Anticipating problems with sand on the track, Ferrari have made some minor changes to the F2004... Image Unavailable, Please Login
in all seriousness we might see teams pulling prefilters out of the airbox and using a shop vac on the radiator ducts at the pit stops.. But i doubt the sand will be as great of an issue and some have hyped it up to be. If we look at the Hungarian GP that track always has crap blowing across it durring the race and it does not cause that many handeling problems other than creating single file racing with no passing. FORZA FERRARI Rob
Other than giving McClaren an excuse for an engine failure, I don't think it will make that much of a difference either. I guess we'll have to wait and see. P.S. As crazy as I think F1 drivers are, they are totally sane compared to the Paris-Dakar Rally guys(where I got the picture from). At least when MS is in the lead he doesn't have to worry about hitting an f-ing LAND MINE!
I agree, it probably won't bother the engines too much, but I can see some dirt off the line. New tracks normally lack grip and I can just hear all the excuses when somebody has an off: "Too much sand off the line"
Andreas; I recall reading somwhere that the Bahrain track is paved with the same asphault mixture made by Shell that Fiorano is paved with. I wonder if Ferrari had done done tests on tires at Fiorano with sand on parts of the track???? Rob
Who knows. Possible. The problem still remains with Bahrain being a new track: No real amount of rubber has been laid down so far so it still doesn't compare to anything existing. BBC News (which never reports on F1) had yet another report about Bahrain. They're really getting excited. The pictures were from the greater city and the track, both of which looked really, really sharp and civilized. They had a Sheikh posing in front of the Scuderia sign and he smiled ear to ear. I think a lot of folks will stop their comments about this place being backwards. The Middle East it is, but there are huge differences. Bahrain is between Quatar (where the US forces had their strategic HQ in the last war) and Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea. Tons of oil and $$$. This doesn't compare at all to the images from e.g. Baghdad.
