A new year seemed like a good time for an upgrade, new theme, and - wait for it - actual content. It’s been sparse around here for a while. Trust me, there’s been a good reason for that. Since that’s all over now, I’m going to try to post more regularly and try to have some semblence of focus.

I’m going to try to have more racing coverage throughout the year. Notice there’s a new page up top where I intend to post schedules of various series both major and minor. I know it’s blank right now - I just put it up 20 minutes ago - but check back as I keep adding to it. If there’s some series or special event that you think ought to go there, drop me a line and I’ll add it. That should be easy enough since I finally put a “Contact Me” page up there as well. Yeah, I finally entered the 90s. You’ll also find links up there to where I’m at on the net when I’m not here.

Overall, I think 2008 is going to be an interesting year to see where this blog heads. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm though.

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That’s not the reaction I was going for.

So, starting at the bottom of the WCC standings we have

McLaren Mercedes - 0 points

Dead last with zero points. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the train wreck that was the McLaren 2007 season. Not even me. What I predicted was a fast but fragile MP4-22, Alonso being nearly suicidal because of it yet happy not to be forced to wear the Renault clown suit, and Hamilton running his car into the ground.

Well, it turned out the McLaren possessed a very un-McLaren like synergy of speed and reliability. Apparently building the car to F2007 specs helped greatly in that aspect.

Alonso’s increasingly bizarre behaviour had nothing to do with his car breaking. It did have everything to do with his rookie teamate being more than fast enough to spank him more or less regularly.

Since the Spaniard will be reunited with KrustyCo for 2008, it may be safe to assume that he doesn’t mind the uniforms.

Hamilton, it turned out, was pretty easy on his car. He did manage to beach it in the season’s smallest gravel trap in a last ditch effort to lose the WDC so I’ll give myself credit for that one.

Spyker-Ferrari - 1 point

Well, right off the bat I thought the car would be orange. Score one for me.

I also thought people would have trouble spelling Christijan Albers. Right again. By the end of the season the press started to spell it Winklehock or Yamamoto. The purported reason for Albers’ dismissal was that his sponsors weren’t paying. I think they just didn’t want to keep paying to fix the fuel rig.

Since Sutil didn’t get fired, wreck the fuel, rig, or lead a race, people are still wondering who the heck he is. I guess if you can’t be fast you should be spectacular.

Gascoyne certainly made the season interesting since he managed to put Winklehock into the lead at the European Grand Prix. I hear you. The lead was just from proper tire selection at the start of the race. But Winklehock was on track and in the lead while turn one was a parking lot of expensive equipment.

I think I nailed this one. Sort of.

Super Aguri F1 - 4 points

Well, I figured Sato would have been his usual fast but reckless self. Honestly, I can’t remember him doing anything stupid this year so I guess I was completely wrong on that one.

Davison was quick as usual and finally got to prove himself in race trim. I’m pretty sure that sent bulletin boards all across the vast expanse of the Internet into a frenzy as the usual trolls claimed heh was on fumes and running more revs. Despite the rev limit. Some people

Honda - 6 points

I figured that kind of cool/kind of goofy decal scheme would have been Honda’s biggest problem this year. That turned out to be the least of their concerns. I don’t think any of the countries fell off the car, but everything else seemed to come off. I scored 0 on this one.

STR-Ferrari - 8 points

Let’s see what I had here.
Speed and Luizzi getting canned. Check and check. Although Luizzi did make it to the end of the season. The one bright side is not having to hear Bob Varsha call him Americanscottspeedfrommantecacalifornia anymore.
Go faster crash harder right into each other. Well, the Red Bull was technically a different car, but they seemed to handle this part OK. I don’t think anyone from STR got a Christmas card from Mark Webber this year.

Toyota - 13 points

I bravely predicted more mediocrity from the Japanese squad in 07. Went waaaay out on a limb there and wound up right.
Apparently they did figure out they were paying a whole lot of money to the wrong Schumacher as the Shoe Jr. isn’t on the 08 roster.
And, while I’m too lazy to actually look it up, I think they did make more races by Monaco than Michael Waltrip Racing had up to that point.
Quite bold and accurate predictions, no?

Red Bull-Toyota - 24 points

With a total of 24 points, Red Bull seemed to be in the points fairly regularly. Score another one for me.
No one, aside from yours truly, made the connection bewteen Red Bull being banned in France and the team running French engines. Just as well as I don’t think the team would have done nearly as well sans engine.
Webber didn’t seem to have many super qualifying sessions, so the prospect of him lining up backward on the grid never got to materialize. Too bad. That would have spiced up the show a bit.
Coulthard is still out yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. OK, maybe not.

Williams-Toyota - 33 points

OK, I disavow any knowledge of the pre season predictions about Williams. I was either possessed of demons at that moment or, more likely, possessed of beer.
Pretty much wrong on every single point.

Renault - 51 points

Somewhere a circus is missing their clown car. Although they seemed to have kept the clowns as I don’t recall seeing 48 clowns climb out of that hideous liveried-by-committee monstrosity when Fisi climbed out.
While neither driver was a threat for a championship, Heikki certainly had the upper hand on his team mate. There may be something to that 3k rule after all.
I got exactly nothing right on this one either.

BMW - 101 points

Let’s see…
Boring livery? Check.
Boring team? Check. Don’t get me wrong, they’re doing an awesome job but damn are they boring. They even managed to go the whole season without stealing any IP from another team. The only ruckus they managed to cause was in Brazil by running their fuel through the beer cooler.
Fast? Check.
Points? Enough for second.
Nailed that one. Pardon me a moment while I gloat.

OK. I’m done. So that just leave

Ferrari - 204 points

“Italian speed and reliability coupled with Finnish cybernetics will bring the constructors championship back to Maranello this year.”
It’s almost like I have a crystal ball some times. What else did I predict?
“OK, long story short (yeah I know, a bit late for that). All you need to know about the 07 F1 season is this: Ferrari, Raikkonen. That’s all.”
Sometimes I’m so right it hurts.
Thankfully you can’t see this, but I’m doing the “Oh yeah I’m the man” dance right now.

Really. Be thankful you can’t see that.

Seriously. Tramadol for dogs. Hundreds of them each day. Day after day.

I don’t think I get a lot of dogs reading this. Maybe I do. After all, on the Internet no one knows you’re a dog and Google Reader is pretty easy to use. Even if I do have a large canine readership, I somehow doubt that a high percentage of them are canine junkies and/or have a credit card to order more smack. Even if they did, how much of that stuff could the average junkie dog go through?

• There are precisely 22 trips involved in dragging out my Christmas decorations.
• There are 22 trips involved in putting them away.
• Lights that were carefully wrapped up and stored in January will come out of the box in knots.
• They won’t work.
• While trying to make them work, it is possible to put the wrong light in the socket.
• When the strand starts working, that light will glow with the intensity of a small nova.
• A small nova produces enough heat to burn a hole in the carpet.
• Melting carpet will activate the smoke detector.
• Hours spent decorating the tree to perfection can be undone by a single cat in under 5 minutes.
• The dog does not destroy the tree.
• Dogs > cats.
• 10 inches of snow followed by 60 degrees and rain makes the ground soggy.
• Soggy ground and high winds are not conducive to keeping yard decorations.
• The neighbors don’t seem to mind stray inflatable decorations in their yard.
• Dragging decorations back across the street in 40 mph winds sucks.
• It is possible to maintain an itinerary that involves over 1000 miles and 16 stops with 100% accuracy.
• It involves very little sleep.
• And even less beer.
• And lots of gas.
• Gas is expensive.
• No one at the last stop minds if you fall asleep on the couch.
• Sleep is good.
• Being the permanently designated driver is not fun.
• Watching 2 brothers who haven’t seen each other in a year and a half reunited on Christmas morning makes the rest of this crap seem pretty pointless.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

In Monaco they were heavily criticized and investigated for allegedly using team orders to keep Hamilton behind Alonso. The stewards cleared them in this one, but the British press vilified them for compromising their golden boy, Hamilton.

Next, Ferrari fired Nigel Stepney and it was then discovered that he had passed some 780 pages of Ferrari technical documents to Mike Coughlan. Coughlan was, and still is I believe, an employee of McLaren. The FIA was gracious enough to invite all parties to a hearing of the World Motorsport Counsel. It was decided at that McLaren was guilty of being in possession of Ferrari intellectual property, but there was no evidence that they had used it. Therefore, there was no penalty issued to McLaren.

Oh, then there was the Hungaroring fiasco where Alonso sat in his pit box long enough to block Hamilton and prevent him from completing his last flying qualifying lap. The stewards again requested the company of the team and this time penalized Alonso by stripping him of his pole and placing him 6th on the grid. They also stripped McLaren of any Constructor points before they even lined up for the race. The team has an appeal scheduled for September 19.

McLaren decided to file an appeal to the WMSC counsel verdict that was to be heard on September 13. That changed yesterday when the FIA announced that they have new evidence in the case and once again requested the honor of the presence of the team. In the original hearing, the FIA stated that, should further evidence be found, they reserved the right to ban McLaren from the F1 championship for not only 2007, but 2008 as well. In that light, this latest invitation probably isn’t Max wanting to share high tea with Ron.

And just for good measure, the stewards of the Italian Grand Prix fined McLaren $50,000 for the use of an unapproved gearbox in the Hungarian Grand Prix. I guess they had run out of other ways to penalize them.

I really don’t think I would want to sit in on any kind of meeting at Paragon on Monday.