Have you seen this?

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/200220...cclestone.html

I think it's intriguing that "eating at the restaurant every day" isn't enough for the Bernie/Max comedy show. I always thought restaurants were at the mercy of the customer, not the owner. We the viewers (who buy the things the advertisers sell), and the ticket holders are the people who buy haircuts for Bernie and leather goods for Max, right? Guess that's not true.

 

Mateschitz's comments also have the backing of FOTA and Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo, who has very publicly criticised the management of F1 on both a commercial and regulatory level.
"We think that Formula 1 has to be a normal sport that is not connected to single people," the Italian is quoted as having said by Pitpass. "There must be a triangle. At the top there are the teams, who invest and innovate, today more than ever before; then there's someone who manages the commercial aspects, a type of super agent, just like Ecclestone has been doing; last but not least a sporting and political authority, which takes the teams' unanimity into account and protects the sport's nature."

Sounds good, its just missing the small print that says

"Ferrari support F1 teams owning the series as long as Ferrari get every advantage to win including re-writing rules on the fly, exemption from rules during races, winning all "spy" cases and free TVs for management every time Ferrari loses the championship"

 

Now here's a stupid idea http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/210220...ye-vettel.html

Your current driver is being referred to as the next Schumacher yet all you care about is a German driver because you have a German engine which sits in a British Car

Lewis and Ferrari may have a destiny after all....if that happens, then perhaps he will be the next Schumacher, not sure Mclaren would ever be able to dominate that long.

 

I could name at least 3 other drivers in the past few seasons who likely wouldn't have been in a seat if they weren't a certain nationality. Its normal for a manufacturer to want a driver from their own country, that's probably a good reason why Hamilton will stay where he is (that and he's the best at the moment).

 

The opposite is just as likely to be true. Manufacturers are more interested in expanding their markets into other countries than they are in nationalism. That's why Renault doesn't want a French driver. And when was the last time Ferrari had an Italian driver. If you consider Mercedes, Hamilton fits that model (English driver paired with a German manufacturer).

 

Looks like more financial troubles.....Williams now

 

Useless post. No link, no info.

 

USF1 may be the only team on the grid in 2010!

 

USF1 may be the only team on the grid in 2010!

Some don't think they will even make the starting grid
http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/...bts-over-usf1/

 

Naturally.

 

Honda Team is Back! The team will be renamed and run Merc motors.
http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/...k-on-the-grid/

 

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/...dical-changes/

Can you say F1 spec racing.

 

Meh, who knows, there are ways of making it cheap w/o making it a spec series. The best invention for that I have seen is from Folk Racing that I saw on Top Gear. You can bring any car you want, prepared any which way, but if a competitor wants to buy it, the price is set already, and you have to sell.
So, the incentive to go completely nuts with the car is taken away.

I could see that working out in F1 style racing, but a mfr will have to be very clever to win. It seems to me that would be one way to lower the cost without the series becoming formula vee or formula ford. Remember, probably the best era in F1 was when anyone could go buy a competitive engine from Ford, and build a chassis around it.

I'm not saying they're smart enough to do this, but it's possible.

 

.

 

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/...irm-agreement/

BrawnGP Don't really like the name but I guess if you buy a F1 team you can call it what you want.

 

http://f1.gpupdate.net/en/news/2009/...ilton-crashes/

The way it's looking. This could be the year to see if Ham can live up to all the hype, because McMerc really hasn't looked all that good thus far. I realize it's only testing, but they haven't been at the sharp end of the time sheets lately.

Personally, I think it will be BMW and the red team, With Toyota and Renault (not Piquet) possibly being the dark horses.

opinions?

 

Sandbagging?

 

working out the KERS? sounds like they maybe not up to speed yet.

 

I'll bet Ferrari is PO'd. He already knew too much, but now he has free reign to use it.

 

I considered sand-bagging. Ferrari seemed to do that a handful of years ago....cant remember which season, and promptly decimated the field. I just get the feeling that with them seeming to be off the pace and then Ham stuffing it into the wall. It just seems like they're struggling.

Why would Ferrari be pissed? They went to a completely different car philosophy when Brawn went on his sabatical.

 

True, but he had a huge hand in getting Ferrari up to speed, and he's now in a position to say "we'll do it," without the usual restraints. And he knows a lot about Ferrari. The carbon fiber might change, but the research probably hasn't.

 

There will be no USF1 in Formula 1 racing this year – or any year for that matter. A full year before the new American team was set to take to the track in 2010, they have been shot down by the very series they planned to compete in. But before you get too upset and think this is a case of Anti-American bias or something, know that it is just the name that the sanctioning body was objecting to.

Apparently Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One Management (FOM) weren't overly fond of the use of "F1" in the team's initially stated name. So it's out with USF1 and in with USGPE, which stands for US Grand Prix Engineering. We wouldn't be surprised to hear that Pontiac is now threatening a lawsuit, or perhaps sponsorship.

Just for clarification, Formula 1 has allowed "F1" in a team's name, but only if the word "Team" is also used. The lone exception is Williams, which officially goes by WilliamsF1. In related news, Force India was asked to revise their logo because "FI" looks too much like "F1". The team will now use a lowercase "i" in the logo to avoid confusion with the series. Got all that? So USF1 is now USGPE and Force India is now using "Fi" instead of "FI".

 

True, but him not being there hasn't seemed to hurt the red team any. Kind of the same thing with Benneton/Renault. Gascoyne came in and improved their cars massively, they sent him packing to Toyota and Renault won the championship twice in a row. McMerc has been without Newey's services for a while now, and their cars are the most reliable they've been in quite some time, not to mention they finally got one of their drivers a championship again.

The way it seems to me, it really does help to have someone like that whip a team into shape. But once the team has been reformed, the necessity of that person seems to lessen. So just sit back relax and let the championships roll in, a la, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004.

Granted, there are always going to exceptions to my rule. Stepney left and it appeared Ferrari were having issues in the pits. ALO left Renault and they were immediately off the pace, he comes back, they win two races in his first season back. I dunno. lol, it's exciting and interesting and I cant wait for the Oz GP.

 

Fear not Mclaren/Hamilton fans.......they have to test new ideas and things that may not work somehow, all of the other teams have had similar if not more problems than Mc. That's why they call it "testing"

How many times have you seen one of the guys go slow in practice and then win the race ? You usually find out that they were working on the race setup while everyone else was either flexing their egos (red cars) or their quali set-up.

I recall last year that Honda did well in "testing" and so did Toyota but where were they during the year ? Toyota should have been in the top three years ago.

Mclaren seemed to have weathered the first rounds of cuts quite intact, in fact with Force India and now Brawn, they have allies on the track and tons of test data that will be flowing into Mclaren headquarters. (As Ferrari have done for years - Spyker, Sauber, RBR,STR,Minardi,FI)

This might be the start of a Mclaren domination.......maybe Hamilton will make a run at Schu's record.

 

IIRC, at no point in testing for the 2008 season, did Honda look promising....for that matter neither did Toyota. Neither of them were ever the fastest in a test session.

I'm thinking McMerc could be somewhere between 2006 (not winning a race) and 2008 (WDC).

I'm curious what kind of rate the teams are going to be able to develop at without any in-season testing. I think Matchet said in Brazil last year, that the Mclaren car was 2.5-3 seconds a lap quicker than it would have been in Australia. I was astounded they were able to make that much progress on those cars, and the fact that the entire field pretty much develops at relatively the same pace.