Button: ‘I’d love to race in London”

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Jenson Button says he would “love to compete in a London Grand Prix”.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

‘I’ll admit I made mistakes. I bought into my own hype’: Jenson Button on his playboy image and life after Formula 1 (Daily Mail)

“Also, before I retire, I’d love to compete in a London Grand Prix. Bernie Ecclestone is currently driving the idea forward and [London Mayor] Boris Johnson seems to be in favour of it.”

The Lightning Bolt vs. The Black & Gold Bullet (Lotus)

“The 100m World Record – set by [Usain] Bolt during the 2009 World Athletics Championships in Berlin – stands at a stunning 9.58s; showboating included! Despite being marginally slower out of the blocks however, the E20 will complete the same distance in the blink of an eye; just 4.25s to be precise.”

Formula One in the streets of Copenhagen (Red Bull)

David Coulthard has been driving the Red Bull showcar in Copenhagen over the last three days. Here are a few pictures:

Looking back: 1997 – an underrated classic (Talking About F1)

“While much of F1 in the 1990s was characterised by only a small number of likely winners at any given moment, and often one team dominating, 1997 represented something of a renaissance.”

Hungary For More (Riding Fast and Flying Low)

“The race was spectacular, but not in the way I thought it would be. Amidst the train of cars, the race saw the rise, once again, of the unusual suspects – the racers we know have the potential, but have never really stepped up, overshadowed by the doyens.”

Tweets

Comment of the day

Button may like the sound of a London Grand Prix but RBAlonso does not:

Am I the only one who thinks Formula 1 is big enough and strong enough not to have to cash in on the Olympics? Why not use any available funds to improve facilities at Silverstone?

This reminds me of the Las Vegas race in the 1980s. Why promote that type of racing in small street circuits when fantastic new tracks like India and Austin are complementing an already unbelievable season?

I will be in the crowd in Spa and I’m glad there are still great historic tracks left on the calendar.
RBAlonso

From the forum

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On this day in F1

Victory in the 1967 German Grand Prix went to Denny Hulme, the New Zealander leading home Brabham team mate and car designer Jack Brabham.

Jim Clark led the opening laps around the Nurburgring Nordschleife before retiring. Dan Gurney took over the lead but his Eagle-Weslake broke its driveshaft two laps from home, handing victory to Hulme.

Here’s footage of the start of the race. Look out for the cars getting airborne at Flugplatz at 3’30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IXFo0huuw

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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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45 comments on “Button: ‘I’d love to race in London””

  1. What a classic, eh Rubinho? Ralf must have felt like Elton John’s Rocket Man :)

    1. I wonder if Ralf ever got that….

      1. @mike I certainly hope so.

    2. Superb OVERtaking .

  2. Love the tongue in cheek Lotus article, hilarious, especially the last bit.

    1. I think Bolt had KERS for the last 30m, he just pulled away from everybody!

  3. f1tooslownowadays
    6th August 2012, 1:45

    Usain won Gold in the london olympics!

    Would he be faster to100m than an f1 car with slicks on a wet track?

    1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
      6th August 2012, 2:34

      No…. -__-

      However there was a test where an Olympic sprinter raced an F1 car in a straight line.

      The sprinter was winning, but only for the first 2 meters.

      1. :-) Even Usain doesn’t go from 0-100 kmh in below 3,5 seconds

        1. f1tooslownowadays
          6th August 2012, 12:23

          Ok maybe that was a silly question but here’s another:

          would Usain Bolt be quicker to 100m than an f1 car using Pirelli wet weather tyres on ice??

          1. Is Bolt on ice too?

          2. f1tooslownowadays
            6th August 2012, 23:37

            Bolt’s on a track and pumping in a time similar to his world record

  4. oh dear that red bull show car is ugly. why don’t they just use the 2010 chassis?

    1. totally agree, if i remember right its just a big mash up of red bull cars, pretty sure it has a V10 powering it as well

      1. Yes, its one with a Cosworth engine. I guess running it is cheaper and easier than asking Renault (or even Ferrari!) for support.

    2. Really, that much ? To me this one does looks very much like an RB6 (therefore 2010), which is consistent with what I heard at the end of last year about their plans to replace the old RB1.
      Unless you have specific details indicating otherwise, of course…

      1. I think it’s the 2006 Torro Rosso which still used the V10 engine because the team couldn’t afford the new V8 just yet.

        1. I know the previous showcar, which was an RB1/STR1, I wrote some software for it. But the one on the picture is definitely a different car, and looks very much like an RB6 (e.g. the sidepods undercut and rear suspension).
          Now if someone else is convinced it is an older car, it should be easy to point to specific technical details of the car to convince me, right ?

  5. That was a reasonably interesting profile of Button, even if it was in the “Daily Fail” — especially (I thought) the part where he talks about what an anticlimax it was in some ways to win the world championship.

    1. “Daily Fail”

      Almost as witty as Sarah Palin’s “lamestream media” ;)

    2. Yeah, quite a good read. I guess the reason might be that it was an article to push that initiative by Button, so who knows how much the fail actually was able to influence it :-)

    3. That and the part where hè confesses that hè tends to make excuses when hè looses. Whining anybody? :-)

    4. who's better who's best
      6th August 2012, 11:48

      So a good news paper would be…?

      1. There are no good tabloids.

  6. What a great race video, if only we could have yesterdays race cars and tracks with to-days safety, 8, 12, and 16 cylinder cars all racing together and on a high speed horsepower track the team with the least power take a 1-2 victory due to reliability combined with drive-ability .

  7. Thanks for the link to the 1997 season review. It was my first full F1 season and it featured almost everything that a perfect F1 season needs, which was probably one of the reasons why I turned into such a diehard F1 fan.

    1. Ditto, 1997 was a great first season for me as well. Pretty much everything was exciting: from the tyre war (Panis about to challenge for the championship thanks to Bridgestone!) to the surprise winners (Coulthard, Berger’s “greatest comeback since Elvis”, Häkkinen)… and of course the epic conclusion to the year.

      1. Yep, 1997 was my introduction to F1 too and what a corker it was. Packed with memorable moments like Ralf punting fisi off for his first podium, Hill’s last lap failure in Hungary, Frentzen’s unending bad luck, Irvine’s dogged chase of Villeneuve in Argentina, Trulli’s unexpected laps in the lead at the A1 Ring, Berger’s emotional win in Hockenheim, Ferrari’s tactical domination at Suzuka, Schumacher’s desperate lunge in Jerez and on and on and on….

    2. It brought back some great memories of the season that got me and my brother hooked! I’d love to watch the season review video again but technology being what it is we don’t have a VHS player anymore :( Duke have missed a trick not transferring all of the season reviews onto DVD!

      1. It’s available online. There are some racing-dedicated torrent sites that have all the F1 season reviews. :)

  8. London and F1… every time you think they will finally shut up about the bad idea, they go and pop it back in the news.

    Is it even news worthy anymore?

    1. Traverse Mark Senior (@)
      6th August 2012, 13:01

      you think they will finally shut up about the bad idea

      I don’t see how the idea of an F1 race in the GREATEST CITY on EARTH can be seen as anything but a good idea. :-)

    2. I find it rather annoying too, @infy

  9. I just read that the NASCAR race at Pocono Raceway was not only cut short by the weather but it ended in tragedy with lightning striking fans, causing one dead and 9 others injured https://www.racefans.net/groups/nascar/forum/topic/lightning-strikes-at-pocono-raceway-one-fan-dead-and-others-injured/#post-71152

  10. Im soo gutted, I live near Copenhagen and had no idea David was driving there this weekend! : ( He even drove past the Queens palace where I have stood guard! Wish I had been there.

  11. Such a good article on Button! I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk at such depth, it does give you an appreciation of what it must be like to be nearing the end of your career and how your going to occupy yourself afterwards. I know it would drive me mad too. He seems well focussed.

  12. Dimitris 1395 (@)
    6th August 2012, 13:58

    Wow! The video proves why back then the F1 was considered the most dangerous sport in the world. Given the fact that now you can crash at 200 mph and suffer at the worst case a broken leg, shows how much progress has been made in the area of safety.

  13. In the Button article, the writer mentions that an F1 driver reaches his peak from 30-32. While that’s not set in stone it seems a pretty narrow window. I think that the most important thing in a driver hitting his peak is the sweet spot where they’re still physically in their prime, yet experienced enough to not make mistakes. Look at Alonso now, or Schumacher back in the early 2000’s. Surely the peak window can be from 28 – 35.
    For example, I’d imagine Hamilton is close to being at the height of his driving prowess. He’s cut out many of his mistakes and is finding the consistency to match his speed. He’s only 27.

    1. I think Vettel was outstanding last year, and he was only 24 when he won the championship.

      1. And Fangio was what? 40 when he won his first of 5 championships.

        1. Well you can’t really compare a modern F1 driver like Vettel against someone like Fangio. The culture of racing as well as the demands on the driver were completely different back then. That isn’t to say either driver is inferior to the other, just that comparisons are inherently difficult.

        2. As @colossal-squid mentions, it was quite a different age, with less physical demands on the drivers @dvc. And its important not to forget that at the time a lot of the greats in those first seasons of the F1 world championship were people who had had experience of racing before WWII, as that put a stop on racing for about 8-15 years (dependent on where one would be) and made for a gap in new talents being ready to race.
          We can only imagine how good Fangio and Ascari etc, would have been had they been racing F1 in their prime!

          1. @bascb That is a very important fact, and I’ve never really thought about it until now! The war must have had a huge impact on the careers of some all time greats…like you said, Fangio driving in F1 in his prime? It’s unimaginable to me that he’d have been better than he was, but unfortunately we’ll never find out. It’s sad to think so many great drivers missed out on their best years.

    2. Totally agree. 30-32 is totally arbitrary and may have been chosen to flatter the subject of the article.

  14. Today I got to read some unusually interesting news / analysis in the local press that I would like to share with you.

    A traditional April Fools’ Day’s joke in my country among the sports journalists is the announcement of an ‘upcoming’ Latvian Grand Prix. However, in the latest issue of the business magazine Kapitāls (‘Capital’, the local analogue of The Economist) it is argued that an F1 race in the streets of Riga would be the most profitable global sporting event that one could theoretically organise in Latvia.

    What is more, the authors of the article have had a chance to talk to Bernie Ecclestone (at least that’s what they claim) and he has praised the Latvian economy and said that he would be ready to invest in the race himself, similarly as he did with the London Grand Prix.

    While it’s still highly unlikely that we will see an F1 race in Latvia over the next 10 or even 20 years, it’s interesting to note that this is the first time ever when some more or less serious analysis of such a possibility has appeared. It’s also noteworthy that ‘readiness to invest in new races’ seems to have become Bernie’s new PR strategy.

Comments are closed.