Fernando Alonso returned Renault to the top of the podium

Sebastian Vettel, Robert Kubica, Fernando Alonso, Felipe Massa, Lewis Hamilton - arguably the class of the 2008 Formula 1 field. Picking these five for my top 5 was the easy part. But how to rank them from 5 to 1 ?

All these five drivers outclassed their team mates, in Alonso’s case brutally. Those two with very equal machinery finished the season almost equal - one with 1 more point, the other one with 1 more win. Those three with less comepetitve cars in hand did not hesitate and took their chances when they came their way. All of them however also lacked the consistency, all of them had their days off or periods of slump. So here is how I rank the top 5 drivers of 2008 Formula 1 season:

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F1Wolf

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Kimi Raikkonen's last win came way back in April in Spain

The 2008 Formula 1 driver rankings continue with part 3 - ranks 10 to 6. I did not have too difficult time to select the five drivers for this post but giving them their ranks was a bit different story. Here is how I settled it:

10th Kimi Raikkonen
Ferrari had bad start to the season in Australia but few races later, after Spanish GP, it looked like Kimi may be the man to beat in 2008. Unfortunately for him, that was the high point of his season. The mid season slump took him out of contention and by the time his form returned all he could do was to support Felipe Massa. He was outqualified by his team mate 12:6 and that says something about the roots of his problems. At the end Raikkonen managed to reclaim the 3rd place in drivers championship but only because the second McLaren driver was nowhere near the top and the BMW Sauber and Kubica lost the plot in the final 2 races. He made my top 10, but only just.

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F1Wolf

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Nick Thomas will race in the Windsor Arch Macau GT Cup Grand Prix

Ferry tickets, hotel room, grand stand ticket and thanks to Nick Thomas (on the picture above) also the paddock passes - all set and ready to go.

The 55th Macau GP long weekend will start this Thursday, November 13th. The first Macau GP was organized back in 1954. Since 1983 the Formula 3 race is part and the highlight of the race weekend programme in the former Portuguese enclave.

Although Macau never hosted and likely never will host Formula 1 race the Macau GP has strong F1 connection. The first Macau GP Formula 3 race winner was Ayrton Senna, the other winners include among others Michael Schumacher, Ralf Schumacher or David Coulthard.

18 out of 22 2008 F1 drivers raced in Macau before

This year 22 drivers started the Formula 1 season. Eighteen of them raced in Macau before. Can you name some or all of them ?

See 2008 Macau GP Formula 3 Entry List here

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F1Wolf

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Sebastien Bourdais - should he stay or should he go ?

I started my 2008 F1 driver rankings yesterday with Part 1, here comes Part 2 covering the ranks 15 to 11:

15th David Coulthard

DC almost made it to Part 1 but at the end I found him a bit less disappointing than Heikki Kovalainen. Although Coulthard scored the only podium for Red Bull this year he was still clearly outperformed by his team mate. The 2:16 qualifying statistics says it all. Coulthard also got involved in many racing incidents ruining several races for himself and for few other drivers. The way the final race of his F1 careers went pretty much sums up his 2008 season.

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F1Wolf

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Anthony Davidson, no longer on anyone's radar ?

It has been a week since the grand 2008 F1 season finale, it is about the time to begin the evaluations here. Not everything went according to pre-season predictions, some teams did better some much worse than expected (or hoped). But let’s forget about the cars and focus on the drivers here. This is the part one of my 2008 Formula 1 driver rankings, positions 22 to 16.

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F1Wolf

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2008 Formula 1 Drivers

The 2008 season is over. Here is the first of the series of posts looking back at the past 7 Formula 1 action filled months.

The 2008 season started with 11 teams and 22 drivers on the grid. Unfortunately Super Aguri team folded after only four races and Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson found themselves out of job. These two were however the only driver job casualties of the entire season. We did not have a single driver change in 2008 season, no driver missed even one race. All the teams raced all the races with the same drivers.

It may look quite normal in the normal life that people keep their jobs for a year but it definitely is not a common occurence in Formula 1 racing. I checked the records all the way back to 1995. (I did not venture further back to the era of pre-qualifying and 30 - 40 plus drivers per season.) There was not a single season from 1995 to 2007 without some drivers loosing their jobs or at least missing a race. All we had were few “close calls” in recent years:

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F1Wolf

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Rubens Barrichello - is the end of his long F1 career near ?

The 2009 grid is filling up. BMW Sauber announcement last week they would continue with Robert Kubica and Nick Heidfeld in 2009 means that half of the current teams has confirmed both their drivers for next season. Ferrari, McLaren, BMW Sauber and Williams will enter 2009 season with unchanged race drivers line ups. The only confirmed change so far is Sebastian Vettel replacing retiring David Coulthard in Red Bull. And although there has been no official confirmation from Toyota yet, the fact that Kazuki Nakajima remains with Williams for another season may be a clear indication that both Glock and Trulli will stay on (as widely expected anyway).

So, 6 teams and 12 seats are but there are still 8 question marks left:

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F1Wolf

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The ConstructorsF1 website currently runs the 4th annual The Climber Of The Year in F1 Award. If you haven’t heard about this site before you may want to check it out. Do not expect a classic F1 news site. This site focuses on design and construction of Formula 1 cars. The introductions of different parts of F1 cars are accompanied with detailed drawings. Since its beginning in 2004 ConstructorsF1 runs the annual Climber of the Year Award for the most significant improvement in terms of hardware and driving skills compared to the previous year.

The previous winners were:

2007 - Lewis Hamilton
2006 - Felipe Massa
2005 - Fernando Alonso
2004 - Jenson Button

Although the award is still young the guys behind are doing some great PR job. The results are usually announced at a press conferences (last year in the SAS Radisson hotel in Prague). And unlike in many other online polls, the winner of this one actually gets to get the crystal trophy. Here is photo of Fernando Alonso with his trophy (presented to him during 2006 European GP), and here is photo of Felipe Massa with his (during 2007 European GP).

The voting for 2008 Climber of The Year in F1 is now underway. You can also make the difference and help to decide who will get the trophy this year - simply click here and vote for The Climber of The Year. At the moment Robert Kubica is in the lead, ahead of Mark Webber. I will keep posting updates on the voting and standings until the voting finishes at the end of the year.

F1Wolf

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Ahead of 2007 Hungarian GP Toro Rosso sent Scott Speed packing and Sebastian Vettel took his place. Before that Christijan Albers’ sponsors stopped paying up and so Spyker signed up Marcus Winkelhock for European Grand Prix, then replacing him with Sakon Yamamoto for the rest of the season. During the Chinese GP weekend Alex Wurz announced that was going to be his last F1 race and Kazuki Nakajima took his seat in Brazil.

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F1Wolf

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Rumours keep flying around (and there will be more) but at the end there are only 20 places on the grid and even less if one aims for race wins … Same as last winter everybody again waits for Alonso’s next move. He however does not really have anywhere to move to. There simply isn’t anywhere to go for most of the drivers. That is unless someone makes a room and starts the big shuffle. At the moment it seems that we may have a period of silence before 2010 driver market storm hits. Here is how I think the not-much-changed line up will look in 2009:

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F1Wolf

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