Running an F1 team “like warfare” says Williams CEO

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Williams CEO Alex Burns likens running an F1 team to “warfare”.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Festival of Business: Williams’ search for a winning formula (The Telegraph)

“The technology, high- performance engineering, use of carbon-fibre composites, that’s all like aerospace. What’s different is the speed we do things here, the intensity of the competition. Being focused on the end game of doing better at racing ?óÔé¼ÔÇØ that drives an incredible speed of decision making and innovation.”

Narain’s F1 demo drive plan cancelled (Deccan Herald)

“The demo drive was caught in a legal tangle after a social activist filed a PIL in a local court seeking cancellation of the demo, saying 40kph [24.8mph] was the maximum permissible speed limit on the road from Kowdiar Palace to Fine Arts College, where the drive was to be organised.”

Indian F1: 21,000 tickets sold already (NDTV)

“With just two months left for the F1 Indian Grand Prix, the organisers have sold 21,000 tickets, with the maximum sale coming from South India where more than 6000 fans have bought the entry tickets.”

Mita ihmetta!? F1-tahti kaljoitteli MM-kultaa (Iltalehti, Finnish)

Pictures of Valtteri Bottas competing in a triathlon-type event which appeared to include necking a large glass of beer! Thanks to @Nebulaf1ghter for the tip.

9 Formula One Drivers Lucky To Be Alive (DownUnderSteer)

“The drivers on this list are the ones who all had their bell rung since that fateful day at Imola but can still talk about it today, even if some of them still don’t quite remember the fine details.”

Tweets

Looks like Eliseo Salazar will be the drivers’ advisor to the stewards in Spa:

Comment of the day

There was no shortage of great suggestion in yesterday’s Michael Schumacher Caption Competition. Among the best were those from Verstappen, Thecollarboys, Cryptowillem, Myles Scullion, Matt and Max Jacobson.

But my favourite this week came from Sumedh:

I am still number one among the over-forty-years-old in F1. In your face, Pedro!

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

Felipe Massa won the Turkish Grand Prix five years ago today, leading home a Ferrari one-two ahead of team mate Kimi Raikkonen.

Lewis Hamilton held third until suffering a puncture which dropped him behind team mate Fernando Alonso and Nick Heidfeld.

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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47 comments on “Running an F1 team “like warfare” says Williams CEO”

  1. 21,000..what’s the capacity of the Indian Circuit?

    1. 100,000

  2. The article says “social activist”, but for some reason, I keep reading “spoilsport”.

    1. I read it as ‘busybody’.

  3. The ‘9 Formula One Drivers’ link is a must read, and also timely since we were debating open cockpits again recently. I loved the end quote on Jackie Stewart’s Spa adventure: “It was the shunt that saved them all”. Very true.

    1. How much I want it to be different, reading that 9 people article makes me realise that certain risks are part of why I love F1. Not like I watch for crashes, but that lingering knowledge in th back of my head does add to F1’s appeal to me.

      Is that bad or common?

    2. Yeah, it really is the perfect addition to that discussion @john-h also nice in how it shows that incidents that were followed up by starting to work on safety at all, and then better cars, tracks and helmets etc. helped save lives after that, pointing to how the sport should always think on and improve further.

    3. It was a great article.

    4. Really great read, good praise to Sir Jackie at the end!

  4. 40 km per hour was the maximum permissible speed limit on the road from Kowdiar Palace to Fine Arts College

    This is something very similar to DC paying a fine when he exceeded the speed limit in Mumbai. This is a pre-arranged demo. What they expect? Very ignorant & total heights of hypocrisy here… no doubt. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk8CnoFCjAE

    1. @icemangrins
      I just don’t get that sort of thing. It seems like some people have simply forgot how to smile, laugh and have fun. And because they are so miserable their only source of amusement is to make sure that noone else can have fun.

      1. @mads they love the word status quo.. stray dogs and cows can crowd the streets… yet a controlled F1 demo is dangerous

      2. @mads – I don’t think it’s a case of someone having forgotten what fun is, but rather someone who doesn’t think the demo run should happen for whatever reason (ie it’s too noisy, they’re worried about pollution, etc.), and so has moved to have it cancelled. It’s unfortunate, because now nothing extraordinary is going to happen on the day that was planned for the demo. It will now just be like every other day.

        Whoever this “social activist” is, I hope they have a really, really good day on the day that was planned for the demo. Their selfish, socially-oriented peace of mind has come at the expense of the enjoyment of thousands of others. Not that they’d notice, of course. Their cause is more imporant that anyone else’s enjoyment to the extent where it’s not just okay to rob everyone else of their fun, but where the person in question would expect everyone else to thank them for it.

      3. Or maybe they just have pretty good reasons because corporate promotional events don’t have to be everyone’s idea of a good thing, especially in a place where the great majority of people can’t even dream of the kind of money it takes to attend a race? Oh, sorry – don’t mean to be spoiling things for my personal amusement.

        1. @maciek
          They have a F1 race in India. If F1 was innapropriate in India, why would they spend money on building a circuit and pay enormous fees for the F1 circuis to come around once a year?
          Yeah sure there might be reasons not to stage the event, but then they should argue that instead of getting it stopped because of a speed limit. Which is there to ensure peoples safety, but if the road is closed, then there is noone to kill is there?

          1. @Mads
            Let’s not be naive. ‘They’ have an F1 race in India because it brings in gazillions of dollars and is a very nice promotional event for corporate and political interests. the problem is that it’s used to mask the kind of poverty that we can barely imagine. What we think about that doesn’t matter too much one way or another I guess, but seems to me that reducing someone’s local protest to spoiling people’s fun because we happen to think that F1 is always and everywhere a good thing is a pretty narrow way of looking at things.

          2. @mads
            I think you misunderstand me (probably my own fault : ) ). My problem is not that someone stands up and stops a F1 demo run. Its that their argument as to why it should be stopped is that the speed limit is 40km/h on that stretch of road. If they can’t come up with a better reason to stop it, then I will put it down to, them stopping it just because they can ruin other peoples fun.

          3. @Mads
            The article says very little about the protester’s reasons, so either way we’re both only guessing, but as far as I’m concerned, if your intentions are good, I see nothing wrong with using an existing law to stop something you’re against from going ahead. I mean, moral reasons are all well and good, but if you’re gonna play with the big boys in court what you need are legal arguments.

          4. @maciek
            Yeah sure, I see what you mean. But if they did that, wouldn’t it had made sense to sort of publicate the moral reason as well? So far they have got a bit of attention, but for what use? Or maybe it just hasn’t hit F1 fanatic yet, and that might be the reason I don’t get it : D

        2. Yep same as any other big sport event anywhere else, I mean extreme poverty group is not invited to FiFA, Olimpics, etc..
          But DEMO is usually free for spectators a little taste for them, but some don’t want it and so now not even that.

    2. I remember back in 2005 Mark Webber did a demo run on the Sydney Harbour Bridge in his Williams. Apparently there were a few small laws passed to allow it to happen and technically he still had to comply with the road rules. He had a limit of 90km/h (although he went way over that) and if a Police officer saw him excessively break traction (burnout, flick turns etc) the officer could legally impound the car for 3 months under the hoon laws.

  5. I wonder if Nelson Piquet will be at Spa as well…

  6. The Williams article illustrates just how important it is for there to be a relevance to the real world in F1 to help finance the massive cost of research and innovation, I daresay Williams would not have survived the last decade had they not had race developed technologies to sell.

    1. Exactly how I see it @hohum, relevance is important. And its definitely the part Williams have been getting into the last few years, probably helped them survive.

      1. I think the mistake in F1 is often thinking that ‘relevance’ should refer to things that more mainstream manufacturers can incorporate into road cars. Whereas F1 by default pushes technological limits that can be applied to a spectrum of other industries. This is better for independent teams that have affiliations with a variety of companies (including road car manufacturers)- pushing purely for road relevance could alienate them just for the sake of more manufacturers entering, likely only temporarily.

  7. Bottas: “It was fresh apple juice!”

    1. I cant wait til he gets a proper F1 seat, he seems like a character.

  8. I think the term warfare is, accurately used on the Maldonado led Williams team at the moment.

    1. I was thinking about it in the same way as well. If it wasn’t visually evident, you’d have to believe that Pastor thought he was driving a tank.

  9. I thought my one was pretty good, I’ll be back! About that trolling over the speed limit, i guess they kept our bureaucratic idiosyncrasies.

  10. If that is the best COTD, the level in the Caption Competition is certainly going down.

    1. @chicanef1 Then post a better one.

      1. I’m not saying anything to you, it’s just that the last one-DC going into the Mercedes, was much better than this. I think others’ like- @Thecollarboys and- @cryptowillem gave much better entries.

        1. Thank you kind sir. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing funnier than a f*rt joke.

    2. What’s with all the complaints about the caption contest of late?

    3. I would like to complain about all these silly complaints.

  11. I can’t wait for Pastor Maldonado to do something silly at Spa, then get called into the stewards room. He’d sure have an interesting conversation with Eliseo Salazar… :D

    1. @journeyer It would have been better had this been the German Grand Prix :P

  12. Quote from Deccan Times

    A Tourism department release, however, said “we had to cancel the demo drive on the eve of Onam as it would be a busy day for shoppers.”

    Hardly Social Activist more likely a concerned citizen, #dont believe the hype Google is your friend#

  13. An after reading about the 10 day shin dig i woudnt go near it in a car either..;]

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onam

    1. As @maciek points out above, its the use of existing law to prevent an event one is not happy with from happening, and I agree with you that having it during that Onam festival might not be the best of ideas.

      Promoting a commercial event, seen by many to be the play of rich people, during a traditional festival with religious connotations, its understandable people object to it. Just imagine having something like this demo during a Christian celebration in Texas!

      1. I look at it a different way. Just imagine the citizens of Texas paying tribute to a two thousand year old human sacrifice, during an F1 demo run.

        1. True, only there will probably be more fanatic human sacrifice worshippers than F1 fanatics :-)

  14. Well I hope that they manage to plan the Indian demo run for another day, as the article suggests. It is unfortunate that someone feels the need to try and cancel it but perhaps it would be getting in the way of the festival mentioned?

    As long as it can be rearranged then fair enough, but if not then that is pretty sad indeed.

Comments are closed.