Thoughts from yesterday's F1 practice session
 

I watched yesterday's second practice session, yes speed did actually have something other than NASCAR lol... I was definately surprised with the results. If you haven't seen them yet, here are the top 5

1. Pedro de La Rosa - McLaren - 1:25.376
2. Kimi Raikkonen - McLaren - 1:25.676
3. Nick Heidfeld - Williams - 1:25.940
4. Michael Schumacher - Ferrari - 1:28.081
5. Juan Montoya - McLaren - 1:26.227

As you can see it definately looks like McLaren dominated this practice session. de La Rosa ran his fastest lap on tires that had almost the complete race distance on them and Kimi did his on cold tires. Heidfeld came out of no where, that was the only lap that he ran all session. Massa was 6th in the Sauber which is a surprise, but they are using a more up to date version of the Ferrari motor than Ferrari is. I thought the Toyotas were a huge disappointment, not even cracking the top 10, as were the Renaults, 7 and 9, and the Hondas, 8 and 16 (i think it was 16).

I think this could definately be an exciting season, I hope its an exciting season.

It was fun to see McLaren out running the Italians but I wouldn't get too excited yet. It's still early in the weekend. BTW, they commented that de La Rosa has just been in the garage and returned to the track so he likely had new tires and, Kimi did have one warm up lap on his tires. Still, it was a pretty impressive showing.

I caught most of it and it was very interesting, as were the new aero "devices." They said that even with the new downforce rules, Ferrari is within ounces of last year. Actually, tonight looks to be a great night on Speed w/ F1 qualifying at 9 EST.

http://www.speedtv.com/schedule/

It was good to see the drivers shuffled as I got tired of the previous lineups. I never know what to make of any practice session. It's not uncommon to be fast in the practice sessions and uncompetitive in the race. There are quite a few things that the teams are working on and with the new rules its difficult to analyze the very first practice session. Yup, Toyota has got a problem and they are proving that you can't through money at a problem and come out on top. That's why they call these things "teams". Chemistry can't be bought.

It was obvious which teams had money as their cars had more aerodynamic refinements to get back the downforce lost with the 05 rules package. I was surprised that Jordan ran their cars in plain yellow. They are going to be very slow this year and will fight with Minardi.

It sure is nice to see something besides NASCAR on the Speed Channel.

de La Rosa did return to the garage, but McLaren was using him to see what kind of life they could get out of their tires. The reason he returned to the garage was because he had a little excursion through the gravel and they wanted to make sure nothing got in that could hurt the engine. As far as I've heard, he was on the tires that he had been using all day.

I'm not sure what to make out of the practice sessions either becuase before schumi made his last lap, he and rubens were like 3 seconds or so off the pace which leads me to believe that Ferrari has something up their sleeve. I dunno though.. I'm just excited for the F1 season!!

It looked like Raikkonen was holding back a little to me.

The new bodies are impressive, as is the speeds you see these guys carrying through the corners!

We'll see what happens on Sunday.
-Z.

Everybody is using practive for different reasons. The slow teams want to make a statement, the fast teams are fine tuning stuff. Wait till qualifying.

The new "rules" are a joke. They keep saying they are trying to make things more "competitive" but it is just the opposite. New Aero? All that means is teams have to spend zillons of dollars to develop new packages. One tire per race? All that means is the teams that are hooked up with the tire manufactures will get exotic tires that cost $100K a piece and the rest are F**ked. The less funded teams just get farther behind.

IF they really want better racing they would eliminate all the aero. Unitl that happens F1 will remain an upside down airshow.... why doesn't MIG form a team? They would only have to spend 5% of the Russion GNP.

Like a fool, I'll probably watch F1 again this year and waste my time staring at the world's fastest DE event. ( No passing without a signal) Why don't they do us all a favor and just replace it with a single lap time trial and three pit stop contests. The result will be the same and will save us all two hours of eye glazing boredom.

I remember when F1 raced real cars wheel to wheel.... arrr, arrr,...nurse! Come wipe the drool off my chin....

If they want to get get back to better racing, with close action and lots of lead changes, there is this operation run by the France family that could help them......(just kidding!!!).

You betcha! Give 'em good honest pushrod power, and git them cheatin 'puters outa them cars. Then you got a real race.

Just kidding too - really! :) The France franchise is a force of nature that I respect, even though their racing leaves me cold.

Dunno... I take the practice session results, which admittedly are fun to watch, with a grain of salt. Particularly this year, given the more stringent engine and tire restrictions. You really think that Pedro is a second faster than JPM? I doubt it.

OTOH, the Michael, as Mika use to like to call him, didn't look all that comfortable from what I could tell. I wouldn't bet against Ferrari just yet, but perhaps there'll be no further need to incent McClaren with the added enjoyment derived from humiliating fat old journalists as they are forced make good on their bets by streaking at Silverstone. Should be an interesting season. Glad it's finally arrived.

Frances are brilliant strategic marketers. They realize there are two ways to deal with competitors

1. Bust your ass and spend big bucks building a better product and outselling them

2. Drive them out of business and sell crap into a virtual monopoly market.

The Frances figured out that option 2 was easier and more profitable.

Example 1:

I am absolutely convinced that the Frances either assisted or opportunistically abetted Tony George founding IRL. Why? To split market share between CART and IRL assuring that neither series was financially viable. How's this? Fance to George "take Indy 500 away from CART and I'll give you the brickyard 500. You will double your annual revenue." Do I have a somoking gun? No. Generally folks in business who are dabbling in restraint of trade don;t publish it in their company newsletter. Could it have happened? Alot of shady dealings go down based on "gentleman's agreements", winks and casual conversation over drinks at trade shows.

You can argue all day whether this is true or not, but you cannot argue the results.... can you say "Spike TV"?

Example 2:

Why in god's name is France backing the Rolex Sports Car championship?

Reason #1. They want to lose money in a crappy, low volume business that has almost never been profitable even when there was only 1 player

Reason #2: It is a cheap way to assure that ALMS is never a viable business or competitor to any NASCAR sanctioned series...(see IRL strategy above)

You choose.

Example #3:

Why is Speed Channel virtually becomming a 7/24 NASCAR mouthpiece with popular sports such as luge and snomobile racing thrown into the mix?

Reason #1: America can't get enough NASCAR coverage and bobsled is the new emerging Super-Sport of the third millenium.

Reason #2: By squeezing them off the only motor-sports related TV outlet, it virtually assures that no other competitor has access to any TV audience or promotional opportunity and die.

Hmmmmm....

Am I crazy? Study the strategic marketing strategy of such notoriously unsuccessful companies and Coca Cola, Anheiser Busch, etc, etc. Its called flood the distribution channel with your products and sqeeze your competitor to death.

In the immortal words of Ray Krock, a mater of this craft ..."If my competitor were drowning, I'd stick a hose in his mouth and turn it on full..."

Sorry..... wrong thread

DOH! :banghead: