F1 2009 World Championship.
Race number 1-Melbourne GP at Albert Park, Australia.
It’s been about 5 months since Brazil and a lot has happened in the world of F1.
We’ve had a radical overhaul of the cars, the rules and regs have changed and they even tried to change the way the drivers win the championship.
A serious overhaul of aerodynamics, the introduction of larger front wings and smaller,taller rear wings, the driver controlled moveable front wing slats and KERS have all spiced it up and made a humongous migraine for the teams and designers. The Formula One Overtaking Working Group sat down and rattled out some cost effective (supposedly) solutions to enable overtaking to return to F1 and what we will see this season will tell us whether they have got it right or not!
Honda have flashed out of existence and a phoenix had risen from its flames in the form of Brawn GP (well the Honda car and team for this season which was designed and made last season and now called BrawnGP instead of Honda!).
Pre season testing has shown us that by having to design entirely new cars the playing field has levelled out a little bit. The front end of the grid is now no longer made up of 2 red cars, 2 silver cars and the odd blue and white car. It now consists of half the field and this season ¾ of the grid have the potential to make the podium.
Off season highlights:
Alonso; will he/won’t he? Well eventually he did, or didn’t, or whatever you thought he would do he didn’t, or did!!! Yes eventually Alonso and Renault let the world know that he would be staying at Renault. Despite all the rumours about Kimi leaving Ferrari and manoeuvres being afoot behind the scenes to swap drivers around, Alonso said he never considered Ferrari because he knew it wasn’t available yet with both Kimi and Felipe still there under contract.
At the end of last season Alonso smashed everyone else. He took more points during the last 6 races than anyone else in a car which was vastly improved as the season went on. Alonso saw this turn round and stayed loyal to Renault in the hope that they could pull it off with a new car. So far testing has looked good, well apart from the odd shunt, and even Piquet seems to have improved his grid position.
Politically this off season has been a belter. Lots of open discourse has been witnessed and reported on in the media with regards to Bernie, Max and FOTA. Even Bernie and Max fell out at one point!
Honda. Jesus! Did that drag on or what? Thank God they finally announced something.
Nice to see Button has a drive and even better to see Rubens further extending his record of most GP starts in F1. Their car has astounded everyone and the front runners are seriously worried. Whether the car has the reliability to match its pace remains to be seen. Only two cars at Jerez beat the Brawn GPs, one was Alonso and the other (believe it or not!) was Nakajima.
The Australian GP.
Australia hosted it’s first GP back in 1985 at Adelaide. This track was usually at the end of the season and was a welcome finish for the drivers because the weather was generally great. Renowned as a good GP the event was always well planned and organised.
The race moved to Melbourne in 1996 and saw a belter of an effort from new rookie Jacques Villeneuve. Recent winner of both the IndyCar championship and the Indianapolis 500 he set about F1 in his typically twitchy car fashion. If he hadn’t have had an engine problem he would have won his debut race, equalling Giancarlo Baghetti.
The track is built around a lake in Albert Park and is pretty fast flowing along its 2.3 miles.
Race winners here aren’t indicative of the rest of the season, rarely do winners here go on to win the championship.
Fastest lap here was back in 2004 from a certain Mr Schumacher 1:24.125.
Timings here this year in GMT/BST. Don’t forget the clocks on Saturday night!!!!
Friday 27
First practice: (0130-0300 GMT)
Second practice: (0530-0700 GMT)
Saturday 28
Third practice: (0300-0400 GMT)
Qualifying: (0600 GMT)
Sunday 29
Race: (0700 BST)
This year sees the GP staged slightly later in the day after an agreement made with Bernie that sees Melbourne retain its GP until 2015. He actually wanted them to stage it even later for the benefit of the European fan base, but Australia said no, or words to that effect!
A short intro really. There has been a massive amount of build up for this season. It will be good to finally get it under way.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to give a warm welcome to any new readers to our F1 threads and a welcome back to you older hands!
Feel free to volunteer your services to writing any of our preview threads. A list of available threads can be found here.
We also have our very own F1 Fantasy League on the Goat this year(thanks to Wobbly) as well as the same one we played last year.
To join the league here on the Goat click here and just follow the joining instructions. There is also a link on the left of the home page in the E Goat Sports box.
For the F1 game from last year click here. Once it is accepting leagues I will create our own E-Goat league and let you all know how to join it.
Also we have denthenmen's fantasy F1 game, details here.
I think that this year is shaping up to be an absolute belter. To top it all off it has returned to the BBC, bring on The Chain!!!!!!!!
This is a linky to their broadcast timings.
I can't find any info on practice being streamed live across the net though. I used to watch it last year on ITVs website but they as of yet don't appear to have any info on it.
Oh well, a short and sweet intro, lots has been said and info is in the various E Goat threads from the past few weeks.
All I would add are a few other links.
Rules and changes Official F1 site.
Regulation changes Planet F1.
Official F1 Site Has a very good little technical section.
Now get amongst it
DT_Xtremez_30:
Here's looking forwards to an interesting new season.DT_Xtremez_30:
Race number 1-Melbourne GP at Albert Park, Australia.
It’s been about 5 months since Brazil and a lot has happened in the world of F1.
We’ve had a radical overhaul of the cars, the rules and regs have changed and they even tried to change the way the drivers win the championship.
A serious overhaul of aerodynamics, the introduction of larger front wings and smaller,taller rear wings, the driver controlled moveable front wing slats and KERS have all spiced it up and made a humongous migraine for the teams and designers. The Formula One Overtaking Working Group sat down and rattled out some cost effective (supposedly) solutions to enable overtaking to return to F1 and what we will see this season will tell us whether they have got it right or not!
Honda have flashed out of existence and a phoenix had risen from its flames in the form of Brawn GP (well the Honda car and team for this season which was designed and made last season and now called BrawnGP instead of Honda!).
Pre season testing has shown us that by having to design entirely new cars the playing field has levelled out a little bit. The front end of the grid is now no longer made up of 2 red cars, 2 silver cars and the odd blue and white car. It now consists of half the field and this season ¾ of the grid have the potential to make the podium.
Off season highlights:
Alonso; will he/won’t he? Well eventually he did, or didn’t, or whatever you thought he would do he didn’t, or did!!! Yes eventually Alonso and Renault let the world know that he would be staying at Renault. Despite all the rumours about Kimi leaving Ferrari and manoeuvres being afoot behind the scenes to swap drivers around, Alonso said he never considered Ferrari because he knew it wasn’t available yet with both Kimi and Felipe still there under contract.
At the end of last season Alonso smashed everyone else. He took more points during the last 6 races than anyone else in a car which was vastly improved as the season went on. Alonso saw this turn round and stayed loyal to Renault in the hope that they could pull it off with a new car. So far testing has looked good, well apart from the odd shunt, and even Piquet seems to have improved his grid position.
Politically this off season has been a belter. Lots of open discourse has been witnessed and reported on in the media with regards to Bernie, Max and FOTA. Even Bernie and Max fell out at one point!
Honda. Jesus! Did that drag on or what? Thank God they finally announced something.
Nice to see Button has a drive and even better to see Rubens further extending his record of most GP starts in F1. Their car has astounded everyone and the front runners are seriously worried. Whether the car has the reliability to match its pace remains to be seen. Only two cars at Jerez beat the Brawn GPs, one was Alonso and the other (believe it or not!) was Nakajima.
The Australian GP.
Australia hosted it’s first GP back in 1985 at Adelaide. This track was usually at the end of the season and was a welcome finish for the drivers because the weather was generally great. Renowned as a good GP the event was always well planned and organised.
The race moved to Melbourne in 1996 and saw a belter of an effort from new rookie Jacques Villeneuve. Recent winner of both the IndyCar championship and the Indianapolis 500 he set about F1 in his typically twitchy car fashion. If he hadn’t have had an engine problem he would have won his debut race, equalling Giancarlo Baghetti.
The track is built around a lake in Albert Park and is pretty fast flowing along its 2.3 miles.
Race winners here aren’t indicative of the rest of the season, rarely do winners here go on to win the championship.
Fastest lap here was back in 2004 from a certain Mr Schumacher 1:24.125.
Timings here this year in GMT/BST. Don’t forget the clocks on Saturday night!!!!
Friday 27
First practice: (0130-0300 GMT)
Second practice: (0530-0700 GMT)
Saturday 28
Third practice: (0300-0400 GMT)
Qualifying: (0600 GMT)
Sunday 29
Race: (0700 BST)
This year sees the GP staged slightly later in the day after an agreement made with Bernie that sees Melbourne retain its GP until 2015. He actually wanted them to stage it even later for the benefit of the European fan base, but Australia said no, or words to that effect!
A short intro really. There has been a massive amount of build up for this season. It will be good to finally get it under way.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to give a warm welcome to any new readers to our F1 threads and a welcome back to you older hands!
Feel free to volunteer your services to writing any of our preview threads. A list of available threads can be found here.
We also have our very own F1 Fantasy League on the Goat this year(thanks to Wobbly) as well as the same one we played last year.
To join the league here on the Goat click here and just follow the joining instructions. There is also a link on the left of the home page in the E Goat Sports box.
For the F1 game from last year click here. Once it is accepting leagues I will create our own E-Goat league and let you all know how to join it.
Also we have denthenmen's fantasy F1 game, details here.
I think that this year is shaping up to be an absolute belter. To top it all off it has returned to the BBC, bring on The Chain!!!!!!!!
This is a linky to their broadcast timings.
I can't find any info on practice being streamed live across the net though. I used to watch it last year on ITVs website but they as of yet don't appear to have any info on it.
Oh well, a short and sweet intro, lots has been said and info is in the various E Goat threads from the past few weeks.
All I would add are a few other links.
Rules and changes Official F1 site.
Regulation changes Planet F1.
Official F1 Site Has a very good little technical section.
Now get amongst it
DT_Xtremez_30:Here's looking forwards to an interesting new season.
DT_Xtremez_30:
