All the teams except Toyota and Ferrari, but finally including Super Aguri, tested in Jerez last week. Williams and Red Bull tested for 4 days, the rest for 3 days only.

As usual it is hard to read into the times. But there are few things that are becoming obvious:

McLarens did look like the fastest cars out of the Jerez pack, although on Wednesday Mark Webber, Nico Rosberg, Kazuki Nakajima, Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica all managed better times than quickest of McLaren’s - Lewis Hamilton. A day later however it was Heikki Kovalainen on top, and around 1.5 second faster than Lewis Hamilton. This big difference suggests that each driver was on different program… They also tried out some weird looking wheel covers.

How close to or ahead of Ferrari they are is everybody’s guess…

Red Bull and Williams did very well. The ugly fin on Red Bull seems to be working and looks set to stay … Nakajima is quite impressive in Williams and I would lie if I say I expected him to be pretty much on par with Nico Rosberg. The races may be different story, but so far so good for Williams and for Nakajima. BMW and Renault are 2 other teams that form the very strong upper midfield group. These four may be a bit behind McLaren at the moment, but it looks like the days of top 6 pre-booked for Ferrari, McLaren and BMW drivers are over. The Q2s are going to be very intense with 12 cars at least fighting it out for 10 places in Q3 …

Then there is Toro Rosso somehow standing alone between the top and the bottom. Vettel seems to be a tenth or two faster than Bourdais. They are still running the old car, the new one not expected before the beginning of the European F1 season. But judging from their current form, starting the season with an old car is not going to hurt them.

Force India car, despite getting a facelift, remains firmly among the backmarkers. There however seems to be quite a difference between performances of Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil (and Tonio Liuzzi). Looks like Fisi is out to prove his critics wrong …

Honda still lacks the speed and the three second gap between Button and Kovalainen on Thursday looks scary. But the guys at Honda seem to be happy and quite upbeat after the Jerez test. Clearly clocking quick times was not why they went to Jerez. The updates expected for the final test in Barcelona are supposed to address all the issues with the car the team has identified, so let’s wait and see …

Super Aguri made it clear to the world they still exist. Both Sato and Davidson (although still without contract for 2008) took the car around the Jerez track. They were slower than Honda proper, but the gaps were just around a tenth of a second. Unfortunately these days being a tenth slower than Honda is not a exactly good news.

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Eight teams have finished their weekend of testing in Barcelona. Three days and three different cars on the top. Hamilton (McLaren) on Friday, Vettel (Toro Rosso) on Saturday and Mark Webber (Red Bull) on Sunday.

In absence of Ferrari it was expected that the McLarens will be topping or be very very close to the top. Hamilton topped the sheets on Friday. On Saturday however Toro Rosso’s were both quicker than both McLarens and on Sunday Mark Webber managed to beat the silver cars. Overall the McLarens look good.

Toro Rosso team will not introduce their new car until few races into the 2008 season, so what they test now is an updated version of their 2007 car. Their Saturday impressive run might a bit misleading, as they an the car very light. However they did not do too bad also on Friday and Sunday. This definitelly was an encouraging weekend for the team.

Red Bull came up with a revolutionary design - implementing an ugly fin on the engine cover. And unfortunatelly it seems to be working Mark Webber’s fastest time on Sunday shows. If other teams get the hint, we may see more cars getting ugly.

BMW seem to have overcome the problems they experienced last week and they seem to be around 0.3 off the McLaren pace now. Renault is also clawing back, either the car has seen quite an improvement from last year or Fernando Alonso brought his famous 0.6 second with him. They do not seem to be 1 second behind McLaren any more. It looks pretty even between them and BMW Sauber.

Giancarlo Fisichella impressed o Friday with the 4th fastest time. Force India only tested with 1 car and neither Liuzzi nor Sutil were able to get anywhere near the time Fisi posted on Friday.

Williams did not do much in Barcelona. After Kazuki Nakajima’s crash the team did not continue on Friday. And when they realized the problems with their front wing mounting need more thorough fix, they decided to abandon the Barcelona test completely. A bit of a turn in their fortunes after the excelent form in Valencia. But one of the purposes of the tests is also to find out what does not work.

Photo: HondaRacingF1

And this leaves the poor Honda. The car simply is not good enough yet and the team has lots of job ahead to move up from the back of the field to midfield at least. According to Jenson Button the car “lacks the driveability” and the new ECU and the fact that the car is brand new are mentioned as the main reasons. The gap between Honda and the top is 1 and half second at the moment. If I was to bet on who will copy the ugly fin from Red Bull first, Honda would be my candidate.

On Sunday there were 7 teams within 1 second and if ad the impresive run of Fisi in Force India on Friday we can say the field is very tight at the moment. The only team visibly lagging behind right now is Honda. We have no comparison with Ferrari and Toyota this time, these 2 will be testing this week in Bahrain. The lack of news (other than takeover and driver rumours) from Super Aguri is a bit worrying.

Unfortunatelly it will not be the racing that will be making the headlines after the Barcelona test but the racist behaviour of some Spanish fans towards Lewis Hamilton …

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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

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The automotive lighting producer Hella held a demonstration of new motor racing circuit lighting system at Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway on November 12, 2007.

This demonstration included test drives by current Red Bull Formula 1 Team driver, Mark Webber, five time World 500cc Champion Mick Doohan and Australian Formula 3 Championship driver Leanne Tander.

Here are few photos from the demostration provided by Hella:

Five time World 500cc Motorcycle Champion Mick Doohan testing the ARTIS illumination ystem at Melbourne’s Calder Park Raceway on November 12, 2007.

Red Bull Racing Formula One driver Mark Webber tests the Artis system in an Elfin sports car.

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One top Czech expert on sexual and marital problems advises all the men to always “deny, deny, deny” if asked by wives about any other women. Telling the truth in these situations does not help at all, he says.

Looks like the Red Bull guys have been listening to him

First David Coulthard, on Monday:

“I cannot see Fernando Alonso joining Red Bull in 2008, and I am 100 percent certain that I will be racing for them next year. I was never worried about that, even when the rumours first surfaced about Alonso.”

Then Mark Webber, on Tuesday:

“I haven’t gone through my contract in that sort of detail but I’m pretty sure I’ll be driving there. David is obviously looking at it a bit more than I am.”

And finally Dietrich Mateschitz, the Red Bull owner, also on Tuesday:

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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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This looks like an amateur video showing what TV feed missed. While it still looks like it was a driving mistake or laps in concentration from Vettel, I wonder, what was Hamilton doing driving the way he was driving, why he almost stopped ?

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