2008 Formula One Australian Grand Prix

[Jack_Bauer]

Well folks, it's finally upon us. The months of waiting around and trying to glean every last tidbit of information from testing times, photographs, interviews, car launches to give is a clue as to what the season will have in store for us are finally over. This weekend all the rumour and speculation stops, and the action begins. Questions will be answered; yet more questions will be posed. The streets of Melbourne's Albert Park will once again reverberate to the sound of wailing V8 engines, roaring fans and, for the first time in many years, spinning rear tyres.

Eight months, eighteen races, seventeen nations and five continents await the drivers, teams and fans over the coming season, but for now all attention is focussed on Melbourne, Australia. The teams have been in Melbourne all week doing the obligatory press junkets and setting up their gear in the Albert Park pitlane, but Friday will see the engines fired up and the first wheels turned in anger. The weather is scorching hot in Melbourne, and is predicted to remain so throughout the whole weekend. This is likely to cause some anxiety in the pitlane as no-one will quite no for sure how the cars, and particularly the tyres, will cope in the heat after the comparatively Arctic conditions of European winter testing. The fact that the track is notorious for being one of the dirtiest and most bumpy due to the street track layout also throws a cat amongst the pigeons at least for the first couple of sessions as the track rubbers up. Nobody will be pushing too hard early on given the lack of traction control and low grip surface.

The early favourites are clearly in the red cars and the silver cars, hopefully things will remain as tight and competitive as they were last season between those two. If not, then at least we have the potential of a great battle in the midfield between three or four teams looking to challenge BMW for the "best of the rest" spot.

So, let the best man and the best team win, and may there be no repeat of last year's controversies. Let's hope that nobody gets hurt, and raise a glass to the drivers and marshalls who put their lives at risk for our entertainment. Let battle commence!

[faksta]

Jack, you can't even imagine how glad I am to read a first 2008 season thread Cheers!

[fisetdavid26]

Originally Posted by faksta

Jack, you can't even imagine how glad I am to read a first 2008 season thread Cheers!

Agreed, practice tonight at 23:00 on SpeedTV... in HD!

Changed my avatar, time to show my colors!

[Suka]

I wonder if i can pick up practice here anywhere...

[Matra et Alpine]

ITV to stream F1 live on the web - F1 | ITV Sport with a live feed from Friday practice

Australian Grand Prix on ITV

Live qualifying Saturday 15 March 0215-0420 ITV1

Qualifying re-run Saturday 15 March 1320-1505 ITV1

Live race Sunday 16 March 0330-0630 ITV1

Race re-run Sunday 16 March 1500-1800 ITV1

Highlights Monday 17 March 0015-0115 ITV1
Monday 17 March 1800-1900 ITV4

[Jack_Bauer]

Originally Posted by Matra et Alpine

ITV to stream F1 live on the web - F1 | ITV Sport with a live feed from Friday practice

Is anyone else in the UK currently trying to watch this? It's not working terribly well for me, constantly jumping and buffering. Starting to annoy me! Maybe there's too many people trying to log onto it and it's messing things up or something.

Can't seem to find it on any of the, erm, not-entirely-legal sources that I sometimes use.

Still, at least there's no James Allen!

[Suka]

I'm currently trying to watch it. Video wont play for longer than a second before it decides to stop and buffer. Not that great...

Edit: I often find that the other crap on the page can slow a stream down so if its of any interest here is the player on its own.

[macoran]

ทอม.......Tom ?

[Suka]

Originally Posted by macoran

ทอม.......Tom ?

Yeah, thats my name...

[Jack_Bauer]

No real surprises in the first session of 2008. Ferrari and McLaren were battling it out for the top spots on the timesheets while everyone else was miles off. The fifth fastest driver, home favourite Mark Webber, was over a second adrift of fourth placed Kovalainen.

Fairly disastrous starts for a few drivers. David Coulthard's session ended in a cloud of smoke after his engine appeared to lunch itself halfway through the session. Are Red Bull's reliability woes coming back to haunt them already?! Nelsinho Piquet's debut weekend got off to a dismal start as he brought out the first red flag of the season after spinning his Renault and stalling his engine. Nick Heidfeld also had a disappointing start with his car grinding to halt out on track and having to trudge back to the paddock. Not entirely sure what was wrong with his BMW. Nico Rosberg's Williams also stopped early on with a mystery problem. His teammate Kazuki Nakajima didn't do much running presumably as some sort of precaution. Headaches early on for a lot of teams!

It certainly doesn't seem like the loss of traction control is hurting the times too much, the pace pace was pretty hot straight out of the box. Raikkonen's 1:26.461 would have put him on the front row of the grid in last year's qualifying! The times were roughly 3 seconds faster than the Friday Practice session times from last year. That's the pace of progress I guess!

Friday Practice 1

1. Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:26.461
2. Hamilton, McLaren, 1:26.948
3. Massa, Ferrari, 1:26.958
4. Kovalainen, McLaren, 1:27.114
5. Webber, Red Bull, 1:28.263
6. Alonso, Renault, 1:28.360
7. Kubica, BMW, 1:28.579
8. Glock, Toyota, 1:28.913
9. Vettel, STR, 1:28.957
10. Trulli, Toyota, 1:29.014
11. Button, Honda, 1:29.124
12. Fisichella, Force India, 1:29.230
13. Coulthard. Red Bull, 1:29.301
14. Bourdais, STR, 1:29.363
15. Barrichello, Honda, 1:29.563
16. Heidfeld, BMW. 1:29.561
17. Sutil, Force India, 1:30.155
18. Piquet, Renault, 1:30.357
19. Sato, Super Aguri, 1:31.048
20. Davidson. Super Aguri, 1:31.771
21. Nakajima, Williams, 1:35.053
22. Rosberg, Williams, no time

[fisetdavid26]

As expected Ferrari and McLaren are close, nice to see a Red Bull in P5. Anyone knows what happened to Rosberg? The dodgy live timings app on F1.com doesn't say it.

[Jack_Bauer]

Rosberg's car gave up on his installation lap, which wasn't exactly brilliant! Not sure exactly what the problem was. Didn't really see it either as I didn't really get much of a picture from the ITV live internet feed thingy.

[fisetdavid26]

Originally Posted by Jack_Bauer

Rosberg's car gave up on his installation lap, which wasn't exactly brilliant! Not sure exactly what the problem was. Didn't really see it either as I didn't really get much of a picture from the ITV live internet feed thingy.

Oh, ok. Indeed, not exactly brilliant. I guess ITV will make some adjustments and fix the problem, or as Suka said it may just be the servers that are too busy.

The second practice will be televised here, for once I like SpeedTV.

[Jack_Bauer]

Second practice honours go to McLaren and Lewis Hamilton who set comfortably the fastest time of the session with a few minutes remaining. He was almost a second ahead of P2, Mark Webber causing some real surprises with a really strong session. He was backed up by his teammate Coulthard in fifth after a seriously curtailed couple of sessions. Red Bull are looking pretty damn quick so far this weekend!

Ferrari were there or thereabouts all session, although Felipe Massa very nearly had a big shunt after losing the back end under braking and skidding to a halt just inches from the barriers. He wasn't the only one having difficulties this session with the lack of electronic assistance under braking. There were numerous instances of people locking an inside rear under braking and nearly spinning out, with several of them resulting in trips across the grass or gravel. Fernando Alonso was one of the more high profile off-track explorers, and he seemed to struggle all session with a rather wayward handling Renault. His teammate Piquet fared even worse after spinning out in Practice 1. This time he lost most of the session with some kind of gremlin in his braking system. Veteran Italians Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno Trulli both had sizeable spins, with Trulli ending the session with his Toyota beached in the gravel trap. It was an otherwise quite impressive day for Toyota and Force India though.

In the predicted fierce battle in the midfield the early indications are that Red Bull and Toyota have the upper hand. Williams looked reasonably good but didn't set the world alight, and BMW and Renault definitely had days to forget. Honda had a pretty decent second session, indicating that maybe they did make some progress in their private test in Jerez last week, as they aren't sucking quite as bad as many expected them to! Poor Super Aguri should just be happy that they're capable of going racing at all this weekend, but they are clearly going to struggle quite badly to start with this season. It'll be a long hard weekend for Sato and Davison.

Friday Practice 2

1. Hamilton - 1:26.559
2. Webber - 1:27.473
3. Massa - 1:27.640
4. Kovalainen - 1:27.683
5. Coulthard - 1:28.037
6. Raikkonen - 1:28.208
7. Trulli - 1:28.292
8. Rosberg - 1:28.352
9. Fisichella - 1:28.469
10. Glock - 1:28.582
11. Button - 1:28.632
12. Heidfeld - 1:28.731
13. Alonso - 1:28.779
14. Barrichello - 1:28.849
15. Kubica - 1:28.860
16. Nakajima - 1:29.077
17. Sutil - 1:29.161
18. Vettel - 1:29.191
19. Piquet - 1:29.518
20. Bourdais - 1:29.605
21. Sato - 1:30.663
22. Davidson - 1:31.527

[fisetdavid26]

Just got back from watching the second practice... all I gotta say is: spectacular. It seems like they're gonna loose it at every corner. Powerslides. Spins. Rides in the grass. Stalled engines.

Red Bull in P2 and P5. Nice.