The fuel loads have been published by the FIA and, as expected the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel is a shade lighter than Jenson Button’s Brawn. Vettel will stop on lap 15, two laps before Button. Button has the tactical advantage for the race because his team will be able to watch what Vettel does at his first stop and will then have around 2 minutes to calculate what strategy to employ for Button at his first stop to give him the best chance of winning the race. Button will have to watch out for Webber, who is on the More…

Sebastian Vettel was fastest in all three qualifying sessions today at Istanbul and picked up his second pole position of the season for Red Bull. Pole position changed hands three times in the final moments of a terrific session. First Mark Webber grabbed it, then Jenson Button went faster, but Vettel got the lap which mattered. Jenson Button again had a quiet build up, with various set up issues to be resolved in practice, but delievered a big lap at the end to start alongside Vettel on the front row. But the early indications are that the Brawn may have More…

We’ve had a great response to the post about what the teams mean to F1, some great thoughts. Picking up on Max Mosley’s analogy of F1 as being like a restaurant we had this very well considered contribution from Bradley, “The restaurant at Le Mans is open for 24 Hours and remains great, no matter who the diners are. “Ferrari ate there for a while and left, so did Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and others, then they left too. And the race stayed great. “I’d suggest that, as long as there are diners coming to the restaurant, it doesn’t matter who More…

I wrote a piece on the ITV F1 website yesterday looking at the prospects for the FOTA teams to start their own breakaway series, which they are being encouraged to do by FIA president Max Mosley. I mentioned that Max always makes the point that the FIA owns F1 and if teams don’t like it they can go and race elsewhere. The teams of course believe that they are the show. Mosley compares the role of teams in F1 to patrons in a restaurant; they may eat there every day and spend a great deal of money doing so, but More…

It has been a see-saw saga and it’s not over yet, but the chances of Donington hosting the British Grand Prix Prix next year received a positive boost today when it was announced that the legal dispute between the promoter, Simon Gillett and the landowners, Wheatcroft and Son, was resolved. This dispute threatened to wreck the planning application without which the event would be a non-starter. A statement posted on Donington’s website reads as follows: “Wheatcroft and Son Limited, and circuit leaseholder, Donington Ventures Leisure Limited (DVLL), confirmed that they have reached an agreement which they hope will move a More…

There have been some interesting suggestions in your comments as to the line up we may see on the grid next year, some of you clearly have some time on your hands to theorise and put drivers in cars. I’m not going to do that, but I am going to think about what the F1 grid might look like in terms of teams next year and take a snapshot of where we are with this delicate situation. The starting point is the teams who are legally obliged to take part next year. Williams acknowledges that it is one and Force More…

McLaren may have topped the times this afternoon in Istanbul, but Ross Brawn, who has been quite vocal in the run up to this weekend’s race, told La Gazzetta dello Sport that he thinks the steps Ferrari has brought to its car will be enough for them to give Brawn a real run for their money this weekend, “I think so, ” he said. “They have improved so much and on top of that they have KERS, which on this track is probably worth an advantage of 2 to 3 tenths of a second. It took them a while to More…

Jenson Button sat down with the media this afternoon and as usual gave a well-considered analysis of where he stands relative to the opposition. Jenson is clearly thinking a lot about all aspects of the rival teams, as is normal, but what is good is that he is prepared to share his thoughts with the media in a considered way. “I think that the Red Bulls should work quite well here,” he said. “The car that they had in Barcelona, if they brought that here they would be competitive. We’ll have to see if their diffuser makes a difference on More…

I’m very grateful to readers for all their interesting comments. We have a very high level of debate going on here. We’ve had 86 comments already on the FOTA story and plenty on the new teams story as well. It seems to be really energising people and getting them thinking. There seems to be a really interesting divide between people who cannot imagine F1 changing from what it is now with the teams we have now and people, perhaps with longer memories, who kind of hanker after the uncomplicated, bare knuckle F1 of the old days, which may or ay More…

I’ve just been sent a press release from a German company, which owns the remnants of the Super Aguri team and also the Brabham brand. They have announced that they have entered next year’s world championship as Brabham. This is a very strong deja vu for me. I started my professional career in Formula 1 in 1990 with the Brabham team. I was the team’s press officer for two seasons. Our drivers in 1990 were David Brabham and Stefano Modena, the team principal was Herbie Blash (now on the FIA race direction team with Charlie Whiting) and it was owned More…