First Post of the New Year!

Happy New Year to you all! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas break. I'll begin 2014 with... 2013. I missed a lot of the main talking points surrounding Formula 1 in December, so I begin the new year by closing the last.

Driver Market Update

With the 2013 season over, focus will now shift to the evolving driver market and any news that the teams feed out about their 2014 challengers or sponsorship deals. As covered in my previous blog posts, changes at the top have filtered down through the lower teams, triggered by Mark Webber's retirement and Ferrari signing Kimi Raikkonen to replace Felipe Massa. Here is a look at each teams 2014 line up, and the rumours for the 6 spots currently vacant...

2013 Season Close

The 2013 season came to a close on Sunday in spectacular fashion and a record breaking result for Sebastian Vettel, Heikki Kovalainen and Max Chilton. For Vettel, 9 wins in a row really demonstrated the strangle hold that both he and the Red Bull team had over the current regulation package. The change of regulations next year could not have been timed better for this reason, and the action will certainly be closer throughout 2014 as teams adjust and adapt. There is a chance that the viewers may also have some adapting of their own, with some rather unsightly nose concepts emerging. 

Raikkonen and Lotus

News emerged on Sunday that Kimi Raikkonen would be ending the 2013 season prematurely, in order to carry out surgery on a back issue that nearly sidelined him at Singapore. It comes just 1 week after threatening to walk away from the season over a financial dispute, and will have left Eric Boullier with quite the headache having believed the pay issue was sorted. As far as Kimi Raikkonen sees it, the season has been over for a while with Sebastian Vettel dominating the later half of the season and comfortably sealing his 4th World Championship. Lotus are however still locked in a scrap with Mercedes and Ferrari for the runner up spot, which would see a great financial reward for the team if they were able to perform well in the United States and Brazil. Lotus are currently 26 points adrift of Ferrari in third and a further 11 points behind Mercedes, and were therefore relying on their star driver to score big in the final 2 races, along with current team mate Romain Grosjean.

Daniil Kvyat

Within the Formula 1 paddock, 2014 is going to look substantially different to how it does today. The regulations have had one of the largest changes from year to year in the history of the sport, and Mark Webber's move away from the Red Bull Racing team to Le Mans has prompted many changes in driver lineups also. Daniel Ricciardo's promotion to Webber's vacant seat left at least one space at the Toro Rosso team, and it was believed that seat would be taken by Antonio Felix Da Costa, the most senior of the Red Bull development drivers. The news instead broke that relatively unknown driver (though still part of the Red Bull development program) Daniil Kvyat has instead landed the promotion.

Red Bull, Lets Race

Apologies for updating this blog as much as I would like lately, and this is also a compressed post. More soon!

Since the August break, Red Bull have been dominating every race weekend. Our TV coverage has also started to include thermal imaging cameras aimed at the tyres and calibrated to show the temperatures across the contact patch. Gary Anderson has analysed footage of the Red Bull lapping in Korea to assess why the Red Bull is currently a cut above the rest of the field.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/24511950

It has been no secret for the last couple of years that Red Bull angle their car rake to be lower at the front, but it seems they have found a way to run the car even lower without rubbing away too much of the plank under the car.


One of the reasons for such a short supply of blogs lately, I am in the process of moving home and also writing some other blogs for Lets Race. I have been working here nearly 3 years now as a race instructor, but recently I have also been writing some posts for their own website blog. Of course anything relevant will be posted onto here as well (some posts have already been transferred the other way!) but keep an eye on out as other members of staff add their own posts to the blog also.

http://www.letsrace.co.uk/blog/

Drivers Facing The Contract Weighting Game

The Korean Grand Prix hosted many fierce topics of discussion throughout this weekend, with more details unravelling surrounding the 2014 Championship, the Grand Prix Drivers Association meeting on Thursday night and such an incident packed race on Sunday. With the remainder of the 2013 Championship looking like a Vettel / Red Bull victory parade, most attention has moved onto next year, the extended calendar, the vast rule changes and the driver lineups as well.