And the winner (looser?) is ...

Nice topic thrown into the air by the nice Sidepodcast people for the first off-season Thursday – Which are your worst three circuits, and what would you do to fix them?

It is not easy to pick only three worst circuits as there are quite a few not so good ones that come to mind – Bahrain, Shanghai, Barcelona, Valencia, Monaco, Hungary, Singapore, Abu Dhabi. Plus add Turkey that has a good track but no one in Turkey cares …

Anyway, here are my top three worst tracks:

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The results of the round one of our prediction game are here. Congratulations to Enigma for his round winning 25 points ! The most “popular” score of this round was 17 points . The lowest score of round one is 10 points.

2010 F1Wolf Prediction Game – Round 1 results:

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2010 Bahrain GP Podium

Fernando Alonso won the 2010 Bahrain GP, winning his first race in Ferrari colours. Felipe Massa finished second and completed 1-2 for Ferrari. Lewis Hamilton took the final podium place. Pole setter Sebastian Vettel battled with mechanical problems but still managed to finish fourth ahead of Mercedes GP duo Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher. Button, Webber, Liuzzi and Barrichello took the remaining point scoring places.

2010 Bahrain GP Race Result:

1. Alonso – Ferrari – 1h39:20.396
2. Massa – Ferrari + 16.099
3. Hamilton – McLaren + 23.182
4. Vettel – Red Bull +38.713
5. Rosberg – Mercedes +40.263
6. Schumacher – Mercedes +44.180
7. Button – McLaren +45.260
8. Webber – Red Bull +46.308
9. Liuzzi – Force India +3.089
10. Barrichello – Williams +1:02.400

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Top three in 2010 Bahrain GP qualifying

Sebastian Vettel will start the 2010 Bahrain GP from the pole position. Felipe Massa will line up next to him on the front row. P3 belongs to Alonso, P4 to Hamilton. Then go Rosberg, Webber, Schumacher, Button, Kubica and Sutil. The top 10 will have to start the race with same tyres with which they qualified in Q3. The only driver in top 10 to have qualified on harder compound tyre is Adrian Sutil.

Q3 qualifying times:

1. Sebastian Vettel – Red Bull – 1:54.101
2. Felipe Massa – Ferrari – 1:54.242
3. Fernando Alonso – Ferrari – 1:54.608
4. Lewis Hamilton – McLaren – 1:55.217
5. Nico Rosberg – Mercedes – 1:55.241
6. Mark Webber – Red Bull – 1:55.284
7. Michael Schumacher – Mercedes – 1:55.524
8. Jenson Button – McLaren – 1:55.672
9. Robert Kubica – Renault – 1:55.885
10. Adrian Sutil – Force India – 1:56.309

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Fernando Alonso - Fastest in final practice for 2010 Bahrain GP

Fernando Alonso was the fastest driver in the final practice session of the 2010 Bahrain GP weekend, second place in FP3 belongs to Nico Rosberg who was about 1.5 tenths faster than his team mate Michael Schumacher (4th fastest time in FP3).

There is one certainty already after FP3. As the HRT team failed to get Karun Chandhok’s car ready he completely missed all the practice sessions and therefore will not be able to take part in the qualifying and the race. He will have to wait for his F1 debut for another 2 weeks. That also means we still need to wait for another F1 race featuring 24 cars … or not ? – see this tweet

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Teams and drivers at the start of 2010 season

The drives line up for the traditional start of the season photo (click on the photo to enlarge) yesterday in Bahrain. This year also took their cars with them. Nice picture, but how long will the cast remain unchanged ?

There were no driver changes at all in 2008 (except of course Davidson and Sato loosing ther drives when Super Aguri folded). The 2009 season was much more eventful with many changes happening in the second half of the season – here are the pictures from Melbourne and Abu Dhabi last year:

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Yesterday was the first day of proper F1 race weekend action for the new F1 teams – Lotus, Virgin and HRT (Hispania). Here are the photos of their cars on track during Bahrain Friday free practice (click on the thumbnails to enlarge the images):

Adrian Sutil, fastest in the morning session

The 2010 F1 season kicked off today with the Friday practice. Fastets time of the morning session belongs to Adrian Sutil in Force India car ahead of Alonso, Kubica, Massa and Button. We will only find out later this weekend what these times mean … At the other end of the time sheets are as expected the new teams.

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2010 Virgin Racing Livery

Here is the final part of the pre-season miniseries of post recapping the changes in Formula One.

Drivers

There were no drivers changes during the 2008 F1 season (other than the seats lost following the demise of Super Aguri) and the only changes in drivers line up ahead of 2009 were related to the retirement of David Coulthard. Vettel moved from Toro Rosso to Red Bull, Sebastien Buemi took Vettel’s seat at Toro Rosso. Buemi was also the only rookie on the grid of the season opening Australian GP last March. What a difference a year makes…

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Here is the final 2010 season countdown post. Just over a week from now the F1 cars will go out for the first practice session of the 2010 season, 10 days from today the Bahrain GP will start.

All is clear, at least it seems to be. We know USF1 will not make it although one of the team founders (Ken Anderson) still hopes they can do in 2011 what they could not in 2010. With USF1 out gone is also the race drive of Jose Maria Lopez. Stefan GP on the other hand failed to make it to the FIA 2010 F1 entry list and so we will only see 12 teams and 24 drivers in 2010 season.

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The 2010 F1 season is now less than 2 weeks away. A lot has changed since the end of 2009. Here is the part 1 of a miniseries summarizing the differences between F1 in 2009 and F1 in 2010.

Grands Prix

The 2010 season will have 19 rounds (compared with 17 last year). No race was dropped from the calendar, Canadian GP returns and for the first time F1 will travel to Korea.

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Jenson Button won the Bahrain GP ahead of Sebastian Vettel and Jarno Trulli. Lewis Hamilton finished 4th, Rubens Barrichello 5th. Kimi Raikkonen scored first 3 points of the season for Ferrari (6th place).

2009 Bahrain GP results:

1. J. Button – Brawn GP – 1h31:48.182
2. S. Vettel – Red Bull + 7.187
3. J. Trulli – Toyota + 9.170
4. L. Hamilton – McLaren + 22.096
5. R. Barrichello – Brawn GP + 37.779
6. K. Raikkonen – Ferrari + 42.057
7. T. Glock – Toyota + 42.880
8. F. Alonso – Renault + 52.775

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