Lewis Hamilton takes Pole Position in Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne

Lewis Hamilton got his bid for the Formula One world championship off to the perfect start after taking pole position for Sunday's Australian Grand Prix. This is Briton's seventh career pole.

The McLaren driver's time of one minute 26.714 seconds was good enough to edge out Robert Kubica's BMW Sauber by 0.155 secs. It was a good day for McLaren, with Heikki Kovalainen taking third, ahead of Massa, with 1m 27.079s.

With Kimi Raikkonen already sidelined after problems in Q2, team mate Felipe Massa had to uphold Ferrari honour alone in Q3, but after recording 1m 27.178s on his first run, he failed to improve on his second. Kubica, meanwhile, was on a blinder that resulted in 1m 26.869s even though he ran wide in Turn Nine. The Pole kept his foot in it and didn’t appear to lose an awful lot of time, and planted his BMW Sauber on the front row for the first time in his career.

Nick Heidfeld’s 1m 27.236s was good enough for fifth in the second BMW Sauber, then came Jarno Trulli’s Toyota on 1m 28.527s, Nico Rosberg’s Williams on 1m 28.687s, David Coulthard’s Red Bull on 1m 29.041s and Timo Glock’s Toyota on 1m 29.593s, while Sebastian Vettel ended an impressive 10th for Toro Rosso.

So wait and watch who will win the 2008 season opening Australian Grand Prix on Sunday, 16th March.

Summary of the first day of practice for the ING Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne

The first day of practice for the ING Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne’s Albert Park saw Ferrari and McLaren evenly matched, but was generally confusing as all sorts of differing fuel loads were used as drivers set their fastest times.

Kimi Raikkonen looked impressive as the Ferrari driver topped the time sheets in Thursday morning's first practice for the Australian Grand Prix.

The Finn played down his favourite's tag on Wednesday but his time of one minute 26.461 seconds was nearly half a second quicker than the McLaren of Lewis Hamilton and served early notice he will be the man to beat at Albert Park this weekend.

Summary of the first day of practice for the Australian Grand Prix

Ferrari
Fastest lap of day, Raikkonen 1m 26.461s, morning

McLaren
Fastest lap of day, Hamilton 1m 26.559s, afternoon

Red Bull
Fastest lap of day, Webber, 1m 27.473s, afternoon

Toyota
Fastest lap of day, Trulli, 1m 28.292s, afternoon
Williams
Fastest lap of day, Rosberg, 1m 28.352s, afternoon

Renault
Fastest lap of day, Alonso, 1m 28.360s, morning

Force India
Fastest lap of day, Fisichella, 1m 28.469s, afternoon

BMW Sauber
Fastest lap of day, Kubica, 1m 28.579s, morning

Honda
Fastest lap of day, Button, 1m 28.632s, afternoon

Toro Rosso
Fastest lap of day, Vettel, 1m 28.957s, morning

Super Aguri
Fastest lap of day, Sato, 1m 30.663s, afternoon

Some Intresting Facts About Formula One (F1) Drivers

• When an F1 Driver hits the brakes on his car he experiences retardation or deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a BRICK wall at 300kmph!
  

• An average F1 Driver looses about 4kgs of weight after just one race due to the prolonged exposure to high G forces and temperatures for little over an hour.
  

• The fit in the cockpit is so tight that the steering wheel must be removed for the driver to get in or out of the car. A small latch behind the wheel releases it from the column. Levers or paddles for changing gear are located on the back of the wheel. So no gearstick! The clutch levers are also on the steering wheel, located below the gear paddles.
  

• The oldest race winner was Italian Luigi Fagioli in 1951, aged 53 years and 22 days.

2008 FIA Formula One World Championship Race Calendar (Schedule)

Here is the complete Schedule (Race Calendar) of Formula 1 World Championship 2008, with date, place and circuit.

1st Race - ING Australian Grand Prix ( Melbourne )
from 14 - 16 March

2nd Race - Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix ( Kuala Lumpur )
from 21 - 23 March

3rd Race - Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix ( Bahrain )
from 04 - 06 April

4th Race - Gran Premio de Espana Telefonica ( Catalunya )
from 25 - 27 April

5th Race - Petrol Osifi Turkish Grand Prix ( Istanbul )
from 9 - 11 May

6th Race - Grand Prix de Monaco ( Monte Carlo )
from 22 - 25 May

7th Race - Grand Prix du Canada ( Montreal )
from 06 - 08 June

8th Race - Grand Prix de France ( Magny-Cours )
from 20 - 22 June

9th Race - Santander British Grand Prix ( Silverstone )
from 04 - 06 July

10th Race - Grosser Preis von Deutschland ( Hockenheim )
from 18 - 20 July

11th Race - Magyar Nagydij ( Budapest )
from 01 - 03 August

12th Race - Grand Prix of Europe ( Valencia )
from 22 - 24 August

13th Race - ING Belgian Grand Prix ( Spa-Francorchamps )
from 05 - 07 September

14th Race - Gran Premio Santander d'italia ( Monza )
from 12 - 14 September

15th Race - SingTel Singapore Grand Prix (Singapore)
from 26 - 28 September

16th Race - Fuji Television Japanese Grand Prix ( Fuji )
from 10 - 12 October

17th Race - Sinopec Chinese Grand Prix ( Shanghai )
from 17 - 19 October

18th Race - Grande Premio do Brasil ( Sao Paulo )
from 31 Oct - 02 November

The New FIA Rules from the 2007 Formula One Season

The FIA has made many changes to both the sporting and technical regulations from the 2007 Formula 1 season.

New Rules for Engines:

The FIA has designed measures to cut development costs. Engines homologated and used in the last two races in 2006 must be used in the 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 seasons. This measure has been widely described as an 'engine freeze'. Engines are rev-limited to 19000rpm. The rule of the two race engine no longer applies to the Friday practice sessions. This means that drivers can save their race engines for the remainder of the weekend by using alternative engines on Fridays.

Weekend Schedule:

The Grand Prix weekend format has seen a slight modification and the two practice sessions on Fridays have been extended from 60 to 90 minutes each.

New Rules for Tyres:

The new rules have made Bridgestone Formula One racing’s sole tyre supplier rom 2007. Only specifications of tyre per event will be given to each team. All the same each team will get more sets, twofour per driver on Fridays and ten for the remainder of the weekend. During the race each driver must use both specifications. Spectators can easily distinguish which tyre a driver is using at any time by a white grove on the tread of the softer compound.

Rules for Safety Car:

Safety car regulations have been modified from 2007. The modification have been made to stop back markers from interfering with the leaders during the restart of a race and to prevent drivers from diving for the pits the moment the safety car comes onto the circuit. Until the field behind the safety car is bunched up no car is permitted to enter the pits. Before the safety car goes back to the pit, any lapped car running between cars on the lead lap should overtake those cars and the safety car before taking their correct position at the back.

Rules for Friday Practice Sessions:

All teams are now allowed to run one alternative test driver during each Friday session and third cars will no longer be allowed. The alternative driver can use either of the team's race cars but should be nominated beforehand.

Safety Rules:

For more effective potential hazard alerts, a GPS marshalling system is being introduced. This system involves a cockpit light display of flag signals in each driver’s car. It is now required for all cars to be fitted with a medical warning light a little ahead of the driver's cockpit. This is connected to the FIA data logger and is set up to provide the rescue crew with immediate indication of the accident’s severity. The mandatory crash tests have been made more stringent. The minimum size for the impact absorbing structure has been raised. The velocity used in the frontal impact test has also been increased to 15m/s from 14 m/s.

The new rule dictates that the driver's cockpit must be fitted out with special anti penetration panels of zylon. In order to offset the weight of the panels, an additional five kgs have been added to the car’s minimum weight requirement.

Some Intresting Facts About Formula One (F1) Cars

• An F1 Car is made up of 80,000 components, if it were assembled 99.9% correctly; itwould still start the race with 80 things wrong.

• F1 Cars have over a kilometer of cable linked to about 100 sensors and actuators whichmonitor and control many parts of the car.

• An F1 Car can go from 0 to 160 kph AND back to 0 in FOUR seconds.

• F1 Car engines last only for about 2 hours of racing mostly before blowing up on theother hand we expect our engines to last us for a decent 20yrs on an average and theyquite faithfully DO....that’s the extent to which the engines r pushed to perform...

• At 550kg a F1 Car is less than half the weight of a Mini.

• An F1 Car engine is used only for two races.

Lewis Hamilton signs a new five-year multi-million pound contract with McLaren

Lewis Hamilton on Friday signed a new five-year multi-million pound contract with McLaren which commits him to the team until 2012. Now he has become one of Britain's highest-paid sportsmen.

Hamilton has now made a long-term commitment to the McLaren team, who were heavily fined last year for their involvement in the F1 `spy row'. The new deal underlines the relationship between Hamilton and a team he has been associated with since an early age.

Hamilton, who turned 23 just 11 days ago, said: "It's fantastic for me the team has extended my contract until 2012.

The five-year deal is believed to be worth £10million per year, or £200,000 per week - a bumper pay packet that eclipses the country's Premier League stars.

Only David Beckham, whose five-year contract with LA Galaxy was rumoured to be £128million over its duration, can claim to earn more than Hamilton.

The 23-year-old came within a point of winning the world title, only to lose out in the final grand prix of the campaign in Brazil as circumstances conspired against him.

Hamilton, though, won four races and broke every rookie record in the Formula One history books, ensuring it would be only a matter of when, and not if, McLaren would offer a new deal.

With the contract not due to expire until 2012, should Hamilton remain with the team up until that time, it means his partnership with McLaren will stretch to 15 years.

Hamilton was initially signed up a decade ago at the age of 13 as he was supported through various karting and junior formulae en route to his breakthrough into Formula One.

Such is his affinity with McLaren, he freely concedes he "could easily drive for this team for the whole of my Formula One career".