2008 Season

Driver changes

Fernando Alonso leaves McLaren after a single turbulent season to rejoin Renault. Heikki Kovalainen, who had replaced Alonso at Renault in 2007, now takes the reverse path to McLaren. Giancarlo Fisichella moves from Renault to the newly renamed Force India, replaced at Renault by the team’s own test driver Nelson Piquet Jr., son of three-time world champion Nelson Piquet.

Ralf Schumacher departs Toyota following an unsuccessful Force India test in December and moves to DTM. His seat goes to 2007 GP2 champion Timo Glock, who had previously served as a test driver at BMW Sauber. Sébastien Bourdais, four-time consecutive Champ Car champion, joins Toro Rosso in place of Vitantonio Liuzzi, who moves to Force India as test driver.

Team changes

Spyker is reborn as Force India after Indian businessman Vijay Mallya purchased the team for €88 million on 24 October 2007 — several million more than Spyker had originally paid. Fisichella drives alongside Adrian Sutil, with Liuzzi as test driver.

Prodrive had been officially granted an entry for 2008 but will not take to the grid. Chief executive David Richards announced in November 2007 that the team could not be set up in time following unresolved negotiations with the FIA over the legality of customer cars.

Calendar

The 2008 championship runs over eighteen races, opening in Australia on 16 March and closing in Brazil on 2 November. Singapore hosts its inaugural Grand Prix at the Marina Bay Street Circuit — Formula One’s first night race, with practice, qualifying, and the race all held under floodlights.

The European Grand Prix moves from the Nürburgring to the new Valencia Street Circuit in Spain. Because both German circuits share hosting rights for the German Grand Prix, Hockenheimring takes over for 2008. The United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis does not appear on the calendar. The French Grand Prix remains at Magny-Cours despite longstanding reports it would be the circuit’s last race.

Regulation changes

Traction control is banned for 2008, along with engine braking reduction. A standard Electronic Control Unit — developed by Microsoft MES, a joint venture between McLaren Electronic Systems and Microsoft — is mandatory across all teams. A five-year engine freeze begins this season; the first unscheduled engine change of a season will no longer trigger a ten-place grid penalty.

Gearboxes must now last four consecutive races. A five-place grid penalty applies for any gearbox change, with an exception: a driver who fails to finish a race may change the gearbox for the next event without penalty.

In qualifying, Q1 is extended to 20 minutes while Q3 is shortened to 10 minutes. Cars in Q3 may no longer refuel after qualifying — a change intended to eliminate the fuel-burn phase. From Round 3 in Bahrain, a minimum qualifying lap time is introduced to prevent cars returning to the pit lane at dangerously slow speeds.

Race fuel must contain at least 5.75% biological materials. Bridgestone is confirmed as sole tyre supplier through 2010; extreme wet-weather tyres are marked with a white stripe in the central groove to distinguish them from the intermediate compound. Each team may not exceed 30,000 km of testing across the calendar year.

Pre-season testing

Testing began in Jerez on 14 January with Ferrari, McLaren, Toyota, Williams, Renault, Red Bull, Honda, Toro Rosso, Super Aguri, and Force India attending. Sessions then moved to Valencia and Barcelona through February. During the Barcelona tests on 1 February, Williams’s Kazuki Nakajima crashed his FW30, and Lewis Hamilton was subjected to racist abuse in the paddock. At the final multi-team test beginning 25 February — attended by every team except Super Aguri — Hamilton topped the timesheets ahead of both Räikkönen and Michael Schumacher’s test effort, with Toyota’s Jarno Trulli fastest on the final day.