F1 Fanatic round-up: 16/1/2010

I’m back from Autosport International with a few hundred of pictures, a couple of hours stored on my dictaphone and a pad full of notes. Among the articles coming up are my experience of trying the Cruden Hexatech simulator used by F1 teams, a chat with Martin Donnelly about the Lotus 102 in which he had his career-ending crash, and an interview with up-and-coming British racer Oliver Turvey.

That’s all to come later on – for now here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Mercedes GP reveals car launch date (Autosport)

Mercedes will take the unusual step of revealing its 2010 livery before the car. The livery will be shown for the first time on January 25th in Stuttgart, but the car will not break cover until the first F1 test on February 1st. These dates have been added to the F1 Fanatic Google Calendar.

F1-linked group in fresh Saab bid (Financial Times)

“Genii Capital, the Luxembourg private equity fund that teamed up with Mr Ecclestone last week, is competing with Spyker Cars, the Dutch boutique sports car maker, to buy Saab but both have struggled to persuade GM that their bids are credible.”

Comment of the day

It’s always great to hear from readers who saw classic Grand Prix cars racing in their prime, like this one from garyc:

I was at the Watkins Glen Formula Libre race in 1958, which was won by Jo Bonnier in a 250F. After the race, while stopped in traffic going down the hill into town,we were passed by the winning car driven by it’s mechanic going downhill in the uphill lane! An unforgettable experience to be sure. This car was said to be Fangio’s 1957 championship winner. I didn’t believe it, but years later found it to be true.

He’s not the only one either – check out the thread for more.

From the forum

Arzvi’s started an interesting debate asking what two changes would you make to F1 if you were FIA president?

Happy birthday!

None today but belated birthday greetings to Ed whose birthday was yesterday but I hadn’t seen because he’d only just added it to the list. Happy birthday for yesterday, Ed!

On this day in F1

It’s three years since McLaren launched it’s 2007 championship challenger, the MP4-22, accompanied by a very happy-looking Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso. That wouldn’t last.

Nor would the media’s Hamilton love-in. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

This is the kind of hype Hamilton will have to be aware of, and manage. There will undoubtedly be difficult times and it doesn’t take much for the press to turn on a British sportsman.

I won’t try to claim that was prescient, merely predictable.