The Official 2008 Formula 1 Thread!
 

It's January, so silly season '08 has officially begun!

So on with the news and rumors!

News!

The drivers and numbers have been announced by the FIA. Only one seat remains!

Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro:
1. Kimi Raikkonen
2. Felipe Massa

BMW Sauber F1 Team:
3. Nick Heidfeld
4. Robert Kubica

ING Renault F1 Team:
5. Fernando Alonso
6. Nelson Piquet Jr

AT&T Williams:
7. Nico Rosberg
8. Kazuki Nakajima

Red Bull Racing:
9. David Coulthard
10. Mark Webber

Panasonic Toyota Racing
11. Jarno Trulli
12. Timo Glock

Scuderia Toro Rosso:
14. Sebastien Bourdais
15. Sebastian Vettel

Honda Racing F1 Team:
16. Jenson Button
17. Rubens Barrichello

Super Aguri F1 Team:
18. Takuma Sato
19. Anthony Davidson

Force India Formula One Team:
20. Adrian Sutil
21. Giancarlo Fisichella

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes:
22. Lewis Hamilton
23. Heikki Kovalainen

The McLaren MP4-23

The Ferrari F2008

So far, nothing looks drastically different from last years.

At least to my eyes.

I dont see much difference either most of it is internal, the aero packages on the ferrari will be completely different come Melbourne

although I hear the ferrari car is shorter then last years model, and those side bolsters around the drivers head are taller now

Isn't the 08 Ferrari front wing quite a bit different?

F2007:

F2008: http://sports.eastday.com/s/20080107...s/01167886.jpg

Good catch. I didn't look closely enough :lol:

Kimi TOTALLY looks ready... to fall asleep. :lol:

What do you mean? That's his excited face.



That's also his sleepy face, his annoyed face, his o face and his sad face.

:lol: EXACTLY!!!

Man, it is really weird to see the McLaren with such a high Number!

check it
http://axisofoversteer.com/blog/pictures/2007-2008.gif

Holy toe out, batman!

That's gotta just be the camera angle.

...then again, F1 teams will run a ton of negative camber just to keep the tires hot. I guess they stick better using 80% of the tire at high temp, than using 100% of the tire at a low temp. Massive toe out would certainly help keep the tires warm too. :lol:

And Massa looks like Kimi farted something rank.

And the Ferarri's rockin' NUMBER 1! :cool:

Rumor has it that Fisichella bought... er... got the last seat left for 08 at Force India.

Official announcement due tomorrow.

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2008/...ed-fisichella/

Poor Fisi... I like that guy, it sucks to see him in what will likely be a perpetual back-marker car.

In other '08 news... has anyone heard if Honda is going to have a real sponsor next season, or are we going to have to watch their slow, ugly cars again this year?

well I think the "earth" car paint scheme is gone but I havent heard anything about a major sponsor

What driver will the banning of traction control help/hinder the most?

ok so maybe I got that one wrong

http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headline...10092103.shtml

Fisichella, Sutil at Force India. Luizzi will be their test driver.

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2008/...il-and-liuzzi/

The Toyota TF108 has been unveiled.

Haven't found any high-res photos yet. But it looks like they are debuting with the McLaren style front wing.

And looks like Prodrive have dropped their F1 ambitions altogether.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/64623

:sadpanda:

and ferrari's wheel covers

Ugh... earth livery, wheel covers, no Prodrive... 2008 sucks.

FIA should just scrap the wheel covers all together. They can't make that big of a difference in aero, but they sure look ugly. Especially Ferrari w/ their stupid painted-on wheel spokes so as to not piss off BBS. The car just looks dumb as hell flying around the track w/ "stopped" front wheels.

I'm not watching anymore F1 until they have these.

Meh... the spinning LED message boards are better.

http://gizmodo.com/images/2006/03/pimpstar_rims.jpg

BMW Sauber debuted the F1.08.

Sounds like they are going to try and win races this year.

Red Bull Racing RB4

Mark Webber looks SO HAPPY :lol:

Webber always looks like he's got a stick up his ass, so that's nothing new :lol:

And for weird news...

The first engine change of 08 for each driver will not incur a penalty (pending approval of the rule), for some weird reason.

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/64747

Williams FW30

This isn't the final Livery. This is the second of six liveries Williams will be testing with this winter in commemoration of their 30th Anniversary.

That's too bad, that livery is the clsoest thing to classic F1 we've seen in a while besides Ferrari.

BMW-Sauber tried out a funky new nose with antlers.

According to the "speed report" on Speedvision, Toyota has officially given their F1 endeavor two years, beginning at the start of this season, to either start winning, or start packing up. Apparently if they don't start placing Toyota plans on just giving up on F1 all together.

Shit, or get off the pot...

That's been coming for a long time... Toyota spends more money on F1 than any other team, and they're not getting squat for a return on their "investment".

The sad truth is that their real problem is that Toyota simply doesn't have the right mindset for a factory F1 team. Look at Ferrari... their road cars eat, drink, and breath F1 technology. Toyota's closest thing to a sports car is what, the Scion tC? While I can't speak to the culture of the Toyota folks in England that directly run their F1 team, I certainly think the blokes back at Toyota Japan simply don't have the right mindset for putting together a winning F1 team... it takes more than just a truck-load of money. Look at Super Aguri... are they championship contenders? No, but on a tiny-ass budget, they're actually racing with the big boys... and they do it all with heart.

Bottom line... Toyota is a soulless corporation trying to compete in a sport where success is still dependent on having a winning spirit as well as a space-program level budget.

Actually, Toyota is based in Cologne Germany (the former TTE that used to run the WRC Program).

Their location has sometimes been attributed to some of their weaknesses. Basically building a team from the ground up, with no experience in the sport and no easy way to scavenge people from former F1 teams. I actually kind of buy into it, especially when you see the Williams team doing better than the factory team.

Anyway, the rumor I've been reading is that if the F1 thing doesn't pan out in the next two years, they'll go back to Le Mans style sports car racing with hybrid engines and they'll take a bigger stake in Williams to keep an F1 presence.

Honda RA108

Still have the earth livery, but it looks a little better.

Sooooo much better looking!

Especially since it doesn't have nKoan and Sybir's names on it.

Ass :p

Renault R28

Funky new front wing

All the colors on the R28 make it hard for me to see the shape of anything, maybe that's just me.

They probably do that by design anyways.

I really like the livery for Renault for the last 2 years. Traditional gay-French blue be damned!

Force India VJM01 was unveiled today in Mumbai.

Nothing really special to note, except that they've changed their color scheme to include a lot of gold now :lol:

Wow, nice old-school paint job! Looks like a pack of cigarettes. :lol: