I would just like to say that this is my first post as a “Guest”. I feel kinda special, I guess.
Makes you look taller…
The way they were going on about it during the race I was wondering if there would be a reordering of the results like after Australia. I have noticed though that the Speed commentators ramble a lot and fill in with “facts” they often have to correct shortly after they utter them. I’m sure it’s difficult to do commentary on a live sporting event without a lot of easily-identified moment-to-moment action. But you’d think with two weeks lead time they could get someone to work up a crib sheet with some relevant filler material.
I agree that it’s got to be a huge pain in the ass to fill up so much dead time, but I don’t fault their conclusions. In Belgium last year, Lewis Hamilton was given a 25-second penalty for cutting a chicane, and he even let the other driver re-pass him, just like Massa did last weekend. Massa didn’t get a 25-second penalty.
That’s because the FIA need to keep Ferrari happy. 
Nice end to today’s Q3 in Turkey. The Red Bulls look good, especially Vettel - grabbing pole at the last moment a la Button was a nice touch. Trulli didn’t look too bad either. Ferrari seemed to be trying hard, but I’m not sure they’re going to be able to keep it up through the race tomorrow. It’s going to be Brawn and Red Bull on the podium… but it might not be in the order I’d like to see.
You know, I can understand Brawn taking a commanding lead at the start of the season due to Honda’s extensive development of the 2009 car throughout 2008. I would have thought that by now the other teams would have figured out the Brawn secrets and adapted them to suit their own cars. I’m a little flummoxed by Brawn’s continued strength and wonder how they’re maintaining their strength. Notwithstanding their comfort margin is being eroded it just seems that on a smaller budget, they’re continuing to out-develop other double diffuser teams, including those that that have significantly greater budgets. Anyone care to speculate?
Also I’m surprised that the car is not carrying more sponsorship. Virgin is still a small visual presence on the car, and I noticed yesterday that the car now carries Mig sponsorship, but the vast expanses of white we see circulating at the head of the field must surely be big blank checks waiting to be cashed - why so little sponsorship, I wonder?
I think part of the reason the Brawn is so “blank” is the fact that they missed “sponsorship season” due to the Honda uncertainty. By the time they were a sure thing to make the grid in Australia, most companies with the money to spend on F1 were already committed elsewhere. Budgets for sponsors participating in F1 were set in late fall/winter 2008, so there is little “free” money around for Brawn to snap up. F1 teams have been chasing Virgin money for years. Branson came to Brawn with deal when it was apparent what a good car they had. MIG (whoever they are…) apparently did find some money…also noticed a tiny logo on the engine cover this weekend.
As Jenson said, that car is a monster…I think they found the sweet spot in the regs and no one else bar Red Bull is close to finding it. It’s more than just the double diffuser since Williams and Toyota haven’t been close on race day. The fact that Jenson is so easily outclassing Ruebens also suggest the sweet spot also serendipitously lines up with Button’s prefered driving style. Apparently the sweet spot is a lot smaller than it used to be, probably due the mandated loss of aero bits at the mid-section and rear.
Wow… the wrong ratio of Brawn to Red Bull on the podium today. I’m starting to really feel bad for Barichello.
The shit has been launched and is on its way to the fan
Could be an interesting few days ahead
Anyone want to speculate as to why the defending champ is driving like such crap this season? His rival teams figure out something his hasn’t?
This is magnificently ugly. I sure hope somebody can pull Max and Bernie’s heads out of their collective ass. A championship featuring Williams, Force India and 3 new teams isn’t going to be as exciting. I’ll watch it (mostly to see if US F1 is any good), but I’ll be watching the Rebel Series as well, to follow the “big teams.”
I must admit I’m having trouble sussing out the motivation for Max and Bernie’s pigheadedness here. Is it really just about maximizing their profits from F1? Proving they have bigger wangs than FOTA? If it’s really all about the money, the greed must be blinding them to the flames that are about to light up their cash cow. (Sorry, I know that’s a bad metaphor.)
The worst part? The disembodied talking heads on SpeedTV are going to natter on about this throughout the Silverstone GP this weekend. (And what’s the deal with abandoning Silverstone? Is it too old and in disrepair?)
The facilities at Silverstone aren’t particularly great, it’s true, but the real reason for leaving is that Bernie wants to fuck over the owners (the British Racing Drivers’ Club) for being a bunch of grandees who object to his taking pretty much all the money in the sport. It doesn’t hurt that he gets to shaft Ron Dennis and Jackie Stewart (both BRDC board members) at the same time.
His proposed replacement, Donington, is by all accounts in a far worse state of repair, and its owners are on the brink of bankruptcy; if one was really cynical, one might speculate that Bernie is deliberately driving them in that direction to pick up a track on the cheap. So no, it’s not really to do with the track or facilities at all; it is, like everything else in this stupid sport, dictated by a mindnumbing and impenetrable series of power plays.
Surprised by the breakaway announcement, to be honest; never thought it’d get this far. Still think it’s brinksmanship, but it’s brinkier brinksmanship than we’ve had in a long time. If they want to cut costs they should just stop racing altogether and televise the endless meetings and lawsuits.
Ed Gorman oversees an excellent and informative bog at The Guardian Online, and the comments associated with his most recent piece are enthusiastic and pretty much in unanimous support of FOTA.
This is about Max, and whether this becomes the stimulus for the FIA to get rid of him, well time will tell. In the meantime the prospect of racing by racers for racers is verrrrrry attractive. I thought I was the only one scratching my head at increasingly odd rule changes over the years (including no refuelling and no tire warmers next year - say, wha?)
Let’s hope for an interesting British Grand Prix and the next exciting installment of FOTA vs Max next week.
I’m not so sure it really is about Max (at least, not totally). Ecclestone is quiet at the moment, but he’s been the prime mover in the sport for longer than many can remember, and it beggars belief that he’s not calling the shots here. The budget cuts are not about concern for privateers, let alone (ha) making F1 look fwuffy and conservative in times of economic turmoil. They’re about ensuring Bernie can deliver a full grid, as he is contracted to do, and in so doing deny the teams a bargaining chip for a greater share of the sport’s revenues. Max is certainly his partner in crime, and I’m sure none of the team owners would weep at his departure, but at its root this is about money, and Ecclestone holds the purse strings.
Remarkably (because I usually find his articles terrible), Richard Williams at the Guardian has written a series of pretty perceptive articles about the whole shamozzle.
He’s right, the parallels with the Indycar split are certainly interesting. US single seater fans; would you agree with his assertion that the sport still hasn’t quite recovered from the Indycar/IRL schism?
Oooops. Ed Gorman writes for the Times Online, not the Guardian.
My bad.
:smack:
I’d let this thread run its course because, obviously, this season is no longer about the racing per se as it is about the politics – which is counter to the spirit of why it was started.
Anyway, succinctly put, the most likely/only possible outcome of all of this is a FOTA break-away series. But even if they can’t get it off the ground for next season, without them, F-1 as we know it, has been dealt a death blow.
Personally, yes, I do blame it almost solely on the little Nazi-wannabe and his soul mate, Bernie.
F-1, 1950-2009. RIP.
Bad car. Just look at it when it goes round sharp corners. He has to be very careful to avoid flat-spotting his tyres. This means he cannot go into corners quite so fast, and so exit them faster for a faster overall lap time. Why exactly it’s bad I do not know. He’s still doing way better than his team-mate.
He’ll still have to alter the 1 on his helmet to a L. 
Although I won’t claim to be an expert on the political ins and outs of either the CART/IRL or the F1/FOTA sitations, the parallels between the two are striking, and if F1 follows the same pattern, we are about to see the destruction of a great racing series.
The CART/IRL split came about because a major ego with a strong bargaining chip felt he deserved more control over the whole series. Tony George, owner of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, wanted the Indianapolis 500 to play a larger role, instead of being just another race in the series. Never mind that it was already the most famous race in the world and was the only race in the series to have a full month of preparation (as it traditionally always had had).
So he started the Indy Racing League in 1996, which was intended to be an oval-only series with mostly American drivers, in which the Indy 500 would be the season finale. Since it wasn’t moved from its traditional date at the end of May, this meant that the new season started in June, ran into the fall, then restarted the next spring. (IIRC, this ridiculous arrangement was dropped after a couple of years.)
For the first few years, the IRL paddock consisted entirely of lesser lights and wannabes, and the season included only a handful of races. IMHO, the winners of the Indianapolis 500 in the mid to late 1990s should have asterisks by their names: their wins don’t have the same meaning as those before or since, since those fields were significantly less talented on average.
In contrast, CART before the split had been arguably the greatest racing series around: top talent running highly competitive and exciting races at some of the greatest tracks in the world. Unlike F1 then or now, in CART’s golden age (late 1980s-1996) most teams were very evenly matched, and any of a dozen different drivers could win any given race. It was the greatest.
After the split, CART (which was renamed Champ Car World Series) continued for a few years to offer much better racing than IRL, but the lure of Indy led several teams to defect, at first just for the 500, but later for the whole season. The problem was that the split fan base wasn’t as attractive to sponsors on either side, and many sponsors preferred the high profile of the Indianapolis 500, the only event that attracted a significant number of non-race fans.
But there really weren’t enough sponsors or dollars for either series to do well, and as a result the television deals worsened. Pre-split, almost all CART races were broadcast on network TV or EPSN. After, only a handful were, and over time the coverage got worse and worse. Champ Car fell from coverage on Speed to the Spike network in the last few years.
So the balance of power shifted to the IRL, which in its last few years had the better drivers and better tracks, including many of the road courses and street circuits that Tony George had originally rejected.
After years of talk about a reunification, finally it happened last year as the remains of Champ Car were on the verge of falling apart. The IndyCar Series as it exists now is virtually the same configuration in most particulars as CART was in 1995.
So what did the decade-long split accomplish? Nothing, except to destroy one of the greatest racing series that ever existed, allow NASCAR to become the pre-eminent racing brand in North America, and deprive fans of the best open-wheel racing for more than ten years. The quality of the series now is slightly worse than it was before the split, and any progress North American open-wheel racing could have made over the past decade – better talent, better technology, better TV coverage, larger fan base – has been squandered for no good reason, just to satisfy the ego of Tony George.
I suspect something similar could be the future of Formula One. It’s a shame.
As for the current state of open wheel in the US, note Danica Patrick (who besides Helio Castroneves, is the only open-wheeler with any real name recognition anymore) stating recently, roughly, that “winning any NASCAR race is as big as winning the Indy 500”. She’s in a contract year, and may very well end up in NASCAR in 2010, depriving the IRL of its biggest sponsor paycheck and name.
As the Speed announce team mentioned this morning, FIA can wield some pretty massive hammers at FOTA (banning any track that hosts a FOTA event from hosting FIA events (they run more than just F1)/participating drivers may be deprived of their superlicenses, etc.). This is far uglier than IRL/CART in 96 in my book and may devolve into “nuclear war” real quick lest someone comes to their senses.