New Silverstone takeover bid from Palmer’s MSV

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: MotorSport Vision – the company owned by Jolyon Palmer’s father Jonathan which operates Brands Hatch, Oulton Park and other circuits – is making a bid to take over Silverstone.

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Comment of the day

A story from the Daily Mail in yesterday’s round-up prompted a discussion over whether stories from certain sources should be avoided entirely, or cited with a reference to why they may not be reliable.

I would really reconsider referring to tabloids in the future. Granted, you did mention immediately below it that the title does not have any reference in the article. Yet still many people here bit into the juicy rubbish.

My humble opinion to shield your viewers off from such untrustworthy sources, is to not mention them at all. There are way more neutral newspapers in the UK who make reports about F1.
Andy (@Turbof1)

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On this day 30 years ago Renault announced their withdrawal from F1 as an engine supplier. They had pulled their works team out of the sport 12 months earlier. However they returned as an engine manufacturer after just two years away.

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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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51 comments on “New Silverstone takeover bid from Palmer’s MSV”

  1. sky sports have reported since that McLaren have denied any talks with Apple..

    Which probably means it’s true.

    1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
      22nd September 2016, 0:57

      You should never believe a rumour until it’s officially been denied.

      1. @nemo87 That is mentioned in the original article from the Financial Times, above.

    2. Apple has realized that it will be very hard to make a difference in automotive industry without a serious auto maker onboard and McLaren does make sense for their remarkable constructor and innovative and footprint but I just can see Ron Denis dancing with Apple…

      1. @jcost @keithcollantine @tophercheese21 @nemo87 If the takeover does happen, I hope Apple makes Ron wear a black turtleneck.

        1. @beejis60 THAT. WOULD. BE. HILARIOUS!!!

          I can see it now: new McLaren car launch, Ron in a black turtleneck going: ‘oh, and one more thing…’

          1. McLaren Apple iP2 and McLaren Apple iP2 Plus :)

            I just hope they don’t come up with a self-driving hyper car…

  2. @keithcollantine, Christian Sylt has been very busy this week with daily articles @ autoweek.com and none of them seem to be pushing any agenda of Bernies.

    1. you mean Sylt is learning to do journalism now @hohum? Well, well …

  3. I’m not sure I like the idea of Palmer having a monopoly on English racing circuits. Not that his company don’t do a good job, but lack of competition/alternatives would give him a huge amount of power over national series.

    1. He doesn’t have a monopoly. He owns 5 out of the 19 in England, Scotland, and Wales.
      4 out of 5 tracks (i havn’t been to Knockhill) are excellent, good facilities, well maintained, always lots to do.
      (I follow BTCC so have been to a few tracks)
      The only track I think is better than MSV’s is Silverstone. Rockingham (for example) isn’t as good as any MSV tracks and its only been there 15 years, compared to Brands which has been there for what seems forever.

      TLDR; MSV is not a bad company by any means, them taking over Silverstone would not be a bad thing

      1. @boli
        Put it this way – if the BTCC had contractual issues with MSV right now they could maybe get away with a championship excluding the circuits they own, barely. However, add Silverstone to that list and you’re left with, what, Donington as a marquee event?

        As I said in my first post, I’m not doubting his company’s ability to run a circuit, just concerned about the amount of negotiating power he would have.

  4. I don’t think Ron will sell to Apple.Ron will not sell Mclaren to someone that would cast him aside and try to run things their way(and Apple only have their way).I don’t think Ron would sell Mclaren at all now.Unless,the buyer guarantees that Dennis can still run things.A tighting up of the Honda partnership is more possible than a sale to Apple.

    1. @alesi27 I can’t even see he will let Honda “takeover”, when a more successful partnership with Mercedes only resulting in 40% (maybe, I forgot how much exactly) stake and ultimately Mercedes backing off completely.

  5. Singapore was the 1st time the full broadcast was produced in UHD 4K but FOM have had 4K cameras for a while now & have been sending 4K feed’s back to there Biggin Hill base via TATA’s fibre network for a few years now.
    All of the super slow motion shots have been shot via 4K cameras filming in 4K since 2014, They did some stuff that year pausing a shot & using a digital zoom to highlight something for instance.

    And with regards to next year, The Motorsport article only mention’s Sky but the 4K feed will be available to any broadcaster who wishes to take it. As far as i’m aware Sky are currently the only one of F1’s broadcast partners that have a channel/service able to broadcast F1 in 4K (In the UK, Germany & Italy I believe) but it will be there for others as soon as they setup there own channels/services.
    Also should point out that the 4K feed will not be different in terms of content to what those watching in SD or 720/1080HD will be getting, The world feed will simply be produced in 4K & downscaled SD & 1080 HD versions of that sent out to broadcasters not broadcasting it in 4K.

    The move towards 4K has been planned for 2-3 years already but was moved forward this year as Sky were really pushing for a move towards 4K in order to help sell there 4K SkyQ service.
    I said when the new Sky 5 year deal was announced earlier in the year that it was more than a simple broadcast deal & more would be announced later & this was a part of that. Sky pushed FOM along & via the new deal helped pay for a lot of the new 4K equipment that FOM will be getting over the next couple months (Some of Sky’s equipment been used until then).
    Sky WON’T be getting access to anything other broadcasters won’t have, But there will be a closer working relationship between Sky & FOM going forward as far as sharing equipment/resources go (TATA Network included).

    1. I really think the switch to 4K is motivated by the fact that they are really trying to discourage torrenting of their content. Most raw 1080p races come in at 25 to 30 GB’s .The jump to 4K broadcast will probably double to triple that so roughly around 100 GB’s per race. That would make a season of 4K races around 2 TB. Most people torrenting their content don’t have home internet service to handle those sizes quickly, not to mention the never ending cost of HD’s to store said material.

      1. Video file compression doesn’t necessarily work that way, you can encode a 4k version of a file at the exact same bit-rate as a 1080p version. Dimensions and bit-rate are two entirely separate variables. Also those file-sizes sound really high by the way, either that’s a full weekend or whoevers doing the encoding is running some ridiculous placebo settings.

        Furthermore in general we have x265 waiting on the wings which has been able to provide vastly superior quality per file size to the ageing x264 for quite some time now (at the cost of CPU cycles) Once 4k monitors become more commonplace I have no doubt the switch to x265 will be truly on.

        1. Sorry, I just noticed you said “raw” in your comment, well that’s simply quite ridiculous for a video to be shared, stored or consumed in a raw format for the reasons you mention.

          1. @Tristan Something not adding up here. RAW 1080p (at 24bit or 3 x 8bit) @ 25fps = 9.33GB per second. For a 2 hour broadcast that’s 1.12TB.

            Someone’s quoting things based on torrents they’ve downloaded. I’m a member of some facistic HD content private trackers and there’s never been an (uncompressed) RAW stream of any 1080p content! For obvious reasons.

            There are no international transmissions of uncompressed RAW video, at any definition. RAW uncompressed 4K two hour broadcast (@25fps) = 4.48TB. Over a ‘perfect’ 1Gb connection that would still take about 12 hours to download. The costs for doing this over anything above 1Gbs mean compression wins the day, everytime. And that’s even with x264.

      2. Not really because in practice the scene will simply downscale it to 720p and 1080p resulting in same file size as we have now. Besides no reason for watching it in 4K unless you really that fanatic into F1, have UHD monitor / TV, and can actually tell the difference from 1080p feed from where you sit at. Also like Tristan said, why you download RAW anyway?

    2. @gt-racer Now that you mention it you’re right, I remember a while ago FOM did that quick digital zoom effect in the very slow motion replays and the quality was very good through out. Obviously only possible with 4k cameras and workflow.

      I guess that’s one of the biggest advantages of the extra resolution, it allows the cameramen to shoot wider angles and then later crop the image to get the best frame of a wheel locking or a driver’s helmet etc

    3. All the talk about 4k amuses me when the Japanese (NHK mainly) are already pushing 8k.

      On a serious note the best thing about 4k is the ability to use the digital zoom and still have regular HD quality. Wider shots can be used to guarantee that nothing gets missed.

    4. Fudge Kobayashi (@)
      22nd September 2016, 13:42

      GT Racer gets my vote for COTD. Everyone who occasionally reads Wired or listened to the 17yr old sales rep at Dixons seems to think they have a solid grasp of 4K when in reality they really don’t. The commenter in the original article in the roundup as a case in point. 4K to prevent torrenting come on man… Movies are still ripped in SD quality from Blurays for the bandwidth starved pirate of course that won’t make a difference!

  6. Jenson Button most memorable race, for me, was when he won Brazil 2012. For all that his victory implied, I mean, if he had dropped the ball, Alonso and Vettel would be 3WDC each by now.

  7. I really hope it doesn’t become apple-mclaren, I feel I would have a hard time keeping them as a favourite team

    I’m already struggling with that, and if I’m really honest with myself I think williams has been for a while now, but the apple thing would not bring positive connotations for me

    1. Agreed. I’d also be concerned about the changes that they would insist on. Fernando will need completely different headphones, radio comms would be replaced with a free U2 album, they’d invent new wheel nuts that were a completely different shape to any nuts seen before, and the car would have to connect to iTunes before it could be fired up…

      1. @eurobrun Or the team could be loved again because it looks great, works like a charm, is brilliant competition for the other teams, and basically there is no reason to hate on it other than a bunch of prehistoric guys that are so full of themselves that they cannot accept somebody has another preference than their own team, the very thing they are accusing the McLaren lovers of doing…

        1. @xtwl

          you are allowed to dislike a brand…

          in the same way that you claim that the “prehistoric guys” who don’t like apple cannot accept that “somebody has another preference than their own”, you are not accepting that people have a different preference than your own

        2. @xtwl, at risk of starting an argument, Apple has done some extremely questionable things over the years that offer some very legitimate grounds for criticism.

          For example, it is not that long ago that Jobs personally co-ordinated an anti-competitive hiring agreement with multiple other high tech corporations to suppress the wages of programmers and other key technical staff, which at one point involved pretty blunt coercion (such as telling the then CEO of Palm that they either had to agree to the anti-competitive hiring deal, or Jobs would order Apple’s legal department to use their patent portfolio to sue Palm into bankruptcy).

          Apple was one of the major participants in an illegal arrangement that affected tens of thousands across the high tech sector and had to pay tens of millions in compensation to settle the case – that device might “look great and work like a charm”, to paraphrase what you said, but the company behind it wasn’t adverse to ripping off the people whom it paid to make sure that product worked in just the way you wanted it to.

  8. They better make the 4K footage FTA or I’m quitting F1! Again! For the 5th time in 3 years!

  9. I might have to reconsider supporting McLaren if the Apple takeover rumours are true.

    1. @telvee32 And would that be to become a supporter or stop being a supporter?

  10. I’ve always thought it’s a matter of time before big tech gets involved in F1. I thought with Red Bull proving that “you don’t need to be a car manufacturer” it would come sooner.

    I hope Apple is a precursor to other companies jumping on board. I’ve longed to see Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc. battle it out on the track. As Abiteboul was saying in the most recent press conference, as our motoring experience as commuters changes, it will be interesting to see what ideas there are for motorsports itself going forward.

    I think bringing on board the companies who are likely to be providing us with the front-end to our motoring experiences is a logical step, especially as drivers are increasingly complaining about how difficult the electronics of the cars are to control.

    1. No offense intended, but I can’t think of anything more nauseating than “Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc. battle(ing) it out on the track.”

  11. Apple McLaren Honda, MacLaren, i-Honda…. No name sounds quite good. But Imagine Apple throwing money at McLaren?

    1. @jureo ‘Apple Mc’ has a familiar ring…

          1. The team’s name will change to Macintosh F1.

      1. Nice one Keith. You beat me to it.

        In other news, the FIA have agreed to allow refuelling in F1 again. But only via Lightning connector.

        1. I don’t know what Apple plans to do in the pit stops without using a jack.

          1. Strontium, that was pretty funny!

    2. McLaren Apple iMP4-40

  12. I like going to Silverstone because its Silverstone. I like standing on the inside of Copse and thinking of Clark, Rindt, Lauda, everyone. But Silverstone is very arrogant. Obviously It’s not the same as a Snetterton or Oulton Park, covering so much land and with so many secondary businesses. Even operationally, the number of marshal’s posts, recovery crews, photographers, having two paddocks and pits in use makes things hard to run.
    Drivers, riders and even the MSA used to complain about the run off at Barn corner at Cadwell. The previous owners said there was nothing to be done because that part of the track is actually Crown land. After MSV bought the circuit that barrier was pushed back as far as it would go.
    Dr Palmer might look at the hospitality at Woodcote and say these are a disgrace and demolish them. He might find somewhere for marshals to sign on that has reliable electricity.

  13. to me if a buyout from apple happens it will be the end of the F1 Team. For a company who promotes itself as an “echo friendly” one it will be a contradiction. Like PETA owning a meat market.

  14. Fudge Kobayashi (@)
    22nd September 2016, 13:50

    To me, Apple and McLaren’s roadcar division seem a very good match. Everyone is being so dramatic here. clearly a large Android fanbase in attendance.

  15. Thanks for the COTD! I’m for all intent and purposes Belgian, so it might sound weird that a foreign guy fires off such a comment. Years ago during my first lessons at university, it got explained in depth how British newspapers work, having both very high quality business/financial newspapers, but also newspapers which really are tabloids like the The Sun and the The Daily Mail. I found this a highly valuable lesson.

  16. Hmmm. Mcapples upgrades would follow their iphones “we even put on a better camera ohh yeah ns removed the jack plug”.

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