The weekend marked the end of the long F1 break and we were long overdue for our fix. Things picked up at the historic Spa Francorchamps circuit for the 2010 Belgian GP. The weekend started off with Mark Webber taking control of qualifying and earning pole but Lewis Hamilton was hot on his heels and managed to nab the second spot on the grid. Sebastien Vettel had a bit of a bobble in his performance and qualified fourth.
When the lights went out the next day Mark Webber fell asleep at the wheel and had a horrible start which Lewis Hamilton was more than happy to capitalize on and that was all she wrote. While Lewis was running away from the field Sebastien Vettel was trying to fight his way to the front after some bad tire decisions put him in mid-pack. He actually lost control at one point and slid into the back of Jenson Button, taking him out completely. Vettel’s car was ok but the stewards didn’t like his stunt at all and smacked him with a drive through penalty which pretty much threw him to the back of the pack. Meanwhile Lewis Hamilton drove on to his first race win since June and preserving his championship points lead. While Sebastien Vettel’s championship chances may be totally done all because of a wet track and a bad decision. Check out a full race report on SPEED’s website.
The 2010 Indy Car season is starting to wind down and the points race is starting to get closer and more dicey than it has been all season. On Saturday the Indy Car grid lined up at Chicagoland speedway for an oval battle royal (there are no more road courses for the rest of the season). This race was Will Power’s chance to increase his points lead and give himself a cushion going into the last few races of 2010 but his plans for that were totally dashed when Power was forced to give up fighting at the front to come into the pits for a splash and go since a malfunction in a previous pit stop prevented him from getting the fuel he needed.
It was none other than Dario Franchitti who took advantage of Will Power’s misfortune to take the lead and eventually the win. With Dario’s win and Power finishing 16th Dario was able to shorten his gap to Power by a scant 22 points. This is a dangerous position for Will Power since there are only two races left (Twin Ring Motegi, Japan and Homestead Speedway, Florida). It looks like things have gotten interesting again folks..
The Indy Cars hit up wine country over the weekend for the last road course race on the schedule AKA the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma. Things continued with this race as they have for most of the season, with Team Penske and the Target Ganassi team trading blow for blow. However in this round it was Will Power with Team Penske getting the last punch in by taking the win and the Andretti road course trophy. From this point on its all ovals to see who is going to take the big prize! Check out the race highlights below.
In this edition of Codemasters’ F1 2010 development diary we finally get to see part of the F1 2010 game that I didn’t get to show you at E3! Included in F1 2010 will be a mode called “Live The Life” that puts you in the shoes of an up and coming Formula One driver. You interact with your teammates, the fans, the press, even your agent!
As any F1 fan knows, there is more to being a FORMULA ONE driver than being the fastest person on the track. Everything in F1 2010 is experienced from the driver’s perspective, from the paddock to the post-race press conference and the team garage. Players will become immersed in the building excitement and drama of a race weekend as they interact with rival drivers, team members, fans and the press, which all affect the way the gamer’s career plays out. Drivers can use the media to spur on the team, criticize a lack of car development, or even pressure rivals in the hopes that they fold during the Championship run-in.
To deliver the authentic feel of a GRAND PRIXTM event, F1 2010 recreates the hustle and bustle of the garage and paddock, complete with motion-captured pit crew, race engineers and pit girls. As a race weekend unfolds, the amount of attention the player receives intensifies according to his or her performance on the circuit. Expectations vary from team to team, and the driver is always under scrutiny from teammates and the media as in real life.
In the video, former FORMULA ONE driver Anthony Davidson, Technical Consultant on F1 2010, explains the unique pressures that FORMULA ONE drivers must perform under, which includes team goals and intense rivalries that develop on the circuit, as reflected in the game. “The expectations for the driver playing the game are the same as in real life,” said Davidson. ”At the end of the day, players’ teammates are the only direct competition they will have through the whole season. There’s a strange balance of having to work together but also this desperate competition. Where it gets a little bit personal is events like qualifying and the race where every driver is just out there to beat the others, no matter what.”
FORMULA ONE fans can view the new developer diary at www.formula1-game.com and http://www.facebook.com/formula1game. F1 2010 is coming this September for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft®, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and PC Games For Windows®.
Over the weekend the F1 party made its final stop in Hungary before it takes its summer break which is nearly a month long. Some of the controversy from the last few races died down a bit but Ferrari’s team orders were still fresh in the minds and on the mouths of almost every person on the grid. However, there weren’t too many opinions shared as understandably all the teams wanted to focus on the race at hand.
As usual the weekend started off with the Red Bull team dominating qualifying and Sebastien Vettel capturing the pole position and Mark Webber qualifying 2nd lining up against his hot shot teammate. The two Ferrari’s of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa earned their grid spots just behind the Red Bull team and were poised to pounce when the time was right.
When the lights went out on Sunday only one Ferrari, piloted by Fernando was able to make a move on Red Bull. Just as Mark Webber was shoving Vettel out of his way, Alonso took it upon himself to get in between the fight and steal 2nd place away from Sebastien. As Mark Webber ran away from the rest of the grid we saw a few shocking things happen: first was Lewis Hamilton’s Vodafone McLaren Mercedes suffered a driveshaft failure putting him out of the race and ending his championship points lead. The next gasp came when Nico Rosberg came into the pits for a tire change when one of his wheels literally came off and rolled through several pit crews before bouncing 20 feet straight up into the air and landing on a crew member. Luckily the crewman only suffered minor injuries.
Then just a short time later Sebastien Vettel was slapped with a drive through penalty for holding up the field by staying longer than 10 car lengths behind the safety car after an incident. As I’m writing this I am sure he is still pretty pissed off about it.
While all of that craziness was going on Mark Webber continued one of the best F1 drives ever seen, making a set of soft compound option tires stretch for a 45 lap stint! Once he built a comfortable 23 second gap on 2nd place he came into the pits to switch to the hard compound tires and finished off the race capping off a dominant performance. Since Lewis Hamilton suffered a DNF Mark Webber has officially taken over the lead in the championship points! Check out a full race report on SPEED.
Saturday was the second day and final day of X Games rally competition. Practice was over and there was no more warm ups. On this day every run counted. The pressure was definitely on each driver to get everything right so they could continue to advance. If the pressure of competition wasn’t enough there was another factor that added to the tension. The officials changed the layout of the track before competition began. The story we heard from various sources was that the original layout was too disconcerting to the drivers. As such, the officials changed the layout. However once the course was changed the drivers had little to no time to practice the new configuration. Then came news that if any driver deviated from the set course they would be red flagged and automatically DQ’d!
There was definitely a lot of drama throughout the rally racing and especially in the Super Rally Final. There will be more posts on all of that later. In the meantime check out some pictures from day 2 below and even more pictures in our GALLERY.
So, the Honda Edmonton Indy race was yesterday and with the exception of the last 3 laps or so there wouldn’t have been much to report. Will Power took the pole position on Saturday and for a great majority of the race Will Power was in the lead with teammates Helio Castroneves and Ryan Briscoe in tow. For a while it looked like we were going to see a boring Team Penske 1-2-3 finish. However, towards the end of the race a chain of events unfolded which ultimately resulted in a massive explosion of in-field drama. It started with the leaders of the race coming into the pits to get fresh tires and fuel to start off the last stint. While Will Power’s crew put a set of hard compound black tires on his car, Helio’s team decided to go for the red-sidewall soft compound tires. Because of this Helio was able to take the lead from Will just as they were coming up on lapped traffic.
This is where things got interesting…
As Will Power fought his way through lapped traffic to get back behind Helio an incident in the back pack brought out a full course yellow during the last 5 laps of the race. Two laps later all the cars were bunched together for a restart leaving Will Power poised in the perfect position to over take Helio. As the green flag dropped Power attempted to make his move on Castroneves going into turn 1 but was foiled as Helio pushed Will towards the outside. In this skirmish Scott Dixon (who was in 3rd) capitalized on the opportunity and passed Will Power to take the 2nd place position behind Helio.
Just as the cars crossed the line marking just 2 laps to go a message comes down from the race officials to the Team Penske pit that Helio was being issued a drive through penalty for blocking Will Power on the restart! This penalty would essentially hand the win over to Scott Dixon as soon as Helio came in to serve his penalty. Helio did not come in… He decided he would stay out finish the race and raise hell later, and raise Hell he did!
As soon as the race was over he pulled off, got out of his car absolutely livid and looked for anyone he could find wearing an Indy Car “Track Official” uniform and got in their face demanding answers. He even grabbed a security guy twice his size by the collar! It was one of the most magnificent displays of emotions I’ve ever seen from Helio and he has had some doozies. The only difference is that while usually Helio’s emotional demonstrations are of extreme happiness or sadness, this time it was unbridled anger! Don’t worry though, there were still some tears in the end. Oh, Helio…
It was so spectacular that Indy Car didn’t even release they’re usual “race highlights” video. Instead they put a full recap of Helio’s meltdown out on the interwebs for all of us to see. Check it out below!
At first I agreed with Helio’s anger but after the rule for blocking was explained I could see how the race officials came to the decision to penalize Castroneves. However what I do not understand is how Scott Dixon got the win when Will Power was in 2nd place when Helio committed the infraction. Shouldn’t the person who was blocked inherit the position that the blocker would be stripped of because of the penalty? Apparently, the Indy Car officials do not see it that way.
Before the Indy Cars started a boring race that ended spectacularly (you’ll see in the post after this), Formula 1 put on a show in Sebastien Vettel’s hometown of Hockenheim, Germany which temporarily re-named “Vettelheim” in honor of Sebastien Vettel. The weekend started off dramatically with many drivers crashing hard during a rainy practice on Friday and Sebastien Vettel edging out Fernando Alonso for pole position by just .002 of a second at the end of Q3 in qualifying on Saturday. To make things even more dramatic for Sebastien, Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa qualified in 3rd position. This meant Red Bull’s young ace would have to start the race with two angry Ferrari’s right behind him.
It was Ferrari’s performance in qualifying that showed the world that they were definitely not going to lay down and let Red Bull or McLaren take away a championship which they feel is still within their reach. Despite having only one win so far this season (with Fernando Alonso taking the win at the first race in Bahrain) Ferrari strongly believes they have a fighting chance at the driver’s championship.
As the lights went out to signal the start of the race Sebastien tried to pull a classic Schumacher move and slice in front of Fernando Alosno but he failed miserably as both Felipe and Fernando split him and lead the pack 1-2 into turn 1. Felipe was actually the biggest benefactor from Sebastien’s blunder as he took first place with Fernando ducking in behind him. However, things didn’t stay quite in this order for the whole race.
At around lap 19 of the race as Felipe and Fernando weaved through slower traffic Fernando attempted a few moves to pass his teammate but both tries were expertly shut down by Massa. It was at this point (lap 22) that Fernando got on the radio and expressed his frustration stating that “this is ridiculous” expressing that he has a faster pace than Felipe and should be let by. Now, Ferrari can’t simply tell Felipe to “let Fernando pass you” because that would be considered “team orders” which are against the rules in F1. Instead the team got on the radio to Felipe and said something to the effect of “Fernando has a much faster pace than you, please respond if you understand this message.” Felipe did not respond but he did eventually and blatantly let Fernando pass him to take first place.
The race ended with a 1-2 finish by Ferrari with Fernando Alonso taking first and his bitter teammate Felipe Massa taking second while Sebastien Vettel landed third place.
When F1 officials learned of the radio transmission between the Ferrari pit and Felipe Massa they were not happy. They allowed Fernando Alonso to keep his victory however, Ferrari was fined $100k for violation of the “no team orders” rule. They were also submitted to the World Motorsport Council (WMSC) for further possible penalties. That is certainly a tough break for Ferrari who fought valiantly to get a much needed win.
On Sunday the Indy Car series threw an open wheel race party up north in Paul Tracy’s hometown of Toronto. The fans really wantetd Tracy to be there and Tracy really wanted to win there (his last win in Toronto was 2003). For a while it looked like Tracy was about to get what he wanted but because of a miscalculation by his race strategist Tracy had to give up the lead and a shot at the win to re-fuel. This then left the race up to Justin Wilson who inherited the lead that Tracy gave up. However Justin had Will Power (the last of the three Penske cars that were in the running) behind him as well as Dario Franchitti.
The pressure from the two top tier drivers was soon too much for Justin and he spun in a corner from pushing too hard. From that point Will Power and Dario Franchitti had their own battle for the remaining 15 laps of the race but Dario just didn’t have enough for Will Power and Mr. Power went on to take the win. It looks like the streak of Penske and Ganassi wins is going to start all over again! Check out the video below for race highlights and visit the Indy Car website for a full post race report on their end.
Today the Indy Car Series announced which manufacturer won the 2012 chassis battle. It looks like Dallara will once again be the chassis provider with a brand new design. I know what you’re thinking! “That kind of sucks..” However there are some interesting developments that come along with this choice. The first of which is that the new chassis will be lighter and 40% cheaper than the current chassis. Part of making the chassis cheaper comes from the fact that Dallara has committed to building a facility in the states to make it easier to source the chassis to the teams.
The other development is that the new chassis will be somewhat modular. This means other aero manufacturers are open to building their own aerodynamic “add-on” packages for the Dallara chassis. This also gives the teams freedom to experiment with set-ups and put together packages they feel work the best. This means we may finally get away from all the cars looking the same! You can learn about all the other juicy tidbits by watching the replay of the full announcement below.
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