Bernie Ecclestone - No plans to put the brakes on


© Getty Images
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian as his 80th birthday approaches, F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone speak out about a variety of subjects, from the future of the sport to Margaret Thatcher, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, democracy, football and what continues to drive him.
The way I feel at the moment, why stop? I do it because I enjoy it. And yesterday is gone. I don't care what happened yesterday. What else would I do? People retire to die. I don't get any individual pleasure because we don't win races or titles in this job. I'm like most business people. You look back at the end of the year and you see what you've achieved by working out how much money the company has made. That's it.

Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/10/bernie_ecclestone_no_plans_to.php

Enrico Bertaggia Tony Bettenhausen Mike Beuttler Birabongse Bhanubandh Lucien Bianchi

Team order rule needs a re-think


Jean Todt arives for Wednesday's hearing © Getty Images
Formula One should look at abolishing the controversial ban on team orders after Ferrari escaped further punishment for their manipulation of the German Grand Prix result. That is the view of the Daily Telegraph’s Tom Cary, who is of the opinion that the team orders rule now needs to be seriously looked at because of its obvious shortcomings.
“Whether you are for or against team orders, if the FIA could not back up its own rules and nail a competitor in a blatant case such as this the rule really does need reviewing. Perhaps Ferrari’s thinly-veiled threat to take the matter to the civil courts if they were punished too harshly scared the governing body, who as much as admitted the flimsiness of its rule."
Paul Weaver, reporting for the Guardian in Monza, was in favour of the ruling which keeps alive Ferrari’s slim chances in an enthralling championship.
“The World Motor Sport Council was right not to ruin a compelling Formula One season by taking away the 25 points Alonso collected in Germany. That would have put him out of the five-man title race. But the council was widely expected to increase the fine and possibly deduct points from the team, as opposed to the individual. In the end, it could be argued that common sense prevailed. But the decision will dismay those who were upset by the way Ferrari handled the situation as much as anything else.”
The Daily Mail's Jonathan McEvoy expressed outrage at the FIA tearing up its own rule book by allowing Ferrari to escape unpunished.
"Although the race stewards fined them £65,000 for giving team orders in July, the FIA World Motor Sport Council, to whom the matter was referred, decided not to impose any further punishment. It leaves the sport's rulers open to derision. It was, after all, their rule they undermined. In a statement, the WMSC said the regulation banning team orders 'should be reviewed'."

Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/09/team_order_rule_needs_a_rethin_1.php

Georges Berger Gerhard Berger Eric Bernard Enrique Bernoldi Enrico Bertaggia

Moebius '55 Chrysler 300 custom color combo

I picked this Moebius  up last night and it is a great kit1 i plan to paint it like my grandfather's '56 Chrysler New Yorker which was painted Coral Pink with a black roof.It was not easy to mix the paint(i'm using tamiya acylics).The first batch came out Barbie Pink so I had to add darker red and black to get the shade I was afterHere it is after the first coat.   .

Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/1013212.aspx

Michael Andretti Keith Andrews Elio de Angelis Marco Apicella M·rio de Ara˙jo Cabral

Christian Horner on Bahrain: Political if you race, political if you don’t

Christian Horner says that his Red Bull team focussed on the sport in Bahrain over the weekend despite the obvious distractions that surrounded the event. “We’ve focussed on motor racing this weekend,” said Horner, who had a chat with the … Continue reading

Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/04/23/christian-horner-on-bahrain-political-if-you-race-political-if-you-dont/

Michael Bartels Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi Erwin Bauer Zsolt Baumgartner

The two Kimi Raikkonens

There are, it turns out, two Kimi Raikkonens.

The public face of the 2007 world champion, who has returned to Formula 1 this season after two years in rallying, is of a monosyllabic, monotone, unsmiling figure, energised only the moment he steps into a racing car.

The one who emerges in private is very different - a talkative, jocular man, who can happily sit and shoot the breeze like anyone else.

As Lotus trackside operations director, Alan Permane has worked closely with Raikkonen since he joined the team last November.

Kimi Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen has been perceived as cold and uncommunicative. Photo: Getty

The 32-year-old Finn, Permane says, "is happy to sit and talk, not only about technical stuff, but laughing and joking and talking rubbish with his engineers about all sorts of stuff".

He is just not interested in any of his dealings with the media and, unlike his rivals, doesn't bother to hide it.

Permane worked with Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso through the title-winning years with the team formerly known as both Benetton and Renault. He has been impressed with Raikkonen from the start.

Raikkonen first drove one of the team's cars at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia in late January. Straightaway the team knew they had something special.

He had not driven an F1 car since the 2009 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and had no experience of the Pirelli tyres he was using. Yet, after a single installation lap to check the car's systems were working, his first flying lap was within a few 10ths of a second of the fastest lap he would do over the next two days.

The good impressions did not go away.

Permane said, "He has never driven a car with a full load of fuel in it.

"We went from 30-160kg [of fuel load in Valencia] to show him that's the sort of difference you can expect - certainly from qualifying to race it's even bigger than that.

"We calculate the lap time difference the fuel load will make and his first lap was absolutely spot on that difference. That is impressive."

After that, Raikkonen did another 20 laps, each one exactly 0.1secs slower than the last - the lap time lost by tyre degradation.

There is a widespread belief that Raikkonen is as unforthcoming in his technical debriefs as he is in public, but that, too, appears to be a fallacy.

Lotus have found his comments in debriefs to be not only lengthy but very perceptive, too.

He was slightly quicker than new team-mate Romain Grosjean throughout pre-season testing, so it was a surprise that he was about 0.2secs slower than the Franco-Swiss semi-novice in the practice sessions in Melbourne.

Equally, the errors Raikkonen made on his qualifying laps that left him down in 18th on the grid betrayed a certain ring-rustiness, as well as perhaps the pressure he was feeling from Grosjean's pace.

In the race, though, something of the old Raikkonen returned as he fought back up from his low starting position to take seventh place by the end.

Clearly, though, there is more to come.

Raikkonen is not entirely happy with the feel he is getting from the Lotus's steering, but Permane plays down the significance of the problem.

"He's very particular," Permane says. "He knows what he wants and it's not quite to his liking. It's not a million miles away, but we'll get it there."

Raikkonen can drive perfectly well with the steering as it is, but the problem probably does mean that he is driving a little below his maximum.

The question now is, at what level is his maximum?

The reason Raikkonen left F1 in the first place was because he performed for Ferrari for much of 2008 and 2009 way below the level expected of him.

Ferrari, in fact, terminated Raikkonen's contract a year early and paid him not to drive in 2010 so they could bring in Alonso.

The Spaniard has since out-performed Felipe Massa, the man who generally had the better of Raikkonen from the start of 2008 until fracturing his skull in an accident in Hungary in July 2009.

Does this mean Alonso is that much better than Raikkonen? Or that Raikkonen in 2008-9 was a long way below his best? Or that Massa is not the driver he was?

No one knows for sure, but for Raikkonen's comeback to be considered an unqualified success he will have to be able to match his new team-mate's pace.

The fact Lotus have regrouped over the winter and produced one of the year's fastest cars only increases the pressure - it's not so bad to be beaten by a team-mate when you're battling to get into the top 10; but a very different matter when you're fighting for the podium.

That, it appears, is what Lotus are in a position to do.

"We screwed up with the car last year," Permane says, "and we know we've done a lovely car this year, not only aerodynamically, but we've done a nice package mechanically."

So pleased are Lotus with the new E20 that Permane says he "dared to compare it with 2005", when Alonso won the first of his two titles.

That is not so much a measure of Lotus's realistic hopes as a reflection of how much the drivers like the car, and how well it responds to changes.

Nevertheless, the team are confident they can keep up with the break-neck development pace of the likes of McLaren and Red Bull and hold on to their position.

For Raikkonen, the requirement now is prove that he can go with them. So far, the signs are positive.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/03/the_two_kimi_raikkonens.html

Phil Cade Alex Caffi John CampbellJones Adri·n Campos John Cannon

Reading between the lines in a phoney war

The annual Formula 1 phoney war was in full swing at the second pre-season test at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya this week.

Fernando Alonso was talking down Ferrari's form, Lewis Hamilton was talking up McLaren's - as, intriguingly, was Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel. And the unlikely combination of Kamui Kobayashi and Sauber set the fastest time of the week.

As ever, the headline lap times were a poor guide to the order of the grid that can be expected in Melbourne at the first race in just three weeks' time.

But look behind the fastest laps, and there is usually a way of gleaning at least some sense of form ahead of the season.

Fernando Alonso

Fernando Alonso's Ferrari could yet to turn out to be a dark horse. Photo: Getty

I'll preface what follows with a major caveat - this has been one of the most difficult tests to read for some time. But here goes.

Red Bull, as ever, looked especially strong. Vettel was fastest of all on the first day of the test, and throughout the four days he and team-mate Mark Webber set consistently formidable-looking times.

On Wednesday afternoon, Vettel and Hamilton set out to do race-distance runs at more or less the same time. Both did 66 laps - the length of the Spanish Grand Prix, which will be held at the track in May.

Vettel did five pit stops; Hamilton four. Discount laps on which they went in and out of the pits and they both managed 55 flying laps. Vettel completed his more than two minutes faster than Hamilton.

If that was repeated in a race, Hamilton would be lapped by the end.

And the pattern was repeated on Thursday with Mark Webber and Jenson Button, although the margin was reduced to about half a minute.

Of course, this is very far from an exact scientific comparison.

They didn't use the same tyres as each other - although they don't necessarily have to in the race either.

We don't know what they were doing with fuel loads - although it would be counter-intuitive to start putting fuel in at pit stops because it would provide the team with data that was never going to be relevant to competition.

And it's an especially confusing situation because only the day before Vettel was saying how impressed he had been with the McLaren's pace on the longer runs.

But there was more - none of it especially happy ready for those hoping for a close season.
On the Wednesday, Vettel's fastest time of all was nearly a second faster than Hamilton's on the same type of tyres. Although both were set on very short runs - suggesting a qualifying-type simulation - that's still potentially meaningless as there is no way of knowing the level of fuel on board at the time.

Nevertheless, if you then look at the lap times both were doing at the start of their race-distance runs, they were about the same margin slower than each driver's fastest laps as you would expect given a full race fuel load.

That suggests that the headline lap times of those two drivers could be a reasonably accurate indicator of form - again worrying for McLaren.

Of course, this is only testing, and teams have updates to put on their cars before the first race - as Button pointed out. And everyone expects McLaren to be a close to challenger at the front come Melbourne. Nevertheless, few are under any illusions about Red Bull's strength.

"You're old enough, Andrew," one senior insider said to me during the test, "to know that Red Bull look very strong. McLaren and Ferrari are a bit behind. Force India look like they have a quick car, too."

He might have added that the new Mercedes looks quite decent as well.

But few teams are as difficult to understand right now as Ferrari - who have not done any race simulations to compare with their main rivals.

The messages coming out of the team have all seemed pretty negative.

There has been a lot of attention put on technical director Pat Fry's remark at the first test in Jerez that Ferrari were "not happy" with their understanding of the car.

Start raking through the time sheets, though, and you begin wonder what's behind all the negativity.

On headline lap times, Alonso was less than 0.3secs behind Vettel. And on both his days he started 10-lap runs with a lap in the region of one minute 24.1 seconds.

If you take 10 laps' worth of fuel off that time, you are left with a lap in the low 1:23sec bracket - again, not far off what Vettel managed. And you can bet the Ferrari was running with more than just 10 laps of fuel anyway; most top teams routinely test with 60-80kg of fuel on board.

In other words, the Ferrari actually looks reasonably fast, and an insider did admit: "The car is not as bad as a lot of people think."

If - and it's a big if - Ferrari can start to extract that potential before the first race of the season, Red Bull might just have a serious fight on their hands. And that's without even considering what McLaren might be able to achieve.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/02/reading_between_the_lines_in_a.html

Elie Bayol Don Beauman Karl Gunther Bechem Jean Behra Derek Bell

Fernando Alonso: “We limited the damage again”

Fernando Alonso may have finished only seventh in Bahrain on Sunday, but the Spaniard was pleased to have bagged some useful points – and ended the run of the first four flyaway races just 10 points off the World Championship … Continue reading

Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/04/24/fernando-alonso-we-limited-the-damage-again/

Eric Brandon Don Branson Tom Bridger Tony Brise Chris Bristow

Alonso the new favourite


Fernando Alonso is the new favourite for the title © Getty Images
Fernando Alonso is the new favourite to win the Formula One drivers’ title, said David Coulthard in his column for The Telegraph.
“He is the man with the momentum and, on the same basis that I backed Mark Webber to win the title before Korea, is now my favourite to claim the world title in Abu Dhabi on Nov 14. “When the cars are so evenly-matched you have to back the man in possession. Especially when that man is a two-time world champion and arguably the finest driver of his generation.”
The Mirror’s Byron Young drew comparisons between Alonso and seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher as the Spaniard bids to become the sport’s youngest ever triple world champion.
“Like Schumacher, Alonso accepts no opposition within his team. Ultimately he fell out with McLaren over their refusal in 2007 to bring Lewis Hamilton to heel. “He returned to Renault on condition he was No.1, only to be at the centre of the Singapore cheat scandal - engineered to hand him victory. “The Spaniard has always denied involvement but at the German GP in July he was brazen enough to radio Ferrari to rein in team-mate Felipe Massa so he could start the winning streak that has taken him to the brink of history.”

Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/10/alonso_the_new_favourite_1.php

Richard Attwood Manny Ayulo Luca Badoer Giancarlo Baghetti Julian Bailey