Horner: Teams hopeful of RRA solution by 2012

F1 Fanatic round-up

Posted on

| Written by

In the round-up: Christian Horner says the Resource Restriction Agreement has been “effectively been taken out of FOTA”.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Brazilian GP – Conference 2 (FIA)

Christian Horner: “We met this morning and it has been decided that the RRA has effectively been taken out of FOTA for the time being, to try and achieve a solution […] from a Red Bull point of view we’re keen to find a solution and we’re hopeful that one can be found between now and the end of 2011.”

Hulkenberg looking forward to 2012 (Reuters)

Nico Hulkenberg on his pole position at Interlagos last year: “Obviously the conditions made it possible, at that time the car performed quite well and I pulled a mega lap which I couldn’t have done better and obviously that is what big teams and names want to see. That’s the way you impress them.”

Button given chance to regain crown (The Times, subscription required)

“One of Formula One’s top engineers, who did not want to be named because he has worked at close quarters with Button and Vettel, explained the difference between the one-lap hotshot and drivers who think their way to victory: ‘I always feel that Sebastian [Vettel] or Jenson [Button] use only about 50 per cent of their brain capacity when they drive […] Lewis [Hamilton] is probably the fastest man in Formula One but you wonder whether he needs 99 per cent of his brain to drive faster than a man using only half that, which explains why he makes mistakes. Look at how few mistakes Jenson and Sebastian make.”

Red Bull auctions off 2011 kit

“Proceeds will go to the Wings for Life spinal cord research foundation.”

Emerson Fittipaldi via Twitter

“Tried to see Bernie and Tamas at track, but was blocked by a lady named Roseli, thank you. Better received last weekend at NASCAR.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Very few people had anything positive to say about BBC’s selection of F1 races for 2012. PJA offered some thoughts why:

I wonder how the BBC’s deal works with regard to choosing races.

When the initial announcement was made the BBC said they would always show Monaco, Britain and season finale.

I assume that after that BBC and Sky took it turns to divide the remaining races between them in the same way you often picked teams when at school.

The things I am uncertain of are if there is condition that the gap between the races the BBC doesn’t show cannot be more than so many races, if you look at the schedule the biggest gap is two races in a row which are Sky exclusives.

Also apart from the races the BBC will show every year do they have to alternate so that if a race is not picked in 2012, in 2013 it will get priority over a race which was shown in 2012.

If these had to be taken into consideration you could understand why the races the BBC will show are a mixed bag and wouldn’t be any fan’s pick of the ten races they would choose to see.
PJA

From the forum

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Carlos Santos and Nick!

If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Happy birthday to Desire Wilson, who turns 58 today.

Wilson is the only woman to have won a race for F1 cars – not a round of the world championship, but the now-defunct British Formula 1 championship race at Brands Hatch in 1980. Wilson drove a Wolf WR4.

A new biography of Wilson has recently been published by Veloce:

F1 Fanatic earns a commission on products sold via the links to our affiliate partners above, however you are not charged any extra. See here for more information.

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...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

39 comments on “Horner: Teams hopeful of RRA solution by 2012”

  1. The BBC had the first 3 picks, Sky the next 3 picks after that and then it alternated between them

    1. I live in Latin America, so I have to pay for my F1, not much but I pay, and have to watch comercials… but I think I´m actually because no matter what I´m sure I´m gonna watch Monza, Germany, Spa and Suzuka. I pay aprox $35.00, for around 60 channels on cable.

      Sky was really smart on picking two of 4 of the races with more history and passion in them, every Ferrari fa wouldn´t like to miss Monza, Spa is always a good race, Suzuka is very festive and Germany have been giving surprises in the past 3 years (2009 first win by Webber, 2010 “Fernando is faster than you”, 2011 the second worst race by Vettel)…

      Maybe with this they are trying to force fans to have to buy their package..

      1. Maybe with this they are trying to force fans to have to buy their package.

        @celeste – I’d say it’s more likely that Sky had to make it worth their while. If they let the BBC take the ten most popular races, people would not sign up for Sky, and would instead just watch the highlights. It would have been an exercise that was as expensive as it was worthless.

      2. And I pay US $70 each month to watch F1. And its been that way for years :-(

    2. Exactly, and they made a solid pick. If anything, it shows that about half of the races on the calendar are not much held in high regard by the fans!

      If you look at it the different way, Sky has 2 races that might be dropped (one of them fondly called Bohrain lately), and they have the season opener rounds, but will people bother to pay AND get up very early for those? In reality many people might happily settle for those extended highlights at noon.

      Here is a pretty nice article about some of the limitations they had in picking

  2. After reading the thing about horner’s statement I can’t help but wonder what the RRA is? What’s he talking about?

    1. @txizzle – the RRA is the Resource Restriction Agreement. It’s an arrangement between the teams that limits how much they can spend over the course of a year, and what they can spend it on. It’s been a point of contention of late because the teams are accusing one another of overspending and being creative with their book-keeping to hide it.

      1. ah yes, thanks. I remember the whole agreement thing, I just couldn’t get the abreviation! LOL.

      2. I think we call saw this coming a mile away. Basically every sport where there is some form of budget cap there will be creative accounting.

  3. If these had to be taken into consideration you could understand why the races the BBC will show are a mixed bag and wouldn’t be any fan’s pick of the ten races they would choose to see.

    I suspect this might be a deiberate move by Sky. If the BBC picked the ten most poopular races among fans, then Sky wouldn’t get a look-in. Can you imagine people signing up for Sky Sports on the basis that by doing so, they would get to watch Valencia and Abu Dhabi?

    1. @prisoner-monkeys Exactly. You’ve got to look at this with your commercially-aware eyes in. I think the deal is about the best the BBC could have come up with.

  4. A couple of reports in the Interlagos paddock suggest that negotiations between Kimi Raikkonen and Williams have completely broken down and that Raikkonen is now trying his hand with Renault.

    1. That will be interesting and ironic after back at 2009 when he accused them of using his image to get more sponsors…

      1. And now it’s the other way round?

        I can’t see it happening. Petrov and Grosjean will drive for Renault next year, I think.

    2. Any links to share? This is certainly interesting!

    3. Hopefully. Renault is a much better place for Kimi than Williams, at the moment.

    4. I really hope he can find a drive somewhere, it doesn’t matter if it is a bad team as long as he has a drive for 2012. That would build a bridge for a top team in 2013.

    5. According to Finnish commentators, there are about as much rumours in the media centre as there are media representatives there… everyone has a “reliable source” and something new to report about Kimi.

      The only facts we’ve gotten in this silly season is that Kimi is in talks with Williams.

      1. +1 Yeah, lets hold our breath and just see how it pans out. Having Bottas in that Williams might be even better than going the nostalgia path!

    6. Renault is a better place, but there are enough drivers there. Petrov, Senna and Grosjean are all fighting for a seat.
      This could hopefully mean Rubens might stay at Williams!

  5. I think the engineer from the Times article is pretty much stating the obvious, we can tell just from listening to the team radio that Vettel and Button (and Alonso, probably to a greater extent) take much freer rein on strategy than Hamilton.

    1. The only obvious thought here is that the alleged engineer is talking complete gibberish.

    2. Actually is pretty comon line in F1 journalist. Is based on the theory that a lot of drivers can run the car fast. But it takes the ones that are really “smart” to be great. I don´t know if it is true… But I have read a lot of articles stading how smart Alonso, Button and Vettel are.I think in one they said that Alonso has a IQ of 140 or something like that…

      1. Yep. As for Alonso, just watch how economical was his way of driving in Japan and in Abu Dhabi on important stints.

        In Japan he mastered a handful of Q laps with tyres at the end of their cycle to jump ahead of Vettel – he must have been altering his drive to make sure the tyres have this kind of reserve.

        Same in Abu Dhabi. Once Hamilton got out of the way, he became faster – not beacuse Lewis held him up, but because he let the tyres live during the stint, being careful with them.

        I can’t the this kind of ‘professor’ status in Lewis although it very much resembles to that of Prost.

        And yeah Vettel probably, but Button certainly falls in line.

        It’s really like Senna and Prost. If you let them do a lap in identical cars, Senna would win 9 times out of 10. Hamilton would win 8 or 9 times out of 10 against Alonso or Button.

        But there are downsides to this, I think it’s a very good comment from the engineer.

    3. @george It is a good and valid point. I’m inclined to agree with it. I think that panic Hamilton (for instance) brings upon himself makes for great drama and keeps people tuning in.

  6. SO the lesser a brain you use the better a driver you are? What about Kimi,he hate to use his brain,no wonder why he is known to be the fastest guy on earth.

    1. That doesn´t mean he isn´t smart. More of the people called “genious” get bored very easily…

    2. I think Kimi was probably the fastest driver on Earth, really. Certainly up with Clark or Senna, or Hamilton in terms of getting everything out of his package. If the package was good, capable of handling the pressure of Kimi, he was literally unstoppable – see Suzuka 2005. One of the best drives ever.

      But he wouldn’t ‘think’. He wouldn’t slow down to do some strategy. See Nurburgring 2005. Huge lead, still made a mistake because he was so much on the edge. He would always do 100%. On every lap.

  7. Comments such as ‘Lewis [Hamilton] is probably the fastest man in Formula One’ are probably the reason his fans feel so hard done by when he doesn’t win.

    I’m a massive Lewis fan, but there is no question that he doesn’t deserve to win simply based on that. I sometimes feel myself wishing for identical car racing, to maybe prove that my favourite racer is also the best; but it’s a naive view, and one that misses the point of Formula 1.

    1. I wish someone with a lot of money (I’m talking billions here) would come up with a new racing league. Exactly the same cars as fast as F1 with all the best drivers in the world. The only difference would be the team personal, race engineer ect… But exactly the same cars.

      That would really show who are the fastest drivers and make amazingly close and exciting races where everyone has a chance to win, not just 3 teams.

      Ok, now i have to find a way to raise a few billions :) donations anyone?

  8. Just because someone has had a bad year doesn’t make his Team mate a genius. Some people feel the only way to get into the news is to do some Hamilton bashing with reporters.

  9. Not sure how reliable a source it is, nor why it suddenly appeared, but here’s some quotes from Massa confirming that he would move over for Alonso in Brazil, if he got the call to do so to help Alonso get 2nd in the WDC

    1. @BasCB

      They seem to come from a Brazilian newspaper but have been well quoted and seem reliable.

      If Massa was heading to a win in his own grand prix after all that has happened past two years and moved over to let Alonso win for the sake of a meaning less 2nd in the drivers championship, I can’t even start to describe how sick that would make me feel. With the whole BBC/Sky disaster as well I would probably walk away and never watch the sport again.

    2. Never heard of the site before, and it’s referring to a translated article, so I have doubts about that one.

      1. Hope your right Keith!!

  10. Well, I don’t recall Button always having been that smart, earlier in his career he seemed to be a lot more ah impulsive, so maybe there’s hope for Hamilton if he just sticks to driving fast and looking around :-)

    Mentioning Vettel in that, I don’t know, he has done a great job in 2011, but the team usually were the ones telling him to keep it cool and not go for the records, as far as I understood. Vettel does seem to put a lot of effort into knowing every detail of the track and car, but having such a good car that you have working perfectly also helps you by allowing more time and energy for other things than just driving it on that lap.

    Difficult to say really, as in 2009 he had more to do, made more mistakes, but also was much less experienced and confident, so there’s no real comparison.

    But that’s different from Button, who’s usually still finding his set up on a Saturday morning; I think those two are very different drivers. Alonso might be a better comparison with Button in that respect, we have seen that he thinks about all of the weekend the whole time.

    I do think Hamilton could do well to get more overview of how his race is going in changeable condition, but he seems to have figured that out for himself from looking at Button this year, he just hasn’t got it done yet.

  11. A nice interview with the Hulk. From reading it, I think he has had his moment of “wait a second, I am not on top of the world, there’s other guys being as good out there” and has moved on, learnt and grown as a driver.

    I hope to see him driving races again next year, and hopefully he will be able to do good enough for the top 10 in the WDC.

  12. kenneth Ntulume
    27th November 2011, 8:57

    Keith Why would you delete my comment below???

    Am always amazed at how ignorant people (callin themselves experts) hide behind anonymous, in an attempt to explain how smart other drivers are and how dumb Lewis is, because of there prejudiced heads. Lewis is admired by loads of people but also hated because some people feel, he shouldn’t be where he is in F1 again prejudice. any way he is a hell of a good racer……

  13. Thanks for the COTD, a bit belated as I didn’t manage to log on to the site yesterday.

    Judging by peoples replies and the article in the Daily Telegraph it seems that the BBC and Sky did take it in turn to divide up the races and that there were conditions that neither channel could pick three consecutive races.

    I suppose we will just have to wait to see how much the BBC’s race line-up changes each season.

Comments are closed.