Author: mike
Weekend at Bernie’s
Sunday, March 11th, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
The Formula One circus is about to interrupt their regularly scheduled testing to actually hold a race. The ING Australian Grand Prix is set to open the 2007 F1 championship season at the Albert Park circuit in Australia.
Per long standing F1 tradition, the season will open with controversy. Sir Frank Williams and Colin Kolles, DDS have stated very publicly their desire to protest the legitimacy of the Super Aguri and Toro Rosso cars. If they don’t get their desired response from the stewards, this stands a good chance of winding up in the Australian courts as did the Minardi fiasco of a few years ago. Mad Max Mosley will decree from his Ivory Tower that unless everyone can play nice, he will remove all FIA sanctioned events from Australia as well as all forms of motorized vehicles leaving the Aussies with nothing more than the horse and carriage. Nobody will bother pointing out to him that he can’t do this. Bernie Eccelstone will be seen lurking about with a copy of the Concorde Agreement muttering something about my preciousssss.
Somewhere along the line, someone will realize that if the Ligier JS43 was different from the BenettonB195 because of a different winglet and the Sauber C23 was different from the Ferrari F2003GA because it was blue, then the Toro Rosso is different from the Red Bull because it has different radiators and the Super Aguri is different than the Honda just because. Well, that and someone will pay an unreal amount of cash to someone else to make the whole matter disappear. Despite all the Machiavellian machinations, the 11 teams comprising the 07 Formula One World Championship will actually manage to race a few times and it should go something like this…
The little team that could. Quite an impressive 2006 given the short start up time and the fact that their initial car was based on a 4 year old Arrows chassis. Expect them to get off to a slower start in 07 as their car has had trouble passing the FIA crash tests and isn’t expected to debut until it hits the pit lane in Melbourne. Given that, expect a few bright flashes this year with the occasional points.
Takuma Sato will show once again that he is 1) fast and 2) suffers from ADD. He will run like hell until he gets distracted by something shiny and forgets what it is he’s supposed to be doing. At that point, Aguri will be glad they finally passed the crash test.
Anthony Davidson will finally get to prove his worth as a racer. He should prove to be every bit a match for his more experienced teammate speed wise which will prompt the F1 bulletin boards to speculate that he is only that fast because he is on fumes and high revs despite the fact that he won’t make his first pit stop until lap 18. At Hockenheim.
Not sure what to make of the Jordan/Midland/Spyker team. A few things we can be certain about here. The cars will be orange, people will misspell Christijian Albers, and ask who the heck is this Sutil guy? With the uber reliable Ferrari power plants, expect the cars to run long enough to get lapped several times each race. With Gascoyne coming on board this season, it will be interesting to see how much they can improve. And did I mention they’ll be orange?
With the Newey designed RB3 STR2 and Ferrari power, the Toro Rosso cars should be able to go faster and crash harder than ever before. This could be a problem as they seem to have a propensity to crashing into one another. And since they are so similar (yet different) to the Red Bull cars, that doubles their chances of hitting something. This will give Scott Speed (aka Americanscottspeedfrommantecacalifornia) plenty of opportunity for interviews. Naturally he will begin each answer with “Yeah, no” thus helping confirm the world’s suspicion that Americans are idiots. Thanks Scott. Don’t expect both of these guys to make it the whole season with Speed being the most likely to be replaced.
After an 06 season that saw the team disappointed with their Cosworth power plants, the team will spend 07 disappointed with their Toyota power plants. The bright spot for Sir Frank will be the loss of Mark Webber. It is expected that the amount the team saves on pacifiers will be better spent in the wind tunnel.
Rosberg will show flashes of brilliance once again even the ability to run the car at ridiculous speeds after a huge shunt has ripped of a good portion of the body work. This will make Sir Frank wonder just why in the hell he is spending a bajillionty dollars on two tunnels.
One of the best feats the team will show this year is the ability to shoehorn Wurz ridiculously large (by F1 standards) frame into their car. Other teams will be perplexed at this ability and Kolles will file a protest claiming that Williams is in fact running a TARDIS for a tub. No one will be able to find an FIA rule outlawing a TARDIS so they will be allowed to continue.
With the Newey designed STR2 RB3 and Renault power, expect these guys to be in the points regularly. Until someone decides that since Red Bull is banned in France, they can’t have French engines.
Expect Mark Webber to return to the stellar qualifying performances he had at Jaguar. Expect Mark Webber to have the same dismal starts he had at Jaguar, going backward when the lights go out. At some point the team will develop a strategy to combat this and line Webber up backwards on the grid. This should safely propel him into the lead by turn 1.
Coulthard, being the elder statesman now, will alternate between showing good speed and yelling at the kids to get off his lawn.
With yet another revamp of their org chart (which is drawn up on a white board to facilitate quick changes), expect more mediocrity from the Japanese squad. There will be the usual mention of kaizen from this team up til the point where someone actually translates it and discovers that they are supposed to be racing and not building Priuses. At the same time, the translator will discover that they have been paying a bajiliionty dollars to the wrong Schumacher and Trulli actually means dwellings with a conical roof instead of whatever it was they thought before. This last fact should cause a fair amount of confusion for the team and they’ll spend the rest of the season trying to update the wiki page for trullo. Somewhere around Monaco, they will realize that they have already made more races than Michael Waltrip Racing and that will be some relief.
Boring livery, boring team, lots of speed. The cars will be fast and in the points regularly which will prompt Super Mario Theisen to find a way to slag off Williams for their lack of success together (I think he may still be bitter). Heidfeld will live up to the “Quick Nick” moniker while the press once again struggle to agree on a pronunciation of Kubica.
While their Earth Car scheme seemed like a good idea, expect this to cause all manner of problems. As the livery is done with decals, expect some country to fall off the car during the coarse of the race. That country will then be honor bound to file some kind of protest with the FIA and the UN causing international tensions that will at best result in a break in diplomatic functions between that country and Japan and at worst, all out war. But at least it will be a green war.
It’s even money on what will break first. Will the Mercedes grenade itself or will the rear wing fall off? Either way, Dennis of Borg will give a statement after the fact that “The collective organizational unit will investigate this severe performance reduction and will strive to improve upon the reliability of the high performance mechanical conveyance.” Alonso will be seen weeping uncontrollably in the team motor home and Witmarsh will order him placed on suicide watch. His one consolation will come when he realizes he doesn’t have to dress like Krusty the Klown, unlike his former team. Hamilton, not knowing any better, will continue to pound out laps until his high performance mechanical conveyance grinds to a halt as well. Initially Vodafone will be happy with the TV exposure until they realize the car is always on fire. This is not good PR.
The red menace from Maranello will pick up in 07 where they left off in 06. Expect them to be on the pace and leaving everyone else fighting for third. Massa will initially be thrilled to be granted number one status with the team. Until, that is, he discovers that Kimi is indeed a cyborg and has been granted number zero status. Italian speed and reliability coupled with Finnish cybernetics will bring the constructors championship back to Maranello this year.
Having lost their World Driving Champion from the year previous, Renault will campaign this season with the Barnum and Bailey Special. The whimsical multi-colored livery is expected to attract the attention of children and carnies world wide. The team will find their trust in Fisichella misplaced and will hope that the Finnish rule of 3k applies with Heikki Kovalainen (think Mika Hakkinen, Kimi Raikkonen). Expect the pressure to get to Fisi who will promptly throw the car off the road. When he climbs out, he will be followed by 48 clowns.
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.
September 27th, 2007 at 11:47 am
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