Bruno Senna: “In the wet we were very strong”
Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/03/26/bruno-senna-in-the-wet-we-were-very-strong/
Ivan Capelli Piero Carini Duane Carter Eugenio Castellotti Johnny Cecotto
Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/03/26/bruno-senna-in-the-wet-we-were-very-strong/
Ivan Capelli Piero Carini Duane Carter Eugenio Castellotti Johnny Cecotto
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/french-gp-rumours/
Gerhard Berger Eric Bernard Enrique Bernoldi Enrico Bertaggia Tony Bettenhausen
Sebastian Vettel's behaviour during and after the Malaysian Grand Prix has been causing a bit of a fuss in Germany over the past few days.
The media have lapped up his response to his collision with backmarker Narain Karthikeyan, in much the same way as their British counterparts would have done with a similar incident involving Lewis Hamilton, and Vettel has come in for a fair bit of criticism.
On the BBC after the race, Vettel called Karthikeyan an "idiot" for his role in the collision that cost the world champion fourth place.
Speaking in German, the word he chose was "cucumber" - a common insult in that country for bad drivers on the road.

Vettel faces increased competition from outside and inside his Red Bull Team. Photo: Getty/AFP
It has also been pointed out that shots from Vettel's onboard camera appear to show the 24-year-old Red Bull driver giving Karthikeyan a middle-finger salute as he drives past. This has led some to call for him to be punished by governing body the FIA, which so far is keeping a low profile on the matter.
Comparisons have been drawn with McLaren's Jenson Button - who also failed to score any points in Malaysia, but who reacted with his usual calm.
Vettel, some in Germany have said, doesn't know how to lose.
They point out that last year he won 11 races on his way to one of the most dominant championship victories in Formula 1 history. Failing to win four races in a row in that context, the critics say, should not elicit this kind of reaction.
Vettel has not spoken in public since leaving Malaysia, and Red Bull are shrugging it off.
After the race on Sunday, team principal Christian Horner defended Vettel's driving in the collision with Karthikeyan, saying that it was the Indian's "responsibility to get out of the way of the leaders as he is a lapped car".
Although the stewards penalised Karthikeyan for the incident, others are not sure it's quite so clear-cut.
One leading F1 figure told me: "It was completely Vettel's fault - he needed to give Karthikeyan more space. He only had to clear the last inch and he cut across the front of him. He was showing a bit of frustration and it bit him."
Certainly Vettel has found himself at the start of 2012 in a situation with which he is not familiar.
Vettel has had the fastest car in F1 since at least the middle of 2009, and he has used it to good effect.
But now things are different. Red Bull's new car is not a match for the McLaren, and it has also been behind one Mercedes and one Lotus on the grid in each of the first two races.
For a man who is as driven to win - to dominate even - as Vettel is, that will not be a comfortable situation.
Nor will it have escaped his attention that team-mate Mark Webber has so far out-qualified him in both races this year - again, quite a turnaround from 2011, when the Australian managed it only three times in 19 grands prix.
It is early days, but so far the comparison between the two Red Bull drivers looks much more like it was in the first part of 2010 - before the team started fully exploiting the exhaust-blown diffusers that dominated the last 18 months and which have been banned for this season.
Webber was never that comfortable in last season's Red Bull - and while he came to match Vettel on race pace in the second half of last season, he never really got on terms with him in qualifying.
Much of that was to do with the behaviour of the car on corner entry, where the exhaust-blown diffusers were so powerful in increasing performance.
Red Bull's decline has also coincided with the stiffening of the front-wing load test, an attempt to stop teams allowing the ends of the wing to droop towards the track at speed to increase downforce. Red Bull were noticeably better at doing this than the other teams.
It may be an unrelated coincidence, but this year's Red Bull suffers from understeer, a lack of front-end grip - a handling characteristic Webber is comfortable with, while Vettel prefers oversteer.
This is not the first time Vettel has been criticised for letting his emotion get the better of him when things are not going his way.
There was the infamous 'nutter' sign he directed at Webber following their collision in the 2010 Turkish Grand Prix.
There were also mistakes in Britain, Belgium and Singapore that year as he very nearly gifted the world title to Ferrari and Fernando Alonso, who lost it only after a strategic error in the final race.
Such was Vettel's domination in 2011 that it never arose- leading some to say he had reached a new level of maturity both in and out of the car.
The truth of that claim looks set to be tested this year, as Red Bull and Vettel struggle to regain a position that the driver at least seems to consider is rightfully his.
Meanwhile, his rivals will have been watching with interest.
Webber, Alonso, Button and Hamilton remember Vettel's behaviour in 2010 all too well.
Betraying his emotions in such an obvious way will be seen by them as a weakness - they will look at it and think he is rattled.
So it is true to say on the one hand that Vettel's reaction proves he is a winner.
But it is also the case that learning how to lose gracefully - as Button and Alonso, particularly, have learnt in recent years - also has its benefits.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/03/vettel_collision_a_champion_un.html
Gino Bianco Hans Binder Clemente Biondetti Pablo Birger Art Bisch
Albert Park, Melbourne
Statements of intent do not come much more emphatic than the one Jenson Button made with a dominant victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
Crushingly superior in a straight fight with McLaren team-mate Lewis Hamilton, Button got off to the perfect start in a season that promises to be very different from Sebastian Vettel's one-sided championship win last year.
There were fears after McLaren's one-two in qualifying that they would run away in the race - and they proved to be half right.
Button left Hamilton behind and never looked like losing the race. It was a win as comfortable as any of the six in seven races he took at the start of 2009 to lay the foundations for his championship year with the Brawn team.

Jenson Button has won three of the last four Australian grands prix. Photo: Getty
Button admitted to BBC Sport after the race not only that he always gets "nervous-excited" before grands prix, but that he was more nervous before this one than perhaps any other.
One assumes it was founded in the knowledge that after starting his first two seasons at McLaren with cars that were off the pace of the Red Bull, he now had a real chance of getting his year off to the best possible start.
Contrary to appearances, that nervousness led to a slight error at the start. After a superb initial getaway, Button went for second gear too early, which delayed his charge to the first corner.
Luckily for Button, Hamilton had also had a bad start, and with the inside line, the corner - and, as it turned out, the victory - were his.
Ironically, the win bore more than a slight resemblance to many of Vettel's in 2011.
Button went off like a frightened rabbit in the first two laps, the aim being to be far enough ahead at the start of lap three - when the drivers are first allowed to use the DRS overtaking aid - to ensure he was out of reach of his pursuers.
Rather than ease off, though, Button just kept going, a succession of fastest laps moving him more than three seconds clear within six laps, after which it stabilised.
So dominant was Button that even had Hamilton converted his lead at the start into one at the end of the first lap, it is difficult to imagine that the result would have been any different.
Hamilton cut a subdued figure after the race, giving short, quietly-spoken answers to questions. He admitted he "didn't generally have great pace" and, after producing a stunning lap in qualifying to take pole, was clearly not expecting Button's demoralising
performance.
Hamilton's mood will not have been helped by losing out on second place to Vettel, largely through bad luck.
After leaving the two cars out slightly too long before their first pit stops, McLaren did exactly the right thing in stopping them one after the other for their second.
It was Hamilton's bad luck that he was delayed by the introduction of the safety car on the very next lap, allowing Vettel to sneak ahead.
Vettel said after the race that he would have "had a crack" at Hamilton even without that stroke of good fortune.
But the two cars were evenly matched and if Hamilton, whose car was faster on the straight, was not able to pass Vettel it seems unlikely that Vettel would have been able to overtake the McLaren.
The manner of Button's victory - Vettel described him as "unbeatable" - led to inevitable questions about whether McLaren will now dominate this season in the way Red Bull did last.
But as Hamilton said, it is "too early to tell" if McLaren are comfortably ahead of Red Bull.
"In qualifying we're quite quick and competitive," he said, "but they were massively quick in the race. I think they're still a force to be reckoned with."
Vettel, meanwhile, proved once again how ridiculous it ever was to suggest he could not race - his move around the outside of Nico Rosberg at Turn Nine on lap two was hugely impressive.
Behind the top two teams, an intriguing race has set the season up nicely.
Romain Grosjean made some errors befitting his semi-novice status as he squandered his excellent third place on the grid, but his Lotus team look like they could have the pace to challenge close to the front if they have a clean weekend.
Mercedes' race pace was a disappointment after their impressive form in qualifying - which extreme was the true representation of their competitive position remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, Fernando Alonso dragged his Ferrari up to fifth place with a typically resilient and impressive performance, although the car's lap times once the race settled down suggested the team still have a lot of work to do.
The mixed-up grid, caused by typical early seasons problems for Red Bull, Alonso and Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen in qualifying, led to some superb battles throughout a race that seemed to confirm the impression of pre-season testing that the grid has closed up this year.
"We all think this is a special year in F1 with six world champions and so many competitive teams," Button said. "F1 is in a special place and it's a great sport to be a part of."
Malaysia next weekend will provide further evidence of what lies ahead. Button and Hamilton, for very different reasons, will be anxious to get on with it.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/03/albert_park_melbourne_statemen.html
Ronnie Bucknum Ivor Bueb Sebastien Buemi Luiz Bueno Ian Burgess
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/WvCtgq-iUMQ/webber-will-threaten-vettel-in-2012
David Brabham Gary Brabham Jack BrabhamÜ Bill Brack Ernesto Brambilla
![]() Emerson Fittipaldi in his heyday © Sutton Images |
Source: http://blogs.espnf1.com/paperroundf1/archives/2010/11/five_ways_to_improve_f1.php
Gerry Ashmore Bill Aston Richard Attwood Manny Ayulo Luca Badoer
A lot of you guys like early street rods - ME TOO!! I started on this a while back and figured it was time to kick this one inta gear too - LOL.
Fun project. The first photo shows the kits I used for the majority of the work.
Enough talk - Here's some pics.

I used the body from the kit on the left as the beginning point.

I cut everting to make a slight wedge tothe front for the shape of the body.
Heres where the wedge shape starts. Blue Willys in the back is the snap kit that will donate several pieces.

This'll be a street car dumped low for that typical "In the Weeds Stance"
.
*Edited to three photos maximum per post.
Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/1005480.aspx
Paolo Barilla Rubens Barrichello Michael Bartels Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi
Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/cvc-saddles-f1-with-new-debts/
Michael Bartels Edgar Barth Giorgio Bassi Erwin Bauer Zsolt Baumgartner
Red Bull have raised the bar in Formula 1 over the last two or three years, heaping pressure of one kind or another on all their major rivals.
McLaren's inability to produce a car that can consistently challenge Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel had a clear effect on Lewis Hamilton's equanimity last season, introducing new pressures into that team as the Englishman struggled to cope with his on-track disappointment and difficulties in his private life.
At Ferrari, a technical director has lost his job and his replacement has felt under pressure to take significant risks this year as F1's most famous team seeks to produce a car that can do justice to Fernando Alonso's abundant talents.
But nowhere, arguably, is the need to improve felt more greatly than at Mercedes, the team trying to make F1's "big three" into a quartet.

Mercedes are hoping their new W03 car for 2012 will herald a return to the front of the grid. Picture: Getty
The German giants enter 2012 seeking a huge step forward from a season of conspicuous under-performance. Lodged in no-man's land, some distance behind the top three and some way ahead of the rest, there was not a single podium finish for either Michael Schumacher or Nico Rosberg in 2011.
Unsurprisingly, Mercedes' vice-president of competition, Norbert Haug, describes that as "not good enough". For one of the world's greatest car companies, that is something of an understatement.
Mercedes' latest venture into F1 has only been running for two years - since the company bought the Brawn team at the end of 2009 after spending 17 years as an engine supplier first to Sauber and then to McLaren.
But the current management has a lot to live up to - the company's two previous forays into grand prix racing were considerably more successful.
In the mid-1930s, Mercedes and fellow German giants Auto Union (the forerunners of Audi) dominated with their famous Silver Arrows. And in 1954 and '55 Mercedes produced a level of domination with the great Juan Manuel Fangio that makes Red Bull's performances in recent years pale into insignificance.
Mercedes' relationship with McLaren had produced drivers' titles for Mika Hakkinen in 1998 and '99 and for Lewis Hamilton in 2008, as well as near-misses with Hakkinen in 2000, Kimi Raikkonen in 2003 and 2005 and Hamilton and Alonso in 2007.
But the decision to set up their own team was based as much on the realities of the road-car marketplace as any comparative lack of success on the track.
The poor results McLaren produced in 2009, starting the season with their worst car for 15 years, were an influence. So, too, was the relative lack of recognition for the Mercedes brand in any McLaren success on the track - inevitably the case for an engine supplier, even if it did own 40% of the team.
But when McLaren decided to launch its own supercar into a market Mercedes was also planning to enter with its SLS, such close links were no longer tenable.
In the autumn of 2009, buying the team that had just won the world championship, run by a man who masterminded all of Schumacher's world titles, must have seemed about as good a guarantee of success as you could get. Bringing Schumacher out of retirement, to rejoin the company that set him on the path to stardom and bring his career full circle, was supposed to be the icing on the cake.
Except that's not how it has worked out. The cars have been uncompetitive and Schumacher - consistently out-paced by Rosberg in qualifying over the last two years, although with improving race form in 2011 - is clearly a shadow of his former greatness.
So why have Mercedes not been able to compete at the top? The simple answer is that Brawn's world title with Jenson Button in 2009 rather disguised the reality.
That car was designed with Honda money, before the Japanese giant abruptly pulled out in December 2008. Team boss Ross Brawn had kept the company alive, but had to force through a painful 40% staff cut in 2009 to keep it going in more straitened circumstances.
The car's speed owed much to its controversial "double diffuser" - and by mid-season a lack of development caused by budgetary restrictions had seen first Red Bull and then other teams overtake them.
There is some truth, then, in Haug's consistent claims over the last two years that Mercedes are a small team that, as he put it this week, "need to learn and develop" to compete with Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
As Mercedes' great rival BMW proved in 2009, major car companies in F1 tend to get itchy feet if they are not winning - it poses too big a risk to their global image if they are consistently seen to be beaten. In BMW's case, a strong season in 2008 was followed by a weak one in 2009 and, with the global economic crisis gripping, the board pulled the plug.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
There is no sign of such a move from Mercedes but the pressure to perform has been plain to see. The team have been on a major recruitment drive over the last year, the biggest indication of which was the hiring of two star designers - Aldo Costa, the technical director sacked by Ferrari, and Geoff Willis, formerly of Williams, Honda and Red Bull.
There are now four men who have been technical directors at other teams all trying to work together to make Mercedes winners - Bob Bell, the man who currently holds that title at the team and who was recruited from Renault, Costa, Willis and Brawn himself.
Brawn is adamant they have defined roles and will work well together. Others remain to be convinced about the wisdom of having so many big beasts in one pride.
What this technical "super-team" does, though, is emphasise just how important winning is to Mercedes - and consequently just how critical it is that the new W03 enables the team to make a marked stepped forward over 2011.
There is no doubting the ambition.
Mercedes are the only top team to have waited until the second pre-season test to run their new car. The idea was to give them more time to find more performance in the car at the design stage, but the move carries risks. If problems occur, there is less time to iron them out before the start of the season.
Haug has been at pains to emphasise that Mercedes' current position is understandable, and that they have the time and ability to improve.
But while the form of the new Mercedes will be watched with interest at Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, you can be sure there will be some nervous faces in the boardroom in Stuttgart, too.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/02/pressure_mounts_on_mercedes.html
JeanDenis Deletraz Patrick Depailler Pedro Diniz Duke Dinsmore Frank Dochnal