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Team hospitality in the paddock has gotten huge, compared even to ten years ago. None of the manufacturers appear to dare coming out with some sort of “foldout bus and a large tent” setup. I’d fully expect the kinds of semipermanent buildings that seem state of the art now to cost a lot, especially when, as is the case with all three manufacturers, they’re active in more racing series than just DTM, so they might build this kind of infrastructure and afford the logistics to ship it around the world. Or calculate if it’s “cheaper” to build a European, Asian and American variant and not have to cargo-haul it across oceans… (Which is what a rock drummer I’m aware of did. He plays a rather large kit.)
I’d find it hard to create an interesting design for the Red-Bull-branded drivers, as the large sticker on the side of the helmet limits what kinds of colours you can choose (it has to go well with red and yellow) — and it’s just one of the areas where a lot of other drivers’ designs have some shapes and lines that define the design. In that respect, I actually find some of the iterations Vettel comes out driving every couple of weeks quite interesting. JMD, in my opinion, shows good creativity with how they modify the basic pattern.
That’s skill and a few delicate chunks of luck in combination. I really enjoyed watching this. Especially since you can see they respected each other and didn’t manage to take each other off on the run to the checkered flag…
I attended this last DTM race on this particular track layout with my dad, well baked in the summer heat, standing on the hill parallel to the “Steilstrecke”, from where one could see both the approach of the cars out of the valley and their ascent towards the carousel. Naturally, it was minutes of waiting every lap until they’d come by again, but being able to hear the field before you could see them was something that impressed me. And, perhaps unlike DTM’s modern iteration, you could well distinguish the cars, sonically, too. The Alfa Romeo with the V6 engine had a very “warm” sound, the Daimler four-cylinder at the end of its development cycle roared, combined with a transmission / gearbox whistling noise that, being a school kid and all, sounded very weird to me at the time.
Regarding the race in the general, it would have been very hard to continue as it was. The cars reached almost 300 kph at Döttinger Höhe in 1993, and for the year after, every manufacturer would come in with redeveloped cars for the new “Class 1” regulations, or, as in Mercedes’s case, with an entirely new car. Bridgestone as one of the tyre suppliers at the time estimated that the 1994 cars would be able to improve on the existing lap record of 8 minutes and 46 seconds (for GP circuit & Nordschleife) by about 20 seconds.
The teams also allegedly voiced concerns about material failures on the recently introduced class 1 cars on the Nordschleife. That wasn’t unfounded crying, most likely. For example, in 1990, Mercedes raced their now kind of famous Evo 2 variant of the 190 for the first time on the Nordschleife, and both drivers had rear tyre failures at Fuchsröhre, which is one of the fastest parts of the track. That or, say, a suspension problem at pretty much any part of the track would have been serious.
The specific circumstances of 1994 even added to those concerns. The race that might otherwise have used the Nordschleife took place the first weekend of June, which was just weeks after the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna at Imola (and even less time since Wendlinger’s harsh crash at Monaco thereafter), so a lot of public attention would have been on anything that might have went wrong at a race on the Nordschleife.
There was, as far as I know, some kind of inspection of the track where they — rather hypothetically — talked about the five or ten spots on the track where they might have to place braking chicanes as other non-permanent DTM tracks regularly had them. It would not have been impromptu tyre barriers, but elevated plastic curb platforms mounted in place, so not as crass as the tyre chicane F1 implemented at Barcelona on short notice, but in the end, I think it was decided to not race the circuit rather than compromise the layout like that. Which, if I’m looking at how much GP circuits were modified in 1994 and 1995, was a bold decision to make.
It’s reaching levels now where the top VLN cars are pushing to the limits of the track. I recommend looking up the video of the Manthey Porsche and the Mercedes fighting for the win on the last few laps this year. There were three or four inconspicuous-looking parts of the track where I was stunned to see how light the front end of the car would get.
I think it’s one of the factors that makes this race track so impressive, that it sometimes forces even the absolute professionals to admit that they’ve reached the limit and they have to take a step back and redefine their expectations.
I’m thinking Massa could benefit from getting to another team. It’s a difficult position for him at Ferrari, because on the one hand, there’s no need for him to win races or run well in the Drivers’ Championship, as the team seems entirely content with Alonso pulling that off, on the other hand, it can’t just not matter where he finishes as the team would like to score the Constructors’ title, and they’re most likely going to miss out on that if things continue the way they do.
The tricky thing is that his results recently most likely won’t put him in a position where teams will cue up to hire him. All of the other top teams are filled up at the moment. A move to one of the backmarkers might not be advisable, though, because he’d either have to be as young as Kovalainen was when he went to what’s now Caterham, or face the realistic possibility that he might finish his career in that team at the back of the grid and be dropped at an opportunity the way Trulli was.
So what’s left, realistically, in my opinion, is the question of which ones of the midfield teams could benefit from exchanging one of their drivers for Massa. Which would be a circumstance where I’d point to teams like Sauber and Williams, which both have still pretty unexperienced drivers. That could be a situation where the team would appreciate more input from Felipe, and at the same time, his odds against his teammate would be significantly much better than competing against one of the quick champions, as things look with Alonso.
Maybe that kind of situation, combined with a lot of people basically having written him off already, could help him.
The big if behind this line of reasoning, of course, would be whether one of these teams would actually even want to part ways with one of their current drivers. I think with Sauber, it pretty much depends on how the question of Perez’s future is going to be solved. Williams, on the other hand, might be more inclined to look into promoting Bottas, rather than hiring someone from the outside.
Otherwise, I personally would consider migrating over to one of the Le Mans prototype series, as the cars are close to F1 tech and driveability, and generally, sportscars have been one of the major fallback options for drivers whose chances in F1 diminished.
