http://f1.automoto365.com/news/controller.php?lang=en&theme=default&month=10&year=2007&nextMode=GpNewsForm&news_id=28591

If everything in that article is true, I can’t believe how sub-standard the whole measurement process is (of both the fuel temp and the ambient temp).

In summary the article claims:

• FOM measure the ambient temperature as 37 degrees Celsius, while Bridgestone and Meteo France measured it as 33 degrees Celsius. Meteo France supplies all the teams with temperature information.
• The FIA measures the fuel temperature at the bottom of the fuel rig, yet the regulation states a requirement for the temperature of the fuel at the point where the fuel enters the tank of the car.

According to Yahoo/Eurosport, BMW and Williams will not be punished for their fuel irregularity during the Brazilian Grand Prix. This means that Lewis Hamilton remains classified 7th and does not take the World Drivers Championship away from Kimi Raikkonen.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/21102007/58/raikkonen-title-confirmed.html

Update: Word is that McLaren are appealing the decision, so Lewis may yet still claim the title in his rookie season. Let’s hope the appeal process doesn’t take weeks as they often do.

Apparently a few copies of this video have been taken off YouTube pretty quickly so let’s hope this embedded one below works for you all..

You’d have to say Lewis was trying the oldest trick in the book – braking suddenly so that the car behind you (Webber) passes you under the safety car. Then Webber would get a drive through penalty or similar, which would have been very convenient given that he was faster than Lewis before the safety car came out…

In any case, it’d be surprising if Lewis didn’t get punished in some way for his actions (actually, it wouldn’t be surprising – this is F1 after all! 8)). Article 40.10 of the F1 Sporting Regulations states:

Once behind the safety car, the race leader must keep within 5 car lengths of it.

Eyeballing it I’d say he left at least 10 car lengths (when the safety car was out of shot right at the end)..?

If you read what Ron said, it seems as though someone hacked into the McLaren radio during the 1998 Australia Grand Prix and falsely instructed Mika Hakkinen to enter the pits when he didn’t need to. To quote Ron:

Team strategy is what you bring to bear to win a Grand Prix. Team orders is what you bring to bear to manipulate a Grand Prix. And we do not, and have not, manipulated Grands Prix, unless there were some exceptional circumstances, which occurred, for example, in Australia (1998), when at that time someone had tapped into our radio and instructed Mika Hakkinen to enter the pits.

At the time I only ever saw it reported that Mika was called into the pits accidentally by the team, not by an outsider ‘tapping’ into their radio! I wonder who was responsible? A competitor? Or maybe a disgruntled fan?

Instead of simply writing to the FIA to ask whether the device was legal, McLaren’s Paddy Lowe wrote to the FIA asking if McLaren could fit a device to their car that does “*insert description of Ferrari device here*”. The FIA stated they could use the device, but the flexibility of the floor would have to be tested without the device attached.

As a result, teams currently using the device (believe to be Ferrari and BMW) will have to ensure their floor is stiff enough to pass the flexibility test in Sepang without the sprung device attached (which was allowed in Melbourne).

Very clever McLaren!

Ferrari and McLaren look by far the quickest, with BMW next. After that, everyone else look as slow as each other.

The big improvers were Super Aguri. But even that wasn’t much of a surprise given talk that their chassis is largely based on that used by the Honda F1 team last year. The latest speculation is that Williams and Spyker are going to protest against the legality of the chassis of Super Aguri, Red Bull Racing and Squadro Toro Rosso.

I wonder if Super Aguri delayed the launch of their car until this week so that other teams wouldn’t have time to analyse their chassis to see exactly how similar it is to last years Honda? If so, very sneaky.. But it could just be that they were late in their manufacturing.. right?

I’m no lawyer, but if you ask me the Super Aguri may actually be the most legal car when compared with Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso. This is because their chassis design is only used on their car (this year at least), whereas it could be that the RBR and Toro Rosso chassis this year are close to identical. An FIA article states:

“A constructor is a person (including any incorporated or unincorporated body) who owns the intellectual property rights to the rolling chassis it currently races, and does not incorporate in such chassis any part designed or manufactured by any other constructor of F1 racing cars except for standard items of safety equipment, providing that nothing in the Schedule 3 shall prevent the use of an engine or gearbox manufactured by a person other than the constructor of the chassis.”

It will be a very interesting couple of weeks to see how the protest turns out. Please note that all comments in this post are purely speculation and just a fans point of view..

The MES stands for McLaren Electronic Systems, formerly known as TAG Electronics. The group has been producing racing electronic systems for over 15 years, so it’s no surprise they won the tender for the 2008 ECU. The only concern is a conflict of interest as McLaren is heavily involved in both F1 on the track and MES.

“Yes, I made a mistake, but I immediately knew I was wrong so I let Raikkonen overtake me… I thought that would be enough as a penalty but they still gave me a drive-through penalty. Maybe they should see if changes are needed in the regulations for these kind of situations.”

I don’t know Giancarlo.. maybe you just shouldn’t jump the start in the first place!! And you certainly shouldn’t whinge about a rule which is very fair.

Rules need to be black and white. If you move before the lights go out, you get penalized. If the rules were based on Giancarlo’s “I didn’t gain anything” system we’d have so many drivers trying to bend the rules that it’d be a rolling start at the end of the day!