Missing home race will be “painful” – Chandhok

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Karun Chandhok describes his “huge disappointment” at missing his home race.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Painful to watch race from sidelines: Chandhok (The Times of India)

“It will be painful to watch the race from the paddock. It is a huge disappointment.”

F1 trial: Gribkowsky ‘defused a bomb’ (Daily Telegraph)

“Although prosecutors are charging Mr Gribkowsky with receiving the bribe they are not charging Mr Ecclestone for paying it. Mr Ecclestone has admitted he gave the money to Mr Gribkowsky. He has denied that it was a ‘consultancy fee’, which is how Mr Gribkowsky has described it.”

Defence attacks ‘one-sided’ F1 bribery probe (FT, registration required)

“Two of Mr Ecclestone’s lawyers are also among the more than 40 witnesses due to give evidence at the trial, which is set to last almost three months. But defence lawyers said prosecutors should have interviewed and called other F1 personalities as witnesses, including Max Mosley, the former president of F1’s governing body; and Flavio Briatore, a former Benetton executive.”

This week’s real F1 action (Autocar)

“Seems difficult, on the face of it, to see how it could all have gone so catastrophically wrong. Or whether Gribkowsky was mad, bad or neither.”

India seeking road to redemption (The Times, subscription required)

Total Sports Asia managing director Suvrangsu Mukherjee: “This is about saying, ‘We have arrived, we’re on the map’. If you like, it’s a sort of redemption after the Commonwealth Games.”

India’s inaugural F1 race – speeding past the poor (Reuters)

“For critics, it is an example of skewed economic growth, an elitist event where even the cheapest tickets are unaffordable for most people and an event that has no roots among India’s 1.2 billion people.”

Formula 1 meets poverty (Joe Saward)

“F1 can do nothing about this sort of thing. F1 is in India to make money, but if in doing so it can contribute to a better life for all Indians then all well and good.”

Felipe’s Indian debut (Ferrari)

“This was not the only off-track activity planned for the two Scuderia Ferrari drivers. On Thursday morning, Fernando Alonso, in his role as a UNICEF ambassador, will visit a paediatric hospital in the Indian capital, bringing gifts for the children who are being treated there, to celebrate Diwali, the festival of light, which is one of the most important events in the Hindu religious calendar.”

Martin Brundle via Twitter

“[The Daily] Telegraph was wrong, I didn’t sign 1m Sky contract today. Calmly working through it, will end up doing what satisfies me most professionally.”

FIA Institute selects 30 young drivers for academy shootout (F1)

“The shortlist is made up of young talent from 26 different countries, including competitors from Australia, Columbia, Costa Rica, Denmark, India, Ireland, Lebanon, Lithuania, Malaysia, South Africa, UAE, UK and USA.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Joel Holland on Karun Chandhok not getting to race in the Indian Grand Prix:

Maybe this is why Turkey never took off as a grand prix. Someone should have given Can Artam or Jason Tahincioglu a pity seat.
Joel Holland

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On this day in F1

Alain Prost scored his second world championship after a dramatic conclusion to the 1986 world championship.

Nigel Mansell was on course to take the title when he suffered a massive tyre failure late in the race.

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47 comments on “Missing home race will be “painful” – Chandhok”

  1. That video with Simoncelli falling was horrible to look at. Poor soul.

    1. Honestly I am glad I did not look at it, from reading the comments I feel quite bad enough. I know he would probably have been dead by the time they dropped him, but still …

      1. The video isn’t very clear, and there’s a marshal in front of him, but the guy behind drops him. What’s horrible is that he must’ve been already passed away at that moment, as his father, who was just metres away, and later helped put the stretcher in the ambulance, said: “I tried to say goodybe to him but he was gone already.” (Source)

  2. Poor Chandock, feel that innappropriate remarks about the number of laps behind he would have been making him a spectator anyway are unfair and should be frowned on. :D

    Anyway, glad that the ink isn’t down yet on the Brundle thing, would be truly sad to see him cross to the dark side.

    A lot of my family used to live in India, allthough now they have mostly emigrated I there is still a house in Rajasthan were some of them live, an although they are easily rich enough not to see it if they don’t want to, if you adventure just a little bit, amongst the most incredible architecture, culture and landscape is the sort of poverty that westerners like most of us can’t even comprehend till we see it. India has some awful problems, this being a private venture takes some of the sting out, but we’ve got another example of a country that needs more things than an F1 race in for the prestige and sort of trade that doesn’t benefit those that need it most.

    1. Just because Brundle hasn’t signed a deal yet, I can’t see him not doing one to go to Sky. He doesn’t owe the BBC anything; he does a job and gets paid by them – he would be foolish to stay on and only be involevd in coverage of half the races if he isn’t planning on doing something else with the spare time he would have.

  3. “It will be painful to watch the race from the paddock. It is a huge disappointment.”

    Well, sorry, Karun, but the team has to take the two best drivers on offer. If neither of those drivers is Indian, then that’s just too bad. They were never under any obligation to run you in your home race.

    1. Yeah, but that doesn´t mean that the guy don´t have a right to feel a little sad about it.

      I´m not againts what Lotus is doing, but how they did it. If they weren´t going to let him drive they should have said from the beggining. What keep him waiting.

      And since they hadn´t said “No”, I guess the poor guy let his hopes rise.

      At last he is only human.

      1. in all fairness, Chandhok did all the work by himself. He kept pushing for a ride and it didn’t happen, as expected.

        1. @fer-no65 Disappointment implies he ever had a chance, really. It’s a shame for him but he will have an opportunity in the future.

    2. Are you suggesting he should be happy about it?

      I’m not in the least surprised that he is upset. Deserved it or not, it would have meant a lot to him.

    3. Just as Lotus has every right to pick its best two drivers, Karun has the right to vent out his true feelings about the whole thing.

      Don’t chastise him for speaking his mind.

  4. About Simoncelli, I read on spanish website Marca that a Italian Doctor wrote a letter sining a lot of points in the procedure that were wrong. Mostly he said that in those cases the ambulance must be near and on the track and yes the way that the marshall carry the body.

    The article is here (Is in spanish)

    And here another article about Simoncelli´s father saying that he is sure that Marco was already dead when the marshall let him fall. He said that maybe things would have been different if Simoncelli would have let go of the bike. (Not implying that it was his fault).

    In the end I don´t think nobody is to blame in the incident, it was just awfuly weird. Surely there are things that can be improeve but is not a question of blame. In the end just something really, really sad.

    1. The marshalls procedures can be critiziced and rightly so. They are extra careful with the bodies, so they don’t move them too much, and then they let him fall.

      1. I can´t argue with that. It is weird. They didnpt put him in a collar.

        If you see what happened after the accident with Simoncelli, withwhat happened with the accident of Perez in Monaco, there is a lot that MotoGP, they should have cover his body form the camaras, they should have introduce the ambulance on track, and they should have being more careful with the way they carried him.

        I don´t know what kind of preparation the marshalls get before a GP? in any sport

        1. I hadn’t thought about the ambulance not being on track- very strange. But I don’t think he needed covering- they had better ways to use their resources than organising that. With Perez they needed to extract him from the car, something that would take longer, so a cover was more appropriate, but generally that is of least concern unless they really do have a surplus of people.

        2. I think F1 can be used as an example.

          1. f1 uses the same marshalls i’m sure

          2. Marshalls may be the same but procedures and professionality of the medical staff seem to be very very different. It took Sid Watkins a lot of time and hard work but meanwhile the standard of care and caution undertaken for even very minor/no injury are at an excellent level. I’m pretty sure even a broken finger would be handled with more care in F1 than this.
            (I’m not blaming anyone for anything, stuff happens, but that really didn’t look good.)

    2. A coworker of mine who is as experienced as anyone on 2 wheels seemed to think that it was precisely because he’s such a good rider that the accident happened how it did. He started to high-side, but saved it in a way that few riders could, that unfortunately put him right in the path of Edwards and Rossi. If he’d been a lesser rider he would’ve just high-sided and maybe even walked away from the crash, but would’ve certainly been out of the race. Having seen the onboards from behind him just prior to the accident, it certainly looks like that is what happened.

      1. it wasnt a high side in any respect.

        he leant too far clipped the kerb and lost it, a low side really. but he is right if he had let it go it would of been just a harmless fall. But you cant predict these things in the heat of the moment

      2. The front folded from under him, that’s a low side. For some weird reason though the tyres gripped and threw him off to the right but it still wasn’t a conventional high side

    3. A friend of mine studies medicine and told me that the first thing one should do when suspecting a neck injury (like in Simoncelli’s case) is to apply a a collar. He said – don’t ever move the body without stabilizing the neck first or the victim might die or become paralysed. I’m amazed by the doctors’ sloppiness if the things written in the mentioned article are true.

      1. Similar to what happened to Daijiro Kato back in 2003. Head/neck injuries are extremely serious. Not saying that moving him caused any additional injuries, though you would think procedures would be more professional by now. Sadly

      2. exactly. That’s why they take their time to remove the drivers from their cars.

  5. It would be painful to watch Chandhok get himself beached in the gravel… again.

    1. I stil think that Chandok is not that bad.

    2. It will be even more painful to see the lesser Karthikeyan do it instead.

      1. I think this was a “race” inside the race itself. Karun vs Karthikeyan. India has a very complex society with “ranks” between indians. i don’t know who is ethnically “higher” in the ranks amongst the 2, but it would be an interesting race in itself.

        1. I hadn´t though about that, but is an interesting point…

        2. @Sergio Perez
          Thats a pretty broad comment to make. Have you ever been to India, a temple, to an Indian home, or had any experience outside of TV or your local Curry joint?

          It seems you are referring to the Caste system. This has been dying for many generations and there are even laws restricting the most egregious use of it. In fact, India is now like any other modern society in that personal quality for adults judged by wealth alone, while children are judged on their test scores.

        3. What a stupid comment!

  6. I think Heikki Kovalainen’s opinion on Team Lotus’ decision is worth mentioning, too:

    The team makes the decision based on performance, and in my opinion they made the right choice. Everyone’s got an opinion and that’s mine

    (via Twitter)

    Actually I haven’t read anyone saying that Chandhok is a better driver than Kovy / Trulli or even on par with them.

    1. Cause he isn’t lol.

    2. They both have way more experience than Chandok, but to be fair they could have given him a chance because nobody has yet driven round the track properly (not including simulator) so at this time it is anyones game.

  7. What’s all the fuss about Ecclestone not being charged. If you’re being blackmailed, you’re the victim!

    1. @dvc – people think that if Ecclestone is arrested and charged, he will either be imprisoned or removed from his position, and therefore cannot “ruin” the sport any more.

    2. The curious thing there is @DVC, that the German prosecution is not charging Gribowsky with blackmailing Ecclestone, but with taking a bribe from him. Bringing up the question of how can the bribed one be prosecuted, but the one paying the bride be there only as a witness.

      Not saying I have any knowledge of what happened, and I only expect little more clarity after the case is judged by that though.

      1. … the one paying the bribe that is ;-)

  8. Something completely different. Seems you can run into all sorts of danger on our planet, this is what Nico Rosberg just tweeted (@nico_rosberg):

    Yikes!in market local comes+says: “very dangerous”.I say:”what?”.And he flicks a spider away from my neck+says:”red body spider dangerous”

  9. Kind of funny reading some articles in the German media saying that Team Orders to help Webber will prevent Vettel to reach Schumi´s records.

    1. Sorry, correct that. It seem that the German media thinks that is noble that Vettel wants to help Mark.

      Nicely played Mr. Horner!

    2. Really? Would be interesting to hear some more on that. Presumably they’re referring to Horner’s remarks about getting Webber to second in the championship?

    3. That seems a bit paranoid considering the seasons Vettel and Webber have had respectively! Got a link?

      1. The traduction to spanish is cleared (sorry I´m actually latin)

        It saids what we already know that Horner wants Webber to be 2nd on the championship and that Sebastian said that he accepted that. It said that even when Vettel still can reach Schumacher´s record, he will likely give up a win for Webber. It goes to said that Webber had been feeling “descriminated” since he hadn´t won a race this year and he wasn´t in the fight for the tittle.

        Is not something new, but I though it was interesting how Germans were giving the story. Obviously they are behind Vettel (I mean they literally gave him a plate calling him “Hero”) but depends how you read, or write the story one or the two man will come very good on the spotlight, so I´m starting to feel a little PR scheme in here.

        I think somebody on the other thread pointed that only two times this year Mark and Seb had been 1st and 2nd at the end of the race, so is obviously a long shot for Vettel to have to give up a win for Webber (even I don´t have a lot of hope that Vettel will win the las 3 races), but whatever Red Bull will come down as a team that did everything they could to help Webber, even “giving up” to a very important record that will put Vettel and RBR7 on the same level as Schumacher and F2004. In deep if this was the objetive that they were going after, I must said Horner and Red Bull PR and really smart!

  10. Well, hard to celebrate birthday seeing these horrible Simoncelli videos. Thank you for mention though.

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