Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, libbets and bunnymen, welcome to the 2014 Formula 1 season!  The past few years have been a little... shall we say "dull"?... but this season should prove to be a little bit different.  We'll get to that.  But first, we need to look at where we begin.  It isn't officially a tradition, but Australia may as well be the home of the first race of the season.  What definitely is a tradition is that I now show you the track map of this week's circuit... and here we are:

Melbourne.  Australia's cultural capital.  Home of the style of dance known as Melbourne Shuffle, the birthplace of Australian film and television, Aussie Rules Football, and the country's oldest and largest public art museum.  It's also the location of Albert Park, a public park turned into a world-class racetrack for one weekend a year.  As I've mentioned in years past, it's also the perfect place for a F1 season to begin.  Consider: it's a fast, but not too fast, circuit, with a nice mix of both quick and slow corners.  It's not particularly hard on tires, nor is it particularly difficult for the driver to cope with.  Air temperatures are usually right at the point you want them for a modern F1 car, except when it rains.  When it does rain, the storms are rarely the type that will completely derail a session (like you can get at Spa, for example).  No, the circuit at Albert Park is pretty much the best track on the calendar to start a season with.

Which is important this season, even moreso than normal.  That's because of the raft of rules changes that came down the pike for this season, the most obvious of which is the new engine.  Gone are the dentist-drill 18000rpm V8s of the past decade.  In their place we now have a 1.6 liter turbo-powered V6 hybrid engine at 15000rpm.  The hybrid part is interesting... previously we had the Kinetic Energy Recovery System, or KERS, a battery pack that gave the cars about 80hp for six seconds per lap.  KERS has now been replaced by ERS-K, a waste-heat recovery device that will provide up to 160hp for 33 seconds/lap.  Because of the way this system works, the rear brakes are now "brake by wire", instead of a direct physical linkage.  Reportedly, some teams are having problem with this technology, but we'll find out about that later this week.  On the whole, the changes seem to have been to the benefit for Williams and have hurt Red Bull... people are already declaring that Seb Vettel won't win the championship this year.  I won't go that far, but Australia could go a long way towards telling us what's going to happen this season!

Fortunately for us, the good folks at NBCSN will be doing their level best to get us up to speed and fast!  Here's their broadcast schedule:

THURSDAY
Practice 1: 830p - 10p live
FRIDAY
Practice 2: 1230a - 2a live
SATURDAY
Quals: 1a - 230a live
SUNDAY
Grand Prix of Australia: 1230a - 3a live

Here's the good news... this week is Spring Break at Duck U.  As a result, the Duck U Bookstore will be closing at 1pm on Thursday and staying closed until Monday morning.  That's right, the F1U! team will have the entire weekend free to concentrate on the race!  It's been a while since we're found a F1 season to be this intriguing, so we'll be hanging on every rev this race!

We'll see you then, right here!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:40 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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