Posts tagged Melbourne
Re-launching the blog
Feb 21st
Well after an almost 2-year hiatus…well more then a hiatus I guess, more like completely MIA, I have decided to Re-Launch my blog.
For various reasons (which I wont go in to now) I was unable to devote the time this blog deserved, but ratehr then shut it down completely, I simply failed to write any new posts. Lets face it, there wasn’t anything too edgy or too interesting in this blog that you couldn’t get from Autosport or any of the mainstream media sites. With that in mind I decided it was time to start the blog up again, only this time write about what interested me, what I was passionate abut and what I felt was worthy of some kind of attention.
I won’t be commenting on every race and every session, but instead i’ll be blogging about quirky things in the world of Formula1. I might start writing about my adventures in the world of F1 and experiences I have had visiting various races around the world or people I’ve met in the process, both in person and online.
I have made a vow recently to attend a minimum of 2 Formula1 races every year. In 2011 I attended The Australian GP and the Singapore GP, this year i’ll be attending the Australian GP (again for obvious reasons) and the British GP. I’ve never been to Silverstone so I’m very much looking forward to it. In 2013 I’m very excited about attending the inagural Grand Prix of New York. For those of you who don’t know, New Jersey (just on the other side of the Hudson from lower Manhattan) will be hosting a street race with Manhattan as it’s backdrop, it should be an absolute blast!
So 2012 should be a great year for F1, we finally return to USA with the race in the Austin Tilkerdome… should be fun. The stepped nose duckbills we’ve sen this season have already grown on me, in fact so much so, that I now find the McLaren the ugliest car on the grid. Amazing how F1 can brainwash you sometimes.
So I met Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo in Singapore last year. That was a buz, but more about that later, for now I’m just happy to be back and bloging, only this time with a differnece, I plan to bring my own unique angle, insight and opinion into my posts, i’m hoping you’ll find my new blog interesting. If you’re looking for a standard spiel post-race or post-quali news wrapup, then you’ve come to the wrong place, but i’m hoping you’ll find my posts interesting, insightful and entertaining. So hears to a great 2012!
Less then 30 days now till lights out in Melbourne, I can’t wait!
- Nathan
ps, i’ll post up the pics with me and Seb and Me and Dan later. That was a great day, one which i’ll never forget.
Cameron McConville drives two-seater F1 car in Melbourne
Mar 22nd
It was an unusual sight on Sunday morning in Melbourne when a two-seater Formula1 Minardi took to the city streets ahead of the GP this weekend. The car was branded in the generic Australian GP livery as a promotion to market the event. Police escorted the car with only very minor disruptions to Sunday traffic. For race fans it was music to the ears and a rare opportunity to get so close to such a machine, however for a lot of the locals enjoying the park and rowing on the river, it may not have been appreciated as much.
The car was driven by V8 Supercar driver and occasional sports commentator Cameron McConville. One lucky competition winner had the honour of being the passanger.
Cameron is no stranger to F1 cars. In late 2008, after the F1 season finished, Cameron received one-on-one tuition from Jensen Button in the 2008 Honda F1 car. Cameron then was able to do a number of hotlaps in the Honda F1 car around their test track whilst under the watchful eye of Jensen Button and his teams engineers. Cameron infact was the last person to ever drive the Honda F1 car before it became BrawnGP ahead of the 2009 season.
The two-seater Minardi will lay the first race rubber on the circuit for the weekend when it opens the program on Thursday morning. The lucky competition winner gets to be a passenger for one flying lap at speed in the Minardi, including an in-lap and an out-lap around the Albert Park circuit.
Here is the official YouTube video of the Sunday morning drive from the event organisers channel:
What’s in store at Albert Park?
Mar 22nd
With the dramas of the ‘un-eventful’ season opener in Bahrain now yesterdays fish n chips wrapper, we look ahead to the AustralianGP which is now less 6 days away.
Melbourne has traditionally hosted the first round of the season so it will be interesting to see teams turning up to this track and for the first time having a clearer understanding of who the pace setters are heading into the weekend.
Lewis Hamilton has been quoted as saying that “The Red Bull is ridiculously faster than anyone else’s car,”
Downforce in Melbourne is very important with the most important corners being very slow speed yet at the same time there are large sweeping corners on the back straight taken at full throttle.
The reliabilty issues that plauged Sebastian during Bahrain will hopefully not be an issue in Melbourne. Sebastian dropped from a comfortable lead down to 4th place when a faulty spark plug caused issues for him and greatly reduced power. Sebastian will be using that same engine this weekend in Melbourne, however RedBull have made assurances the issue has been rectified and there is nothing wrong with the engine itself. Having siad that, the Renault engine is still down on power and was 10 km/h slower then the McLarens through the speed trap in Bahrain. With the speeds topping 300km/h at Albert Park, this hopefully won’t become an issue for RedBull.
The majority of the grid believe that the best two cars going into this weekend are the RedBulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Mark will be under a lot of pressure to perform infront of his home-crowd. He has not had good luck in past seasons in Melbourne however with the local press already touting 2010 as ‘being his year’ at Albert park, there may be much disapointment if he doesn’t atleast claim a podium this weekend and with such a car beneath him, there should be no excuses not to perform.
The weather in Melbourne is always un-predicatable. We have seen the temperature on the race in recent years vary from the low 20′s (celcius) to the low-mid 40 degree temperatures.
The forecast is for a mixed dry and wet weekend. Possible showers on Saturday for Quali and whilst Sunday will start out fine, strong winds could also bring rain in the late afternoon. Temps will be in the mid-high 20′s on Saturday and it will push into 30 degrees celcius for the Sunday, so not a relatively hot weekend.
Melbourne has a very large Italian community and one of the largest Ferrari fan bases we see at any GP outside of Italy.
Fernando Alonso is who many fans have come to cheer on and the Red and Yellow will be out in force cheering for this man.
Whilst Ferrari may not have the aero package the RedBull have, they do have reliability on their side and in a race like Melbounre which always claims casualaties and is always prone to safety car periods, reliabilty may win the day.
Most of the F1 teams are already in Melbourne, many of the dirvers flew in over this past weekend to adjust to the time-zone differnce and the change in timezone will put them in good stead for the malaysian GP the following weekend.
Albert Park is a street circuit only a few Kilometers from Melbournes CBD. The circuit is just over 5.3km’s in length and the lap record set in 2004 by Michael Schumacher of 1:24.125 still stands.
Michael has been a local crowd favourite at Albert Park ever since he won his first AustralianGP for Ferrari in 2000. There will be a very large legion of “schumi fans” out to see their man. We don’t expect him to break that lap record however, the MecredesGP team hasn’t had the pace of the Ferrari, RedBull or even the McLarens so far this season.
Lets go for a lap around Albert Park on-board with Michael Schumacher in 2004. This was his pole setting lap:
UBS Chinese Grand Prix