The teams keep rolling out their new cars and the F1 drivers are coming up with their 2008 helmet design. Here they are:

Raikkonen, Massa

Hamilton, Kovalainen

Heidfeld, Kubica

Alonso, Piquet

Rosberg, Nakajima

Webber, Coulthard

Glock, Trulli

Barrichello, Button

Bourdais, Vettel

Sutil, Fisichella

Sato, Davidson

Fernando Alonso seems to be getting away from McLaren days and returning to Renault even with his helmet design. Jarno Trulli reduced the shiny silver surface with more red colour over it. Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica keep the designs very close to their 2007 styles.

Kimi Raikkonen’s new 2008 helmet (click here) is very similar to his 2007 one, but the white front has been replaced with some sort of “tribal” drawing. Anyone knows what it means ?

Lewis Hamilton keeps his yellow helmet pretty much unchanged. Heikki Kovalainen had to make changes to accomodate new sponsors the result is Alonso 2007 like helmet. Bourdais keeps his Champ Car yellow and blue with the addition of Red Bull brand.

Both Honda and Red Bull drivers keep the same designs as in 2007. Sutil’s helmet does not look too different from his 2007 one as well. Fisichella is another guy sticking with his traditional colours.

Please check back for updates to this post with more on 2008 F1 driver helmets. It happened before that drivers used different design for the winter testing and came up with brand new one when the season started, so these may not yet be the definite 2008 helmets.

If you come across good pictures of new 2008 F1 driver helmets that are not yet displayed here, let me know. I will add them here !

To see what the drivers were wearing in 2007, check here

F1Wolf

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The Force India confirmed today the expected drivers line up for the 2008 season. Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil will lead the team for its debut 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship campaign. Vitantonio Liuzzi will fulfill a test and reserve driver role for Force India.

Giancarlo Fisichella:

“I am looking forward to joining Force India for the coming season. At the test in Jerez, I was very impressed with the team’s professionalism and commitment to move forward and I hope that my experience will help them achieve these goals. Contrary to what people may think, this was not my only opportunity, it was the best one: with new owners and a competitive budget, I really think we can shake things up next year. I feel motivated and ready to help Force India get points on a regular basis.”

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Spyker entered Formula 1 in Shanghai 2006 but 2007 was their first full F1 season. Was supposed to be. Before the season came to close, the former Jordan / Midland team was sold again, this time to Vijay Mallya. The 2007 season ended up to be the one and only F1 season for Spyker F1. The orange cars spent most of it at the back of the grid but they had their moments of glory. Sutil was fastest in wet Monaco practice, Winkelhock lead the race during the European GP mayhem and the team even managed to score a point. Here is the screensaver to remember the only F1 season for the Spyker F1 team. In 2008 the team will race as Force India.

You can download it here: 2007 Spyker F1 Screensaver

Please check the screensaver tag for more F1 screensavers.

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While the “big” announcement on Fernando Alonso is now after the Renault ruling expected anytime soon, there were some other interesting developments elsewhere over the past few days.

The Jerez tests were kind of a shoot out for the Force India seat. There are no clear winners yet, but there is one obvious looser - Ralf Schumacher. Even he himself now admits, the Jerez outing might have been his last appearance in Formula 1 car…

Unlike Ralf, the other serious candidates - Fisichella, Liuzzi and Klien - did not do themselves too much harm.

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F1Wolf

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During the past month I published series of posts with the high resolution photos of all the teams and all the drivers (well almost, one driver is missing) of 2007 Formula 1 season for download.

For those who missed it, here are all the links:

Kimi Raikkonen
Lewis Hamilton
Fernando Alonso
Felipe Massa
Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica
Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen
Nico Rosberg, Alex Wurz, Kazuki Nakajima
Mark Webber, David Coulthard
Jarno Trulli, Ralf Schumacher
Sebastian Vettel, Scott Speed, Vitantonio Liuzzi
Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello
Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson
Adrian Sutil, Christijan Albers, Sakon Yamamoto

Screensavers are also on the way. If you do not want to miss out, subscribe to F1 Wolf via RSS Feed or E-mail

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Honda

Oh my…. What a season. This is a team that under its old identity BAR Honda finished 2nd in the constructors table in 2004. This is the team that recorded its first race win in 2006. This the team who’s driver Jenson Button finished 3rd in driver’s table in 2004 and scored more points than any other driver in the second half of 2006 season… They hoped for further step up in 2007, if not for a title fight than at least few more race wins… To promote enviromental issues they entered the season with an unique Earth livery, with no sponsors messages on the car. The weight of the whole Earth was apparently too much for them to carry …

The Australian Grand Prix was an eye opener. The Honda cars were solid midfield cars, far behind the leading Ferraris and McLarens. Both cars finished lap down, barely getting out of Q1. The pattern for the rest of the season has been set. The 3 week break before Malaysian GP did not help them much, more the opposite. By the Malaysian GP the main competion for Honda began to appear - Toro Rosso, Spyker, Super Aguri and Ralf Schumacher. Getting to top ten in 2007 meant to the team about the same as getting on podium in 2006. Scoring points in 2007 was on par with race win a year ago. Podiums and wins were totally out the reach for Honda. On several ocassion Honda was outperformed by their baby team Super Aguri, racing more less the 2006 Honda car. That was the clear indication of how bad the 2007 Honda car, the RA107 was.

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Part 13, the final part of 2007 Formula 1 high resolution downloads - 14 pictures of Spyker team and their drivers Adrian Sutil, Sakon Yamamoto and Christijan Albers. Unfortunatelly I do not have any shots of Marcus Winkelhock. All the photos are free but for personal use only. Right click on the links below and save. Enjoy ! These are photos from the one and only season of Spyker in Formula 1.

Sutil 1

Sutil 2

Sutil 3

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The f1gpudpate.net revealed ”exclusively” that “The Force India Formula 1 team will reveal its 2008 driver line-up after the team completes its three-day test session in Jerez next month”. Fine. But then they say ”The team is currently testing in Barcelona with five different drivers and it is very likely two of them will be chosen to become the team’s official race driver. The “two of them” part caught my attention. Isn’t Adrian Sutil already a confirmed driver for Force India F1 for 2008 ? This is what he said just a day ago while acknowledging that he is lucky to have a race seat with Force India next season.

“I’ve had a very nice season working with this team, and I’m glad that I have a drive for next year, when a lot of drivers are still looking.”

So why is Force India talking about choosing 2 drivers ? It may be a typo from f1gpudate, it may be that they count Sutil as one of the 2 as he also testing for the team this week. But it also may mean that Force India is also considering their options should Sutil move to another team… This is what Sutil told The Telegraph:

“I would love to be driving with Lewis again. Maybe some time in the future. But next year would be good.”

It is obvious what team is on Sutil’s mind. In the meantime, Liuzzi, Sutil and Klien were closely matched on their first day of testing with Force India.

F1Wolf

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