Alonso’s silence is deafening.

there is something amiss, either in his Health, or something in the car – rumours are of electrical shock.

if the FIA have decided to do a crash investigation, and the reasons are being covered up by McLaren, it could be very bad for them when it concerns the safety of a driver.

Agree. Something isn’t right. For a start it was a very weird accident. My spider sensors are tingling.

Hes not twitted since and he was a daily twitter user before.

it’ll be a big kick in Rons face if he doesn’t start the season.. although with K-mag they have a decent number two.
I wonder if the cracks are appearing the Ronando relationship.

I wonder if the cracks are appearing the Ronando relationship.

Or there could be another possibility other than that or a mechanical issue with the car – and I hope to heck that this isn’t the case…

…it’s entirely possible that Alonso may have a neurological condition that caused the crash and has been flagged up during his hospital stay. His three day stay in hospital and absence from social media may simply be under doctor’s orders to rest.

As I say, I sincerely hope that this isn’t the case.

I think Alonso’s just worked out that he can feign injury and have a nice break while jb and kmag endure the reliability nightmare of the flyaway races, then hop back in the car in Europe when it might stand a chance of finishing.

Wonder if mchonda will manage a full race sim by Sunday.

What sort of race simulation? Egg & spoon?

McLaren would need to reengineer Honda’s spoon to make sure it didn’t fail. They could use a carbon fibre/spoon expert for that, but they’re hard to find…

.. not if you know where to look.

Lotus have a new development driver…….

What is being developed? PR?

Manor/Marussia are likely to be bailed out by the man behind Ovo energy.

Manovo to the grid in Australia? They claim to have built a new car from eBay finds and the bits that fell off Max Chilton’s car last year.

Looking forward to Manor F1 making the grid

I would be, IF they had paid of their creditors from last season rather than renaming the company and acting like nothing happened.
The Caterham / Marussia debacle pushed alot of suppliers to the edge, cash up front is king atm, hence the no show of the FI-FI car at the earlier tests.
And don’t get me started on the new Lotus development driver!
BJ

I would be, IF they had paid of their creditors from last season rather than renaming the company and acting like nothing happened.

They have agreed to repay creditors through a voluntary arrangement. All legal. How much the creditors will get though is another matter.

If they went bankrupt and started as a new team they wouldn’t have been eligable for last years prize money.

I quite like the look of lotus’ development driver. Is it better to have more teams on the grid than less? I’ll be rooting for the underdog and I suppose that includes Mclaren 🙂

Although stranger things have happened like Brawn GP I’m sure all the guys in F1 work their nuts off no matter where they are in the pecking order.

Please stick it to Farce India and relegate them to the bottom !

From the Beeb…

Jorda, who finished 29th in last year’s GP3 feeder series

Logically then, there are at least 28 better drivers who don’t get a look-in because they are less photogenic?

Watch out Merc, Lotus are coming!

They have agreed to repay creditors through a voluntary arrangement. All legal. How much the creditors will get though is another matter

.
That’s the real trick isn’t it, Whilst its all legal, it just leave a sour taste in my mouth.
Back to the task in hand, what are peoples predictions for this season – A return to the Status quo of Merc to win, RB and Williams to fight over 3/4/5/6?
Regards the tail end of the grid I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sauber ahead of both McLaren and Force India after the first 3 rounds (given they’ve managed some testing miles) whether they can get any points on the other hand is another matter. Torro Rosso is a bit of an unknown, but I doubt they’d trouble the upper part of the grid.
For Aus I cant see past a Merc 1/2 with Williams 3rd.
Getting quite excited now! 🙂

Logically then, there are at least 28 better drivers who don’t get a look-in because they are less photogenic?

In recent times F1 hasn’t always been about who is the best driver. The ability to bring money either via direct cash injection or attract new sponsors is also very important.

Whaddya mean, in recent times…?

Lotus are coming!

…the Lotus mechanics may be coming! 😉

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxuVHLjuwkk&feature=youtu.be[/video]

Im looking forward to how Buttom gets on with Alonso in the team. Button has always claimed to be a top driver so now he is racing one in the same car he isnt going to be able to blame the car for the poor results when he finishes behind Alonso.

I thought Button gave a good account of himself against barichello and Hamilton too. He was mighty in canada 2011.
I reckon williams for the win and merc and 2nd williams for 2/3. Expect a few cars to blow up, notably JB’s Mclaren, 1 red bull, 2 Farce indias, 1 Sauber and a lotus. 😉

There will be a big gap from merc/ williams to the mid table. Ferrari, Lotus, Red bull, Force india, Sauber, Mclaren,Torro rosso and Manor.

Button has always claimed to be a top driver so now he is racing one in the same car

You may find he did when Hamilton was his team mate, in fact, I’d put Hammo above Alonso these days.

Bosh.. thats gone and blown the doors off.. w06 on softs …. the rest are still wondering what they need to do to catch up.

that Merc lap, means Bernie will be
a) putting in some quick and stupid rule change ideas to spice up the show
b) pushing behind the scenes Ferrari and RBR to give Todt hell about how legal the merc might be and also (a) as well 🙂

last thing the sport needs again is another white wash – expect (a) to come into play after about race 3.

Its only testing. Yeah the mercs quick but nobody really knows anything until p1 in oz. Remember a few years ago when redbull hadn’t shown anything special in testing then blew everyone away. Anyway I quite enjoyed last season because merc allowed their drivers to race, unlike the dominant years of Ferrari and RB.

http://hasmaldonadocrashedtoday.com/

I never believe what testing = to the 1st race, We don’t know what set up and test there doing or if they are using the 2014 engine.

Its nice to see the Manor team back on the grid, was looking a little short on numbers at the end of last year.

I wish they would take some of the rules away.

I would love to see that basic rules as this.
1) the car must fit into this box.
2) no changed can be made of 5 races
3) 50 points will be lost if the drive gets hurts in a accident that the car is at fault.

F1 is not a cheap sport why do cost cutting

Also on the note of Lotus test driver only benign there for her looks.

What about Susie Wolff from Williams?
Not a bad looking lady.

Also her hubby is Toto Wolff who is Executive Director of Mercedes. Williams use Merc engines and Toto does have a stake in Williams (he just sold some of shares this week) Wonder if he as done some arm twisting to get her there?

More to the point he was executive director and a major shareholder of Williams F1 when she was signed – I don’t suppose he had to twist many arms. I’m not sure she’d still be there if she wasn’t any good though (whilst he still has a stake, it’s now fairly small and I don’t think Merc have any influence).

Are those heels longer than her shorts? Don’t they get in the way a bit when operating the throttle and brake?

I do believe that they need to get some females to be 1st team drivers and not just back up/ test drivers as that would help to stop the dropping viewer numbers and get some different people to watch F1.

Also how odd does it look to see Vettal in Red

F1 is not a cheap sport why do cost cutting

Without some sort of cost control, the big manufacturers and odd pop maker will out spend and drive other teams out of the business.
When they’ve had enough, they’ll simply walk away and leave nothing behind, the independent teams have to be caterered for and given the chance to compete

Maybe all teams should have one male and one female driver on the grid

3) 50 points will be lost if the drive gets hurts in a accident that the car is at fault

Thats a recipe for chancing it though isn’t it

I think, sadly, the rules have to be quite strict to deal with things like safety

For example you haven’ banned rocket or jet power

Is it any tyres that you like?

Eric Boullier fears McLaren-Honda’s reliability woes mean it could be months before the team’s MP4-30 is a competitive car.

Linky

Hell that’s a massive admission for McLaren ahead of the 2015 season, Ron will not be happy

Everyone else has had a year to develop their turbo engines, so it’s no surprise to see McLaren struggle here. The car is pretty radical too, I’d expect it to be very good on the slower tracks if they can get decent driveability out of that Honda unit.

I don’t think anything that he is saying there is news – it’s been admitted publicly for weeks that they wouldn’t be ready for Melbourne, and long before that everybody expected that it would take them a while to get the new power unit sorted. You need to look at their testing in the context of what other teams were doing last year – it doesn’t look all that bad in comparison, and some of the teams you’d have written off based on early 2014 testing didn’t do so bad (anybody remember RBR’s testing – bets being placed on whether they’d make the finish line?)

The thing is, JB or FA being WC this year is a long shot, but then anybody other than LH or NR being WC this year is a bit of a longshot, and actually I wouldn’t be all that surprised if McLaren pick up a race win later in the year. They might even end up the only team to closely challenge Merc by the end of the year – unless one of the other major teams is massively sandbagging, it doesn’t look like anybody else will be doing that out of the gate.

chrismac – Member
Im looking forward to how Buttom gets on with Alonso in the team. Button has always claimed to be a top driver so now he is racing one in the same car he isnt going to be able to blame the car for the poor results when he finishes behind Alonso.

When JB and LH were both at McLaren JB scored more points over that period.

Post first title LH went through a mix of erratic, low self belief etc. Crashing into people etc.

He came back.

JB carried on trundling along. Someone you could place in the top six for years.

I’m quite suprised how much of a gap the other teams are from mercedes this year. I could see it happening in the first year as the integration of the engine and chassis would favour the works team but in the second year clearly the other teams should have a years worth of data and photos of the meec to play with.

The gap is enormous considering some teams using the same powerplant is it just aero that makes the difference.
If this is the case is Newey could be mistaken that it is an engine formula, after all the Rb managed to haul the renault engine to a few wins.
I’m pretty sure the mp29 won a lot of plaudits last year in the unveiling.