Ah, aren’t those the coolest racing cars on the planet? And what a thrilling first race of the season.
Here are a few interesting “sound bites” gleamed from the SPEED channel’s TV coverage during the past weekend’s Australian Grand Prix.
Friday Notes
During the second practice session Peter Winsor commented on how the Honda F1 factory team has paid the agency seeking sponsorship deals for the past 15 months a retainer of $200,000 per month to come up with “Nothing.”
Winsor wanted to know David Hobbs opinion on the “Eco-Friendly” livery? Hobbs commented that he definitely had the wrong job as Bob Varsha chimed in that he’d have done the work for half the retainer…
McLaren spent $2 million on its 2007 “glitzy” launch in Valencia…
And in the wake of cost cutting, it was pointed out that with the No Engine grid spot penalty for Friday’s practice sessions. Renault is now bringing eight engines per weekend, up from the squad’s previous five per outing…
Saturday Notes
Once again Peter Winsor was on form with his sarcastic comments towards the plight of the Honda factory team. Winsor noted that there was a joke already making the rounds about how the Honda and Super Aguri would swap chassis for the second race in Malaysia…
After Button failed to move on to the “P3” final knock-out qualifying session, Winsor noted that cynics in the pit lane were already noting how “Jense’s” failing to make the top ten was actually a good thing. That way Honda was saving about 30 kilos of petrol which figured in nicely with their new “Planet Earth” scheme…
With both Honda’s failing to make the top ten, while both “Super Best Friends” outqualified their “Big Brother’s” and “Taku”
(Takuma Sato) notched Super aguri’s first ever foray into P3 qualifying, the ugly rumours over chassis cloning flared up once again.
Matchett noted that Williams was prepared to file legal action against three teams that it felt were grossly “illegal.” These are the teams that have been in question all winter long: Super Aguri, Toro Rosso and Red Bull Racing. Varsha noted it’ll be interesting to see how the other teams feel towards this issue…
And the “Iceman” is so cool. Upon Kimi Raikkonen securing his first pole for Ferrari in his very first team outing, Winsor noted that Kimi was the first driver to accomplish the feat since Juan Manuel Fangio had done so in 1956, a mere 51 years ago…
