Bit of an odd Jenson Button story in the papers yesterday – have a look at the link below.
Here’s the rest of the round-up:
Links
Formula 1 World champion Jenson Button sued Mercedes over £1million car ‘gift’ (The Daily Mail)
“Button’s spokesman said that he will receive a 2009 Brawn BGP 001 from Mercedes. ‘We have arrived at an amicable resolution, and so there will no longer be any court action over this,’ he added.”
Karun Chandhok column: Canadian GP a mixed bag (Reuters)
“I had a gearbox problem in FP3 which meant that I didn’t even leave the pit lane and missed the entire session and then another problem in qualifying left me with only every alternate gear. We tried to do one lap while playing with the settings on the steering wheel but to no avail and it was a frustrating day for the whole team on my side of the pits to watch the car go around for a lap with only 1st-3rd-5th and 7th gear.” (Someone needs to tell The Daily Telegraph their ‘exclusive Karun Chandhok diary’ ain’t so exclusive…)
Comment of the day
In response to yestrday’s article on the Indianapolis 2005 controversy we heard from a couple of fans who’d been in the stands that day including Ryan and this comment from Andrew:
I was at the race. It was one of the most appalling let-downs of my life. The worst part was that those of us who were in the infield and couldn’t see the pit lane had no idea what was going on.
The formation lap came by, then someone nearby with a radio said cars had gone into the pit lane, and a little bit later the Ferraris, Jordans and Minardis came by. We were all in total shock. Obviously we knew the tyres had been having problems, but we had no idea this was a possibility.
My friends and I stood there in shock for a couple laps, before one of them said, "do you have any interest in this crap?" I said no, and we immediately left and drove ten hours back to North Carolina. We had gone to the Canadian GP the week before, which was great so overall it was still a good trip.
But I’ll never forget the feeling when those six cars came by.
Andrew
From the forum
This thread’s had a huge response in just 24 hours – join in the F1 Fanatic rolling trivia quiz.
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Julie!
On this day in F1
Three years ago today I wrote about the growing number of F1 drivers’ sons, daughters and other relatives getting into motor racing: F1’s famous names return
Four of the drivers named went on to compete in Formula 1 – Bruno Senna, Nelson Piquet Jnr, Markus Winkelhock and Kazuki Nakajima.
But Henry Surtees lost his life in a Formula Two crash at Brands Hatch last year.
Scalextric
20th June 2010, 0:26
Texas politics: looks like fun. The newspaper is trying to chase down how Tavo got the seed money from the Texas state govt.
The comments to the article show there’s an anti-F1 in Austin Facebook page.
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/texas-comptroller-had-big-role-in-plan-to-756676.html
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
20th June 2010, 8:46
Thanks for posting that – interesting read.
bosyber
20th June 2010, 9:24
Very interesting article. A good job by the newspaper to be curious about the economics of the race, and very interesting for us fans as well to see what the costs and benefits are.
Definitely helps in assessing the price that Bernie puts on an F1 race. If I read it correctly, it is, as might be expected from British GP troubles, not very easy for a race organizer to break even.
BasCB
20th June 2010, 10:58
Great read, nice you posted this. It is a follow up from the article about a week ago, isn’t it?
I love the press to get into who pulls which strings here and give some background on what are they planning and numbers counting.
Scalextric
20th June 2010, 23:48
The Austin Statesman is using ‘Freedom of Information’ requests to get state govt. docs. This process can get prolonged as information is released in a dribble by officials, for whatever reason (inefficient document retrieval, procrastination, attempts to hide information or to release it a controlled rate). So expect these articles to continue as more documents are released.
TogoG
20th June 2010, 11:09
Anyone else find it kind of intriguing that for the average American who does not particularly care about F1, the “exotic” venues that come to their mind are Singapore, Istanbul and Monaco? Different tastes, or rather perceptions. :)
Scribe (@scribe)
20th June 2010, 0:59
That is a funny article from Button, you’d think seeing as he drove the same chassis all year they could give it to him? An he’s split with Michibata? awww… thats kinda sad, at least I didn’t feel vaugley hacked off when the camera constantly picked her out, Schrizinger (spell) tho, grrrr.
What that Indy article from yesterday really made me think is the sport has willing American fans, sure the majority prefer stock cars but racing goes deep down there, please lets not mess it up, AgAin.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
20th June 2010, 1:34
Michbata’s free? I mean, sorry to hear that…
bosyber
20th June 2010, 9:29
Maybe Mercedes repainted them all into the 2010 Merc. livery, and added bits onto them for media outings? Or perhaps those front and rear wings do not just look the same, as in 2009, but are the very same kit :-p
KNF
20th June 2010, 11:25
That could be a very likely reason, or that they converted the chassis to the W01 spec for FIA crash testing and actual test sessions…
newnhamlea1
20th June 2010, 1:24
nice to know some americans still refer to us as ‘eurotrash’
Icthyes (@icthyes)
20th June 2010, 1:35
Considering what some of us call them…
Scribe
20th June 2010, 11:20
limeyb****ds still we’re often quite cutting in resturn, im sure you can think of a few things worse than yank.
W154
20th June 2010, 11:42
Aussies refer to Americans as Septics!
Joey-Poey
20th June 2010, 18:48
considering we have a baseball team actually called the “Yankees” I think the only place you’ll find it considered an insult is the south ;)
Pete
20th June 2010, 12:56
Some Americans. Please don’t judge us by an ignorant vocal minority.
Peeling back the layers a bit, many Texans don’t consider themselves to be Americans, or if they do, they don’t consider anyone from any other state to be Americans.
leon
21st June 2010, 16:48
Yep. Small minded negativity is pretty damn universal. No matter what exciting, adventurous, ground-breaking enterprise you come up with, somebody will be very happy to try to make damn sure it never gets off the ground.
Lets hope the miseable buggers fail completely to stop F1 running live in Texas.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
20th June 2010, 1:38
RIP Henry. Sad that most of us (including myself) had to hear of your existence only at the time it ended.
sato113 (@sato113)
20th June 2010, 23:28
i realised i went to school with him for a bit before he died.
wasiF1
20th June 2010, 2:33
Really feel sorry for including Ryan.
wasiF1
20th June 2010, 2:34
Sorry it will be “Ryan” not “including Ryan”
rfs (@rfs)
20th June 2010, 6:30
If you have Rfactor, the FSONE 2009 mod is due to be released today. IPM’s website is down though. :\
sato113 (@sato113)
20th June 2010, 23:28
is it meant to be better than rft 2009???
Hamish
20th June 2010, 8:47
Buttons company is called “JB Next BV”. Is “BV” a type of company abbreviation like LTD and PTY over in England or does Jensen aspire to be like someone with the initials BV?
bosyber
20th June 2010, 9:15
Is it a Dutch company? In Dutch, BV stands for “Besloten Vennootschap” or limited liability
company (LTD). And I have heard that the Dutch tax regime somehow makes it advantageous to have holding companies here.
Sush Meerkat
20th June 2010, 10:34
Bosyber, yep that is correct, Bono of U2 fame has his accounts hold up there for tax reasons, which is hypocritical of him since the Dutch are Anti “clear 3rd world debt”.
Also Red bull finances are based in Bermuda for tax breaks.
BasCB
20th June 2010, 10:53
I think Mallya has some kind of sceme through a Dutch holing company as well.
verstappen
20th June 2010, 12:04
(dutch) Michiel Mol, one of the partners of Spyker F1, still has shares in Force India. I think even as much as half.
verstappen
20th June 2010, 12:06
Oh and Michiel says that the VM in the Force India car name stands for Vijay-Michiel – instead of Vijay Mallya
BasCB
20th June 2010, 10:52
Funny article on Button and Brawn/Mercedes. It seems there were some serious bad feelings developing there at the end of last year. Another autobiografy we can look forward to in a couple of years.
Mercedes were reluctant to give up the car, they would have loved to have it in the museum themselves. Also it was repainted for their Team presentation at the start of the year.
But if 6 chassis were built, it should not be to hard to make one car ready to give to Button.
From that piece i am not sure weather they agreed on building the new one or give Button on of the cars he ran last year.
Scribe
20th June 2010, 11:24
To be fair, it is only one year since the car was active, it might not make Mercedes entirley happy to see that technology go to a McLaren driver.
Most of it will have been changed an out of date but I bet McLaren would like to put the wings in a wind tunnel.
bosyber
20th June 2010, 12:50
Yes, I was also thinking that. Maybe they should have put a delayed-release of the car in his contract in case he moved to a different team. Perhaps something for other teams to look at as well.
As far as I understood the article Bas, Button did not want the replica, and they negotiated an acceptable solution.
To me that sounds like Button will get one of those six chassis. But maybe only after the summer month because they need to repaint etc.
And perhaps they did now agree that he only gets it at the end of the year, when the DDD is not allowed anymore, making the aero much less valuable. Yes, all speculation on my part.
HounslowBusGarage (@hounslowbusgarage)
20th June 2010, 16:22
You can imagine the situation, can’t you.
Button: “. . . and if I win the World Championship, I want the car I was driving as a oresent.”
Brawn: “Sure Jenson, no problem.” Thinks: It’ll never happen. Barichello is far more likely.”
PJA
21st June 2010, 14:03
I thought I read an article during the off season that said because of their limited budget that Brawn only made three chassis, which would make it more understandable not to have given Button his yet rather than if they had six.
At least one chassis is in the Mercedes livery and was used at the livery launch earlier this year and is being used as a showcar. I would have thought they would like to keep one at the factory to put on display and the Mercedes museum might also want one to put on display.
BasCB
20th June 2010, 11:06
Chandhok seems to be a great guy, judging from comments and inverviews with him so far. Nice take on the big cars in Canada :-)
Also interesting to read about his comments on the race and the situation with Alonso. It seems Alonso is not the complete A** a lot of us uninformed hold him to be after 2007.
Just imagine, Dallara did a pretty solid job with the car, and setting up a F1 car is pretty hard to do. HRT have brought no updates for the year, but only by getting to grips with car setup they have closed in on Virgin and got closer to Lotus as well!
bosyber
20th June 2010, 12:53
I think that even if Chandok turns out to be not god enough to have a very long career driving in F1, he would make a great commentator and writer about it :)
KNF
21st June 2010, 6:25
Chandok was a great commentator on ESPN Star last year on the rare occasions Steve Slater let him talk…
bosyber
20th June 2010, 13:03
Or maybe Dallara did get the low drag part of the chassis done, but the rest of the car meant it took them so many races to understand its set up? And they still lack a lot of efficient downforce.
But regardless, Virgin are not looking too good in comparison.
Dan Thorn (@dan-thorn)
20th June 2010, 14:46
I’d put that down to the fact that Alonso was in a near identical situation to Chandhok and Senna during his first year with Minardi in 2001. That car was also only just completed before the first race and had only a 50k shakedown.
Now that I think of it, of the top guys only Alonso and Webber really have experience in such a bad car.
KNF
21st June 2010, 6:29
Include Button in that list in case anyone forgot about the Benetton B201 and the Honda RA107 and RA108…
US_Peter (@us_peter)
20th June 2010, 20:04
Just saw a short article about Chandhok trying to apologize to Alonso post race, (having been unaware that Button was right behind Alonso and Buemi). For whatever reason though he was unable to get to Alonso, so he plans to speak with him in Valencia.
If nothing else Chandhok seems like one of the nicest and most down to earth drivers on the grid.
bosyber
20th June 2010, 12:36
Pat Fry to go to Ferrari?
http://www.motorsport-total.com/f1/news/2010/06/Ferrari_holt_ehemaligen_McLaren-Chefingenieur_Fry_10062004.html
Good for them if true, we have been saying they need some new views into their development, even if he headed development of the lackluster MP4-23. He did help bring it back to race-winning pace, after all. I wonder if Alonso prodded him/Ferrari to go for it.
And I am sure that in the current climate we won’t have Return of the Spygate :-p
The F Duct (@)
20th June 2010, 17:03
A similar article is in English on Autosport ;)