Alvin's Formula One Blog

Together again.. The 2015 grid has had some really big shakeup recently and it would be very interesting indeed to see how Vettel fares at Ferrari and Alonso at McLaren, especially with the new Honda engine. That is a 50/50 bet there, anything can happen. If Honda does a "Mercedes" or a "Brawn" then Alonso is on his way and 2015 will be a nice fight with the Mercedes. Red Bull Daniel Ricciardo, Daniil Kvyat Almost as surprising as the announcement that Sebastian Vettel would leave Red Bull at the end of 2014 was the team immediately confirmed Russian rookie Daniil Kvyat as his replacement. The news closed off the seat to Fernando Alonso and shows Red Bull has lost no faith in its young driver programme, confidence surely strengthened by Daniel Ricciardo's incredible first season at the team. Mercedes Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg The champions have their current driver line-up locked in for 2015. Nico Rosberg signed a "multi-year" contract ex...

Meeting in Doha, the World Motor Sport Council has announced a number of changes to the Sporting and Technical Regulations. Along with these changes to the regulations, the FIA President confirmed that the focus will be on reducing costs, improving the show, making cars quicker and more difficult to drive, and reviewing the technical and sporting regulations, with the aim of simplifying the rules where possible. Sporting Regulations Points Points for both titles will no longer be doubled for the final Event of the Championship. Standing Restarts After consultation with the Teams who raised a number of safety concerns, Articles 42.7 and 42.8 on standing restarts have been rescinded. Virtual Safety Car (VSC) Following tests of the VSC system at the final Events of 2014, the introduction of the system has been approved for 2015. The VSC procedure may be initiated to neutralise a race upon the order of the clerk of the course. It will normally be used when double waved ye...

The 2015 calendar is out now and other than the surprise inclusion of  Korea , which the World Motor Sport Council admits has yet to be confirmed, the only change to the provisional calendar announced in September is that which sees China change places with Bahrain . The Koreans were surprised they were included. On the other hand, running the Korean and Spanish events back-to-back does appear ambitious, to put it mildly. Date Race Circuit 15-Mar Australia Melbourne 29-Mar Malaysia Sepang 12-Apr China Shanghai International Circuit 19-Apr Bahrain Sakhir 03-May Korea* Yeongam 10-May Spain Barcelona 24-May Monaco Monaco 07-Jun Canada Montreal 21-Jun Austria Red Bull Ring 05-Jul Britain Silverstone 19-Jul Germany Nurburgring 26-Jul Hungary Hungaroring 2...

Article written by Andrew Davies of PlanetF1. Original article HERE . It may be the year of the Silver Arrows, but 2014 will also go down as The Year of Shocks in F1. Some of them were tragic, some of them were unexpected twists, but all stole headlines on the sports pages (and sometimes on the main news pages). We started the year with perhaps the saddest shock of all. Michael Schumacher's ski accident Michael's battle with a head injury from a Christmas skiing trip began in the last days of 2013, with the world's press camped outside a hospital in Grenoble well into the New Year. Michael survived and has begun the long, slow struggle back to functionality. What Corinne Schumacher and his long-time press secretary Sabine Kehm also have to fight, apart from health issues, is the ongoing battle to keep his recovery and his recuperation private. If one good thing can come out of the accident it's that all skiiers need ski helmets, because if someone as seemingly in...

UPDATE 12 DECEMBER! Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso have been officially confirmed as drivers for McLaren in 2015. And Kevin Magnussen has been put into the test driver role. A pretty safe combo if you ask me. So here we are going into the winter season and no action. This is gonna be a long winter again. As far as the drivers situation is concerned, most driver moves have been made. Some moved around, some were thrown out and brought in. Some are still in limbo like Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen. Very unlike McLaren to do this but when a double world champion and a new engine is concerned, I think they are probably thinking of doing a Mercedes. I don't think Marussia or Manor will be racing. In fact their stuff has been put up for auction. Caterham has been given the green light to use this year's chassis for next year, so I don't see the point of that. Unless it was just to make it attractive for a buyer to have a ready F1 team to buy. But will they make ...