The Bahrain Grand Prix is over and the teams are heading back to Europe where the ‘real’ season will start in earnest in three weeks. The action on the track was nowhere near the excitement that goes on in Max Mosley’s bedroom but it still provided a few things worth pondering. After three rounds of the 2008 season, here are five points to consider.

1. The British press still have a beef with Fernando Alonso - Of course Lewis Hamilton would collide with Alonso! Or, if you believe some suggestions in the British Press - Fernando gave Lewis a bit of the old brake business. Come on! There was nothing to it but a racing mistake from a sophomore driver. Hamilton was flustered by a bad start, got anxious and hit a fuel-heavy Fernando in the rear - both drivers suffered as a result in the race. The countless suggestion from James Allen and Martin Brundle during the broadcast that it might have been more sinister than that was a desperate attempt at drumming up some drama that was nowhere to be seen in the race. Shame on you ITV!

2. BMW are derailing McLaren’s championship plans - The Scuderia must not know what to think when they look over their shoulders these days - the silver cars aren’t there! BMW are definitely on the move but the team from Hinwil don’t have the experience to challenge Ferrari for the title. McLaren are the team that everyone was expecting to take the fight to Ferrari - problem is, they seem to be stuck behind BMW!

3. Ferrari are running away with the season - The wunderkid from Stevenage seems to have come in contact with some Kryptonyte this season and is unable to take the fight to Ferrari. In a near repeat of last season’s closing races, Hamilton has squandered a 10 point lead in the championship and now trails Kimi Raikkonen by four points. If McLaren can’t find the pace to get around BMW and into a position to attack Ferrari, the season is all but settled. We’ll only have to wait for Jean Todt to mastermind one of his famous coin tosses to see which Ferrari driver will win the championship.

4. David Coulthard is racing his last season - Someone get this guy bigger mirrors! What can you say, the boil has come off this guy - the fire in the belly is gone along with his peripheral vision. There are a 1000 drivers who would kill to be in that Red Bull RB4 and they’re not going to have to wait much longer.

5. Renault are going backwards faster than the R28 can go forwards - Fourth, eighth, tenth - anyone else see the trend here? Renault are in need of some major upgrades on the car if they want to avoid being swallowed up by Red Bull, Toyota and Williams. Alonso has been driving well and that’s worth a few tenths but they need to find a second quickly which is unheard of in F1. If the rumors are true, and there are performance clauses in Fernando’s contract that let him leave if they aren’t competitive, then Renault have a crisis on their hands.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

The team’s have endured back to back races in tough (hot) conditions and while some people feel the real season won’t start until the Spanish Grand Prix, I think a few things are coming to the fore that will provide the theme of this season’s championship.

1. BMW are the fly in the ointment for Ferrari and McLaren. If either of the top two teams stumble during a race this season, they won’t just fall behind their main rivals - odds are they’ll fall behind BMW as well. With BMW able to match the pace of McLaren and showing better reliability than Ferrari, the damage from a bad weekend will be greater than what either team faced last year. Unlike 2007, the front runners are now looking over their shoulders.

2. Toyota weren’t grandstanding! I can say it - I was wrong. I honestly thought that Toyota were going to be nowhere this season but happily the team with megabucks have proven me, and many others wrong. We never really got to see Trulli’s ultimate pace in Melbourne but in Malaysia, he put in a strong qualifying performance and followed it up with a determined run to fourth, holding off a late charging Lewis Hamilton. Toyota aren’t quite with BMW yet but they seem to have the measure of Red Bull and Williams. As a qualifying specialist, Trulli should not be underestimated and he might wreck the race plans of more than one driver this season.

3 . Massa is looking hopeless. Wow, can it get any worse for Felipe Massa? Two races, two unforced and very amateurish driving errors. Worse, the second ‘off’ cost him an assured second place. I haven’t even brought up the silly crash with David Coulthard in Australia. F1 claims it has the best drivers in the world so you would expect that lapping the track would be fairly easy stuff. Apparently not for Massa who is looking more and more uncomfortable in a world without traction control. He’s 14 points behind Hamilton after two races and can already kiss his title shot goodbye. If he doesn’t improve, Ferrari will not be able to hold onto the Constructor’s Title.

4. Ferrari have a serious reliability issue. I’m not sure of the count but…let’s see, in Australia we had Kimi’s engine expire, Felipe’s engine expire and Sebastian’s engine explode. Interestingly, in Australia Adrian Sutil’s Ferrari powered Force India had ‘hydraulics’ problems and again in Malaysia. It wouldn’t be so suspicious if Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari powered Torro Rosso didn’t also fail because of hydraulics in Malaysia. So in all, six Ferrari powered cars have failed to finish for mechanical reasons in two races. That’s a 50% failure rate. Even in the dark days before Schumacher at Ferrari, the team wasn’t this bad, was it? With engine homologation looming, now is not the time for problems.

5. Alonso is showing a champion’s character. Fernando put in a scrappy race in Australia and between the retirements of those in front of him and the bizarre pit-limiter mistake from Heikki Kovaleinen that slowed his car right after passing Alonso, the Renault driver was lucky to steal fourth place. Still, unlike most, he tamed the Australian circuit without the aid of traction control. In Malaysia, he put in a hard fought race, dispatching David Coulthard and harassing Mark Webber relentlessly at the end of the race for the reward of a single point. There have been many former champions who just switch off and fade as soon as they aren’t fighting for wins (Hill, Hunt, Scheckter) but Alonso is not one of them. He flogged a pretty awful car around the track with sublime control. He seems at ease at Renault and back on the form that marked him as one of the most complete drivers in F1 - past or present. I’m happy he’s back to normal.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Heckling is part of the game.  Fans yelling sometimes witty (sometimes childish) taunts in an effort to throw off a rival team’s game or disrupt their concentration is something professional athletes are expected to deal with.  However, what happened in Barcelona, Spain this past weekend was not good natured heckling, it was racism.  It was ugly.

If fans in Spain want to believe that McLaren wronged Fernando Alonso and wish to direct their displeasure towards Lewis Hamilton, they are entitled to do so - to a point.  That entitlement does not extend to assaulting a young man with racist taunts while wearing black face paint.  The behavior of a few Spanish fans was a pathetic display of racism hiding behind sports partisanship.

Spain has the privilege of hosting two grand prix events this year (Barcelona and Valencia) - a situation many countries would like to enjoy.  Rewards like this come with expectations.  One of these expectations would be to not bring the sport into disrepute. The governing body is now, rightfully and properly, investigating this incident. The FIA have warned that one or both of the events may be canceled if the track organizers cannot control the fans and prevent an incident like this one from occurring again.  It would be unfortunate and even damaging to the sport in the short term to cancel races but would be nothing compared to the damage that could be inflicted on the sport if it was perceived to tolerate racism.

The FIA should be applauded for stepping in quickly to stop this behavior from continuing.  Tough decisions will need to be made in the next few weeks and hopefully commercial considerations will not come into consideration.  The issue is bigger than money.  If the Spanish people have to suffer for the actions of a few, it is a price worth paying to send a message to everyone that racism will not be tolerated in any form, in any place, at any time.

Now however, is the time for Fernando Alonso to step forward and speak to his fans.  The former World Champion’s voice has the power to halt the anger and hatred being directed to his former teammate, Lewis Hamilton.  Alonso needs to address his fans and demand the attacks on Hamilton stop.  The time has come for everyone to put the past behind them and it is the time for Fernando take the role of a champion and leader of the sport.

Spain is better than this.  Formula 1 is better than this.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Descending from Scottish heritage I can tell you that laying out hundreds of dollars for a ticket to an F1 race causes my heart to ache. I take some consolation though when a race is as exciting as the 2007 Montreal Grand Prix but decidedly not from a race like the catastrophe that was the 2005 USGP.

But, imagine yourself having to shell out nearly a quarter million euro to get through the gates. That’s exactly what Kimi Raikkonen will have to pay this year to race in F1. Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso will be paying nearly as much. Its all because of the new costs for an FIA issued super-license.

For the privilege of racing in the upcoming season, drivers will have to pay a flat fee of €10,000 plus an additional 2000€ for each point they scored during the 2007 season. The previous rates were €1690 plus another €447 for each point earned the previous year. For Raikkonen, that works out to €230,000 in super-license fees for 2008 while under the old licensing model, Kimi would only have had to pay €50,860. For the entire grid to license itself this season (22 drivers including 3 rookies) the total will be €1, 504,000. Quite the cash cow for the FIA.

The speculation behind this raise in fees is that it will help deter unqualified drivers from obtaining a super-license. I think that the FIA could prevent unqualified drivers from obtaining a super-license by just saying “No” to the applicant. In 2001, the FIA did this in the case of then rookie, Kimi Raikkonen whom they considered to be too inexperienced to race in F1. They ended up only issuing him a probationary license.

Even if they looked rather stupid after the fact in the case of Raikkonen - he scored a point in his debut, the FIA still stepped in as the regulator of the sport and evaluated the driver regardless of whether or not the fee had been paid. Could they not carry out the same process with any driver who applied to race in Formula 1?

Instead of consistently enforcing rules that would only allow the qualified onto the grid, the FIA has happily allowed the likes of Gaston Mazzacane, Alex Yoong and Yuji Ide into the exclusive ranks of Formula 1 drivers. Pay drivers like these three typically bring millions of dollars into a backmarker F1 team each year through their personal sponsorship deals with companies. Raising licensing fees, even as drastically as the governing body have done for 2008 will not keep pay drivers out of F1, it only insures a bigger slice of the pie for the FIA.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Renault’s wayward son returned home today. Fernando Alonso stepped back into a Renault uniform this morning at Jerez, Spain for a run in the team’s R27 race car. The Spaniard’s return to the French team from McLaren closes an ugly chapter in his career that tarnished an otherwise stellar image.

For both the team and driver the focus in 2008 will be on rebuilding reputations. Renault was fortunate to only drop as far as third in the team championship last year, thanks to the McLaren disqualification, and will be eager to get back to the top on merit. The team had achieved great success in 2005 and 2006 when they beat McLaren and Ferrari respectively to the titles.

Similarly, Alonso will be desperate to rebuild his reputation as the world’s best driver. He will need to get on top of his rookie teammate, Nelson Piquet Jr., quickly if he is to erase the memory of being beaten by Lewis Hamilton last year. The Spaniard cannot afford to play the childish political games that went on in 2007 at McLaren. On-track results are all that matter and they need to be accomplished fairly.

Needing to restore their pride will be a powerful motivator for both driver and team. Fernando and Renault are wounded animals and writing off either would be a serious mistake. If Renault build a reasonable car, Alonso will use it to great effect, especially against McLaren if given the chance.

*Alonso finished the day at the top of the timesheets. Though this is winter testing and lap times alone cannot determine who will be fastest when the season starts, there should be no doubt that today’s performance was a message sent to and understood by the rest of the paddock. Fernando is still a threat.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!