Just a quick note from Keith – thanks to everybody who sent messages of congratulations, he’s looking forward to catching up on all the comments he’s missed when he gets back on Thursday.
Here’s today’s round up:
Links
Vitaly Petrov gears up for Rotterdam demo (Renault and @rf1paddockpass)
Image (C) Renault via Twitter
"The Renault F1 Roadshow heads to Rotterdam this weekend to take part in the Bavaria City Racing event on the streets of Dutch city.
"Vitaly Petrov will be on driving duty, stepping in to replace Ho-Pin Tung, who continues to recover from the back injury he sustained during the GP2 race at the Hungaroring last month.
"Reserve driver, Jan Charouz, will also be in Rotterdam and will share demonstration duties of the R29 with Vitaly on Sunday 22 August."
Senna launches helmet challenge (F1.co.uk)
"Hispania Racing’s Bruno Senna invites fans to participate in a unique tribute to his late uncle Ayton Senna.
"Bruno is to celebrate the life of his late uncle and idol, who would have been 50 this year, by wearing a special tribute helmet at a F1 race later this season. As such Bruno is launching a competition where fans from all over the world will have the chance to create a new design for his crash helmet, along the theme ‘Ayrton Senna’s 50th Anniversary’.
"The winning design will be specially painted on Bruno’s crash helmet and will be worn by the Brazilian as a one-off later in the year."
Korean Grand Prix
Pictures have emerged of the Korean International Circuit, which is due to officially open on September 5th. Reports suggest the pictures were taken a few weeks ago and that the project is on target.
Merger Between HRT And Epsilon Euskadi? (Speed)
"According to reports in Spain, there might be merger talks afoot between the struggling HRT team, and hopeful 2011 entrant Epsilon Euskadi.
"The news agency EFE said the latter’s chief Joan Villadelprat is weighing up two options: the first being acceptance by the FIA to be the 13th team entry in its own right next year.
"The second option is reportedly a merger with Hispania, F1’s existing Spanish entrant that is lagging at the rear of the grid and yet to pen a concrete deal for the construction of its next car."
Comment of the day
MacaNut has commented on the McLaren story saying:
From these statements McLaren obviously think they are in serious trouble.
Whitmarsh talks of continued experimentation at Spa to try to unlock "some large areas of performance locked within the car". Button knows "that we have some catching-up do to" and is counting on the FIA clamping down on flexi-wings.
And Hamilton who is only 4 points behind in the WDC (1.6 points old money) thinks they’re out of the hunt; "I’ll be going flat-out to try and get us back into the hunt again".
MacaNut
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
Juan-Manuel Fangio won his second championship on this day in 1954 at the Swiss Grand Prix. Fangio took the World Championship with two races to go in the season.
Mercedes driver Fangio led the race from start to finish almost a minute ahead of second-place Jos?? Froil??n Gonz??lez and Hans Herrmann in third behind the wheel of the second Mercedes car.
This was the last race held at Bremgarten and the last Formula One race in Switzerland, following events at the 1955 Le Mans. The Swiss government banned all forms of motor racing.
ChRiS
22nd August 2010, 0:05
And-how-is-Bruno-sure-that-he-will-be-racing-later-this-year?
Lord Stig
22nd August 2010, 8:03
Well Senna does get money for the team from Embratel.
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:00
As he was signed pretty early on by Campos his deal is quite a bit different from the other 3 drivers (that’s why Kolles was said to have him suspended for some issue in Silverstone to get a seat for YAM) and after that one occasion both he and the team confirmed he will be racing all further races. Only the second car is a bigger wallet drives deal now.
Charlie Watts
22nd August 2010, 0:54
I don’t think that Mclaren are really in ‘serious trouble’ at least according to cotd! It sounds like normal talk from a team that are trailing in the WDC!
Patrickl
22nd August 2010, 11:08
Yea I don’t think they are in serious trouble either. Hungary is not a type of circuit that suits their car. Hamilton actually did reasonably well there.
I’m assuming they have some problem getting their blown diffuser to work though. Or they might have expected more from it.
Obviously it didn’t work the first time they tried it so they are to remedy this problem and are veryfying if their windtunnel data correlates well to the actual on track performance.
Apaprently they even changed their windtunnel since Hungary. At the very least that would mean that they need to check whether it’s working correctly.
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:03
I think they are in a pretty good condition. They are pretty close to Webber/Red Bull in the championships.
The next two circuits will probalby suit their car, and give them some time to further optimize the exhaus blown diffusor.
And they did state, that they would like to have those flex wings banned or will do some creative thinking around the rules themselves.
Does not sound bad at all.
thestig84
22nd August 2010, 17:47
I agree. Odd comment of the day as its clearly someone just reading the story and making it sound how he wants it to sound not remotely how it was meant.
Cari Jones (@cari-jones)
22nd August 2010, 19:26
COTD isn’t about choosing a comment F1F agrees with – it’s just interesting.
Fer no.65
22nd August 2010, 1:08
oh those years when Argentina finished 1st and 2nd at a race… and even champion and runner up…
so long ago…
Zahir
22nd August 2010, 1:20
Hmm I wonder which race Bruno could possibly be thinking of?!
I think a merger between HRT and Epsilon Euskadi would be a good thing. I admit I know very little when it comes to the business of a deal like this, the pros and cons etc, but it looks like it will be amicable for both sides. HRT will recieve the stability they so desperatly need whilst Epsilon Euskadi can almost skip that inevitble poor first year, have a lot of data and fresh faces at Hispania may be good for the car development
wasiF1 (@wasif1)
22nd August 2010, 3:16
Where is the asphalt where the car will be racing in the picture or my eyes are bad?
mkh1
22nd August 2010, 4:22
Didn’t you know the Korean GP is going to be the first F1 rallycross race?
anthony
22nd August 2010, 5:57
lol f1 cars with mud pulker tyres. haha
Mouse_Nightshirt (@mouse_nightshirt)
22nd August 2010, 10:33
I will be you all a capital R, a semicolon and the number 3 that this race will not happen this year.
It just won’t.
And that didn’t make sense. Don’t blame me, I’ve just done a twelve and a half hour night shift!
HounslowBusGarage
22nd August 2010, 10:56
Re ‘On this day’.
A tiny, nit-picking point is that hill climbs and other events where the drivers do not compete directly against each other do not seem to have been banned in Switzerland.
Calum
22nd August 2010, 11:00
Only…five…more…excruciating…summer…break…days…to…go…
Doug
22nd August 2010, 11:15
If that picture was taken a few weeks ago, there is no chance it will be ready in time for 2011 let alone 2010.
Some racing has already been postponed…
http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/25963.html
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:04
I thought exactly the same, althoug a few weeks might have been 4-5 weeks, which would make it realistic to build something.
pawelf1
22nd August 2010, 13:12
There was also another F1 event in the world on saturday.
In Warsaw (Poland) Orlen Company build a street track – and there was an event : Verva Street Racing.
Here You can find and share with others my photos from the track.
http://www.f1fanclub.pl/2010/08/zdjecia-z-verva-street-racing-w.html
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:14
Nice pictures, that must have been quite a nice event. Are those real F1 cars though?
That one picture of the “Renault” back end with the large exhaust pipe looking out makes me wonder. Also the actual proportion of the cars and their lines does seem wrong.
pawelf1
22nd August 2010, 21:30
There where old F1 cars, exhaust were modified so on events like this the engine wont overheat, that why there are longer.
On street track like this one the straits are not so long.
Dan Selby
22nd August 2010, 14:07
Am I the only one a little disappointed that it doesn’t look asthough we’ll have 26 cars on the grid next season?
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:09
I will be pretty disapointed if there will not be a 13th team as well.
That said, i think it would make sense for Epsilon to de facto take over from Carabante.
HRT will give them real data about all circuits as well as some tyre information and a lot of engine data as well. And they have a race team with some experience by now as well as being only several 100km away. Epsilon can offer their high tech facility and constructor experience in sportscars with less investment needed than for actually building a complete factory.
That would mean there will be more money to get some Toyota design imput to make a viable car available.
But some spanish posters here warned me, that Epsilon Euskadi is very much a Bask team, which would not fit at all with current HRT backers, i.e. the region of Murcia (but Carabante himself might like the deal, he is not that much of a nationalist i think).
bosyber
23rd August 2010, 23:28
Yes, disappointed a bit, but, I agree with Bas that it would probably be a good deal for both teams as Epsilon has facilities while HRT has experience in F1 now. I don’t know about how well their finances would combine, Bas does bring up an interesting point – but in the best case it would mean they have two “markets” to accept money from. Maybe it even would help Basks unite with other Spanish people for one team :-o
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:19
Joe Saward looks at what happend in the F1 world in the last weeks (not much) and finds one interesting thing:
Do you thing this might be behind that rumour? I remember discussing the calendar and possible regroupings of races to make for a more logical route. Maybe this makes it fit.
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:27
Here’s a small crash from Bavaria City Racing in Rotterdam (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MamzJU0aj_8&feature=player_embedded – from 0:44 onwards).
Dutch driver Allard Kalff in his F5000 car did not notice the Indy car in front of him was going to do a doughnut and drove into him
bosyber
23rd August 2010, 23:29
oops. I now know that I missed at least two events in NL that I might have enjoyed (not for the crash though) – the other being “sail” in amsterdam.
BasCB
22nd August 2010, 16:32
Raikkonen did an interview in Frensh newspaper l’equipe. Seems he will not be returning to F1, here’s what he says about it:
For now he is enjoying Rally where he likes having a lot more challenges from differing surfaces. In the interview he also says, that he would like to do LeMans in the future, but he’s not planning that for now.
Klon
22nd August 2010, 19:59
Seeing as I doubt Epsilon Euskadi will make it to F1 on their own merit, a combination with HRT makes sense to me and I’d love to have it happen. But only if the livery remains.
sato113
23rd August 2010, 22:50
that Korean photo looks more like months old than weeks… there’s no tarmac!