Formula 1 2008 Season Preview

This should have come about earlier as this weekend (15th & 16th March) marks the start of the 2008 Formula 1 World Championship. Yes, it's been four months since the end of the tightly contested 2007 championship which will hopefully be remembered for Hamilton's unbelievable rookie season and the closely fought race for the title with Raikkonnen emerging the winner at the very last race, and not all the stolen documents, spy scandal which reflected a lot of negative attention for the sport.
That should be all behind us and so we can emerge from the winter testing and look forward to what should be a very competitive championship with a number of drivers already backed to challenge for the title with a handful more with the ability (and car/team) to win races.
At the start of the F1 season it always seems customary to have a look at how the drivers have moved between the teams over the Winter break. The most notable of all is Alonso being kicked out of McLaren and returning to the team where he made his name, Renault. Renault struggled with the switch to bridgestones last year, and already Alonso is playing down his chances of even challenging for wins. I was a fan of Alonso during the Renault days, but his behaviour last year has not won him any friends, and whilst the inter-driver squabbling probably happens a lot more than we are exposed to, his outwardly public attitude was pretty shocking and only helped to endear Hamilton to the fans, well British ones anyway.
In terms of other driver movements, a few rookies are finally getting drives but it is very much status quo. The Ferrari line-up is unchanged, as is Honda's. With Alonso going to Renault, Heikki has gone the other way to McLaren. He also has the same amount of F1 experience, last year being his rookie season too although he should prove to be a more obedient servant for McLaren - they do hold the stance of treating their drivers equally, but the feeling very much is that Hamilton is their best shot for the title, although don't be surprised to see Heikki being a regular on the podium if the McLaren's are competitive.

Moving away from the drivers, it's time to make some season-long predictions in that old-timely fashion. Pre-season testing is a rough indicator of the expected performance over the year. Considering that, the Ferraris must be the favourite, and despite me not being a Fan of Kimi (although his drinking habits are legendary!), I expect him to win his second title, with Ferrari collecting the constructors. That being said, I expect (and hope to the point of getting on my knees and praying) it to a very competitive season, with numerous drivers winning races. I think the season will pan out with Ferrari and McLaren fighting it out for the wins, whilst BMW will be lurking if the top 2 have reliability issues. I expect Renault to end up behind BMW, I'm sceptical that they can realistically challenge as the third best team out there.

Now F1 is probably the only sport I follow where they change the rules pretty much ever year. The current form of qualifying is my opinion pretty darn awesome, although its "fuel-burn" phase did come under criticism. That has been noted and cut from 20 minutes to 15 minutes which should hopefully allow the phase to match the previous 2 sessions for spectacle.
Technical changes notably include the banning of traction control and engine breaking. Also the electronics have now been standardised, with all the teams using the same unit. There have been mixed thoughts about the banning of traction control, but I hold the opinion that fast drivers will always be fast, and ultimately the better drivers should be able to adopt quicker. Hopefully this will allow Jenson to have a good season with his renowned smoothness behind the wheel, although the Honda '08 car doesn't seem to have the speed - they've cured the woeful handling of the '07 car but that won't be very useful if it's very tardy.

The opener is again in Australia and has proved to be a great season opener in recent times. The teams aren't sure exactly how competitive they will be when compared to each other, but do expect the familiar names to be heading up the timesheets before this weekend's race.
Now all I have to do is break up my sleep pattern so I'll be able to watch the coverage live and not have it ruined by ITV's heavy editing for reruns and the habit of passing the coverage onto their digital channels which for those out there which don't have at least freeview (there's not many but people will be affected), they will miss out. It does make me worry how much importance is tied to ITV's coverage if it constantly has to make way for Rugby etc. That being said my predictions for the race itself and I'm gonna go with a Raikkonnen win as much as it pains me.