I toyed with the idea of doing something similar here but these debates always end up the same: arguments about whether you can compare drivers from the ’50s with those from five decades later, why all the current drivers are over-rated and so on.

Instead let’s go to the other end of the scale and ask who were F1’s very worst drivers ever? I’ve picked five, nominate yours below…

Jean-Denis Deletraz

Presences: 3
Starts: 3
Best grid position: 24
Best finishing position: 15

Deletraz was nine laps into his Grand Prix debut at Adelaide in 1994 when the leaders came by him for the first time. He was ten laps down by the time his car died of shame on lap 57. On his third and final Grand Prix appearance at the Nürburgring in 1995 he actually finished having been lapped seven times.

Giovanni Lavaggi

Presences: 10
Starts: 9
Best grid position: 20
Best finishing position: 10 (classified finish despite having spun off)

After four races with Pacific in 1995 he returned the following year to replace the a young, under-funded Giancarlo Fisichella at Minardi - and promptly failed to qualify for his first race back. He only looked good when Délétraz replaced him.

Ricardo Rosset

Presences: 33
Starts: 26
Best grid position: 17
Best finishing position: 8

You don’t need to know much more about Rosset other than the fact his Tyrrell mechanics used to swap the letters ‘R’ and ‘T’ of his surname around on his car’s stickers.

He provided a sublime comedy moment for ITV’s Murray Walker and Martin Brundle by crashing just was Walker was finished saying, “There’s some debate about whether Rosset is Formula 1 material” to which Brundle dead-panned, “That’s a pretty short debate, Murray.”

Enrico Bertaggia

Presences: 6
Starts: 0
Best grid position: DNPQ
Best finishing position: N/A

The stats say it all, really. In six attempts he never pre-qualified once. But he is trumped by…

Claudio Langes

Presences: 14
Starts: 0
Best grid position: DNPQ
Best finishing position: N/A

Yes. Well, the less said the better really.

Those are my first five. But who do you think belongs on the list of F1’s worst drivers - and why? Do any current or recent drivers deserve to be on the list? Nominate as many as you like as later on we’ll whittle the list down to ten.

In the meantime, here’s a few more names to consider: Taki Inoue, Philippe Adams and Piercarlo Ghinzani.

We learned last week that Codemasters had snatched the rights to produce the official Formula 1 game from Sony, and the first installment in the series will arrive next year.

Codemasters have a clear choice in how to approach this. They can cynically exploit the F1 brand and just stick the official drivers and team colours on a bog-standard racing engine.

Or they can create something truly original that will court both young newcomers to the sport and long-term fans; those looking for a quick race, and those hankering for an immersive, long-term challenge. Here’s what I think they should do with the new F1 game.

Cater for both crowds. Racing game fans are generally split between those who want pick-up-and-play arcade fun, and those who are happy to while away hours with a realistic simulator refining setups and chasing lap times.

Geoff Crammond’s excellent Grand Prix series proved you can create a game that caters for both crowds. Turn all the driving aids on, and you can ricochet off the Monte-Carlo walls to your heart’s content. Turn them off, and try tackling the same event with full race distance and the weather changing as you drive, and it suddenly becomes exponentially more demanding.

Proper career mode. Inevitably the game will have to be based around the current season. But why not throw in a few of the last years’ teams, drivers and tracks as well?

If the new game covered the seasons from 2001 to today then fans of Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa could re-create their heroes paths from the likes of Sauber and Minardi to to Ferrari and Renault.

Why not take the idea a step further and offer expansion packs bundling different seasons together? A ‘Michael Schumacher years’ kit would go down a storm in Germany and I’d love to have a go on a ‘turbo era’ version.

Challenge mode. While we’ve nicking ideas from the past, let’s merge F1 history with Gran Turismo’s ‘Challenge mode’. A sub-game could re-create famous moments from F1’s past - you could be Nigel Mansell chasing down Nelson Piquet at Silverstone in 1987, or Kimi Raikkonen racing from 17th to first at Suzuka in 2005, or Juan Manuel Fangio reeling in the Ferraris of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins at the Nürburgring in 1957. Complete the challenges to unlock bonus tracks or cars.

Evolving cars. We all know that a Ferrari at Monza looks totally different to one at Monte-Carlo. The graphics should reflect that, with tea tray wings on the super-fast tracks, and aerofoils bolted onto every available surface at the street races.

Checklist. No official F1 game should go to market in the 21st century without the following: race control modelling including safety car periods, car damage and reliability modelling, online play, changeable weather and convincing computer driver intelligence.

What do you want from the new Codemasters F1 game? What other racing games should it borrow ideas from? And what should it avoid?

Read more: Good news, bad news: Codemasters to make 2009 F1 video game

I sadly missed the Turkish Grand Prix on Sunday because I was racing in the Czech Republic, so I’ve had to rely on race reports to get a full understanding of what happened.

Of all the comment and intrigue from the weekend, the factor that has stood out the most to me, has been the fact that Lewis Hamilton was forced into a three stop strategy because of worries he would suffer a repeat of last year’s tyre failure, whereas his team mate Heikki Kovalainen did not.

Having been laughed out of town during the pre-season for suggesting that Hamilton would struggle to set his McLaren up to win races, I feel that this nugget rather vindicates my view.

It is one thing, after all, to get a car that works for one very fast lap, it is quite another to set it up for a two hour race, something that Hamilton’s driving style turns into a fine art.

Of the really quick men of F1, I would say there are two camps, there are those who are devastatingly fast but can make the car last, and there are those who will go on maximum attack regardless of the potential mechanical damage.

In the former camp I would place Michael Schumacher, who whilst being exceptionally quick, never taxed the machinery more than would be expected. Obviously for some of his wins (or seasons) you could argue that he didn’t need to, but as far back as his days in sportscars there were those who could never reconcile his pace with the fact that the car he brought home wasn’t a steaming pile of metallic junk.

On the other hand there are drivers such as Gilles Villeneuve who lost a number of races but simply pushing the car too hard. Don’t believe me? Watch some footage of his Grands Prix and you will see what I mean. Admittedly it is a massively entertaining and hugely laudable way to drive, but it would never win a championship, or even that many races.

Whilst I wouldn’t say that Lewis Hamilton’s approach to racing is in the Gilles Villeneuve mould, it is fair to say that he is far harder on his machinery than many of his contemporaries. The pit stop strategy in Turkey bore this out, and it was only by driving the race of his life that Hamilton scored the 2nd position. However, had Kovalainen not been tagged at the start, nor Raikkonen having an off day, that 2nd could easily have been 4th.

Felipe Massa is a step further removed from Hamilton, in that while Hamilton knows when to play the averages, Felipe simply does not. Eliminating himself from a safe second place in Malaysia may prove to be very costly come prize time in the autumn.

Conversely Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso are always quick without being car wreckers. I cannot think of an occasion where either driver has had their race strategy compromised by being too hard on the car that an extra stop is required.

For the good of the championship the result in Turkey at the weekend was perfect and I am really looking forward to Monaco as it is always one of the most entertaining weekends of the year. In recent years the principality has been McLaren territory, and really nothing less than an McLaren one-two will do the trick for them.

Max Mosley’s hopes of remaining FIA president have been dealt a new blow as it has emerged that he will be in delegating his duties as FIA president to someone else at next weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix .

Monaco’s royal palace do not want him to meet Prince Albert and so FIA vice-president Marco Piccinini will represent the sport’s governing body. Mosley will be, “conducting his business in other aspects of his role,” according to the FIA.

Mosley was previously asked by the Bahraini royal family not to attend their Grand Prix and there were rumours that King Juan Carlos of Spain and the Turkish Grand Prix organisers had been keen for him not to attend their respective races.

The Monaco Grand Prix is the last race before Mosley’s Extraordinary General Meeting on June 3rd at which the question of whether he has brought Formula 1 into disrepute will be discussed.

However Mosley has made it clear the discussion will be on his terms and is endeavouring to divert the debate onto whether or not there were any Nazi connotations in his infamous sadomasochistic sex session with five prostitutes.

In yesterday’s Autosport Mark Hughes pointed out that even if there is a vote of no confidence in Mosley at the EGM, it will not necessarily lead to any action being taken. When a group of Mosley’s opponents tried to pass a motion allowing action to be taken if there is a vote of no confidence in Mosley, they lost despite the vote showing 18 members in favour versus 14 against - because under FIA rules those who do not vote are assumed to be in favour of keeping things as they are. It’s a revealing example of how the cards are stacked in Mosley’s favour.

Earlier this week the Czech FIA representative Radovan Novak, who alleged that McLaren’s Ron Dennis was involved in the affair coming to light, has apologised to the McLaren boss.

Yesterday I considered what would happen to Formula 1 if the economic crisis caused teams to leave the sport. Before I wrote that reader Scott Newton had sent in his thoughts on how F1 could work with just a few manufacturers supplying all the chassis.

My idea stems from the concern that customer cars will turn F1 into a spec series (with everyone driving either Ferraris, McLarens or BMWs).

What if we only allowed constructors to supply customer chassis depending on where they finished in the constructors’ championship?

For example:

• First - third place constructors: No customer cars allowed
• Fourth - sixth place constructors: Each team in these positions is allowed one customer team
• Sixth place ore lower: Can supply as many customer teams as they like.

Taking the 2007 championship as an example this would mean that:

• Nobody but Ferrari, BMW & Renault would be driving Ferrari, BMW or Renault cars.
• Williams, Red Bull & Toyota would each be allowed one customer team.
• Toro Rosso would not be allowed a customer team (they’re Red Bull’s customer team).
• Honda could have as many customer teams as they like (allowing them to bring back Super Aguri).
• Force India and McLaren would be allowed unlimited customer teams.

This could also effectively help control dynasties. If Williams were allowed to share development (and testing) with a customer team, they could use it to their advantage to topple a top 3 team. Of course, once they do this, their customer team would need to forfeit their Williams chassis, but could pick up chassis from the new 4th place team.

It gives advantages to constructor teams, as the only way to effectively be a top 3 team is to be an outright constructor. A customer team could feasibly win the championship, but they would be chassis-less the following year (as their constructor would then be banned from having customer teams), and would need to start all over as a customer for a different constructor.

Problems?

Possible downsides would be sandbagging. A team could try to forfeit 3rd place and retain 4th place so that it could maintain constructor/customer status the following year. This could easily be defeated by making 3rd place pay enough to make it not worthwhile.

Another downside is issues like McLaren’s current eleventh place status. This could be avoided by disallowing excluded teams from entering a constructor/customer status. This would also place a larger penalty on exclusion.

The third downside is the uncertainty this creates for customer teams. Nobody will want to invest millions of dollars into a customer relationship, only to have the fear of loosing your constructor the following year.

This could be tackled in a few ways, one of which is to allow constructor’s in a constructor/customer relationship a one year ‘grace period’, where they would be allowed to continue as a parent constructor, even after finishing in a position which would normally disallow them.

What do you think of Scott’s proposal? If you want to write a guest article for F1 Fanatic see the information for guest writers here.

Call it the credit crunch, call it the sub-prime crisis, whatever you call it, I call it trouble.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what the consequences of the developing global economic downturn will be for Formula 1. But it’s hard to imagine them being good.

And to the pessimists it could look very bad indeed.

The car manufacturers

When I first began following Formula 1 in 1989 the only manufacturer-run team in the sport was Ferrari. Renault and Honda were both present as engine suppliers.

Today the car manufacturers account for six of the ten teams and supply all the engines. And much of that transformation has happened since the turn of the millennium. Consider when the each of the various manufacturer teams arrived in F1 in their current guises:

Ferrari 1950
Mercedes* 1995
Toyota 2002
Renault 2002
BMW 2006
Honda 2006

*As engine supplier to McLaren

The popularity of Formula 1 among the world’s car makers is undoubtedly part of the sport’s attraction. But however vast their budgets are, they are subject to the same financial forces as the rest of us.

The impact of the financial down turn on the car manufacturers is starting to become clear. Toyota, which has been gradually edging ahead of General Motors to become the world’s largest car manufacturer, revealed last week its profits in the first three months of the year were 28% down - substantially below expectations.

Only last winter we were hearing rumours that Toyota would can its F1 project if solid results didn’t materialise. All the manufacturers are in F1 to succeed - and they can’t all win the world championship. And, in the form of Max Mosley’s well-documented indiscretions, they all have the perfect excuse to leave.

Withdrawal

Whatever slick and glossy marketing spin they use to market their involvement in Formula 1, let’s be clear about one thing: for them F1 only has value as a marketing exercise. Williams Grand Prix Engineering Limited are not using F1 to sell cars, they’re only in it purely to win it. Apart from Ferrari, who’ve been there since the start, you can’t say the same of the other manufacturers.

If F1 ceases to make sense financially, the manufacturers will simply up and leave. Renault did it in 1985 as a constructor and again in 1997 as an engine supplier. BMW did it in 1987 as an engine builder as did Honda in 1992. Others have left the sport and not returned, such as Ford and Peugeot, who currently feel other forms of motor sport (rallying and sports car racing respectively) fit their marketing needs better.

One might argue “yes, but most of them returned, which proves the enduring appeal of Formula 1.” That may well be the case – but if several of them were to abandon F1 at short notice, where will all the cars come from in the meantime?

On leaving the manufacturers couldn’t sell their old chassis to GP2 teams to run in F1, because that’s not allowed. And besides which they may not wish to leave their intellectual property lying around for others to grab - when Opel left the DTM in 2005 it refused to let anyone use its old cars for exactly that reason.

In the 1990s F1 had independent constructors and engine builders to fall back on. Today they are increasingly marginalised in Formula 1 - no independent constructor has won an F1 race in four years, since Juan Palo Montoya’s last hurrah for Williams at Interlagos.

Chain reaction

One manufacturer leaving could prompt others to do the same. If Toyota left would their fierce Japanese rivals Honda stay long? What about BMW without rival premium car builder Mercedes?

The loss of Super Aguri has left F1 with just 10 teams and 20 cars. This is believed to be the minimum number of entrants Ecclestone is required to bring to Grands Prix. If it fell below that, he may require two teams to each bring a third car.

And if that responsibility fell to regular points-scorers like Ferrari and McLaren the likes of Renault and Toyota could face the prospect of not scoring any points for the rest of the season while their rivals lock-out entire podiums. How well would that go down in their board meetings?

Recovery

A recovery in the markets would not necessarily improve the situation in Formula 1 overnight.

As Ron Dennis has pointed out, because the most valuable F1 contracts tend to be long-term deals, sponsors and the like may be forced to remain in F1 as the economic going gets tough, and already be long gone as the wider economy begins to recover.

The engine freeze regulations might add another unwelcome complication for manufacturers returning to the series or new ones joining. Engine development is presently banned for F1 teams. But if a new team were to join they could spend as long as they liked covertly developing a 2.4-litre 19,000 rpm V8 and hand themselves a whopping advantage when they do join in. Which would not go down well with their rivals…

Admittedly this is a deliberately pessimistic outlook on the future. But I do think the sport is vulnerable as the economic forecasts continue to worsen.

More on car manufacturers in F1

• F1’s new reason for cost cutting
• The FIA must solve the customer car problem
• Green F1: right idea, wrong approach
• Should Tata bring Jaguar back to F1?
• The Ben Evans column - DTM’s lesson for F1

The debate over who is the most-hyped driver in Formula 1 is a short one. But who is the second most-hyped driver in F1 after Lewis Hamilton?

Sebastian Vettel may be a candidate. He arrived in the sport at a rude young age last year and is apparently already being considered for a promotion to Red Bull in 2009 from its Toro Rosso ‘junior’ team. What do you think of the young German driver?

On his way through the junior ranks Vettel achieved what must be one of the most dominant performances ever seen in a championship. In 2004 he claimed the German Formula BMW championship with 387 points from a maximum of 400, winning 18 of the 20 races.

He narrowly missed out on the 2006 Formula Three Euroseries title to Paul di Rests, but interrupted his campaign with a brief foray into the World Series by Renault, where he won on his debut.

Last year Vettel was on duty as a BMW test driver while leading the World Series, when Robert Kunica’s crash in the Canadian Grand Prix gave him the chance of a one-off start in the United States round.

In his maiden F1 race he qualified inside the top ten and, despite going off at turn one, brought the car home in the points on a day when few of the front runners retired. That made him F1’s youngest ever points scorer.

Vettel returned to F1 with Toro Rosso following the sacking of Scott Speed. Although Vettel had spent several years with BMW, it was Red Bull who had priority on his services for the future and he joined the team full-time for 2008.

The more experienced Vitantonio Liuzzi ran him close over the final races of 2007 but Vettel was in the right place at the right time to score a fine fourth place for the team in the Chinese Grand Prix with a masterful strategic call.

It wiped the slate clean a week after he had taken fellow Red Bull driver out of the Japanese Grand Prix while Webber was running second under the safety car and eyeing a tilt at race leader Lewis Hamilton.

An exasperating start to 2008 saw Vettel retire from the first four races, partly due to two first-lap collisions for which he was largely blameless. At Melbourne he qualified in the top ten.

Although he has comparatively few starts to his name he is already considered by many to be a star of the future. Even Michael Schumacher has spoken highly of him.

How do you rate Sebastian Vettel? Does he deserve a top-line drive in 2009?

Sebastian Vettel biography

The news that Lewis Hamilton is courting a £10m sponsorship deal with Reebok is interesting not because of the amount of money involved, but because of what it says about his relationship with McLaren.

When people started talking about the immense marketing potential of F1’s first successful mixed-race driver F1 fans were quick to note that McLaren may stop him from maximising that value.

McLaren generally do not allow their drivers to arrange personal sponsorship deal (nor do many of the other top teams, it seems) but an exception is being made for Hamilton just as it was for his hero Ayrton Senna when he joined the team 20 years ago.

Senna was allowed to bring personal sponsorship from Brazilian bank Nacional with him (see picture below). Hamilton and father/manager Anthony apparently have negotiated the same exemption from McLaren’s usual rules on driver personal sponsorship that Senna had.

Football fans are familiar with players who become bigger than their clubs - David Beckham at Manchester United being an example. Is this a sign Hamilton is going down the same route?

According to The Times, Hamilton’s annual earnings now exceed Beckham’s, making him the highest-paid British sportsperson, and may be bolstered in the near future by another deal with Pepsi. The rights to his autobiography were sold last year for a reported £2m and both the hardback and paperback are among the top ten F1 books on Amazon (even though it’s rubbish).

McLaren must be wary of the phenomenon of the driver becoming bigger than the team. Even with a driver of Senna’s genius, indulging it at the team’s expense ended up compromising the outfit. By 1993 McLaren had lost their works Honda engine deal and the cost of meeting Senna’s salary demands plus paying for engines ate into the budget for car development. After Senna left it was four years before the team won another Grand Prix.

Ironically the announcement comes mere days after a Hamilton was ridiculed in the press for a truly awful public relations stunt for McLaren principal sponsor Vodafone, in which he appeared in a stage production of Troy. His Reebok contract better rule out further such nonsense with fellow ‘brand ambassadors’ Thierry Henry, Amir Khan, 50 Cent and Jay-Z.

More on Lewis Hamilton

• The most hated man in Formula 1
• Lewis Hamilton biography

Bernie Ecclestone has reiterated his desire to see the 2009 French Grand Prix held in Paris instead of its current venue Magny-Cours:

We agreed that there would be a French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours in 2008 but not in 2009. Prime Minister Francois Fillon told me we would then see if we could have a Grand Prix in Paris or just outside but that would not necessarily be for 2009, rather for 2010. In any case, 2008 will be the last time we continue like this.

That raises the prospect of there being no French Grand Prix in 2009, even though Magny-Cours’ current contract is supposed to include a race there next year.

Earlier this year Ecclestone revealed he was trying to arrange a Paris Grand Prix for 2009. There’s been no notable public response from anyone interested in hosting the race and F1’s only French team Renault (the chassis department for which is based in Britain, the engine department in Viry-Châtillon on the outskirts of Paris) are not exactly giving the plan any vocal enthusiastic support.

It’s possible that anyone who might be interested in setting up a new street race in France might be waiting to see how smoothly the Grand Prix at Valencia goes in September. The European Union has expressed reservations about the new European Grand Prix’s organisation.

Ecclestone made exactly the same threat last year but relented and agreed to keep Magny-Cours on the calendar for 2008. France held the first recognised Grand Prix in 1906 and since the world championship began in 1950 only failed to hold a race in 1955, when its Grand Prix was cancelled in the wake of that year’s Le Mans disaster that killed over 80 people.

Dropping it from the calendar for a single year, when the contract is already in place and half the teams are based only a Channel crossing away from the circuit seems the very definition of cutting your nose to spite your face. But, as American Formula 1 fans know well, that’s not a concept Ecclestone understands.

More on the French Grand Prix at Magny Cours

• Ecclestone wants French Grand Prix in Paris from 2009
• Will you miss Magny-Cours?
• 2008 French Grand Prix information
• 2009 F1 season

It’s the Monaco Grand Prix next and to get in the mood here’s some fantastic pictures of great Formula 1 cars from the 1960, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s in action in the 2008 Monaco Historic Grand Prix last weekend.

Joris Meuffels kindly let me use a selection of these pictures he took including loads of Ferraris (including one that never raced), Jacky Ickx in an Auto Union, McLarens, Lotuses and more.

Do let me know if I’ve got some of the model designations wrong some of them are a bit hard to tell apart!

All images © Joris Meuffels

The Turkish Grand Prix review video looks at how the teams’ engine development is limited by the engine freeze regulations and reveals just how expensive it is to stay at a hotel in Monaco for next week’s Grand Prix! Plus the usual round-up of post-race news.

This series of videos is also available on the F1 Fanatic Facebook Group as well:

A few choice morsels from the world of motor racing blogs including the A1 Grand Prix car based on the Ferrari F2004, the poor crowd at the Turkish Grand Prix and McLaren’s painfully bad PR.

Plus a shameless plug for my interview with Sir Stirling Moss and more.

Ferrari A1GP car for 2008-09 season revealed - Ferrari are providing the engines for the new generation of A1 Grand prix cars to be used from the start of the 2008-09 season. The car is based on Ferrari’s 2004 title-winning F2004.

Turkish Grand Prix has lost its impetus - Sparse crowds at Istanbul. Perhaps considering the last F1 race there was eight months ago instead of the usual 12 we shouldn’t jump to conclusions too quickly, but the audience wasn’t huge when I went there in 2006. As I said on the Live Blog during the race, it was like being at a touring car race in Britain, only much hotter…

Louise Goodmen says women’s influence is growing - Danica Patrick’s recent Indy Car win put the spotlight back on the issue of women in motor racing. ITV’s Louise Goodman reckons, “they’ve been recognised as having a valuable contribution to make within Formula 1 for a while now.”

Sir Stirling Moss on F1 and sportsmanship - As I mentioned last week I got the chance to meet F1 legend and ‘best driver not to win the championship’ Sir Stirling Moss on Wednesday. Here’s my blog post from the Auto Trader blog (you can read the write-up from the interview here).

There’s nothing like a good PR stunt - And McLaren’s cringeingly embarassing antics with Lewis Hamilton last weekend was nothing like a good PR stunt. Meanwhile on a rare PR outing for Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen, “was looking about as pleased to be there as a fat kid at a salad seminar.” More on Blog F1 and more from me on McLaren’s PR disasters.

Mosley avoidance strategies - Still no let-up in the pursuit of Max Mosley over at The Times.

Giancarlo Fisichella reckons Sebastien Bourdais caused him to crash at the start of the Turkish Grand Prix. Fisichella said:

I made a good start but then under braking Bourdais changed direction twice and I couldn’t brake in time and went into the back of the Williams

Looking at the video it’s hard to agree with him.

Bourdais’ car appears to follow Kazuki Nakajima’s Williams at first, and from the positioning of the car it’s pretty clear he’s lining up to try a pass down the inside. He moves left for the inside line - this is no doubt what Fisichella believes is Bourdais’ ‘illegal second move’ - and as they reach the first corner Fisichella locks up his brakes and hits Nakajima’s car hard enough to fly over the top of it.

I don’t agree with Fisichella’s explanation. It would take a very harsh interpretation of the rules to conclude that Bourdais’ driving was at fault. And I think the fact Fisichella hit Nakajima so hard that his car took off shows Fisichella simply braked too late for the first corner.

If the roles were reversed and Nakajima, with six Grand Prix starts to his name, had hit Fisichella, who starts his 200th at Monaco, I think people would be calling for Nakajima to get a race ban.

Something odd is going on with the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association at the moment. There have been stories going around since last year about some of its members being unhappy that certain drivers haven’t joined what is effectively the drivers’ union.

The driver mentioned most often has been Lewis Hamilton, who over the weekend denied rumours he had decided to join the group and donate £15,000. Kimi Raikkonen and Adrian Sutil are also not members, and nor was Anthony Davidson (who is now no longer an active F1 driver).

Their ranks were swelled over the weekend by Felipe Massa, who quit the GPDA saying, “I didn’t always like the way it was run.” But I wonder if money also has something to do with it.

Division in the ranks

Jarno Trulli and Fernando Alonso have led the criticism of the non-GPDA drivers. Trulli said:

There are some drivers who couldn’t care less but they take advantage of the work done by others. What these sensationally uninterested drivers don’t understand is that the GPDA has a price. We fund it with a fee on the points scored.

If the top six drivers are the uninterested ones, then there’s a lack of money to survive and it’s always the unlucky ones, the ones who get paid less, that have to sustain the costs. The figures are little. The entry fee was one thousand dollars, now it’s probably €1000, then you pay something like $200 per point scored.

But what I don’t understand is that you might not want to be part of the GPDA, then you can do what you want, but at least pay the money since you go on track too.

The most outrageous thing is that a top driver doesn’t give a damn about his safety. For me, that’s unacceptable. Even drivers that were part of the association and left pretend not to understand, and don’t read what we do.

Alonso added:

It is true there are drivers not in the GPDA, which is their own decision, but in my opinion it is not good.

As I have said another time, everyone can choose what they want - but it is difficult to understand how drivers don’t want to be involved in an association of drivers that want to save our lives when we are racing.

The accident that Kovalainen had last week, we will work on it with the FIA very closely, we will make some proposals and at the end we will find a solution. And these type of accidents will not be repeated.

So drivers who don’t want to be involved with that, it makes no sense.

Money problems

As Trulli explains, the absence of three of F1’s top four drivers from last season is a serious problem for the organisation.

According to Trulli’s estimate of the entry fee per driver being around €1000 plus $200 (€128.71) per point scored last year then from a potential pot of €107,334.73 they have already lost €31,316.20. If Massa has withdrawn the money he owed from last year the total lost grows to €44,414.94 or 41.38% of their potential revenue - a serious problem for the group.

Back in January the FIA revealed it was substantially increasing the cost of the drivers’ superlicences and linking the cost to the number of points they scored per season. Drivers such as Alonso suddenly found his superlicence bill increase more than four-fold to €228,000.

At the time I wondered if it was Max Mosley’s way of making the drivers pay for safety changes they were demanding that he didn’t necessarily agree with.

I now wonder if some drivers have seen their whopping superlicence bill and decided that they needn’t pay for two organisations that promote safety in F1, and it’s not as if they can be without their superlicences.

See what the drivers pay for their superlicences here: How much does an F1 driver cost?

Nik left an interesting comment in the Turkish Grand Prix Facts and Stats article about how much of an advantage the drivers who started on the clean side of the grid had at Istanbul:

Hamilton (third) overtook Kovalainen (second)
Kubica (fifth) overtook Raikkonen (fourth) and Kovalainen (second)
Alonso (seventh) overtook Webber (sixth) and Raikkonen (fourth)
Heidfeld (ninth) overtook Trulli (tenth)
Rosberg (eleventh) overtook Trulli (eighth) and Couthard (tenth)

The rules prevent drivers from being allowed to clean the piece of track they start from. But should that rule should be changed to lessen the disadvantage of starting off-line, particularly at tracks like Istanbul where it is a big problem?

The sporting regulations state:

30.3 b) Other than by driving on the track, Competitors are not permitted to attempt to alter the grip of any part of the track surface.

However it is clear that some circuits lend a massive advantage to drivers who start on the clean side. This is because at circuits like Istanbul and the Hungaroring the racing line passes straight along the grid hatching for the drivers behind the pole sitter.

That combined with how infrequently those circuits are used makes an off-line starting position a major disadvantage. So should something be done about it in the interest of fairness?

Allowing the teams to prepare the surface as they wish might be one solution. But I expect if that were allowed we would quickly see teams applying some kind of grip-enhancing chemical to their starting positions to improve their getaways!

A simpler option might just be to allow the track organisers to clean the surface. This is often seen in Indy Racing during caution periods to allow drivers to use the higher line on ovals for overtaking.

Another solution would be to use a rolling start at these races, which would lessen the disadvantafe of having to start off-line as the car would already be moving. A proper two-by-two one as seen in Indy Cars would be rest, rather than the one-by-one rolling starts occasionally seen in F1 when it’s very wet (like at Fuji last year).

I think that would be a welcome addition to the spectacle that would add some variety and require the drivers to show another element of their race craft.

Do you think something should be done? Or is it not a problem that needs solving?

I’ve had a rummage through the data and pulled out some interesting statistics and facts on the Turkish Grand Prix. Have I missed anything? Post your findings in the comments.

Plus the full drivers’ and constructors’ championship tables after round five.

Felipe Massa won his third Turkish Grand Prix in a row from his third pole position in a row at the circuit. Giancarlo Fisichella crashed on the first lap of the Turkish Grand Prix for the third race in a row.

Happily, Sebastian Vettel did not retire on the first lap for the third consecutive race this year, and was a classified finisher for the first time in 2008. He is the last driver to finish a race this year.

Massa’s seventh Grand Prix win puts him level with Rene Arnoux and Juan Pablo Montoya. It was also his 11th pole position and 20th podium finish, and he passed the 5,000 laps raced mark having now amassed 5,022.

Massa also has the best average starting position (see right) of 2.2. Robert Kubica is second with 3.2 as his fifth on the grid this weekend was his worst starting position of the year. There are some big gaps between team mates, particularly the Toyotas (Jarno Trulli 6.4, Timo Glock 14) and Renaults (Fernando Alonso 7.8, Nelson Piquet Jnr 14.8).

It was the 23rd consecutive race won by a McLaren or a Ferrari, which equals the all-time record held by the same two teams between the 1987 Japanese and 1989 United States Grands Prix. Of those, 19 were won by McLaren and four by Ferrari. This time, Ferrari have 14 and McLaren nine.

Heikki Kovalainen started from the front row of the grid for the first time in his career. Compatriot Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap for the second race in the row, his 27th, which puts him fourth in the all-time list of drivers with the most fastest laps, one behind Jim Clark.

Mark Webber scored points for the fourth consecutive race, which equals the best he has ever achieved. He scored points in the Bahrain, San Marino, Spanish and Monaco Grands Prix for Williams in 2005.

With Super Aguri no more the race saw the fewest entrants since the 2005 Chinese Grand Prix when there were also 20.

It was the 40th consecutive points-scoring finish for a Ferrari-engined car.

Alonso is poised to break the 500 points mark having now scored 499. Nelson Piquet Jnr finished 15th, Renault’s worst finishing position since Kovalainen in the French Grand Prix last year, who at least had the excuse of being hit on the first lap. The worst classified finish for a Renault car was Arnoux’s 16th in the 1982 Swiss Grand Prix (”Isn’t motor racing banned in Switzerland?” I hear you ask. Indeed it is - the race was held at Dijon in France).

Jenson Button completed his 100th race distance from 142 Grand Prix presences.

And last, but certainly not least, Rubens Barrichello set a new record for the most Grand Prix starts, with 257. He eclipses Riccardo Patrese’s mark of 256, which has stood since 1993.

Drivers’ championship standings

Kimi Raikkonen 35
Felipe Massa 28
Lewis Hamilton 28
Robert Kubica 24
Nick Heidfeld 20
Heikki Kovalainen 14
Mark Webber 10
Fernando Alonso 9
Jarno Trulli 9
Nico Rosberg 8
Kazuki Nakajima 5
Jenson Button 3
Sebastien Bourdais 2

Not scored

Rubens Barrichello
David Coulthard
Anthony Davidson*
Giancarlo Fisichella
Timo Glock
Nelson Piquet Jnr
Takuma Sato*
Adrian Sutil
Sebastian Vettel

Constructors’ championship standings

Ferrari 63
BMW 44
McLaren 42
Williams 13
Red Bull 10
Renault 9
Toyota 9
Honda 3
Toro Rosso 2

Not scored

Force India F1 Team
Super Aguri*

*Team has withdrawn from the championship

Felipe Massa remains the man to beat at Istanbul after his third win from pole position at the track in as many years.

But he was chased all the way and even headed for a while by the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen finished third after run-in with Heikki Kovalainen at the first corner. The contact left Kovalainen with a flat tyre that dropped him to the back of the field and cost him a chance of a maiden victory.

Kovalainen and Raikkonen collide

It looked like business as usual at Istanbul for Massa when he converted pole position into the lead at the start of the race as the chasing field funnelled through the first corner.

Sadly for Giancarlo Fisichella his Istanbul race also ran true to form as he crashed on the first lap for the third year in a row. He misjudged his braking point for turn one and slammed hard into the back of Kazuki Nakajima, vaulting over the top of the Williams. Nakajima limped back to the pits but could not continue.

The drivers on the clean side of the grid had generally gotten much better starts. Hamilton and Robert Kubica converted third and fifth into second and third respectively. Raikkonen tried to pass Kovalainen at the entry to turn one but the McLaren driver crowded him out and the pair made the briefest of contact.

Kovalainen headed for the pits while Raikkonen pressed on, the wing slightly damaged but staying in one piece. It certainly didn’t stop him slipstreaming past Fernando Alonso for fourth on lap three with little difficulty.

Also pitting were Adrian Sutil and Sebastian Vettel. The former German had damaged his front wing and the latter picked up a puncture, although he was probably relieved at having made it to the end of the first lap in one piece for the first time since the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Hamilton takes on Massa

Massa pulled out a slight advantage over Hamilton in the early running but the McLaren driver reversed the trend with a string of quick laps of his own. On lap 16 we discovered why as Hamilton made a surprisingly early pit stop. It transpired he was running a three-stop strategy out of concerns from tyre supplier Bridgestone that he would suffer a failure of the type he had last year if he tried to do only two stops.

That left Hamilton needing to get ahead of Massa to build up a lead but he failed to do it at the first set of pit stops, Massa retaining the lead after his first pit stop. Hamilton had needed to start first, not third, and being out-qualified by both Massa and his team mate despite both carrying more fuel suggests the race was his to lose.

He did his best two make amends however, catching and passing Massa on lap 25. This gave him the lead, Raikkonen having pitted shortly after setting the fastest lap of the race despite his handicap. He moved up to third at the expense of Robert Kubica.

Now Hamilton let rip, up to seven-tenths of a second quicker per sector at times, as he fought to build up an advantage over the Ferraris.

Meanwhile Kovalainen had caught up to the rear of the field and was making his way towards the front. Nelson Piquet Jnr helpfully under-steered wide at turn 12, letting the McLaren through. Others were tougher: Timo Glock and Nico Rosberg, hardened GP2 champions both, each fought back but couldn’t repel Kovalainen’s onslaught.

Hamilton’s second stint ended on lap 33 and he spent the next ten laps behind Raikkonen, taking only a little time out of the Ferrari driver and left with only two laps to extend his advantage once Raikkonen had pitted on the 43rd tour. It was never going to be enough, and Hamilton was not very far in front of Raikkonen when he began his final stint, now on the softer tyres.

Massa, five seconds further ahead, inherited the lead back and wouldn’t be troubled by Hamilton any more. Nor was Hamilton in turn troubled by Raikkonen, who could not get within range to make a pass.

Best of the rest

The rest of the field re-organised itself through the pit stops with no real drama. Kubica held onto fourth while Nick Heidfeld rose four places from tenth. Alonso was best of the rest in sixth (team mate Piquet, after starting a poor 17th, only made up two places) having beaten Mark Webber, the Red Bull driver falling to seventh.

The final point went to Nico Rosberg, who worked his way up from 11th (using a different front wing on his Williams to team mate Nakajima) partly at the expense of Jarno Trulli, who lost three places from eighth on the grid at the start.

After the two retirements at the start the only other driver who failed to finish was Sebastien Bourdais, who spun out on lap 25. David Coulthard finished ninth ahead of Trulli and Jenson Button, with Kovalainen 12th after a late pit stop. Glock, Barrichello, Piquet, Sutil and Vettel were the remaining drivers running at the flag.

Three races ago I was wondering if Massa had totally lost the plot over the winter. Now he’s bounced back with two victories and a second place and is only seven points behind Kimi Raikkonen in the championship.

Can mount a serious bid for the championship this year?

If so he needs to deliver at more than just the venues we are starting to recognise as “Massa tracks”. He needs to be up front at Montreal and Monza and above all he needs to on the pace when the rain falls - a big problem for him last year.

He now lies equal second in the championship with Lewis Hamilton on 28 points (see right), with the useful advantage of an extra victory keeping him ahead of the McLaren driver.

Ferrari have won the last four races in a row and if McLaren can’t beat them in the next two races, at tracks where the British team excelled last year, then Hamiton will be powerless to prevent the title from going to one of the two Ferrari pilots.

And of course Massa has to beat his team mate. He did that today but how much was he helped back Raikkonen’s problems? The Finn touched Heikki Kovalainen’s car at the first corner and blamed the wing damage from that (which he did not consider worth repairing) for slowing him down.

Massa has really turned his season around in the last few races but the hard part now will be not losing that precious momentum.

A mistake by Bridgestone, Formula 1’s sole tyre supplier, created additional problems for McLaren this weekend. Even before the race got underway the Japanese manufacturer was openly admitting it had brought the wrong choice of compounds.

It chose the same combination of medium and hard tyres it brought last year, despite the race being much earlier in the calendar this year and therefore held in cooler conditions. Hirohide Hamashima, the director of Bridgestone motorsport tyre development, said yesterday:

I think for next season maybe we have to shift the [compound] one position softer. It is about 10-15 degrees [C] lower than we expected, so especially the medium compound has some graining until about 10 laps, then it vanishes gradually.

Hamashima denied this had caused any problems for the teams:

We have checked the car data from every team, and so far we have seen no problems. Last year we found the small problem on the Friday, but now we are very happy and we don’t face any trouble.

But according to McLaren that was not the case. Ron Dennis said after the race:

There was some internal delamination which Bridgestone were very good at picking up. We didn’t want to have any tyre failure. It was possibly okay to run two stops, but it was a bit more severe on Lewis’ and we put drivers’ safety first.

Lewis Hamilton added:

The reason we went with the three stopper was that Bridgestone were concerned. They thought the tyre was going to fail like it did last year and they made us do a three-stop as it was the safest route to go. Unfortunately that put us in not such a strong position to win the race.

Were the two problems related? If they aren’t then why did Hamashina claim they hadn’t had any problems? (If Dennis is feeling particularly paranoid, he may point out that it is not his cars that appear in Bridgestone’s television adverts, but those of a certain leading rival.)

It’s not easy to say how far was this Bridgestone’s fault and how far was it McLaren’s, although Bridgestone clearly made a mistake in the first place by failing to appreciate how different the conditions would be in Istanbul in May instead of September.

The difference in driving styles between the two McLaren drivers further complicates the picture. Hamilton is much harder on his tyres than most drivers including team mate Heikki Kovalainen. At the same circuit last year he suffered a tyre de-lamination during the race.

According to Dennis and Hamilton, they opted for a three-stop strategy out of concerns over safety at Bridgestone’s insistence. Under similar circumstances at Interlagos last year McLaren stuck to a short-stint strategy out of concerns that the tyres would not last, and Hamilton potentially lost the world championship because of that decision.

McLaren still haven’t gotten to grips with the rubber supplied by Bridgestone, but the tyre supplier’s mistake this weekend didn’t help.