Monaco Grand Prix is a special event. If I ever doubted it I do not any more after going to see the race last year (my pictures are here). The special GP needs some special treatment also here, so I beging the Monaco GP countdown with some videos. Here is one, Ayrton Senna’s pole position lap in 1991:

To see more Monaco F1 videos visit the F1Wolf Club and feel free to ad your favourite Monaco F1 videos.

F1Wolf

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The Formula 1 budget cap has been talked about for a while. Yesterday some details of the proposed cap were revealed. The budget cap is set to be introduced in Formula One from the start of 2009. Tony Purnell (FIA consultant) has written to all F1 teams with the figures the FIA would like to set. So here are the figures:

2009 - 175 million Euro (USD280 million)
2010 - 140 million Euro (USD224 million)
2011 - 110 million Euro (USD176 million)

At the first sight it looks like significant reduction in spending, especially when we think about Toyota’s current F1 budget in the area of USD500 - 600 million.

But … Force India wastly improved budget for 2008 season in “only” USD150 million or thereabouts. The budget cap proposed for 3 years from now is still way over this privateer team current budget and … now the fun part - the proposed budget cap is not about to cover:

- engine development
- marketing expenses
- driver salaries
- team principal salaries
- KERS development

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F1Wolf

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There are many ways these days for readers to socialize together. Not all of them work for everybody. I set up a Facebook Group but I do not find it too useful. One of the reasons is I still have not figured out what to do with it. I tried the Entrecard here, but dropped it after while from this site.Twitter has been much better. It drives some traffic to this site and also helps me to keep up to date with what other F1 bloggers are up to. One thing I did like however was The Bikers Place community created by Shaun. I borrowed the idea and created The F1Wolf Community - F1Wolf Club. I did not do much promotion yet. I needed some time to figure out the benefits for me and for the members. So what I think are the benefits ?

If you run a racing site or blog yourself you can use the F1Wolf Club to:
- shamelessly promote your sites
- have your latest posts featured on the main page

If you do not run any site yourself you can use the F1Wolf Club to:
- write what you want on your own page

And everybody can start a dicussion in the forum, set up a group, upload pictures, embed videos and probably much more that I haven’t figured out yet.

After first five days since the clumsy start the F1Wolf Club has already 15 members, few hundred photos, 2 groups and several videos. I expected that by this time I will still be only talking to myself so the start was not too bad .

To join, visit the F1Wolf Club. And do not forget to invite others !


F1Wolf Club


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First point to make about this race is - the race had flying start (see the picture above). Second - we actually had a race. There were cars that raced each other ! Third point to make about this race is a question - would Lewis Hamilton even start the race under 2005 rules that prevented tyre changes ?

Felipe Massa is becoming the King of Istanbul track. Three pole postitions in a row, three wins in a row. He is the first driver since Michael Schumacher to win three consecutive races at the same Formula 1 track … He had a perfect start and created nice gap between himself and Hamilton before even reaching Turn 1. He lost his lead later on in the race when Hamilton overtook him, but at that time Massa was already aware of Hamilton’s 3 stop strategy and did exactly defend hard. He reclaimed his lead after another round of pitstops and held it rather comfortably. Massa wnet on to win his 7th F1 race, 3th consecutive Turkish GP and second race this year. After 2 DNFs early on Massa made it to the podium 3 times in a row. He is now officially back in the hunt for the title.

It was not the best weekend for Massa’s team mate and the championship leader Kimi Raikkonen. His troubles started on Friday already and stuck with him for the rest of the weekend. He collided with Heikki Kovalainen at the start and damaged his front wing. He still however managed to record the fastest lap of the race and finish on podium. Nothing spectacular from the defending champion, pretty much a damage limitation weekend …

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A bit of refreshment before the Turkish GP Formula 1 race. Vijay Mallya has been known for his lavish parties and his Kingfisher party last year in Monaco was said to be The party to attend. There are still 2 weeks to go before Monaco but the European Party season has already began for Force India boss. Here are few photos from the party on board Mallya’s yacht in Istanbul, on Friday before Turkish GP. He looks to have stolen Sakon Yamamoto from Renault and turned him into a DJ (All photos courtesy of Force India F1):

(more photos inside the article)

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F1Wolf

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The 2008 Formula 1 season continues this weekend with the Turkish Grand Prix. Here is what we know:

- there will be no Super Aguri, no Takuma Sato , no Anthony Davidson
- there will be no shark fin on Toro Rosso yet
- there will be no hole in the nose of Ferrari car for this race
- Rubens Barrichello will celebrate his 257th F1 GP
- there will be no changes to the safety car rules
- the weather forecasts do not expect rain on Saturday and Sunday
- the weather is rather cool

We can’t be sure but we can expect another strong weekend from Ferrari. Out of the last 6 Formula One races 5 were won by Ferrari driver. It gets even more scary if we talk about Turkish Grand Prix. The inaugural race in 2005 was won by Kimi Raikkonen (in McLaren that time), the last 2 races had one winner - Felipe Massa… But as it is with the investments - the past performances do not guarantee future returns. Ferraris were hot favourites for Australian Grand Prix too and we all know how that race ended up.

It is getting tigher behind Ferrari. It will be interesting to see who will come out on top this time - BMW Sauber or McLaren. The other unknown is Fernando Alonso. Was his new found pace in Barcelona just an one race wonder is he ready to fight with Kubica, Kovalainen, Heidfeld and Hamilton for the rest of the season ?

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The Super Aguri F1 team withdraw from F1 … That is the outcome of the talks between Honda board and Aguri Suzuki. The Weigl proposal was clearly not good enough …

Statement from Aguri Suzuki:

“In order to realise my dream to become an owner of a Formula One team, I applied for a grid position in the FIA Formula One World Championship in November 2005. Since then, I have participated in the championship for two years and four months as the Super Aguri F1 Team, but regretfully I must inform you that the team will cease their racing activities as of today.

The team competed against the many car manufacturer-backed teams and have succeeded in obtaining the first points after only the 22nd race finishing in ninth place overall in the 2007 constructors’ championship.

However, the breach of contract by the promised partner SS United Oil & Gas Company resulted in the loss of financial backing and immediately put the team into financial difficulties. Also, the change in direction of the environment surrounding the team, in terms of the use of customer chassis, has affected our ability to find partners.

Meanwhile, with the help of Honda, we have somehow managed to keep the team going, but we find it difficult to establish a way to continue the activities in the future within the environment surrounding F1 and as a result, I have concluded to withdraw from the championship. I would like to express my deepest thanks to Honda, Bridgestone, the sponsors, all the people who have given us advise during various situations over the past couple of years all the Team Staff who have kept their motivations high and always done their best, Anthony Davidson who has always pushed to the limit despite the very difficult conditions, Takuma Sato who has been with us from the very start and has always fought hard and led the team and lastly our fans from all over the world who have loyally supported the Super Aguri F1 Team.”

About a year ago it still looked like 2008 will be a season with 12 teams and 24 cars with expected Prodrive entry. It will now continue with 10 teams and 20 cars only for the first time since beginning of 2006 season. This is the first time since 2002 Prost and Arrows demise that Formula One is loosing a team … Just a year ago (May 13, 2007) Super Aguri scored their first Formula 1 points at Spanish GP (takuma Sato, 8th) and went on to score 3 more 2 races later in Canada (Sato 6th after overtaking Fernando Alonso).

Will anybody pick up the bits and pieces and revive the team or is it gone for good ?

F1Wolf

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I am going to be Bernie friendly for a while but only for a while. I totally forgot that the official F1 site has some videos now. Only after I received the email reminder that the video edit from Spanish GP is ready I went to check it out. The video is not too bad if all you expect is a quick 2 minutes sum up of all the incidents with few F1 babes and Nelson Piquet sr. added to the mix. But I think that FOM or whoever is in charge of keeping the official F1 site up could and should do better. They are still far behind the level of Sidepodcast people unfortunately for us Sidepodcast does not have an access to the FOM TV feed .

What would you want F1.com to include or ad to their video edits from races ?

You can see the official F1 video edits here.

F1Wolf

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It has been busy few days for me and it took me 2 days to finish the Spanish GP review. Here it comes finally… I apologize for a dull format without pictures this time .

Four races, three Ferrari wins, two 1-2 finishes, red cars leading both championships and Ferrari friendly Turkey track next … Things have turned around a bit since Melbourne …

After Fernando Alonso squeezed in between Raikkonen and Massa in qualifying there was a chance Renault may spoil the race for Ferrari. Massa’s good start put an end to those worries and from then on it was Ferrari’s race. The gap between them and Hamilton and Kubica was not that big but this may be down to the safety car period and Ferrari preserving the machinery towards the end of the race.

Hamilton returned to the podium for the first time since Melbourne. The race of both McLarens has been compromised by their qualifying. Fifth and sixth places on the grid are not the best places from where to launch the attack on the podium. The positive sign for McLaren is that they did not seem to be too much off the pace of Ferrari. The worry must be the BMW Sauber … The talking point of the race however was the heavy crash of Heikki Kovalainen. It looked very scary and to me even worse than the crash of Robert Kubica in Montreal last year. It is amazing to see how much protection the current F1 cars give to drivers. It is hard to believe that somebody can survive an impact like that with pretty much no injuries at all. At the same time crashes like this are a reminder that F1 is still a dangerous sport …

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The evironmental impacts of Formula 1 are being discussed a lot these days. So is F1 environmentally friendly sport ? Hell no. And does that make me feel sick ? Hell no again … There are things that make me sick much more …

The debate over the Formula 1 night race in Singapore is a prime example. People love to slam the night race shouting loud about all the energy that will be needed to light up the streets. Yes, Singapore power grid will probably have to provide more power that weekend than on normal weekends. How much more that I do not know, I have no numbers. But I doubt it is more than what for example football stadiums around Europe use over a weekend of evening matches. There is one night F1 race a year now, there may be few more. But there are football games almost everyday now and no one seems to care about the energy used for those lights … (don’t take me wrong, I love football). Add to it all the indoor lit up and airconditioned or frozen arenas where basketball, ice hockey and other sports are played on daily basis. How is that any better than F1 night race ?

Take the cross country skiing events now held in cities like Dusseldorf or Prague where all the snow had to be trucked from countryside or mountains far away … That makes me sick, not the lights in Singapore …

Now look at the Olympics madness. That event is just one massive drain on resources and for what ? So people can count medals that are often just products of pharmaceutical and chemical labs … The original Olympic ideas are long gone anyway, so what is all that theatre about anyway. Money … How is F1 any worse than Olympic games … Anyway, keep them on if people enjoy them. But what about this totally stupid idea of the World Olympic Torch Jet Tour ? A special plane keeps jetting around the globe to carry a flame, so few people can under police protection run few metres with a torch in hand (while others are being arrested by police) before flying it again to another city … They will cover 137,000 kilometers, how many of those km will people actually run ? I haven’t seen anything more silly than this in a very long time … This:

and this:

makes me sick … Not the lights on for 3 days in Singapore.

And what about all the damages the money driven biofuel global fiasco has caused ? Shortages of food, food prices rising to dangerous levels in places that no one wishes any unrest to begin, loss of hundreds of thousands hectares of rainforest causing more carbon emisions than burning fossil fuels does … But to grow corn for ethanol brings more cash than growing rice or wheat for people to eat, so there we go … We rush into biofuels before we know how to make them work for us and not against us. This makes me sick … Not those lights on for 3 days in Singapore …

End of the angry rant caused by the Olympic torch report I saw earlier today in the news.

F1Wolf

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