F1 Fanatic round-up: 29/5/2010

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The start of final practice for the Turkish Grand Prix is nine hours away so make sure you enter your race predictions here before then.

Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Ecclestone sees long-term future for Turkish GP (Reuters)

“It’s not good but you’ve got to remember that if you’d have come here 10 years ago and said to somebody ‘Formula One’, they wouldn’t have known what you were talking about. “It takes a long time to get into, for people to start to understand.”

Texas will build the track we want – Bernie Ecclestone (BBC)

“They’re prepared to build exactly the sort of circuit we want… We’ve managed without an race in the US, but that part of the world is important. There is an awful lot of sport in America and we’re there for one race, NASCAR has 35 races.”

Danica Patrick: ‘I’ve stopped driving my Lamborghini to dinner…’ (The Independent)

“I’d never say never, and Formula One I imagine would be amazing, but having fun is important to me and I think the environment of F1 is a little bit cold. You don’t see drivers hanging out together. Takuma Sato came to IndyCar [from F1] and he was, like, ‘Everyone’s so nice here’.”

Comment of the day

You’ll hear no disagreement from me on this point from Praveen Titus:

In present day Formula 1 it seems there is an unwritten rule that in the name of propriety things should be kept boring. They don’t even let drivers celebrate with their flag on the podium. Look at MotoGP to see how the winner celebrates. But in F1, all the winner does is stand on the car, shake his fists and go to the podium (yeah, I know, what else should he do?).

I wish drivers could park their car somewhere on the victory lap, get out of it, celebrate before the crowds and then drive back to parc ferme!
Praveen Titus

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Hughes and Chris!

On this day in F1

Lotus scored their first world championship win on this day 50 years ago – though it was a car entered by privateer Rob Walker for Stirling Moss that took the spoils, and not the Team Lotus-run cars.

Moss took the lead early on but was passed by Jack Brabham after a rain shower hit the track. But Brabham crashed at Sainte Devote a few laps later, letting Moss back into the lead.

He lost the lead again after pitting to to have an engine problem seen to. Back on the track he quickly caught and passed Jo Bonnier’s BRM to re-take the lead a second time, and stayed ahead until the chequered flag fell.

Here’s some early silent footage from the race in which you can see Moss and his car:

Author information

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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26 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 29/5/2010”

  1. Bernie says they’ll build the track that they want… but is that what the fans might want? Hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be a Valencia styled permanent circuit.

    I think it might be in their best interest to have some drivers give input on track designs and corner suggestions, while trying to stay within the rules set by the FIA.

  2. bernie- ‘It takes a long time to get into’

    well it’s been a long time and people still haven’t got into it (in turkey). don’t you think it’s time to give it up?

  3. I quite like the idea that F1 will expand it’s calender in the future up to 24 races by 2012-2013. I think the French Gp will be back on the calender sometime in the future, Russia will definitely make it there. India is already fixed. but why isn’t there any new European GP added on the calender in the last seven years?? Imola, Austria, Portugal should be good venues to add on the calender.

    What do you people think?

    Is there any people from India Or other part of the world planning to go in the Indian GP in 2011?

    1. I’ll be attending the Indian GP… but it’s still so far away… never know where I’ll be then

    2. UneedAFinn2Win
      29th May 2010, 10:38

      24 races sounds good, now if we could spread them out a little, say 12 between February and July and 12 between August and December. That’d give 6-7 weeks off for teams twice a year and for us fans, no mid-winter drought!

  4. SpeedTV had a 20-25 minute special about the USGP during F1 Debrief tonight.

    Speaking directly with the voice behind Formula 1 here in the states, Bob Varsha, was the man behind everything, Tavo Hellund, CEO of Full Throttle Productions. Disappointingly he had next to no answers when asked directly about land, about funding, about the facility itself, or even a date for the event. He was confronted about how disappointed US fans have been over the past decade losing our lone driver, our GP, and this year, with loss of the prospect of a home based team; but his answers were so vague and ambiguous they did little to instill confidence.

    He did immediately mention Herman Tilke, whom they’d been talking to about track design “since the demise of Indianapolis”. He mentioned planning for multiple corner views from the grandstands, elevation changes, “high speed stretches” and a more “European”-designed circuit (whatever that means).

    If they’ve been working on this plan for several years, which is how it sounded when he talked about working on it since the loss of the last version of the USGP, then how could there be so few details. Even more worryingly, if it’s taken them two to three years to figure out what little they have now, how could they possibly design, build, plan and sell a “$400 million dollar facility” in less than two years.

    1. His main answer was along the lines of “If Bernie says it’s OK, we must be doing it right”.

      He did promise corners that would demand a lot of commitment from the drivers. I wonder what that will mean, if anything.

    2. Oh, and he promised a ‘formal launch’ of the US GP soon. That might give us some details and a better idea of the event’s chances of seeing the light of day.

    3. I’m starting to get a bad feeling about this USGP.

      1) Full Throttle Production’s website looks like it is a middle-schooler’s class project. If they can’t promote themselves, how are they going to promote F1?

      2) The only past events I could find that FTP actually ran were some races in a regional NASCAR feeder series. How are they going to function on the world stage?

      3) Where is the money coming from? People are saying the Texas Event Trust Fund. But in the past 6 years it has spent a grand total of $53 million. It would have to spend a decade’s budget on only one event to pay for part of the construction, and that obviously won’t happen.

      We know from recent events (Donington, USF1) that the Lords of F1 aren’t exactly doing due diligence for new participants in the sport. I get the feeling that the same thing is going on with the USGP in Austin.

      1. So USGP is resembling USF1?

        makes sense, I think, the modern solution to funding, is to announce an event or team, and then try to find the funding, no one will fund something that isn’t guaranteed to happen, so it’s not entirely the organisers fault. Because to get the funding they have to announce that it WILL happen.

        Unfortunately this system doesn’t always work, and as people are now cottoning onto this, the whole system looks to be falling apart around their ankles.

      2. Texas state has committed to $25M/yr. Obviously not enough but they wrote a letter to that effect in April.
        More info here:
        http://www.statesman.com/news/local/formula-one-promoter-promises-austin-track-will-be-715886.html?srcTrk=RTR_504016

    4. This only furthers my view that the entire announcement is just a straw man bid orchestrated by Bernie to placate his investors, the teams and US F1 fans – while pressuring those who he has been negotiating with on other USGP ideas.

      The F1 economic model simply doesn’t fly in the USA, because that isn’t how sport works here. It is easy to sell a Gran Prix to a wealthy Gulf nation that is trying to re-invent itself as a tourist destination since the wells are running dry, but it is near impossible to have a US government subsidies a Grand Prix – it would be unfathomable.

      Bernie is up to his tricks again, and he is running the same playbook he used in Europe, the Middle East and Asia – the difference this time is that he is in way over his head with the US market and it will come back to bite him.

      I lay 5-1 that this Grand Prix won’t happen as outlined in the announcement. Actually, make that 10-1.

      1. I’d agree that I don’t think that this grand prix won’t happen, I’d personally put it nearer 50 to 1, but I think you are wrong in saying that the US market and it will come back to bite Bernie. That’s not the way he works at all, his deals have always been very one sided and this is no exception. If the Texas GP goes ahead he makes loads of money…. if it doesn’t ……. so what? There is always another GP venue and he loses basically nothing….. in fact he still gains by being able to say “well I tried, I put my faith in these people” etc…. just look at his reaction to Donnington…. for Bernie it’s a win/win situation, which is just the way he likes it.

        1. That should be “I don’t think that this grand prix will happen” … brain fade!

  5. The Danica Patrick interview was interesting. I personally think there are other IndyCar drivers that would deserve a spot in F1 over Danica, based on results, guys like Will Power and Ryan Briscoe.

  6. The Canadian GP is a complete sell out!
    For no reason we missed that race for two years.

    If you are looking for tickets then the following link may help you

    http://www.bookf1.com/canadian-formula-1-grand-prix-124/tickets.htm

    1. Unfortunately it looks like they may be having trouble at the track to have it ready for the race (drainage issues I’ve read),

      The tracks are so important to F1, But they will always lose money. Why can’t Bernie put some effort into helping the tracks that produce great races. Spa and Montreal are both in trouble, yet they are 2 of the best tracks… Why Bernie Why?

  7. Does anyone know why the european gp came about? I mean its not like we have an asian gp or any other continent gp?

    1. Originally, the title “European Grand Prix” was bestowed on some rounds of the world championship in addition to their regular title. For example, the first ever world championship race, the 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, was also the European Grand Prix.

      It wasn’t until 1983 that the “European” Grand Prix was run as a separate championship event – at Brands Hatch. If I remember correctly that was a race that was added to the calendar at short notice because a planned race in New York failed to materialise.

      From then on it was occasionally used as a supplementary round in countries which already had a Grand Prix: Germany in 1984 and Britain again in 1985. It was revived in 1993 for Donington and in 1994 when Jerez was added to the calendar after the Argentinean Grand Prix was called off.

      From 1995 to 2006 it was basically an extra German race (though not in 1997, when Jerez returned again because the Portuguese race was canned, and not in 1998). Then from 2008 the race switched to Spain.

      1. Don’t forget there was also a Pacific GP at the horrid TI Aida circuit in Japan in ’94 and ’95. What the reasoning for that was I don’t know.

      2. In the 80’s and 90’s there was a rule that a country could only host one Grand Prix per year. Having a European GP got round that rule when there was a shortage of countries to host a GP. That was also why we had a San Marino GP even though San Marino has no race track within it’s borders.

  8. Nice to see that video, look at the cars, the people, the track serface!

    The interview with Danica is nice, but i can’t help feeling her stance towards F1 (and Britain) has a lot to do with not getting in.

    I saw a video of the last practise for the Indy 500 a minute ago. If we complain about not having viewers on the grandstands in Turkey in practise, Indy did not have any at all (not sure they actually sell tickets for it).
    Turkey will hopefully beat the 32.000 viewers from last year. And if they keep the ticket prices as they are and we get some packages with a stay closer to the track for the next years it might be pretty good.

  9. HounslowBusGarage
    29th May 2010, 10:49

    The Monaco 1960 clip is fun. I like the bit where the mechanic seems to be pulling the exhaust pipe up and down to see if the rear suspension is working!
    And yes BasCB. The road surface, the road surface . . .

  10. Ex-Ferrari International Assistence (FIA) president mad Max has spoken up again. He must really have started to hate Luca for last year.

    And as always he tries throwing dirt on others while at the same time making it seem he was the good guy. Good hes gone!
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/formulaone/article-1282295/Ferraris-big-day-tainted-fix-claims-FIA-president-Max-Mosley.html#ixzz0pIddIyvC

  11. I downloaded Uno torrent from http://www.games-iso.com about a week ago and, despite the fact its a”dusty” game, its the best PS2 game ever made in my opinion ;)

  12. Michelin are putting in a last minute bid for the future F1 tyre contract.

    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/84004

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