Interesting Facts About A Formula 1 Car

If you have even a passing interest in Formula One cars you must take a look at this great list of interesting facts about F1 cars - click here.

Some tid-bits to whet your appetite :

- To give you an idea of just how important aerodynamic design and added downforce can be, small planes can take off at slower speeds than F1 cars travel on the track

- An F1 car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9% correctly, it would still start the race with 80 things wrong!

Hungarian Formula 1 Grand Prix 5 August 2007 - Race Report

McLaren’s first came in the form of the grid place penalty that moved Fernando Alonso from the pole down to sixth place, guaranteeing that he had no chance of victory. Their second was the stewards’ decision that the team would not be eligible for any constructors’ points after the qualifying incident. Considering that they ‘scored’ 15, that had to hurt.

Ferrari had some nasty things to swallow, too. The first pill for them was the oversight in not refuelling Felipe Massa’s car in the second session of qualifying. They don’t normally have to do two runs in Q2, and that caught them out.

Starting from 14th, of necessity with a heavy fuel load, Massa was damned from the get go and never made any inroads into the bunch of cars ahead. He was quite right when he described his race as “horrible”.

Their second pill was the knowledge that their F2007 had the pace to have won the race, after struggling in qualifying. Kimi Raikkonen traded fastest laps with winner Lewis Hamilton, and set the best one on the very last lap.

Nevertheless, there were silver linings in both sets of clouds. Hamilton put McLaren back in the winner’s circle for the second consecutive race, and increased his championship lead. And Alonso, for all that he had a very tough afternoon, added a further five points to his score. And Raikkonen added eight to his, and eight to Ferrari’s, so they now have 119 points to McLaren’s 138.

One of the obstacles that Alonso could not overcome was Nick Heidfeld and his BMW Sauber. The German, ironically, was one of the men who did not benefit from Alonso’s penalty, since it moved him from the clean side of the grid to the dirty side. This was a double blow, because it meant that he was slower away and, conversely, Raikkonen was faster. The net result was that he got stuck with third place, when he might have been able to have defended second. With team mate Robert Kubica making a great start, driving as strongly as he ever does, and some excellent pit work, the Swiss-German squad were on track for another healthy dose of points, their 10 actually outscoring everyone else and bringing their score to 71.

Ralf Schumacher hung in for sixth place, having fended off Alonso for a long time early on, and the Toyota driver was very happy with his car once front flap adjustments during his first stop had eliminated some nervousness. He was also satisfied that his two-stop strategy was the right one. Team mate Jarno Trulli, however, faded down to a 12th place finish and was highly disappointed to find himself stuck in traffic almost all race. Unlike Schumacher, he found his TF107 a handful on the super-soft tyre in the final stint.

Williams’ Nico Rosberg looked likely to do better than the two points he got for seventh place, but his three-stop strategy dropped him back in the final analysis. He was far enough ahead not to be troubled by Heikki Kovalainen, who once again took the final point after a better run in the race than he’d had in qualifying. Interestingly, he ran and Renault team mate Giancarlo Fisichella (together with Honda’s Rubens Barrichello) were the only runners to start on the Bridgestone super-soft tyre, which had demonstrated a tendency to grain quickly in practice, and the Finn’s R27 loved them. He did 27 laps on the first set, and 22 on the second, before doing his final stint on the soft prime tyre. And no sign of graining at all. Fisichella’s chances disappeared pretty much when his penalty for impeding Yamamoto in qualifying dropped him to 13th, but going off track and losing a place to Trulli, and later colliding with Super Aguri’s Anthony Davidson as they left the pits together, did not help his cause.

This time there were no points for Mark Webber and Red Bull, but at least the RB3 was reliable. The Australian felt he got the best from the available package on his way to ninth place, but David Coulthard, who finished 11th behind Trulli, found his RB3’s behaviour very inconsistent on the three sets of tyres he used.

Renault thus remain fourth with 33 points, Williams have 20, Red Bull are still on 16, and Toyota have 12.

Behind Coulthard, 12th place was the subject of an intense fight between Fisichella, Massa and Williams’ Alex Wurz. None of them were happy, for their different reasons, and Wurz felt he lost out when Spyker’s Adrian Sutil inadvertently brushed him on to the grass at one point as he was being lapped by the trio.

Takuma Sato was Super Aguri’s only finisher, struggling with low grip on a heavy initial fuel load. He was happier with his SA07’s balance on the super-soft tyre in his third stint, but by then it was too late. He nearly distinguished himself by tripping up Hamilton in Turn One as he rejoined after a pit stop; fortunately Hamilton just missed him.

Davidson had the upper hand at Super Aguri all weekend, and did well to fend off Wurz for so long. But his race ended in a collision with Fisichella exiting Turn One, which broke his rear suspension.

Toro Rosso debutant Sebastian Vettel took 16th after a tough afternoon in which he found the STR02 to be a very different proposition to the BMW Sauber F1.07. He ran a lot more fuel than team mate Tonio Liuzzi, who was ahead of him when he suffered electronic gremlins.

Spyker lost Sakon Yamamoto early on, when he crashed into the tyre wall in Turn 11, but as Sutil survived some off-track explorations to finish 17th the Dutch team drew succour from beating Honda on a terrible day for the Japanese enterprise. 2006 winner Jenson Button had a torrid time trailing round at the back until a throttle sensor problem put him out of his misery after 35 laps, while Barrichello was obliged to soldier on for another 33 laps on his way to 18th, two laps down.

With no testing and a three-week gap to Turkey, everyone will now work away in their factories, ready to regroup for battle in Istanbul at the end of the month.

David Tremayne
(taken from F1 - The Official Formula One website)

European Formula 1 Grand Prix 22 July 2007 - Race Report

McLaren’s Fernando Alonso won a humdinger of a European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring on Sunday afternoon, in a contest that at the start was almost rendered farcical by rain. But it was only when more precipitation fell on parts of the track in the closing laps that the Spaniard was able to pounce on erstwhile leader Felipe Massa, and to snatch the triumph from the Brazilian in the Ferrari.

It was a great day for Alonso, for team mate Lewis Hamilton had an up and down race which ultimately brought him no points and ended his nine-race string of podium visits. Alonso thus has 68 points to Hamilton’s 70, and with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen failing to finish, Massa lies third on 59 to the Finn’s 52.

To begin with there was total confusion as a deluge, which arrived earlier than expected, flooded the track during the opening lap. That then prompted the extraordinary sight of rookie Markus Winkelhock leading on his debut by the second lap, thanks to Spyker presciently putting him on full wets after the parade lap. As everyone else headed for the pits (well, not leader Raikkonen, who tried to, but then slid over the pit lane entry line and back on to the track!), the first corner claimed Honda’s Jenson Button (who had risen to third but got slightly short-braked in the appalling conditions behind Massa and Alonso), Spyker’s Adrian Sutil and Toro Rosso team mates Scott Speed and Tonio Liuzzi (whose STR07 had broken its rear suspension after being rear-ended on the opening lap). Hamilton also went off there, but was rescued by a crane that Liuzzi nearly struck.

The race was wisely red flagged on the fourth lap as everything was tidied up, then restarted behind the safety car in better conditions half an hour later. Everyone who could run was allowed to, and after three more laps behind the safety car (in which Hamilton was allowed to unlap himself), the racing resumed on Lap Eight. Massa quickly asserted himself over Alonso, but another flurry of pit stops as people switched from wet Bridgestones to dry tyres as conditions improved, enabled the canny Raikkonen to jump up to a challenging third by Lap 14 as Massa and Alonso continued their duel.The Finn stopped later with an intermittent problem that crippled his Ferrari on the 35th lap, and as the race went into its second half Massa pulled away from Alonso.

Then the rain came back with 10 laps to run, prompting another rash of stops. Massa and Alonso came in together on Lap 53. Later the Brazilian complained of a set of tyres that vibrated badly, and soon Alonso was able to reel him in before grabbing the lead on the 56th lap, the sides of their respective cars briefly making contact in the process. Massa clung on to second, while behind them Red Bull’s Mark Webber just managed to keep hold of the third place he had held for much of the race, as a similarly vibrating set of tyres on the Red Bull enabled Alex Wurz to mount a late challenge for Williams. They finished nose to tail.

Further back, David Coulthard made it a great day for Red Bull with fifth, ahead of the duelling BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica. They had tangled on the opening lap when the Pole tried a move in Turn Two that spun the German, and it was only at the very end that Heidfeld moved back ahead. He faced a post-race investigation after pushing Toyota's Ralf Schumacher off the track in the final corner on Lap 19, but the stewards ultimately deemed it a racing incident.

Poor Hamilton! He had made a brilliant start to run fourth by Turn Two, only to sustain a puncture that crippled his car. No sooner had he pitted for a replacement than he slid off the road in the lake in Turn One, from whence he was lucky to be rescued by the mobile crane. A lap behind now, he was allowed under the new rules to make up that lap behind the safety car, but a premature switch to dry tyres put him off the road again briefly. He then launched a great comeback as he traded fastest laps with Massa while trying to get back on the lead lap. After a dogged drive he got back into the points in eighth place on Lap 53, but then the need to pit for wets dropped him back. In the final laps he passed Renault’s Giancarlo Fisichella (for the second time, having overtaken him earlier round the outside in Turn 12), but he just ran out of time to deprive Heikki Kovalainen in the second R27 of the final point, even though he was at that stage lapping three seconds faster than the Renaults.

Behind Fisichella, Rubens Barrichello brought the surviving Honda home 11th, having been given a hard time for much of the race by Anthony Davidson’s Super Aguri, and Jarno Trulli brought his Toyota home 13th.Besides Raikkonen, Schumacher, Button, Sutil, Speed and Liuzzi, Nico Rosberg was taken out when he was hit from behind shortly after doing likewise to Barrichello on the second lap, Super Aguri’s Takuma Sato retired after 19 laps, and so did Winkelhock after 13, following his moments of glory in the Spyker early on.

It was one of those races with a thousand moments, many of which are still being unravelled. But three things stood out: the superb performances by Alonso, Massa and Hamilton; the wisdom of the FIA in stopping the race initially but later leaving it to run its course (when conditions were nothing like as severe) and Red Bull’s best day in Formula One racing.Roll on Hungary!

(taken from F1 - The Official Formula One website)