Mad About Cars

For everyone who loves their fast cars will love F1 and Sunday marked the start of the season in Bahrain. With 24 cars lined up on the grid and many new drivers and teams it made way for a great race many with their eyes on the return of Michael Schumacher to the track.

The new rule of no re-fueling has been criticised by many as some have suggested that it makes it impossible to overtake unless someone makes a mistake.

The Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa took first and second place with Lewis Hamilton taking third spot to get a podium finish.

Five times World Rally Champion Sebastian Loeb confirmed that he’s ready to try his luck by racing a Formula One car instead of the WRC:

If Toro Rosso need a driver I’d love to help out.

Sports Daily l’Equipe was interviewing the French driver who made a Citroen’s Xara WRC a legend by winning in it five time in the row. He also mentioned that as long as the F1 and Rally calendars won’t overlap he is available for Toro Rosso. The Red Bull team was doing some tests last year using the French driver in Barcelona.

But the good news is that there is no way Sebastian Loeb could start racing in F1 and forget about WRC, according to Citroen’s Rally boss Oliver Quesnel. At least for this season.

There is a new challenger at Le Mans for 2009. Yes the new Audi R15 will be turning its wheels for the first time at Sebring 12 hours on March 21^st!

The new contender is all-together lighter, with a longer wheelbase, and is much more agile. Power from a newly developed V10 TDI Engine makes over 600bhp with over 775 lb ft of torque.

Aerodynamics includes a raised nose, a rear wing – suspended from the top, and the R15 is also the first racer with low beam headlights which are entirely LED’s – an Audi Trademark!

Allen McNish will be one of two pilots testing the triumphs of the new R15 in Florida before the low down at Le Mans with the 3 car Audi Sports Team ‘Joest’…

Long before the days of high-tech development and multi-million dollar budgets from major car companies, Formula One was a much simpler affair, and still within the realms of wealthy enthusiasts and budding team owners from the junior formulae could develop a car and enter Formula One.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, entries at Grand Prix events typically exceeded 30 cars, with pre-qualifying necessary to weed out the slowest cars. Most of the small teams of this era had short lifespans of only a couple of seasons, usually terminating their interest when it was clear they would never make the step up from also-rans.

Some teams from this era barely made any impact at all, in 1990, the Life team emerged from Italy to showcase a radically designed W12 engine. Hopelessly slow, the car never made it past pre-qualification in 14 attempts.

Some failed to capitalise on early promise, the neat Coloni team gathered some decent results in 1988, before a disastrous engine deal with Subaru saw them fail to qualify for a Grand Prix ever again. The Onyx team enjoyed a podium during their first season in 1989, but by 1990 the team had been taken over by Swiss enthusiast Peter Monteverdi and soon collapsed under poor management and lack of funding.

Some teams rose from backmarkers to become top runners, the most prominent of these being Jordan, who after failing to capitalise on a good opening season in 1991, soon rose to become one of the sport’s leading teams during the late 1990s.

Sadly, the recession of the early 1990s ended the involvement of the small privateer teams, with the likes of Simtek, Pacific and lastly Forti having brief, relatively unsuccessful spells in F1 during the mid 1990s.

Soon after, the sport had closed itself off to such participants. Today, new teams entering F1 are carefully vetted, with many millions of dollars investment behind them. Many herald this as in improvement and far more professional. But others feel that with the passing of the privateer teams, something has been lost from the sport.

In the long, proud history of Formula One, everyone remembers the greats of the sports, famous names such as Senna, Prost, Schumacher, Clark and Fangio. But quite often the rest of the cast disappears into history, long forgotten by most.

However, a pair of hardened Australian Formula One fans keep alive the memory of some of the sport’s less noteworthy drivers alive with their unique website ‘F1 Rejects’ (www.f1rejects.com)

The site has been operating since 1999, and features biographies of some of the sport’s least successful drivers and teams (judged by number of points scored in Formula One). Along with this, the website has regular reports and podcasts with topical Formula One discussion, and a number of correspondents have submitted articles about some of the sport’s less noteworthy achievers.

To the outsider, it may appear that the website serves to mock the ‘reject’ drivers, but upon reading the site’s  description and the driver biographies, it is obvious that the site serves to honour the memory of Formula One’s failures. The creators are fully aware that even the least successful driver is nonetheless hugely talented, and this shows in the quality of the writing. Even many of the drivers featured have gladly assisted the website with exclusive interviews about their Formula One careers.

All manner of drivers are featured, the young prodigies who failed to make the step-up (Corrado Fabi), gentleman clubman drivers (Desmond Titterington), drivers with more money than speed (Phillipe Adams), drivers who simply had no luck (Perry McCarthy) and those whose racing careers were a huge success with the exception of Formula One (Hans Heyer, Eric van de Poele)

What makes for interesting reading is the wide manner of stories, backgrounds and anecdotes these more obscure drivers produce. The site is a real labour of love and is well recommended for the Formula One fan who is after something a little out of the ordinary.