Be Excellent To Each Other

Well, we're nearly there. The advantage of having a baby is that I'll probably be up to watch the opening race this year.

So, who are your pennies on? I would put my cash on a Ferarri victory, but I'd love to see Kubica win.

Testing this year has been... inconclusive.

I wouldn't wish to put my money on anyone winning.

My money is on the Jordan team

I think they've got a real chance

Force India?

Yeah, they may get a point this year.

They are one of the teams I support

I would say Ferrari, but I really don't think either driver has it in them to be champion this season. Raikkonen looks like he's going through the motions and Massa blew his best chance ever of winning last year.

I think McLaren will struggle for a bit early on, but get stronger and stronger as the season progresses. Alonso and Kubica will be massive threats, but don't rule out Toyota either. Or Vettel in the Red Bull!

It's going to be an interesting season.

He did win, for about 30 seconds
But seriously, I disagree. He did everything he needed to do in that last race, he was just painfully unlucky.

Vaguely tempted to watch it to see if the hybrid thingies make it exciting or interesting at all..

I also heard it's back on BBC, with the proper theme tune? Yay! But also with Murray Walker? Woo. That can't be right - I mean legendary that he is, he was fairly wobbly at it last time I watched >10 years ago.

He's not back as a full time commentator. More a regular commenter.

To be honest, I just hate Ferrari.

Also, Mark Webber must be sweating over his place in the Red Bull teams. His name isn't Sebastian.

What are Brawn F1's chances then? Do they have a major backer yet?

Murray's just on website duty I believe.

As for Sebastians, his cousin has a chance of a drive soonish but she's not called Sebastian.

http://autoracingworld.wordpress.com/20 ... g-is-here/

3rd in Spanish F3 last year... in a 2 year old car. Doing the new F2 series in 09.

There are rumours that Danica Patrick might get a drive next year, too.

Also, hello Dudley!

That's a nice site.

Yeah, I thought so, too. Some of the comments on the F1 blog about it are cretinous, however.

I think it's going to be impossible to predict this year as it isn't down to the two teams with the most money for once. It will, as ever, be interesting to see who wins the first race as that's a reasonably good indicator of who's going to win (don't know the actual stats, but it's quite high for 1st race win turning into champ isn't it?)

As for drivers? I'd fancy Hamilton again unless the car's a complete dog - bizarrely I think his biggest weakness is his relationship with McLaren - most of the time he fucks up it's down to stupid team strategies and I think he's been too beholden to them for grooming him or too green to actually dictate strategy - hopefully this will change.
I think conservatively there will be strong competition from Alonso, Raikkonen, Massa, Kubica and Vettel but in Ferrari's case in particular I don't think there's enough consistency or talent to win the championship - Massa is groomed by possibly the best driver and best car set-up/testing driver the sport has ever seen and he still didn't win last year as it was always Hamilton's to lose - unlucky Massa may be, but I simply don't think he's got that special magic to become champion as he's been groomed and finessed by arguably the best in the world and still can't do it. I don't think Raikkonen really has it either - he's missing something. We know Alonso has it in spades - give him a half decent car and he'll win races and I'd say he's probably one of the strongest contenders in any giver year. The rest are just wildcards at the moment, though it would be nice to see something better than mediocre or shit from the former Honda team now they have a decent team principal in his first year with a car he's actually been involved in producing.

I am going to be supporting Hamilton but secretly thinking that Alonso and Massa will have good seasons.

KERS is going to be interesting and the move back to full slicks, in fact the general shake up of rules means this is the most excited I have been for a few seasons. I just don't know what is going to happen.

I really hope not, she'd set women in motorsport back 20 years. She's won one professional motor race in her life, and that was on an oval, on a fuel mileage gamble, with half the field missing because they scheduled 2 races 5000 miles apart on the same day. She also said an F1 test "might not fit in her schedule", a schedule that includes relentless half naked photoshoots. She's got some talent for oval racing but she's always out of depth in the Indycar series on road courses.

There ARE talented women in motorsport of course and what the hell, this is a geek subject of mine so here's some.

Natacha Gachnang - Formula 2
Podium finisher in Star Mazda 2007, 3rd in Spanish F3 in 2008 for Campos in a 2006 car. Cousin of Sebastian Buemi. For those who saw the Valencian GP last year consider this. She managed to overtake multiple people on that track in the F3 race.


But also...


Ana Beatriz - Indy Lights
Race winner in debut season last year, would have won 2nd race if her teammate hadn't punted her off. Back in the series this year with every chance of a championship run.


Simona de Silvestro - Won in the Atlantic series last year, a series Danica raced winless in for 2 years. Unknown 2009


Susie Stoddart - races 1 year old cars for Mercdes in DTM (the german BTCC effectively). Spent most of last year making teammate Matteus Lauda's days very difficult. Likely to return to DTM in the same car in 09 but Mercedes haven't announced their line up yet.


Katherine Legge - Won 3 times in Atlantics, including her first race, did ok in Champ car in a variety of cars that frequently had no business even being on a track. Did DTM last year in a private (actually run by ex-Force India boss Colin Kolles) 2 year old Audi A4 and did well enough to win a works (albeit 1 year old) car this year.


Pippa Mann - Seen punting around the midfield of the Renault World Series in a loser team. Joins Indy Lights (one below Indycar Series) this year and was fastest both in the rookie only and full field tests. Jury out.

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And two special mentions


Sarah Fisher - The nicest woman in racing. That pic above is from a fan meet and greet, the body language difference between her and Danica says it all. Faced with trouble getting a drive she loves racing enough to start her own Indycar team (see right). Got taken out by 2 AGR cars in the Indy 500 and partly through Tony Kannan being awesome and her being liked the next race AGR ran her sponsor on Tony's car in apology and bought the team several replacement parts. Race 2 she was 11th before a last lap bearing failure, skip to 8:55 on the vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjK4Q8nk ... re=related to see her interview afterwards. Racing needs a million more people with that enthusiasm and passion, women or not.


Milka Duno - I shouldn't like Milka, she appeared on the Indycar scene having got a 2nd place in the Daytona 24hr by driving as little as possible, she's over made up, she didn't appear to care and in the first year was actually dangerously slow at times. But by 2008 she'd quietly worked at getting better, constantly and is now a very reasonable oval racer, she led more laps in 2008 than Danica did despite driving for probably the worst team and was the only one to stand up to Danica's legendary tantrums after she held her up in UNTIMED practice - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7eLhSuwCw . This year she has a ride at Newman-Hass, winners of the Champ car title many times with Seb Bourdais. There's a real danger Milka will beat Danica on ovals. I can't wait for Danica to storm down the pitlane to be met with a headbutt.

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For the patriots, Susie, Katherine and Pippa are all British.

Wasn't there a female F1 driver back in the 90s, but who never actually qualified for a race (back when there were 35 drivers for 26 starting places). I can't remember the name—Italian?

Didn't 'one of them' get half a point once? Aaages ago?

Giovanna Amati failed to qualify a rapidly dying Brabham team 3 times in 1992. She was replaced by a man called Damon Hill.

Curio is talking about Lella Lombardi who took 6th in the 1975 Spanish GP for March, one of 17 starts. A shorterened race distance meant half a point yes.

Not mentioned historically here is Desire Wilson whose championship stats read "1 DNQ". She is however the only woman to win an official F1 race, winning at Brands Hatch in the British F1 championship (yes, we had one).



2 more women have attempted championship F1 races, Maria Teresa de Filippis is the only female to run herself in her own team in 1958 and Divina Galica failed to qualify Surtees and Hesketh cars, she now works for iRacing.

Of the women above, I can only really see Natacha getting to F1, she's the only one working towards it seriously and has the connections.

Fanks for all that info Duds - it's always nice to get precis on stuff like this. I don't know much if anything about female racing drivers (and not a great deal about their male compadres if I'm honest ) but it does appear than Danica Partick or whatever she's called is the motor racing equivalent of that Russian tennis player of a few years ago who was all mediocre looks, even worse skills and tons of endorsements.

Anna Kournikova is hot, though.

That's the one and NO she isn't. Mildly tepid maybe.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

The thing is she isn't. It's like saying any gym bunny who gets paid loads for being fit, is hot. AK is very average looking all things considered and out of a hundred I'd give her, hmmm, 47

There are just as many hard faced eastern European beauties in my local Asda on any given day.

What part of 'agree to disagree' don't you understand, clothead?

The sad thing is she IS quite talented, although not the best we've got, she's just a total bitch and doesn't seem to care about racing or the fans. She'll always be a better driver than Milka for example, but Milka works at it. The first page of pics on indycar.com when I checked was illuminating, Sarah was at 2 clearly optional fan events chatting to people and looking clearly thrilled. Milka is posing for pics with people who've clearly just said "hi!" and hugging her teammate's kid. Danica is cross-armed, sunglassed and sulky. To overcome that you've got to be GOOD and she isn't, the context to the Milka vid is that there's multiple similar instances of Danica shoving and shouting at male drivers like that (and most famously storming down a live pitlane at Indy) because she knows they won't hit a girl. Milka will.

Oh, while I think of it, did anyone notice I was in Autosport magazine last week (the Williams - we will survive one)?

Dur. You said it not me. I'm not agreeing to letting you be wrong. For once. Most of the time I'm happy to let you be wrong about most things you are, not this one. Or AK either.

You were? For what reason?

Coincidentally them picking up on a forum post where I pointed out "Sakon Yamamoto, Alex Yoong and Yuji Ide have all won more professional motor races than Danica Patrick."

You sexist pig!

Heh, I would have used Katherine Legge in there but I didn't want it to be about "You picked the wrong woman" but about F1 failures.

I used to be friends with the Simmonite sisters, they started in off-road Racing. They we looking like getting a top-level Rally drive with Ford when Rachael got done for drink driving, Christ, ten years ago now.
They were good.

I think I remember them actually.

Rally has been a happier hunting ground for females in any case, Louise Aitken-Walker was competitive in British and World rallies (and the BTCC) and of course Michèle Mouton won a World Rally outright (4 of them in fact) and if not for some bad luck with reliability could well have been world champion in 1982. She's also awesome for retiring when they banned Group B because she didn't want to drive slower cars.

was going to write Yeah for danica!, but then read the rest and it appears she has been a bit hyped.. would be fun to see some women in there..

since all dutch guys kinda left the f1 and 'our' team fialed to do anything, not really sure.. liked Massa last season, brazilians are allowed to win this kind of thing

normally i have an agreement with Finland. they are good in sports we aren't and vice versa, so since Jari Litmanen i support them at things like ice hockey and ski jumping, but hakkinen and raikonen were a bit exceptions to that rule

Oh hell yeah.

Is that a Brawn!!!

That is indeed the new Brawn car testing at Silverstone today.

I'd take credit but it's off their website.

http://brawngp.com/gallery.php

Without wanting to take things too off topic the WTCC starts this weekend, does anyone know how I can go about watching it on my pooter?

Legally, you can subscribe to stream Eurosport 1 and 2 for £3.99 a month and they show the WTCC live amongst many other fabulous things.

http://video.eurosport.co.uk/eurosport- ... aser.shtml

I might make an effort to attend one of these as the price is pretty good, for a whole day, for the most part, if anyone wants to organise a "BeeX goes to the Races" day.

I'd love to I've not been to watch any motorsport for years now. It's bit of a trek to Silverstone from here for a day out though.

Am I right in assuming that you don't have to pay to go to a WRC rally stage? What with it being on public roads?

I'd have thought so, I can't see how they could restrict access to all of it.

I keep joking to the ex that our daughter to be will be the first female F1 world champion. I fully intend to be one of those horrible parents that live out their failed ambitions through their children - Zioette will be going karting, like it or not.

I do like F1, but personally I'm more looking forward to the start of the BTCC season at Brands Hatch on April 5th. It's my mate's birthday party the night before though, so I'm hedging my bets on which of my friends will be well enough to attend with me on the day.

You going to come to Silverstone to see it, too? I'll see if I can get some tickets for much freeness.

Also from their presskit.

"Red Bull's motives in taking over the team were prompted by the need to find cockpits for the most talented of the rookie drivers emerging from it's young driver program. Or maybe because it just liked pissing people off by buying a 2nd team"

I love Red Bull. PDF here (copy and paste, the forum breaks it) - http://www.scuderiatororosso.com/PageFi ... Kit%20(PDF).pdf

They also posted this story last night. - http://www.scuderiatororosso.com/Car/Ne ... -STR4-Car/