Hamilton is 3.02 odds to win the championship. To see all the odds click here
The Championship table now looks like this after the European GP:
Pos Driver Points
01 Mark Webber 161
02 Lewis Hamilton 157
03 Sebastian Vettel 151
04 Jenson Button 147
05 Fernando Alonso 141
06 Felipe Massa 97
07 Nico Rosberg 94
08 Robert Kubica 89
09 Michael Schumacher 38
10 Adrian Sutil 35
11 Rubens Barrichello 30
12 Vitaly Petrov 17
13 Kamui Kobayashi 17
14 Vitantonio Liuzzi 12
15 Nico Hulkenberg 10
16 Sebastien Buemi 7
17 Pedro de la Rosa 6
18 Jaime Alguersuari 3

Red Bull now lead the Constructors Championship with 312 points, McLaren are on 304 pts, Ferrari 238.
© 2010 FOA Ltd

The odds are updated constantly to help you find the best odds available.
For the Odds for the Constructors World Championship Click Here

Well ok not quite, we’ve adopted the word Lotus as part of the excellent charity “I Can”, as it was the only English word we could think of apart from Button (someone beat us to that one!) on the F1 grid.
Communication difficulties are not life threatening, but they are life limiting: children who find communication hard find life hard.
I CAN is there to ensure that no child’s potential is needlessly wasted because of a difficulty with speaking, understanding or interacting. To help the charity, you can also adopt a word, for just £20. Visit:adoptaword.co.uk search for a word that is available and in the English Dictionary and it will be yours!
Here is our certificate:

With less than a week to go, you can really start to feel the excitement that this season is going to bring. It is probably one of the hardest seasons to predict who will come out the victor. But that doesnt stop the F1 fan from having their opinions. Whilst the Bookies still say Alonso, many Shumi fans are still optimistic he can pull off the biggest comeback in the history of F1. But what better way to decide who is an expert at predicting the oputcome of F1 than to enter a Fantasy F1 league. There are quite a few out there, and many are set up by bloggers, some better than others. So which one should you enter – well it depends if you want a good community, great prizes, private leagues, or a combination of all that. So without wasting any more time lets get cracking at the reviews (if we are missing any let us know). Reviews are in order of us discovering them, our top 5 are then listed at the end.     Reviews after the jump.

SuperBru F1 7/10

“Simple to participate, ideal for friendly private leagues with people of various F1 knowledge”

Superbru is a South African site that first started out doing Rugby prediction leagues. It’s F1 league will be in it’s 3rd year this season, so any technical problems should be well and truly sorted out. This is less a team creation based league and more of a race outcome game. In other words, after Qualifying you predict the top 8 finishers and get bonus points for Fastest Lap, Top 3 correct positions etc. It’s simple, and that is part of it’s appeal. If you have a life outside F1 (I know, we struggle to think what else there is to do either) this is great as it takes just a few minutes to do your race predictions. Also, there is a bonus point to those who predict PRIOR to qualifying for the really cocky players.
The web site looks good, professional outfit, and you are reminded to make picks on email. Once you have made your picks you cant change them, so be warned! Good thing about this site is that there are 1000′s of people playing worldwide.
We like this site for it’s ease, and you can set up private leagues too, all for nothing! It’s FREE! Which gets it an extra point. If you wish to join the F1 Geek league on this site follow the instructions below after going to the site here: Superbru

After you have registered on the main F1 page of your profile go to “Pools”, then “Join Pools” and then:

A good looking site with private leagues. But it has a €5 entry fee.

This is the F1 game from GPupdate.net . Unfortunately you have to pay €5.50 , so it already loses some points for that! I’m sorry but I cant see the need nor appeal from an organisation that is already making it’s money from advertising to charge a fee for a online game. Well the lucky company has at least one subscriber, as I paid up to review it so you guys didnt have too! So I am in the site after a effortless registration process. Although I would prefer the option to pay by PayPal rather than pay an extra 50cents on top of the subscription for a credit card handling fee. I am not booking a flight, I want to play your fantasy F1 game!!!! Anyway, the look of the site is neat and tidy, it follows from GPupdate’s site which is no surprise. The format is more of a traditional game. You pick 2 drivers, an engine and a chassis. BUT, you have limited funds. So do you get a top driver in the expense of poor car, etc. Typical format. However I do find that the budget seems too tight. Here was the team that maxed out my limit: Glock, Kobyashi, Cosworth engine, Torro Rosso chassis. If you went with the top 4 drivewrs, you would be forced to pick USF1 as your chassis!!!! Plus, that is another groan, why do I pay €5 to play a game that still allows you to pick USF1 after almost 4 days of it being announced they are not in the 2010 season? Some of the driver’s pictures are not uploaded either. Surely Glock is already on file from last year? Plus points to this site is that has Sub Leagues for you to set up with your mates. It has the ability to be shown in any language, although if you have read this review so far, that is unlikely to bother you.  The season works on a transfer market between races, so there is the chance to build your team up as and when you swap drivers based on performance, I like that in a fantasy league. However, I am not sure how popular this one will be as it wont show the standings until after the first race., and the entry fee may keep some away. But it looks good and has a nice format to it. It does say there are prizes. But I think they may need to update this page as currently if you finish 4th to 13th you win yourself a 2007 F1 calendar – very useful!

Fun, Friendly, Free!

Our friends over at F1 Badger have had their fantasy site set up for a few weeks now. And they were bigging it up on twitter too so we hope they have had a few people enter to make it competitive.  At the time of writing – 1 week prior to Bahrain, there was 1083 registered teams – not bad for the Badger Bloggers! The site looks great, fun feel to it, just like the F1 Badger site itself. Team picks are effortless and you can get a good mix of drivers and teams into your team with the set budget. Best of all this one is FREE! For every Grand Prix, the winning team manager in the main championship recieves an exclusive F1 Badger Fantasy GP prize, in the form of the much coveted Badger trophy mug.You can set up your own Friend Mini Leagues too. All in all a simple but effective F1 fantasy league game. I hope when it rolls into action after the first GP it doesnt suffer any meltdowns!

FF1GP 3/10

If you want to play fantasy f1 whilst staring at a web site less attractive than sick, this is the one for you!

First impressions are not great on this one. It looks like a 9 year old has designed it for a school project, and was given a detention as a result.  But at least it has the year 2010 on its logo. Many sites we didn’t bother reviewing as it was still 2009 according to them, so its by no means the worst! Lets cut to the chase on this one. Is it free? Yes. Does it have private league option? Yes. Does it look good? Nah. And it is also a very odd way of doing it. To the point I was quite baffled. When choosing a team it gave me the options: Want to win, Want to lose or ‘Mega budget’. What? I just want to play fantasy F1 not decide on 3 different game types! The wants to lose is basically a reverse F1 predictyion: Who do you think will lose rather than win. At this point I really couldnt be bothered to stare any longer at the binary equivelant of vomit. So I logged out! Need I say more. Apparently it has been going for several years. Maybe the design needs to be kicked into 2010?

Fantasy Racers 6/10

Simple, driver only selection, maybe too basic for some people.

Registration was quick and easy. Then you have two options. there are 2 different types of team you can create. You can start with a 45.0m but not be able to change your drivers once the season gets underway, or you can have a 40.0m budget and make as many changes as you like throughout the year. All teams will be competing with one another, regardless of strategy adopted. You only pick drivers, you can select up to 6 drivers if your ‘available to spend’ budget allows. It’s simple and if you opt to not make any changes but a bigger budget – you dont have anything to do for the rest of the season. Seems a little pointless to me. There are private leagues though. And over 6000 entries to date.

Pure Fantasy F1 8/10

The most in depth F1 league we could find. The ultimate geek league.

OK, its looks let it down a bit but this one is detailed. Your team not only comprises of a F1 team boss (Brawn, Whitmarsh etc) but also tyre options and test drivers. This thing is for the true F1 fanatic.  For others probably a bit too much detail. There are loads of private leagues and the main UK one has over 700 teams already! This concentrates on true technical and in depth knowledge of F1 – thus winning on this site would truly give you respect from thef1geek.com!

Fantasy League F1 7/10

The original and one of the better run sites. Very professional with loads of entrants.

This was one of the first F1 fantasy leagues. It was set up by the company who ran the first ever premiership fantasy footy game. They also provide the engine behind many Newspaper fantasy games in the UK. As such, this one has a hefty charge to it. £10 to be exact. So we nock a point off for that. Fat too expensive to make it accesible to the masses. But unsurprisingly as it is well managed and been around for so long you do get a lot of people entering. Autosport even associate themselves with this one so it is always full of skillful F1 fantasy leaguers. You can do private leagues. It follows the traditional format of set budget, pick 6 drivers a car. Transfers throughout the season. Yes it runs well, it is well maintained and 2010 has seen it have a makeover slightly. If you want to spend £10 and or think you have a chance of winning the top prizes this is worth doing.

Not reviewed leagues – these were either down, had nothing extra to offer, looked like they had not been looked at since the creation of the wheel or just looked badly managed. We shere the links anyway for your own perusal!:

http://www.fantasyformulaone.net/newplayer.php

http://www.ff1.co.uk/

http://www.fantasyf1.co.uk/

http://fantasytournament.graymoose.com/

http://www.fantasy-f1.net/user/goRegister.do

http://fantasyf1game.net/

If we have missed any then email us at info@thef1geek.com or post a comment.

In the past few days it has become increasingly apparent that the USF1 team is struggling to not only make the grid, but also make a physical car. And today we learn it has thrown in the towel altogether. More on that team later, but what does it take to succeed in formula One? As we all know, to run a team costs money – a lot of money. Just to even turn up, with two cars and two half decent drivers, costs more money that the last EuroMillions lotto winner received.

1. F1 has a different business model to a lot of sports

How do teams get money? Well unlike most sports you can forget about the gate receipts from your home matches. You can forget about relying on prize money – no guarantee you will get enough wins to pay for it all.

That leaves Sponsorship and Merchandise.

Well why would you be sponsored as a team? The best way to look at that, is to look at some of the most successful sponsorship deals. Firstly, Santander. Imagine the UK banking industry today, without F1 you would walk down a British high street and think “Who are they? Where did Abbey go?”. Santander didn’t just sponsor any F1 team, they chose one to drive awareness as they evolved abbey in to Santander as well as boosting their image in their home market (thanks to Alonso), through a team that is very British in it’s history and had a new and emerging talent in the form of Hamilton. It made perfect sense. And for McLaren? A huge upfront and thru season cash injection to keep the team ticking along. Add in Vodafone who require global reach to key businessmen who will use their services and, voila! A team with money to run a podium grabbing outfit.

But is McLaren a successful brand? Well thanks to it’s sought after road car, it’s historic past, and the top class brands it associates itself with, the whole package is certainly one people like to say they follow.

2. Have a car brand at the heart of everything you do

But it doesn’t come close to Ferrari as a brand. It is a well know pub fact, that if Ferrari win a F1 race on the Sunday, sales enquiries increase the following Monday – around the world. It is a brand that has been built on the race track success and the desirability of it’s road going products for decades. But it starts with and will continue to be the car that is at the core – brands have come and gone sponsoring Ferrari, most notably the longest partnership is with Marlboro. Still to this day, the brand sticks with Ferrari, even though it’s name no longer appears on it’s car. But they still get massive promotional mileage out of using the link up in countries where tobacco advertising is still permitted.

3. A Passion for Racing – back to the roots of why this sport started

Most recently, BrawnGP became an overnight success when it launched. It was typically British in it’s fighting spirit, rising from the Honda ashes -lets highlight the failed branding exercise Honda tried to do with it’s “EarthDreams” campaign in F1 : Why ram down the throat of an F1 fan the importance of eco friendliness when your car is not running on ‘green’ fuel. They clearly are not the first people to try and convert especially when you are not practicing what you preach.

BrawnGP on the other hand, went straight into the hearts of F1 fans – true raw racing team. No car company dominating the team, a motor racing icon as the name (think Brabham, McLaren, Ferrari, Williams, all names, all nutters interested in going racing on a Sunday just like the fans). It was beautifully branded. Distinct colours, stylish logo. It was a brand people could relate to, British roots but very global in it’s ambitions. And now it is Mercedes GP – that may be a German firm, but fans around the world will support it, just like millions of non-Italians support Ferrari. The brand has taken it’s identity global.

So why will there not be a future for F1 in the US, and thus why USF1 has struggled to become an F1 team?
There is a lot about America that has huge global marketing reach, but the “US” part immediately smacks it in your face that is it an American team for American fans. You can never really go global with that. So in the end you can only attract sponsors that want to do the same – only target the US customer base. And if there are companies out there that want that in their strategy why pick F1 as a place to do it?

The TV coverage in America is poor (time zones in Europe and Asia do not help and only 2 races are “prime time” – Canada and Brazil.

The sport cannot compete with American Football, Basketball, Baseball but most importantly, NASCAR / Indy car. The recent Daytona 500 had 225,000 people at the track to watch along with about 40 million watching on TV which F1 cannot compete against. In addition, there is no US grand prix at the moment. All USF1 would be doing is helping Bernie get a bit of free exposure in the US market. Why would major Indy car or Nascar sponsors make the switch? Even if they were interested, the amount of investment would be minimal as the reach in the US would be lower.

Perhaps a US racing team could succeed but it would need to do this with the help of a global brand. If the USF1 team couldn’t find one, then that makes today’s CNN deal with Lotus F1 even more of a great achievement for that team.

OTHER NEWS TODAY: Campos Meta 1 intends to change its name to Hispania Racing F1

Saw this on the Amazon site, and had to share it with you all: An F1 USB memory stick!

Lotus Racing officially came back into the world of F1 this evening when they launched their new car for the 2010 F1 season. Painted in the traditional Green & Yellow colours of the marque it looked stunning. In this day and age however, the british born car company is well and truly Malaysian owned. Lotus describe the modern era of the company ”Lotus F1 Racing is flying the Malaysian flag in the championship with full support from the Malaysian government and its 1Malaysia initiative. The team is fully financed by Malaysian entrepreneurs which gives the team a strong Malaysian character throughout all areas of its operation.”


The team has had one shakedown test with the car, and it is due to join the official test Feb 17th. Launch images below, courtesy of Lotus F1 Racing: