F1 Fanatic round-up 8/7/2010

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Predictions are open for this weekend’s round so make sure you enter yours before third practice on Saturday morning.

Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Formula One 2010: Lotus dream big but stay true to Colin Chapman’s vision (The Daily Telegraph)

Mike Gascoyne: “If you look at what we have done in the last nine months I think someone like Colin [Chapman] would say that was good engineering; bang for buck decisions where we had to cut corners. We have remained true to the name of Lotus.”

Bugatti Veyron regains fastest car title (BBC)

Former F1 driver Pierre-Henri Raphanel (qualified once for Coloni in 17 attempts in 1988 and 1989) took a production 1,200bhp Bugatti Veyron Super Sport to 431kph (268mph).

Silverstone ’58 – Hawthorn & Collins’ all-English affair (F1.com)

“Dip into the history books to discover the last time two English team mates reigned supreme on home soil you have to delve pretty deep – all the way back to Silverstone 1958.”

BBC to introduce "Driver Tracker" to live online F1 coverage (James Allen)

Not available to those outside the UK, though I’m not sure it’ll show much you can’t work out from the live timing.

Comment of the day

BasCB is impressed with McLaren’s latest PR efforts:

Not sure if it’s scripted but McLaren and Vodafone are doing a great job with these in the last weeks.

First the funny "build a car together" video, than the impressive visit to the old car storage before Goodwood (Jenson making fun of Lewis drifting skills) and now this nice making fun of the Red Bull guys ("done a webber", better than the simulator and presenting it in the same way as the RBR pre race simulator rides) is great as well.

They are really into something here!
BasCB

BasCB also deserves a mention for being our most prolific commenter, putting up over 500 comments in the past month. See if you rank among the top 20 most regular commenters.

From the forum

Are McLaren doing better under Martin Whitmarsh than they were under Ron Dennis?

Site updates

The planned changes to the site didn’t happen yesterday because the code isn’t quite right yet. I’m hoping to get it done today.

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

The last F1 Grand Prix at the Paul Ricard circuit in France was held on this day 20 years ago – and it very nearly produced a shock result.

In Mexico two weeks earlier, neither of the Leyton-House Judd CG901s driven by Ivan Capelli and Mauricio Gugelmin managed to qualify.

But while the Adrian Newey-designed car worked poorly on the bumpy Hermanos Rodriguez track, on the smooth Paul Ricard circuit it proved very quick.

Capelli qualified seventh and planned to go the entire distance without pitting for tyres (which, of course, is not allowed under the current rules). He inherited the lead and stayed there – even when he came under fierce pressure from home hero Alain Prost’s Ferrari in the closing laps.

But Capelli’s dream result was not to be. With three laps to go a broken oil pump caused a loss of power and Prost was through. Nevertheless, Capelli brought the car home in a remarkable second place.

The video below shows the dramatic final laps of the race:

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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56 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up 8/7/2010”

  1. Hello everyone!

    This is my first comment, so please excuse me if I have done something wrong. Sorry that this has nothing to do with F1, I just wanted to introduce myself. This is a great site by the way.

    1. Nice to meet you. In future though:
      https://www.racefans.net/forum/

      Is where no F1 an this sort of thing is to be found and goes.

  2. Has anybody noticed that McLaren have released loads of videos that show lewis and jenson as best buddies, its almost as if they are trying to dodge questions about how well the two of them get along.

    1. Mark Webber agree’s with this theory, he’s got an interveiw in the Guardian dismissing the love in as smoke and mirrors on McLarens part.

      Personally I don’t think they’re anywhere enar as chummy as on McLarens scripted videos but if you watch them during the time before the podiums, they get on fine, they’re competitors not BFFs. They know that war would harm them both so they keep it civil.

      Webber’s just having ago at a few mind games of his own.

      1. or it could just be good publicity coming up to thier home gp!

      2. I don’t really see it as any different to the photo op Red Bull released after their crash. It is slightly disingenious of Webber to make that sort of comment – I wonder if the interviewer had to stifle a snigger…

        1. I think McLaren are in the lucky situation of being a British team with two British drivers, as it does mean they can be shown talking together, even if it is PR…
          Even if they aren’t best buddies, it must be a more relaxed atmosphere in the garage and the factory just because everyone can understand what’s happening.

  3. The Driver tracker is a nice gimmick.
    I tried it last race with the iphone app.
    It’s kinda like the gps tracking they showed last week on the bbc. The only nice thing is with pitstops, you can follow the action better. And maybe in qualy to look where each driver is on their last stints.
    But apart from that, it aint that special :)

  4. McLaren are getting easier and easier to support and like. Whitmarsh is a good, if not a great team boss and FOTA chairman, Hamilton is a bit of a spoilt kid in his own dream, but Button really brings a great balance to the team.

    They are in general, more and more well rounded, and that’s easy to see. It’s hard to fake being friends, and Jenson is a very comfortable, relaxed nice guy. Whatever Lewis might find difficult in being a team mate, seems to get absorbed by Buttons more mature, more enjoyable personality.

    Long may it continue, it’s how I’d like to imagine the ‘golden era’ of gentleman racers. I’m sure it wasn’t all like that, but it’s an attractive image to emit.

    1. They’re even making silly mistakes!

      All the same, McLaren have acheived what would of been impossible but 2 years ago, they can now genuinley, for the first time since Uncle Ron be liked.

      1. completely concur.. I used to admire the technical nature, and the success of McLaren, but my heart wasn’t in it. I think Bruce McLaren would be happy with the current state of affairs and it’s forward direction.

        1. Bruce certainly would but Colin Chapman would be disgusted.
          Gascoynes comments are so stupid they are laughable. If he is waiting for the other teams to lower their standards and come back to them he will be waiting a b long time. ACBC got Lotus to the top by being a leader in engineering and innovation. They produced great cars such as the 16, 18, the ground breaking 25,33,and 49 and on to the 72, 78,79 and radical 88. His comment that “Colin would say that was good engineering” is an absolute insult to the man he praises so much. The current car is just a boring bucket of bolts. A Chapman designed car would at least be as fast as a Williams with the same motor.
          I used to think Gascoyne was a good operator but now see him as just an arrogant clown. Perhaps the fumes from all that animal manure around his HQ is affecting his clear thinking.
          And just a little Lotus history lesson for Mr G….The Lotus 32B was a formula 2 car with a 2.5 litre motor shoehorned into the back used for the Tasman Races in NZ and Australia. It was a Lotus33 that Clark took all before him in 1965.

          1. All the teams have agreed to lower their budgets (resources) to 1990 levels though. That would indeed mean that they are coming down to the level of Lotus eventually.

  5. http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=376408&FS=F1

    I’m surprised this didn’t make it to the links.

    1. I read this somewhere as well. The possible source of Red Bull’s reliability issues perhaps? Oh no wait…they don’t have reliability issues…Christian Horner said so… ;-)

    2. During deceleration, there would be a fuel-cut where no fuel would be injected into the engine. Consequently, there cannot be any combustion in the chambers.

      If however, they are managing to do this somehow, retarding the ignition radically increases the exhaust gas temperatures which would destroy the exhaust valves and everything else along its path like the exhaust headers.

      Check youtube for antilag videos as this is basically what Red Bull seems to be doing.

      1. I suppose that’s what they do in Q3 to get the maximum out of the car and secure pole position (it might even be one of the reasons they kept blowing engines last year when experimenting with it) and maybe have a possible use of it during critical situations in the race for a lap or two.

        1. For the kind of revs that these engines go to, even with the strongest and lightest materials, antilag would kill the engine within 30 seconds. The system has to be driver activated and is probably only used for a couple of seconds at a time.

    3. I think it was mentioned a few days ago.

  6. The Bugatti Super Sport will have a challenger soon: http://gtr-xs.com/specifications.htm

  7. keith, when will we get the ‘top posts’ box back. the site needs it. (see red box)
    http://img46.imageshack.us/img46/4606/f1fanatic.jpg

    1. Marks & Spencers Delivers????

    2. Not any time soon I’m afraid, though there will be a forum link up soon.

      1. :( is the code to complex? i loved the up to date quick access to the forum like it used to be…

  8. The team (drivers included) have a job to do and if they do it right every Mclaren fan should be happy.
    On the question of friendship, I refuse to pontificate on whether or not two multi-millionaires are friends or not. None of us know any of them well enough to give even an educated guest about the nature of their relationship.

  9. I read somewhere (http://www.gpupdate.net/en/?) that Red Bull is giving Webber the chassis that Vettel didn’t like from Spain and Monaco… apparently after some repairs.

    I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but not sure how this can be a good thing for Webber??

    1. Randy Mandy vs Kate’s Dirty sister :)

  10. A COTD! My first, but i sort of feel bad about posting that many comments, maybe i am overdoing it?

    That video was nice Keith. It shows Newey has learnt a lot since then about how to make the car fast but also flexible, although reliability is still a bit of an issue.

    Also shows overtaking has never been very common. How long did Prost sit behind Capelli? And not much overtaking between the top 6 drivers, only cars dropping out due to technical issues.

    1. I thought you’d had a COTD before?

      1. Not sure, maybe I did a while ago but forgot about it.
        Also I am glad my forum comment on Karun Chandhok made it to the half term driver rankings.

    2. lol you’ve done 500 and the next person has done 200!

  11. I think you should get out of my head Keith, lately I have taken an interst in the Leyton House Team and have been reading up on them and now you show this video. Spooky.

    On a side note, did I see Patrese run into the side of Mansell after he had his problem and was coasting?

      1. Yer, beautyful car, who was driving it at Goodwood.

  12. About the Leyton House in 1990, Newey came to France with a new designed chassis, because the previous chassis had a too strong working diffuser because of a bad windtunnel calculations.

    The new chassis proved to be a lot better although the car still handled badly on bumps, so yes, the smooth circuit played a huge role in this.

    It’s a shame Newey couldn’t develop the car further, because he got the blame for the bad results (which was due to the bad windtunnel) and switched to Williams, where he designed the FW14 in the same style as the CG901, which proved to be a winner.

    1. Yer, it’s a shame to think the Leyton House could have been a front running team.

      1. They were, for 45 laps 20 years ago!

        1. Don’t forget a March was also the first NA car to lead a GP the previous year with Capelli (from memory in Japan) albeit the length of the pit straight only. They did quite well at Silverstone ’89 too before breaking down.

          I love the 1989 French GP – it was a classic case of the established order being overturned by a team taking a punt on a different strategy. Even James Hunt was perplexed by it all.

          Unfortunately these days such a thing is prevented by the daft tyre rules.

          1. Weal, I think Sauber might have something to say about that. Kobayashi was midly out of position for the whole race, though he did finished 7 or something so I take your point.

  13. Hey Keith, can I ask what font you use for the F1 Fanatics logo?

    1. Can’t remember off the top of my head, sorry.

  14. As you may have noticed the changes to the design have been made, including some of your requests to centre-align the page and add a forum link.

    1. Looks good Keith! Thumbs up for running the site and adding great content and improving it even more.

    2. Gets the thumbs up from me!

      1. Like the fresh look, very classy.

  15. Looking very nice keith!

  16. JP (@jonathanproc)
    8th July 2010, 13:59

    got a bit confused as i was used to the old one :D looks good, nice and fresh :)

  17. The new header is sleek!! Love it.

    But I get a blank grey box next to the name. Am I missing something or it is supposed to be this way?

    1. Looks like ads aren’t loading in some regions at present, looking into it.

  18. This here ( http://www.theengineer.co.uk/1003299.article?cmpid=TE01P&cmptype=newsletter ) is giving more information on the Gordon Murray small car and is focussing on its super efficient production process.

    Maybe something for FOTA to look at as well as general car manufacturers. This is why getting F1 engineers to have a broad mind to development makes sense.

  19. On another Topic…

    Ferrari’s 2011 Team Logo
    http://cdn.images.autosport.com/editorial/1278600443.jpg

    This frustrates me. ALOT.
    It is clearly subliminal messaging for Marlboro. the logo has been distorted slightly and then claimed to be Ferraris logo.

    1. Richard Brown
      8th July 2010, 17:42

      Does it really matter to you if it’s subliminal messaging?

      I’m becoming ever-more fed up with the tobacco F1 saga that’s played out for years now. Firstly, because the fuss that is made actually increases people’s awareness to the brands – who, except those watching F1 regularly would really have noticed any of them, or cared for that matter?
      Secondly, if people around the world are so naive as to go and run out to their local corner shop to buy some fags because they saw it flying past them on a Benetton, Mclaren, Jordan etc, then frankly let us leave them do so, and pity them for it…

      1. That’s what i was thinking myself. All this fuss about the logo made everything even more clear. The regular watchers stopped giving attention to such details, and the new watchers; well you just made them aware of that “subliminal message”! It was a huge mistake to even bring up the whole idea in the first place.
        And now i assume its all going to happen again

    2. Everybody in Europe already smokes, so who cares?

  20. Saward is reporting Senna will be replaced by Yamamoto for this race.

    1. That is pretty bad news, let’s hope it’s not the end of Senna’s season.

      Saward also has some interesting things about the Austin GP and i like him citing Cypher as having signed Summerton for next year. Looks they want to be best prepared!

Comments are closed.