F1 Fanatic round-up: 12/2/2010

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While F1 testing continues in Jerez, Lotus are launching their first F1 car in 16 years today.

We’ll have more from today’s two big F1 events later. In the meantime, here’s today’s round-up:

Links

New management at Magny-Cours (Joe Saward)

France’s best chance of getting its Grand Prix back?

Ron Dennis honoured at UK motorsport’s first hall of fame (McLaren

“Ron shared the limelight with three fellow inductees – 1950s grand prix winner Tony Brooks, sports car legend Jacky Ickx and 1978 Formula 1 world champion Mario Andretti.”

Comment of the day

-A- likes the look of the re-vamped Silverstone and I have to say I agree:

Interesting to see a track modification that, for once, adds faster corners to a circuit. In the absence of being able to add run-off to restore Abbey to its pre-1994 condition, I rather prefer this change to the circuit’s 2009 configuration. I think the new turns 11 and 12 could provide a suitable challenge. It will be interesting to see if there can be some overtaking into turn 13, then, although the left-hander hairpin following so closely after that could make it possible for a driver on the outside line to counter-attack.
-A-

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Toranosuke Takagi turns 36 today. The Japanese driver spent two seasons in F1 with Tyrrell and Arrows. His time in the sport was short on achievement but it’s possible he helped write one piece of F1 history in the 1998 season finale.

Takagi was rammed by Esteban Tuero at the chicane, damaging both cars. Shortly afterwards Michael Schumacher’s title hopes ended with a puncture – one quite possibly caused by running over debris from the Tuero-Takagi crash.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 12/2/2010”

  1. no matter who’s in charge of Magny Cours, it’s still in the middle of nowhere.

    1. My only race in Europe, since I’m a Brazilian, was in Magny Cours, in one point of my trip I though that I was being schemed and in that farm town someone would steal my kidney…it’s too far, you have to face a 2:30hrs trip from paris plus 45 minutes by bus…it’s not practical, but was incredibly packed…

  2. Rally Sweden starts off the WRC season today so don’t forget to watch out for kimi!

  3. God please no return of yet another boredom-fest of a track like Magny-Cours! Track design HAS to be one of the major contributory factors or lack of overtaking. Especially with current car design. Once cars can run closer it should open up overtaking on more tracks. But even Magny-Cours will still suffer due to its design.

  4. Never been the Magny-Cours. Is the track of a type easily ( ie relatively cheaply ) modified to make it a better, tougher, more interesting race venue ?

    1. the track itself is fine. the drivers love it too. it’s the poor location and atmosphere that killed it.

      1. middle of nowhere ?

        1. Yeah also they butchered that last sector.

        2. well obviously it’s not nowhere. I mean it’s just not near any major cities. it’s in remote, quiet rural france. this leads to half full grandstands.

        3. 3 hour drive from paris,
          4 hour drive from any other major city,
          6 hours from where i live in france.

          1. yeah, shouldn’t be that far! Bernie wanted a GP near Paris to draw in the spectator numbers.

  5. Worth of note that Takagi was also involved in another piece of history: he was last to drive for Tyrrell as his team-mate Rosset failed to qualify for that race.

  6. I hope Magny-Cours get a place on the calender,it’s true that the location is not good,but we did had some good racing there in the last three season.

    1. I’m not sure I agree about the last 3 French GP’s being good, I thought they were boring.

      But there have been plenty of good races at Magny Cours, the 1999, 2000 and 2002 GP’s were all great. And 2004 had the novelty of Schumi’s win on a 4 stop strategy

  7. I didn’t know where else to post this as there’s no forum.
    Hilarious video, The Schumacher Clause:
    http://www.crash.net/tailenders/video/156697/1/the_schumacher_clause.html

    1. good a place as any.

      Ha ha ha,

      extras? ;-)

  8. How about holding the French GP at Dijon-Prenois? From what I’ve seen, it seems like a better circuit than Magny-Cours.

  9. Are they not allowed to run two cars in testing? Or are the second cars not finished yet? Who knows?

  10. Nearly Lotus o’clock.

    Does anyone know if the launch is live online – or who’s there, with a camera, on Twitter?

  11. Shame Flins-les-Mureaux was cancelled, that might have been good.

  12. New Lotus. Green colour looks quite like it should. http://twitpic.com/12suiv

  13. So I just had a look at the 10 day weather forecast for Jerez and it looks like more rain for next week.. I wonder if they’ll move the test or get more wet weather data..

  14. And richly deserved by Ron, it should be Sir Ron…

Comments are closed.