Archive for January, 2010

Jan201031

Rob

0

Renault with a Russian and new colours

Renault have now launched their car and announced the driver to partner Robert Kubica. Vitaly Petrov will pilot the second Renault for 2010, he makes history as the first Russian to enter F1, no mention of the money he could bring though.
The new Renault doesn’t look as sharp as the McLaren or the Ferrari but the 2005/6 cars didn’t either and look what they did. I love the new colour scheme though it does remind me somewhat of Eddie Jordan’s team. It will look good on track, and if their design team has managed to stay insulated from all the happenings at the team over the past 12 months they might produce something – I guess we’ll have to wait until Bahrain to see if they have managed it.
Vitaly Petrov seems an odd choice as the second driver but I guess they couldn’t have done worse than Romain Grosjean. He [...]

Jan201030

Rob

0

Red Bull

Red Bull finished the 2009 season with the best car, even the guys at Brawn would have said that. They were consistently fast, have great drivers and had the drive and capacity to follow this through all season and if they had designed a double diffuser into the car they probably would have won at least the constructors championship. So what should we expect in 2010?
The team hasn’t had any major changes, with both drivers Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel staying put  - why would they want to move?! Mark Webber should be on form from the start this year after his leg injury and will be wanting to reassert himself over his young team mate Vettel. Vettel has another rival on the scene now for top german and another for most promising young german in the forms of Michael Schumacher and Nico Hulkenberg, I don’t think he get lost [...]

Jan201029

Rob

0

McLaren and the tale of two world champions

McLaren pulled off somewhat of a coup luring Jenson Button to the team, I’m not sure what Lewis Hamilton would have thought about that but from a spectators point of view it should make interesting viewing! McLaren don’t have a brilliant history of driver partnerships, though it does tend to move the car forward.
With Jenson Button arriving and Lewis Hamilton staying put we have the last two world champions in the same team. A team that has just bought back the stake held by Mercedes to return to the fold of independent teams. This move will require some restructuring and I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the team Mercedes bought was also the team that Jenson Button moved away from. There will be sparks this season between these two and I expect the battle to be much closer than some people think, I’m not sure there will even be a [...]

Jan201029

Rob

1

Tyres and Qualifying

It seems that there is going to be another new rule for 2010, that the top ten drivers will have to start the race on the same tyres that they qualified in. At first it seems that it will make the race strategy even more different from last year, but will it?
The drivers will more likely use the softer compound for qualifying and therefore want to stop sooner in the race to get rid of them, so we’ll just have the short first stints that we’ve seen in the past. It will be a boon for any car/driver that can keep the harder compound on throughout qualifying though so perhaps we’ll see more upsets.
This rule sounds like an odd addition but I guess it’s all about trying to spice up the action and I can see how this would put drivers out of position if they go for race day [...]

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