It’s been a week of ups and downs, but almost exclusively the latter, including the author who forgot to write his own damn article! [Oops…]
Anyway, here is a belated Good Week, Bad Week for you to mull over…
King Of The Hill – Red Bull Racing
The RB6 has looked quite fast so far, despite the lack of dry running compared to its rivals. They’ve had the odd hiccup, such as a fuel pump failure for Vettel, but apart from that it’s been a solid weeks testing for the team that everyone is expecting to be challenging for the title again this year.
Rising Up – Stefan GP
For the second consecutive week Stefan GP holds position in Good Week, Bad Week – partly their own doing, partly other certain teams’ incompetence. They have already fired up their Stefan S-01 at the Toyota Motorsport factory in Cologne and team principal Zoran Stefanovic has been bullish on his team’s progress.
“The car is completely assembled and the second one is already underway and will be ready also in several days,” he says. But there is one stumbling block ahead of their planned test at Portimao at the end of the month – they don’t have any tyres!
“What we have at the moment is an answer from Bridgestone that they are only supplying to teams which are participating in Formula 1, but we are positive that they may supply GP2 tyres,” explains Stefanovic.
However only having tyres missing rather than entire cars is pretty good compared to some of the other newcomers…
Average Joe – Lotus Racing
Mike Gascoyne must have thought his mind was playing tricks on him during the first two days of testing – on wet track with no power steering rookie Fairuz Fauzy kept the car on the track and put in some consistent runs to beat Virgin Racing, whereas the next day Kovalainen, who was hired due to his ‘experience’ crashed after just 20 laps, ceasing the test for the whole day there and then. After a second day of running he complained the car lacked ultimate downforce – not a great start.
Midfield Mediocrity – Campos Meta/Carabante Meta/Scuderia Dallara/Spyker/Midland F1 (Take your pick)
Unbelievably Campos have moved up a place in this week’s rankings – thanks to Spanish team owner come couch potato Adrian Campos finally making a decision on the future of his team – sell it to someone else, namely Jose Ramon Carabante, who already had a stake in the team anyway. Along with the owner change comes a team principal change – Campos is out in favour of ex-Midland frontman Chavski a.k.a Colin Kolles. Presumably now he has full control of the team, the car will be decked out in full Burberry livery?
According to Kolles the team is in dire straits – he even says himself that “My role is to clean up the chaos!”
“They had basically nothing, only chaos. The only department which basically exists is a software department, with eight guys who never saw an F1 car in their lives, and who are doing software simulation programmes. Then there are two or three engineers with F1 experience, and that’s it.”
Sounds like the TCF Office could give them a run for their money then.
Rock Bottom – USF1
Well it had to be, didn’t it? At least Campos now have the slightest hope of competing this year, albeit a rather small one. USF1 on the other hand look dead in the water – no money, no car, empty warehouses, fake autoclaves, etc etc. Lopez has apparently been told his contract has effictively become as redeemable as Payment Protection Insurace and is trying to use the money he didn’t pour down the crapper at USF1 to get the second Campos seat.
What we know for sure if they won’t make the opening race – Ken Anderson admitting they are negotiating with the FIA to let them start at Barcelona instead, the beginning of the European season.
Do us a favour guys, go home and stop wasting everyone’s time. GAME OVER.
