I don’t get to England that often and usually it is only London. The other morning, however, I found myself in Lambourn en route (a circuitous one) from the M4 to the Williams factory in Grove. I had a little time to kill and so I was pottering about. And it struck me as I [...]
Archive for February, 2009
The power of ingenuity and good engineering
Posted in Sustainability on February 28, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Off to Williams
Posted in F1 Teams on February 26, 2009 | Comments Off
Today it is off to Williams, to hear about the team’s plans for the year ahead. Yesterday’s news was dominated by the announcement that the Royal Bank of Scotland is pulling out at the end of 2010. Like most news in F1, this can be viewed in two different ways: it can be seen as [...]
The Peter and Ken Show
Posted in F1 Teams on February 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Peter Windsor, a colleague and friend, has long dreamed of creating his own F1 team and today we will hear about his plans. Peter is a fan to the core and kept on trying. When he was a teenager he lived in Australia and used to follow F1 so closely that he would be at [...]
Is anyone really safe?
Posted in Circuits on February 23, 2009 | Comments Off
Formula 1 is a world where people tend not to think of the real world outside – particularly the journalists. Teams will tell you that it is virtually impossible to raise sponsorship money at the moment, but that is an inconvenient fact and tends to be ignored. Of course, it is logical for Virgin to [...]
Honda and Formula 1
Posted in F1 Teams on February 23, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Call me a cynic but I think that Sir Richard Branson ruled himself out of Formula 1 over the weekend by making remarks which suggested that he has no real intention of buying the Honda Racing F1 and is simply using the story to generate free publicity for Virgin. Branson said that “there are faults [...]
The state of F1 politics at the moment
Posted in F1 politics on February 20, 2009 | Comments Off
It has been many years since the teams were truly a force in Formula 1 politics. They have been divided by the different demands on them and by the fact that some of them were given incentives to break away from the rest of the pack. By dividing the teams F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone and [...]
Barnstormers, snake oil salesmen and the art of sustainability
Posted in Sustainability on February 18, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The other day I figured it was time to tidy up the house a bit. A fatal mistake, of course. One finds things and one is quickly diverted. Suddenly I was reading Richard Bach’s book called “Biplane”, about flying a 1929 barnstormer from coast to coast in the United States, back in 1964. And as [...]
Clever men…
Posted in F1 politics on February 13, 2009 | Comments Off
Benjamin Franklin was a clever man. One of the founding fathers of the Unites States of America, he was an author, a satirist, a political theorist, a politician, a scientist and an inventor. He was a diplomat too. And he coined the expression “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Of [...]
An American Formula 1 team?
Posted in F1 Teams on February 4, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The idea that there might be a US Formula 1 team is very attractive for the sport. The United States remains the world’s biggest consumer market and the sponsors in F1 are keen to get a higher profile over there, something which F1 has consistently failed to do for them. The idea is fine. On [...]
