Looking back

Every man and his dog is writing this week about Imola. I doubt that I need to remind anyone that Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger died there 20 years ago this week. I am not about to follow suit on this blog. I have written a few reminiscences elsewhere but there is such a feeding …

Another promising day for De Silvestro

Simona De Silvestro has now completed two full days of testing at the Ferrari test track in Fiorano, at the wheel of a two-year-old Sauber C31. She completed a total of 180 laps without any problems, a total of 540 kilometres of running. If this was done in a current Sauber she would have qualified …

Simona does 112 laps

Simona de Silvestro had a successful first day of F1 testing at Fiorano on Saturday, completing a total of 112 laps at her first attempt, a pretty impressive start in terms of mileage. Here she is in the re liveried Sauber C31.

Challenges

It is a bad state of affairs when all that one can read in the newspapers about Formula 1 is court reports from Munich and sad memories of events 20 years ago. I am tempted to say that a savvy communications operation would be busy pumping out any kind of stories in order to offset …

Simona tests a Sauber

Simona de Silvestro had her first F1 test this morning in a re-liveried 2012 Sauber at Fiorano. The car features a much nicer paint scheme than the current grey car, with sponsorship visible from a number of clean air companies and the words "clean air" and "hybrid" prominent on the car. At last someone is …

A press release that someone should have put out…

Communication is a word that comes from the Latin verb "commūnicāre", which means "to share". If there is an idea worth sharing, one shares it with other people. One communicates. It strikes me that some of the folks who are involved in Formula 1 communication did not study Latin, and appear to believe that when …

Who is Sacha Woodward Hill and does she speak Australian?

As Bernie Ecclestone’s trial begins in Munich, there have been a lot of reports about the rise to power of Ms Sacha Woodward-Hill, the Chief Legal Officer of the Formula One group. There have been various confused stories suggesting that she is an Australian, and even one I saw that reckoned she came from Austria. …

Govt cash for F1 ideas…

Britain's Business Secretary Vince Cable is to announce grants of £133 million from the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) which aims to invest in developing and commercialising technology for future vehicles in the course of the next 10 years. The first batch of winners include Ford, Cummins, JCB and GKN. “The next generation of cars, buses …

Mr Christ’s Easter weekend

My wife sometimes calls me “Sawar”, which is the result of a terribly nice driver in Cuba who thought that this was my first name and spent an entire day calling me that as we drove around the Valle de Viñales, looking at tobacco farms, cliffs and caves. Such mistakes are not unusual, as some …

Three hours and 20 minutes after the flag

The Great Firewall of China is not going to stop GP+ publishing - although the Chinese are none too keen on allowing us to tell the world about their Grand Prix. There was a huge crowd in Shanghai to watch an absolutely exemplary display of driving from Lewis Hamilton, who led from lights to flag …