Who Will Replace Massa?

It seems clear now that Felipe Massa, in the best of circumstances, is likely miss a minimum of three races, if not the rest of the season. Who does Ferrari have to fill in for Felipe?

Ferrari's back up drivers are Luca Badoer and Marc Gene, two great test drivers who have not, in their previous Formula 1 careers, shown to be especially successful racers. Badoer has 56 F1 starts, no points, his last race was in 1999. Marc Gene had 36 F1 races and scored 5 points, his last race was in 2004. Of the two, Gene is the obvious choice.

There is another name that is bound to come up, it's inevitable. He retired at the end of 2006 and has enjoyed some success in Formula 1...


It's going to come up, Schumacher coming back to help his team in a pinch. It may also be the thing to revitalize this rather negative F1 season, a story line that must make Bernie Ecclestone, circuit owners and network executives vibrate at night.

Massa's condition will also determine the diver's market, throwing everything up in the air. I'm sure driver's managers are recomputing all their strategies at this point and waiting anxiously on Massa's prognosis.

It's a cold world in F1.

Malaysian GP preview with telemetry.

A nice feature of the new Ferrari web site are lap guides for every track on the calendar with access to selectable telemetry and commentary from test driver Marc Gene.

What I find most interesting here is the difference in driving style between Massa and Raikkonen evidenced by their telemetry throttle traces from 2008. Kimi always brakes earlier but is consistently able to get to full throttle sooner. Raikkonen's trace is green, Massa's in yellow.

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Buttongate will not go away.

I thought we had put to rest the theory Hamilton tripped himself in Brazil last season, pushing "the wrong button" and causing his gearbox to go into "blue screen of death" mode but the story will just not go away that easily.

Even someone who perhaps should know better (or read Axis more often) like Marc Gene is still putting that theory out there. On his blog at ElMundo.es referring to the Heikki Kovalainen pit limiter incident he believes it " ...amazing that Mclaren has done nothing to correct a problem which cost Hamilton so much in Brazil".

Before you dismiss this as partisan however, consider his next point which is that "on the Ferrari, the pit speed limiter will only engage in low gears and never when the car is at full throttle". Kovalainen was well past the last turn apex and presumably at full throttle when he, as the official story goes, pressed the speed limiter.

Some smoke there...