F1 season start, take 2

So this weekend sees the Formula one season get going after the cancellation of the Bahrain GP.

And events in Bahrain have kinda backed up what I was talking about a couple of weeks ago. A country where dozens of peaceful demonstrators are shot to death and neighbouring countries with equally despotic leaders are asked to send troops in to crush the rebellion doesn't really sound like the sort of place I want my sport to be endorsing. Unless it resolves in the direction of giving the people greater say in the running of their own country, I think we should be staying away.

Anyway, at least the Australian GP should be going ahead.

I've been trying to keep up with the F1 stuff during the off-season, though I tend to forget about it. The new cars look a little different - they've got a longer wheel base, to give them more room for these KERS systems. This seems to have manifested itself as a longer, pointier nose on most cars, which seems a little odd, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

I must say I'm not sure about the whole re-inclusion of KERS as well as this rear-wing idea. KERS was okay as a concept, but they way it was implemented when it first came in seemed to make it a bit of a damp squib. If it had been a done more simply, such as they could only use it to overtake, and it had been more powerful, I think it would have worked better.

And the rear-wing idea seems to be even more complicated - you can only use it if you're within a certain distance of the car in front, and only on a designated straight, but not within x laps of the start and they can't use it to defend. I've a horrible feeling we're going to see a few people hang around behind the car in front until the very last lap and then use it to blast past and get points they don't really deserve.

What's more annoying is these all seem to be sops to the real problem that the cars have become horribly reliant on aerodynamic down force, which prevents them getting close enough to each other. Hopefully the rule changes proposed for future years - the introduction of ground effect in particular will sort that out, though.

After going on about whether I would watch the MotoGP last Friday, the practicalities of the situation actually prevented me from doing so - I'd forgotten it was being shown quite late on the Sunday as it was in foreign climes, so in the end I recorded it and will have to catch up later on.