From his brief tenure at McLaren, we know that Fernando Alonso has a bit of trouble getting along with his teammates. Especially when he doesn't get the clear preferential treatment as the team's #1 driver. After all, as has often been said, a driver's teammate is his chief rival. So after Ferrari confirmed that Alonso and Felipe Massa would be put on equal footing, we smelled some trouble a-brewin'. But we didn't expect it to start at least until the beginning of next season. Turns out, that was a bit premature, as some cracks in the relationship between the two teammates-to-be have already started to show.
Speaking with a group of journalists in his native Brazil where the F1 circus is preparing for this weekend's grand prix, Felipe Massa said with "absolute certainty" that Alonso knew about the plan to have wingman Nelson Piquet crash to hand him the controversial victory. That's a pretty hefty charge levied by his future teammate, and Ferrari naturally scrambled to issue a clarification (which you can read after the jump) but you can't take back what's already been said.
Massa was suitably – and vocally – upset when the Crashgate story broke, because without Alonso's ill-earned victory, Massa would have won the championship last year, instead of losing to Lewis Hamilton by one point at the last corner of the last lap of the last race of the season. Better luck next year, gents.
We know what you're thinking, and we agree – if there's one thing that we just can't seem to accept in modern Formula One racing, it's the distinct lack of edible race cars. Fortunately, that minor niggle is currently being remedied by the Culinary Executive Chef from the Royal Plaza On Scotts in Singapore, who led a team of six chefs, two artists, two technicians, two culinary staff members and five young volunteers from Metta Welfare Association to create bake the machine you see in the gallery below: Asia's Largest Race Car Made From Bread. We wonder... is there some other bread-based race car vying for the world record?
According to Klik.tv, there are a thousand individual loaves and 22 different types of bread in the life-size F1 car. More numbers: it took 33 pounds of yeast, 14 liters of water, 4.4 pounds of salt and nearly three gallons of varnish to finish this delightful creation. We bet it's the best smelling race car ever.
Opening night can be the worst time to see a new production. But it can also be the most painfully entertaining, watching all the actors trip over their toes and forget their lines with the pressure to perform bearing down and the bright lights glaring in their eyes. This weekend's Singapore Grand Prix wasn't just the first race on a new track and in a new host country. It was also the very first Formula One race held at night. No problem, you might figure, for these are the most professional drivers in the world. Well, not quite. But opening night was still highly entertaining; probably more so as a result. If you've recorded the race and haven't watched it yet, move along. But if you haven't, or even watched part and skipped out before the end, you'll want to follow the jump to see how Formula One's foray into the nocturnal panned out for this year's crop of championship hopefuls.
This weekend Singapore will host Formula 1's first night race, and SPEED TV has created a computerized lap of the course narrated by Mark Webber taking you through the 24 corners. Perhaps the best part of this brand new track in a brand new host country at a brand new time of day night is the knowledge that there are three spots for overtaking, which hopefully means this will be more than just a two-hour parade lap. If nothing else, McLaren might be packing a surprise. Follow the jump to check out the video.
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Racing fans were excited at the announcement that Singapore would join the 2008 Formula One calendar as the series' first night race. But it's one thing to make the announcement, quite another to actually pull it off.
Lighting up a road circuit in the middle of a bustling city is not like lighting up an outdoor stadium or even an oval speedway. The track snakes along over three miles through downtown Singapore, and needs to be lit up enough to provide sufficient visibility for the drivers, spectators and television cameras, all the while minimizing glare off potentially wet surfaces. To execute the illumination, the organizers turned to Italian lighting specialists Valerio Maioli SpA, who worked up a custom lighting system just for the Singapore Grand Prix.
The system devised for the event will consist of some 1600 lighting projectors, hanging in clusters 10 meters above the surface on 240 steel pilings placed 32 meters apart from each other around the circuit and connected by over 100,000 meters of cable. The system will draw 3.18 Megawatts of electricity from 12 pairs of generators encased in sound-proof containers, each with its own engineer on standby in case anything should go wrong. Although the run-off areas will be illuminated as well, the lighting will be dimmer than the track surface to avoid confusion for the drivers. That's a pretty impressive system, which all in all will be four times brighter than the lighting in an ordinary stadium.
Source: GrandPrix.com
Singapore is getting ready to host the first night race in Formula One history after the FIA approved the proposed calendar for next year's championship. Race promoters in Singapore got the clearance from the FIA to build the Monaco-style street circuit in May, and things are reportedly moving along well. The spectacle of the flood-lit road race in the Pacific city-state promises to inject some more excitement into what is already held as the pinnacle of international motorsport.
As we had reported earlier, there were a few proposed grands prix that were up in the air, but the motorsport governing body has approved them all. (Yay!) In addition to Singapore, the new event in Valencia, Spain, was awaiting approval. The French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours was under threat, as well. Even the perennial Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal wasn't for sure, as the economies of scale in schlepping the whole F1 circus to North America were eliminated with the cancellation of the race at Indianapolis. In the end all were confirmed, alongside the usual suspects in Australia, Malaysia, Bahrain, Spain, Turkey, Monaco, Britain, Germany, Hungary, Belgium, Italy, Japan, China and Brazil. Only a few dates were changed around by the FIA in the process. Altogether it makes for a full eighteen races, and we're looking forward already.
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