A couple of days ago it was officially announced that Toyota has dropped out of Formula One. The automaker came into the sport only seven years ago and since then has produced a handful of good results and zero wins. The company was hoping to secure its first win this season, but after some hopeful qualifying results, the race results never transpired. The auto giant threw a lot of money at the sport, but could still never get the ultimate result that it wanted. This probably goes to show that racing in Formula One has a lot more to do with the people that are in and around the team, rather than simply having a ton of cash. The company has cited the economic downturn for their dropping out and now join Honda as the next big manufacturer to leave the sport.

What this means for Formula One is that there are no more Japanese manufacturers in the sport. In fact, there will be zero Japanese presence after Bridgestone leaves after 2010. This is a bad turn for a sport that prides itself on being a “World Championship” (even though there isn’t a round in the largest auto buying market in the world in the USA, but whatever Bernie). Plus, with no Japanese automakers on the grid, there will probably be zero Japanese drivers. Takuma Sato was always backed by Honda, and he is no more, Kazuki Nakajima was backed by Toyota and probably won’t have a seat and newcomer Kamui Kobayashi – though very impressive in two races – is most likely also going to be without a seat.

And at the end of next season, after Bridgestone leaves, there will really be zero Japanese contingent, other than the race at Suzuka. But the big draw for that crowd was to come out and cheer on their countrymen and the cars they drive, but they probably won’t get a chance to do that.

Luckily for the sport, Renault has decided to continue on, despite the controversies of this year. It is always good for the sport to have big names there so people can root for them against a rival team. Imagine what the sport would be like if there was no McLaren to battle Ferrari, or a… well I guess that’s kinda it now isn’t it. Of course there will be other battles, but you won’t have a Honda vs. Toyota race or a BMW vs. Mercedes race anymore. Now you will have a Campos vs. USF1 race, which though it may be entertaining, will most likely not be for any points. More stories are bound to come up over the course of this winter break, and there are only 100 days left until the first round of the 2010 season starts in Bahrain.

Brawn GP has a seat open. Rubens Barrichello is moving to Williams next season to be alongside the rookie Nico Hulkenberg. This basically means that Brawn GP’s seat will be filled by Nico Rosberg. I think I may have even said as much a couple of posts ago.

This arrangement is even better confirmed by the fact that Brawn have also made it clear that Kimi Raikkonen would cost them too much; and considering that he wants $30 million for a drive, I would think most teams are not willing to sign him. I didn’t want to make this all about Kimi, but that’s what he would like, so here I go. Kimi is self-centered and doesn’t care if he drives in F1 next season or not. I know this because he has it in his contract that he can go rally driving during the season. This was not a problem for Ferrari, but McLaren – the only viable team for him now – say that rallying is not an option. But he maintains that he will be allowed to go rallying because he isn’t removing it from his contract. Personally, I say that if Kimi wants to have rallying in his contract, then go drive a rally car. Don’t get me wrong, Kimi is a good driver, but only when the mood strikes him. He didn’t care about the last two seasons because there was nothing to play for. If he doesn’t go out and win in the first couple of races, he becomes disinterested in the rest of the season. Case in point, he could have easily had a point or two in the last race if he would have just tried a little harder (look at Kamui Kobayashi for that) and gotten Ferrari third place in the Constructor’s title. Instead, he celebrated his final race for the famous prancing horse by driving around the track in a lowly 11^th for most of the race. If he doesn’t see the prize at the end of the stick, then he ain’t going to be interested in doing anything. For that reason, I think that the move to get Alonso into the car is a good one. As much as I am not a big fan of Alonso, I do think that he is better prepared to help the team get back to winning than Kimi. Raikkonen should really just take his $20 million from Ferrari that he is going to get and go listen to his stereo with the stone speakers and drive his little Suzuki through the forests. It would be more relaxing for him to drive that car, and he could then go out and party in a gorilla suit more often if he really wants to. Just the fact that he is getting $20 million from Ferrari after the season, then has the balls to want $30 million for a drive is outrageous. Plus, this doesn’t even take into account the sponsorship money that he pulls in (of course, that’s assuming that Mr. Self-Centered actually shows up for those things – which he probably won’t) and that is probably a couple more million right there. All in all, I think that Kimi has had his run in F1 and is just as sick of it as many other people are now getting of him. So please, go and leave the racing to people who actually care about making their cars and teams better and stop driving.

Well, that’s it. It’s all over except for the celebrating…for some anyway. This past weekend was the final race of the 2009 Formula One season, and it went out in grand, albeit boring, style in Abu Dhabi. The Yas Marina Circuit is the latest in a line of “new world” grand prix circuits in Bernie Ecclestone’s desire to go to new, and increasing more expensive, countries. This was the first time that a Formula One race had gone from day to night, in that they started the race at dusk and crossed the finish line under artificial lighting. The track itself is impressive to be sure, but I still think that the thing is just too big. When I say that, I mean that the track is too wide and has too many good runoff points. While it may seem like a wider track will allow for better passing, that would entail that there are still places to pass. And this track does have them, but they are few and far between. With a wider track, the cars are also allowed to move a bit more under braking and can weave over the track more. This allows for more blocking maneuvers and less passing. In the race itself, it turned out to be very much like Monaco, in that, the passing that was done was mostly in the pits. If it wasn’t for Hamilton breaking down like he did, I still contend that he would have won that race. But, as it was, the podium was Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber and Jenson Button. The rest of the points scorers were Barrichello, Heidfeld, Kobayashi, Trulli and Buemi. As far as my predictions went, I did have Button in third with Vettel second, so pretty good there. But I only got Webber and Kobayashi right on the other people to score points. Kimi couldn’t come through and neither could Kovalainen, while Rosberg was no where to be seen. Oh well. In the end, the overall results of Jenson Button being World Champion and Brawn GP being Constructor’s Champions still ring true. So now the winter months begin, and there is no testing until sometime in February I believe. However, there will certainly be more stories coming up, with drivers moving all over the place, including Barrichello and Raikkonen.

My last predictions of this Formula One season! The final race of this season takes place in Abu Dhabi at the newly constructed Yas Marina Circuit. No one has seen this track firsthand and right now both McLarens are on the pace. Kovalainen leads Hamilton by a few tenths and then it is F1 World Champion 2009 Jenson Button in third. Vettel is in fourth right now followed by the impressive rookie Kamui Kobayashi in the Toyota. I think that this race is going to come down to who can keep up with both of the McLarens. This also means that I think…no, I know that McLaren will retain third in the manufacturer’s standings. Fisi hasn’t really done anything with his Ferrari and Kimi don’t care enough to go fast. He’s just looking to next season when he will be driving either a rally car or listening to his awesome speakers hewn from living rocks. Right now he is trying to sew up a deal with McLaren to be their second driver, but his contract states that he is allowed to go rally racing, but McLaren don’t want him to do that during the season. It will be interesting to see whether or not he gets to drive for his old team again, and if he does, whether they will allow him to race rally cars during the season. Personally, I am hoping that he does go to McLaren and then there is a huge squabble between the team and Kimi about driving. That would be fun to read about. Ok, back to the race at hand. Winning this race will be Hamilton. I have a feeling that he is gaining a lot of confidence with his car, and that the KERS system will be in full effect. In second will be Vettel, and third will be Button. The rest of the point scorers will be Raikkonen, Webber, Kobayashi, Rosberg and Kovalainen. I think that this race will be a forgettable affair, but the track will look good and the place will be pretty. The track is very wide open and features huge run-off areas for the racers. I think there may be some passing, but it will be from the people at the back of the pack and won’t matter all that much. As far as crashes go, I don’t expect there to be any of those because the start is fairly simple and all the corners are very wide. Come back on Monday for the full recap and a look forward to next season.

The British Grand Prix will not be heading to Donnington Park. That is the statement straight from the horse’s mouth. Bernie has made it clear that Donnington have missed all the deadlines that they needed to make to get the British Grand Prix away from Silverstone, but they could not come up with the money. This leaves the British Grand Prix in doubt for next year, but I think that both Bernie and the BRDC will come to a conclusion, because no one wants to miss Britain having a round of the championship. Of course, I would also like the French Grand Prix and the US Grand Prix back, but what do I know?

Also in the news, it has been announced that it is the last race for Nico Rosberg at Williams. This isn’t really new news per se, as it has been speculated for a couple of weeks now that he would be moving on, but it remains to be seen where. Some people think McLaren, while others are betting on Brawn because of the increased Mercedes backing. Personally, I would say that Brawn and Williams are going to do a straight driver-for-driver swap with Barrichello going to Sir Frank’s team.

Weekend predictions come tomorrow and then it will be time for the final race of the year.

There isn’t a whole lot of news coming out of the F1 camps this week, though there are rumblings that Jenson wants more money now that he is world champion, and Brawn don’t want to pay it. Also, Rubens Barrichello may end up being a Williams driver – Mark Webber seems to think it’s a done deal – and, surprise, surprise, Donnington Park is late and will not be hosting a Grand Prix.

You know, the BRDC (British Racing Drivers Club) seemed to know that Donnington would never get this deal done, and they have a perfectly good track in Silverstone sitting right there, ready to use. I don’t understand why Bernie hates Silverstone so much. Is it because it has too much history behind it? Because the drivers really seem to like it? Ok, so I know it’s because he wants more money and the track is very horrible when it comes to accommodations and the traffic sucks, but come on. I think I have mentioned this before, but I really am not Bernie’s biggest fan. He seems to be trying to destroy the traditional races that have been on the calendar for a long time, to make way for races that sign up for big money, but then can’t sustain the viewership or turnout. Turkey, China and Malaysia are all good examples of this. I saw a video today that the new Yas Marina Circuit has seating for a whole 50,000 people! Whoopty-fricken-do. The Canadian Grand Prix (which is coming back next year thank god) always has more than 100,000 people attend. Now, much of that number is due to the fact that Montreal is much more accessible than Abu Dhabi, but that isn’t the point with Bernie. See he is in it for the money up front and doesn’t care about what happens afterward. As long as he sees the greenbacks (or whatever color money they have there) up front, he is a happy man. So, will this last Grand Prix be exciting? Maybe. Will it have lots of people watching? For this inaugural race, yes. Can it sustain itself for a long time? Based on many of the new tracks in F1, no. But all that will come later, after Bernie is rolling around in his money vault like Scrooge McDuck.

Well, the FIA finally chose a successor to the Nazi orgy guy, better known as Max Mosley. They did not choose the former rally champion Ari Vatanen. Instead, they went with the former rally co-driver – and former Ferrari F1 team boss – Jean Todt. Frankly, this isn’t surprising, what with Vatanen making some pretty heavy waves as of late, but it is still news. Personally, I think I would have gone with Ari, if only because he used to do stuff like in the embedded video. It’s astounding the amount of car control that some people have, and he was one of the best. Check out the video and tell me that isn’t awesome.

Will this new election really change anything? Probably not, but either way, I guess I’m happy to have Max removed from his power. Now, if we could all get to work on removing Bernie, everything would be much better.

Updates for Formula One are slightly few and far between (at least for the stuff that I want to cover) but there is still some speculation about the new USF1 team. Bernie is constantly making claims that one or more of the new teams won’t make it onto the grid next season, and many people take that to mean the USF1 team. I can see where they are coming from, because the team is based in North Carolina and, supposedly, the employees are paid on a month my month basis. Also, the driver that was closest to getting a full time race seat for the squad, Alexander Wurz, has pulled out from the running. But both Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson are adamant that they have all the pieces in place and that they are just putting them together. The FIA has seen the work space for the team and has come away impressed and they even have a new driver in mind for their car. That person is Kyle Busch. I do not normally watch NASCAR if I can help it, so I know very little about Kyle. From what I have read – which is very little – he is 24 and is very good at turning left. Regardless of that though, I would be skeptical to see how well he can get on in a full on F1 car. For what its worth, not even the winningest rally driver ever, Sebastian Loeb, was quick enough for the FIA to grant him a super license to drive an F1 car, and I think that rally drivers are much more skilled than NASCAR drivers. I think they are more skilled than many F1 drivers too, but that may be because they risk their lives driving next to huge cliffs and on narrow, tree lined roads at over 100 mph. Whatever the outcome of this, at least Kyle is sort of young enough to maybe, kinda learn how to drive an open-wheeled car. I’m sure we will all know more as the time draws closer to the season opener in Melbourne next season.

Also, it seems as though the saying for next season should be “KERS is dead; long live KERS.” This is because, even though KERS is being taken off the cars for next season (because it sucked and didn’t really do anything and led to higher costs), it seems like the FIA is trying to push for it to be standardized in 2011. This seems foolish to me because they must have seen the problems it caused for teams who ran, or tried to run it. Oh yeah, before I forget, which team running KERS won the title? None. Zero. The two remaining teams who have KERS systems on the cars are currently battling it out for third place in the constructor’s title, and are not even close to the title winners at Brawn. It is true that McLaren did make extraordinary strides this season, but that is mostly down to aerodynamic changes, and not the KERS system. This “green” technology that is KERS should be saved for road cars and not be anywhere near a Formula One car. I say leave it behind and never speak of it again.

What is it about the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, or Interlagos, that makes for such great races? Is it the nature of the track being counter-clockwise? Is it the compact dimensions and surprising elevation changes? Or is it the people who line the track just to watch these technological wonders go around it? Whatever it is, it certainly came to light again as the Brazilian Grand Prix took place on Sunday.  In Saturday’s qualifying, the fans sat through about an hour of red-flagged stoppage time as the rains pounded the track. It eventually cleared, but left title leader Jenson Button in 14^th place and title hopeful Rubens Barrichello on pole. This was set up to be a monumental race and the first few laps did not disappoint.

At the start of the race, Button had to be very mindful of where he was if he didn’t want the title chase to move on to Abu Dhabi. In the Senna Esses, Kovalainen spun out and bumped in Fisichella, while up front, it was Jarno Trulli running wide of Adrian Sutil and eventually losing control of his car and running into Sutil who then speared across the grass, over the track and clipped Fernando Alonso. In a move that is more reminiscent of NASCAR than it is of F1, Jarno flipped out on Sutil and had a shouting match that seemed about to break into blows. Maybe Jarno is just mentally preparing himself for his test drive with a NASCAR team later this year, who knows? As the safety car departed the course, Barrichello led and Button was up to ninth. With spectacular passes into the first corner on a couple of different laps, Button seemed to be on a mission not to let this championship slip out of his grasp for good. Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, had to finish either first or second, but it was not to be his day as he finished ahead of Button, but only by one place in fifth. Barrichello had a shot to finally win his home grand prix, but as the laps wound down, he found himself on a bad set of tires and received a puncture from Lewis Hamilton and finished in eighth position. Jenson wound up fifth and captured his first Formula One world championship of his career. The Brawn team also made it a clean sweep by taking home the constructor’s title. So the final podium positions were Mark Webber, Robert Kubica and Lewis Hamilton. Followed up by Vettel, Button, Raikkonen, Sebastian Buemi and Barrichello.

As for my picks, they didn’t come out how I envisioned them, but they did lead to my overall prediction of Brawn wrapping this thing up. I also said that if rain happened, all my predictions would change, and it did happen on Saturday, so that has to figure in right? I think so. At this point, I’ll take anything I can get. So now it is going to be two weeks until the season finale in Abu Dhabi, and all I can say is that this season went way too fast, and that no one will really care about this race, with one exception. Ferrari is now one point behind McLaren for third in the constructor’s title. Although this doesn’t have any real effect on anything, it is still a big rivalry between these two teams and that will be the race to watch for. So stay tuned for Abu Dhabi and see who comes out on top for third place; Ferrari or McLaren!

Fernando Alonso has set the early pace this weekend, but both the Brawns and the Red Bulls are looking very strong. Most people are probably like me in assuming that the Brawns and the Red Bulls will be vying for pole position this weekend. I like Barrichello, in front of his home crowd, for both the pole and the victory, but I like Button to be on second. This will secure both of the championships for the team and I think it would be a fitting end to this season (and yes, I know there is still a race after this, but c’mon, who would really care other than to see the new track?). For third place I like Mark Webber with the following drivers in the points: Hamilton, Vettel, Trulli, Alonso and Raikkonen. Of course all of this changes if the light showers they experienced in both practice sessions continues tomorrow and on Sunday, but we will see. Those are my predictions for this race. Now I just need Jenson to see them and perform as well as he was earlier this season.