It’s the first working day after the new year so hopefully we’ll start to see some news trickling through. The verdicts on Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds’ case against the FIA is expected tomorrow, so we may see some news on that leaking out. Here’s today’s round-up:
Comment of the day
John Beamer was not impressed with the Daily Telegraph’s piece on why car makers are quitting F1:
To say Mercedes needs to sell 4,100 cars to cover its F1 costs is just wrong. For a start the calculation is based on revenue not profit. You don’t need an MBA from Harvard to work out that profit should be the denominator.
John Beamer
From the forum
Interesting to see how much money people people spend on going to F1 races in a year. The highest so far is £3,000…
Site updates
The ‘F1 video’ link on the bar at the top of the page has been pointing to old content for some time. A new updated page will be created for it soon but in the meantime the link has been changed to point to the F1 video category. It’s not so pretty but it is functional and up-to-date.
Happy birthday!
I’m not aware of any F1 Fanatic reader birthdays today – to let me know about on you can get in touch by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.
On this day in F1
Slow January drags on. A scan of the F1 Fanatic archives turned up little apart from this random post about Renault four years ago.
On this day in 2002 Jaguar launched their R3. They said they wanted to finish the year ‘best of the rest’ behind the usual trio of Ferrari, McLaren and Williams. It didn’t quite work out that way – they ended they year seventh with eight points.
Still I’m sure none of the new teams will make any rash boasts during this year’s launches…
Macca
4th January 2010, 11:50
It was a shame about Jaguar, I was quite a fan of theres.
Oliver
5th January 2010, 13:21
I think it was more of sabotage that killed Jaguar. I believe there was a lot of resentment toward Lauda by some senior management personel.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
4th January 2010, 12:45
Andrew Benson claims Kubica was considering leaving Renault after their change of ownership, but won’t be:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8439373.stm
Not as if he had much in the way of other options though.
sato113
4th January 2010, 13:02
http://www.crash.net/f1/news/155671/1/domenicali_against_ralf_piquet_briatore_f1_return.html
good article on domenicali
Mark Hitchcock
4th January 2010, 15:23
Have I missed something? Why would they only be allowed to stop once?
wasiF1
4th January 2010, 14:24
About Mercedes,don’t they have sponsor to back their finance,why do they need to sell 4,100 cars??