While we wait for the grands fromages to have their meetings and decide what kind of spectacle we are going to see next year and beyond in Formula 1, I thought a brief colour post might be in order. For the first time in years I’m not staying in Monaco this year. I’m in Villefranche, which is 20 minutes west by train. They have a fantastic train service here with double decker trains whizzing you along the coastline. Monaco railway station is a 10 minute walk from the paddock and the media centre. On my way in I passed a More…

This is going to be a big day. The F1 team owners meet this morning to discuss their next move in the escalating row over the 2010 budget cap rules. By the end of today, the teams will really have to make their minds up whether they are going to put an entry in before the deadline of May 29th. At the moment, there is every indication that Ferrari are determined to stick to their guns and if nothing changes they will not put an entry in for 2010. They are backed up by other manufacturers including Renault and Toyota. More…

I caught up with Fernando Alonso this afternoon at his press briefing in the Renault motorhome. He’s one of the few drivers to do this session on the first day of practice. I was interested to hear how good it felt to be back on the streets here, brushing the barriers, feeling that unique adrenalin rush of Monaco. His answer surprised me a little, “Not feeling good because being close to the barriers is not something you enjoy too much it’s a bit stressful. It’s always nice to be at Monaco and you get a different feeling, but it’s very More…

I wasn’t surprised to hear Jenson Button saying that racing is dominating his life at the moment. Button is like many drivers who have found themselves in with a chance of winning the world title. Presented with an unexpected opportunity to fulfill his lifetime’s ambition, Button is finding that he can think of little else between races. “I’m probably a right boring bastard at the moment, I really am,” he said. Jenson has always had a relaxed air about him in person and in the years when things were not going so well, he found it easy to switch off More…

Two weeks ago Felipe Massa’s hopes of a podium in Spain were wrecked by a strange situation with the refuelling of his Ferrari, which meant that the team believed he was running out of fuel and was telling him to slow down in the closing stages of the race. He lost places to Mark Webber, Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso. When we spoke to him after the race he and the team had not worked out the reason, but yesterday he explained what happened, “What happened to my car especially in the last race was something that I never saw More…

This is going to be one of those weekends, where the buzz is constant and the drama level high. The strange statement on the Ferrari website denigrating the teams hoping to enter F1 seems to have garnered the most reaction, certainly a lot of the media are focussed on it. But in the wider sphere, the reaction has been interesting to the news from Paris that Ferrari’s injunction has failed. This is one of those moments when you need to apply a bit of perspective and calm appraisal, rather than run screaming. We’ve had some great comments on this site More…

On the official Ferrari website there is an extraordinary piece, posted today, which has a major dig at the calibre of teams lining up to join Formula 1 next season under the new budget cap rules. The tone is very disparaging. Under the headline “Formula 1 or GP3?” the following piece appears, “Maranello, 20th May – They couldn’t almost believe their eyes, the men at women (sic) working at Ferrari, when they read the papers this morning and found the names of the teams, declaring that they have the intention to race in Formula 1 in the next year. Looking More…

Ferrari has lost its legal challenge against the FIA in the Paris courts. The team had been laying the ground for the legal challenge for a while and had set great store by the outcome. Now the legal route is closed to them, they will have to try to persuade as many teams as they can to stick with them and not put in an entry for the 2010 championship by next week’s deadline of May 29th. The dreaded word ‘breakaway’ will be on the agenda. Although Ferrari felt they had a strong case in Paris, the FIA were more More…

I’ve been enjoying working with the leading F1 photographer Darren Heath this season. He has a fantastic eye and always gets an original view on a Grand Prix weekend. We are experimenting with ways we can work together on content and this is a Flickr slideshow with my captions. For maximum impact, expand it to full screen and click on “Show info” to get the captions. (You will need the latest Flash plug-in installed and your browsers might prefer to go directly to the JAF1 Flickr pages) [vodpod id=Groupvideo.2529187&w=425&h=350&fv=offsite%3Dtrue%26offsite%3Dtrue%26amp%3Blang%3Den-us%26amp%3Bpage_show_url%3D%252Fphotos%252Fjaf1%252Fsets%252F72157618183455056%252Fshow%252F%26amp%3Bpage_show_back_url%3D%252Fphotos%252Fjaf1%252Fsets%252F72157618183455056%252F%26amp%3Bset_id%3D72157618183455056%26amp%3Bjump_to%3D]

For the first time in his career, Jenson Button goes to Monaco as the favourite to win the race. “To go to Monaco with the lead in both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships is fantastic but we saw in Barcelona that the performance margins at the front are extremely close. There will be a lot of competitive cars fighting it out this weekend, ” he said. He has won four of the first five races and even though there have been signs lately that the Red Bull car is more than a match for the Brawn, at a tight circuit More…