Paul di Resta splits from manager Anthony Hamilton

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Paul di Resta parts with his manager, Lewis Hamilton’s father Anthony.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Di Resta in shock split from manager Hamilton (The Telegraph)

“It is believed that the break-up, which happened some weeks ago, was not planned and the situation between the pair remains delicate, which may lead to some awkward questions for di Resta ahead of his home Formula One grand prix at Silverstone this weekend.”

Q&A with McLaren’s Sam Michael (F1)

Sam Michael: “We have upgrades going to Silverstone as well, as we do at every race. So we are hoping they can bring at least a tenth.”

F1 penalty system set for an overhaul (Autosport)

Derek Warwick: “Whether anything can come of them and they can be introduced, I don’t know – this is all a new process, we didn’t use to have these meetings. Charlie will go away, analyse it and make recommendations. There might be a few changes coming along in the next few months or year.”

BBC is the home of F1 and we’ll honour seven-year deal, insists Humphrey (Daily Mail)

Jake Humphrey: “I’ve been told categorically that the BBC are sticking with F1 until the end of the current deal and perhaps longer. I can’t see that they are going to come out of this early.”

Why F1 drivers love the British GP (BBC)

“It reminds me of Suzuka in Japan – it is fantastic to drive and it is one of few tracks where you really feel what an F1 car is capable of, what the downforce is doing.”

The accident at Duxford (Joe Saward)

“It is still a little early to say what happened at Duxford, but clearly the accident involved either a technical glitch or inexperience. One can, of course, ask whether it was wise to have a truck with the tail-lift down in proximity to an F1 car being tested.”

Stirling Moss: A history of Silverstone race track (CNN via YouTube)

Williams F1 Team Exclusive Fan Experience (Motorsport Industry Association)

“Williams Formula One Team is supporting National Motorsport Week 2012 (NMW), announcing their exclusive factory tour for fans in Autumn 2012.”

British Grand Prix Pub Crawl… At the only pub in the village!

The F1 in Pubs team is organising a meet-up on Friday evening, I’m going to try to make it along.

F1 Fanatic via Twitter

Lotus will display Batman logos this weekend. Based on the last film expect the cars to plod around for three hours without going anywhere.”

How to pick a British Grand Prix winner (Unibet)

My new article for Unibet.

Comment of the day

I wasn’t expecting to find anyone who’d been to more British Grands Prix in a row than Nigel Bryce but, sure enough…

Yes, I can beat Nigel by one – my first was 1974. And that includes all the non-championship F1 races in the seventies and the European Grand Prix at Brands Hatch and Donington.
Peter Maynard

From the forum

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today.

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

Nigel Mansell won the 1987 French Grand Prix, 7.7s ahead of Williams team mate Nelson Piquet.

The Honda-powered cars dominated, third-placed Alain Prost finishing 55s behind Mansell.

Here’s footage of the race with a characteristically forthright piece of commentary from James Hunt, suggesting Piquet should retire from motor racing after he stalled his engine during a pit stop:

Image © Sahara Force India F1 Team

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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93 comments on “Paul di Resta splits from manager Anthony Hamilton”

  1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    5th July 2012, 0:29

    probably it’s just a speculation but what I read in some other comment is that this split may give some room for Lewis in Mercedes. Of course only if he gets sick and tired of McL pitstops.

    1. +1 I think Dad Hamilton did it after finding out that Lewis was in talks with the team… Not a fan of Di Resta but feel for him in this one… could hurt him in the future…

      1. If Schumacher does retire which would surprise me I would say Di Resta has realised his manager Anthony might have a conflict in interest negotiating with Mercedes because of Lewis.

        1. It wouldn’t actually surprise me if Schmacher bought the team if Mercedes decide to withdraw over the Concorde Agreement. His future will “be decided in six weeks”, which will coincide nicely with a decision from Mercedes on what to do with 2013.

      2. I can understand why Hamilton is thinking about possibilities with other teams, and as refreshing as it would be to have a few driver changes in the next few years, it just doesn’t have that same ‘good old rivalry’ as its currently shaping up to have. At the moment, the best three drivers in F1 are with three very different teams that are not only at the sharp end of the grid, but also each driver very much suits each team. Alonso – Ferrari, Hamilton – McLaren, Vettel – Red Bull. Hamilton and Vettel were very much set from a young age to head their teams, and have done so very well. And it seems that Alonso was always destined to drive for Ferrari, and seems just as suited to the team if, not more than, the glory Schumacher days. So yes, a few driver/team changes could be quite exciting, but I just don’t think it would have that same feel as it currently does.

        1. @ivz I’d argue Alonso and Hamilton should swap places. Hamilton is a more heart-on-sleeve driver, similar to the Latin blood at Ferrari. Alonso is a colder (not crueler), more calculating person, which is very similar to the academically-driven McLaren.

          1. Much as I dislike Alonso – I can’t help agreeing.

            Sure, Alonso has the occasional emotional celebration like last week, but that was more because he was in Spain than because it was a red car.

    2. xeroxpt (@)
      5th July 2012, 4:35

      or the contrary they split cause perhaps mclaren were speaking to Di Resta already believing that Hamilton may join Ferrari.

      1. Of all the driver silly season, this is the most unlikely I’ve read.

        1. I agree Nick, that’s the best I have seen yet by far. Still laughing.

  2. The first thing they want to change about the stewards at penalties is get rid of the different ex driver steward at every grand prix. How are they going to achieve consistency with say Alan Jones at one GP who will want to punish nothing but the worst(my type of steward) and Martin Donnelly at another GP who will want to punish everything?

    And what about ex driver allegiances? Mika Salo who was pushing his fellow country man Bothas race seat chances a few weeks earlier on the Stewards panel where Bruno gets a penalty when basically everyone saw it the other way. Any ex British F1 driver ruling on a Schumacher penalty?

    A few times they release an in-depth analysis of how they came to their conclusion. Why can’t they do this all the time?

    1. I’m dying to see Montoya in the stewards panel!!! MSC drive through, stop-go, black flag and ten-spot penalty!! Why? Coz I hate you! Hahahaha :)

      1. subsailorfl
        5th July 2012, 3:53

        Yeah, crappy biased officiating would be great for F1.

        1. Whats wrong with the crappy, biased officiating we have now?

      2. loling hard!

    2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      5th July 2012, 0:46

      Well I thinks it’s pretty hard to choose an ex driver who is not from one current driver’s nationality, who are you going to call? Gaston Mazzacanne? Joss Verstappen?
      Probably ot would be better to have two or three senior F1 drivers taking these decisions, but right away, not waiting till the race it’s over to add some seconds after it

      1. xeroxpt (@)
        5th July 2012, 4:36

        Jacques Villeneuve, it would be confusing for sure.

        1. For sure.

    3. The first thing they want to change about the stewards at penalties is get rid of the different ex driver steward at every grand prix.

      @snowman Funny. For me that’s the best addition the FIA has done in over a decade. Having an ex driver out there with the stewards (who mostly have no idea what a driver does on a track) is a great thing.

      Maybe they should listen to him a lot more often. I remember Hill wanted to ban Schumacher for a race, or something like that, after Hungary 2010. And to be honest, it would’ve been a fair penalty considering they suspend drivers for similar things in lower formulas.

      What you’re saying is possible and raises a lot of questions (specially the Salo thing) but I don’t think you can make it better by scrapping the ex-driver as steward rule. If anything, they should get another ex-driver in there too…

    4. The ex-driver thing is just a show to please the crowd.

      1. @infy I rather have that than a couple of old members of the FIA judging F1 drivers attitudes on the track.

        1. @fer-no65 Sometimes wisdom is the best source for judgment. You don’t need to be a drug dealer to punish one. I don’t think a football referee needs to be a former player, he needs to understand the rules and trust his wisdom.

          1. good analogy

          2. Easier said than done, as said before a racing driver who used to drive at 200 mph knows why another driver did a certain action. A stewards with complete understanding of the rules will only be good enough to enforce a rule and not see why such an incident happened in the frst palce.

          3. @jcost that’s different. An umpire doesn’t need to be a player to know that if the ball goes beyond the line, the point is lost, or that there’s no tie-break in the last set of many tournaments.

            But placing a car on a track, and trying to overtake someone from the outside, it’s something very few people know about. They can judge if they let enough room for each other, but that’s very much it. Who had the right to go for the corner it’s a different matter. Stewards don’t know what a driver had or was able to do in certain situations, they can only judge a part of driving, not the whole of it.

          4. @fer-no65 are you a driver? I’m not, I’ve driven karts for fun nothing more but I still make my own calls on F1 accidents, sometimes it matches FIA’s decision, sometimes don’t. I think you do the same.

            I’ve never spent hours studying F1 rules, I bet those old guys have and enough years of experience to teach us a thing or two, it doesn’t mean they’re always right, they’re men after all. Sometimes biased decision will arise, but it happens with former drivers too, doesn’t it?

          5. @ridiculous it’s easier said than done in basketball, rugby or athletics too. Every legal system has laws/rules and one should be previously instructed to apply those rules. The rule says you cannot overtake from the right, the driver who breaks the rule should be penalized unless a good reason is behind his move.

            I like the driver thing, but I don’t think we need a panel full of former drivers to have more sound calls, because we have rules and people prepared to interpret those rules.

          6. @jcost you’re talking as if I said “scrap the stewards and put ex-drivers instead” when I’m not.

            An experienced ex-driver has a totally different view of what happens compared to the stewards who have never drove that fast through a particular corner. There are a lot of things we don’t see that drivers do.

            That’s why in other sports there’s always a commentator that used to be a player/driver/rider whatever. If they give their views (right or wrong, but more or less all valid points) to the audience, then surely it’s more than welcomed for the stewards.

          7. @fer-no65 My bad, I got your words wrong.

            @infy I rather have that than a couple of old members of the FIA judging F1 drivers attitudes on the track.

            Enjoyyou British GP weekend mate.

    5. Also there is a problem with having the same set of stewards, considering Nigel and Lewis don’t get along well and if Nigel is going to be a permanent steward, even a fair penalty might raise awkward questions. On the other side, say Johhny Herbert is a permanent steward – this will again cause more questions than answers.

      1. I would say Johnny Herbert is perfectly placed to be a Steward because he has so much experience of crashing. He was the best crasher of his era, probably the best ever so often was he in the kitty litter or getting intimate with the armco. If memory serves he was carried to his car in his first F1 race because his ankles were goosed from a crash and was stretchered away from his final race. He seemed to crash in every race, I know he didn’t but it just seems that way because he crashed so much. In 161 race starts he recorded 70 retirements.

        1. @coefficient

          I dunno if Herbert crashed that much but great comment!

          1. Check out the Wikipedia on him mate, it’s all there.

  3. James Hunt was the best commenter ever. His best line for me was at a race in Monaco where Murry was offering a long-winded explanation a driver had given him about how the normally aspirated cars where hard for him to drive because he was used to turbos. James Hunts response was as usual concise and to the point “Well all i can say to that is ********” :D

    1. I agree, but if he was commentating today I bet the volume of complaints about him would be deafening.

    2. I miss him loads. It would be so refreshing to have someone like that commentate but alas, those days are well behind us now.

  4. I find it funny Joe Saward talks about:

    It is not the time to get into disputes about the rights and wrongs of whether or not Maria de Villota should be in a Formula 1 car; nor the larger question of whether women can drive F1 cars. Nor, for that matter, is it wise to try to speculate as to what happened at Duxford. The answers will exist in the software.

    After he said in the previous post:

    She had no obvious qualifications to be a Formula 1 driver and no Superlicence, but private testing does not require the same rules and regulations as “official” activities. What she did have was some money and a dream and that made her presence in the Marussia team possible. It obviously helped that she was a woman because it is fairly unlikely that an F1 team would run an obscure Spanish man with the same kind of qualifications. We have not seen that since 41- year-old Israeli Channock Nissany drove for Minardi in 2005. One can accuse the Marussia team of tokenism if you wish, but money is money and Marussia Racing clearly needed it.

    1. Is weird, but he is saying something that most people thought when the news of her signing with Marussia came out…

      1. @celeste yeah, but he’s kinda contradicting himself in the same day…

    2. xeroxpt (@)
      5th July 2012, 4:40

      and…. he is right in both, in his latest post he fears that something serious had happened and that’s the reason that his conclusion is well inexistent.

        1. I don’t like Joe Saward. He comes off as extremely rude and unplesant in many of his responses to users commenting on his articles. Kieth has the better approach of; if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

          1. @nick-uk Spell my name correctly you miserable peasant!

            (I’m joking of course :-)

          2. @keithcollantine ‘I’ before ‘E’ except after ‘C’… I can’t help it if all the world’s Kieths can’t spell their own names… :P

          3. Indeed, the man is a conceited horror who regularly contradicts himself and with utter indignation.

            His arrogance makes him incapable of unbiased journalism and he is best ignored.

  5. I don’t see why F1 can’t implement a similar penalty / assessment system to what a court of law in real life would follow. You have a legislation or a rulebook that provides the skeleton to the law, and case law which provides precedence, authority and detail for the decision makers to follow. It seems although there are rule guidelines, there are no set penalty units (besides engine or gearbox changes), and that’s where a dispute arises when stewards apply their perspective to the incident. It wouldn’t be too difficult to simply say “Negligently causing an avoidable collision results in 3 position drops at the end of the race, however if the car retires prior to serving the penalty, a 5 spot grid-drop applies to the following race”, with a simple reference to a precedent where this penalty was applied under the same circumstances. Honestly, you wouldn’t even need to go past Hamilton, Massa, Maldonando and Vettel over the last 3 seasons to cover most cases.

  6. I suspect Di Resta may be worried that a father, naturally, would harbor feelings for his son (d’oh) and not compete (on Di Resta’s behalf) with his son, producing a big conflict of interest. For example, if such were true, that would immediately knock Di Resta out of the frame for a McLaren 2013 drive. I don’t think he was going to go there anyways, but with Button having a contract for 2013, there is only 1 free seat – and Antony Hamilton might not want to compete with that for fear of losing his son a job.

    The only way he’d probably compete with Lewis is if a team has two seats free. Then he could fight for one seat while Lewis fights for the other.

    1. Where is all this “di Resta to McLaren” stuff coming from? I’m just not seeing it myself. He’s British and he drives for a Mercedes-powered team, but that’s not enough of a reason for McLaren to take him on-board. Like any team, they’re obligated to take the two best drivers available to them at any given time, but it Paul di Resta really the best driver available? Wouldn’t it make more sense for McLaren to try for Rosberg or Perez or Kobayashi or even Alguersuari first? Hell, it wouldn’t surprise me if they went for Kevin Magnussen.

      If di Resta and Anthony Hamilton have gone their separate ways over a conflict of interests, then it probably has to do with a possible Mercedes drive rather than a possible McLaren drive.

    2. I think there might be something about signing deals and the silly season at the basis of this, but I seriously doubt its about Lewis Hamilton. After all, I am not that sure even his father has a clue where Lewis’ team is going there.

      And if indeed McLaren would think about DiResta in the car, it would be because they already know that they won’t get a top level driver, meaning they know that Lewis would not want to stay.

  7. Just my thought. Time will tell but considering RBR’s pace at Valencia and potentially further addition in Silverstone, ‘at least one tenth’ of gain in McLaren may fall quite short.

    1. @leotef – All year long, the Red Bull has been a “hot” car. It performs best when temperatures are high, but Silverstone has consistently been one of the cooler races on the calendar.

      1. I think that’s general perception with some ground, but think does not mean that RBR is in bad form at lower temp tracks. Contrary to this, RBR sort of dominated the qualifying and racing during the last two seasons at Silverstone.
        This year with different rule, it’s been the case and it’s arguably defensible but if indeed RBR found another tricky sleight which I suspect they did, then it may be of sudden repeat of last two years.

    2. @leotef, indeed. After Hamilton saying something along the lines of pinning his hopes on the Silverstone upgrade, I think most of use were anticipating something more than

      We have upgrades going to Silverstone as well, as we do at every race. So we are hoping they can bring at least a tenth.

      Still, I think the circuit characteristics and the lower temperatures will ensure that McLaren will be in the fight for victory, but based on recent form Red Bull seems to be the ‘default’ favourite for every race, regardless of what the circuit looks like.

      1. Yes. McLaren was competitive against RBR at Germany and Hungary last year where both cases the track temperature was lower end. Assuming their form remains in the same context it may be the case too for the coming 3 races which might be very much important to the top runners.
        What’s amusing though is Sam Michael’s interview taking RBR’s dominance at the Valencia as work of tyres mostly rather than the rear-wing change. In a couple days, it may turn out in one way or the other. Hope not to see the pole and runaway style with final fingerings any more again at the least.

  8. This whole “it’s too early to speculate” followed by some speculation is annoying me. It’s as if prefacing anything with introduction like that makes anything OK. But it’s not OK and, yes, it is too early to speculate. They made a mistake and you can be 100% sure it will never happen again. It’s a horrible shame and I feel very sorry for everyone involved, not least poor Maria, but speculating and whinging about what they did wrong is also quite sad.

    Hopefully Maria will recover soon enough and she can get back to racing cars.

    1. With one eye? Probably not the wisest idea.

      1. It would take away her depth perception making braking zones almost impossible, never mind navigating other cars.

  9. Meanwhile, in Australia, Jacques Villeneuve is taking part in the Sucrogen 400 in Townsville this weekend, filling in for the injured Greg Murphy. He’s also got a personal livery for the event, which may well be one of the worst liveries ever produced.

    1. @prisoner-monkeys If it just had the colours without all those confusing lines it might look a bit better. It seems like they based it on his helmet colours which is respectable I suppose.

      Villeneuve doesn’t look bad as a baldie, needs to even the tan out though!

  10. BBC may be the home of F1 in Britain, but they allowed Sky to have the greater coverage and best race commentators…

    Which doesn’t really help their claim. It’s like saying Australia is the home of honest politicians. You can say it, but we all know it’s not really true.

    1. Saying Sky have the better commentators and coverage is a personal thing for everyone. But on that note why do Sky loose HALF their audience everytime they compete against BBC live if as you put it we all think Sky is better??

      1. @snowman

        Saying Sky have the better commentators and coverage is a personal thing for everyone.

        Agreed – there’s elements in both that I like and dislike.

        1. And I do think that Sky is getting better to show they are a worthy successor, while the BBC improved too, to show they still have reason to be watched. Ie. competiion did improve F1 coverage (for those who can see Sky …).

        2. i like coulthard and brundle, but not together.

          not too keen on edwards or crofty.

          1. I didn’t think Coulthard and Brundle worked well together. But I like both pairs as they are at the moment. The BBC duo edge it for me but that’s probably because of my nostalgia for Edwards’ IndyCar commentaries in the good old days.

          2. I feel pretty much the same as Keith on this subject.

          3. Coulthard and Brundle worked well together

            +1

        3. I prefer DC to MB. He is more engaging because he still has a child like wonder for the sport. MB seems a bit sterile in comparison, good but a little lacking in passion by comparison.

      2. Sky also poached half of the Beebs commentary & pit team.

        1. I think Gary Anderson is the best addition to the BBC team, he whipes the floor with Ted Kravitz!

  11. Based on the previous film, I’m expecting Lotus to be the best team by miles, possibly for every race this season.

    1. @matt90 We’ll have to differ on that one. Regardless, here’s a peek at the branding:

      http://instagram.com/p/MshL6exlTp/

      1. That logo looks unfortunately like ‘The Bark Knight Rises’…..

        1. I was just about to ask what the Bark Knight is.

      2. And here’s a first look at Red Bull’s Faces for Charity livery:

        https://twitter.com/tgruener/status/220833969141329920/photo/1/large

        1. Now that is really looking nice! Welcome surprise to see how the charity livery combines with their colorings and makes a really refreshing one.

        2. That’s about 1,000,000 times better than their last attempt at it.

      3. The first thing I thought when I saw that was “Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Iceman!”

  12. I wonder who Di Resta will pick as his new manager? I’m looking forward to hearing what has happened exactly.

    The penalty system overhaul sounds very interesting but I wonder what it means. Will they introduce new penalties or just readdress how they’re distributed? I’m gonna hazard a guess here and say it wouldn’t be easy or possible to implement right now, but.restricting the use of DRS or KERS might be an option for the more slight infringements.

    1. @andrewtanner

      restricting the use of DRS or KERS might be an option for the more slight infringements

      I like that idea, particularly for KERS (disabling DRS would be a little pointless if the driver is not close enough to the car in front to use it). But I think it would be difficult to implement.

      1. @prisoner-monkeys Ah yeah, didn’t think about DRS properly. It would always be hard to implement some penalty like the disabling of a system but with brand spanking new engines just around the corner, who knows what could happen.

    2. @andrewtanner I don’t like it. It’s like making the punished driver wear a helmet with SUCKER written on it. I mean, it would make him feel annoyed and it would also effectively create an artificial technical glitch with all the related consequences, which is something I cannot imagine FIA doing. Maybe such a penalty would be effective but we’re not in kindergarten, F1 drivers 1)shouldn’t be afraid to make mistakes 2)shouldn’t make mistakes often because they’re F1 drivers. If someone has committed something totally unacceptable or cannot learn from the previous mistakes, he should probably be disqualified for a couple of races but normally drivers shouldn’t be treated that harshly.

  13. I’ve always thought that this partnership would be extremely awkward as when it would come to Paul racing against Hamilton on the rare occasion, Anthony wouldn’t know who to support. Lol

  14. Edd Straw has published his thoughts on Autosport Plus, too. He says the lack of transparency in stewards decisions is the biggest issue, not the alleged inconsistency. I agree with him on that as stewards are normally clever people, who have much more information then the fans do but it’s often hard to understand their decisions without understanding the reasons behind them.

    The idea that the severity of penalties should depend on the potential dangerousness of them makes sense, too. However, I’m still sceptical towards penalties for ‘causing avoidable collisions’ exactly because so many different situations are possible, a lot of circumstances have to be taken into account so there will always be discussions about the fairness. I also doubt if drivers are so crazy that they’re ready to put fellow drivers out of the race deliberately knowing that they risk to crash themselves, too.

    I’m against a more complicated penalty system and more detailed sporting rules that would describe in details what drivers are allowed to do and what not. The rules should be kept simple where possible so that fans can understand them and don’t get confused even more.

    So I believe that serious changes to the rulebook are unnecessary but I think that FIA should focus on explaining the stewards decisions better and that the stewards should penalise drivers less often, particularly for accidents that ain’t dangerous.

    1. Agree with everything you said there. I can’t understand why they don’t release detailed accounts of why the penalty was given. An in-depth account was given last year on all the penalties given or investigated at the Canadian GP including Lewis and Jenson incident and it was in-depth and really good.

    2. @girts

      He says the lack of transparency in stewards decisions is the biggest issue, not the alleged inconsistency

      I agree fully, as anyone who’s read my whinges on here about the lack of detail in stewards’ decisions here in the past will surely know by now!

      1. @keithcollantine For sure, although I would never call your opinions ‘whinges’ ;)

        Talking about opinions, F1F itself actually contains enough ‘stories behind F1 news’ to make one able to form a decent opinion on everything that’s going on in F1. I just like to compare as many competent views as possible and F1 journalism fascinates me, too. After all, it was once my dream to become a journo myself…

        1. Exactly what you say there @girts, enormously good job from @keithcollantine to try and give a complete picture of some of these controversial desicions, but the FIA really should make good on their promise and publish far more information that led to their conclusion, including videos from different angles and as much data/conclusions from the data as possible.

    3. Well said @girts. It is pretty telling that in that autosport article even Warwick himself says he can’t know why stewards decided something, bc. he doesn’t have all the information.

      So basically, even the stewards can’t easily know what a precedent actually meant in an earlier race, unless they were there themselves. I suppose (well, hope) the FIA at least stores the materials somewhere for review if it was ever needed, but still, pretty odd and untransparent.

    4. Couldn’t agree more, on all counts. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a majority of fans in agreement that a driver was penalized over something most would consider a racing incident, and I wouldn’t mind seeing that lessen at least a bit. And needless to repeat, probably, but more transparency for things like this would always be appreciated, especially in the instances when just about everyone seems to be left scratching their heads once a penalty comes down.

  15. Might ruffle a few feathers here, but anyway, here goes…

    I’m a bit bored of Stirling Moss always popping up to give his opinion. He always seems to think that his view is correct, often manages to say something disparaging about the current Formula, and generally be a grumpy old Hector. The same for Jackie Stewart: they just never seem to go away! They remind me of my Nanna; always believing she knows best about bringing up my daughter, then giving her a spoonful of Nutella to stop her misbehaving.

    Of course, I know less about the sport than they’ve forgotten, and they’ve both been invaluable to the development of the cars, popularity of racing and safety and so on…

    Ok, now I’ve got that off my chest I feel a lot better. Feel free to disregard/berate me accordingly.

    1. @splittimes
      How dare you say that about our heroes?? :)

      I have thought the same for quite some time but the thing is a journalist asks for their opinion and they just give it. Mansell comes out with some stupid stuff too.

  16. My opinion is that we are lucky to have a Stirling Moss still around to offer an opinion. The man got into F1 in 1951….Let that marinate in your head for a little bit. Being around is an achievement in itself considering the era he lived in, and makes you wonder who is being the grumpy old Hector. Same with Jackie, though I do concur that sometimes he comes across a bit abrasive, but there will come a time (hopefully not to soon) when these men, some of whom did an awful lot for the sport to be where it is, will no longer be around to offer their opinion.

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