F1 Fanatic round-up: 3/3/2010

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Today is the birthday of former Andrea Moda driver and Top Gear’s original Stig Perry McCarthy. You can follow him on Twitter along with a small number of other ex-F1 drivers.

Here’s the Wednesday round-up:

Links

Red Bull: Exhaust Driven Diffuser (Scarbs)

Just what is going on at the back of the Red Bull RB6? Scarbs explains.

Barcelona Testing Summary 2010 (Making up the Numbers)

More analysis from the last test of 2010.

Comment of the day

If you’re thinking of going to Spa for the Belgian Grand Prix this comment from Rob is a must-read. Make sure you read the whole piece, this is just an extract:

Regarding good places to view… In ’08 we got tickets for Silver 3 grandstand, dont make the same mistake. I mistakenly thought you’d see the cars through Les Combes, maybe if you’re in the first couple of rows on the right of the stand you’d see them bear left in the second part of the corner and through Malmedy. Almost all the stand only see them exit Malmedy and accelerate away towards Bruxelles.

We gave up on the grandstand and looked for a decent GA spot to stand at, deciding on standing above Liege. From there you get a decent view of them exiting Bruxelles, through Liege, into Pouhon and again at the top of the straight into the bus stop chicane, down the pit straight (binoculars needed at this point) into La Source and on the La Source exit. You are also opposite a big screen.

Took this spot again last year with our GA tickets and debating whether to move to Les Combes GA viewing this year with a Kangaroo TV rental (no big screen there, but more likely to see some overtaking into Les Combes). If it’s a grandstand seat you’re after I’d listen to some of the the good advice offered by others on this forum on the Gold stands.
Rob

Site updates

In addition to the regular F1 Fanatic Twitter account and the account for F1 Fanatic site updates you can now follow my personal Twitter account as well if you wish. I sent the first Tweet from it on Monday and I’m quite proud of it.

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Eight years ago today Toyota made their first start in an F1 race. Mika Salo and Allan McNish occupied 14th and 16th positions respectively on the grid for the Australian Grand Prix.

McNish’s F1 debut ended in the first corner melee triggered by Rubens Barrichello and Ralf Schumacher.

But Salo brought his car home in sixth place for a single point – and might have got two had he not spun trying to pass Mark Webber’s Minardi.

Sadly Toyota seldom performed much better than this in their F1 stint which lasted nine years and consumed massive amounts of cash. Their 2010 car design may yet see the light of day as Stefan GP cars. It depends on whether Zoran Stefanovic is successful in his endeavour either to take over US F1’s now-vacant spot or persuade the other teams to allow his team to compete.

Author information

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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38 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 3/3/2010”

  1. congrats on getting engaged Keith! well done, and i hope all is well. and you still find the time to write this amzing blog, bravo!

  2. Congratlations.

  3. All the best for your life.

  4. Best of luck to you guys! congrats :)

  5. Congrats!!!!

  6. Congratulations and good luck!

  7. Congratulations.All v best 4 your future endevours.

  8. Wow,Porsche KERS,Ferrari KERS,this stuff is exciting.Innovative. F1 must go in this direction if they really wish 2 lay claim 2 being the pinnicle of motorsport.Mabe they can combine Hydrogen and KERS and a little bit of primitive internal combustion engine-approx 1 third of each maybe-and show how how smart they are by doing it without massive budgets-you cant really take high budgets much further-nor can do much more testing than what was being done-ground effects were cutting edge-active suspention was cutting edge-but that was all yesterday-paddles on the steering wheel of the car-traction control-thats all so yesterday-lets be leaders of today-and tomorrow!

    1. I think F1 should think good about such developments.
      If it gets taken seriously in road cars as Porsche and Ferrari, it might make sense in F1 as well.
      But please not have them make a rigid defenition of what to do/ specifications of the propulsion and Kw rates etc.
      The FIA and FOTA should get together on this and find a way to enable more freedom of development.
      Bring on 4wd, loosen engine sizes, enable electro-engines, bio-fuel, maybe even Hydrogen.
      But define some limit of development and output (limited CO2-output/km, limited amount of tweaking during the season, maybe make application in road cars/boats etc. a must)

  9. Aww! Congratulations!! Great news :D Wish you all the happiness in the world

  10. Keith, if you can take a look in my article of McLaren, lewis and jenson!:
    http://theformula1.wordpress.com/
    thanks very much and bye!
    Tomas

  11. Congratulations Keith. Best of luck :)

  12. Wow! Congratulations Keith. All the best for you in this new adventure!
    I’m married since 21 years and still quite happy; not quite usual in this days, but still possible!

  13. Congratulations, indeed.

  14. I asked my wife if we could go to Romania on holiday (and if yes if we could postpone for one week so we could do the Hungaroring GP on the way back ;-)).
    I hope she will say yes as well.

    This weekend the 2010 kick off is on dutch TV (RTL7). I am looking forward to see some footage of the Barcelona tests.

  15. i think a better way to sumarise the ‘On this day’ bit was ‘one of the craziest f1 races of all time’. Schumacher ended up dominating it but no one in australia really cared due to webber’s fantastic (fortunate) drive! i can still remember james allen’s commentary when salo spun: “Yeeeehhhh, i’m not against you mika salo, but Australia certainly is!”

  16. Thanks for the congratulations everyone!

    1. Wow Keith, you have quit your day job and started traipsing around the world chasing after weird looking godawful noisy cars that she doesn’t care about and she still said Yes! Sounds like you’ve found the perfect woman, best of luck to you both!

      1. Congratulations Keith, wishing the two of you all the best.

      2. HounslowBusGarage
        3rd March 2010, 9:56

        Ditto!

  17. Very many congratulations Keith. All the best for the journey ahead.

    Signed up to Twitter yesterday, currently following you and F1Fanatic… no idea how any of it works though, still a tad bewildered.

  18. Congratulations and all the best for the future.

  19. Congratulations Keith and all the best for your new life.

  20. Does anybody now, weather the “LADA sponsors Renault F1” is officially confirmed by Renault F1?

    I did not see any confirmation on their site, only comments about the deal involving Goshn having a chat with Putin.

  21. On another not, I want to wish you a great wedding and happy marriage afterwords.

    Are you planning the wedding on a GP weekend or maybe combined with a honeymoon trip to a nice place (Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, AbuDhabi, Korea)?

    Or do you rather have some nice time only the two you?

  22. Terry Fabulous
    3rd March 2010, 11:10

    Congratulations mate! great decision!

    1. Terry Fabulous
      3rd March 2010, 11:16

      Incidentally 8 years ago I sat at the final corner of Albert Park with my ex watching Mark Webber bag 5th place.

      What a day! I have a photo somewhere of him climbing the fence to wave at all us Aussie Yahoos!

  23. Congratulations Keith. Hope it all turns out wonderfully and have a fantastic wedding.

  24. Anyone seen the new concept for 2012’s IndyCar series from DeltaWing?

    Crazy stuff! http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/81386

    1. Looks crap, and honest drivers would load that car, because it would understeer like crazy! But its just a silly concept dreamd up by some artist who has never heard of the laws of physics.

      1. But the spectacle of seeing 33 Batmobiles line up to take the start of the Indy 500 would be well worth it: “Holy abomination, Batman!”

        Congrats to Keith too!

  25. Mark Hitchcock
    3rd March 2010, 12:36

    Congratulations :D

  26. Congratulations to you both :)

  27. Salut Gilles
    3rd March 2010, 14:36

    It’s the Batmobile!

  28. Congratulations Keith.

  29. Congratulations Keith!

  30. About the SPA tickets, he’s right.
    The grandstand seats aren’t worth the money.
    Take a General bronze ticket, so you can get nice spots.
    Even great foto places!

  31. “Exhaust driven diffuser”, well Newey sure knows how to think outside the box…

Comments are closed.