F1 Fanatic round-up: 16/9/2010

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It was great to meet several F1 Fanatics at the F1 photography exhibition in Camden yesterday – Sebastian (or is it Sebastien?), LewisC and Icthyes were among those who showed up. Apologies if you were there early and I missed you – blame the London Underground I’m afraid.

Also yesterday I had my first play of the retail version of “F1 2010” and interviewed two of the games’ designers. They had a lot of interesting things to say and I’m sure you’ll enjoy the article which should be up on the site later today.

Here’s the round-up:

Links

Sauber: Ferrari loyalty no factor in letter (Autosport)

Monisha Kaltenborn: “We also did not write it in name or in favour of Ferrari. We wrote it as an interested party to the whole matter, because it is a matter that we feel concerns us all.”

Villeneuve still pursuing F1 (GrandPrix.com)

“It is now thought that Villeneuve could look at a buy-out or partnership with one of F1’s existing teams, with HRT the obvious target as rumours circulated Monza that the team may not be in a position to complete its debut season.”

Comment of the day

Lost of different views on who will be world champion yesterday. Steve makes the case for fifth-placed Sebastian Vettel:

If Vettel wins in Singapore, I think he will take it.

Monza was such a big race for him after recent events, and after his problem he handled it all superbly to go on and take a big gamble and go on such a stint to finish ahead of Webber which was vital.

His confidence will now be back to a degree, and he’s now also in a position which I think he is more comfortable in: no expectation upon him, the underdog.

He also has the experience of that last races of last year where he was the strongest driver in terms of results along with Hamilton, if I remember correctly, when he was in a similar position to now with Button having such a lead to lose.
Steve

From the forum

SLR wonders if the Singapore Grand Prix will have to be cut short.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Jo?â?úo Pedro CQ and F1 Badger’s Adam Milleneuve, who I saw at the F1 2010 preview event yesterday!

On this day in F1

One year ago today Renault announced Pat Symonds and Flavio Briatore would be leaving the team – the first sign we had of the truth of the allegations over Singapore 2008:

Read more: Briatore and Symonds step down as Renault accepts Singapore crash charge

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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45 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 16/9/2010”

  1. Keith babe.
    Seb finished 4th, not 5th. ;) xxx

    1. ignore me. i thought you meant the race and not the championship! :p xxx

  2. Thanks for the birthday mention Keith, keep up the great work – I’m currently enjoying my birthday on a fab city break in Barcelona!

    Good to see you again at the F1 2010 launch, what a fantabulous game…

    1. Have a nice birthday Adam, sounds like your ejoying it!

    1. Seeing their 2008 car makes me think… how weird does it seem to think that only 2 years ago Red Bull Racing were a lower midfield team?

      I know some people disagree but I believe the team itself was born in 1997 as Stewart (even though the name and ownership has since changed twice), and it’s crazy to think that for their first 12 seasons they were nowhere, and now all of a sudden they’re championship challenegers!

      1. Apparently it’s actually a 2006 car with some newer wings. They wouldn’t let out even an RB4 just yet!

        It’s strange to think how far they’ve come in such a short time. Even extending back to the Stewart days it’s been a rapid rise in F1 terms.

        1. When David Coulthard came to Belfast, for the Red Bull city limits, he was in last years car.

      2. they were reasonably good in 1999…

        as Red Bull, it took them just 4 years to win the first GP.

        Renault needed a year and a half to win the first race (after taking over Benetton), but they were a much better team (or at least, a bigger older one) in its previous incarnation.

        Just keep an eye and maybe, just maybe, in 3 years, we could see a HRT winning a race (in our dreams :P)

    2. When I see that car I think…

      God how did we let it get so bad back then with the elephant ears on the nose and the chimney stacks on the side an the…

      I never really paid much attention to it back then.

      1. Those cars look frighteningly ugly now. They kind of look they’re clad in samurai armor…

      2. The thing I’m most gad to see the back of is the wheel fairings. they where horrible last season, and I was so glad to hear they would be banned!

      3. I suppose we got used to it, but i must say that spoon nose with the horns and the winglets and the toweres and flaps looks clogged up now.

        I would be glad to take some things of these cars, like the beautifully curved front wings (but lose the bridge wing) and the nice and low rear wing, though.

        1. MouseNightshirt
          16th September 2010, 8:14

          I must say, other than the wheel fairings, I liked the old cars. Yes they had bits sprouting out, but it was done with curves and style. I guess I’m an artist at heart, cars these days seem so plain…

    3. seeing an old car on slicks is weird

  3. Almost there Keith, it is indeed spelt Sebastien. But I’ll let you off this time! It was a very good meeting indeed, and I enjoyed the chat! but as we mentioned earlier, the exhibition was a little smaller than expected, especially considering the large number of photos in his archives!

  4. It occured to me earlier that I hardly ever take the time to wish my fellow Fanatics a happy birthday, even those who were polite enough to say happy birthday to me.

    So, may I take this opportunity to say happy birthday not only to Adam and João, but to everyone else whose birthday I’ve ignored this year!

    1. Same here, I used to try and keep up with everyone’s but got lazy – Happy Birthday Everyone!

      1. happy birthday!

    2. Me too, happy birthday Adam, João, and everyone.

    3. Happy Birthday!

      I love you guys.

      1. Merry Chri- err, wait.

  5. wouldn’t it make sense (haha i know) for epsilon to buy out/merge with hrt, and for villenueve/durango to buy out torro rosso? STR has been for sale before. i’d be shocked if either branson or wirth parted with their shares of virgin.

    1. Good idea, sounds logical, but this being F1 it might end up with Villedeprat going with STR and HRT teaming up with Cypher or Durango/Villeneuve in the end.

      And don’t forget ART is somewhere out there as well, looking for an opportunity, might it arise.

  6. my preorder of f12010 was cheap as I had a 20 quid amazon coupon in my drawer!!!

  7. Can I just say its my birthday tomorrow (Friday). I’ll be 21.
    Can I get a mention please? xx

    1. Happy Birthday Grace!

      1. Happy Birthday Adam, João and Grace, although we really should keep yours for tomorrow!

        Nathan

  8. FYI, PEOPLE: grandprix.com (the villeneuve link) are serving an ad that’s covertly including malware (FDA Drug Mall apparently, not sure what that says about F1 fans…)

    Google Chrome is catching it automatically and blocking the site. (You’re not missing much anyway – the article doesn’t have much more info than Keith’s quoted.)

    http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://fdadrugmall.com/home/1/&client=googlechrome&hl=en-US

    1. not the first time they have served up a bogus ad

    2. thanks for the heads up!

    3. Yeah, I use Chrome, so I just skipped it after the warning. Didn’t really need to read about Villeneuve anyhow.

  9. I would be interested to know what the points standings would look like if we were still using the old system. Does anyone know where I can find it?

    1. Webber – 63
      Hamilton – 63
      Alonso – 56
      Button – 53
      Vettel – 52
      Massa – 34
      Kubica – 25
      Rosberg – 25

      1. That looks much better! Kind of miss the old style points, this new system is taking some getting used to

        1. Actually when you take into account that Webber won a race more, i think the new system is a tad better.

          It does seem even closer together, doesn’t it?

  10. Happy birthday to everyone today!

  11. That piece of information from Sauber is interesting. Sur, they would say that wouldn’t they. No sense in admitting their dependant on Ferrari.

    But it seems there is a real big push from the teams in the paddock to overturn this rule completely and let team orders be legal again.
    Williams, Sauber officially supported Ferrari in this, and a lot of “paddock insiders” from the teams and media are vocal on this as well.
    Even though I am not a great fan of his, glad to hear Jordan at least loudly protesting, and i am hopefull of McLaren and Red Bull boss Mateschitz not being in favour of using team orders (at least for now).

    F1Fanatic and Joe Saward, with maybe Adam Cooper as well are the only blogs that keep seeing it from the perspective of the fans and are against team orders.

    Let us just hope, the FIA does not go for allowing team orders altogether.

  12. Here’s a nice story from Will Buxton, about who he met at the airport after Monza: its Alex, living out is F1 fan dream of visiting all GPs this year and writing about it on his blog.
    http://willthef1journo.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/the-worlds-biggest-f1-fan/
    the article has links to Alex blog as well. I think this is something quite a few of us here would dream of doing once.
    In case you are on F1Fanatic, thanks for living our dream this year Alex!

  13. Was good to meet you yesterday evening Keith and thanks for running the competition!

    I was very tempted to buy a couple of pictures but couldn’t actually decide which I liked best; and there seemed to be a strong bias towards portraits of Graham Hill for some reason :)

    I’ve got some sneaky photos and will post some links later…

    1. Great to meet you Lewis – hope you had a good meal afterwards (we went for Mexican!)

  14. Do I continue to be the newest guy here?

  15. Just spinning off the above discussion briefly, I thought a few people might be interested in the MG Metro 6R4, which was designed and built by Patrick Head and Williams right at the end of the Group B era. I’ve got this really great book simply called Rally Cars by Reinhard Klein, which looks at the most influential cars from the sport’s inception to the year 2000; it was practically the first thing I bought when I got my first job and cost about $65. I don’t know if it’s still in print today.

    Anyway, there’s a few pages dedicated to the Metro 6R4, and this is what the book has to say:

    The Metro 6R4 long outlived it Group B rivals, but partly because it founds its level. It remained and effective tool in British and Irish national rallies long after Metros disappeared from the showroom, but it looked capable of fulfilling its World Championship aspirations only fleetingly and its hird place on the 1985 RAC, its first World Championship rally, was its best rest.

    Work began in 1981 and if it had appeared on schedule in 193, it might indeed have beaten long Quattros and early 205T16s, although its uncertain reliability makes that open to question. By the time John Davenport bludgeoned Austin Rover into committing itself to the car, a brave attempt to amange without a turbocharger was doomed. The pace of development and the increasing use of “special” petrol permitted the turbo teams to run much higher boost and therefore pressure.

    The mid-mouned three-litre V6 epitomised the Metro’s failings. Chronic problems with the came belts caused a rash of failures well into 1986 and early air filters were badly wanting in the dusty conditionss, but above all, it delivered neither the 400bhp nor the smooth flow of power promised. The exhaust system caused a serious power drop between 4000-5000rpm that was only identified when a new dynomometer was installed in late-1986. Until then, shortening the gearing had been the only solution and that imposed excessive strain on the differentials.

    But it was never intended to be a three-litre, nor to be as wide and as heavy as it became. Williams (yes, the Formula 1 team) made the prototypes, which had six-cylinder versions of Rover’s V8 and were reputed to cost one million pounds each. Patrick Head’s design had a 2.5-litre engine and 13-inch wheels. Then Michelin railroaded the Austin Rover Group (ARG) into using the bigger 390mm rims that Peugeot and Audi wanted and, as development proceeded, weight went up in both senses of the term. The homologated car was not only heavier than Williams intended, but the size and nature of the engine caused major handling problems because it raised the centre of gravity and the shell was too small to permit ancillaries such as oil and header tanks to be relocated to compensate. ARG therefore pioneered the use of wings, but it was forced to reveal its hand as early as 1984 simply to make the car perform on national rallies, thereby alerting the opposition. As the wings were fitted to the 200 road cars, it remained ahead of the field in this regard because the FIA felt unable to quibble over the homologation, but downforce and braking were the sole areas in which the 6R4 excelled.

    Understandably perhaps, Williams had failed to appreciate either the amount of punishment it was expected to take, or the need for rapid access for servicing. As Wynne Mitchell, the engineer who finally took control of the project, observed: “It was designed as a race car, It was light and it was neat and it just wasn’t strong enough for **** and corruption.”

    So there you go. Williams’ foray into the WRC wasn’t exactly what one might call a success, though the 6R4 picked up several major national rally victories, including the 198 Ulster, Manx and Circuit of Ireland rallies and Didier Auriol claimed the 1986 French National Championship behind the wheel of one.

    The source is as follows:
    Williams, D., Davenport, J., McMaster C., 2000, Rally Cars, Konemann Verlagsgesellschaft mhB, Bonn, Germany

  16. Seems Renault is coming to the resque to boost visitor ratings at the Korean GP, after Red Bull kicked off the promotion with its circuit run. http://www.gpupdate.net/en/f1-news/242715/renault-confirms-korean-roadshow-for-october/

    If the teams get Ferrari and Mercedes and McLaren to join at the end of next year to get the USA warmed to the Austing event, that would be great work by the FOTA community.

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