We're racing towards some new F1 action, with a launch and some testing due next week. Until then, we can bathe in the relative silence of a weekend, that is, until the live show begins later tonight.
- Yesterday, the GPDA stepped into the superlicence battle, by issuing a statement in response to Max. Will it make any difference though, and can Max's high prices really be overturned?
- I've been adding some tables to the wiki, mostly to experiment with the table facilities, so you can now check out the upcoming battles in the Character Cup, or have a look at who's doing well in the Podcast Guesses game. (Another one of those coming up later today!)
- Also on the wiki, we're still looking for you guys to sign up to the Sidepodmap. It's easy to do, just stick a pin in your location, and we can take a look at how beautifully global we really are.
- And my final wiki page to plug is the Flickr page. If you've got some pictures stashed away on the photo sharing site and would like us all to have a look, then please feel free to add yourself to the Wiki. We've got three already, but that's including us, so really only two.
Like I said, there'll be a live show arriving later today, although I can't give you a time just yet. Until then, I'll see you in the comments.
Afternoon all, just heard the best news all week that my game is off! So now I can watch the Spurs v Arsenal game.
It surprises me they called it off an hour before I was supposed to be their.
Well that's the RLB IndyCar season done for me. Final race at Laguna Seca just took place and despite starting 18th still managed to fight all the way up to 5th. I end the season 7th on 94 points with the win at Cleveland and the 2nd place at Nazareth as my best finishes. I'm staying on at AGR for next season so fingers crossed with the better package we'll have, we can win the championship. :)
No Bernie! That's the good one!
Arrrrgh.
I hope its still a precedent that he relises these tracks just aint working.
I'm about 1/3 to halfway through the Mind of the Racing Driver book. One thing which I found quite amusing was when Christopher Hilton, the author, was talking to Julian Bailey about trying to find money to get a drive. Julian and his brother ran a pub together and when he went to Ken Tyrrell he told him "If I get you £500,000 then could I drive for you?" Ken replied "No-one in Britian has that kind of money right now!" But Julian went ahead and got a total of £200,000 from sponsors. But to make up the rest he had to look elsewhere. So he and his brother both agreed to sell the pub which would get him £300k. But Ken wouldn't take his money and that all of it had to come from sponsorship, so instead he did a really crafty thing. His sponsor, Cavendish Finance made an agreement to buy his pub, so in effect the money would be coming from them instead of Julian himself. Ken was none the wiser and Bailey drove for them in F1!
Now you don't see that happening these days, do you?!
Ooh, I signed up for e-mails from Mike Garth and he's just sent one with a link to your show with Mark Webber in it :)
Nice story Scott.
Why the hell does Abu Dhabi have an underground pitlane exit? And the grandstands are <i>above</i> the safety fencing, that's just asking for trouble.
heh... awesome.
go mike!
but turkey's the only decent thing tilke has ever designed?
I find its only really one corner thats decent.
i like the elevation changes too. how is it that valencia stays and turkey doesn't?
Valencia has a contract till the end of the universe, it'll cost a bit to get out of it probably.
it's because bernie is blind as well as forgetfull ;)
:D
this is new information right?
"A new bid to bring an American team into Formula 1 in 2010 is set to be officially launched within the next month."
"The official launch of USF1 will take place on American broadcaster SPEED TV, for whom Windsor commentates, in late February or early March."
http://www.itv-f1.com/News_Article.aspx?id=45068
Random comment before I go to bed:
Doohickey has been up for 3 days and 4 hours. Safari. Mac. Nuff said.
Hopefully I can get up early enough for live show.
cheers jeremy :)
In his opinion all the new tracks are working, providing he gets paid his millions.
maybe he's trying to prove to his wife he'll spend more time at home in future?
What time is the show tonight?
I guess that means he is putting the price up. Now Turkey will really learn what it is like to get stuffed.
I think even Tilke was getting bored with his own designs
D'oh! That's a good one!
I guess Peter Windsor asked Stuart not to say anything and so we got the non-denial denial. Either that or this is bull.
I couldn't help myself.
probs after 7pm when the first poll of round 2 goes up. at a stretch i'd imagine the thread will open 7:15pm and we'll be live about 20mins after that.
anyone up for some quick calls? would be interested to hear from rg / anyone re: the croft debacle. not really f1 related, but it's the kind of thing that might stuff donny / s'stone in the future.
I'd be happy to come on and talk about Croft.
I am always available for a call.
How was the Spurs match?
0-0, shoulda won, by miles the better team. Eboue got sent off for Arsenal as well.
cheers guys :)
The last round of BATracer in half an hour. :)
It's just qualifying Dom. I'm aiming for top 5 finish here.
Just a thought: how can it be cheaper for a US-based team to compete in F1 vs. a European-based team?
The race-by-race logistics alone drives up costs massively. While production may be cheaper (and even then, not by much in the first few years at least), recruiting people to move Stateside will be VERY difficult.
Oh...
i don't believe a word of it. whatever their reasons for doing this, low costs aren't one of them.
anonymity, independence and sheer bloodymindedness would all be valid reasoning, but not price.
so why is most of the F1 press reporting it? surely they wouldn't report it if they thought it had no chance? they are taking it seriously.
makes super aguri seem totally pragmatic compared to them.
There's more to this than meets the eye. Could USF1 just be a team that hires someone such as Penske/Lola/Dallara/Panoz to make the actual car?
i think USF1 believe they can make it happen.
the question no-ones really answered thus far, is who's going to drive for the team? steven suggested bourdais, but an all american team needs at least one american driver.
Marco Andretti and... hmm... can't think of anyone else. Surely not Scott Speed or Danica?
easily. and with standard engine / gearing and kers there's not much else to put together. they have a windtunnel. with they be anything except last though?
experience and marketing value. could happen...
...
god help us all.
Can you say: Marco Andretti?
He WILL have a crack at F1: even if Michael says no, grandpa Mario will get his way. And Marco wants it too: why else would you think he'd be driving their US A1GP car for free?
A 2nd driver COULD be Danica Patrick, but I'm betting they will go for a more conservative choice: maybe a Dario Franchitti.
I don't think such a team would have too many people move to the USA. There are a lot of good people there and they could have a satellite operation in the UK for any skills that are hard to find locally.
You can say that again.
I remember reading an interview with Scott Speed that he wasn't intrested in Formula 1 anymore and found it more exciting in NASCAR.
Grandprix.com have some news on the USF1 project:
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns21164.html
They will have a Spanish base, it's rumored, but if those specialist skills stay in Europe, then I don't think their Charlotte base would amount to much.
A danger for them to avoid: the John Barnard Ferrari setup (the one from 1992-1996). Car construction in Maranello, car design in England. Here, the distance may get even farther, and that could cause more trouble.
ooh:
"If Haas is the man behind the project then it can be taken seriously."
"According to stories we have heard the plan is to design and build the cars in Charlotte, with a European base being established at Epsilon Euskadi, in the town of Azkoitia, near Bilbao, in Spain."
seems like an utterly random location??
Afternoon all!
While the American car industry is in the toilet one of the American car companies has continued to make money...
Name begins with an F?
Or have they had enough?
works okay for STR now though doesn't it?
Exactly. Why not just base the team at Epsilon Euskadi's HQ?
Home of a racing team it seems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epsilon_Euskadi
I would have thought after the Jaguar affair that they would have had enough...
I wouldn't be so sure. The guy just got caught evading taxes, for crying out loud!
it's RBR, not STR, that drives the car's design - and they're both in Milton Keynes. so that's a completely different banana.
Not a bad one either....
FTA: According to stories we have heard the plan is to design and build the cars in Charlotte, with a European base being established at Epsilon Euskadi, in the town of Azkoitia, near Bilbao, in Spain. This is run by Joan Villadelprat who worked for McLaren, Ferrari, Benetton, Tyrrell and Prost during a long F1 career. His chief engineer is Sergio Rinland, another F1 veteran, who worked at RAM, Williams, Brabham, Dallara, Benetton and Sauber in the course of his career. Epsilon Euskadi already has impressive manufacturing capabilities and builds its own LMP1 sports car.
Sounds like a decent idea to me.
Ford coming back? No way, man. It would be miles wiser for them to invest in NASCAR at this point.
Not if that is where they get access to heavyweights like Villadelprat and Rinland.
Because you can't sell it as American to the sponsors and the public.
What about Force India?
who are?
rbr design the car in the uk, and str build / buy in the parts in italy. str are not the uk at all.
There is something about All American that really needs to be All American I'd say.
There used to be an Epsilon Euskadi team in some round the world yacht race. I wonder what the connection is.
new names to me, important guys?
Oooh Valencia?
yup, so they have to base SOMETHING in Charlotte to give it that semblance of 'Buy America'. But it just cause them more problems, methinks.
Different mindset: Americans are much more confident of keeping things at home, so to speak. Also, FI is the child of a different era, where it's more important to stay in Europe when constructing your car.
RBR and Red Bull Tech. :D Sorry for that.
They own Epsilon Euskadi and presumably have a wealth of experience
No silly, it's carbon fibre!
last year there were rumours toyota and renault were shipping their chassis over to the windshear tunnel, because it was bigger and better than anything else in the world.
that is the "something".
Villadelprat was one of the guys behind Schumacher at Benetton. Could have been team manager or something similar. I was really surprised when he didn't go to Ferrari with the rest because he was important as the others.
Sergio Rinland is a designer with a few F1 cars to his name
Villadelprat was the Benetton team manager in their halycon days with Michael Schumacher.
Sergio Rinland was a leading car designer in the late 90s and early 2000s, most notable for developing the twin keel, predecessor of the current zero keel. The twin keel helped Sauber to their best ever season in 2001, helping a certain Kimi Raikkonen move up...
there has to be a reason why it didn't come true, and it probably relates to cost.
and these are manufacturers! how can an independent team fund this?
fyi, from brad last summer:
"Someone I know in Concorde, North Carolina just informed me that they had seen last week a whole lot of people wearing Renault F1 uniforms staying at a local hotel near the Windshear Wind Tunnel. This would seem to suggest that the Renault F1 team is using the wind tunnel to develop its Formula One car."
http://formula1.about.com/b/2008/07/04/renault-using-wind-tunnel-in-united-states.htm
I am sure Honda used it because at one point last year they were running in 4 separate tunnels.
Is the windshear tunnel the one that can run with 6 full scale NASCAR cars line astern?
Nigel Stepney seemed to be doing a good enough job at Ferrari. And Villadelprat seemed to be closer to Pat Symonds than Ross Brawn.
k, cheers.
scratch what i said then. still, how can an independent team fund this on a regular basis?
Stepney was chief mechanic at both teams and worked for Villadelprat. They really had different jobs. I thought both Villadelprat and Symonds would have gone to Ferrari. Of the people who didn't make the move they were the two stand out names.
x10 bigger than european tunnels. so probably.
racecar engineering did a piece on it recently, i try and did it out.
He can do that?! I'm surprised he was even allowed.
Not at the same time!
I wonder if Piquet's straight line running was to get info to calibrate the Windshear tunnel results?
beats me. if i were thinking of starting a team, i'd wait until max makes the cost cutting proposals happen, rather than when he simply says they will happen.
He wouldn't even need to send text messages to himself ;)
although, he managed it in '07 :)
Haha! Oops. Still, Stepney moved to Ferrari early - he moved in 1993, before Schumi won a title.
BATracer qually done
:D
:D
:D
Ah, cheeky! :D :P
Now may be a very good time to be negotiating with Bernie. I would bet he would love to get a new team in especially if it was from a new market and would be prepared to do a special deal just to counteract the Honda publicity and the constant reduction of the grid.
Unfortunately, it isn't Bernie setting the rules - it's Max. And given that they both seem to go with the flow, just because negotiations are doing well now doesn't mean they won't do a 180 later and screw you.
3rd in Q1
2nd in Q2
10th in Q3 due to mechanical problems.
That game hates me
blimey, well done R.G!
That's begging for a joke about Max...
Don't. Just... don't. :P
It's taken me 16 races to perfect it, watch me crash into Luke at the first corner.
I think there is as far as jokes about Max go on here there's something of a gag order.
Ahem.
I think we're bound not say anything here...
I think my car is too slow to even get near you, I'll ber honest, I was expecting 10th or so for quali. I've no idea how I'm on the front row.
I hope that doesn't get anyone's Attention!
:(
Quick Gavin... You've been rumbled.
*whistles*
:D
I am almost certain who set me up. I'll tell you in a few years when I can make the most of it...
:)
Well done indeed, though considering your track record I can understand if you're a bit apprehensive :P
The BMW is technically the fastest car, according to the car comparision page ;)
Having looked at the draw for the character cup I predict a Rosberg Vettel final.
Does anyone feel like setting up the 1986 F1 BAT game? I can't at the moment because this one hasn't finished.
Oh by the way - baggsie Williams :D
Be patient till this one ends for sure. Give it a few days or so.
Well this game ends tomorrow, so when it finishes I can set the 86 game up straight away.
no more BATracer games for me for a while sadly. They are great fun, but they do take up a lot of time and i have so much work atm that work has to be my priority. Otherwise i may just have a little bit of a break down. which wouldn't be good cause i'd prob miss the start of the new season ;)
Personally, I'd like to wait a few days before stepping into another BATracer game.
Or in essence what lou said, how long will the 86 season last?
32 days. 4 less than this game has.
Probably be just about alright. But nothing after that definatly as it gets 'busy' school wise then on.
I'm assuming Christine and Mr C will be absent from the grid this time given their lack of motivation to run Super Aguri this season :P
The Minardi passion would inspire him!
I feel I might have to give this one a miss too. I enjoyed it, but was I was very remiss at the start and I am not a very good team mate so I think it's probably fairer to step aside.
There were a few French drivers around in 1986
No problem. To be honest, we don't need a full grid. As long as all the teams entered make sure they're all full, we can go with at least 10.
I'm not sure if Christine is attracted to Prost, Arnoux, Laffite, Alliot, Tambay or Streiff at all ;)
I'm just thinking - if some people want to go to teams that are linked with those they support right now, they'll have to look at engine suppliers, so Lou should be in a Williams due to the Honda engines, RG could be in a Brabham, Benetton or Arrows a la BMW engines, anyone who supports Renault can could go to Lotus, Tyrrell or Ligier.
I'm Facebook friends with Tambay and Jarier :-)
But I wanna be Minardi.
Yes! I should go with the team I support! I very much agree.
Make your mind up! You can't have both.
I support Sauber not BMW if that makes sense.
not a lack of motivation... too freakin' much to do.
sorry.
Well I always relate one team to those it kinda took the place off when they left the grid. So for Sauber, you could go Brabham since they left F1 in 1992 and Sauber came in for 1993. But it's up to you at the end of the day.
Well I would like to be Williams as 1986 was the year I became a Williams supporter. Failing that, I'll take the Ferrari :-)
For me this is how I relate teams in terms of who took the place of who:
Ferrari (never replaced)
McLaren (never replaced)
Williams (never replaced)
Lotus - Forti - Stewart - Jaguar - Red Bull
Brabham - Sauber - BMW
Tyrrell - BAR - Honda
Ligier - Prost - Toyota
Benetton - Renault
Arrows - Super Aguri
Minardi - Toro Rosso
All the rest I'm working on. I know there's a link for Force India in terms of one team quitting at the end of 1990 for Jordan to take their place.
Fancy teamming up at Williams then? ;)
Heck yeah :-D
I was always a Lotus fan so if one of those is available I will have it.
Take your pick, Onyx most likely
Are you suggesting that it is as if Toro Rosso have inherited some of the genetic characteristics of the Minardi team and that these characteristics are traveling within the return pipes from the arterial system?
Shotgun Lotus!
You might as well start it as soon as this one ends because we'll have to wait a few days to get enough people. It'll definatley be nice to have a break though! ;)
Replace "school" with "university" and its my sentiments exactly.
I was gonna choose Williams 'cos of the Honda connection.
Guess it'll be a popular choice though... ;)
:D
What gave you that idea? ;)
Basically I linked the two on the simple basis that Minardi ended in 2005 and Toro Rosso took them over for 2006. :P
Hi all, is there an ETA for the live show tonight?
Well I've got one seat at Williams via the global law of Baggsie, so whoever wants the second seat can have it. I think Gavin was first to ask about it so he might be in there.
Shouldn't it be like....now?
Mr C said at 7:15
i think 'me' said 7:15 for opening the thread, and then about 20 mins later the show will start..
So that says 7:35, so in theory we're looking at say...8pm start?
His very words:
I voted for Rosberg on the basis that he comes across better on TV. Kubica moans too much.
8pm ish It's sidepodtime
Yeah Kubica is a bit of a moaner. Hmmm... This one is trouble.
Current "SPC 1986 Thoroughbred F1 Series" Lineups:
Williams - Scott Woodwiss/Gavin Brown
Lotus - Steven Roy/Selidor
Minardi - R.G?
So that's 5 seats taken, 23 to go?
yeah i voted for Rosberg too, for the reasons you state plus Kubica always seems a little bored, he prob isn't, he just never seems happy. Plus Rosberg can speak loads of languages :)
If I was Kubica I would have moaned my a*** off. BMW could have given him a winning car last year and he was right to keep complaining that they weren't developing it...
the question no-ones really answered thus far, is who’s going to drive for the team? {me - comment #40}
That's probably the easiest question to answer. 2010 is going to be quite the year for driver changeovers, so there could be any number of people on the market. Not to mention the people in American series who may or may not be tempted. There are more pressing problems like engine supply and funding to sort out first.
What about Force India? {Gavin Brown - comment #61}
They get away with it largely because of India's low prior involvement in F1 and because India doesn't have quite the same culture of doing everything in-house as the USA does. American people expect an American team to be predominantly American, not just have an American boss and America-orientated PR.
For the 1986 to 2009 transitions, I'd go for:
McLaren -> McLaren
Tyrrell -> BAR -> Honda -> ex-Honda
Williams -> Williams
Motor Racing Developments -> Brabham ->| Sauber -> BMW
Lotus -> extinct
Zakspeed ->|; Onyx ->| Jordan -> Midland -> Spyker -> Force India
Haas (Lola) ->| Simtek -> extinct
Arrows -> Footwork -> Arrows - extinct
Benetton -> Renault
Osella ->| Fondmetal ->| Larrouse ->| Forti ->| Stewart -> Jaguar -> Red Bull
Minardi -> Toro Rosso
Ligier -> Prost -> extinct
Ferrari -> Ferrari
AGS ->| Venturi -> extinct
Note: -> represents a change of name for the same race entry, ->| represents a different race entry
There is a gap of about 8 years between Haas Lola and Simtek