March is always one of my favorite months in the world of sports: NCAA March Madness, the season premieres of the IZOD IndyCar Series and Formula One racing, as well as MLB Spring Training. Today I focus on the F1 season for this year.
I'm really looking forward to the F1 season-opener on March 14th. If you watched the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last November and saw me, you were probably noticing my anticipation for March to arrive fast and it has. The FIA (European racing governing body) allowed 4 new teams to compete for the championship: Lotus, HTR, Virgin and BMW Sauber. There are also a lot of driver moves as well with fresh new faces as well as an old foe, coming back after 3 years of so-called "retirement" (Michael Schumacher).
The McLaren team features Jenson Button & Lewis Hamilton...champions of the last 2 years and they will be going against the Mercedes (Schumacher & Nico Rosberg), Red Bull (Sebastien Vettel & Mark Webber) and Ferrari (Fernando Alonso & Felipe Massa) as big-competition to claim a drivers title but also a constructors championship. The Renault team has new faces with Robert Kubica & Vitaly Petrov (first Russian in F1 history), while Toro Rosso brings back Sebastien Buemi & Jaime Alguersuari. Williams rehires Rubens Barrichello & hires newcomer Nico Hulkenberg. Adrian Sutil returns with Force India as well as Vitantonio Liuzzi.
Four new teams were added in the lineup. Lotus is a new team with experienced drivers Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen. Virgin racing (yes, Richard Branson is an owner) carries Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi. HTR is a brand-new team which fell apart from Campos Meta racing after that disbanded and brought over rookies Bruno Senna & Korun Chandhok as drivers. The new, revised BMW Sauber team also brings veteran Pedro de la Rosa and newcomer Kamui Kobayashi, who impressed owners after replacing Glock during last season's final 2 events.
These 24 drivers will compete in 17 events, starting March 14 in Sakhir, Bahrain for the Bahrain GP. Throughout the season, they make stops in Singapore, Montreal (returning to F1 after a year absence), Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Shanghai and Abu Dhabi. The Korean GP will make its debut in October when track work is completed.
I'm picking Vettel to win the title this year after a breakout performance last year with 4 wins on the season. A full field of drivers and great tracks make up what I'm expecting to be a really great F1 season and I can't wait. The competition is gonna be tough and that's what makes racing fun.
Tomorrow I preview the IZOD IndyCar series for 2010 before I leave for vacation.
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