gsnedders

With the start of the 2008 F1 season just hours away, time to post some predictions:

• Kimi Räikkönen will win a second world drivers' championship, with Felipe Massa second, Heikki Kovalainen third, and Lewis Hamilton fourth.
• Sébastien Bourdais will be the most successful rookie.
• Ferrari will win the constructors' championship, with McLaren second, and BMW third.
• Ferrari and McLaren will continue to absolutely dominate, and will be massively clear of third place in the constructors' championship.
• Despite Ferrari and McLaren being comparatively close, Ferrari will still manage to get a fair lead from McLaren and win the constructors' championship at, at the very latest, the third last race (at Fuji).
• BMW, despite finishing third in the constructors' championship, will fail to win a race.
• The naïveté of Jenson Button buying himself out of his Williams' contract will continue with Williams outdoing Honda again.

Formula 1 is in chaos, we've got 6 cars running the US Grand Prix after a severe problem with the Michelin tyres, with 11 tyres failing before the race, Michelin advised all their partner teams not to race, failing to get a chicane built before the 9° banking of turn 13, to slow the cars down as that was causing the problems for the Michelin runners, however, the FIA refused as it would have been unfair for the Bridgestone teams.

IMO, and in many others, this is a direct result of having the one tyre rule, allowing one set of tyres for qualifying and the race, and they aren't allowed to change them without genuine and obvious safety concerns, while they could've done that, they'd have to pit every 10-15 laps, resulting in 5-7 pit stops, which makes racing more or less pointless.

The Michelin teams went out on to the grid, and came in at the end of the Formation lap, which means the top 2 Michelin cars on the grid may score points (Trulli and Raikkonen).

People have ended up throwing things on track, such as water bottles and beer bottles, which put the drivers in danger. The marshals are having to run onto the track, dangering themselves, to get them.

Another thing must be noted is this extract Article 73 part b from the Sport Regulations:

two tyre suppliers present: each of them must, if called upon to do so, be prepared to equip up to 60% of the entered teams on ordinary commercial terms ;

Michelin supply 70% of the teams. Notice something? This probably part of Bridgestone's trouble this year, with Sauber switching to Michelin at the beginning of the season, despite there car having been designed for Bridgestone tyres, otherwise it would've been a 60/40 split.