The shark fins spread like a virus. Only Williams and BMW Sauber haven’t tried them yet. McLaren are the only team who tested them but does not run them in the races. All the other seven Formula 1 teams are sporting this rather weird looking structure.

The shark fin fashion was brought to us by Red Bull Racing, probably courtesy of their design guru Adrian Newey. The aero benefits are not very clear. Some teams running the fin say it helps to clean up the air flow over the rear wing, some others say it helps the balance of the car, some say it does not bring as much benefit as some other not that visible updates. One thing most people agree on however is that the fin shaped engine cover provides nice advertising space. Let’s have a look at the fins and how the ad space is used by the teams (you can enlarge the photos by clicking on the thumbnail):

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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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Williams - those blue or blue and white cars, at least that is how they have looked in these past few years. But it hasn’t been that long ago that Williams painted their cars red. They used red liveries for 2 years back in the nineties. Can you recall when was that ? What drivers drove for the teams in those 2 years ?

Here are few pictures that might help …

Photos: Williams/LAT

F1Wolf

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The Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) is a part of 2009 Formula 1 regulations. and the also the top topic of these days. Forget for a while about its relevance to road car development. Let’s look instead how it may affect the Formula 1 teams. Events of past few days suggest that it may affect F1 significantly.

Several teams face obvious problems. Red Bull had to call the fire brigade and evacuate their Milton Keynes factory after KERS tests resulted in smoke and steam all over the place. Few days ago a BMW Sauber mechanic felt the KERS impact himself. He received electrical shock after touching the KERS testing F1 car during the pit stop in Jerez.Yesterday John Howett, Toyota team president, expressed his doubts that the KERS technology will be ready and safe to use when 2009 season begins. He suggested that most of the teams are struggling with KERS development. There have been even reports of a potentially extremely dangerous by-product of exploded KERS batteries - the arsenic poison.

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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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I believe it was during Saturday’s Free Practice Live Blog that the debate turned to a lack of proper high speed tracks. As Keith from F1Fanatic mentioned, basically Monza is the only traditional high speed track left on the calendar. Some guys said that with the 305 km limit on the race distance the races on high speed tracks would be rather short (meaning higher speeds and same distance). Well exemptions are possible. We have slow track in Monaco where the race distance is only 260 km, we could as well have a high speed race over longer distance …

This short debate finally brought me to the post I had in mind for a while. Back in May, after the Indy 500 race, I started a thread at the F1Wolf Club forum on the possibility of having a Formula 1 race on a proper oval track. There are different opinions on the former F1 track at Indy but I always looked forward to that race. The sight of the F1 cars going around the final banked corner (see the photo above) and then charging down the long straight used to be one of the higlights of the season. (The rest of the track was boring but that is a different story). Now Indy F1 race is gone and the closest we get to banked corner is Turn 13 in Shanghai …

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F1Wolf

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I have been checking out the FIA website and I realized that the 2009 Sporting and Technical regulations have already been published. Both documents are quite long (43 and 63 pages) so it would take some time to spot all the changes Max and company made. After a quick read it is clear however that there are still some amendments to come. Not much is changing in the sporting side, all the major changes are in technical regulations:

Here is some very basic summary:

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F1Wolf

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There was only one correct fastest lap prediction, and not too many people expected Vettel and Piquet to make it to top 8. it goes without saying that no one placed Piquet at 2nd place . So the points were rather low this time and 16 was the most popular score. It is very close at the top. The current standings can as usual be found on the left sidebar or on Prediction Game page.

19 - stew, Fisheye
18 - Ben, brabhamburger, Ram, igi
17 - deaddogsmoking, Ozzi, Draconte
16 - Klokan, Steve Robertson, zblkhwk, kotenok, mcw3, shaun, Rob The Flying Dutchman, xxMarinaxx
14 - blazena, Queen Bee, fatfish, Luis Miguel Sainz
13 - F1Wolf, Arun
12 - nieuwe
11 - Rich

F1Wolf

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And here come the results of Round 9 of the Prediction Game. Messy race resulted in pretty low point scores this time… The overall standings are at the left sidebar, you can also check them at the Prediction Game page. We have 2 guys sharing the lead, but we also have brabhamburger and Ozzi in close contact with the top despite both missing out one round …

2008 Prediction Game Round 9 Results:

17 - Kaylen, mcw3, brabhamburger, shaun
16 - Rob The Flying Dutchman
15 - zblkhwk, deaddogsmoking, Ram, Rich, fatfish, Draconte, Steve Robertson
14 - stew, Ben, kotenok, nieuwe, igi, daniel
13 - Klokan, blazena, Fisheye
12 - F1Wolf, Ozzi
11 - Luis Miguel Sainz

F1Wolf

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It has been a weekend full filled with announcements. Future of David Coulthard and Mark Webber, then the new Australian GP deal and now British GP … In a rare sign of harmony both Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone came out with rater unexpected bit of news today. While Silverstone is gearing up for Sunday’s 2008 British F1 GP it was announced today that from 2010 the race will move to Donington Park…
Max Mosley:

“After many years of patient but fruitless negotiation with the BRDC, we are delighted that Bernie has nevertheless been able to ensure that the British Grand Prix will keep its place on the Formula One World Championship calendar.We understand that the development programme planned for Donington will achieve the very high standards we and FOM expect from a modern F1 circuit. Finally, British Formula One fans will get the Grand Prix venue they deserve.”

Bernie Ecclestone:

“Finally the uncertainty is over. A contract has been signed with Donington Park and the future of the British Grand Prix is now secure. We wanted a world class venue for Formula One in Britain, something that the teams and British F1 fans could be proud of. The major development plans for Donington will give us exactly that. A venue that will put British motor sport back on the map. I am sorry that we could not have helped Silverstone to raise the money to carry out the circuit improvements and run Formula One. I believe that the government should have supported them which would have cost probably less than .002% of the government’s commitment for the Olympic Games.”

While Donington Park has been hosting Moto GP on regular basis it only hosted Formula 1 once back in 1993. The surprising announcement only came out few hours ago but serious doubts about Donington actually be ready to host the Formula 1 race in 2010 have already been raised by those familiar with the realities of United Kingdom. (see this article at GrandPrix dot com and this post at F1 Fanatic).

So are we really going to see 2010 British Grand Prix at Donington Park or is this just another chapter of Bernies mind games with Silverstone and (obviously unhappy) BRDC ?

F1Wolf

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