Flavio Briatore has revealed that as of next year, he will be taking on a revised role within the Renault team. Briatore has also said that he has earmarked an assistant who will help him run the Renault team during the 2009 season.

Briatore’s contract with Renault runs out at the end of the year however he has so far not signed any contract extensions. Despite this, he has told Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport that he will definitely still be with Renault next season albeit in a new role.

“Next year, I won’t have a 360 degree role in the team any more. There will be a director, who I have already earmarked, to look after the day-to-day management. That way I will be able to concentrate on the most important matters.”

Briatore is also confident that Alonso will remain and that the team can return to the top of F1 once more.

“The victory [at Singapore] has not changed anything. Fernando has not signed to anyone and I think is happy to stay, but we will see at the end of the championship. What can we offer him? An innovative team and a mix of cards that play in our favour.

“In F1 there are cycles. In difficult moments, Carlos Ghosn didn’t want to lower our budget. F1 in not just about the money otherwise Toyota would will all the Grands Prix!

“At Renault, we have to renew the whole aerodynamics department. When you change 40 people, you must wait for them to gel. Now we are ready to start again. We have the right people and are young and capable.

By Forumula1.net on Friday, October 3, 2008

Red Bull Racing have revealed that a freak set of circumstances may have been to blame for Mark Webber’s retirement from the Singapore Grand Prix. Webber was on-course to finish on the podium, however a mechanical failure – his first of the season – forced him to retire from the race on Lap 30.

Webber’s car limped to the pits with a broken gearbox after it had tried to select two gears at the same time. Team principal Christian Horner explained to Autosport that a bizarre set of coincidences might have been the cause of the issue.

“At Turn 13, the gearbox selected two gears at one,” Horner explained. “The moog valve controlling the gearshift had been triggered into changing to seventh while he was still in fifth yet after interrogating the software we can see that it at no time was allowing for this. We can see a momentary electrical surge at the precise moment which seems to have triggered the moog valve.

“It was exactly what [Toro Rosso] suffered from with Bourdais in Friday practice at exactly the same place. A tram line runs beneath the track at that corner and it seems as if static from a passing tram at the very moment Mark was in the corner passed through the ground.”

By Forumula1.net on Friday, October 3, 2008

Bernie Ecclestone has said that the number of races on the 2009 F1 calendar is about right, despite pushing for 20 races on the calendar earlier in the year.

“No more races,” Ecclestone told Bloomberg. “We don’t want any more! We have too many races – we have to lose some.”

It appears that Ecclestone has switched his focus from cramming more races into the Formula 1 calendar to night racing following the success of first ever night race in Singapore last month. Ecclestone has already revealed that he would like Malaysia to become a night race along with Japan, with countries who are hoping to host races such as India and South Korea also possibly heading for night racing.

Even though their time zone does not demand a night race, Abu Dhabi race bosses are seriously considering running their race at night under floodlights after the positive reaction to the Singapore Grand Prix. Although they have yet to confirm what time they are planning the race start to be, bosses have confirmed that night racing is definitely a possibility.

By Forumula1.net on Friday, October 3, 2008

Alonso reigns supreme in Singapore

Double world champion gives Singapore’s Marina Bay a christening to remember after winning dramatic inaugural night race;

Ferrari incompetence in the pits puts Hamilton in pole position for the title.

He said he needed a miracle. And on lap 15 it came, his team-mate ironically the bearer.

When Nelson Piquet threw his Renault into the wall, bringing out the safety car, any chance of a straight forward outcome to the inaugural Singapore race was lost as the Marina Bay circuit opened its gates to a flood of spectacle and drama.

Prior to Piquet’s collision it was a distinctly less complex picture that had begun to emerge under the night lights. Felipe Massa led Lewis Hamilton and the rest of the field through the first corner without major incident - a knock between Heikki Kovalainen and Robert Kubica excluded - and had begun to build up a sizable cushion over his championship protagonist.

By Lap 12 Hamilton was beginning to struggle to keep the Brazilian in sight and had the added concern of Kimi Raikkonen steaming up onto his gearbox.

“I started well, but then my rear tyres faded and, although we had good pace, I wasn’t in a position to challenge Felipe ahead of me,” explained Hamilton.

Alonso, who qualified fifteenth after being hit with a fuel problem in qualifying, was on a short first stint and pitted for fuel early on Lap 13. That dropped him to the rear of the field and appeared to mark the end of his race.

Then all hell broke loose under the night sky. The Piquet-induced safety car bunched up the field right in the middle of the pit-stop window. Nico Rosberg and Robert Kubica were among those to get caught out and were forced to stop for fuel while the pitlane was closed, later taking their respective ten second penalties.

The rest of the field waited patiently behind the safety car and Massa led the charge into the pitlane the moment it re-opened leaving Rosberg (yet to take his drive-through penalty) leading the one-stoppers of Jarno Trulli and Giancarlo Fissichella, and the short-stinting Fernando Alonso. The Red Bull cars of Mark Webber and David Coulthard were also in the mix behind Alonso having also stopped early in the race.

That was the moment that it all begun to unravel for poor old Felipe Massa. Ferrari’s controversial semi-automatic pit-release signal gave the Brazilian the green light to leave the pitlane before the refuelling hose had been detached. The Ferrari driver carried the hose down the pitlane, much to the delight of the McLaren mechanics, before stopping and waiting for it to be de-attached.

“When he came in, we had a problem with the fuel rig, we had a problem with our refuelling system,” Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley explained to German broadcaster Premiere. “He saw the green light and he correctly left the pit box, but it shouldn’t have been a green light, so it was a failure of the team and not of him.”

“And, for that, he had to stop at the end of the pit lane, and then we sent the guys up an they pulled the fuel nozzle out and then he got a drive-through penalty and then he got a puncture. So, what could go wrong, did go wrong.”

“Unfortunately, it’s just one of them things, everything always happens at the worst possible time, that’s why you’ve just got to be 100 percent waterproof with all your reliability and today we weren’t. Today we were useless.”

The incident was almost identical to Ferrari’s pit-lane faux-pas in Valencia, only this time the stewards were less sympathetic and docked Massa with a drive through penalty on the grounds of “unsafe” release. Game over. The Brazilian was dropped to the rear of the field. A spin at Turn 18 with ten laps to go sealed his fate.

The debacle also dashed Raikkonen’s Singaporean hopes. The Finn had been forced to queue behind Massa in the pits and bore the brunt of Ferrari’s bungle as much as the Brazilian himself. Unlike Massa though, Raikkonen recovered to fifth and was sitting pretty when the safety car re-remerged in the closing stages. That was until he dropped his Ferrari into the wall with only four laps remaining.

Zero points for Ferrari and advantage McLaren in the constructors’ championship for the first time this season.

Lewis Hamilton emerged from his pit-stop behind the trail of one-stoppers and short-stinters, three places behind Alonso in the provisional lead, but behind a much slower David Coulthard.

“During my first pit stop I lost a bit of time because everybody came in due to the Safety Car period,” said the McLaren driver. “After that I was unfortunately stuck behind David and although I was clearly faster it was really difficult to overtake him.”

The McLaren driver, sensing the opportunity presented by Massa’s demise, made little impression on the Red Bull car and it wasn’t until Lap 41 that he leapfrogged Coulthard, by which point Alonso and second place man Nico Rosberg were out of reach.

The final safety car period provided Hamilton with a chance to pass Rosberg for extra points, but by then the Briton appeared happy to just bring his car home in the points; he settled for third.

“After the second re-start, I tried to stay as close as possible behind Nico; however, I didn’t want to take chances - particularly as the Ferraris were outside the points. Also, this is not a track where overtaking is easy.”

Toyota’s Timo Glock managed to claw his way up to fourth having pushed hard after his first stop to leap frog his one-stopping team mate Jarno Trulli and the Red Bull duo. Sebastian Vettel finished fifth ahead of Nick Heidfeld, David Coulthard and Kazuki Nakajima.

But the day undoubtedly belonged to Fernando Alonso. The double world champion had showed impressive pace throughout the weekend, and in a strange quirk of fate it was his qualifying misfortune that enabled to triumph by virtue of a strategy selection based on his fifteenth place grid slot. The win is Alonso’s twentieth and the first in over a year.

“Fantastic! First podium of the season and the first victory,” enthused Alonso after the race. “I’m extremely happy, I can’t believe it.”

“I think I need a couple of races to realise that we won a race; it seems impossible. Here we’ve been competitive; we had bad luck in qualifying, but great luck in the race. The safety car helped me a lot and I was able to win the race.”

“We chose to do a very short first stint, recognising that in fifteenth place you can’t overtake.”

“So we tried something very different: very short first sting and try to make as many positions at the start, and we would see from there. It was very lucky. The pace was there all through the race and we were always able to pull out a gap to the cars behind us.”

By Christopher Hayes on Sunday, September 28, 2008

The podium in the 15th race of 2008 Formula One Worldchampionship was taken by Fernando Alonso (Renault) - 1st, Nico Roseberg (Williams-Toyota) - 2nd and Lewis Hamilton (McLaren-Mercedes) -3rd.

Today's race was the first race in Singapore and the first ever night race in the history of Formula 1.

The race had started with Felipe Massa in pole position and he was being considered by everyone as the top contender for today's race, but things went sour for him after a pit-stop incident. He started off after a pit stop while the fuel rig had not yet been removed.

The hose came off from its mooring spitting a lot of fuel into the air. Massa lost a lot of time and managed to rejoin the race at the 18th position. By the time he finished the race, he had manged to come up to the 13th position.

The fate of the Indian team, Force India, drivers was not very good in today's race also.

Giancarlo Fisichella completed the race in the 14 position while Adrian Sutil the other driver of Force India team had to drop out of the race in the 49th lap.

After the first night race, Lewis Hamilton is leading the championship chart with 84 points, followed by Felipe Massa with 77 points. In the constructors standings table, McLaren- Mercedes is at the top with 135 point, while Ferrari is behind by only 1 point at 134.

Singapore (Sports Network) - Ferrari's Felipe Massa won the pole Saturday for the inaugural Singapore Grand Prix, beating McLaren's Lewis Hamilton in the final seconds of the third and final qualifying session. The Brazilian driver rounded the 3.148-mile Singapore Street Circuit in one minute, 44.801 seconds.

It was Massa's fifth Formula One pole of the season and the 14th of his career.

"The car was just perfect and so nice to drive," Massa said. "I managed to do a perfect lap so that always helps when I have a good car and don't make any single mistakes in whatever corner you go."

Hamilton will start on the outside pole after posting a time of 1:45.456.

"Fortunately we got through and managed to still secure a good spot on the front row, but obviously not as smooth sailing as some other people," Hamilton said.

Hamilton almost missed the third session. He finished 0.10 seconds ahead of Jarno Trulli for the 10th and final transfer spot in Q3. Hamilton enters the first-ever F1 night-time event with only a one-point lead over Massa in the World Championship standings.

The FIA's International Court of Appeal on Tuesday denied Hamilton's appeal to overturn a 25-second penalty that cost him the victory in the Belgian Grand Prix earlier this month.

Hamilton appeared before a five-judge panel in Paris on Monday to contest the timed penalty that was assessed to the British driver by race stewards at Spa- Francorchamps after he gained an advantage by cutting a chicane while battling Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen for the lead in the final laps.

McLaren officials filed an appeal two weeks ago on the grounds their driver had relinquished the lead back to Raikkonen immediately following the incident. However, the court rejected McLaren's right to appeal.

"Having heard the explanations of the parties, the Court has concluded that the appeal is inadmissible," the FIA stated in their decision.

The FIA also noted, "Article 152 of the International Sporting Code states that drive-through penalties are 'not susceptible to appeal'."

Defending F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen (1:45.617) and Robert Kubica (1:45.779) will make up row two.

The forecast at race time calls for rain. Two weeks ago, Torro Rosso's Sebastian Vettel survived wet track conditions at Monza to capture the Italian Grand Prix. The 21-year-old German driver became the youngest grand prix winner in the history of F1. Vettel will start seventh.

The race begins Sunday at 8 a.m. (et).