Anyone watch the tokyo grand prix? Was on at 4am eastern time. Hell of a race, Mr. Schumacher resorted to locking up on the hairpin turn to take out his brother Ralph for a scoring position. He beat out McLaren/Mercedes by one position and took his 6th world championship, and ferrari took the constructors championship. Raikkonnen is grooming to be the next Schumacher the guy can drive. Anyone know when Ferrari will be retesting the 2004 F1 model? Its suppose to be faster in the straights than the BMWs. Ferrari is slowly loosing its top speed advantage. Anyone here into F1 racing? I recall seeing posts of traders near F1 hot spots like Monaco. Do any trtaders attend F1 races? What a boring afternoon, like watching paint dry. -goodluck to all
Interesting articles in the UK papers today about Schumacher. Apparently all the other drivers dislike him because he keeps running them off the circuit. After the race he and his brother went a bit rock and roll and smashed the place up!
for the F1 race on three occasions and can say quite honestly that the sound coming from an F1 engine is like nothing you have ever heard before in your life! As I walked across the brick foot bridge onto the Isle of St. Helene to see my first F1 race in Montreal, I heard a Sauber-Petronas shoot down the straight during a practice session. Suffice to say, I had goose-bumps all over and tears were coming down the sides of my face from under my sunglasses! As for Michael running people off the road, that's kind of hard to do when you start 90% of your races from the POLE! What I thought was most interesting is that he seemed pretty exhausted from the race, more so than others . . . Starting 14th on the grid obviously took a lot out of him and he was pushing like crazy! He didn't even mention the death of his mother when he was aksed to reflect back over the season . . . the FOCUS of this athlete is simply amazing, and unmatched, that is why he is the best, and even better now than Fangio. http://www.formula1.com/race/news/951/33.html
I love F1 racing, I used to wake up 6 am to watch all the races. I enjoyed it more 10 years ago, but still a fan. I am more into Motorcycle racing right now. I went to the Canadian GP in 1989 and the USGP in 2000.
Formula One: Schumacher's rivals won't be rushing to join the party By Andrew Baker (Filed: 13/10/2003) It is difficult to find a quiet place when you have just made sporting history in front of tens of thousands of delirious fans. Michael Schumacher found an empty corridor at the back of the control tower at Suzuka Circuit and slumped against a window, emotionally and physically spent. His sweat-soaked overalls steamed up the glass against which leant. Only one person was with him: Jean Todt, who built the indomitable Ferrari machine around him. Time and again the German fell forward, overcome by his emotions. Time and again the little Frenchman grabbed his shoulders, shaking Schumacher with sympathy. The man in the scarlet overalls had just become the first driver to win six world championships, and the world, the watching millions, wanted to know how he felt. The trouble was, Schumacher didn't know how he felt, didn't want to tell anyone anything. Eventually, he was cajoled before the cameras, clearly emotional but oddly unfocused. Schumacher sometimes makes winning look easy: but yesterday he made it look very hard. "It's been a tough year," he said. "A tough last stage of the season, and a tough race - really, that's one of my toughest." Yes, yes, but how did it feel to have broken Juan Manuel Fangio's record, to be alone atop the pinnacle of his sport? Schumacher's face clouded for a moment. "It's perhaps not appropriate," he broke off. "With all this happening, with a very, very strange race, my feelings just haven't sunk in. I can feel for the team, but I can't feel for myself, I'm just empty, exhausted." Ferrari are everything to Schumacher because the team was constructed around him, tailored to his taste as carefully as his race-suit. "How many people wrote us off?" he asked, defiantly. "Here we are. We're back. We never give up." That is a chilling message for Schumacher's rivals, but they seem pretty chilled by him already. Asked for a reaction to his team-mate's sixth title, Rubens Barrichello avoided the question; pressed, he wriggled before producing a purely abstract appreciation. Kimi Raikkonen, who yesterday came much closer to defeating Schumacher than most had expected, had not a single word of praise for his rival: no words at all, in fact. David Coulthard was similarly mute. The message could hardly have been clearer: Schumacher may be adored by his millions of fans, but among his peers he is loathed. What manner of champion is this, who breaks every record in the book, but in the process so alienates his rivals that he has forfeited their respect? It is a champion who will stop at nothing in his annual quest to remain champion. We have seen his trademark combination of ruthlessness and a kind of corporate cunning time and again. The ruthlessness previously deployed against Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve was yesterday exercised against Schumacher's younger brother. Ralf, fighting his way back up the field after a number of mishaps, was making energetic efforts to deprive big brother of the eighth position he needed to be sure of his title. He loomed alongside on the main straight, at 200mph, and had the momentum to pass. Michael veered right, and kept on veering right until Ralf had to either back off or hit the pit wall. Hard racing? Or too hard? Either way, it is a style of driving that Schumacher senior has made his own. The corporate cunning, which Schumacher inspires but for which he is not solely culpable, came into play earlier in the season when Ferrari protested about the tyres used by their increasingly successful rivals. There is no need to go back into the nitty-gritty of that dispute now: suffice to say that it threw a spanner into the works at Williams just when they were threatening to dominate, and that Ferrari never looked back. The tyre shenanigans reinforced the conviction among the other teams that Ferrari play politics too often, and too well, to allow any rival to establish a competitive edge. What results is an erosion of respect for the best team and the best driver in the sport. This is a shame: people forget, sometimes, that Schumacher left a high-achieving team to join an under-achieving Ferrari. They forget that he might by now have won more than six world titles had he not done so. But his fellow drivers cannot forget how which all this was achieved. That is why, when Ferrari's celebrations got under way in the Log Cabin bar at Suzuka's Flower Garden hotel yesterday evening, Michael Schumacher's greatest rivals were not queuing up to buy him a drink.
Actually, it was the Japanese GP. On my TV the cars rolled off the starting grid at 1:30 AM EST. MS did not lock up to "to take out his brother Ralph for a scoring position," he had to brake because he couldn't get by da Matta; Ralphie shouldn't have been so close. Prior to this, MS swerved in a manuever to keep his brother behind him down the straight at near 200 MPH. Raphie immediately ordered up a Steward's investigation who ruled it legal. Boring afternoon? If Barrichello spun, wrecked or had a mechanical failure and Schumi failed to keep brother Ralph behind him for the crucial 8th place, Kimi would have been the WC; a record in itself, he would have been the youngest WC at 23. As it was, Schumacher did not have any cake walk. He qualified only 14th, he lost his front wing on lap 6 and had to pull into the pits to have the entire front nose of the car changed; he rejoined the race almost dead last in 19th place. After the lock up at the chicane, the flat spots on his tires created a severe vibration, with 12 laps to go. Panis pitted which gave da Matta 7th and Michael his needed saftey margin of finishing at least 8th. Michael Schumacher's Formula One Records: Drivers' Titles: 6 - 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 Wins: 70 Fastest laps: 55 Points: 1,038 Wins in a Season: 11 (2002) Points in a Season: 144 (2002) Biggest points winning margin: 67 (2002) Consecutive seasons of winning: 12 (1992-2003) Consecutive races in points: 24 (Hungary 2001 - Malaysia 2003) Consecutive races on podium: 19 (United States 2001 - Japan 2002) Most Podium Finishes: 122 da Matta, Michael and Ralph just prior to the lock up
I agree with you 100%. This was not a LOCK whatsoever for Schumi and the commentators remarked on several occasions that Michael's expression on the grid at P-14 before the race was won of concern and much stress. As for the article that one of the posters posted about Ferrari displaying corporate cunning in regards to the TIRE WARS, let me just state what the typical BRITISH RACING PRESS article left out.... While racing journalist's such as Nigel Roebuck ( and perhaps Andrew Baker above ) believe that Michelin simply exploited the rules more cleverly than its rivals, the fact of the matter is that they are merely in denial and just plain kidding themselves! It's highly difficult to believe that anyone ( the British Press ) really believe that the FIA and F1 meant that it was okay for the CONTACT PATCH TO WIDEN NEARLY 3/4's OF AN INCH DURING A RACE. If Ferrari's response to this is labeled as "corporate cunning" than so be it. However, it just might not be convenient for the British press to call Michelin's ever changing contact patch as what most of us American's would call: CHEATING! If they did, they probably would never get another interview from Frank Williams and Williams-BMW ever again! :eek: