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As the season opener in Melbourne looms ever larger, nine of the 11 F1 teams are out in Bahrain to get some hot weather experience, important for things like the cooling systems of new cars but especially so for the new Bridgestone tyres. Ferrari had a good first week, being quickest on day one and 5kph faster down the straight than any of their rivals. On day three they completed endurance testing of the engine, both Massa and Raikkonen covering more than twice race distance. This included a GP simulation complete with pit stops and tweaking. This is excellent news as the off-track scene at Ferrari has been less happy. Nigel Stepney, the last of the ex-Benetton "dream team" still involved on a day-to-day basis has been making unhappy noises for some time. Like Ross Brawn, he requested a sabbatical, but this was refused and he has been moved sideways and put in charge of "Team Performance Development" (whatever that is), and won't be at the races. It is believed that Stepney was unhappy with changes made over the winter following Ross Brawn deciding to go fishing for a year. Former Head of Human Resources Mario Almondo was made new Technical Director (er, from HR to Tech Director.....?), with strategist Luca Baldisserri complementing him at events and heading up the Track Activity Department. The words "human resources" in connection with F1 makes any fan feel queasy and bring back memories of the Jaguar fiasco. Let us hope that this is not an attempt by the Italians to seize control of "their" team, following a run of Anglo Saxon-led success. This has happened several times in the past, usually with unhappy results. Ross has stated that he will not come back to Ferrari as Technical Director and it looks like he wants to be F1 Team Boss; meanwhile there are worrying rumours that he might be off to McLaren, reportedly for £1.8m per year. One could also imagine Mercedes being delighted to finally capture Schuey in some capacity after promoting his career all those years ago. McLaren had a good test in Sakir, with Alonso ending up on top on the final day. The best time of the week was set by Heidfeld, conforming the pace of the Sauber BMW. Renault slipped a bit, but Kovalainen completed a race distance with no problems. Honda did better than in Barcelona but their on-track performance seems to be taking second place in their priorities. Following the banning of fag advertising and the absence of a new title sponsor, they have performed a complete about face and gone green. Last week they revealed a Google Earth type livery devoid of any advertising, but sponsors will be featured on a special website. Also on the site, anyone who pledges to make a lifestyle change to improve the environment and makes a donation to an environmental charity will have the opportunity to have their name on the car. Under the concept of “our car is your car”, each name will form a individual pixel which will help build the image of planet earth on the car. Each name will be visible on the website when you make the pledge or under a microscope on the car. I believe that this sort of tokenism won't help solve global warming and may do F1 more harm than good by drawing more attention to it. On the surface conservation and F1 are totally incompatible. The fact is that F1 is irrelevant to global warming. It would be far more effective to ban fishing, football and urban 4x4s, but the problem is that F1 is high profile. In any case the FIA has apparently got it covered! They've just announced that they've been buying credits in the Fonfo BioClimatico trust fund since 1997, but just never told anyone before..... The fund operates a number of different schemes, including the establishment of tree plantations, growing timber and fruit trees and protecting threatened forests. The FIA's investments are said to offset the emissions caused by both the Formula One World Championship and the World Rally Championship. Maybe Honda have given up any hope of ever winning
the F1 championships and are content just to generate publicity. It's
going to be amusing to see which countries are hit and which names are
crushed if a big fat Bimmer or a Merc, chucking out carbon like there's
no tomorrow, crashes into a Honda!
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