Well. Seeing as the 2009 F1 Season starts this weekend, I thought I should do some posts on the rule changes and where everyone is at the moment.

Most significantly, the winner of this years (drivers) championship will be the person With the most RACE WINS (Subject to change ), Which should stop those awesome racers who keep getting poduims over and over from winning the championship (Which imo, isn't exactly fair). However, points will still be retained for the Constructors and the rest of the driver positions. So we could end up in a wierd position where the person with the most points doesnt win the championship.

Also, Cars will look radically different this year (to the amusement of some people, because some look downright UGLEH). With bigger, lower front wings and higher smaller rear wings. Also, Slick tyres will also be used for the first time since 1997. Other changes on the techincal side involve the introduciton of KERS (Kinetic Energy Redistribution System) which means that as the cars brake, they store power that can be released electrically at certain points on the track for a sort of "Turbo".

Getting down to the nitty gritty stuff, Most of the "Major players" have stayed ship for this season (Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW, Toyota, Williams all keep the same drivers) and there have been few changes elsewhere. The biggest news is that the team formely known as Honda will be on the grid in the giuse of "Brawn F1" and will still have Button and Barrichello as drivers. The car has shone in testing recently. Red Bull pick up Sebastian Vettel from their B team Torro Rosso, who replaced him with Sebastian Buemi. Infact, apart from that single move (due to Coulthards retirement) the grid is exactly how is was last year xD Making almost this entire paragraph pointless

Anyway, if pre-season testing is anything to go by, the brawn team look like the red hot favourites going into the GP this weekend.

The Australian GP is held at Albert Park in Melbourne.



A "Point and Squirt" track which gives some overtaking oppurtunities into turn 3, and also turn 9. You might see someone trying their luck into 13 aswell. "Point and Squirt" is essentially just that, fast down the straights, point in the direction of the next straight and go Pit Strategy usually defines who wins this race... Though raw speed obviously counts for a lot.

With so many rule changes, I have not even a jot of trying to pin down who will come where, but expect the usual culprits (Ferrari and McLaren) to be near the top of the timing sheets. More to come on Friday after their first Melbourne timing session.

Looks pretty interesting.

That turbo thing sounds like something you would find in a video game

Well, there are lower formulas that already allow a "Booster" time which allows the engine to rev higher and produce more power for 3 minutes over a race distance, they are simply taking that and applying it to F1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTkVKPdyWs0

this was a whore to track down but, enjoy

(Hole in my word filter)

Nice video Explains the lot really nicely tbh Nice find Nannal

Thanks, not only was it informative, it was also purty

The "Subject to change part" HAS changed.

Points Will determine who wins the 2009 World Championship. This sudden U Turn is because of a mix up with rules that state things like this cant be changed less than 20 days prior to the start of the season.

So I assume the points will be the usual 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 that we have had since 2003.

I guess it half makes sense, half doesn't. It would have been really interesting to have to win races.

It's apparently being forced in in 2010 though.... Unless a better points sytem is made up

10 for first, 5 for second, 2 for 3rd, that would make things interesting

Errrm... yeah for the top 3 cars maybe Most broken points ever xD

I support the ideas for 12-9-6-5-4-3-2-1 for the top 8 finishers. Or even 15-12-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 for the top ten would be even better.

The reasoning behind mine was it has a similar effect as the "most wins" thing, just not quite as harsh.

Also, wouldn't 15-11-8-etc make more sense?

Practice Session times from todays practive (Qualiy in like 5 hours )

1. ROSBERG Williams 1m26.053s
2. BARRICHELLO Brawn 1m26.157s
3. TRULLI Toyota 1m26.350s
4. WEBBER Red Bull 1m26.370s
5. BUTTON Brawn 1m26.374s
6. GLOCK Toyota 1m26.443s
7. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m26.560s
8. VETTEL Red Bull 1m26.740s
9. SUTIL Force India 1m27.040s
10. MASSA Ferrari 1m27.064s
11. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m27.204s
12. ALONSO Renault 1m27.232s
13. FISICHELLA Force India 1m27.282s
14. HEIDFELD BMW 1m27.317s
15. KUBICA BMW 1m27.398s
16. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso 1m27.479s
17. KOVALAINEN McLaren 1m27.802s
18. HAMILTON McLaren 1m27.813s
19. PIQUET Renault 1m27.828s
20. BUEMI Toro Rosso 1m28.076s

Both Williams are going well, as are the Toyotas and Brawn cars. Unfortunatly... McLaren are shit

Well, Qualification was this morning, and after several frantic sessions, the brand new Brawn F1 Team scooped the Pole with a fabulous lap from Button, who pipped team mate Rubens Barrichello into second place.

Provisional Grid

1. BUTTON Brawn
2. BARRICHELLO Brawn
3. VETTEL Red Bull
4. KUBICA BMW
5. ROSBERG Williams
6. MASSA Ferrari
7. RAIKKONEN Ferrari
8. WEBBER Red Bull
9. HEIDFELD BMW
10. ALONSO Renault
11. NAKAJIMA Williams
12. KOVALAINEN McLaren
13. BUEMI Toro Rosso
14. PIQUET Renault
15. FISICHELLA Force India
16. SUTIL Force India
17. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso
18. HAMILTON McLaren
19. GLOCK Toyota
20. TRULLI Toyota

Usual suspects went out in the first round, both Force indias and the stuggling Torro Rosso's along with Piquets Renault. Hamilton managed to scrape into the second section of qualifying before something on his car broke, leaving him stranded in 15th place, just behind team mate Kovalainen. Nakajima shone early on before being pulled down to his usual place, and Alonso and Heidfeld struggled in their KERS equipped cars.

Webber looked a strong candidate for pole after some of the testing sessions, but slipped back to tenth with what is assumed to be a very large fuel load. The Ferrari's struggled with qualifying pace (after being much lighter and much slower than Button's Brawn car). Kubica managed to throw his car up the grid, but he has hardly any fuel, so will be hoping to pass the Brawn Cars early on for any chance of victory. Rosberg and Vettel are on exactly the same fuel load, so assume those two guys to be fighting over third (If the Brawn GP cars vanish into the distance).

The Toyota's ran well (They were 6th and 8th in qualifying) but they have bumped to the back of the grid due a technical infringement that leaves them mired in the final grid slots. I guess we'll see just how those rear diffusers and flaps aid Toyota's progress. Hamilton has dropped 5 places too due to a Geabox Change leaving him stranded in 18th. Will we see one of the best races of the year at the opening race?

Race Report tomorrow ^^

DHR race report, brought to you by techious, and now the weather.

lol Nannal

Well here it is

What a fantastic start to the season. This race had everything, incidents, overtaking, great strategy calls, mistakes in the pits and a first lap pile up. Button stormed away from pole, but Barrichello almost stalled his Brawn car as Vettel, Kubica, both Ferrari's (on the super soft tyres) blasted off the line using their KERS systems and Rosberg all sailed past. He managed to get it going into the first corner, where Kovalainen hit him [Barrichello] from behind, pushing him straight into the side of Mark Webber, who tagged Heidfeld and Piquet. Unbelievably, his nose cone stayed intact and he managed to escape the melee in 7th place.

Hamilton stormed through the field with his light fuel load, but he was being chased by both Toyota's who had started from the pitlane. The race stayed constant for most of this time, Button kept a lead of around 4.5 seconds over Vettel until the first pitstops. Both of the Ferrari's and Kubica's BMW were the first cars into the pits. The Super Soft option tyre was graining (deteriorating ) very badly, and was assumed to only be good for about 15 laps in total.

Barrichello got into another incident with Raikkonen which knocked another lump off his front wing, but it still didn't come off. That Brawn car is incredibly strong!

Most of the front runners had decided to start on the more consistent Medium tyres. However, using these (Super Soft) tyres for a short opening stint meant that they could use the better harder tyres later in the race. Vettel and Rosberg pitted around Lap 18, with Button in at 21 and holding his lead through the stops. Enough fuel went into the car for nearly the rest of the race, so a "Splash and Dash" was required near the end to make it.

As this was going on, Nakajima (who had managed to get upto 5th behind his team mate) span coming out of Turn 4 (Helias) and smashed into the wall, bringing out the first Safety Car. This negated Buttons now decent lead to nothing, and several laps were wasted behind the Safety Car as the track was cleared of the wrecked Williams. At the restart after the safety car, Rosberg pressured Piquet into making a race ending mistake, when on cold tyres he snatched a brake at the first corner and snapped into the gravel. Button managed to bring the gap back upto around 4 seconds and held it there ahead of Vettel and Massa. Raikkonen and Kubica were still threatening, and Barrichello was lurking just inside the top 8. Massa was running a clean race, trying to keep Vettel honest, but not really having the pace to stay with the Red Bull. By this point, new boy Sebastian Buemi was starting to hound the slow Raikkonen and Barrichello. He was even mixing it with Alonso and Hamilton at one point.

The Toyota's were making there way through the field quietly, and passed the out of sequence Ferrari's when they [Ferrari's] made their second stops. The status quo resumed after that, with Button staying calmly ahead of Vettel, who was now being chased down by Kubica. Massa had gone out with a technical problem, which left him stranded with no power down the straights. Raikkonen proceeded to ruin Ferrari's day more by sliding wide at Ascari and clattering the wall. Though he carried on, the impact was very heavy and it didn't help his race much.

By this point, Barrichello was into 4th, with Kubica, Vettel and Button ahead of him. The Toyota's were right behind him, as were an inspired Alonso and Rosberg. Kubica came out from his second and final stop just ahead of Barrichello, and promptly set after Vettel (Who, along with Button, was now on the Super Soft tyres). Kubica closed the game in amazing fashion, and with 3 laps to go Vettel slid wide in turn 1, allowing Kubica to get alongside. A messy incident occured afterwards. Vettel seemed to brake early for the corner, Kubica went for the outside, and turned in on the hapless Vettel. The coming together ripped off half of Kubica's front wing, and all of Vettel's. In the next corner Vettel slammed into the wall due to massive understeer, as Kubica had an almighty accident just a little further down the straight. His front left wheel came off and looked like it had hit him very close to the head. The Safety Car was deployed again, and Barrichello was promoted to Second. The Safety car stayed out until the last corner of the race, where it pulled in and let Button lead everyone home.

Vettel somehow managed to keep his stricken car (with three wheels) moving fowards and did another lap. Although later that lap he parked it otherwise he would of been Black Flagged. He had already made Trulli make a mistake and fall off the track (ahead of Hamilton who had sneaked all the way upto 4th), and then re-passed Hamilton under the safety car. This earnt Trulli a 25 second penalty which stripped him of a valuable podium.

So the Brawn GP cars took an incredible One Two Finish, ahead of Hamilton (after Trulli's penalty), Glock (Who started in the pitlane), Alonso, Rosberg and the two Torro Rosso's. Buemi becomes yet another Rookie to score points on his F1 Debut, and did a solid job the entire race.

1. BUTTON Brawn
2. BARRICHELLO Brawn +0.8s
3. TRULLI Toyota +1.6s
4. GLOCK Toyota +4.4s
5. ALONSO Renault +4.8s
6. ROSBERG Williams +5.7s
7. BUEMI Toro Rosso +6.0s
8. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso +6.2s
9. SUTIL Force India +6.3s
10. HEIDFELD BMW +7.0s
11. FISICHELLA Force India +7.3s
12. WEBBER Red Bull +1 lap
13. VETTEL Red Bull +2 laps (Crashed)
14. KUBICA BMW +3 laps (Crashed)
15. RAIKKONEN Ferrari +3 laps (Crashed)
R. MASSA Ferrari +13 laps (Mechanical Breakdown)
R. PIQUET Renault +34 laps (Crashed, Brake failure)
R. NAKAJIMA Williams +41 laps (Crashed)
R. KOVALAINEN McLaren +58 laps (Crashed)
DSQ. HAMILTON McLaren (Unsporting Conduct in Stewards meeting)

Race Results Correct as of 11:58 AM 2nd April 2009, Race results still to be decided in Diffuser row debate on the 16th of April (Which would give Alonso the Win, and Disqualify Brawn, Toyota and Williams)

Driver Of The Day: Button & Glock. Button was the epitome of cool and collected (even though he made a slight mistake in his second pitstop) and lead everyone home for a fairytale win, and Glock's charge through the field was of equal merit.

See you next weekend for the Malaysian GP at Sepang

Wait, does that mean 2 Brits were on the podium!? What's the world coming to!?

Sounds like it was a good race. You have a good way of writing this, too

Well, thge actual ceremony Trulli was on the Podium, the 25 sec penalty came after

And thanks I like writing stuff like this

News just in is that Vettel has been penalised for causing the accident between him and Kubica (which should be on in about 30 mins Repeat on BBC one now ) and is going to be dumped 10 places next weekend at Sepang... I don't really know why, it looked like a racing incident to me

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/watchlive/

Lewis Hamilton has been thrown out of 3rd place in the Australian Grand Prix, and has been officially disqualified from the event. This is due to "Misleading the Stewards" about the incident involving Jarno Trulli and the Safety Car.



Trulli's penalty has been rescinded, so he moves back into third, so only his and Hamiltons results differ from what is above (I will ammend shortly).

To be honest, whilst I agree that the sport should be fair and what not, having the outcome of a race not fully decided until the following THURSDAY (or in the case of this diffuser row, maybe upto around 3 weeks for TWO races to be decided) is a bit stupid. If this carries on Drivers might aswell roll a dice and see what places they get and bypass the racing altogether. Stewards are getting a little too much power in my opinion, just like in the incident between Vettel and Kubica...

TY Nannal for the slightly late heads up I got your PM just as I was about to add this post

I thought Trulli was innocent in the first place really, cos if he'd overtaken under the safety car his team would have told him to give the place back. 4th is better than at least a 10 place penalty say.

Yeah, but the problem is, that was what the confusion was about.

Trulli slid off the road avoiding a 3 wheeled Vettel and Hamilton went past (Trulli). As that happened the Safety Car came out, which is what caused all the confusion.

Hamilton suddenly slowed, so Trulli assumed him to be letting him back through, which Trulli accpeted and went back past... It wasn't Trulli's fault, hence why Hamilton got Disqualified...

yeh, well tbh, I don't like Hamilton so the fact he's come out as a lying cheat is kinda lol ^^

TBH, it sounds like neithers fault, it's not like Hamilton told Trulli to go past, he was just following the safety car rules, which Trulli technically didn't.

Where abouts in the race was this, near the end?

Yeah, Vettel only had 3 wheels so it was literally about 3/2 laps from the end

Kinda ruined a good first GP with all thes e dam stewards meetings