Sidepodcast

Not So Fast, Speed

Finally, Toro Rosso have decided to announce their drivers! Well, don't get too excited, it's actually only one driver. They've confirmed that Tonio Liuzzi will definitely be racing for them in 2007. Scott Speed's future, however, is still unknown.

Team owner, Gerhard Berger: "Everything is fine with Tonio, he's in the car and he's going to drive. With Scott we still have some contractual issues to sort out. We are going to see later."

He also said that they have worked closely with Liuzzi over the winter, having analysed his performances from last year. Supposedly this year he's going to "make less mistakes". Charming! It's nice to know your boss has faith in you, isn't it?

Massa's Madness

For some reason, on Friday last week, Massa came out and said that he thought BMW Sauber were the team to beat this year. He decided that after studying a lot of the testing adventures of the team, and on god knows what else.

"...in my opinion the BMW Sauber is the best of all at the moment."

"I'm saying this by not just looking at the fastest time of this last day, but by seeing their consistency over their long run simulations."

Hmm. I can't imagine why he would bother to say such a thing, unless he's trying to make some friends somewhere. There may be more to this than meets the eye.

I mean, even BMW driver Nick Heidfeld has practically ridiculed the suggestions. Supposedly Heidfeld has said that BMW still has a long way to go until the start of the season and plenty still to be looking at.

"It's nice to hear other people saying how fast we are, but we still do not know really. Until Melbourne no one knows what each team is doing."

He went on to suggest that perhaps the comment from Massa was made to try and shift the pressure of expectations away from the top teams towards some of the mid-runners.

How intriguing.

Two Days Testing

So, yesterday there was more testing news, and another person on top, this time Massa in the Ferrari was fastest man on track. The red of the Ferrari hasn't been seen at the top for quite a while, and Raikkonen kept up the pace, settling in fifth. Massa must have felt pretty good about this, because he was ill in previous days testing.

Lewis Hamilton kept up his top form, posting a time second to the Ferrari and well ahead of champion Alonso.

The Renaults and the Honda's were disappointingly far down the timesheets. Oh well.

Today, it rained, rained, Rained. It rained so much that Nick Heidfeld was the fastest man of the day.

Enough said.

McLaren on Top on Tuesday

Pedro de la Rosa has kept McLaren's strong testing form going strong, finishing on top at Jerez today.

It seemed to be a bit of a mixed up day though, with a Williams, followed by a BMW in second and third. There were three red flags, and Renault finished down in 13th and 14th.

No wonder, then, that they came out the same day and said they weren't worried about the fact that they haven't exactly shone in testing so far.

Chief test engineer Christian Silk: "We're a strong team and these performances don't worry us. The out and out lap times during the winter are almost impossible to analyse."

Renault have said they aimed to test the reliability and are just happy that they got the miles in, and really it's all down to the weather.

Spyker's Plans for the Future

The new very orange Spyker car was launched this week, with plenty of hopeful looking towards the future.

Team owner Michiel Mol has been getting quite emotional about the whole thing:

"This is a special thing, it is history in the making. It is amazing to see what we have achieved in the past few months to get this together. I think for a smaller team like we are this is the time, the moment, to start in F1."

Gosh, isn't there a song that goes like that?

"If we want to be successful... you have to have the best of everything."
"If we score points this year..."
"If we can be a serious midfielder next year..."
All those 'ifs' don't really fill me with a lot of confidence.

New Grand Prix Venues

Bernie Ecclestone has been out and about talking about the future of F1. A new deal with Abu Dhabi has been announced, confirming that they will be hosting a Grand Prix weekend from 2009.

The track will be designed by Hermann Tilke, adding to his vast portfolio of previous designs. The race looks set to be on it's very own island, with a Formula 1 theme park and all the business hotels and golf courses needed to make it a really fabulous destination.

This news came out at the same time as Bernie announcing that he forsees the Formula 1 calendar settling down at about 20 races, with five other countries looking at getting in on the act.

When will it be on all year round??

Who's Turn is it Now?

The customer car row continues to rattle onwards with no real leaning to one side or the other. Each team takes their turn to come out with some argument that usually goes: "They're wrong and we're right," and then we wait for the others to retaliate.

Latest news to emerge: Patrick Head, the director of engineering at Williams has said that those teams using a customer chassis should not be allowed to score championship points next year - on the constructor side of things.

This does make sense really, if you didn't build it, why should you get the points?

I have to wonder though, with it being Super Aguri and Toro Rosso mainly in the firing line for these allegations, is it really going to matter? How many points are they going to be getting? Really?

Battle at the Back

Giedo van de Garde is a test driver that you've probably never heard of. But now he is hitting headlines because he's in the midst of a battle between Super Aguri and Spyker for his services.

van de Garde has been the third driver for Super Aguri, but was announced as a test driver when Spyker confirmed who their four, FOUR, testers would be.

However, Super Aguri are adament that they had no idea van de Garde was going to be included in this announcement and is actually still under contract with them.

I'm not surprised the poor guy is confused, all those bloody S's. Super Aguri? Spyker? Can't they come up with a name a bit different?

Testing Catchup

Yesterday, Alonso held onto his lead in testing, with Fisichella and Kovalainen close behind him in the Renault's. There was no 1 second lead for Alonso this time, and the top three finished very close behind each other.

The weather wasn't great, again, but still 10,000 spectators turned out to see the event. They saw three red flags, caused by Fisichella, Massa and Nick Heidfeld.

Coulthard was quite frustrated both by the weather and by a gearbox problem meaning that he didn't actually manage to complete one dry lap.

Today, in a complete change of fortunes Ralf Schumacher found himself at the top of the timesheets in the Toyota. The Renault's held onto their second and thirds, with Alonso sticking right behind them.

Kazuki Nakajima in the WilliamsF1 caused two red flags in one day and finished with the lowest time. Oh dear.

Most teams are planning to extend their testing due to the hideous weather.

Alonso Proving a Point

In a bid to shout out to everyone that switching teams is not going to affect his ability to fight for his third title, Fernando Alonso took to testing in style. Knocking almost a second off his nearest rival, the double world champion threw his McLaren around the track, despite a little bit of bad weather.

Those closest behind Alonso at the Valencia circuit were all very close together on the timesheets with about a tenth of a second separating 2nd and 5th place. They were taken by Piquet in the Renault and Montagny in the Toyota, then Vettel in the BMW-Sauber and Raikkonen in the Ferrari.

Most were frustrated with the days work, I imagine Raikkonen was particularly unimpressed with his finishing position behind his rival, and the misery was compounded with no less than 10 red flags.

All in all, it sounds like a day that would have better been spent staying in bed.