grumpyf1

The (supposed) last of the F1 test sessions in Spain finished today, and it seems that things are getting a little bit clearer now, with Vettel fastest on the first two days, Rosberg on the third and Massa today (and with the fastest time of the whole session). The fast guys do seem to be Red Bull and Ferrari at the moment, with McLaren struggling a little. Whilst this is perhaps down to them having launched their car later than the other two, and thus not having had as much time to fettle their car, this is possibly not a good sign. Mind you, it is a seriously radical car, so maybe a bit of extra time is all they need. Due to the situation in Bahrain they've got it too, with the season-opener there being postponed (and quite probably cancelled altogether). The preceding test session is also gone, but the teams have agreed to have a final test session back in Barcelona for 4 days from the 8th of March. We'll then have to wait until Australia to see where they all are pace-...

Well... what did you think? The first race of 2010 wasn't stunningly exciting, was it? Pretty unexciting in fact. Interesting yes, but not a thriller. The new kids on the block (Lotus, Hispania & Virgin) weren't as far off the pace as expected, but were pretty much about as reliable as we expected (ie, not very) with the exception of Lotus, who got 1 car to the end and the other at least classified as a finisher. Hispania just got the better of Virgin when Senna dragged his car into it's 19th lap before it finally packed up. Chandhok managed less that 5 laps in the entire weekend in his Hispania - a bump he didn't even know was there got him on his 2nd race lap. After my irritation with BBC commentator Jonathan Legard last year ("Hamilton pushes on"), Pit lane poppet Lee Mackenzie got my goat this weekend with her brilliant questioning style. I think she instructed every driver that dropped out of the race to "Just tell us what happened". Oooh. G...

Ahh..... the warm glow that is having F1 back again. Mmmmmmm. Nice. And in about 19 hours we move up a gear to the race itself. But that's tomorrow. In the meantime, we had qualifying earlier and it was pretty interesting... First of all, I just became a Chandhok fan. Poor guy - He'd never even driven the car before, the seat didn't fit and I'm surprised he didn't have the handbook out, reading the little notice about not going over 50mph for the first 1000 miles, and trying to work out where the volume control was for the stereo. In the end, he was about 10 seconds off the pace. Sounds a lot, but when you consider his last drive in an F1 car was a test last year, that's darn good. Nice one Karun. A slight whinge - The graphics have changed this year and they seem to have opted for a slanty style of showing positions. I think it slopes the wrong way, boys. A bit counter-intuitive (did I just type that? Sorry). Sort it out. As for the rest of quali, well, it was ...