2007 F1 Season

From Frikipedia

Preview

The Teams

Renault

Last years constructors championship winners have had a pre-season of upheaval, losing driver's champion Fernando Alonso and their fag money, but gaining an identikit blond man from Finland and a rather garish new orange colour scheme from banking firm ING. Which is better because they don't kill people directly. Pre-season testing has been fairly average, punctuated by new boy Heikki writing a car off rather spectacularly during testing at Bahrain. A crucial year for Fisichella, who has to prove that he's not cack by beating the man who was employed as Renault's test driver last year, and should therefore be capable of hitting the ground running.

Best Bet

Kovalainen to be caught in a compromising position with a stripper before the end of the season - 25/1

McLaren-Mercedes

#1 car Fernando Alonso

#2 car Lewis Hamilton

McLaren celebrated their 40th anniversary last year in monumentally woeful fashion, failing to win a race for the first time since they stopped considering David Coulthard to be a racing driver. Crap-talking team boss Ron Dennis has therefore upped the ante for 07, pilfering Alonso from under Renault's noses and Vodafone sponsorship from under Ferrari's, finding this a far more straightforward way of getting the number 1 on the nose of his shiny silver machines. Testing during pre-season seems to have allayed fears that the cars will be anything other than in their traditional performance window of being rather fast but woefully unreliable. Alonso will be partnered by rising British star Hamilton (Tyler to his friends), whom McLaren have been sponsoring massively since the moment he was concieved. So no pressure there then.

Best Bet

Hamilton to retire from the lead of the British Grand Prix with engine failure - 12/1 - VOID

Ferrari

#5 car Kimi Raikkonen

#6 car Felipe Massa

Getting used to being the bridesmaids of the title race after an indeterminable period of domination, Ferrari have been hit by the biggest upheaval of the top teams, losing The Chin and many of the backroom techie people who helped make all the winning possible (including technical director Ross Brawn, who is now too large to get out of his own front door). Despite these losses, they have signed perma-drunk Finn Raikkonen to lead their 07 campaign. Massa will partner Kimi, who managed a good season with the team last year, shaking off the not entirely unfair perception that he enjoyed the taste of Armco. Have dominated pre-season testing, using their existing knowledge of Bridgestone tyres, but with Massa largely ahead of Kimi. Surely we haven't over-estimated his ability again?

Best Bet

Schumacher to buy the company and install his named-after-a-bricklayer-from-Wigan son Mick as test driver - 125/1

Honda

#7 car Jenson Button

#8 car Boobens

Honda have come over all climate conscious for 2007, eschewing the traditional tawdry smattering of sponsors for a rather odd-looking picture of the Earth across their cars. Pre-season testing has seemed to prove that the car is about as aerodynamic as a planet to boot. Button finally got the King Kong sized monkey off his back last year by finally winning a race, but given that he has started moaning about the car's pace early this year, he seems unlikely to add to that figure of one. Meanwhile, old stager Boobens will continue to dodder pathetically towards retirement like a slightly arthritic bin-man.

Best Bet

Both car's engines to burst in unison on the grid at Melbourne, covering the pictures of the Earth in thick smoke in a pithy protest about pollution - 200/1 - VOID

BMW Sauber

#9 car Ickle

#10 car Robert Kubica

Despite BMW buying out the Sauber team before last year, it failed to shake off the overwhelming sense of averageness associated with the Swiss F1 jobsworths, and pottered around happily in the midfield all season. However, pre-season testing has seen the BMWs topping the timesheets on more than one occasion. Though whether or not you believe that dubious speed will ever be seen at an actual Grand Prix weekend is rather dependant on how large a pinch of salt you took along with them. Ickle Nick is kept on for 2007, at a team where he is slowly gaining a third dimension, and is partnered by Polish driver Kubica. Who impressed for around three laps on his debut last season which somehow led to him being lauded as the second coming.

Best Bet

Kubica's odds to remain bafflingly shorter than Ickle's all season - 50/1 - VOID

Toyota

#11 car Ralf Schumacher

#12 car Jarno Trulli

Like Chelsea's still-fruitless pursuit of the Champions League, or Real Madrid's pursuit of any trophy whatsoever, Toyota remain F1's proof that money doesn't necessarily buy success. Particularly if you choose to stick with the same two under-performing drivers that have failed to produce a performance of note between them since 2002. Testing has been almost chronically average and they still haven't changed livery from the same old drab red-and-white effort. Big year for narcoleptic Trulli and famous heterosexual Ralf, who both must surely be pushed out the door at the end of the season if they turf up another dullard jog to 6th place in the constructors championship.

Best Bet

Trulli to switch to Red Bull mid-season and suddenly perk up after he gets a caffiene hit - 40/1 - VOID

Red Bull-Renault

#14 car David Coulthard

#15 car Mark Webber

The caffiene franchise enters another season of midfield action, having replaced rent-a-chin Christian Klien with chirpy Aussie Webber. Sadly, even for him, 5th place may be a bridge too far this season. Both Webber and the 76-year-old Coulthard have struggled in testing with the new Adrian Newey designed car, which would make this the sixth year in a row where a Newey design has proved itself to be as aerodynamic as a house, and leaves Frikipedia wondering when exactly he will cease to be able to demand such an inflated salary for his erratic doodling.

Best Bet

DC to announce his retirement and therefore leave himself nothing to say to expectant journalists around November 2007 - 3/1 - VOID

Williams-Toyota

#16 car Nico Rosberg

#17 car Alexander Wurz

The sole remaining true privateer battles on into 2007, replacing the woeful Cosworth V8s of 06 with Yoda power. Which sounds rather like replacing a hamster in a wheel with a three legged hamster in a wheel, but Toyota need to get that second team from somewhere. Rosberg will need to instigate around 2000% less incidents in 07 to prove his really is capable of cutting it in F1, whilst Forrest Gump stunt double Wurz will want to show he has lost none of that pace which helped him keep Fisichella on his toes during their time together at Benetton some 8 years ago, in a sort of Rocky Balboa comeback kind of way, but with far less success.

Best Bet

Sir Frank Williams to be the first to complain about the identikit Red Bull/STR and Honda/Aguri cars, before shutting up once he receives Toyota's sizeable buyout cheque - 25/1

Scuderia Toro Rosso-Ferrari

#18 car Vitantonio Liuzzi

#19 car Scott Speed

Mini Red Bull have already caused controversy by releasing their 07 car, which is based heavily on Red Bull's design. And by "based heavily", Friki means "identical". Thusfar, they have failed to pick up a set of slapped wrists from the FIA, largely because the underlying design is so comically rubbish. Displaying an utter lack of imagination that Toyota would be proud of, team chief Gerhard Berger has kept Speed and Liuzzi, their two drivers who spent last year failing to live up to their surnames (if 'Liuzzi' translates as 'faster than a coma victim could manage if the mechanics just strapped one in instead').

Best Bet

Berger to tire of losing and take over Speed's seat himself mid-season - 500/1 - VOID

Spyker-Ferrari

#20 car Christijan Albers

#21 car Adrian Sutil

Dutch supercar manufacturer who took over the spectacularly half-arsed Midland F1 effort towards the end of last season (after Midland had bought out the spectacularly half-arsed Jordan F1 effort towards the end of the season prior to that). Now preparing for their first full season on the grid with doe-eyed, child-like optimism, seemingly blissfully unaware of the amount of last places they are about to clock up. Have spent the pre-season painting their cars just like the old Arrows cars looked, shortly before that team plummeted into receivership. Frikipedia hopes this isn't a sign of portent. Albers is heavily sponsored, so is safe for another season of media ignorance, while Sutil won the Japanese Formula Three championship last season. And just to put that into perspective for you, recent former champions of that series include Joao Paulo de Oliveira, Ronny Quintarelli and Takashi Kogure. Yes, exactly.

Best Bet

Team to go an entire race weekend without once featuring in the TV coverage - 16/1

Super Aguri

#22 car Takuma Sato

#23 car Anthony Davidson

The debut season for the Goo sadly saw them fail to really live up to the optimistic adjective they chose for their moniker. However, in 2007 things are looking rosier. They have ever so slightly copied daddy Honda's chassis design from last season and the team recently posted some very quick times in testing. Driver Sato spent much of last season proving that when he's left alone to get on with a job, he tends to crash a lot less, though unfortunately last season, that job was being really slow. Sato is joined by Brit Davidson, who has been testing for Honda since 1989 and has finally been "rewarded" for his efforts with a season-long drive in a really crap car.

Best Bet

Sato to go the whole season without causing an accident - 10,000/1

What's New?

Michelin (those of the exploding tyres at Indianapolis fame) have departed just as the FIA plans to impose a single tyre manufacturer rule, presumably to give the teams one less thing to blame when they fail to start the season well. Bridgestone are now the sole tyre supplier, as they were in 1999 and 2000, leaving no need for the rule to be implemented, really.

Both Friday practice sessions are now half an hour longer, and are exempt from the silly "engines must last two race weekends" rule, in an attempt to make the on-track Friday action rival a competing spectacle involving watching a recently creosoted fence dry.

There will be no engine development until the end of 2008, meaning that the unit now will pretty much have to be good enough for two full years of competition. Good luck, Toyota.

Bernie Ecclestone's FOM company now controls the horizontal and the vertical of the TV feed at every event. Hopefully bringing to an end the days of tiredly watching the host nation's driver toddle around lap after lap, despite the fact that there'd been a 16-car pile-up, three streakers and an impromptu performance by Pink Floyd across the other side of the circuit.

The pits will be closed when the Safety Car is deployed until all cars are safely behind the back of each other. Won't, however, prevent the laughable sight of drivers "queuing" behind each other in the pits like a demented rush for the pumps at a motorway service station, because the teams still get one pit space each.