Drama started with Qualifying, Hamilton had a problem with his front right wing and had a high speed accident. For few minutes Hamilton’s condition was not clear. He was unhurt in accident and was cleared for the race (first time lucky). Cause of the accident was failure in the wheelgun.

As expected (by few) the race was ‘wet’. First lap without water on track Kimi and Alonso started very well, but maximum benefit was taken by Hamilton who climbed up to 4^th place after starting from 10^th, it looked like Hamilton will have another podium finish but he has a puncture. Rain came to help him (Second time lucky). Everyone pitted in for tyre change, I was wondering if Massa would have to wait for tyre change as both Ferrari’s went in together but Kimi made a mistake and overshot the pit lane (First time unlucky). It was such heavy rain that there was aquaplaning everywhere and we could see all cars skidding, in few seconds we had ‘the most expensive car park’ (as our commentators love to call) at first corner with Hamilton, Button, Sutil, Speed and Lizzui contributing to it. Hamilton was lucky for the third time and ‘crane’ rescued him back on track. Why only Hamilton was rescued? Why not Button or any other driver? In all this Hamilton was lap down and race was ‘red flagged’.

Behind the safety car (for rolling start) Hamilton was asked to ‘unlap’. WHY? (Fourth time lucky) and safety car was deployed for one more lap so he could unlap. This time Hamilton went in pit lanes and came up with sleek tyres. But luck did not favor him, he skidded twice but was able to come back to track.

Rest of the race was normal after that, same pit poker, unlucky Kimi, aggressive Alonso, Ralf retiring in front of grand stand full of Toyota employees and Spyker engine failure. Hamilton could not score the points but he justified why he is on top in championship table, he drove very well and succeeded in some nice overtaking maneuvers. There were moments when you could feel the same fighting spirit, same style, and same aggression as ‘The serial winner who murdered Formula One’. My friends might not agree with me, but I am sure if he continues like this than we are lucky, there is history in making and we are here to see all.

Forgot to add, in all this drama who was leading the race after lap one? Rookie Markus Winkelhock, on his debut race. Good move by Spyker to start race with wet tyres.

• Ferrari and Kimi favorite
• No testing by any team at Nurburgring, Bridgestone has very less data to select which tyre compound to be used.
• High downforce circuit.
• Hamilton suffering with flu, last race he made his first mistake, will he be back to normal or will we have another mistake?
• Winkelhock will debut for Spyker
• Four drivers home race : Quick Nick, Roseburg, Sutil and Winkelhock ( 4 is max)
• Most probably a wet race
• With scandalous clouds over McLaren, will it have any impact on team?

My Fav : Kimi…..GO KIMI!!!

As it happened

1. Feb 2007: Nigel Stepney makes it public that he is not happy with new Ferrari team. After few days Stepney is made head of performance team and he no longer would be attending any races.
2. June 23: Stepney accused of sabotaging Ferraris before raceday. Corrosive white powder is found in fuel tanks of the car. Stepney’s apartment is searched by cops and criminal case filed.
3. July 3: Stepney dismissed after an internal inquiry by Ferrari. Ferrari accuses Mike Coughlan , McLaren’s chief designer suspected of espionage against Ferrari. Coughlan is suspended from McLaren team.
4. July 4: Police raids Coughlan’s house and finds a 780 page Ferrari technical documents. McLaren confirms that no intellectual property is passed to any other members or is used in the cars.
5. July 6: Honda team confirms that Stepney and Coughlan met Nick Fry, Team Principal, Honda for job opportunity. Honda clarifies no design documents were transferred.
6. July 7: Max Mosley clears Honda in the scandal.
7. July 11: Coughlan provides an affidavit specifying all the relevant facts. Ferrari on other hand agreed not to pass this affidavit to Italian authorities.
8. July 16: McLaren confirms that ‘internal investigation’ confirms no Ferrari material was used or in possession of McLaren team member ( except Coughlan) before July 3. McLaren to face FIA World Motor Sport Council on July 16 for ‘keeping’ the other team’s technical document from March to July.
9. July 19: sources confirmed that Stepney tipped off Coughlan about Ferrari’s movable floor design before the start of 2007 season and McLaren asked FIA for rule clarification regarding movable floor and FIA did not allow to use movable floor, thus significantly hampering Ferrari’s performance in Australian GP.

Pitpass reveals that main reason behind FIA summoning McLaren because of alleged similarities between this year’s McLaren ( MP422) and last year’s Ferrari ( f2007). Video footage shows there are similarities between body parts and McLaren is using the same unique decal technology (Vodafone stickers) developed by Ferrari. Supposedly McLaren is using the red paint used by Ferrari also which is not McLaren style as they are used to dull colors.

Corriere della sera, an Italian newspaper claims to have seen the affidavit by Coughlan to Ferrari, and according to it three top McLaren officials have seen the document, but all asked to destroy the document. This arises few questions:

1. Did McLaren lie about the fact that no other official than Coughlan has seen the document. If yes than McLaren would be in trouble for hiding facts and may face more charges.

2. How a Ferrari confidential document, which was not supposed to be made public (or to be provided to Italian authorities) is present with a newspaper. Either Ferrari did it purposely or there is another spy somewhere. Italian newspaper La Repubblica also claims to have a copy of the affidavit.

3. Question form Jose: Why isn’t a tech-savvy company using soft copies?

4. Why FIA could not notice all these things (logo, color, same design) before?

I want everyone to come out clean after this event; it would be good for sport. I hope only very few people are involved and those should be severely punished. As Coulthard mentioned ‘this’ is not a Hollywood movie and will end, this scandal will have deep impact on the game. I also want McLaren to be punished (if proven guilty) but drivers (Alonso and Hamilton) should not be stripped off points and should continue racing as now, McLaren would not be a contender in constructor championship then. It will be a lesson for other teams too.

I was trying to find out what impact does decals and colors had on the performance on McLaren but could not find any. Jose helped me out with it, decals can cause difference of 0.000001 ng in weight and Prasoon thinks depending on smoothness, probably an aero advantage. According to Jose brighter colors can cause temporary to permanent eye damage for the driver following, which could slow him down, but FIA Ferrari spokesperson did not like the idea.

Update: Disaster for McLaren, FIA is preparing a lot of question concerning 30 more similarities.

More links:
Greatest F1 scandals
Relates post
Formula One is no stranger to spying
2007 Formula One espionage controversy

If you get a wish, that for next 30 minutes you can do whatever you want. What would it be?

Mine would be: I would love to drive an F1 car at top speed at Spa. First 10 minutes normal conditions, next 10 minutes in rain and finally night race.

Christijan Albers’ contract with Spyker was terminated for some financial reason, one of his sponsors failed to pay. I feel it has more to do with the driving rather than finances. One of the main reasons might be numerous mistakes made by Albers during driving. He was the one who took the fuel hose along with car during a pit stop in French GP.

This termination gives chance to some of the other drivers to get on the track. Spyker wants Karthikeyan to be back on track, they are also in talks with Honda’s test driver Christian Klien. I don’t know it would be a good move for Narain to race with Spyker or not. Currently he is with Williams and is a second test driver, and I do not see him gaining racing experience there. He might get a chance to race with Williams but that seems to be a long wait, but getting back into a slow car is not a good option. He has offer for GP2 participate in the event and can also participate in A1GP, but it sounds odd, it’s a backward move, people move up from these events to reach F1 finally.

Trivia : there are fewer F1 drivers than total astronauts.

• Fastest circuit on calendar
• Ferrari in form, McLaren promised to be competitive
• Hamilton’s first home race. McLaren’s home race too.
• Ferrari-McLaren scandal has shadowed Hamilton’s performance, but Bernie has said even if McLaren are found guilty Hamilton won’t loose points.
• Alonso wants to fight back, Kimi wants to prove stability and Massa wants to get back in winning(P1) form.
• RBR racing cars would have photos of around 30,000 people who contributed to the charity ‘Faces for Charity’

Trivia : some interesting photos on RBR cars : England cricketer Freddie Flintoff, footballer Nigel Reo-Coker, Virgin radio DJ Christian O’Connell. Mark Webber’s donkeys, David Coulthard’s parents and even a few ultrasound images of as yet unborn F1 fans!

update : ( in reply to ‘Did u read that McLaren’s constructors points can be taken off if proven..’)

Yes, that is the top news. But I think it would be very hard to prove if some technology was used.
In favor of McLaren :

1. By now McLaren would have removed all the ‘stolen’ components/technology.
2. FIA just checks the car till it leaves Park Ferme, so if nothing was noticed in previous races it would be hard to prove with video and statical evidenced.
3. If there is a doubt, the benefit will definitely go to McLaren.
4. If same components as Ferrari were used McLaren, then why Ferrari and McLaren did not have comparable speed??

Things that will go against McLaren :

1. If there is some component whose development cycle is not available with McLaren. It can be proven to be stolen based on ‘circumstantial evidences’

Friday:

Release day for iPhone. People are waiting excitedly in queues outside stores and unlucky ones are refreshing engadget for the videos.

India bounces back into the series with a six wicket victory. More important than that was the way Sachin played, a brilliant knock of 93 before being beaten by Tshabalala. Sadly he missed the century second time in the row. But fans love this, the maestro is back in form, every pull shot he played the crowd gained the confidence. He crossed the 15000 run mark too.

Learnt a lesson, not following a design pattern can leads to disaster. Problem that has been bugging since Monday is solved. Just had to look into When a Singleton not a singleton and things became clear.

Saturday:

iPhone released, videos out. Look superb and engadget confirms that all the features are at par with what was advertised. People have ripped apart the iPhone to found out what hardware it uses [not for the faint hearted]. iPhone’s Firmware is out on internet and people are trying to get into the system.

Massa taken the pole position at Magny-Cours. Ferrari is clearly ahead of the McLarens. Thanks to the rigorous testing and new aerodynamic package. Alosno had gearbox problem and would be starting 10 from the grid (probably). Only threat to Ferrari is Hamilton’s brilliance.

Valentino Rossi wins the Dutch GP. An excellent race, Rossi started from back and finally reached the top. Once again Rossi proved that to win a race you don’t need the fastest bike.

All the critics and news channels who were criticizing Sachin Tendulkar have taken a U turn and are praising his brilliance.

Sunday:

Match delayed due to rain and is shortened to 31 overs each side. South Africa is restricted to moderate total, excellent bowling by Zaheer, Ganguly and RP Singh. Chasing is not easy, Tendulkar falls cheaply and when it was looking as if the ‘one many army’ is going to fail once again in a final, Dravid and Yuvraj rescues from a difficult situation. Good to see Dravid’s aggression and Yuvraj back into the finisher role. Sachin was awarded Man of the series, but he shared it with Yuvi.

Iceman shows he is not out of the championship race and wins the race followed by Massa and Hamilton. Ferrari got a perfect setup now and hopefully it will continue throughout the season. McLaren’s strategy of 3 pit stops would have failed, but once again Hamilton came to the rescue. Alonso was aggressive but luck did not favor him. Wondering why all the aggression is there from McLaren team only, Kimi get back in the form.

Overall a great weekend for all sports/tech lovers. I realized that I did not cover Wimbledon and 20twenty. Only match I kept track of was Paes-Damm Vs Auckland-Huss. It was an interesting match and in the end paes lost the temper and had a discussion with referee. But most of the matches at Wimbledon were washed out.

F1 is back after a two weeks break and back to Europe also. Ferrari’s were supposed to dominate in America but results were totally different. Hope Ferrari will bounce back and we see Kimi on the top. Contest between teammates was main attraction in US Grand Prix and hope this continues.

There is 60 chance of rain on Sunday and I am hoping for the first wet race of the season. A wet farewell to Magny-Cours would be great. It reminds me of the last race at Spa. It was a wet incident packed race, where Sato took Schmi out, Narain overtook Coulthard over the grass and maintained the lead. He was close to get into points tally (competitive race) for the first time. We don’t know where would be next year’s French Grand Prix but there are speculations (and hints from Bernie Ecclestone too) that we might have race in Disney Land, Paris.

This time I would be cheering for Honda team too as my name is going to be present on Jenson Button’s cars. It would be engraved on the front wing.If I get a chance to take a microscope near to the car I can read it. I got image from Honda team specifying where exactly my name would be ( more details at My Earth Dream )

This formula1 season is turning out to be good for second drivers in team. Hamilton, Massa, Kovalainen and Trulli outperformed their high earning, high reputation teammates. Hamilton and Massa brilliantly defended their positions and thankfully there were no ‘team orders’.

It was a perfect drive from Hamilton, who was destined to win after brilliant performance in qualifying. Alonso showed some charge but Hamilton took it well and denied any overtaking. It was nice to see Kimi taking charge in second half of race and hope he wins the championship. Best part of the race was fight in the bottom half between Fisichella, Wurz and Davidson, after long time we saw wheel to wheel racing.

Just a week and F1 is back in action (or was never out of action). First thing that comes to mind after hearing Indianapolis is ‘Black day’ in Formula1. Before that day I had never understood ‘that much’ importance of tyres. One more thing that I noticed was politics. I don’t know politics is too big a word for ‘ganging up’ but am sure that FIA sometimes favors. And finally that resulted in single tyre supplier rule.

This weekend race Ferrari my favorite; because of their straight line speed I feel that have very good chance to win (or at least give a very good completion to McLaren). Alonso would be all fired up with last week’s dismal performance; Hamilton would be looking for double; BMW won’t want to lose the touch and Spyker has already issued a warning to drivers. Renault and Toyota, I don’t know what has happened to both teams, huge budgets and no results at all.

Technically, this race needs a good balance between medium-heavy downforce (for first half) and lesser downforce (for last part of circuit), which every team gets the proper mix will win. Overtaking is possible and would add a lot to the excitement in viewers.

Finally, thanks to F1 safety rules that Kubica is back after such a horrible accident, but he would not be participating. Let’s see what is there in Indianapolis for another rookie.