Turkish government says no to funding for race

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: The Turkish government says it will not subsidised a race at Istanbul Park next year.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Minister dismisses Turkey GP funding hopes (Reuters)

Sports minister Suat Kilic: “If it wants to, the private sector can bring Formula One. But there is no question of us paying the cost of the rights which have been proposed to a private company to bring Formula One.”

Pirelli: Higher degradation levels in 2013 (GP Update)

Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery: “With the changes we’re making to the compounds we’re trying to bring back some degradation levels, because quite frankly at the end of the season we were in negative degradation and maybe not where we were asked to be. We were maybe repeating some races from the past where we were down to one pit-stop and I’m not going to say it was too easy, but teams were dominating the situation.”

US GP wants to change date (Sky)

“The Austin race is scheduled for November 17, the same weekend that the University of Texas are hosting a college game against Oklahoma State.”

Newey admits to being ‘frustrated’ by RB8 (ESPN)

“We came out with a car which had flashes of pace. Sebastian [Vettel] won in Bahrain, Mark [Webber] won in Monaco. But we didn’t have the level of consistency we wanted, and as an engineer that was very frustrating because the truth is we didn’t properly understand the car and what was happening.”

Hamilton not ruling out McLaren return (Autosport)

“You can never say never and I’ve had a great time. I think it will always be my home. I’ll always look at it as where I’ve come from. Going back there would be nice one day. But I want to go and experience some things for a bit.”

Reporting from the pit lane (McLaren)

Ayrton [Senna] of course should own the final word on the topic of statistics. Ayrton won three world championships, but only after he had overtaken the records of Brabham, Stewart, Lauda and Piquet. And sure, Niki marked the going rate for an emergent F1 star, but it was Ayrton who was the first driver to breach the million bucks per race line in 1994.”

Tweets

Comment of the day

@Colossal-Squid suggests two excellent additions to 50 things that made the 2012 F1 season great:

I’d have included a lot of delighted Japanese fans shouting “Kamui – Kamui!” after Kobayashi nabbed third at Suzuka. That gave me goosebumps.

Also Alonso stopping on track and soaking up the atmosphere of a home win in Valencia was very special. I loved seeing him interact with the marshals and the crowd.

From the forum

Looks like our online racing leagues are getting busy as we head into the off-season:

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Stretch!

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

And happy birthday to Robert Kubica who is 28 today!

Image © Virgin Racing

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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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39 comments on “Turkish government says no to funding for race”

  1. Why do Pirelli have to insist on tyres that degrade more quickly? I we had only race we all year where the drivers could push constantly – India if I’m not mistaken.

    The tyres they brought this year were ok in terms of degredation, once the teams were on top of them. It was Pirreli being conservative with their tyred choice in the last races that meant the races were one stoppers. If they want to see more degredation all they had to do was bring softer compounds

    1. And India was a monumentally boring race with no track action, no strategy battles, and nothing to recommend it.

      1. i thing they just need to re-think with the tyre choice… there only 3-5 race which i think the tyre choice a bit to conservative.

        1. Yeah India WAS the worst race of the year followed by Korea then monaco IMO

          I want to see the tyres that allow the drivers to push but that still mean 2 or 3 stops is the norm.

          I was complaining about the tyres at monaco because the drivers weren’t able to push throughout, but now the teams understand those tyres better the cars might not munch the tyres so much.

          Pirelli have been far from terrible but they are also very far from perfection. I’d rate them as 6/10 this year.

          1. Korea was a good race. Monaco was also a good race. I didn’t see the race in India, but it was probably good.

          2. All three had virtually no passing, and were ranked as three of the worst races – if not the three worst races – of 2012.

    2. There’s no refueling so strategy has to be down to tyres. And drivers being unable to push through the whole race is a myth and I think only driver to think so was Schumacher whose car was destroying the tyres. So he was probably saying that because he would have liked to do better, it’s always like that in F1. And there was nothing wrong with Medium and Hard tyres. All teams except Mercedes could have done any race after Spa with Medium sets without stopping once if they thought it was the fastest way. Saying that tyres don’t allow drivers to push at all in the race means that they don’t last even 10 laps, then how is it possible that in Austin for example it took 4-6 laps just to warm the tyres and everyone was doing 1 stop races in the end. If tyres last 15 laps then we’are going to have 4 stop races but that doesn’t mean drivers couldn’t push for that 15 laps and then change the tires. They don’t have to keep the best form for 150 laps for that to be possible.

      1. I get the impression that all of you pit-stop fans have never seen a race without pit stops so you think it is important to have them, F1 went without pit stops for longer than it has had them, they are a gimmick and totally unnecessary for good racing, they are also a very expensive part of a teams budget.

        1. Pitstops are good, at least they are not mandatory. I’ve never understood why there was something like a two-tyre rule. Before the refuelling ban it was useless and after the ban it was only harmful. It ruled out all strategic heterogeneity in the 2010 season. The only strategic variation came from some opportunistic early pitstops under yellow, like Monaco and Abu Dhabi. I think it’s a shame the drivers didn’t have the choice to do without any tyre change, because that would probably have ruled out most pitstops – leaving all action on track.
          However, Pirelli did a great job to spice things up. I really enjoyed the 2011 Spanish GP thanks to the rapidly degrading tyres. Even the two-tyre rule worked out pretty nicely, because of the large tyre-compound differences. But when tyre-wear levels are low, that stupid two-tyre rule does more harm than good. I don’t think the Indian GP needed tyre stops. There was, except for the rules, no reason to replace them. It was one of the few races this year I really missed the fuel-driven pitstop strategies.

  2. I hope F1 some day returns to the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans.

    1. @joey-zyla – Why? The circuit was so unpopular with drivers in 1967 that they refused to go back the next year.

      1. It’s a kool track.

  3. I don’t quite get the Alan Henry article, I mean, it was, interesting, but, I don’t know what I just read.

    It’s like you take a great deal of memories, perfectly written for a book, then cut out a line from each chapter and paste it onto a page.

    1. I agree with you – then I looked at the picture and while I respect that he has been in the business for years, and had a decent career, but you can tell why it was babble. I’m surprised nobody told him his marbles are rolling down the track.

      1. I saw the snip[ped of the article keith put in the round up and thought: “Great, this looks interesting” I’ve always found the drivers salaries a very interesting topic, then I read that and just cant work out what the point in the very short article was?? anyone??

  4. So, if the government won’t support the Turkish Grand Prix, a race at the Red Bull Ring is “highly unlikely”, and the deal for the French Grand Prix has fallen through, then where is this extra European race – which the FIA went to the trouble of arranging by moving the German Grand Prix – going to take place?

    1. Imola?

      1. Please don’t let it be Moscow Raceway…

        1. @necrodethmortem At present Moscow Raceway has FIA grade F1T which means it can hold F1 test sessions but not races. It’s feasible it could be upgraded to full F1 standard, but given it was only finished recently you have to think if their intention was to do that they’d have done it when they built it.

          1. @keithcollantine Yes, I thought the same. But maybe they’re only 1T because they didn’t want to pay the hefty fee for grade 1, because they didn’t stand a chance of getting a GP anyway, because of Sochi. Anyways, I don’t think it stands any chance and I can’t say I’m disappointed about that.

            For those interested, the grade 1 tracks without a grand prix are: Dubai, Fuji, Hockenheim, Imola, Indianapolis, Magny-Cours, Mugello, Paul Ricard, Red Bull Ring and Valencia.

        2. Why on earth would it be the Moscow Raceway? Russia is already getting a Grand Prix in 2014. It makes no sense for anyone to start up a rival race at the Moscow Raceway.

    2. Christian Sylt – Bernie’s handpuppet – writes that Austria is possible, because of a name licence.
      Bernie leveraging with Turkey?

      1. Maybe it’s just Bernie re-registering a name after his ownership of it was set to expire, so as to prevent someone from taking it for themselves and/or just in case there was ever a serious bid from Austria.

  5. Not exactly F1 related, but the 2013 F2 season has been cancelled.

    Looking at this table it’s hard to say why the championship should exist (as a feeder series for F1); how many of these names do you know to be in F1 today?

    1. Several of those drivers are/have been F1 test drivers.

      1. Each year, the winner of Formula 2 was automatically given a test drive with Williams. They were never actually considered to be a test and reserve driver in the regular season.

    2. That’s sad, because in the Swiss-French Matheo Tuscher we had a young and genuinely talented kid. He has a bright future, as he’s only 16. But you’re right, it is difficult to fit F2 into the feeder or entry categories. I knew this would happen sooner or later.

    3. I guess the series was doomed to fail from the start. Shame for Williams though, they miss out on some revenue.

  6. “The Austin race is scheduled for November 17, the same weekend that the University of Texas are hosting a college game against Oklahoma State.”

    Not to mention the NASCAR season finale!

    This year, there were so many other sporting events on that same weekend that here, in Canada, the race was only televised live on CTV2 — a channel only available to Bell Subscribers — there being “bigger” sporting events scheduled on TSN, TSN2, and CTV. I guess I then understood what it felt like to only be able to watch BBC coverage and not have Sky, for example.

  7. Something has to give on the weekend of November 17, 18. Either Formula 1, or the Texas football game. 117,000+ showed up this year to the COTA inaugural race. A Texas Longhorns home game, smack in the middle of Austin, and right where the shuttle buses were picking up race fans this year, typically draws around 100,000+. To have both on the same weekend would be utter mayhem (though the football game would only coincide with the qualifying session).

    1. Ah, but who will give? Joe Saward has an (unintentionally) amusing article on the clash, with various american commenters pointing out that the football game has a little more clout than F1 round here, and Saward snootily declaring F1 is god’s gift to mankind and if the texans don’t recognise that, they don’t deserve a race.

      1. @pelican My favorite comment from him on that post:

        One has to ask whether F1 is really after “the average tailgating beer drinking American sports fan”.

        That’s the spirit, Joe!

        1. @aka_robyn – exactly – the 5% of the country who don’t fit into that description isn’t going to watch F1 either.

  8. An hour ago, we were exactly 100 days away from the first race of the 2013 season. sigh

  9. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    7th December 2012, 11:26

    The Arabians have a lot of money. Why don’t they just laser scan everything in Istanbul, then make an exact replica in UAE?

    lol, just a hypothetical.

    1. I thought this too.. because ultimately, Istanbul Park is one of the better, if not best of the “new” circuits in recent years. Its awesome to drive (in computer games) and has a flow and character that lots of other tracks, new and old, just do not have at all. I say bring it back, but if they can’t afford it, then it really needs to be used by someone for something. If I was a millionaire (in £, $ or € – as I am a millionaire here in Tanzanian Shillings) then I’d buy the track, a load of old F1 cars, and shut the gate and just drive around and around with friends until I ran out of money.

      If only the location was a bit more user-friendly, it could be used as a test track or even a base for some of the teams, but situated where it is, I fear it was always doomed to fail. Big shame.

      Why didn’t they build such a great track in one of the “rich” countries instead??

  10. I hope the private sector get’s their act together and get’s the Turkish race back on the calendar.

    One of the very best F1 circuits EVER!

    LOVE THIS TRACK!

  11. Happy birthday, @debaser91 !

    1. Eh? I’ve not been on here for a few days so only just seen this. You’re a couple of days early I’m afraid @keithcollantine, my birthdays the 11th of December haha. Thanks all the same @girts :), you can wish me happy birthday for real in three days time!

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