Just spooling up before heading off to Spa and, as expected, there was not a lot going on over the summer break. Now everyone is talking about the new rules about F1 start systems and, inevitably, about the weather in the Ardennes, which seems to be good until Sunday, when it is likely to rain. The holiday weeks saw real stretches in search of stories, my favourite being a Finnish Grand Prix. The country has a population of 5.2 million, which is about half the number of people in Azerbaijan. It has no oil to boost the books and has been economically stagnant in recent years. Likelihood of a Grand Prix? Hm… Slightly less than zero percent chance. The other story that tickled my fancy was the “news” that Danica Patrick will not be moving to F1 (not that anyone sensible ever said she was) because she has just announced a new multi-year deal to stay in NASCAR with sponsorship from a Nevada company called Nature’s Bakery, which produces different flavoured fig bars for Vegans. Given that Danica is into this kind of stuff, she’s a good advocate for the products, even if the NASCAR audience is perhaps not the obvious target market. Having said that, GoDaddy was also a firm with little obvious appeal to NASCAR fans and she did a great job for them.
The driver market should start warming up at Spa, with just two weeks before the Italian GP, where Ferrari traditionally names its drivers. It is hard to imagine that the team will have re-employed Kimi Raikkonen at the same salary as previously, the new boss Sergio Marchionne famously being a pincher of pennies.
joeblogsf1 
Fig bars eh? That might result in a breach of the exhaust regulations? Welcome back – looking forward to the Spa scuttlebutt…
I hope your time in Cape Cod went well Joe! Having spent my summer youth there and owned a house as well, I’m curious what town you stayed in?
Hyannis
The big city! HA HA! Hope you had fun!
Welcome back. What about the story that Haas has 10 drivers talking to him, presumably that includes the taxi driver on the way from the airport, the driver on the way to the hotel, the …. and so on. I don’t imagine any top driver is volunteering to move to the new team, with unproven capabilities and resources, in the wrong location (i.e. not England or Modena).
Joe your thoughts on the stories that Mercedes will supply engines to RBR in 2016 itself, in case Renault buy Lotus and make it their works team?
I see few other options apart from Ferrari, but I do not see what is in it for the Mercedes team.
How to shoot yourself in both feet. It would be funny if they supplied Red Bull and then got promptly dominated. Have Red Bull suddenly forgotten how to build a chassis & excel at aero / flexible bodywork tricks etc.
Hope you enjoyed The Cape. Weather was brilliant while you were here. It has gotten crappy now being very humid and hot.
There were some impressive rainstorms as well!!
Joe
It is good to have you and F1 back.
I am very grateful for your insight into what is really happening.
I hope the second half is as good as the first. Not a bad year I would say.
So, I worked at GoDaddy for more than a year…as a company, it’s still more widely known for the chick they sponsor than for what they do (domains, websites and WordPress blogs, which you may want to look into Joe, so you actually own your content here…technically wordpress owns your blog if it’s hosted on their servers. Anyways…).
It’s telling that the only American driver ever talked about entering F1 is…that woman, whom I dislike. I wear it as a badge of honor that maybe 1 in 20 even knows what F1 is in this country, and I’m the 1. Part of me wants to keep it that way, too. Since nobody seems to want to really embrace the US market, truly and with gusto, it probably will stay that way for a long time to come.
GoDaddy are also widely known for having a CEO who likes to kill endangered species.
That’s what leaps to mind for GoDaddy for me too, and why I don’t use them. Same for Jimmy John’s subs, I spend my money elsewhere.
How about a report on the lobster or the New England boils?