Well, the 2007 championship seasonm is up and running with Day 1 free practice completed in the early hours today.

You can't always read very much into free practice times, but it's interesting to see both the Aguri Suzuki's faster than the factory cars and likewise at Toyota - both the Willians faster than the works cars!

My thoughts for the coming season? Ferrari will do well and I am hoping to see Massa give Kimi a very hard time, Renault will be let down by their driver line up (though Heikki will be good soon), McLlaren will be there or there abouts, but bits will continue to drop off the cars, and I fancy Nick Heidfeld could have the good season he has deserved for so long.

Honda could go two ways.....slowly bulid speed and results as the season progresses, or if frustrationj sets in, it could all go tits-up buy mid-season! I hope it is the former

1. Felipe Massa (Brazil) Ferrari 1:27.353
2. Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) Ferrari 1:27.750
3. Lewis Hamilton (Britain) McLaren-Mercedes 1:27.829
4. Giancarlo Fisichella (Italy) Renault 1:27.941
5. Nick Heidfeld (Germany) BMW Sauber 1:27.970
6. Alexander Wurz (Austria) Williams-Toyota 1:27.981
7. Fernando Alonso (Spain) McLaren-Mercedes 1:28.040
8. Nico Rosberg (Germany) Williams-Toyota 1:28.055
9. Robert Kubica (Poland) BMW Sauber 1:28.281
10. David Coulthard (Britain) RedBull-Renault 1:28.495
11. Anthony Davidson (Britain) Super Aguri-Honda 1:28.727
12. Jarno Trulli (Italy) Toyota 1:28.921
13. Takuma Sato (Japan) Super Aguri-Honda 1:29.009
14. Jenson Button (Britain) Honda 1:29.066
15. Rubens Barrichello (Brazil) Honda 1:29.542
16. Ralf Schumacher (Germany) Toyota 1:29.574
17. Mark Webber (Australia) RedBull-Renault 1:29.801
18. Heikki Kovalainen (Finland) Renault 1:30.097
19. Scott Speed (U.S.) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:30.383
20. Christijan Albers (Netherlands) Spyker-Ferrari 1:31.108
21. Adrian Sutil (Germany) Spyker-Ferrari 1:31.175
22. Vitantonio Liuzzi (Italy) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:31.693

 

It's interesting that JB is already being publicly negative about the car & Honda Racing's chances for the opening race. Hopefully things improve.

There's some speculation that Super Aguri are running last years Honda Racing cars with a few "make it look different" modifications. This would be a car that is fairly fast and that Anthony Davidson has some experience with - should be interesting.

 

Looks like I'll be SKY+ing the race.


Australian GP on ITV

Live qualifying Saturday 17 March 0220-0420 ITV1

Qualifying re-run Saturday 17 March 1530-1700 ITV1

Live race Sunday 18 March 0200-0505 ITV1

Race re-run Sunday 18 March 1610-1830 ITV1

Highlights Sunday 18 March 2315-0015 ITV1

Highlights re-run Monday 19 March 1800-1900 ITV4

 

I am quite sure that this is the case. However, given this, I was surprised / mystified by Aguri Suzuki's difficulties getting last years Honda through crash testing - I wasn't aware that the crash test had become any more stringent this year??

It's a good point you make about Davidson Chris - hopefully he will get some good results this year

 

Same here, will watch sunday morning and miss out all those ads

 

The changes have been to satisfy regulations regarding Intellectual Property, Ian. The rules say that you can't homologate someone else's car, so they have made some minor changes to justify a different chassis number.

The '06 Honda was the 3rd quickest car on the grid at the end of last year, and Honda have fallen back. I think with Davidson's intimate knowledge of it having helped develop the car and done thousands of miles in it, could mean he'll be battling with the Williams/Toyota/BMW pack.

At least at the start of the season whilst everyone else is finding their feet with their new cars.

 

I would'nt pin your hopes on Mclaren, my Mclaren source tells me they will be biting there nails in the latter stages of the race as they are not happy with the amount of cooling getting into the brakes. Earlier this week they thought they had found a substanitial increase in air flow to the front brakes but the data appeared to be incorrect.

 

Yes I think Kimi will win some, and Alonso will look like winning a more or less equal amount but his car will let him down all the time. And the suprise could well be BMW.

Honda are obviously too busy arsing about with environmental colour schemes to work on the car.

 

anther procession in store by the look of things

if we're lucky, there might be one overtake on the track

boring, boring, boring

 

Widescreen.

Honda. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

The boy did good. What happened to Heikki?