Talking technical, rear view mirrors, brake lights and the increasingly controversial floortrays all came in for scrutiny. Already small enough to seemingly preclude any clear sight of what may be behind, mirrors – and particularly the sidepod-mounted variation – came in for extra testing in Bahrain, with further checks rumoured in future. Brake lights, suggested as a future addition to the modern F1 car, have been put on the backburner for the time being, but the flexible floor debate rumbled on, with the
FIA introducing yet another load test, this time featuring a four-fold increase to 200kg.
Elsewhere, the leaking of technical information made the news, as two former
Ferrari employees were found guilty of passing secrets to
Toyota. Mauro Iacconi got nine months and Angelo Santini 16. Whether such a fate awaits whoever passed
Red Bull drawing to Spyker, providing the basis for the latter's ‘customer car' protest against
Scuderia Toro Rosso, remains to be seen.
Finally,
Formula One returned to the Nordschleife, as
Nick Heidfeld took a 2006-spec
BMW Sauber
F1.06 for a spin around the ‘Green Hell'. Running on hard demonstration-spec tyres, the German did not threaten the track record, but the circuit won an instant place at the top of his favourites list.
NEWS FROM THE TEAMS:
McLaren – Fernando Alonso (#1), Lewis Hamilton (#2):
McLaren heads into the opening European round of the season as the strongest team on the grid - on paper at least. While Ferrari may have double the number of wins of its Woking rival, McLaren heads the constructors' championship and has
both its drivers in P1 in the individual standings. While that may not have been unexpected of double world champion
Fernando Alonso, the fact that rookie Lewis Hamilton is a co-leader speaks volumes for both the team and its newcomer.
