F1 wrong to return to Bahrain – Ward

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Jean Todt’s FIA president election opponent David Ward says he would look into F1 should continue racing in Bahrain if he is elected.

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Bahrain GP suitability ‘could be investigated’ says FIA candidate (BBC)

“He said it was a mistake to run the Bahrain race in 2012 and that the FIA and F1 ‘crossed over a line’ in their facilitation of the Bahrain authorities.”

Gutierrez sure Singapore no one-off (Autosport)

“When you are able to manage such a lap in qualifying, it brings you to another level, which you can use to keep building even more.”

Force India not giving up McLaren fight (NBC)

Vijay Mallya: “McLaren have a points lead over us, but they are not totally out of reach.”

James Hunt was a charming character but he drank, smoked and womanised too much, says Murray Walker (Metro)

“He wasn’t in my opinion in the Mika Hakkinen, Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher bracket. But he had more personality than the rest of them put together.”

Singapore 2013 – race edit (F1)

Brief video highlights from the Singapore Grand Prix. Interesting to hear Guillaume Rocquelin telling Sebastian Vettel that Daniel Ricciardo had crashed in “the usual place”, a message which wasn’t broadcast during the race.

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Comment of the day

Although it may have made for a less exciting end to the championship, @Bebilou believes the mid-season tyre changes were necessary:

The loser in these tyre changes is Pirelli itself: they have a poor image since the beginning of the year, even if it would be worse if they had done nothing. The Silvertone race was catastrophic for everyone, and mostly Pirelli.

The winner is credibility of F1: tyres that could last 5-7 laps was a ridiculous situation. That gave a bad image of the sport.

Same thing for the number of pit stops: it’s sometimes hard to follow what’s happening with 2 stops per car, so with four stops it’s just impossible.

Moreover, drivers were complaining about these tyres, as they were unable to push. That also was ridiculous.

Of course, it increased the domination of Vettel. But I think it preserves the sport, which is far more important.
@Bebilou

From the forum

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On this day in F1

Newly-crowned world champion Mario Andretti started from pole position in his home race at Watkins Glen 35 years ago, but retired with a blown engine before half-distance.

Carlos Reutemann therefore scored his fourth win of the year for Ferrari ahead of Alan Jones and Jody Scheckter.

Here’s the start of the race:

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Keith Collantine
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60 comments on “F1 wrong to return to Bahrain – Ward”

  1. Bloody awful music choice in that race edit. As much as I love pop and dance music, this just didn’t fit at all.

    1. +1
      Usually when there’s a very boring race weekend, they still can get a rather exciting race edit from it, with the music and different sound effects. But this time, that’s like you would put ketchup on corn flakes, it just dosen’t match.

    2. I really don’t enjoy these race edits since ever since I started watching the MotoGP in 2012. They just get better and better summing up the whole weekend so nicely with apt music and great visuals! I really say MotoGP crushes Formula 1 when it comes to serving the fans.

  2. David (@mansellsmoustache)
    1st October 2013, 0:14

    Metro article says hunt died in 83. Pretty sure it was 93. Too young in any case.

    I enjoyed the movie, though I can’t imagine Hunt would’ve been drinking bottles of Bud in England circa 1974-5 :-). Product placement fail imo.

    1. “Rush” is, at it’s heart, an independent film. It simply had a considerably larger budget than most independent films (“Rush” had a budget of $50 million; by comparison, “Reservoir Dogs” – one of the most important independent films ever made – had a budget of just $2 million). That money has to come from somewhere, and product placement is one of the easiest ways to get it.

  3. Whether the crash occured in the usual place or not something has to be done about the number of laps that the safety car does, even commercial TV can’t use all that time for commercials, surely lapped drivers could be instructed to slow down and pull to the side of the track until they reached their correct slot at the back, and this should happen earlier rather than later.

    1. @hohum That’s a really logical solution. So easy and simple that it is never going to happen. All the super high tech computers wouldn’t be able to alter their tracking data without putting them an extra lap down after being overtaken/letting people passed. It’s just too complicated for them… haha.

      1. Altering is not even necessary. They should just take a route through pitlane and join behind others. Yes, it would sometimes mess the fight of backmarkers but who cares really.
        Unfair? How about build faster car. “Same for everybody”.

    2. The trouble with the “lapped-cars-getting-the-chance-to-unlap-themselves” rule is that they still have to follow the safety car delta times when they are trying to catch up to the pack. This means they have to lap quite slowly which in turn means it takes longer to catch the pack and that the safety car spends longer out there.

      I know the safety car delta times are there for good reasons, but allowing the lapped cars to go a bit quicker than the delta to catch the pack up, while still exercising caution obviously, would probably be a better solution. It could be difficult to police though.

      1. The track is clear when lapped cars are given permission to overtake, so there’s no reason why they can’t proceed to the back of the queue at racing speeds.

        I think the lap delta system is flawed anyway, it’s not enforced when it’s not politically convenient to do so (like Valencia 2010, where seven or eight drivers all broke the delta time but got away with it) and was only ever a workaround to stop people from running out of fuel when the pit lane was closed. Now that’s not an issue anymore, I’d remove the delta restrictions altogether and close the pit lane when the safety car is deployed.

      2. Why should they be allowed to catch up again? They’ve been lapped for a reason.
        If they’ve been released past the leaders and the track’s clear, start the race next time the leader crosses the line. The backmarkers will see the green flags & lights and get back up to racing speed.

    3. @hohum that’s a good solution but it would put thm another lap back, wouldn’t it?

      1. @jcost, maybe, but who cares, the race finishes for all cars when the lead car completes the required X number of laps, your finishing position depends on how many cars cross the line ahead of you on that lap, adjusted for the number of laps completed, and that adjustment could take into account the “lost”lap.

        1. @hohum Nope, still not fair, as it means they are put even further out of contention. I’d rather give them a lap back and bring them back into contention. But for that to be fair, they need to still run that lap (which costs them fuel and tyre life).

          In other words, I mostly like the system as it is. The only adjustment I’d make is once the lapped cars are released, I would restart the race the lap after. I won’t wait for them to catch back up to the main pack.

    4. I don’t see why they can’t just stay where they are in the running order. I realise that the logic behind allowing them to unlap themselves is that it might be dangerous at the restart to have a very slow car right in front of a much faster car, but there are plenty of other times when this happens, e.g. when cars qualify out of position or get grid penalties (like the races last year where Vettel/Hamilton started at the back of the grid), or when there is a restart after a red flag and some cars are out of position (like Karthikeyan in the HRT being in the top 10 at the restart at Malaysia 2012).
      I don’t see why we have this rule for safety car restarts but in other situations like these it’s perfectly all right for much faster cars and much slower cars to start alongside each other. Moreover, these guys are the top racing drivers in the world, so they ought to be able to handle it.

      1. The trouble with the “lapped-cars-getting-the-chance-to-unlap-themselves” rule is that they still have to follow the safety car delta times when they are trying to catch up to the pack.

        No they don’t.
        The safety car delta in only in place until the track is clear, When lapped cars are allowed to pass they are able to go at full racing speed as by this point the track is clear of whatever hazard caused the SC.

        I don’t see why they can’t just stay where they are in the running order.

        Because fans, teams & drivers complained about lapped cars getting in the way on restarts.

        Brazil 2010 comes to mind, late race restart bunches up the field yet there were 2-3 cars between 1st/2nd allowing Vettel to have a 2.1 second lead by the line for the restart. There was about 5-6 cars between 2nd/3rd & Webber got to line with a 3-4 second gap to Alonso. Again a few cars between 3rd/4th saw Alonso 5 seconds ahead of Hamilton at the line.
        It completely ruined any potential battle for position at the front over the final 10 or so laps as by the time they got by the lapped traffic the gaps were even larger.

        1. @gt-racer

          It completely ruined any potential battle for position

          But this is a fallacy – without the Safety Car period those battle wouldn’t have existed anyway.

          As far as I’m concerned most F1 tracks are simply too long for this procedure to be viable. And the restart rules are so generous to the lead driver (unlike, say, in IndyCar) that even with the lapped cars moved out of the way it isn’t going to create a battle for position.

          So they may as well stop wasting their time with it and restart the race several laps sooner instead of going through this tedious and worthless rigmarole.

          1. Agreed that it takes too long the way there doing it.

            All they need to do to get lapped cars out the way without taking forever to do it is get the lapped cars through the pit lane as soon as everyone is lined up in the SC train. Then put the red light on at the end & make them wait until the rest of the cars pass by before releasing them at the back of the pack.

  4. Gutierrez…shut up and start showing results. I agree the Sauber squad is not at its best…but still….13 races and the only good thing is having beaten your teanmate once in qualy and only for 1 position….My God…I wish I had money…I will be fighting Chilton Pic Maldonado and Gutierrez.

  5. I don’t think Gutierrez has been doing as badly as the perception tends to be.

    Its true to say that he’s struggled in qualifying, But his race pace has generally been solid & he’s had a couple strong races where he was a bit unlucky not to get a higher position.

    I still don’t understand some of the ‘pay driver’ critisism when its used as a way to suggest he has no business in F1.
    He’s won races & championships in the lower categories, Was 3rd in the GP2 championship last year & was pretty highly rated throughout that junior career.

    Bottas won the GP3 championship & everyone was raving about he deserved an F1 race seat last year, Guttierez won the GP3 championship & people complained he’s not good enough for F1 when he was announced at Sauber for 2013.

    Does Guttierez bring money to Sauber, Yes but so did Perez (Same backing actually) & nobody complained about him when he joined Sauber in 2011.

    The Sauber has clearly been a difficult car, Hulkenberg has got more out of it but you would expect an experienced driver to be able to figure out & adapt to the problems sooner than a rookie, Plus Nico is an exceptional driver (Who really should be in a top car by now).

    Esteban is improving, I feel he deserves a 2nd year by the end of which we’ll know exactly how good he is.

    1. @gt-racer I completely agree with you, Gutiérrez may not look like the next Vettel for now but let’s just look at the car and teammate he has this season, some are lucky in that respect, some are not.

      So far this year I haven’t seen any rookie really stand out, obviously Bottas and Bianchi seem to be the best so far but look at their teammates, I think we all agree Hülkenberg is a much tougher challenge.
      The problem also this days is that everyone wants to see results immediately, if we had a poll here on F1F on whether Esteban should continue next year I don´t even want to think what the result would be.

    2. +1 Great comment, couldnt agree more…best regards!

    3. Please, open google and check the results overview for Bottas and Gutierezz or Hulkenberg for that matter, don’t be lazy, you might understand what everyone is raving about.

      ps. doh..
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valtteri_Bottas
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esteban_Guti%C3%A9rrez
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico_H%C3%BClkenberg

      1. Where Gutierrez has competed the WHOLE season (he has less experience than Bottas and Hulkenberg), he has done fairly good…I do not see your point…give credit where credit is due, dont be a hater…

      2. Where Gutierrez has competed the WHOLE season (he has less experience than Bottas and Hulkenberg), he has done fairly good…I do not see your point…give credit where credit is due…

        1. I’m sorry but if the results page does not get my point across, I give up :)

          He is a decent driver, there are thousands of them, if not more. But he is certainly not worth (oops, literally, he is :)) the spot. If he had performed everywhere, every time….maybe I expect too much from new drivers? I guess we already have so many legendary drivers, we too must have “filler” drivers.

          ps. Obviously my rant is about recent driver standard.

    4. Gutierrez was always going to be a second season driver – as shown by his driving record. A point I think many will miss. If next year he is not up to his full potential then perhaps criticism will be justified. Gutierrez would have done well with a year of FP1s or the old times of increased testing.

      You can see Hulk is always straight out of the box fast – yet with these times of limited testing, even he took half a year to get to his full pace in the Williams or Force India.

  6. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    1st October 2013, 1:50

    Is Ward honest? It sounds to me as just another promise during a campaign, as anywhere else in this world

    1. @omarr-pepper – I’ve noticed that Ward doesn’t really have any policies of his own. Ever since he announced his plans to stand as a candidate, all he has done is question the process of canvassing for votes (apparently because Todt secured a promise from the Uruguayans before anyone had announced their intention to stand against him), and now he’s made vague promises to consider investigating something that happened a year ago without actually what would be investigated or the potential outcomes for such an investigation.

      1. @prisoner-monkeys

        Ward doesn’t really have any policies of his own.

        The first thing he did after officially confirming his candidacy was outline his policy plan:

        Ward sets out plan to reform “antiquated” FIA

        1. See my comment on attacking Todt over canvassing support. Ward’s reforms amount to “make it easier for me to be elected”. He hasn’t made a single comment on any of the major issues he will have to deal with as President – cost-cutting in Formula 1, the sorry state of the WRC’s promotion and organisation, the next stage of Gerhard Berger’s reforms if the junior categories, his vision for the FUA’s role outside motorsport, and half a dozen other issues.

    2. IDK if he’s honest, but the more he talks, the more he sounds like an idiot, if you ask me…

      1. @beejis60
        care to explain why?

        1. Do you not read the stuff he spews on an almost weekly basis? In attempts to try to my Todt look bad, I think he damages his image more…

  7. The FIA presidential election can’t help but bring some of the least enjoyable aspects of Formula 1 to the forefront. Politics and particularly how F1 interacts with certain geopolitical situations are enough to make one forget that F1 is supposed to be an enjoyable sport for those involved and for us fans. We would have our heads buried in the sand, so to speak, to ignore the controversy surrounding the Grand Prix that takes place in Bahrain. Ward brings this up as a valid point considering the numerous objections to F1 doing business there when there are so many other countries with more racing tradition and without the negative political issues and protests from without and within Bahrain.

    Would Ward be a better leader for the FIA and the sport of Formula 1 than Todt? Though he has only promised to look into whether F1 should be in Bahrain, he certainly is hitting all the hot button issues in his campaign. His association with Mosely is known, but what else is known about Ward? Maybe they should put Todt and Ward in equal cars and let them race to decide the winner.

  8. Mclaren in 1975 looks like a Force India livery ;) LOL . Besides what are those circular vents in the car for ? Air vents or for fuel intake ?

    1. Quite possibly, Mclaren Honda in 2014 will look like the evil twin of Force India!

  9. I dont think anyone really thinks F1 has gained credibility during the tyre events this year. Its been a total mess.

    1. I agree. Credibility is the last thing f1 has gained from all this.

  10. I’ve never bought the “hard to follow” argument: I’m perfectly capable of following a four stop race personally. However, I don’t want to have to follow a 4 stop race.

    1. I don’t get that line of thinking either. But I don’t feel that I need to follow every single detail of every single driver’s race. And as with any sport and anything at all really you’ll never be able to take in every detail. A sport is what it is – how much you’re able to follow is down to how it is broadcast and how much knowledge and effort you put into it yourself.

  11. wrong for Ward to make Bahrain an election agenda

    1. By my understanding, Todt’s handling of the Bahrain situation is one of the main reasons for him losing popularity within the FIA. So if Ward is trying to get votes from the members who disagreed with Todt, then promising to reassess Bahrain is a logical campaign move.

      Personally, I think it is just a hollow promise. If he visits the place, he will be fed the exact same information that Todt and his representives were fed. He will come back having decided that things have changed and the Bahrain GP is completely safe, then when April comes we’ll see more stories of burning tyres and petrol bombs.

    2. Agreed. Since when is the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile the F.I. of World Politics? My dentist has strong feelings about Bahrain (he was born there), but it’s not his job to ban F1 racing.

      From the FIA website: “On issues such as safety, mobility, the environment and consumer law the FIA actively promotes the interests of motorists …” — nothing about the politics of overthrowing governments.

      Ducking now…

    3. Yes, great explanation of your point of view on that too. Some sound argumentation there. However, having examined each of your points, I strongly disagree in the most absolute and unexplained terms possible.

  12. “He wasn’t in my opinion in the Mika Hakkinen, Sebastian Vettel and Michael Schumacher bracket”

    Murray forgot to mention Damon Hill :-)

  13. This “amazing” performance by Gutierrez has been done to death – he didn’t even do a lap in Q3.
    Once he’d got to his other level he didn’t do any building – he just sat there. I’d have been impressed if he’d repeated it and nabbed 8th or 9th on the grid.

  14. ‘Waaaa too many pitstops, I can’t follow F1. It’s too chaotic and unpredictable.’

    *Tyres get changed*

    ‘Waaaa not enough pitstops, its too boring and predictable. Vettel wins every race.’

    1. @neelv27 The original version of the article was posted in the comments a few days ago:

      https://www.racefans.net/2013/09/28/f1-fanatic-round-up-2809/comment-page-1/#comment-1367292

      1. Yes. The reason I posted is that now it has some video evidence.

        1. @neelv27 – Yeah, the sound of an F1 car passing by through a slow corner on its own is so suspicious compared to the sound of several cars at the same time doing the same.

  15. I think this really increases the weight of suspicion

    1. @neelv27 – No it doesn’t. It’s just another pathetic attempt at crying foul, like the tyre marks nonsense in Canada.

      1. @david-a – Well I really can’t say with that certainty mate. It won’t be good if it’s true as that truly was a destructive drive.

  16. @keithcollantine Any news on the cause of di Resta’s retirement in Singapore? Simple driver error? If so very uncharacteristic for Paul.

  17. @David
    Spot on mate, James passed in 93, not 83. Still was only 45- far too young.
    I remember meeting him a few times in Adelaide in the early days- say 1988 -1990- even as a young teen I could tell he was a loose cannon for sure. He seemed alot older but at 12-14 I guess thats our preception!

    I am 36 and started to REALLY watch F1 from 1987- before that just in Adelaide and whenever I could get a look. In 87, I was 11 and TOLD Mum (well, politley asked LOL) I was older enough to get up, wee mid hours here in Australia back then- 1am, 2am, sometimes 4am- not like 9pm for most like now) and watched- the Senna V Mansell footage on past post was my childhood. And really for most of that until he passed was the Murray and James commentary duo- and they were awesome!! Brundle & Crofty I really like, but the old school were just gold………….. again it may be re-living the childhood, but these two a great combo!!!!

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