This is a great video clip from the 1997 season - the last season f1 cars were on slick tyres.

cool stuff.

originally posted by TheFazz on my-kart.org:

The F1 career of the most successful formula one driver of all time is about to come to a close this sunday. Much as i hate the guy's guts, i must say that Michael Schumacher has been the closest you will ever get to a perfect formula one driver. Fast, fit, aggressive, technical, analytical, smart, strong teamplayer, good pr - everything a modern day f1 driver should be. And this shows in the monumental statistics accumulated by the man. He has just about broken every f1 numbers record apart from the most race starts (IIRC, just 6 shy of Ricardo Patrese's 256 starts).

I found some good collection of Villeneuve racing videos at YouTube.

Check out some of the fantastic stuff there. The Villeneuve name was what first got me into F1 in the late 70s, when Gilles was wow-ing the F1 world with his daring driving.

His son Jacques came into F1 and almost won on his debut and clinched the world title in his second year in F1.

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I must say that after 6 rounds of the F1 season, it is looking like another championship for Fernando Alonso. The scoreboard is 3 wins for Alonso, 2 for Schumi and 1 for Fisico. Alonso also leads the championship and Schumi can only hope that the realible Renaults would fail once or twice for him to catch up.

Unlike last year, Schumi's position (compared to Kimi's last year) is a little more predictable. Kimi's 2005 run during the first half was beset by reliability woes. Schumi's challenge to Alonso so far is looking reliable if not strong.

It's probably a sign of the times (for me) when the F1 weekend is just a few hours away, and I am starting to think of food and I started googling for hors d'oeuvres.

My mouth starts to water.

Weird.

As it is now, I am struggling to keep my weight down... much to the chagrin and delight of my sometimes karting teammates and most of the times karting rivals. Luckily, I've still got my speed ha ha ha! Perhaps that will go soon, but in the meantime I shall enjoy it.

The wait is almost over!

In slightly over a week, the 2006 F1 season will come.

So far in testing, it looks like Renault will once again be very strong. World Champ Alonso looks like a strong bet for his second title. However, teammate Fisico will have to dig deep to perform at the same level as his younger colleague. They have been both quick and reliable so far.

Next up is Honda. All their drivers have been spectacular at one time or another during testing, even test driver Ant Davidson. They have also run the most test mileage. Honda may surprise by even beating Renault this year. But let's see if they hold up for the whole season.

For those of you who followed F1 since the late 80s, you would be familiar with the titanic battles between the legends of F1 in the 80s/90s: Prost vs Senna vs Mansell vs Piquet. Those were iconic times in F1's 60 year history. That was the time that real rivalry in F1 was all about. Between them, these four drivers have won 11 F1 World Drivers Championships, and won countless races. By comparison, the now Great Michael Schumacher has won 7 WDCs in is own right... an amazing achievement... but Schumi has been relatively untroubled by others due largely to the dominance of his Ferrari team (and a unthreatening teammate) and due to the uncompetitive position of his championship rivals in a number of years. So many F1 fans who went through the 80s would still look back to the golden rivalry between the fantastic quartet. Till today, the rivalry still burns...

 

A few days ago I read with great happiness that BMW Sauber F1 has confirmed 1997 World F1 Champion, Jacques Villeneuve as their driver alongside Nick Heidfeld.

The thing about Jacques is that his is a career that promised so much so early on, yet failed to deliver due to bad career choices at BAR which in my mind basically drained him of the hunger that so propelled him to second in his rookie year and world champ in the following year.