F1 links: Hamilton wins Dick Seaman award

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Brown presents Hamilton with award

"On top of earning two BRDC Gold Stars, Hamilton was handed one of them – the Richard Seaman Trophy – by Brown." Richard Seaman raced for Mercedes in the 1930s and yes, he was also called 'Dick'…

Autosport Awards News: Int. Racing Driver: Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton has been named International Racing Driver of the Year at the Autosport Awards in London.

Q&A with Toyota’s John Howett

Howett: "We will have to make less resource go much further and I predict that the motorsport supply base will be the hardest hit as teams do less and in-source much more."

Are big F1 salaries for the chop?

Frank Williams: “Drivers’ salaries are the one major snag, an area not addressed in the teams’ unified decision to reduce spending. If McLaren don’t want to pay Hamilton £15m, then someone else will. Any suggestion of a gentleman’s agreement on this would never happen.”

Is this the end of the road for the auto industry?

"Honda’s chief executive, Takeo Fukui, was forced to give up his $500 million-a-year crusade to win a Formula One Championship, and put the company’s team, based in Brackley, Northants, up for sale. This was the initiative on which he had staked his reputation, delaying the launch of the NSX sports car and ignoring a warning from his predecessor (a former F1 mechanic) to steer clear of the sport."

Honda’s withdrawal in context

"When you consider that the 2008 season was originally destined to contain 24 entries, F1 has essentially lost a quarter of its teams in a matter of months. Formula 1 is beginning to look like a shadow of its former self."

Red Bull and Formula 1

"A little housekeeping makes total sense, but pulling out of F1 after all the investment that has been made is illogical." Why did that logic not apply to Honda?

Why so negative Mr President?

"FIA President Max Mosley is reported to have said that he suspected that a manufacturer would leave Formula 1 – and that he was surprised that it turned out to be Honda. He has also said that he thinks it will be difficult for Honda to sell the team. All this is rather negative and it is not going to help the situation. Surely it would be better to be positive and to look at the fact that Honda is a brilliant bargain for a car manufacturer that is in less trouble than some of the others, particularly if the plan is for major cost-cutting in the future."

Lenovo to McLaren

"Lenovo will announce tomorrow that it is to sponsor the McLaren team next year. The company has been involved with Williams in recent years, but decided not to continue the arrangement." Lenovo saw a 78% fall in profits in the second quarter of this year: https://www.racefans.net/2008/11/08/f1-sponsors-hit-by-global-recession/

Williams’s Parr expects another team to go

Williams' Adam Parr: "I believe that we probably will lose another team before the beginning of next season and there is a very high chance it will be a manufacturer." Anyone think he's talking about Toyota?

Ferrari denies sales crisis

"Global sales at the Italian supercar maker have dived from almost 600 a month to just 92 cars in November and Ferrari is now negotiating with Italy’s trade unions to trim unwanted road-car production staff."

These are articles I’ve found and bookmarked using Delicious. View my Delicious profile to see what else I’m reading and recommend other links to me.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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7 comments on “F1 links: Hamilton wins Dick Seaman award”

  1. Sir Frank Williams: “If McLaren don’t want to pay Hamilton £15m, then someone else will. Any suggestion of a gentleman’s agreement on this would never happen.”

    Surely the drivers care enough about the sport to take a short term pay cut ?

    Sorry, just realised what I was saying…

  2. On pay for the top half dozen drivers…..

    Considering they seem to be the only ones capable of getting the last 1/100’s of a second out of the top cars they probably are being compensated very correctly. Without them the car may do well, but it won’t win. So, what is winning worth to Ferrari or McLaren?

    Also, for most fans the drivers are the first focus of attention, so for the teams they become a vehicle for commercial exposure & identification, especially away from the track…as we see from this article about Hamilton’s award.

    Also, considering that F1 is the world pinnacle of racing, apologies to the Mashcar Set, and the limited length of a drivers productive years, pay is certainly not excessive.

    Any drastic cost reductions should be found elsewhere.

  3. As I’ve discussed on another thread today, I don’t think capping expenditure on anything is ever going to work – driver salaries, team budgets, whatever. There are so many ways to get around that king of thing.

  4. Its been a while since the season ended and Hamilton fever has yet to die down. I don’t know why everyone’s jumping up and down about his win, he won, thats that. But little to people realize its not that big a deal and that its been done before. Remember the once heroic Jacques Villenueve?

    What Jacques did in 97 is exactly the same as Lewis’s 08, won it in sophomore year, albeit being a couple years older. But if you look at the stats, Jacques was a lot more dominant in winning the championship when compared to Lewis. In 97, Jacques had 10 Poles, 3 Fastest Laps and 7 Wins (1 podium) whereas Lewis in 08, 7 Poles, 1 Fastest Lap and 5 Wins (3 podiums). You have to keep in mind, that in 97, Villenueve was fending off 3 other teams with serious pace. There Ferraris of Schumacher and Irvine weren’t quite finished article, but were racey. MacLaren had the car and drivers to win, they proved so in the following two seasons. Bennetton had the class of Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi, so it was a pretty competitive field with a double world champion and a defending one also on the grid. 6 different drivers won races that year.

    In 08, it was pretty much the same as 97, but less teams with real proper race pace throughout. Yes, 7 different drivers won the championship, but that probably down to the inconsistency of the front-runners and some astute mid season developments from the likes of Renault. So yes, Hamilton is the youngest world champion, great, but from a statistical perspective, it was hardly mind blowing. There isn’t much to shout about the current field fo drivers as compared to the likes that line up in 97. Apart from Massa, Kubica, and an early season Kimi, there wasn’t anyone else with genuine race pace but that is subject to change in future. Keep in mind that Schumi, Hakkinen, Coulthard, Frentzen, Berger had good race winning speed in 97.

    I honestly don’t see why this win is such a big deal if it wasn’t for his age. If Vettel wins the championship in another 2 years, what will we be singing then? Hamilton has already become the greatest motor racing driver after one world title, thats the world we live in today. I would imagine certain quarters back in 97 would have echoed similar sentiments on the matter of Villenueve, but look what happened to him. It may have been a combination of cockiness, bad management and greed, but you also have to consider the fact that Renault pulled out and he a pretty “****” car at best in 98. So anything can happen to Lewis.

    Anyway, what are the chance that Lewis will be racing trucks in 2019? I suspect that Brand Hamilton will market it well enough to make it a hit!

  5. Sir Frank, as I understood it then, refused to pay a certain Damon Hill an increased salary after becoming World Champion, so he probably gets emotional thinking about what he would have to pay young Lewis…….
    I agree with the comments about Mad Max, I suspect he was expecting his least fravourite teams to hit the finacial crisis first, and save him the trouble of setting up more biased stewards next year, but since he doesn’t know anything about racing, or has forgotten it all, he’s been left high and dry.
    And what were we saying about the Red Cars? No road car sales means no profit, which means the team is more dependable on FIAT and the government, who will want more results for their money.
    Any problems at Renault too?

  6. Dick Seaman award? LOL

  7. Dane – Glad at least one other person is as low-brow as me :-)

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