Formula One 2008

[Radar]

What a crap sport. Follow NASCAR where there is passing and around 25 different drivers who are not on the pole can actaully win a race

[CJ]

NASCAR turn left. straight a bit turn left straight turn left straight

oooh very difficult.

but then yanks dont get difficult do they!

[G]

I posted after last years finale that I thought Hamilton would wipe the floor with everyone this year and I still believe that. The race was good I thought, certainly better than previous seasons, ill keep watching this season and I do hope that Hamilton wins the championship. I just hope someone pushes him so that we get good entertainment all season. It could be one sided I fear.

it won't be one sided.He's young and will make errors and the Ferrari's are far too good for him to walk away with it.If Raikkonen has the same hunger as last year,It'll be a tight affair again coming down to the final few races.Also,if he gets the car, Alonso has the talent to nick a race win here and there and there's no love lost between him and Hamilton so there could be fireworks between them if they are neck and neck heading into a corner.A promising season ahead,much better than the old Schumi march season after season.

Delighted with the Beeb getting the rights back too.No more stupid ad breaks

[Radar]

NASCAR turn left. straight a bit turn left straight turn left straight

oooh very difficult.

but then yanks dont get difficult do they!

A bloke called Juan Pablo Montoya would disagree with you but he what the **** does he know hey

[CJ]

i wonder why the best drivers in the world want to be in F1?

horses for courses.

[Joe King]

No Marsh

Thats why F1 is around the world. Not only in one country like NASCAR which goes round and round and round.

[CJ]

I dont get you ben?

F1 is very well marketed around the world. And is techologically supreme in terms of motor racing. However as anyone who watches it will know it is not as exiting as it could be (mainly due to Aero wake of the cars)

Nascar is about as advanced as the horse and cart. However the racing is more dynamic. but in terms of a challenge its not up with F1. the money in Nascar is certainly worth earning lets say

[Joe King]

I dont get you ben?

F1 is very well marketed around the world. And is techologically supreme in terms of motor racing. However as anyone who watches it will know it is not as exiting as it could be (mainly due to Aero wake of the cars)

Nascar is about as advanced as the horse and cart. However the racing is more dynamic. but in terms of a challenge its not up with F1. the money in Nascar is certainly worth earning lets say

Thats what I was getting at

Sorry for the misunderstanding

Nascar is horrendous.

[CJ]

it is strange how sport doesnt cross the atlantic very well in either direction.

[AFII]

Total domination from Ferrari in the Qualifying. Looks like Schumi helped them a lot.

[G]

Massa is a very good driver too.Has every chance of being in the title shake up this season too.

[AFII]

Massa is a very good driver too.Has every chance of being in the title shake up this season too.

If he is allowed to challenge by Ferrari then he will have a good chance.

[G]

If he is allowed to challenge by Ferrari then he will have a good chance.

If he's leading the championship or ahead of Kimi then he will be.They let the 2 of them go at it last year until it was obvious only Kimi had a realistic chance

[Radar]

i wonder why the best drivers in the world want to be in F1?

horses for courses.

NASCAR - Drivers win the races

F1 - Cars win the races

One of Juan’s first lessons was that every NASCAR car is unique because the car is built around a welded, tube-frame chassis. “In Formula 1, once the car is sorted, you’re very close on setup everywhere you go,” Juan observed. “But here, because the ovals are so different from each other and the cars are so different, you really need to treat each car as its own animal. With a f1 car, everything is made out of molds, but here the cars are welded together and if the guy put more welding on it for some reason, the car may be stiffer and it may be a little bit heavier. They try to make all the cars as close as possible but they’re never going to be identical.

“Some of these guys have run this car for the last six races and they’ve won five of them, and they just love the car. You don’t see that in F1. In F1, whatever car you get in, they all handle the same way.”

Contrastingly, each individual NASCAR car is developed in its own way, and Montoya was surprised to see the depth of engineering applied by the top teams. “The crazy thing is how limited NASCAR’s rules are for technology and how far they go with the cars. If you would bring an engineer from F1 and show him how detailed the cars are, he would be shocked. When you look at the cars on TV, they all look alike, but they’re different. You have to look very closely to learn how different the cars are. The guys in the team tell me, ‘That spoiler is more to the right,’ and I say, ‘Is it?’ I’m driving the car and I don’t see the differences yet.”

Montoya is intrigued by the complexity of dialing-in a stock car to each track. “There are so many tools to make the car right, or wrong, that it’s really hard. At the same time that you can make the car really good, you can make it really bad, really easy.”

The Columbian says most motor racing people in Europe and F1 have no appreciation at all for NASCAR or oval racing. “When I came from CART to F1, people in Europe said, ‘You did good on the road courses, but those ovals are a waste of time. They’re easy.’ And I said, ‘No, the road courses are actually the easy bit. The ovals are the hard bit.’

“On a road course, there’s one line. There’s one way to take a corner and that’s it, and you’ll see everybody will go through the same place. But on an oval, there are probably four or even five lines at some tracks. You can run high, or on the line at the bottom, or up in the next groove, and at some tracks you can use the groove to help the car turn. There are so many little details to learn.

“When you do open wheel racing on an oval, there are a lot of things you miss because you’re going so fast and the grip level factor is so much higher. One of the things I’ve learned with these cars is that if you put the car on the seams in the pavement between the grooves, it will actually help the car turn. There are so many little things that can help make the car tighter or looser. And because the car changes so much during a fuel run, it make the car very, very critical to drive.

“They tell you to start with the car really loose. You go out ather and have a good car for two or three laps, but then it starts getting tight and it just doesn’t want to turn anymore. You need to find ways to make it turn, maybe by going in a little bit lower, or if it’s really tight, to run really high. When I ran on ovals in CART, tghere was one, maybe two race lines. But these guys go all the way up to the wall. I’m trying to get a handle on it.”

Montoya was immediately impressed with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s uncanny ability to run an extremely high line very close to the wall almost all the way around some tracks. “I’ve gone up high to learn how high you can run and I think I’m running really high and then I see Junior and he’s going three cars higher than me! And that’s like, wow! It’s hard having the confidence to get up there and know the car’s going to turn because th speed you’re going to arrive at is so much higher than if you go in tighter. I need to go up there and run for a hundred laps before I even get comfortable, let alone run quick.”

[Colemere]

NASCAR - Drivers win the races

F1 - Cars win the races

One of Juan’s first lessons was that every NASCAR car is unique because the car is built around a welded, tube-frame chassis. “In Formula 1, once the car is sorted, you’re very close on setup everywhere you go,” Juan observed. “But here, because the ovals are so different from each other and the cars are so different, you really need to treat each car as its own animal. With a f1 car, everything is made out of molds, but here the cars are welded together and if the guy put more welding on it for some reason, the car may be stiffer and it may be a little bit heavier. They try to make all the cars as close as possible but they’re never going to be identical.

“Some of these guys have run this car for the last six races and they’ve won five of them, and they just love the car. You don’t see that in F1. In F1, whatever car you get in, they all handle the same way.”

Contrastingly, each individual NASCAR car is developed in its own way, and Montoya was surprised to see the depth of engineering applied by the top teams. “The crazy thing is how limited NASCAR’s rules are for technology and how far they go with the cars. If you would bring an engineer from F1 and show him how detailed the cars are, he would be shocked. When you look at the cars on TV, they all look alike, but they’re different. You have to look very closely to learn how different the cars are. The guys in the team tell me, ‘That spoiler is more to the right,’ and I say, ‘Is it?’ I’m driving the car and I don’t see the differences yet.”

Montoya is intrigued by the complexity of dialing-in a stock car to each track. “There are so many tools to make the car right, or wrong, that it’s really hard. At the same time that you can make the car really good, you can make it really bad, really easy.”

The Columbian says most motor racing people in Europe and F1 have no appreciation at all for NASCAR or oval racing. “When I came from CART to F1, people in Europe said, ‘You did good on the road courses, but those ovals are a waste of time. They’re easy.’ And I said, ‘No, the road courses are actually the easy bit. The ovals are the hard bit.’

“On a road course, there’s one line. There’s one way to take a corner and that’s it, and you’ll see everybody will go through the same place. But on an oval, there are probably four or even five lines at some tracks. You can run high, or on the line at the bottom, or up in the next groove, and at some tracks you can use the groove to help the car turn. There are so many little details to learn.

“When you do open wheel racing on an oval, there are a lot of things you miss because you’re going so fast and the grip level factor is so much higher. One of the things I’ve learned with these cars is that if you put the car on the seams in the pavement between the grooves, it will actually help the car turn. There are so many little things that can help make the car tighter or looser. And because the car changes so much during a fuel run, it make the car very, very critical to drive.

“They tell you to start with the car really loose. You go out ather and have a good car for two or three laps, but then it starts getting tight and it just doesn’t want to turn anymore. You need to find ways to make it turn, maybe by going in a little bit lower, or if it’s really tight, to run really high. When I ran on ovals in CART, tghere was one, maybe two race lines. But these guys go all the way up to the wall. I’m trying to get a handle on it.”

Montoya was immediately impressed with Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s uncanny ability to run an extremely high line very close to the wall almost all the way around some tracks. “I’ve gone up high to learn how high you can run and I think I’m running really high and then I see Junior and he’s going three cars higher than me! And that’s like, wow! It’s hard having the confidence to get up there and know the car’s going to turn because th speed you’re going to arrive at is so much higher than if you go in tighter. I need to go up there and run for a hundred laps before I even get comfortable, let alone run quick.”

Drivers run into each other left, right and centre in NASCAR. it's bollocks, that isn't racing it's fighting without scraping your nuckles.