Official F1/Motorsport thread

[Alastair]

Here's a slightly better shot:

[adam_the_browndog]

I have to say, it's the lushist car ive seen so far.

but we all know who will win the championship,
the ferrari main man, massa.

[VR46]

It is going to be a very close year this year, but expect the team from Maranello to top the Championship tables at the end of the season

[Alastair]

Lets hope so, it's never better than when it's close fought.

I hope to see at least 6 winners this season, that'd be great. Don't really mind who wins the championship though, maybe my new mate Jenson

[adam_the_browndog]

It's hard to say who will be the champ.

few years ago, you'd probably only have one choice michael schumacher.

Mainly both ferrari, obviously Alonso and well you do have fisicella but he must of been dreaming when he said he could be champion. sadly.

[Richard.John]

Fanboy? 100%

It will probably be between FA and KR but you never know in F1. One year ago, most pundits said that Kimi was going to walk it, as the Mclaren was so fast in '05,but look how wrong they (we) were.

Renault is interesting as on paper they have the second fastest car, presumably behind Ferrari, but can Fisi deliver? I think not as proved over the last two seasons. Of course he was up against the finest driver, yet he hardly excelled in what was the best all round package on the grid. His stats compared to Nando were dismal.

[Paulos G]

I think you're right about Fisi. Be interesting to see how his new team mate compares.

KR and FA are probably favourites to win but I hope to see Massa doing well too.

[VR46]

Think alot of 2007 is going to come down to Mercedes & McLaren's reliability, Alonso may not win week-in-week-out but he is so consistent, he could probably pick up the Drivers title by finishing third or fourth each race.

[Alastair]

Don't ignore Massa people, he knows the Ferrari very well now (and the team), is capable of winning on merit and so long as there are no team orders he could well have the upper hand on Kimi for the first few races at least.

Fisi is difficult to pin down, now he's out from under Nando he could be a revelation, spurred on by 'needing' to beat his young upstart team-mate.

McL will have needed to have made major progress on both performance and reliability to be consistently on the podium and I'm not sure they will have done enough to be right up there from the off. But maybe Nando is great enough for that not to matter like my man Hollis says!

Seems everything points at a Ferrari season this year but I've said that before and been proven wrong so who can tell.

All I know is that Australia is usually a great, surprising race and I can't wait!

[Alastair]

Found the new Williams, LOVE it, look at the exhausts, hope it goes as good as it looks:





EDIT - damn, apparently it's last years car with this years livery, maybe not finalised yet though as there isn't enough AT&T on there I think.

[Richard.John]

We should all shed a tear for Williams. How can a team that was the powerhouse in F1 just ten years ago be reduced to backmarker status? I feel for them as I don't think there is any way back.

Then again you could argue that they only have themselves to blame,considering that they couldn't deliver a WDC or WCC with JPM and RS at the helm, even though they had BMW power.

[adam_the_browndog]

The year ralf & montoya left, think as they spent alot on the car to be a challenger. Sadly the car didn't do it's job dispite doing ok. This was their last best season of actually trying.

Like Eddie Jordan said, sell up frank the glory days are over.

Eddie paid the price, alot of investment on the 2001 jordan what started out extremely well. Then everything fell apart, frentzen fired and the follow up seasons we're just brutal for the team dispite fisci's win & their last podium Monteiros 3rd.

[Richard.John]

I actually think that if this year is as bad as last, FW and PH will consider selling their stakes and heading off into retirement,but they are racers so it might be hard to swallow. VW could use it as a springboard into F1 under the Audi brand.

[MonkeyWrench]

Forza 2?

Yeah that too no doubt, but I was referring on the fact Peugeot revealed the existence of PGR4 on its website.

[On The Edge of Insanity]

I have a feeling Williams will be much stronger this season. They've had a bit of a shakeup in some key areas and seem to have made a lot of good commercial deals for next season, which may have provided enough funding for them to have another proper go at this season. I wouldn't expect them to win (unless Rosberg suddenly puts in another drive like his debut), but I think they'll be solidly in and around the points places.

The main problem they have is that with the almost rock solid reliability of most of the top teams (Mclaren excluded), its pretty much always going to be points going to Renault, Ferrari, Mclaren, Honda and BMW, add Toyota when their drivers can be bothered and possibly Red Bull if Newey's managed to work his magic, it's not really hard to see why Williams might find points hard to come by unless they have managed to make a big improvement over last year's car.