Martin Whitmarsh and McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen look ahead to this weekend’s Santander German Grand Prix:

German GP weekend started today with free practice. Mark Webber was the fastest driver in the first session, about 4 tenths ahead of Jenson Button. Felipe Massa clocked the thirds best time in his Ferrari featuring very Red Bull like nose.

Lewis Hamilton was the fastest driver in the afternoon practice followed by Vettel, Button and Webber. Force India was again out in force – this time Adrian Sutil in 6th.

A thing to note is the Williams change of strategy – no more Friday low fuel runs.

Friday Practice 1 times:

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FIA issued a press release following the confusing events of yesterday. Here is the full text of June 9 FIA press release:

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German GP weekend is almost here. Following the events of yesterday it does look like unfortunately there will again be more focus on the politics than on the racing. But let’s disregard that for a while and get on with round 9 of the prediction game.

As usual you can wait till the last moment before the qualifying or make your prediction right away to make sure you do not miss the round (and change your prediction later if you feel like doing that). But do remember, the deadline is the start of the Saturday qualifying session ! So, make your prediction for the pole position, fastest lap and top eight finishers in the comments below this post. The results of round 9 will be published on Monday after the race.

As there was no race at Nurburgring last year here is a short video introduction of the track:

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When I said in my previous post that we are in for interesting few days in Germany I haven’t expected this bizzare turn of events.

First the statement from FIA:

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The eight FOTA teams are to meet with the suspended members (Force India, Williams) and the new entrants (Campos, Manor and USF1) at the Nurburgring on Wednesday to begin discussing the regulations and other plans for 2010 season.

It will be interesting to see what will come out of these talks. The peace deal between FIA and FOTA is one thing, but there are also 5 non FOTA teams listed as 2010 entries.

There has been a lot of noise surrounding the letters Max Mosley sent out last night reminding non FOTA teams about their rights and FOTA members about the International Sporting Code.

66. Amendments to Supplementary Regulations
No amendments shall be made to the Supplementary Regulations after the beginning of the period for receiving entries, unless unanimous agreement is given by all competitors already entered, or by decision of the stewards of the meeting for reasons of force majeure or safety (see Article 141).

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The quiz is back. This time the topic is the German GP and Nurburgring.

You know the drill. Complete all 10 questions, afterwards all the answers will be revealed. As usual please no googling for answers . Hint – watch out, some questions refer to German GP some to F1 races Nurburgring …

And do not forget to share your result in comments ! If you missed the past quizzes you can try them too – click here.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes released new video, this time Martin Whitmarsh explains why he believes the sport has to appeal more to the fans, and how FOTA is working to achieve this.

Here come the Bridgestones ...

With the exception of Monaco Grand Prix Bridgestone this season has been following the concept of leaving a gap in rubber stiffness between the two allocated tyres for each race. That means that for example drivers have had to use super soft and medium or soft and hard rather than super soft and soft or medium and hard compounds at each GP (unless the race is declared wet).

For the four races from the Hungarian Grand Prix to the Italian Grand Prix Bridgestone will allocate consecutive compound pairings for each of these races.

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Bacardi recently released this video with Michael Schumacher (featured also on Top Gear). As I myself benefited from Michael Schumacher’s involvement in this campaign I think it is only fair that I help to spread the message.

I believe that shooting of the above video took part the day after my ride in that black Maserati around the beautiful Ascari track (you can see photos here and video here).