The last day of the Bahrain GP2 test saw Britain’s Jon Lancaster (MP Motorsport) come out on top of the time sheets less than a tenth of a second over Alexander Rossi (Caterham). Williams test driver Felipe Nasr was third ahead of McLaren counterpart Stoffel Vandoorne. They were followed by Daniel Abt (Hilmer Motorsport) and Jolyon Palmer (DAMS).
- Comment
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
joeblogsf1 
Slightly OT but great to see Dean Stoneman’s secured a drive in GP3 after all he’s been through.
From memory he performed really well in his Williams test before he became ill a few years ago and it will be great if he has a strong year as he tries to get his career back on track.
Rossi looked very promising in this week’s testing, constantly at the top. Hopefully he can have a shot at the title this year.
Fastest GP2 laps in this test were in the 1m39s range.
Fastest F1 laps in their last test at the same circuit were in 1m33s range.
So in spite of some chatter earlier that F1 would be slow with the new regs, there is still a healthy gap, and we can expect the F1 teams to improve more as they spend more, get the engines working better etc.
Ummm not for all teams- the Caterham GP2 was faster than the Caterham F1 by 3 seconds.
Nonsense… the Caterham F1 was quicker than the GP2s by the final test by at least a second.
Hi Joe
Sorry to bring up the matter of females in this Jon Lancaster result. By coincidence, he was Alice Powell’s team mate in the Indian MRF Championship, which is one of the few occasions that a female has had the opportunity to race on a level playing field, as a team mate. She led him in the Championship for 9 races until the last round when she had a DNF. He eventually finished 4th and she finished 5th.
Comparing “team mates” in motorsport is one of the few ways of accurately assessing talent or ability, because money is no longer a factor. The fact that Jon was so close to Alice does not diminish his talent one bit, because Jon is a first class driver who also has produced excellent results in low budget teams, eg he had two GP2 wins in 2014.
Jim
The best drivers will rise to the top. If there is a woman with more talent than the people racing F1 cars logically she would have found the money to get to F1 because it is far easier for a woman racer to find cash than it is for a man.
Drivers will rise, but only if they have money to practice, in the first place. On a running track, football pitch, etc, talent is immediately apparent.
People who beat the drum of it being easier for females to raise budget are the root cause of deterring potential sponsors from backing females: this send out a message that if a female does not have a sponsor that they are poor drivers.
Comments of if a woman has more talent that an F1 driver they will get the money to get to F1 is equally damaging because it is not true. You know that Alice Powell in her rookie year on a shoe string budget in JICA Karting managed to finish 2 points behind his, in spite of his being 15 months older than her and already having a year of JICA under his belt. Max supports women in motorsport and is turning out to be a good F1 driver as he is now beating his team mate, who is also a good driver. That same year, in a month long shoot out, aged 12, she beat Jamie Green, Craig Dolby, Martin Plowman. Although aged 12, she weighed 60 kilos: little different that the others and also driving on the same day as Jamie on his home track. She was introduced to Prince Andrew on that achievement.
She was the youngest driver when she won the Formula Renault BARC UK championship on a shoestring budget, but some drivers that she beat, to this day, to not have a problem getting sponsorship. In the case of Jon Lancaster, when she led him in most of the season, she was over four years younger than him.
I could rattle on and on, but there are dozens of drivers who are equally talented as some F1 drivers, but they cannot raise as much as a fiver in sponsorship and have not gone beyond karting.
Sponsorship may be easier for a female in the US but that is now questionable. Conor Daly, who is the US’s best hope of getting to F1, is struggling to get sponsorship for F2. The recession and luck are the two most important factors affecting sponsorship at the junior levels.
Jimbo
Alice is not a very good driver. She’s not bad, but she is nowhere near top level. Never has been and never will be. She badly trashed a number of ginettas (leaving one team out of pocket for not paying a bill). A top driver would have won in those cars rather than breaking them. Let’s be frank as Joe says, if she was the cream, she would have risen to the top. She hasn’t. It doesn’t help that she has some people behind her who have almost entirely ruined her chances behind the scenes. As usual family members haven’t helped. In fact, I would say that they have been the hindrance.
It sounds like “sour grapes” that thankfully only occasional come from a male. In 12 years racing, she never had a point on a license. She is about the most cautious driver because of her crash insurance. Her podiums in Ginetta were objected to, and the stewards never upheld one, e.g. in one weekend alone, she had four objections. Moreover, she owned that Ginetta. With respect, you are 100% deluded about several wrecked cars and unpaid bills. Name the several dates when these were purportedly wrecked!
jimbo
Let’s get back to F1 please. Last time I looked Alice Powell was not in it. When she is, we can have such conversations, until then… Zzzzz
This whole article is not about F1…
And?
F1FAN1998, I think you need to check your facts before making sweeping statements.
I do not want to burst your bubble here, because I admire everything Alice is achieving, but there is no way she is on a par with Jon Lancaster. You have extrapolated from a very small set of results in a low quality series.
Alice’s GP3 results have not been good, and Jon has at least 2 wins in very few races in a much more competitive GP2 series. He is clearly quick, and Alice isn’t quite at that level yet.
That is enough Alice Powell.
Hi Joe
I made an error in saying that Alice Powell had a DNF in the last Indian race (which is their equivalent to F3). She started on pole, and had a spin which dropped her to the back. I gather that she made some places back.
Jimbo
The JICA driver being referred to was Max Chilton
Jimbo
Jon is a very good driver. I see him in a different league to Alice but budget has always been an issue with him.
Bob
I agree with your comments on Jon. I feel sorry for the likes of him and many other drivers, who as I expect, were all led down the road on the belief that if they had talent, they had a chance of free drives or even making a profit. He makes reference to JICA being the ultimate level, but this was also leading nowhere. It also explains why UK Gearbox Karting virtually vanished, along with other UK series, etc. The industry urgently needs to re-structure itself.
Bobby Game had an offer of sponsorship, but he could not even raise the £30,000 balance. The “Karting Kid” who wrote this article about 15 years ago did not fully appreciate that this was the thin edge of the wedge for some parts of the UK Motorsport Industry and the country’s top drivers.
“We’re Gonna Make You a Star by the Karting Kid”
It’s every Father’s dream to see the ‘light of their life’ reach Formula 1 and share the acclaim of the likes of Coulthard, Herbert and Franchitti, but beware it’s not all as it seems!
Many Daddy’s have stars in their eyes throughout their Kid’s Karting career, assuming that their little pilot is the chosen one, with talent, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since Coulthard graced the scene a few moons ago. Thank goodness that, that this is their belief, as it’s often what keeps Dad shelling out on a sport that he never really realised was that expensive, but he too, is now bitten by the bug and the ego of it all.
This ‘rising star’ ego is almost always encouraged by the teams, especially at Cadet level, where engines are purported to change hands for many thousands of pounds and mostly to find that it’s not actually any quicker than the one you’ve been using, but the driving ability of it’s previous pilot made it look worth the money. Of course the Dad’s stop watch always twitches a bit faster, just to justify the spending , whilst the ‘tuner’ mutters words of encouragement, just within ear shot. It takes some time to realise and often it is after the little pilot has grown into another class, that the engines can only be ‘blue printed’ anyway, not tuned and therefore there’s only so far an engine can be played with legally and often it’s the experience of the driver aged 11, that makes it look quicker to the eye of the Father of the 8 year old.
This spending lark is then encouraged throughout Junior TKM, even the sprockets have to be stamped TKM and are inflated for the privilege, as with many other non performance enhancing TKM parts, so that by the time the ‘talented’ youth reaches the heady heights of JICA, Dad is so used to forking out, he hardly notices the money spent, that would keep some small Nations afloat.
But don’t worry this is all training you up for the big day, Karting’s very own Brain Drain, Car Racing! Now this is big league and whilst it’s not been heard of for Karters to re-mortgage their house to go Karting (although I believe one’s just recently done so for his kid to race on the Continent), even Nigel Mansell did so to fund his way to the top and Damon Hill, used his Motorcycle messenger job to knock on doors, bandying around his Dad’s name liberally to raise funds to race, while Herbert’s, was lucky enough to have Sisley’s help in securing the ‘Racing for Britain’ sponsorship that helped drivers with talent and no money, to reach the top!
You’ve probably got the hint by now, it’s not your talented boy they’re after, it’s your money and if your boy has talent that’s just a bit of a bonus really, because the vital steps through the lower Formulae take considerable money, with figures like £100k+ for a drive in a top Formula Ford, Vauxhall team etc being bandied around and Formula 3 needing at least a minimum budget of £250k and around a million for the move too F3000, but don’t despair too much, maybe the lads Mum can actually fit in an extra job to the 3 she already has, to make the family dream come true! The car teams have woken up to the fact that ‘there’s money in them there Karters’ and with Jackie Stewart uttering phrases like “You won’t get anywhere in car racing, unless you started in Karting”, fuels the fire for the Car Teams to hunt out our richest drivers and wouldn’t it be nice, if just one Karter was approached by Jackie Stewart or his like and told that he would pay for his racing through cars because he has talent!!!
The good news however is that, sometime down line you are going to know some one who has made it to F1, you may have even spoken to that person or admired their massive motorhome close up, but you’ll be able to relay to your pals in the pub one night, that you once lent the new superstar a spark plug or your Dad once pushed him whilst you were in Cadets together and even better news is that you might have even been a better driver, but just didn’t have the money to go forth. Never mind you will join the ranks of Kartings best ever in Mike Wilson, Francois Goldstein (who), Terry Fullerton, Mickey Allen, Bobby Game, all extremely talented drivers, who were true Karting greats and like the majority of us should be proud that we have stayed within a much better sport!
Jimbo
Franchitti was in F1? Can we keep to Grand Prix racing please.
Thank you for adding GP2 news. It may be along with Indycar and DTM the only real racing left for fans.
A strange view
DTM and racing don’t belong in the same sentence. Only the Germans could make touring car racing dull.
I agree there is an element of dullness and it seems to be spreading. Like 6 nations Rugby, BTCC keeps fans on the edge of their seats like F1 did, until about 15 years ago. Today, and I may be wrong, but F1 seems to have developed a clinical racing element in it that only keeps you on the edge of your seat for the first half a dozen laps and the last few laps. There is added interest with the new engines, at the present, but it seems that new engines will eventually add to a clinical ambiance that has lost its old exciting edge.
jimbo
I am really pleased that Jon did very well in the test at Bahrain. He also won in spectacular fashion at the British GP meeting. However when Alice and Jon both drove for me there was not much between them. Infact Alice was a little faster than Jon at the second meeting on the Buddh circuit. I still have all the data from the last round at Chennai where Jon was marginally ahead. The road to F1 is a rocky one and we have all seen less talented drivers than Alice Powell get a prized F1 drive.
That is enough Alice Powell. When she gets to F1 we can mention the name again but until she does this blog has had enough of people blathering on. The proof of the pudding… and all that.