F1 Fanatic round-up: 20/10/2010

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The F1 Fanatic Predictions Championship is open for Korea so you can’t start getting your predictions in for this weekend’s race. As usual the deadline is the start of practice three on Saturday.

Here’s today’s round-up.

Links

Expats excited about F1 Korean GP (The Korean Times)

“For Liz Poustie, a teacher in Seoul, it will be her first time attending any kind of motorsport event. ‘Motorsport’s not usually my thing but I think it’s going to be a great experience, and actually being there as the cars race by will be pretty exciting. And I’ll get to see Lewis Hamilton, my fellow countryman,’ she said.”

Buemi’s diary – Stimulating simulating (Toro Rosso)

“It looks interesting enough with a very long straight, while the corners cover a really big range of types, from very slow to very fast. You get a sense from the simulator that the track layout is very much in the style of the more recent circuits designed by Hermann Tilke in that he has been able to create a wide track and the overall length is one of the longest on the calendar at around 5.6km.”

Rosberg expected more from 2010 (Autosport)

“It’s a two-faced season. On one side there is the comparison with my team-mate, and under this aspect I am very happy. However, if we look at the absolute results, I must say that I had hoped for something more.”

Comment of the day

Bernie Ecclestone said he doesn’t understand why the Turkish Grand Prix hasn’t been a success. Xtophe offers an explanation:

1) Remote location
2) Low interest of the home crowd
3) cost of a ticket vis-?â?á-vis the average wage of the inhabitants of Turkey

Bernie is all about marketing and thinks in terms of a free market system. He wants to bring his product (F1) to as large a crowd in as many geographically spread locations as possible, to maximize his benefits.

He operates by the general idea (although contested by some, but that’s a technical and semantic discussion that would lead to nowhere) of "Say’s law", i.e. every supply generates its own demand. Both China and Turkey have proven this to be a fundamentally flawed logic.
Xtophe

From the forum

Who’s up for The F1 Fanatic Tour 2011?

Site updates

Some more changes were made to the server configuration last night in an attempt to address the problem of comments not appearing immediately which some users have experienced.

Hopefully this has now fixed the problem. Thanks as ever to Ed Marshal for his technical wizardry!

Happy birthday!

Best birthday wishes to DanThorn!

On this day in F1

Qualifying for the championship-deciding Portuguese Grand Prix in 1984 saw title-contending McLaren team mates Alain Prost and Niki Lauda qualifying second and 11th respectively on the grid.

Lauda had gone off the track during his first attempt to set a flying lap on the special qualifying tyres, now long gone from Formula 1, which gave prodigious grip but only held up long enough for one flying lap.

His TAG-Porsche turbo engine fell short of power for his second run, condemning him to start from the sixth row. But he knew second place behind Prost in the race would be enough to make him champion by half a point – and that’s exactly what he did the following day.

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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30 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 20/10/2010”

  1. I believe we CAN start getting our predictions in for this weekends GP.

    1. That’s what I’m hoping!!

  2. http://jalopnik.com/5667617/the-no+holds+barred-race-car-trapped-inside-gran-turismo-5

    Anyone seen this? Thought it was just awesome, especially with the fan car lineage :)

    1. Yep. There’s three forum threads on it and it was posted in yesterday’s round-up.

      1. He’s just sharing a link. No need to put him down like that

        It’s an amazing looking car. Can’t wait for GT5 so I can give it a try, although I don’t suppose I’ll be able to keep it on track very much!

        Incidentally, Williams came up with a similar ‘no holds barred’ F1 prototype a few years ago which was shown in F1 Racing. Not sure what issue, but it’s sometime in 2002. Worth a look perhaps to see how it compares to Red Bull’s version

        1. It had 6 wheels! I think, was supposed to lap Silverstone 17’s+ what the modern cars of the day could acheive.

          I want to see McLarens version! No holds barred Ferrari, I’ve got chills.

          1. Yeah that’s right. But unlike the infamous six wheel Tyrell the extra wheels were at the rear.

            In fact, as I remember, it looked really different to Red Bull’s version. I wonder which would be faster?…

        2. I remember that, it looked pretty cool but I’m not sure it was entirely no holds barred. I think it was using rules from 30 years ago or something, so it had six wheels but it didn’t have the wheels covered like the red bull. I think, could be wrong.

  3. Happy birthday to Dan Thorn!

    1. Happy birthday from me as well, Dan, enjoy it!

    2. Happy Birthday Dan!

    3. Happy Birthday Dan!

    4. Happy birthday!

  4. Wish you a very happy “Happy birthday” Dan Thorn.

  5. Happy B-day Dan Thorn!

  6. Best part of that Buemi diary, and something i fully agree with:

    Experiencing a new country and a new culture with a different way of life is always interesting, the location of the track near the sea also looks very nice, so the key question will be if the people know enough about Formula One to want to come to the race and provide a good crowd on Sunday.

  7. Never thought I’d read a headline anywhere that used Buemi and Stimulating in the same line, without a negative qualifier.

    The man could bore paint off a tree.

  8. Happy Birthday Dan!

  9. I heard they (the old geaser) want to remove Spa from the calendar. So a purebreed is going to be replaced by a roundabout circuit…

    Seems it’s al about money and less racing. I wish they made more circuit like Spa just a hill or two does the trick.

    If that happens i think i quits the F1 forgood as we get just boring races or they start building in rain installations which random generate some kind of rain.

    1. Bernie really will have lost it if he allows Spa to fall off the calendar.

      Part of the reason these new countries want in on the calendar is because they have historic races like Spa on them. What happens if the German tracks and Suzuka go the same way as Spa, they’ve all been making noises along the same line. And then if Melbourne too gives in to the annual cost-whiners? Over 10 years, all this could very well happen. The calendar will devalue and the new countries will not want to continue to pay so much and Bernie will be left with less races paying less money.

      If Bernie had any sense he’d let all the historic tracks (I don’t know how you’d define it, a certain amount of appearances in the last 30 years maybe?) on the calendar for free and instead take a hunk of their profits. Otherwise the greed of this man and his masters could ruin themselves as well as F1.

      As for Spa, the only solution may be the most unpalatable: loan the circuit out to the French to have their own race there.

  10. Keith, seems your article has been linked to on Australian news aggregate site crikey.com.au. I don’t normally read crikey as its way to left wing, but thought it may be of interest.

  11. Happy birth Dan one of my all tinme favourite fanatics. It brings such joy to know not only is there another Alfa loving, Fernando fan, F1 fanatic on here but one who also enjoys the Gilmoure Girls :P Have a great day Dan! :)

    1. Damn, if only I was an Alonso fan we could be the three musketeers.

  12. Happy Birthday Dan.

    Re: Server updates… let’s see if they worked. Thanks in advance Ed. Here goes nothing!

  13. Ed you’re my new hero!

  14. A little article that may or may not be interesting for tomorrow’s round-up:
    “VW MOTORSPORT – A TOSS-UP BETWEEN NASCAR AND F1”
    http://www.pistonheads.com/news/default.asp?storyId=22662

  15. So how much is a weekend ticket for a grandstand at Turkey?

    1. Really, really cheap. You could get one this year for €90 and that wasn’t even the cheapest price.

      1. Cheapest in the calendar but still too costly for Turks to come in large numbers. I believe you could get a stand at start-finish straight for 150€ and I paid my General Admission tickets 25€.
        There were a lot of Bulgarians, Russians and even Spaniards at the track but not in big enough numbers to fill the stands. General Admission was rather full, especially around turn eight.

  16. @Alex Bkk Glad it’s fixed your issues :)

Comments are closed.