Racing '07
12-17-2007 (last updated)
The first important event in the racing season is surely Dakar rally marathon. As of today there's nothing more than 18 km left. This year the Russian Kamaz racing team looks weaker than in 2006 but still the 2nd place is a very good result. On the whole watching this rally leaves strong impressions.
WRC 2007
This is one of the championship I decided to give a coverage of on my site. I hope that I'll manage to watch broadcasts of the main sport events this year as well, just as I did earlier.
First of all I'd like to speak of the innovations introduced in this season. Some rules have been changed, in particular it'll be more difficult to compete for higher positions with help of super-rally system.
Some teams have introduced their new cars. The most notable of all is perhaps the new Citroen C4. This car is considerably faster than the previous rally car, Xsara. Cirtoen is of the top racing teams, it's pilots are S. Loeb and D. Sordo, both are expert pilots.
Subaru team will introduce it's new version of Subaru Impreza WRC later this year. As for the Stage 1 Subaru racing team presented an updated version of the old car but used a newly-developed Goodrich tyres.
The next top level team is Ford. It looks much better than Subaru and I personally think they have much more chances to win the championship than Subaru does.
Stage 1, Rally Monte-Carlo
Traditionally the first stage with tarmac roads is held in the second half of January. This year the weather is consuderably warmer and piloting is easier. A few super specials are now held at night. This gives completely new experience to drivers and viewers. Still the skill of most of the pilots is such that they drive their cars as fast as if it were daylight. Also the last super special stage partially included the famous city racetrack which came as a complete surprise to me.
The winner is guess who, surely it is S. Loeb, the current championship. As you remember last year he had an accident but managed to finish 2nd. This time he had no competitors at all. His team partner D. Sordo finished second. The next was Mr. Gronholm driving a Ford. Solberg finished 6th while Atkinson, his fellow pilot, managed to outpass M. Hirvanen from Ford team. In this way, Cirtoen team takes the lead by points followed by Ford and Subaru teams respectively.
Stay tuned for more updates.
Stage 2, Rally Sweden
It comes to the fact that Mr Solberg proves to be a loser the 2 year round. The main candidates for the champion titles are Mr Loeb and Mr Gronholm. The winners of this stage, in order of their positions, are Gronholm, Loeb, and M. Hirvanen, Mr Gronholm's teammate.
Stage 3, Rally Norway
Missed the event. I'll have to make up for it somehow.
Stage 4, Rally Mexico
This event is scheduled for March 9, i.e. this weekend. Also if you haven't read about the Rally Norway elsewhere I can say that the the current top pilot is not Loeb but Gronholm. It is that Mr Loeb crashed during one of the super specials and has lost the lead. Now most of the points go to Ford team, it has almost twice as many championship points as Citroen does.
Speaking of Rally Mexico. the winner is S.Loeb followed by Gronholm. At first I actually hoped that P.Solberg would win but he failed once again. The thing is that Subaru team presented the new Impreza WRC 2007. It resembles the previous version by style but it features a number of improvements in engine structure, suspension, gearbox etc. It is awfully fast but to this moment it doesn't lead to winnings. Solberg crashed his car and Atkinson had techinical problems with turbocharger.
- missed half of the season--
Rally Italy
Missed the event.
Rally Greece
Finally I managed to watch a program on local tv. It appears that there will be huge vacations before the next stage takes place. What is worth pointing out is that Subaru team has finally achieved some results. P.Solberg did his best and managed to finish 3rd. His chances to be a champion are slim though. He's got almost 3 times less points than the leader, S.Loeb. Subaru team in turn holds the 3rd position in the constructor's cup. Ford and Gronholm in particular appear as the most active rivals to Citroen racing team at the moment. All in all we have a break till August.
Rally Japan, Ireland etc.
After a number a failures from Gronholm, he's now 6 points behind S. Loeb. There's only one stage left and Gronholm should absolutely win while Loeb should absolutely lose for Gronholm to become a champion.
Rally Great Britain
The situation is exactly like it was last year. Ford team collected enough points to win the constructor's cup but in driver's championship Gronholm lost the title to S. Loeb again. Only this time he actually had more chances to win. Of only he could get some points at Ireland. You know during the last stage Gronholm was actually faster but that didn't help.
Ok, this is it for the 2007 season. It feels like it's just started but in fact it's December already. Oh, and I'm still in schock after what's happened with Mcrae. He had so many plans and it is Dakar marathon starting soon, but we have what we have, there's nothing we can do about it.
Formula One
Australian Grand Prix
So we've actually lived to the moment when the new season starts. I watched a recording of the first race from a local TV station and I was quite impressed by the race itself and the comments.
Speaking of the 2007 season it's all new. The leading teams have presented their new cars and there are new pilots as well. It's hard to imagine Ferrary without Mr Shumi for me but there's nothing we can do about it. Still, Raikkonen showed great skill and he has high chances to win. Alonso is now in Mercedes and his partner is a young British pilot Hamilton. Now that I mention them the 3 of them finished 1, 2, and 3rd respectively. As for the comments I noted one regarding Kimi and the other one about Toyota and Williams teams. The first funny moment was about Kimi not being very talkative. The second one concerned the two Japanese teams. They both share the same engines but have different names.
During the race there was a quite huge accident but no safety car was needed. The thing was that Coulhard was driving so recklessly that he jumped over Wurtz's car. Coulhard flew over so close to his helmet that I thought Wurtz could get hurt.
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Information regarding Grand Prix Malaysia, GP Bahrain and Rally Portugal is going to be added soon.
Grand Prix Monaco
I mentioned it in the news. Once again I can say that Kimi and co are not performing as good as I'd like them to.
Grand Prix Japan, China, Brazil
Ok, since I stopped updating the section those of you who are interested in F1 know pretty well that Kimi is a champion, with only 1 point ahead of Hamilton. But it's really great to have things this way.
DTM
I couldn't miss the chance to watch the first race so I didn't. From now on I'll follow all the events and comment on them.
Hockenheimring
The season started with a while accident on the very first lap. Kristensen lost control of his car in one of the turns and was hit by 3 cars that were behind him. The hit was so hard he got injured. I hope there's nothing terrible with his health. After that the race was stopped for 20 minutes and it was then restarted.
Speaking of the cars and teams you can enjoy updated car design for 2007 versions of both Mercedes and Audi. The painting of each car is unique for season 2007. C-klasse is based on the new production model and features a hi-tech design. As for the drivers we're missing J.Alesi but we have a number of new pilots. The winners of the first race are Ekstrom, Spengler and Tomczyk (terrible spelling of the name, no offense). Schneider who is the current champion could only get as far as 10th place.
C-klasse is based on the new production model and features a hi-tech design. As for the drivers we're missing J.Alesi but we have a number of new pilots. The winners of the first race are Ekstrom, Spengler and Tomczyk (terrible spelling of the name, no offense). Schneider who is the current champion could only get as far as 10th place.
Oschesleben
missed the event
missed even more
Brandshatch
This is the 4th stage in the season. The winner is Schneider. The current champion is not performing very good, this weekend it was the first he won. The 2nd was Tomczyk followed by Ekstrom. Hakkinen finished soon after them.
Also while I was absent It appears that some pilots got a penalty in the form of their points being cut by half.
More information on the account can be found here:
http://www.dtm.com/newsausgabe.php?id=5670
-- missed the whole season--
Barcelona
The 9th stage in the season promised a lot of hot duels for positions and the total championship score. Apparently Tomczyk and Ekstrom have the highest chances to win as they have 40 and 44 points. However the race turned out to have numerous collisions between Audi and Mercedes team drivers so that in the end the whole Audi team decided to leave the race and only 6 pilots crossed the finish line. Despite agressive driving and collisions it seems that no penalty is brought against Mercedes team. Now that Bruno Spengler finished 2nd with 8 more points to his score he has a high chance to become the champion this year.
24 heures du Mans (24 hours of le Mans)
On July 16 I had an opportunity to watch this endurance race live. Actually I only switched on tv at night at first and then the next day I came back to watch the last 2 hours. I found it very interesting as the pilots were forces to drive under heavy weather conditions as it started raining suddenly. All teams were forced to change tyres from slick to rain pack. The list of winners can be found at wiki.
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