You can find the post-Canada updated season statistics on the F1 2010 statistics page. Here’s today’s round-up:
Links
Does Ferrari not want an Italian star? (Motorsport)
“It is extraordinary to note that post-Tazio Nuvolari, Alberto Ascari remains the most successful Italian with 13 Grand Prix wins followed by ‘American’ Andretti with 12 – and these are the only two in double figures. Riccardo Patrese scored six, while Giuseppe Farina and Michele Alboreto won five apiece. Fisichella took three and de Angelis two, while the rest have only a single victory. This only reflects the modern World Championship, but it does tell a story.”
Mike Gascoyne interview (Grandprix.com)
“Some of the [Tilke] circuits have been good and some haven’t. If you look at Valencia, it’s dreadful and I don’t think there’s been an overtake yet. It’s clear where you get good overtaking, the studies have been done and we’ve just got to take them into account.”
What public officials are revealing about F1
“We do know that several members of Gov. Perry’s staff are excited about the idea. They said so in a series of short e-mails exchanged following the May 25 announcement that F1 was headed to Austin – the only documents that the governor’s office has seen fit to release. ‘Awesome, I will be there. Even though I much prefer stock car racing??’ reads one.”
Comment of the day
Ferrari fan Dorian (the clue’s in her avatar) reckons her team could struggle to stay in the title chase if their Valencia upgrade doesn’t pay off:
I think it’s gonna be between Red Bull and McLaren with one stipulation – if Red Bull and McLaren develop at exactly the same rate then I think Red Bull will take the title due to it being and inherently faster design than the McLaren. McLaren must develop more aggressively and ingeniously than Red Bull if they are to take it.
I really hope I’m wrong and Ferrari’s upgrade for Valencia (and subsequent upgrades) is gonna put them on top – or on par with whomever is on top and Alonso take the championship by storm. That’s what the heart wants but my brain says the former??
Dorian
From the forum
We’ve got a great collection of F1 quotes going – one of my favourites posted by Guilherme Teixeira from Mario Andretti about Chris Amon: “Jesus, the luck of Chris. I tell you, if he went into the undertaking business, people would stop dying.”
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to vikenbauer, JonathanProc and Beninlux!
On this day in F1
Lewis Hamilton won the last United States Grand Prix on this day three years ago following a tense battle with team mate Fernando Alonso.
Read the race report here: United States Grand Prix 2007 review: Win #2 for Hamilton
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 0:58
off topic but i was scanning through some Bahrain 2010 articles and found the biggest lie i’ve ever heard from Bridgestone-
“What a great way to start Bridgestone’s fourteenth season of Formula One racing, with great battles right to the chequered flag at the new layout of Sakhir circuit in Bahrain.”
this coming after one of the worst races in F1 history!
link- http://www.f1technical.net/news/14408?sid=f7c6ada67d15e566b72a2401d418f920
i’m quite miffed with bridgestone’s anti-strategic tyres this year (except for canada).
PJA
17th June 2010, 9:40
The tyre situation at Canada was by accident not by choice, understandably Bridgestone don’t want people talking about how bad the tyres are or coming out with comments such as they are made of cheese.
Hopefully Canada has shown the powers that be that having more marginal tyres can help promote better racing, and so even if it doesn’t happen this year it might next year, with whoever the new tyre supplier is.
Of course if someone like Pirelli is chosen with no recent F1 experience we could well end up with tyres that aren’t great at every race for the first season at least anyway.
I recall someone on the BBC F1 Forum say they wouldn’t be surprised if Ecclestone was delaying the signing of a tyre deal for 2011 to create an element of uncertainty for next season as the cars won’t be optimised for the tyres.
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 11:59
that uncertainty to lead to one team walking away with the championship (brawn 09) could be a bad scenario…
Patrickl
17th June 2010, 17:10
There were 21 overtakes in Bahrain. We just never got to see them.
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 17:48
finally it’s taken them 8 races to realise!-
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/84544
BasCB (@bascb)
17th June 2010, 18:19
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it!
But imagine what next year will be like, if the tyre supplier is not even yet confirmed, has no data not given to them by the teams (not much, as most is probably Bridgestone intellectual property) and hardly any time for testing the tyres.
They would have to go pretty conservative with the tyres, so what would that mean for the drivers?
Glenn
17th June 2010, 18:19
Bingo I was just going to post this is here as soon as I say this.. I say this is great. Like it or not the action is created when drivers are put into situation where they have to stop or come out of the pits in traffic. Lets hope that from Germany on, will be the end of one stop strategies.. Where drivers are penalized for staying on SS for more than 10 laps, and the Prime doesnt last for an entire race.
Michael Griffin
17th June 2010, 1:46
Mike Gascoyne is spot on with Valencia, its atrocious.
It may well be the worst racing circuit in the world, there have been about three overtaking maneuvers at the track and they have all been on lap one of the race, after that you could rename the race the procession grand prix.
The fact that its still on the calendar shows just how mentally unstable Bernie Ecclestone really is. Or, could it be that they have the money to keep paying him? More than likely, although with the state Spain is in right now, lets hope it kills off this waste of calendar space.
European GP back at the Nurburgring? Yes please.
Ben
17th June 2010, 1:53
mentally unstable? Far out sometimes you guys go overboard.
Ever thought the organisers of Valencia have a multi-year contract? Ecclestone can’t just walk away without legal action being brought against him.
Michael Griffin
17th June 2010, 2:30
As the commercial rights holder surely even he wouldn’t be silly enough not to have a terminate option in the contract?
Oh and mentally unstable isn’t overboard, that’s rather timid for my opinions on Bernie.
Macca (@macca)
17th June 2010, 4:45
I have to agree with Ben, sometimes people just get caught up in the moment. A big part of the reason why F1 is as strong as it is, is becuase of Bernie. Yes his methods might be a little controversial but he gets the results.
Dane
17th June 2010, 5:25
Agree with Macca 100%
US_Peter (@us_peter)
17th June 2010, 5:47
Three cheers for Bernie!
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 12:05
why is everyone celebrating bernie all of a sudden?
this is they guys who tried to force the medals system, made things very hard for silverstone to get a gp, is trying to price turkey off the calendar, got rid of the usgp for a few years, is moving f1 to boring new exotic tracks, is anti-HD, doesn’t do much to bring the fans closer to the sport and i could go on…
yes he’s done wonders for the sport but sometimes he lets us down.
US_Peter
17th June 2010, 18:52
I was making a funny. Apparently no one got it.
BasCB
17th June 2010, 7:54
Why on earth would Bernie terminate the contract before its time?
Sure he probably can, but it would only make sense if the promoter did something Bernie minds. Like not paying, not paying in time or not paying all they might (or maybe having slumpy facilities and views or badly messing up in the organization). He would probably screw them and ask for more.
The quality of racing has never been of much interet to him, so no reason to even think about terminating the contract.
joe
17th June 2010, 8:07
The bad races make the good ones look better. You need a Valencia to remind you how good Canada was
nik (@nik)
17th June 2010, 17:20
you have no idea of how the business of f1 works. F1 doesn’t pick the circuits, the circuits and promoters pick F1.
geo132 (@geo132)
17th June 2010, 6:15
Maybe i didn’t notice a post about it, but did the guys at FOTA and FOM get to an agreement about the tyre supplier for next year?
Red Andy
17th June 2010, 7:44
No, still no agreement is forthcoming. The FIA are preparing to put out a tender as they’ve realised that allowing the lunatics to run the asylum isn’t necessarily a smart way to do business.
mvi
17th June 2010, 9:42
It is still a mystery why the FIA is now, months late, talking about putting out a tender. This certainly muddies the water about the whole commercial proposition of tyres in F1.
In the meantime, the old lunatic has been rather profitably running the commercial asylum for a while now.
Red Andy
17th June 2010, 13:03
I think the FIA were relying on FOTA to act sensibly and come up with a solution that was in the best interests of the sport. As ever, of course, they can’t agree on anything. So the FIA has to step in.
BasCB (@bascb)
17th June 2010, 18:24
Sure, that makes sense. Only the FIA and FOM should have acted half a year ago and not let it for the Teams to try and convince Bridgestone.
Now the teams have more or less agreed on choosing Pirelli and with time running out for next year, it is utter folly to first start a “tender proces”.
Starting up the process and putting out a bidding document will take weeks. Receiving offers from bidders another month or so. Then you would have to check how realistic the biddings are and choose a winner. Then allow for protests to be filed at fench/european courts and then sign a contract.
I expect something like that might be settled by the time testing for next season comes to an end in March next year, or maybe they would be able to make it before testing begins. But it will hardly begin without tyres.
BasCB
17th June 2010, 7:47
So far nothing has been posted. The last thing was an italian news site saying Pirelli had it all but bagged already in Turkey and now waits for FIA/FOM to do their thing.
This was later confirmed by Brawn or Sam Michael (not sure who it was) in an interview in Canada.
BasCB
17th June 2010, 7:57
Classic government officials reaction to the public or media asking for information they have a right to in Austin!
Let us all hope, that Tavo gives us something good at Silverstone. Best would be to have a site, track rendering or even a scale model of the track as well as more information on his backers or where the money for building the circuit is going to come from.
Then the government officials might give their statements to the press about it as well.
mvi
17th June 2010, 9:36
According to the statesman.com article, Comptroller Susan Coombs is considered the force behind bringing F1 to Austin. It is interesting that her platform has been more efficiency, accountability and transparency of public spending. She said the rest of the requested documents would be available a week later (i.e. next week?). This is a great opportunity to show she is serious about transparency and serious about F1.
BasCB (@bascb)
17th June 2010, 18:25
I suppose a lot of F1 followers and not the least Austin citizens will be very much interested to hear of the the solid foundation for this bid.
Bertie
17th June 2010, 7:58
Keith, are there any plans to have the latest forum threads dsiplayed on the right like they were back in the day?
BasCB
17th June 2010, 9:06
Seems Branson is giving the team some serious thought and impulses. Interesting reflection from Joe Saward on the money and tricks involved in F1 here:
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/06/16/why-finishing-11th-may-be-better-than-10th/
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
17th June 2010, 10:16
Some new F1 2010 videos from Codemasters, handheld stuff shot at E3 but shows the 2010 graphics for the first time (I think):
http://youtu.be/v14prpWpQjc
http://youtu.be/to_IclklR2A
Mandev
17th June 2010, 11:33
Looks good! Shame damage wasn’t on though.
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 12:21
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR3RMJlJEo0
more footage
Patrickl
17th June 2010, 17:22
ROFL when the presenter is explaining how the game is helping people to feel like they are amazing drivers and that guy playing just keeps on messing up :)
Anyway, the game looks good. Hope they have some telemetry too, but probably not.
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 17:49
yeah that guy was pretty cr*p!
BasCB (@bascb)
17th June 2010, 18:26
That was pretty funny, how bad can you get. Maybe it was ment to show the damage model, but that was hardly visible.
UneedAFinn2Win
17th June 2010, 12:46
Here’s the least “news” news out of Ferrari this week:
http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/20632.html
If you don’t already know what it is about, just think sand, and v**…
I swear I’m getting a Déjà vu
BasCB (@bascb)
17th June 2010, 18:27
Not Luca again! He is sounding like a broken record. How many times a month can somebody listen to this.
GeeMac
17th June 2010, 14:35
As I understand it Enzo Ferrari shyed away from hiring Italian drivers after the death of Lorenzo Bandini in 1967. He got slated in the press for putting young Italian men at risk, so after that, he just hired foreigners.
Anyone else heard that?
Cacarella
17th June 2010, 14:44
Heard this as well but can’t remember when or where. (1967 was a long time ago)
Tomás
17th June 2010, 14:42
Andretti’s remark on Chris Amon’s bad luck (“Jesus, the luck of Chris. I tell you, if he went into the undertaking business, people would stop dying.”) made me laugh but also reminded me of a typical Argentine remark, referred to the unlucky: “the day it rains soup will find him with a fork in his hand”.
Patrickl
17th June 2010, 17:24
Ha, a fork is easy. I ordered soup in a Chinese restaurant and was given chop sticks.
sato113 (@sato113)
17th June 2010, 17:50
because your meant to hold the bowl and drink the soup!