F1 Fanatic

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Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Crunch Time For Brendon Hartley (Motor Sport Musings)

“Brendon Hartley still remains as the only Kiwi with the best shot at making a go of it in Formula 1, and this year could be make or break for the 21-year-old if he wants to realise his ambitions.”

Rely on the Red Bulls for a title tilt (The National)

Johnny Herbert on the decision to give Lewis Hamilton the black-and-white flag during the Malaysian Grand Prix – seems it wasn’t his call after all:

“Lewis Hamilton did well and had every right to be pleased with sixth. He did get a warning for dangerous driving, which I thought was interesting. I was on the board of race stewards in Malaysia as the drivers’ representative, but the decision to warn Hamilton did not come from us, it came from Charlie Whiting, the race director.

“The incident where he wove down the start-finish straight in front of the Renault of Vitaly Petrov divided opinion. In my view it would only have been dangerous or become an issue if Petrov had made a move and tried to overtake Lewis.

“But he didn’t and he followed Lewis from one side of the track to the other and made no attempt to pass him. It was a strange bit of driving and I think it got a reaction as we have not seen that kind of driving for a long time.

“As I said, I do not think there was anything wrong with it, but if it was an attempt to break the tow from his car to Petrov’s then it was unusual.”

Veyron Top Gear race faked? (Wheels 24)

Ron Dennis isn’t impressed by the Bugatti Veyron and suggests the ‘race’ between it and a McLaren F1 was rigged: “When we did the race in Abu Dhabi, we beat it off the line so many times that the film crew was getting frustrated because the outcome was supposed to be for the Bugatti to win. So we had to do that whole thing about ten times before it managed to get off the line cleanly and catch us up. Because every time they dropped the clutch it bogged down and we were gone.”

Update: Original source for the above article: Arabian Business

Comment of the day

Macahan isn’t convinced F1 keeps going to China because of its importance as a market for cars:

Considering that North America wasn’t “important” enough for FIA/FOM to keep on the calendar a few years back and this is a place that is huge in form of car sales and sponsors (Intel, AMD, HP, UST Global, Mobile 1, CNN, Texaco, Clear, Reuters, AT&T, 7-Eleven) to rack up what current and very recent past sponsors that have North American HQ that I can think of. So to me it just say that FIA/FOM don’t care where the races are based on where the sponsors are located or the markets the sponsors are interested in. Looking from Car manufactures consider that up until 09 US was the biggest Car market in the world and now surpassed by China this doesn’t seem to bare into account either.

If sponsor/car mfg sales location and interest would really be taken into account by FIA/FOM you wouldn’t expect to see North America to been completely without a race in 2009, and only 1 race in 08 and 10 (in Canada). You would think they would done anything and everything to ensure there was at least 1, 2 if not actually 3 races there.

So why would China count from sponsor deals, car manufacturer interest or general sponsor interest? Bernie does what Bernie wants and put races where he can suck money out of local government and organisers without heed to sponsor interest nor fans or else why do we still have Turkey on the calendar? And soon Korea when big China can’t even fill their grandstands.
Macahan

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Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to cmcgato!

On this day in F1

I say it at least once a week, but if only more F1 drivers were as frank as Mark Webber. He had this to say on this day in 2008 about the talents of Nelson Piquet Jnr and Kazuki Nakajima:

We have two drivers. Williams and Renault have only one.
Mark Webber

Two years later, neither of them are in F1 any more…