There will be two Australian Grand Prix drivers at Silverstone. Daniel Ricciardo (22) will be joining Mark Webber in the World Championship, and will be seen alongside Tonio Liuzzi in the HRT team, presumably thanks to an input of financial support for the nominally-Spanish team from Red Bull. He will replace Narain Karthikeyan, although one [...]
Archive for June, 2011
Ricciardo to HRT (no need for a question mark)
Posted in F1 Drivers on June 30, 2011 | 50 Comments »
The loss of the BBC… and the TV world in general
Posted in F1 politics on June 30, 2011 | 55 Comments »
The potential loss of BBC coverage of Formula 1 is a massive blow for the sport. The BBC may not be the richest TV channel in the UK, but it is the largest by a considerable margin, although multichannel fragmentation is having an effect on all the numbers. It is a complex market with two [...]
Looking forward to Britain’s biggest motoring event
Posted in F1 politics on June 30, 2011 | 11 Comments »
No, it’s not the British Grand Prix, but rather the Goodwood Festival of Speed which begins tomorrow at the Goodwood estate, near Chichester. This has become the world’s biggest celebration of the history of motorsport and car culture and an example of how things could be at every Grand Prix if there were fewer restrictions [...]
The fragility of sponsorships
Posted in F1 Teams on June 30, 2011 | 13 Comments »
The Venezuelan national oil company PDVSA came to Williams this year with driver Pastor Maldonado, and the blessing of the country’s president Hugo Chavez. It was a deal that was offered to other F1 teams but was politely declined because they were not sure that they wanted to be involved with the controversial Chavez, the [...]
Playing away from home
Posted in F1 politics on June 30, 2011 | 22 Comments »
News Corporation is a mightily impressive empire, which has done remarkably well in the world of newspapers, television and the movies. When it comes to direct ownership of sports it has a great deal less experience, and it is rather more alien a planet as the corporation will have to deal with entities that it [...]
Austin Council votes for F1
Posted in Circuits on June 29, 2011 | 21 Comments »
The Austin City Council has endorsed the plans for the United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas by a margin of five votes to two. There has been discussion about the June 17 date because this may fall on what is called an Ozone Action Day. These are hot, sunny, still days [...]
Furthermore…
Posted in F1 politics on June 28, 2011 | 51 Comments »
The idea that Formula 1 racing circuits will switch to IndyCar racing if the current engines are not retained is obviously an idle threat, when one considers the IndyCar rules. They are as follows: “turbocharged engines (to allow for flexibility in power) with up to six cylinders and 2.4 liters of displacement, tuned to produce [...]
Bits and bobs from the F1 world
Posted in F1 people on June 28, 2011 | 29 Comments »
There were some interesting rumours kicking about the paddock in Valencia, one of which was that the Carabante Family wants to take control of the HRT team and is planning to promote Geoff Willis to be team principal and Gary Savage to be technical director. Well, that is the story in the Spanish press. The [...]
Customer service
Posted in Personal musings on June 28, 2011 | 32 Comments »
One of the best things about Formula 1 is that there is always a certain amount of thinking time when one travels too and from the races, as one cannot work at quite the same tempo while on the move, despite the best efforts of the geek world to produce machines that enable us to [...]
Indycars replacing F1… the real story behind the news
Posted in F1 politics, FIA and F1 politics on June 28, 2011 | 116 Comments »
How does one explain the bizarre story that is floating around the Internet at the moment about the majority of the Formula 1 circuits getting together and rejecting Formula 1 racing and doing a deal instead with IndyCar? You can say it is daft, or you could say that it comes from Ron Walker, who [...]
