Dominos

As the end of October approaches, options in various contracts will be running out and some of the F1 teams and drivers will therefore be free to make announcements about the future.

It is a good time for teams to be at peace with their drivers, if they want to keep them in 2013. There may, for example, be drivers who we think are settled but who might be able to walk out of their current situations if they can argue that their team is in breach of its contract with them.

It is no great surprise that there are rumours about the Force India drivers, given the financial pickles that the two team owners have got themselves into. Last year Vijay Mallya was very high profile on India. It would not be wise to be in the spotlight this year. At his last FIA press conference Mallya was savaged by the F1 media and, given what has happened since then, he is not going to get off as lightly if he tries to play the role of benevolent Mr Motorsport in front of an Indian press corps that is obviously not very keen on The King of Good Times.

The word is that Nico Hulkenberg is on his way to Sauber and the Indian GP would be a good place to announce that given that – incongruously – the Sauber team principal is an Indian. That would be a bit of a bloody nose for Mallya, but c’est la vie. F1 is a rough place and if you cannot take the heat, you don’t deserve to be there.

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Mallya case dropped

The embarrassing arrest warrant that was issued against Vijay Mallya and others involved in his Kingfisher Airlines, has been withdrawn after the airport in question was paid. This is good news for Mallya, who can now return to India without fear of being arrested, but it may not be such good news in the longer term as other companies who are owed money may conclude that if the only way to get debts settled is to go legal, there may be a blizzard of new legal actions, given the debts that the airline is rumored to have. The planes remain grounded because of a strike by staff who have not been paid for seven months.

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Arrest warrant for Mallya

Force India boss Vijay Mallya has run into more trouble in Hyderabad where the 13th Metropolitan Sessions Court has issued an arrest warrant against him in a case filed by GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd which manages the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport.

The case dates back several months when cheques issued by Kingfisher bounced. The court issued the warrant after Mallya failed to appear despite a summons.

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Lewis and Mercedes

If, as is being reported, it is confirmed that Lewis Hamilton has moved from McLaren to Mercedes, it will be a leap of great faith in the German-owned operation, but may be a decision that the British youngster will one day regret.

With the exception of Ferrari – which is in any case a very different case – most manufacturer teams do not do well in F1 and the team that Hamilton joins failed to win consistently during its time as the Honda team. As an independent team it came up with a clever gizmo that helped Jenson Button win the title in 2009 but since then it has been pretty average.

The one exception to that is probably Renault in the 2005-2006 period, although that was in many ways a manufacturer team in name only and its demise was caused by team members so desperate not to lose the Renault link that they resorted to cheating to achieve their goal – which was, of course, a complete disaster.

There are plenty of other examples of factory teams that failed to deliver, because the demands are simply different and the F1 environment seems to work best for manufacturers when they are engine suppliers only. If Mercedes decide to blitz F1 with money, as they did in the 1950s then perhaps they will be impossible to beat, but can the firm afford such excess?

Lewis Hamilton does not know much about racing history and so cannot learn from the mistakes of others. Perhaps he thinks that if it fails he will at least have the consolation of earning loads more money and being a bigger star, thanks to his hustling management that will sell his image here, there and everywhere. That might make him an international celebrity on a bigger scale than he is, but it will not make him a racing legend.

Perhaps Mercedes will pull it off and then Hamilton will look clever, but I fear that this will be a move similar to James Hunt joining Wolf; Emerson Fittipaldi joining Fittipaldi, Jacques Villeneuve moving to BAR or Niki Lauda’s ill-fated move to Brabham. History relates that you do not leave a winning team in F1 unless it is to go to another proven winner…

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Who is Cyril Abiteboul?

The new CEO of Caterham F1 is Frenchman Cyril Abiteboul, a 35-year-old who is seen as being one of young high flyers at Renault. Educated at the prestigious Lycée Carnot and Lycée Chaptal high schools in Paris, both well known for preparing the best and birghtest youngsters for France’s Grandes Ecoles. To put that into perspective it should be noted that the Lycée Carnot was where Jacques Chirac, the former French President, studied while his successor Nicolas Sarkozy attended the Lycée Chaptal. He went on to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Informatique Mathématiques Appliquées, graduating in 2001 when he joined Renault at Boulogne-Billancourt. At the start of 2007 he was appointed the Business Development Manager of Renault F1 Team, for a two-year period. He then returned to Renault mainstream until March 2010 when he was named executive director of Renault Sport F1 in the Spring of 2010 and was promoted to Deputy Managing Director a year ago.

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Hamilton and Mercedes

Eddie Jordan is close to Bernie Ecclestone and it is not unusual for EJ to be used to put out stories. So if EJ is saying that Lewis Hamilton is close to signing for Mercedes, one needs to listen. But is it true? McLaren says that Lewis’s management is saying it is not true. I am a little suspicious because Bernie slipped in a little comment on the BBC at Spa suggesting Michael Schumacher might retire, but is that right, or is it part of a bigger political game with Mercedes? If Michael did retire, Lewis would be a good choice for the Germans, but I fail to see why it would be a good choice for Lewis. The one thing he does not need right now is more instability. And it would mess up the Mercedes succession plan, with Paul di Resta perhaps going to McLaren.

One might also read the situation as Bernie trying to place his pawns in such a way as to create a better show in 2013. With Jenson Button and AN Other at McLaren; and Hamilton at Mercedes there might be more interest.

For the time being I have doubts. If it has happened, it will be a reflection of Lewis’s state of mind, as this is not a logical thing to do.

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The harsh realities

Vitaly Petrov is a pay driver. A good one, but a pay driver nonetheless and if his friends in Russia do not deliver the cash for him to continue in F1 in 2013 then Caterham will take another driver who can provide what is needed. The second driver role is not that important. At the moment Vitaly does it well, but there is no room for sentiment in F1. If the money does not arrive there are others who can do the job. They may not be as good as Vitaly, but the standards are pretty high these days. The team needs a solid number one, with drive, passion and experience.

Despite a fair amount of waffle about his future, Heikki Kovalainen is still the obvious candidate. He will be lucky to get an offer from elsewhere. His speed and experience are of value to Caterham, but he has not outshone Petrov as much as one might have expected. There are other options out there for the ride if Heikki tries to pay hard ball, so he needs to have reasonable financial demands and be keen to stay where he is.

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A stupid (or worse) story

There is a story kicking around today that McLaren might be doing a deal with Coca-Cola. There are two ways to read such an article. The first is that the author (and the copiers around the web) are just not very clever. McLaren is in a long-term strategic alliance with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). The British conglomerate that makes Lucozade, which is a major competitor to Coca-Cola’s Powerade and to Pepsico’s Gatorade. Thus it is decidedly unlikely that McLaren would be doing a deal with Coca-Cola at a time when the word in the F1 paddock is that Lucozade could be stepping up to become the McLaren title sponsor if Vodafone decides to reduce its involvement.

Obviously the author of the Coca-Cola article is not someone involved directly in F1.

While such stupidity is not uncommon in the Internet coverage of F1, there is still the potential that this is a story that has been deliberately designed to be disruptive.

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The accident at Duxford

Maria de Villota drove a Renault Formula 1 car at Paul Ricard last year. She had no obvious qualifications to be a Formula 1 driver and no Superlicence, but private testing does not require the same rules and regulations as “official” activities. What she did have was some money and a dream and that made her presence in the Marussia team possible. It obviously helped that she was a woman because it is fairly unlikely that an F1 team would run an obscure Spanish man with the same kind of qualifications. We have not seen that since 41- year-old Israeli Channock Nissany drove for Minardi in 2005. One can accuse the Marussia team of tokenism if you wish, but money is money and Marussia Racing clearly needed it.

It is still a little early to say what happened at Duxford, but clearly the accident involved either a technical glitch or inexperience. One can, of course, ask whether it was wise to have a truck with the tail-lift down in proximity to an F1 car being tested.

Whatever the case there is no doubt that that this was a freak accident and F1 can count itself as fortunate that the ramifications were not more serious. People learn from mistakes and it remains to be seen whether the FIA will deem it necessary to get involved. It is, of course, important that the sport is as safe as possible – and seen to be safe – and these days any kind of accident reflects on the sport. Serious accidents in F1 are rare and as a result the reporting related to them tends to be rather hysterical, as was seen with Felipe Massa’s incident in Hungary a few years back.

For the time being F1 should not be making any snap decisions. The sport should take a look at what happened and then decide whether that warrants any action.

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De Villota’s accident

The accident this morning at Duxford, an aerodrome near Cambridge, involving Marussia’s Maria de Villota has garnered a lot of headlines, but for the moment we know very little about the circumstances of the accident and the extent of the injuries involved. On such circumstances there is always a fair amount of sensationalism, and it is best not to get sucked into that. More details will emerge in the hours ahead and that will help to give us a clear idea and then analyse what if anything needs to be done.

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