We expect some big changes in the look of the Formula 1 cars in 2009 but as the season progresses the cars change even without new rules. Let’s have a look how the 2008 F1 cars looked in Melbourne and compare them with their look in Brazil:

Ferrari - Melbourne

Ferrari - Brazil

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Front wings in 2009 will be much lower

2008 style front wing on Williams F1 car

We may see more of these soon, the winter testing begins next week. But Williams are the first team offering us the sneak peak at the 2009 style aero. They tested the narrow and high rear wing in Barcelona back in September, yesterday they fitted the FW30 car with the new front wing too during their Kemble airfield shakedown.

The pictures above show the differences between 2008 and 2009 spec front wings. I must say that while the new rear wing looks funny, its cousing at the front of car does have the look of proper racing wing .

More on 2009 F1 cars:

2009 Formula 1 cars look - The most obvious differences

How will the 2009 F1 cars look like ?

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Karun Chandhok GP2 Monza 2008

Earlier this year, at the height of the Mosleygate came a surprising piece of news from FIA - plans to revive the Formula 2 series. Thanks to the timing of the announcement it was almost immediately considered to be just another shot fired in the Bernie vs. Max war. Thanks to the planned low budget (£195,000 per car) it was also almost immediately branded as impossible. Things have however moved ahead. Jonathan Palmer’s MotorSport Vision has been selected to run the series and the plans for 2009 season were announced last weekend including the 2009 FIA Formula Two Championship calendar (see the bottom of this post).

Many people are a bit confused with this Formula 2 thing especially when there already exists rather successful Formula 1 feeder series - GP2. So what are the differences between current GP2 series and the planned Formula 2 championship ?

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Kazuki Nakajima, Williams

We entered the last month of 2008 Formula 1 season and after a short period of silence the drivers market there seems to be a lot happening on drivers market.

Williams team confirmed yesterday their 2009 drivers line up will remain the same as this year - Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima. Rosberg’s drive has been confirmed for a while already, Nakajima being the Toyota boy doing a decent rookie job was expected to continue. No real surprises here.

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Daniel from F1Bloggen is doing great job discovering all these videos … Here is his new find, onboard lap of Singapore track with Nico Rosberg (click to watch). Simulator of course, the real F1 cars still have to wait till Friday to taste the latest F1 street track. The video is also featured on WilliamsF1 website and in F1WolfClub video collection.

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There has been a lot of speculations about the look of 2009 cars. The tall and narrow rear wing that Williams ran yesterday at Jerez may be the first indication of things to come. As expected, return to early 1990s .

It will be interesting to see if any other teams test some 2009 features during this final test of 2008 season.

Photo: Williams/LAT

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Takuma Sato ready to test for Toro Rosso

Not surprisingly there has been renewed talk about the future of Toro Rosso following their maiden F1 win last weekend. There are basically 2 questions:

a) Who will drive for Toro Rosso next year
b) What will happen with the team after 2009 season

Not much has changed with the drivers situation. Although the Sebastien Bourdais has been doing better recently, especially in qualifying, his future is still very uncertain. On one hand the team bosses sound a bit happier about Le Seb’s performances, on the other hand Bourdais himself does not see much point in continuing with the team if he can’t get a car that would suit his driving style. So let’s see. For the time being Toro Rosso are looking at the Sebastien Buemi and Takuma Sato. Both are with the team in Jerez for the final test session of the season. Buemi was behind the wheel yesterday, today (Thursday) will be Sato’s turn. There hasn’t been much said about Bruno Senna recently though …

What is more interesting is what lies ahed of the team itself. I was wondering whether Dietrich Mateschitz would change his mind about selling the team. But what the media say this week is right, he never put the team up for sale in the first place:

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Adrian Newey

Adrian Newey did it again. After winning races and titles with both Williams and McLaren he ended his winless streak and added another race win to his already impressive tally of Formula 1 race wins.

Williams raced Newey built cars between 1991 and 1997 winning 59 races in the process (Red Bull’s website says 58, I counted 59). McLaren relied on Newey car design between 1998 and 2005 winning 41 races in that period. I am not sure if all these 100 race wins can be contributed to Newey’s design or not. I haven’t found any source that would state this high number of race wins for Newey built cars, most sources say “over 80″. What we can say for sure now is that he has won one more.

Many people believed that it is only matter of time before Newey designed Red Bull car wins a race. But I think no too many expected that it will be STR instead of RB …

The STR03 first appeared in April test in Barcelona and scored first points on its race debut in Monaco. Then came it’s ninth race weekend, the pole position and the win.

Photo: Red Bull/GEPA

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Nico Rosberg, Williams

Nico Rosberg has confirmed that he is staying with Williams in 2009:

“The future is here (at Williams). Well, for next year. Then we’ll see. I feel very comfortable at the team. Of course I feel good. I’ve been with the team a long time, I get on with everybody so it’s very nice. It’ s just the car isn’t fast enough.”

While this pretty much settles it for 2009 Rosberg’s words seem to indicate yet again, that he is ready to move on if an opportunity to drive better car presents itself … Well, who would not be.

You can follow the 2009 Driver Line up on this page

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Here comes the second Grand Prix video preview - this time 2008 Hungarian GP:

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

This video includes:

- Look back at winners of all previous Hungarian Grands Prix - from Nelson Piquet to Lewis Hamilton
- Flashback to 2007 Hungarian GP
- Race preview with Nico Rosberg and Sam Michael

This video can also be viewed at F1 Wolf Club, on Facebook and on one day perhaps also on Dailymotion

Music: music.podshow.com

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