil Ferrari 1:27.178

5. Nick Heidfeld Germany BMW Sauber 1:27.236

6. Jarno Trulli Italy Toyota 1:28.527

7. Nico Rosberg Germany Williams-Toyota 1:28.687

8. David Coulthard Britain Red Bull-Renault 1:29.041

9. Timo Glock Germany Toyota 1:29.593

10. Sebastian Vettel Germany Toro Rosso-Ferrari No Time

11. Rubens Barrichello Brazil Honda 1:26.173

12. Fernando Alonso Spain Renault 1:26.188

13. Jenson Button Britain Honda 1:26.259

14. Kazuki Nakajima Japan Williams-Toyota 1:26.413

15. Mark Webber Australia Red Bull-Renault No Time

16. Kimi Raikkonen Finland Ferrari No Time

17. Giancarlo Fisichella Italy Force India-Ferrari 1:27.207

18. Sebastien Bourdais France Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:27.446

19. Adrian Sutil Germany Force India-Ferrari 1:27.859

20. Takuma Sato Japan Super Aguri-Honda 1:28.208

21. Nelson Piquet Brazil Renault 1:28.330

22. Anthony Davidson Super Super Aguri-Honda 1:29.059

Another Indian formula one team ? , it might not be true after all. Nick Fry had claimed that having Narain onboard would not be so great for the Super Aguri team. Nick Fry who i respected a lot earlier arrogantly claimed that Narain will not be a good standard to work with.

“I would not personally be convinced that Karthikeyan would be of an acceptable standard for us” Nick Fry was quoted.

Meanwhile Spice Energy who is in talks to buyout the team has rebutted Fry’s claims and made it clear the only reason it wants to invest in a formula one team is to give Indian formula one drivers a chance at formula one and who better they say than Narain Karthikeyan who had impressed many with his gutsy driving in the Jordans. Anyway i am not so sure if its a good idea to support an Indian driver by buying a team, but i also disagree with Fry’s baseless comments. Narain has a lot of formula one experience in him especially testing which would make his feedback pretty good. Also Fry should be looking to give some Honda race experience to the Super Aguri drivers as they are ‘pretty good’ in his opinion. Oh wait, i forgot, they kicked Honda butts in Super Aguris, i guess thats the reason Fry thinks they are so good (maybe a nice look at the two cars would do the trick for him and tell him that Honda’s cars are pretty bad and that its not the Aguri drivers who are topshot).

Statement by Spice Energy :

“To begin with, the discussions are at a very preliminary stage.

Right now they are centred on commercial feasibility. But our main mission is to support Indian drivers and give Narain the opportunity to drive in F1 again,”

“So you can say the deal is contingent on this condition,” Spokesperson for Spice Energy Neha Rastogi said

With truckloads of money in the bank and a super booming economy, Indian companies will be more than willing to support any Indian F1 prospects and having an Indian Driver will obviously make more commercial sense too. If Spice Energy buys Super Aguri it would pay about 66 million USD plus a dollar (token amount). The 66 million will be used to write off the huge debt that the Super Aguri team is already in.