The 2006 Formula One World Championship timetable is as follows:

(All times are local)

Friday (*)
11:00 – 12:00 Practice Session 1
14:00 – 15:00 Practice Session 2

Saturday
11:00 – 12:00 Practice Session 3 (**)
14:00 Qualifying Session (***)

Sunday
14:00 Race (****)

(*) Friday Practice sessions at Monaco will take place on Thursday.

(**) Except for Great Britain (9:30), Canada (10:00) and United States (10:00)

(***) Except for Great Britain (12:30), Canada (13:00) and United States (13:00)

(****) Except for Bahrain (14:30), Malaysia (15:00), Great Britain (12:00), Canada (13:00), United States (13:00) and Turkey (15:00)

Mc Laren stunned many in Formula 1 by signing up Alonso recently for the 2007 season. The new signing mean that either Kimi Raikonen or Juan Pablo Montoya will have to leave Mc Laren by the end of 2006. No one know whether Kimi will stay with Mc Laren at this stage and it is definitely a wise move by Ron Dennis to sign up a top driver so soon. Should Kimi stay, then Mc Laren will have two of the best drivers in Formula 1. Comparing Alonso and Montoya, Alonso is a much better driver that made very few mistake. Montoyo committed quite a number of mistakes in 2005 and that cost Mc Laren dearly in the Constructor Title. Now that Mc Laren have some of the best drivers, it will now depend on whether Mc Laren’s car is good enough for the 2006 challenge, after the departure of their chief engineer, Adrian Newey.

Toyota and William will use Bridgestone tyre for the 2006 F1 season. With such announcement, there will be 5 teams using Michelin and another 5 using Bridgestone tyres.

The 10 teams are:-

Mild Serven Renault – Michelin
Mc Laren Mercedes – Michelin
Ferrari – Bridgestone
William F1- Bridgestone
BMW Sauber F1 – Michelin
Midland F1- Bridgestone
Squadra Toro Rosso – Bridgestone
Red Bull Racing – Michelin
Bar Honda – Michelin
Panasonic Toyota – Bridgestone

There is likely a new F1 team by the name of Super Aguri Formula One that Takuma Sato will drive for in 2006 season. The new team is pending approval from F1 Authority. Chances is this new team will use Bridgestone tyres since it will also use Honda engine.

2006 F1 Season (provisional)

Mar 12: Bahrain Grand Prix (Bahrain)
Mar 19: Malaysian Grand Prix (Sepang)
Apr 02: Australian Grand Prix (Melbourne)
Apr 23: San Marino Grand Prix (Imola)
May 07: European Grand Prix (Nurburgring, Germany)
May 14: Spanish Grand Prix (Barcelona)
May 28: Monaco Grand Prix (Monte Carlo)
Jun 11: British Grand Prix (Silverstone)
Jun 25: Canadian Grand Prix (Montreal)
Jul 02: United States Grand Prix (Indianapolis)
Jul 16: French Grand Prix (Mangy-Cours)
Jul 30: German Grand Prix (Hockenheim)
Aug 06: Hungarian Grand Prix (Hungaroring)
Aug 27: Turkish Grand Prix (Istanbul)
Sep 10: Italian Grand Prix (Monza)
Sep 17: Belgian Grand Prix (Spa-Francorchamps)
Oct 01: Japanese Grand Prix (Suzuka)
Oct 08: Chinese Grand Prix (Shanghai)
Oct 22: Brazilian Grand Prix (Interlagos)

The old Sauber Petronas F1 Team will be called BMW Sauber F1 Team in 2006 after BMW acquired the Sauber Team. The Petronas name will therefore be dropped from the name and at this point of time there is no report as whether Petronas will still be involve in the Sauber team in 2006.

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The news of Adrian Newey, one of the top F1 Designer who has served Mc Laren for years and helped Mc Laren to win two recent titles. Newey departure at the time Mc Laren is doing so well will definitely be a step backward for the Silver Arrow. While the Woking Team downplayed concern that Newey departure will hurt Mc Laren, we need to face the fact that loosing a top designer in the competitive world of F1 will somehow affect the team’s performance to a certain extent.

The 2005 Jordan driver announced on Wednesday that he’d been forced to withdraw from the battle for Midland’s second 2006 race-seat due to financial constraints.

Midland, who purchased the Jordan outfit in January this year, are selling their second race-seat for between eight and ten million euros. And it’s a price that Karthikeyan can’t meet.

With the absense of tobacco advertising, F1 team depend on driver to raise fund these days.

New qualifying format will be introduced again in year 2006.

Under the new format, qualifying in 2006 will be held in three phases. The five slowest cars will drop out after the first 15 minutes, and five more will depart after the next 15. The remaining cars will compete in a 20-minute session for the top spots on the grid.

Tyre change will also be allowed in the race and this will definitely favour the Ferrari, surely.

The 2005 season saw F1 impose one tyre rule and Ferrari and Bridgestone has not been able to find the right equation throughout the 19 races the defend their title. If not because the Michellin seven opt out of US GP, Ferrari would have been fourth this year in constructor title. Ferrari scored a maximum of 18 points in US GP and such score helped the pranching horse stay ahead of Toyota in constructor standing.

Come in 2006, the major change will be the reduction of engine capacity from the present 3.0 litre v10 to next year 2.4 litre V8. Such changes expected to reduce the Horse Power rating of the F1 car from the present of 950HP to about 700HP.

The engine capacity was reduced from 3.5 litres to 3.0 litres in 94/95 seasons after Aryton Senna’s fatal crash at Imola. The reduction at that time reduced the power of the F1 car to about 650HP at that time and with no restriction on engine development, the 3.0 litre V10 F1 car has increased the power output by more than 300HP over a period of 10 years.

Will Renault and Mc Laren be able to maintain their superiority against others in 2006, no one know. It will depend how well the F1 team can adapt to the changes. We hope that the change in engine size will let not top team like Ferrari to slip further down the grid :-).

There has been quite a lot of talk on whether Kimi Raikkonen will move the Ferrari in the future. Kimi has made it clear that he will only go a winning team, a team that can perform and win races. Ferrari is not in that position currently and hence the move is obviously not likely.

Kimi and Michael Shumacher, both are good and talented driver but quite different is certain sense. Micheal move the Ferrari years back when the red pranching horse was still not a winning team. But Michael moved there with a group of talented people that finally built a winning Ferrari Team.

Wherever Kimi moves, he will have to move to an established team that has the capability to win. Michael, however, has more to offer. With his experience and relationship with many capable F1 veterans, he was able to help to build a winning Ferrari that won 5 Constructor Championship.

Bad luck striked Montoya and Mc Laren again and this time Montoya hit a loose drain cover the retired from the race. That simply put a end to Mc Laren quest for Constructor Title barely half way through the race in Shanghai.

Mc Laren won 10 races to Renault’ 8 in 2005 and yet lost both driver and contructor title. Lack of reliability in the Mercedes engine was the main reason that cost Kimi Raikkonen the driver title. Bad luck played a great part in Mc Laren failure to clinch the Constructor Title. In the last 5 races of 2005, Montoya failed to finish three of them due to fault not of his.

Nothing much Mc Laren can do now except to try again in 2006. Rules will change again in year 2006 and whether Mc Laren will have the same advantage against others, we shall wait and see.

Nevertheless, 2005 is a good year for Mc Laren and their superb performance half way through 2005 bring much excitement back to F1, something we have been waiting for a long time.

Credit Suisse has confirmed that it will be remaining as a major sponsor of the BMW Motorsport when the Munich car company takes over Sauber. The next news we will have to wait will see whether Petronas will follow suit, to remain a sponsor to the new BMW team.

Petronas has every thing to gain to join BMW, a popular team. With BMW taking over the ownership and management, more funds will be pump into the team and BMW will definitely has more chance of winning races in the future. These will definitely carry the Petronas name well. We shall wait and see !

Come this weekend we will bid farewell to several independant F1 Teams. Two teams namely Minardi and Sauber will be taken over by Redbull Racing and BMW respectively. Coming to 2006 will also see the Jordan team loose their name to a new outfit.

With F1 becoming very competitive and having more and more races each year, it is becoming more difficult for such independant team to keep up with the escalating cost. Last year we have 17 races and this year, the number of races increased to 19. The ban in tobacco adverting in many racing track will also see many teams gaining less sponsors. Even BAR, British American Racing that feature their tobacco brand 555 and Lucky Strike in their racing car think it is better and wiser to sell their stake to Honda.

In the past, we too notice that it is generally difficult to keep independant team afloat. The Prost Racing Team formerly owned by Alain Prost went out of business, out of F1 without even able to find a buyer.

The departute of Paul Stoddart will no doubt have big impact on F1 arena. Paul being a very out spoken person often speak his mind loud and clear on many F1 issues. The recent one being his strong remark against the F1 President Max Mosley on US GP debacle. We are surely going to miss him.

The recent F1 race in Suzuka, Japan last weekend was won by Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren Mercedes, the straight 8th wins by the Silver Arrow in year 2005. Kimi won it in style. Starting from 17th and finished to take the chequed flag by overtaking Giancarlo fisichella on the last lap. Such was the commitment by Kimi Raikkonen to put McLaren back into the fight for the Constructor Title after Montoya crashed on the first lap. Such superb commitment put Ron Dennis closed to tears. Who say overtaking is difficult in F1. With Kimi , it is definitely not the case. With this win, Mc Laren is now 2 points short of Renault and the fight for the Contructor Title will go all the way to Shanghai this weekend.

The Suzuka race initially look bad for the Silver Arrow. Firstly, Raikkonen suffered another engine failure in practise, his fourth in year 2005 which prompted Mercedes Boss Norbert Haug to apologised to Mc Laren again. Next, both Raikkonen and Montoya qualified badly due to rain during qualifying. When the race started, Montoya was brought out by JV of Sauber Petronas Team. Mc Laren bad luck just will not go further and true enough, Kimi turned it all around and won it in style.

Such superb show by Raikkonen reminded me again of another fantastic overtaking by Mika Hakkinen, another Finn, back in August 2000 in Belgian F1 Race. Read the quote below:-

Ricardo Zonta barely had time to blink. The young Brazilian was tooling around at the back of the field with four laps left to run in the Belgian Grand Prix when he noticed the red car of the race leader, Michael Schumacher, looming in the mirrors of his BAR Honda. Approaching the end of a 200-mph straight, he moved to the centre of the track to allow the German to lap him. But as Schumacher shot by, a silver car suddenly appeared on the inside of Zonta and passed both the BAR and the Ferrari. Then Mika Hakkinen – for it was he – drove away from both of them.

These two classic race will definitely stick in my memory for many years to come.

Great results for McLaren at Brazil but taken their 1-2 finish in 5 years since Mika Hakinen & David Coultard did it 5 years ago. This round with Montoya taken the chequed Flag and Raikkonen followed behind.

As expected, Raikkonen lost the title chase to Alonso who was crowned the driver championship in Brazil. A good driver coupled with extremely reliable car is the key to Renault success this season. Multiple engine failures through the season caused the McLaren dearly.

The 1-2 finish last weekend however put McLaren ahead of Renault by two points in Constructor Title, their first lead in this season. Ron Dennis is pretty confident that no one will be able to touch McLaren’s domainance at this point in time and McLaren will surely claim the Constructor Title.

As a Fan of McLaren, I do hope that their dominance will continue into next season. The FIA rules will change again and the engine will change the V10 to V8 next season in a bid the reduce the speed of F1 cars. I do hope that such changes will not change the McLaren winning formula at the same time. Substantial rules change sometime bring great change to the competitiveness of certain team. Ferrari has worked for the last races and yet still not able to find an answer the new one tyre rule.