F1 Driver Rankings - End 2012

So another season of F1 has passed. This was my 15th, it also marked the first year, however, that I did not watch a race the whole way through. As a kind of protest against the Bahrain Grand Prix I suffered through the fairly poor BBC highlight show instead of watching the race live. Bit of a crap protest as I still watched... but I didn't enjoy it.

Rating the races

F1 this season is reaching a record 20 tracks in 19 countries. The racing so far this year has been unpredictable and exciting but there are some tracks that I feel do not do the sport justice with their layouts. In this post I will be ranking the tracks used in this year's world championship, my criteria will be how enjoyable I find them to watch/play in games and how good the racing usually is at the circuit.

1. Canadian GP
   

Ranking F1 - after seven races

It is time for the return of my F1 rankings. These are my first since the end of the 2011 season. What a start we have seen to 2012, seven races and seven different winners. I have been impressed by five of those winners' campaigns so far. You can probably work out the five from the rankings.

1 Fernando Alonso +1

2 Lewis Hamilton +4

3 Sebastien Vettel -2

4 Nico Rosberg /

5 Romain Grosjean NE

F1 Driver Rankings - season end - 2011

So for the first time since race 5 of the season we have an F1 driver ranking post. While my feelings towards F1 were tempered slightly by the domination of king Vettel and the introduction of DRS it was still generally a good season. Possibly not up there with the last couple but fairly strong. How were the drivers though? Well Hamilton certainly struggled with his style not suiting a DRS / Pirelli tyre world. He made silly mistakes aplenty and looked like a rookie. This is the first season he has been outperformed by a teammate and that saw him slip. Heikki Kovaleinen continues his rise through the rankings. He has worked very well with a teammate not seeming to contribute much and moved Lotus near to the midfield. He deserve a high spot.

Improving Yas Marina

Martin Whitmarsh at Mclaren today said that the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi could do with improvements to aid overtaking. I agree, so here is my hastily put together design for improving the track.

The image might not be the clearest but as I said, hastily put together. The blue line is the current layout, the red markings are my changes.

F1 rankings - revised

So 12 races in how have things changed in my rankings over the past 9 races? The championship battle has gone back and forth between the major drivers but this is about pace against teammates and general ability (plus possibly some deductions based on whininess).

2010 rankings (after 12 races):
1. Sebastien Vettel /
2. Lewis Hamilton /
3. Robert Kubica +1
4. Mark Webber +6
5. Felipe Massa /
6. Fernando Alonso -3
7. Nico Rosberg -1
8. Kamui Kobayashi +13
9. Adrian Sutil -1

F1 Driver Rankings

I figure it would make sense to a do an annual F1 driver rankings that my friends can comment on or reply with their own lists. This would also make it possible to have some idea of how drivers are doing from season to season.

2010 rankings (after three races):
1. Sebastien Vettel
2. Lewis Hamilton
3. Fernando Alonso
4. Robert Kubica
5. Felipe Massa
6. Nico Rosberg
7. Jenson Button
8. Adrian Sutil
9. Rubens Barrichello
10. Mark Webber
11. Michael Schumacher
12. Heikki Kovaleinen

What I've been working on

You may or may not know that several months ago my friend Craig and I launched (well almost) our own hosting website. I'll tell you more about that in another post in the future when we have finished tinkering. Part of that process meant signing up as being self employed, I thought that I'd take the opportunity to earn some extra funds and build websites for people in my spare time. Well the first of those websites has now been launched.

Tapovan

Sporting achievements 2009

I asked my resident king of sports knowledge (I say king meaning he knows more than me) Trefor Little (aka my dad) to write down the top 5 sporting achievements of 2009. In no particular order then:

• England winning the ashes
• Andy Murray reaching Number 2 in the world rankings
• Jenson Button winning the world championship
• Usain Bolt breaking the 100m and 200m world records again
• Manny Pacquiao becoming the first man to win seven different titles at seven different weights

C

The British Grand Prix 2009

We arrived at the campsite around 3:30 on the Thursday and set up camp. Once this was done we headed off for a walk, we found the perimeter road around the track. We passed the entrance to the track and wandered all the way around the track to Vale which is about 2/3s of the way before finding a gate stopping as getting further... great. We therefore just sauntered back to the campsite for a BBQ