New Jersey Grand Prix ‘postponed to 2014’

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: The second F1 race in the USA may be postponed until 2014.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Mayors: Formula 1 race along Hudson River waterfront postponed until 2014 (NJ.com)

“The much-heralded plan for the Grand Prix of America to run a race along the Hudson River waterfront in Weehawken and West New York next year has been postponed until 2014, according to two mayors with knowledge of the plan.”

Arrest warrant for Mallya withdrawn (The Telegraph)

Force India co-owner Vijay Mallya has had the arrest warrant issued against him by an Indian court withdrawn following the settlement of a dispute over payments.”

Giddy up! Schumacher ready to ride into the sunset (Reuters)

“Formula One offers the maximum in terms of emotion, speed, and complete work. Any other kind of car would not give me the same emotions. I am stopping here completely.”

David Coulthard to bow out at DTM season finale in Hockenheim (DTM)

“I am looking forward to the final race of what has been an exciting season in the DTM. The weekend will be my final opportunity to compete at this level as I will stop racing in the DTM to concentrate on my developing off-track businesses and of course my family.”

F1 teams pushing to avoid tyre ‘shock’ (Autosport)

“On the back of Pirelli submitting its 2013 data, F1 team engineers have conceded that they did not react as well as they should have to the changes made for 2012, which is why they will be taking matters much more seriously this time out.”

Thailand government claims to have struck deal to host Bangkok Grand Prix in 2014 (The Independent)

“Kanokphand Chulakasem, governor of the Sports Authority of Thailand, was quoted as saying ‘Formula One has decided to include Thailand in its 2014 season calendar’ with a race slated for November.”

Reasons behind a decision (Ferrari)

“The decision to extend the agreement with Felipe Massa for another season was carefully weighed up and not just the obvious one. Nor was it inevitable because of the lack of alternatives, nor was it in anyway guided by the wishes of his current team-mate, because Ferrari alone chooses its drivers.”

Andretti To Open COTA In 2010 Renault (Speed)

Mario Andretti will drive the Lotus team’s 2010 Renault R30 at the opening ceremony at Circuit of The Americas on Sunday.”

Left wanting more at the Korean Grand Prix (Toro Rosso)

“It was pretty confusing for the next few corners. The car was drive-able but I didn’t have much in the way of brake performance and the car was veering to the left whenever I attempted to brake. Then the team told me the telemetry showed I had no braking on the front right.”

Luciano Bacheta drives Williams F1 car at Silverstone (Formula Two)

“I’m still taking it all in and I am sure that it won’t be until I go away and reflect that I’ll realise quite how brilliant it was. The car is just a pleasure to drive, better than anything I’ve driven before, so I’d love to have some more experience of Formula One in the future.”

Addingham schoolboy racer aims to impress F1 stars in India (Ilkley Gazzette)

“Fifteen-year-old Toby Earle from Addingham will be driving in two rounds of the JK Asia Racing Series for the Meritus GP team in the Formula BMW race.”

Capturing Korea (ESPN)

“It was just an opportunity to get a shot of a couple of guys trying to out-psych each other during practice. This is what they do sometimes, when one’s slowed down the other will go past; I think this was actually on a slowing down lap but they were just battling.”

The Secret Underside of a Modern F1 Car (Road and Track)

“Topside, Rosberg’s car uses multi-element wings to produce downforce, but peer underneath and you’ll find a cocktail of mind-bending vortex generators and what F1 designer Nick Wirth calls a ‘horrific assortment of [interconnected] parts and pieces.'”

F1: Chart Of Pirelli Compounds vs Race Winner (F1 Goggles)

“The trend has been that Vettel has yet to win with a hard/medium combination. Alonso has never won with a hard/soft combination.”

Comment of the day

Sumedh on Hamilton and Button at McLaren:

This pairing reminds me so much of the Kimi Raikkonen-Felipe Massa pairing. Raikkonen (Hamilton) was expected to trounce Massa (Button) and did so in the first year. But in the second year, the other driver had the upper hand. And after the third season, the partnership ends with the faster driver making a bizarre career decision (Raikkonen leaving F1, Hamilton going to Mercedes).

Massa beat Raikkonen. So, I will put my money on Button for the last five races.
Sumedh

From the forum

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Daykind and Estesark!

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

Lewis Hamilton escaped a penalty ahead of the decisive 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix five years ago today.

Hamilton along with Jenson Button and Takuma Sato’s teams were fined after using an extra set of wet weather tyres in practice.

Image © Red Bull/Getty images

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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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93 comments on “New Jersey Grand Prix ‘postponed to 2014’”

  1. What will take New Jersey’s place on the calendar then? Will Spain get to keep two GP’s for one more year, will a previously ditched circuit such as Turkey get one last swan-song?

    1. Hopefully another circuit will be allowed to take its place. I’d love Turkey to get it, I know there’s not much atmosphere but I love the track itself. I don’t think there’s anything like Turn 8 with its quadruple apex!

      Could it open up the possibility of France getting a test run? Surely Paul Ricard is ready to host a race, and it’d serve as a tryout should Bernie decide to revisit the idea of alternating it with Spa.

      1. I’d like to see Paul Ricard get a test run, after all it makes much more sense now since there are 3 French drivers currently on the F1 grid. I’d hope that they would use one of its more high-speed configurations if they were to do that as appose to the usual un-dramatic, monotonous Tilkedromes.
        Turkey is a welcome exception to the boring Tilkedrome rule, but I just don’t think it makes financial sense sadly, but as I said it was rather dishonerbaly kicked from the calendar; it would be nice if F1 returned for a year.

    2. I believe I´ve read that Turkey would step in if New Jersey didn´t make it.
      I agree with you, the track layout of the circuit of Istanbul is really challenging (though that DRS zone should be shortened, it made overtaking too easy last time) and provides good races. However my preference would be an event in France, Paul Ricard or Magny-Cours really doesn´t make a difference to me, what I think is importante is to have another european race because we are slowly losing them all and France has great tradition in motorsport.
      I know that F1 is a global sport but the heart is in Europe, going to countries like Korea, Sinpore or even Bangcok is like selling the soul of the sport to the highest bidder. It kills me when Ecclestone says that Spa or Silverstone have their slot in danger (has he did 2 years ago). It kills a little bit this great sport too…

    3. I definitely won’t be Spain – just because Bernie needs to ‘parachute’ a backup in doesn’t waive their fees and Spain can barely afford one GP at the moment.

    4. What about Indianapolis?

  2. that tyre mistake at interlagos in 2007 now seems like such a typically small but potentially costly Mclaren error.

    1. @sato113 Surely you mean Shanghai 2007? And at no point did it seem small. It was immediately apparent that it erased Hamilton’s seemingly invincible championship lead.

      1. No; the Interlagos tyre mix-up; Mclaren just made an honest mistake in practice; Shanghai is a different kettle of fish

  3. new jersey, thailand, mallya, wirth, ferrari….what a mess!

    1. +1 the very definition of concise and to the point.

      1. thank you very much! my grandfather would be proud. “get to the point” he would say. my favorite was “no money, no funny.” great guy, my grandfather. see, his father was smuggled into the states after killing a tax collector in greece. when my grandfather left school, he went back to greece to find a wife, and ended up trapped there when the italians invaded. they weren’t so bad, but when the germans took over, well i don’t need to tell you what kind of b*st*rds they were. there’s an old joke that there’s still nazi plunder buried in the hills. anyway, it wasn’t until 1950 that he came back with his wife and 2 daughters. they stayed with his brother for a bit – he had a pool hall and bowling alley on the wrong side of the tracks, in the crap part of town. and that’s where i spent much of my childhood, playing billiards with all kinds of shady characters, and what characters they were! looking back, i wouldn’t let my kids do anything that i did. don’t think my folks were neglectful or anything, just times are different now. i make a deliberate effort to be as old-fashioned as possible (my interpretation of “keepin’ it real”) but it’s not easy. i dunno…what do you think?

          1. +1 the very definition of concise and to the point.

  4. The news about New Jersey is true or just a rumor?

    1. it will be official tomorrow

      1. sad Scuderia is sad :'(

      2. I was undecided between Spa or Canada+NJ, I guess my doubt is dead.

        When in 2014? I guess my pocket will not stomach a GP in US and a World Cup in Brazil, I think I’ll have to postpone it :)

  5. On the back of Pirelli submitting its 2013 data, F1 team engineers have conceded that they did not react as well as they should have to the changes made for 2012, which is why they will be taking matters much more seriously this time out.

    I hope they don’t manage it. The first half of the season when teams were still getting to grips with tyres was unpredictable and exciting. The last few races have been irredeemably tedious because the strategies are obvious and nothing goes wrong (despite red bull’s unproven hyperbole in the last race, which I suspect was an attempt to cover up the car’s dominance).

    In other news, Bernie’s odd ramblings turn out to be true again, months ahead of time. Despite our tendency to assume he’s lost it, he’s still sharper than us on his worst day.

    1. @hairs, agreed about Bernie still as cunning as a fox, but of course he is the 1st.person to know what is happening.
      RedBulls verbal crocodile tears re the state of Vettels tyres is even more laughable when you remember that no such messages were heard going to Webber whose tyres, from my memory ,had done more laps than Vettels.

      1. Red Bull told Webber to watch out for right front wear live on television at least once, i thought twice.

        1. Thanks Rambo, guess we were in a commercial break.

    2. irredeemably tedious

      good one!

    3. @hairs – did you see the lock up Vettel had on his in lap? They were very much trying to prevent a repeat, as his tyres were in almost the same condition in the final stages of the race. More warnings were sent to Vettel because he has a tendency to ignore team messages and set fastest laps, which could’ve resulted in the tyre giving up.

  6. Bob Fearnley is the salt of the earth but it may well be he is a victim of his bosses vain assurances. Fearnley said, ““In F1 we are captivated by our own self importance…and in Vijay’s world the F1 programme is of relatively small importance.” (link)

    Indeed this is probably the case – ie that the Force India team is so self absorbed with the F1 circus that they are unaware of the financial hurricane on the horizon. Further, when it comes to saving his future, Mallya will have no interest in his ‘insignificant’ F1 team.

    The Economic Times states that the main Kingfisher Holding company, which owns the airline and the other Mallya businesses, has made guarantees against the airline business which if called in will sink the whole group.

    The response of the Kingfisher board suggest they are ‘reasonably confident’ that these [guarantees] will not be invoked’. However, the airport owed just $2m after months of non-payment issued legal proceedings and in a week Kingfisher had sold a chunk of the business to Diageo and paid the debt.

    So, if a warrant for a mere $2m gets Mallya’s attention in a week, what will other creditors learn who are owed nearly $4bn? Maybe that Legal action gets results.

    It could be that the Indian courts may be very busy with all things Kingfisher quite soon and Force India may need a new benefactor.

    1. Step in, Edward Jordan :)

      1. Doesn’t that just make me smile – a lot

    2. The true nature of how much of Kingfisher, the parent company, is linked with the airline is still an unknown. Sometimes it is totally disconnected while at others it is connected enough to sink the whole group. Vijay hasn’t sold his cricket team yet so I don’t think Force India would be on the block. Also, Vijay has been associated with F1 for quite a while now and I think it would take a very serious blow to end his Force India ownership. In such a case, given Force’s relatively good results, Sahara may be coaxed into taking over the team or maybe get Tata on board. However, it doesn’t look like Vijay will be putting FI up for sale anytime soom.

  7. Ferrari 19:15 GMT: Released this terse explanation for retaining Felipe. “The decision to extend the agreement with Felipe Massa for another season was carefully weighed up and not just the obvious one. Nor was it inevitable because of the lack of alternatives, nor was it in anyway guided by the wishes of his current team-mate, because Ferrari alone chooses its drivers”. (Ferrari.com)

    once again ‘The Godfather’ Luca stamps his authority over Alonso. Remember a couple of weeks ago at the Paris Motor Show, the Padrino when questioned about Alonso’s backing of Massa for 2013 stated, “But first Fernando should win the world title and then we will certainly not put anyone alongside him who would bother him”.

    Why do Ferrari need to issue an explanation of why they retained Massa? – it was obvious to the rest of us.

    1. Sounded to me a bit like a guy saying ” I bought the people-carrier because it makes the most sense, and no ! my wife’s preference had nothing to do with it, I wear the pants in our house”.

      1. Exactly that @hohum, why else “expain”

      2. Yup, that is definitely how it read to me too @hohum and @bascb!

      3. @hohum

        +1.

        When season started I was backing Hamilton to win this, but his title chase is over so I’m with Alonso now.

        However, I fear Vettel has got it already and LdM will exploit Alonso’s “failure” raising his pressure on him basically because he’s sick of some of Alonso’s remarks that can be read as him (Alonso)being “the man in charge”.

      4. @HoHum

        V. Funny. Unless you’re reading this and have a people carrier. All kinds of existential angst may be caused – even a divorce or two if the unlucky owner has a moment of self reflection and a dawn of realisation. :)

  8. I don’t know about the options that are possible to fill up the vacant spot on the calendar but here they are:

    Valencia: If Spain can afford to hold the race for one more year as the European GP, under the current arrangements, Valencia would be holding the Spanish GP in 2014, that means that before we will see Valencia off the calendar it will be 2015. This is unless they don’t postpone the alternation between the Spanish GP’s for one more year.

    Turkey: It would be an exciting prospect but doubt that it will be happening. The financial situation of the country isn’t good and holding another race there would probably be a financial disaster.

    France: Cannot see it happening until the government funds come to life.

    Other improbable possibilities:

    Germany: If Valencia does not host the European GP and the Nurburgring hosts the German GP, we could see the Hockenheimring on the calendar, but as all the other possibilities, needs serious financial backing to be able to hold a race for three consecutive races (considering 2012).

    Mexico: If Mexico is able to get the Autodromo Hermano Rodriguez up to today’s standards, I am sure it will be a great race but I doubt that they can renew everything in less than one year.

    Conclusion: I think the 2013 will have a 19 race calendar and with a possible three-week gap between Canada and Silverstone :(

    1. I believe Bernie owns Paul Ricard, if so I would not put it past him to very generously allow an F1 race to fill a blank in the calendar, of course he would not be expected to have to pay a fee like tracks with a contract.

    2. I think your conclusion migh well prove to be the right one @kevincucamest.

      As for the proposed venues:
      Valencia is out of money (and Barcelona not that much better on the matter), that is why they did the alternating deal in the first place, to not have to drop out altogether. Not even being considered, I am sure.
      Germany – its already highly likely that Hockenheim will have to step in to have any kind of German GP next year, and its not going to do 2 races in one season. Not going to happen
      – Mexico – would be nice to see that, but that track is so far from being F1 ready, its hardly even being considered. But maybe it could bring back that idea for the “almost signed” contract for the Argentinian GP, or who knows that Thailand / Bangkok race to be done a year early.

    3. Oh man, Mexico would be awesome. The track is in good shape and could be easily bring to F1 standards with one exception. And that is that there is no run-off area in the fearsome Peraltada curve. If a car loses control there it would be against the wall, something unacceptable naturally. The only possibility would be to make the track go through the baseball stadium as they did when CART ran in Mexico City but that has problems of its own, mainly an uneven track! Other than those two big issues, I think the rest is quite basic. And I am sure it would be packed, it was packed all days during the CART era, so imagine Formula 1. Would be amazing.

      1. Walls are ok in F1

      2. I thought that too when it was mentioned earlier in the year, but there’s less run-off at Abu Dhabi’s turn 3 or Korea’s turn 17, both tracks built and approved in the last few years. For whatever reason, the FIA don’t seem to require runoff in these flat or near flat corners.

        1. Actually, it came to my mind that Slim and Emilio Azcarraga Jean have been battling each other for the last few months. Azcarraga owns Televisa and Televisa owns the company that has the concession to operate the race track at Mexico City (the track itself is owned by the city government). Their business battle has been so bitter that Slim has pulled all advertising away from Televisa (Televisa being the largest TV network in Mexico, so quite a big deal). A Mexican GP at Hermanos Rodriguez would inevitable require these two parties to co-operate…not sure about this, but it could be a big reason why there is no serious talk about it

          1. Hmm, interesting.

            I remember articles quoting Bernie earlier this year along the lines of if the government was re-elected (which I believe happened?) then works would commence on getting the track up to F1 standard. I’m guessing no such work has begun?

            I got interested in this track back in May when these articles and have been wondering how fast the first chicane and the esses after turn 6 would be in a modern F1 car and whether peraltada would simply be taken flat, even if the cars approached unimpeded from the back straight?

            Also would you think that there would have to be a hairpin created after a straight? The only corners slow enough for overtaking I can see on there at the moment are turns 5 and 6 – turn five comes right after the fast turn four and then only a very short quirt to turn six. Certainly not possibility for DRS to be used before either corner in the race.

            This is a mockup I did to create some overtaking and slow down the entry into peraltada:

            http://advertisingspecialists.net/images/Mexico_GP_2013_2.jpg

            Keith, I know you’re a fan of this track, any thoughts on what would be needed to get it up to scratch in terms of overtaking and speeds through peraltada (if it’s an issue at all).

            With the money being poured into Sauber by Slim and a Mexican driver in a top seat from next year, there must be forced working in favour of this…

  9. USA: Speed TV isn’t sending their broadcast crew to the Austin GP this year, their last with F1 before it moves to NBC. Shame.

    1. Wow, that’s a pretty huge missed opportunity. What a shame.

    2. (They were originally going to send them, they changed their mind today, Thursday).

      1. Wow that is a major letdown. Last week they were still talking about making it a great effort for the Austin GP, now nothing.

        Bad losers, it seems!

    3. Sad F1 day for me.
      I kinda like the SpeedTV broadcast team, and I will miss them. I dont know where NBC will get new announcers who have the experience to commentate F1 effectively. I hope and pray they import some from the UK or elsewhere. Speed is owned by the Fox company, and sometimes they broadcast on that more general network rather than the Speed channel. Years ago, they used a different broadcast team other than David, Steve, Bob, and Peter(in those days). I have to say, the fill-ins were horrible. I will seriously consider changing my F1 consumption if the broadcasters are less than informed of their subject matter.

  10. postponement to new jersey and news of F1 in thailand, i like!

  11. Very sorry to hear about the likelihood of NJ getting postponed, but it was starting to look as though it was in serious trouble over the past few weeks. As an American fan hoping to make her first GP there next year (can’t possibly make Austin this year), that really saddens me.

    1. Ditto.
      Not my first, but would have been first F1 GP in this country, continent, century, millennium. Wish I could have made Austin.
      I hope some other worthy circuit gets to benefit from the vacant date.

  12. Paul Hemberey says next year tyres will be different aerodynamically, musing on the possibilities of this a picture formed in my mind of the back tyres of a dragster going from big wide bags to tall and skinny from centrifugal force as they rocket down the strip.
    It would be truly bizarre if F1 tyres behaved like this but would be a great help in the DRS zone. Anyone have other more likely thoughts on what this could mean.

    1. @hohum I’d imagine it’d have something to do with the shape/dimensions of the shoulder of the tyre between the sidewall and the tread surface.

      Also the deforming dragster style tyres would really give engineers and drivers something to complain about. Imagine having wildly differing lateral stiffness of the tyre in a corner depending on the speed of the corner.

    2. Maybe if they made them slightly off from a perfect round, the car designers would have to consider structural integruty rather than just aero issues..

  13. Here is the thing though, it’s a street race so it’s not like a track needs to be built. The garages/paddock area are near complete, the roads are scheduled to get paved in the spring & the barriers/fences have been ordered, the only thing needing to be done was buy (or lease) the land the to put the grandstands on.

    NJ/Race Organizers don’t want to pay the price for it but their mistake was not securing that land before the race was announced as now the land owners basically have the promoters by the balls “You’re either gonna pay what we want or you’re not gonna get the land which means you won’t have a race”.

  14. Bob (@bobthevulcan)
    19th October 2012, 3:34

    Seems bizzare that the Thai government would suddenly, and unilaterally, announce a race deal without FOM confirmation. (If I remember correctly, race deals have always been jointly announced.)

    That being said, I don’t think a Thai GP is a good idea. If it were to be introduced, that would leave three races in the relatively tiny Southeast Asian region (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore) – would this not be market saturation? It’s unlikely that it would draw in crowds, given that the existing races already capture the regional audience, that many locals will not be able to afford tickets, and the general lack of interest in motorsports. (Would a race in Thailand promote auto racing there? Look at the empty grandstands in Shanghai and Korea, and the answer is, “doubtful”.)

    They propose a street circuit in the suburbs, port area or government district, yet looking at Maps and Street View, these are laid out in a rather boring grid pattern, and more importantly, most are too narrow to support racing – ie, two-lane roadways lined with shophouses and apartments.

    It seems that hosting a Grand Prix has become a sign of economic clout, an exercise in ego. Countries host races as a matter of international prestige, valuing the exposure it gives them, yet if they are ill-conceived, such races will be to the detriment of the sport itself.

    1. I agree with you on this one. I don’t really understand it, beyond ‘money talks’ of course.
      Apparently it’s going to be a street night race, in a major Southeast Asian capital. Wait don’t we have this already?

    2. When Redbull racing did a demo run in Bangkok few years ago. Hundreds-thousands of people participated the event so I think there might be at least some interests in motosport there.

      And Thailand is where Redbull came from anyway.

      1. Bob (@bobthevulcan)
        19th October 2012, 4:49

        You make a good point about Red Bull’s home crowd. However, anyone can attend a public demo run for free. Will those hundreds of thousands be willing (or be able) to fork out what must be a hefty sum for race tickets?

        Besides that, the point still stands – will they be able to craft a good street circuit? None of the roads in the areas cited in the article seem wide enough to accomodate a racetrack, let alone grandstands or a pit building.

        1. Yep, Totally forgot that demo runs are freebies. My bad.

          But if they really want a GP, they probably try to squeeze them in eventually. Only thing I fear is that the race will be a snoozefest where cars following each other in order because there is just no room for overtaking.

          1. Sorry for double post but I forgot to mention that the Race of Champions 2012 will be held in Bangkok. Tickets were available yesterday but now almost sold-out as we speak.

          2. Bob (@bobthevulcan)
            19th October 2012, 5:09

            Only thing I fear is that the race will be a snoozefest

            I agree with you on that. F1 street races are usually processional. Bangkok could very well end up being another Phoenix.

            As for the Race of Champions, did they really fill up a 65,000-seat stadium? I guess I underestimated the draw of motorsport in Thailand. Just found out as well that the expatriate population is larger than expected. Maybe they will bring in the crowds, but I doubt they’ll produce a good circuit.

      2. davidnotcoulthard
        19th October 2012, 16:26

        And Thailand is where Redbull came from anyway.

        Very indirectly, though. Red bull still came from Austria, it just happened to be based on something from Thailand. A bit like how Windows XP simply isn’t MS-DOS and how Mac OSX isn’t neccessarilly accosiated with FreeBSD.

  15. Booo. I’ve got plans to be in NY/NJ next year for a holiday around when it should be held…

  16. Happy birth day to Heikki Kovalainen!!

  17. artificial racer
    19th October 2012, 8:01

    Did this news get covered elsewhere?
    Massa Raced Red Bull-Style Exhaust In Korea:
    http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/f1-grand-prix-news-briefs154/

    Ferrari raced an all-new Red Bull-style exhaust on only Felipe Massa’s car in Korea last weekend, according to the Spanish newspaper 20 Minutos. The news would explain the Brazilian driver’s better pace than teammate Fernando Alonso in the sister F2012, and also the Spaniard’s confidence that he is still in the running to beat Sebastian Vettel to the title despite a new six-point championship deficit and Red Bull’s recent dominance. Indeed, 20 Minutos claims Alonso will be running the Massa-specification on his own red car next weekend in India. The report also said Ferrari is working hard in former F1 team Toyota’s state of the art Cologne wind tunnel on a so-called ‘double DRS’ straightline speed-boosting system.”

    1. A surprising story if true, given Alonso’s recent comments about the slow pace of development of this year’s car.

    2. So Massa’s exhaust was different from Alonso’s?
      Here’s a little comparison of the two: looks pretty similar to me
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/77889303@N07/8102134748/in/photostream

      1. Hm, that would have to be an extremely subtle change :-)

      2. Ferrari are running a Coanda exhaust (like McLaren, Lotus, AMG etc) , where as aren’t Red Bull still running a purely downwash design (like Sauber) with the undercut tunnel feeding the diffuser?

        Those pictures clearly show an external Coanda system on both red cars.

    3. Ferrari must have put Klingon camouflage on top of their RB style exhaust, or else how do you explain the lack of any picture or video of it? And there is enough of them showing the ferrari’s own exhaust design on Massa’s car.
      I wonder if internet news sites really think that if they repeat something enough times it will make it real XD

    4. That is not a true story. It was a bad translation from a Spanish newspaper, “20 minutos” was its name I recall. The paper said they will try to develop the exhaust for the Indian GP, but who ever translated it, got it completely wrong.

      1. @caci99 Thanks for the info.

  18. Am I the only one who seems to be happy with the announcement that there’s difficulties over USA2 GP?

    I’m still yet to see any evidence that American F1 fans have been to an F1 race and enjoyed it since 2004.. It’s a huge risk putting 2 races on in the US, no matter how large the potential fanbase is/could be

    Of course, I hope to be proven wrong, cause new tracks are meant to be exciting and draw in crowds, but I just think this is happening too quickly for a country that only 7 years ago staged one of the worst races in F1 history…

    1. Of course, you’re missing the point that Indianapolis 2005 was a terrible failure of a race due to politicking and fallout from the tyre war going on.

      Bridgestone knew about the tyre surface ahead of the event, Ferrari vetoed changes to the circuit, Mosley got involved, everyone got angry, Michelin made multiple bad decisions, Schumacher and Rubens nearly took each other out of the race, Monteiro got a bloody podium and everyone came out of it looking like fools.

      1. “road surface”, not “tyre surface”.

      2. Ferrari vetoed changes to the circuit

        Thats actually not true, Nobody from Ferrari was ever asked as Jean Todt was never invited to any of the raceday morning meetings.

        The circuit wasn’t altered because under the regulations the circuit layout cannot be altered after qualifying. There was also insurance reasons as any alterations to the layout would not have been covered meaning any damage, injury or fatality could have resulted in legal problems.

        I was at Indy that weekend working in the pits/paddock for FOM & there’s a lot of stuff that was never made public & a lot of the stuff that was isn’t totally accurate.

      3. I don’t see why one should point to Ferrari as being the bad guy, when obviously Michelin got it wrong. And because they got it wrong the majority of the teams running Michelin and Michelin itself tried to turn the event as if it were the Brigestone teams (Ferrari) doing the wrong. It was a tyre war, if the Michelin tyres weren’t up to the circuit it was their fault and the teams should have setup the cars accordingly.

        1. Wasn’t even a problem for all Michelin teams, Toyota were the only team that had any problems & that was caused by the ‘extreme’ camber angle they were running.

          I spoke to engineers from McLaren, Renault, Williams & Red Bull Saturday evening after qualifying & all were perfectly happy with the tyres & said they had suffered zero signs of any problem.

          The biggest problem that weekend was the way Michelin & the GPMA teams decided to play politics with something that seriously wasn’t the issue they made it out to be.

          You can see this just by looking at the way they tried to shift blame onto Ferrari/Jean Todt for there been no circuit changes when as I said above nobody was from Ferrari was ever consulted.
          Also how they said that Max Mosley had interfered to prevent a chicane when in fact Max Mosley wasn’t consulted & actually had little idea of what was happening as he wasn’t there.

          Charlie Whiting told the teams very early on that changes to the track were no option & clearly laid out the reason why. There was zero room to work as far as that went, Not just because of the regulations but also because of the insurance policies.

          Charlie said he would waver the regulations banning tyre changes & allow teams to change tyres as many times as they felt they needed to during the race, Michelin claimed they didn’t have enough tyres available to do this even thought they said they could have got new compounds out overnight.

          As I understand it there was 1 team meeting Sunday morning which Bernie Ecclestone was invited to that lasted an hour in which the only thing discussed was the threats of a breakaway series. Oddly considering what was going on, In this same meeting Bridgestone were informed that should that breakaway series go ahead Michelin would be its sole tyre supplier.

  19. Even though the team is based in the UK, and races under an Austrian flag, would the Thailand Grand Prix be RedBull’s home race? :P

    1. @calum I guess it could very loosely be a home GP for them :P

  20. Schumacher expects rodeo to be safer than riding a bike?
    I’d rather see him testing the 2014 Pirelli’s and make one final comeback at Sauber – winning WDC.

  21. Wow! The Hamilton/Button and Räikkönen/Massa pairing is so similar and I never noticed! Bizarre..

  22. Those tyre stats are really interesting. A more telling way of putting it is Red Bull haven’t been successful with the medium compound at all, and with that compound featuring in 3 of the remaining 4 races, no wonder Webber made the comments he did. Especially considering that compound has been present in all of Alonso’s victories.

    Perhaps Red Bull haven’t been able to find a set-up that works well on that compound so they’ve been going with compromises that affect their pace on the alternate compounds.

    Either way, it will be interesting to see if this theory comes in to play for the rest of the season, it would be foolish to flat out dismiss it.

    1. never mind, just re-read the chart and realised Vettel won in Bahrain on the mediums… apologies, still the trend is there I think.

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