Believe the hype?
Posted by Nick Trott at 3:30PM on Wednesday 06 February, 2008 8 Comments
Current F1 drivers' champ Kimi Raikkonen has been testing his '08 Ferrari in Bahrain. He's been flying, too - charging to a best time of 1:30.595 during a Grand Prix simulation.
This lap was almost 1.5secs faster than test driver Luca Badoer (himself no tugger), nearly two seconds quicker than last year's pole time, and 2.3secs quicker than Timo Glock's '08 Toyota.
It's the kind of speed that should have Kimi's rivals punching walls in frustration, but the Finn's pace in Bahrain was significantly affected by some unusual conditions at the traditionally gusty and dusty Arabian track.
Basically, there was little gust or dust because the wind conditions were mild, and the circuit had plenty of rubber down after nearly a day-and-a-half of constant testing.
Saying that, David Coulthard has just told Autosport that Ferrari (with McLaren) have a "big advantage" and interestingly Formula Money - a guide to F1's financial data - is reporting that Ferrari have been given a £100 million 'head start' thanks to a combination of 2007 prize monies and a payout from F1's owners CVC.
The payout is the result of new commercial terms giving the F1 teams a bigger slice of the TV, trackside advertising and hospitality pie. Being champs, Ferrari get the biggest slice.
$100 million buys a lot of wind tunnel time...
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8 Comments for "Believe the hype?"
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I think the FIA should give the biggest 'slices' to the weaker teams. In this day and age, the team with the most money tends to make the best cars. This'll be why Ferrari's cars tends to be several years ahead of cars from teams like Toyota or Honda.
So, since everybody complains that F1 is boring and people are only watching it now because Hamilton is giving Ferrari a run for their money, why not reverse the policy on 'money slices' so that in theory, every team is balanced with each other and racing becomes how it should be - a test of skill rather than a test of cars.
That way, even Jenson Button could win a race!
It's tough to get much from testing times (especially when the only other car is a Toyota...), but I think this is definitely Ferrari's championship to loose.
Their next closest competitors - McLaren, Renault and (on a good day) BMW all have major issues within their teams. Ferrari have a huge funding advantage over the McLaren team because of Stepneygate, I'm still not convinced Renault have solved all of their problems from last year even with Alonso back, and BMW have yet to perfect their car's balance.
I doubt it's gonna be a walkover reminiscent of the Schumacher years, but if the Scuderia aren't on top come October, I'd be very surprised.
Is it unfeasible to pay lesser teams more than their larger counterparts to provide more competitive racing? Or am I living in a dreamworld?
I think the most significant factor for 2008 is MaClaren's development will not keep pace - all the self imposed controls / monitoring coming into place will have a significant negative impact
I thought the point of competitive sport was to do as well as you can and reap the rewards that come with it. Giving out larger slices of money to the teams that consistently finish down the grid isn't exactly the right kind of incentive to do better is it?
The fair solution is to divide the money equally. Even that is no guarantee of achieving a more competitive grid. Toyota's millions hasn't even made a dent on the top teams. The trouble is Ferrari and McLaren are too far ahead for the others to catch, even BMW and Renault.
Ash come on mate, Ferrari build better cars than Toyota because they are better! Quite simply because Ferrari have way more experience and they know what it takes to win.
OK, money plays a big part but isn't Toyota's budget similar if not bigger than Toyota's? Ditto for Honda, although that should change now that they have Ross Brawn.
I have to say that accusing Toyota and Honda of have limited budgets is ridiculous, they are two of the most heavily funded teams, even without prize money.
Also, taking the track conditions into account, the time is possibly a bit misleading. However, once again Ferrari will be one of the teams who will be fighting for wins in every race, alongside McLaren and possibly BMW and Renault occasionally...
Paying weaker teams more than the winners is, by nature, weird! "Oh, I cannot win the championship so I'll sit back come last and get the money."
So instead of watching a competition to gain places, you watch a competition to lose races. What can be done, and has been suggested, is to introduce a budget cap.
Furthermore I would suggest to allow all technologies, because it would be far more crucial for a team to know where to invest their money within the budget cap on developing certain tools, therefore you would come up with teams having several strengths and weaknesses.