F1: Chinese Style Spicy Qualifying!

A very wet Qualifying at the Shanghai Circuit meant that no Toyota powered car made it past Q1 with both Toyotas and both Spyker MF1s joining the Super Aguris in their usual low grid spots. The Toro Rosso cars were impressive in the first session, but kept falling off the track in Q2 so didn't make the top 10. The Michelin tyred cars definitely ruled Qualifying today, with Michael Schumacher being the only Bridgestone equiped car to make Q3. An all Renault front row with the Hondas on row two should help Alonso's run for the title, but I can't see Ferrari-bound Raikkonen staying in Schumacher's way for too long - depending on their respective pace.

Button for the win? If it stays wet for the race, why not? Two-stop, first stop fuel only, and if the track dries towards the end of the race chuck some dry tyres on at the second stop. Possibly even three stop, but I doubt that very much. I think that Alonso will take the win, as long as the FIA don't mysteriously find something wrong at Renault.........

David Coulthard showed that maybe he isn't in the right job when he complained that the conditions were dangerous as it restricted visibility. Sorry DC but those conditions are nothing compared to what we used to see in the late 80's/early 90's - maybe you should move to Indycar so you don't get wet anymore?!

When Ralf was asked about the conditions he replied

Sure it's dangerous, but surely any driver out there is qualified to drive and knows to brake a bit earlier and not drive as fast?

Well said, take note DC!

I'm disgusted - though not at all surprised - that Ferrari are still allowed to run those things on their rear wheels! They say they are for brake cooling and not an aero aid, funny that, as Mercedes run similar devices in the DTM. They only use them in Qualifying though as they help tidy the airflow around the car but cause the brakes to overheat if used for a race distance. The opposite of what Ferrari claim. But Ferrari are in F1 and they are the FIA's favourite team , so nothing will be said. If Renault or McLaren had introduced them, they'd be gone by now.

A1GP: Zandvoort Qualifying

Remember back in 2004 when Formula 1 had two single lap Qualifying sessions - one on Friday, one on Saturday - and you added the two lap times together to get the qualifying time for each driver? Well, most people didn't like it, they said it was too complicated. Well this is nothing to the system used in A1GP!

This is my first taste of A1GP, as last year it was only available on Sky Sports and I didn't subscribe, however, this year I do. Todays qualifying for A1GP is underway as I type this, and it involves four 15 minute sessions where every driver gets one shot per session to set a lap, they can this at anytime in each session, so you have multiple cars on track. Not too bad at moment, but then at the end of the four sessions you have to take each driver's fastest two laps and add them together to get their qualifying time. So any action you watch on track is pretty much irrelevant until after all four sessions.

It makes it very difficult to stay interested - which is why I'm typing this whilst the qualifying is still in progress!

Ok, just to make it even more complicated, that's only the qualifying for the sprint race, the feature race's grid is made up of a combination of the qualifying, the results from the sprint race and the fastest laps from the sprint race!!!!

Hopefully the races themselves will be better to watch, as I really like the idea behind A1GP - Nation against Nation in the 'World Cup of Motorsport'. The cars are cool, big V8 motors with no driver aids and limited downforce, although they aren't the most attractive single seaters out there! Also with 23 Nations currently running one car each in the series there are more cars on the Grid than in F1 - albeit only by one car!

South Africa have taken Pole Position from Mexico in 2nd and France 3rd, with teamGB - run by the legendary John Surtees - in 6th.

F1: Montoya Free From McLaren

Juan Pablo Montoya has finally been released from his contract with McLaren Mercedes allowing him to race in NASCAR before the end of the current season. Hopefully we'll see him in a few Busch Series races before he makes the jump into the Nextel Cup.

F1: Italian GP 2006

I'm not making any comments on this race as it contained one of the most contrived moments by the FIA ever.

Even Alonso commented that he didn't think F1 was a sport anymore.