It was crazy enough idea 2 or so years back when Superi Aguri got conceived in order to keep Taku Sato in F1. I am a fan of Sato and I am glad he is still around and his move on Alonso last year was awesome. But still, the idea to create a multimillion dollar company for the sake of keeping one driver in F1 does sound crazy, right ?

This madness has proven to be contaigeous ! It has spread to India and another consortium around the Spice Group has openly admitted that the only purpose of their possible purchase of or investment to Super Aguri is to provide a race drive for Narain Karthikeyan …

Neha Rastogi, spokesman for the Spice Group:

“The discussions right now 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.”

People, please get real … Throw your money into F1 if that is what makes you feel good. But please choose the drivers based their skills …

F1Wolf

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Until now it was not very clear from the 2008 F1 Sporting Regulations how would the race weekend in Singapore look. All that we knew was the race will start at 8pm. Now FIA has confirmed the schedule for practice and qualifying sessions too:

Friday
16:00 - 17:30 Practice Session 1
20:00 - 21:30 Practice Session 2

Saturday
17:00 - 18:00 Practice Session 3
20:00 - 21:00 Qualifying Session

Sunday
20:00 Race

The news F1Wolf has been receiving from the special envoy posted there also confirm the worst fears. Besides being the street race there also other similarities with Monaco. Prices of hotels are through the roof and the same can be said about the tickets. Well, I have to speed up the contributions to my piggy bank massively.

The full 2008 Formula One World Championship timetable is inside the article:

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F1Wolf

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This week has been mostly about Honda, thanks to their car launch. Super Aguri also made it to the news thanks to Max Mosley’s doubts about their future. Now the strong words from Honda, namely from Nick Fry (to Reuters) only add to Super Aguri woes:

“The intent for 2008 is that Aguri will be on the grid but clearly what Ross (Brawn) and I need to do, and are doing, is ensure that doesn’t detract from our primary job. At this stage, the intent is that they will be on the grid with Honda engines and support. Exactly how much of that support comes from here is being worked on at the moment. I would not personally be convinced that the driver you mentioned would be of an acceptable standard for us.”

Nick Fry went on to point out that Anthony Davidson is the driver of the appropriate standard.

The driver Reuters mentioned is Narain Karthikeyan. His name came up in connection with Indian telecom company Spice Group. Spice Group is said to be one of the parties in talks with Super Aguri over funding or investment.

Now this is not an easy situation for Super Aguri. Paid drivers have been source of funds for the cash strapped teams for years. And the race seat may be the only thing thatSuper Aguri has to offer at the moment. On the other hand, while they may struggle without new funds coming in, they would surely go down and under and out of business should Honda pull the plug. Super Aguri simply can’t afford to go against Honda’s wishes…

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F1Wolf

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The new Honda did some track mileage last week in Valencia. Today the official unveiling took part in Honda’s F1 headquarters in Brackley. Altgough no longer carrying the weight of the entire globe, the new mostly white Honda RA108 is also “green” with myearthdream message all over the chassis.

The new Honda livery is what kept the fans guessing for a while, but for Honda the performance of their 2008 challenger is what matters the most. Especially after the dismal 2007 season with their dog of a car (poor retired RA107). This is what Ross Brawn had to say about the car the team unveiled today:

“The difficulty with last year’s car was that it produced a lot of downforce but it was in a very aggressive way. The focus on this car has been to make sure we produce the aero downforce in a more friendly way, a more usable way. We have also slimmed down the chassis, changed some of the layout for the car to give it more potential, particularly with aero development in the future, because it is going to be a very intensive season of development for us. There are a lot of new ideas, and we wanted a car that could accept a wide variety of changes through the season.
The car you see here is very much a base spec, which was established back in October/November and you will see over the next few months before we get to Melbourne some quite dramatic changes in the car - a new engine cover, new floor, new wings, new bargeboards and area around there. So this is very much a starting spec and there is a good programme before Melbourne.”

Here are some more photos of the new Honda RA108, courtesy of Honda Racing F1:

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F1Wolf

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With Prodrive expected to enter the F1 from coming season, it looked that finally F1 can have a full grid of 12 teams and 24 cars. The last time F1 was close to having 12 teams was in 2002, the year when Toyota entered. However Prost went out of business during the winter and Arrows cars were last seen in Germany 2002. With 5 races to go in 2002, the grid that promised to have 24 cars has shrunk to 20.

Now Max Mosley is not convinced there will still be 11 teams in Formula 1 by the end of the 2008 season. When asked whether Super Aguri will appear on the start of Australian GP in Melbourne in little over 6 weeks, he said:

“I wouldn’t like to stake my life on that. I think so, but you can’t be certain.”

But when asked if he is confident that all eleven teams will contest the entire 2008 F1 championship, he allegedly said to PA Sport:

“Not very.”

The team in question is no doubt Super Aguri.
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F1Wolf

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I took a short weekend break from F1 Wolf but now I am back with the update on the 2008 Prediction Game.

As you may already know, there are few changes in the rules. The main two are:

1) You can predict the 2008 champion anytime before March 13, 2008. If you already placed your prediction you can still change it anytime and as many times as you want, as long as it is done on/before March 13, 2008.

2) Unlike in 2007, the deadline for race result predictions will not be before start of each race but before start of the qualifying. Why ? Because this year we are also predicting the pole position.

The complete rules are here.

So, how does it look so far ?

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F1Wolf

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Only 50 days left and the Aussie GP will be on the way. To mark the occassion I started a poll on the left sidebar - vote for your 2008 F1 Champion. If you haven’t done so, make sure you also join the 2008 F1 Wolf Prediction Game.

In the past 10 days we had some official and some unoficial car launches. First Red Bull launched in a low key way their RB4 in Jerez. Williams and Renault rolled out their new F1 cars in Valencia, with Renault planning the official launch for next week. Right after them Rubens Barrichello took the new Honda RA108 for a spin.

Drivers are slowly beginning to show they new lids, you can follow the new 2008 driver helmets here. Fernando Alonso is settling in Renault again, and seems to be reminding himslef of the good old times with his new helmet too.

There were Super Aguri sale rumours circulating, but if anything has been sold to Alejandro Agag, Super Aguri team is not aware of it. The team is the last one yet to officially confirm both drivers and the only one that did not test in Valencia.

The Valencia test attracted most of the F1 attention this week, Ferrari, McLaren and Williams doing pretty well. Heikki Kovalainen seems to have get used to McLaren car very quickly and very well.

The season haven’t even started and there are already claims that some teams may have found a way around the TC ban. FIA was also in action. Max Mosley is ready to introduce and confident to police a budget cap as early as from 2009 season. Slight change in the rules is on the way for 2008 season - teams will be allowed one penalty free engine change per car per season.

Max Mosley can’t seem to able to stop mumbling about the spy gate. He warned that the next team caught spying faces exclusion.

F1 Racing magazine finally devoted the cover to Kimi Raikkonen, few months after he won his F1 title. ING signed up as a sponsor of the beloved Hungarian GP. Lewis Hamilton signed up with McLaren until the end of 2012 season, and no doubt Ron Dennis added something to Hamilton’s paycheck too.

Nigel Stepney came out and said he never thougt that him passing Ferrari data to McLaren will result in McLaren using them, or something along those lines.

And finally, Lewis Hamilton revealed he knows how not to behave, and it was no one other than Fernando Alonso who taught him the lesson:

“He showed me just how not to behave as an F1 driver. He was (the leader) at the beginning, wasn’t he, but it changed. Well, he thought he was at the beginning,. But I don’t think that should be the case, we should be a team. It should be equal.”

F1Wolf

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Yesterday was the final day of the four day test at Circuito Ricardo Tormo in Valencia. The teams are in very different stages of their 2008 car development so no conclusions should be made yet, but there are already some signs of what may come.

Ferrari seems to be ready to mount another title challenge. Both Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa had good runs in the new Ferrari. Massa was fastest on Tuesday, Raikkonen on Thursday. It can be said that Ferrari is the fastest car at the moment.

McLaren did not do too bad either. Heikki Kovalainen is settling in the car pretty well and he even managed to set the new lap record on this F1 test track. He later disclosed it was on very low fuel, but nevertheless the combination of Heikki Kovalainen and McLaren car looks impressive. Lewis Hamilton was in the car on Wednesday and Thursday only, both time outpaced by his team mate. It may mean that Heikki will be formidable opponent, it may also mean each of the McLaren drivers had different test duties.

Williams, the pleasant surprise. At this stage of the testing season clearly the third fastest car, no matter whether driven by Rosberg or Nakajima. They however have to keep up their job, because there are several teams right behind them … Considering that they only came out with the new car this week in Valencia, the performance of Williams is very impressive.

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F1Wolf

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Jarno Trulli expressed suspicion that some teams may have found a way around the new standard ECU developed and supplied by McLaren Electronic Systems.

“I’m not going to name any names, but I think that some teams have already found a way to automate the starting procedure and reduce to the minimum the chance of spinning the wheels under acceleration. I’m not saying someone’s cheating, even though we’ve received some conflicting information at Toyota. But having analysed the behaviour on the track both now and in the tests in December, the changes between them are many - and in several cases suspicious.”

Autosport also reports some “Paddock sources” saying that some cars did sound different under heavy acceleration during last week tests in Jerez. Only Honda and BMW did not run in Jerez last week, so if what Trulli says is true, there are quite a few suspects. The teams would be stupid to use something outright illegal, but pushing the limits to the edge of legality is common in the competitive world of F1. Remember BAR and their fuel tank in 2005 (banned for 2 races), Renault and their mass dampers in 2006, Ferrari and their flexi floor in Melbourne 2007…

The implementation of the standard ECU, was one of the reasons why it was possible to ban the traction control. It has been banned before, but quickly everybody found a way around it somewhere deep inside the car electronics and FIA had no other way than to make the TC legal again. Standard ECU should have been (among other things) a solution to the problem policing the TC ban.

If some of the teams indeed found a way around the standard ECU after only few months of working with it, than the TC ban might be shortlived again. It would be interesting to see what action (if any) will FIA take. Trulli may be right or he may be wrong. But in any case I hope that FIA goes ahead and investigates Trulli’s suspicions now. If there are to be any rulings on legality of any cars, FIA better make them before the racing begins. It would be nice if the 2008 Formula 1 season can start without a controversy.

F1Wolf

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A week ahead of the official launch Honda’s 2008 car, RA108 made the track debut. Rubens Barrichello took the car around the Valencia test track today.

As the new livery is expected to be revealed only at the official launch next week, all we can see is the all white car (last year they used all black livery during winter). A quick look reveals several similarities - the engine cover, sidepods … Hopefully the car is different from its predecessor, the doomed RA107, where it needs to be. Unlike many other teams, new Honda does not feature the front wing bridge (yet).

Rubens seems to be sticking to his traditional helmet design …

Here is the 2007 Honda F1 Screensaver to remind you of the 2007 Honda car with the Earth livery.

What will the new Honda livery be like ?

F1Wolf

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