F1 Fanatic round-up: 27/8/2010

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Hello everyone, I’m back from honeymoon and happy to be writing my first round-up in almost two weeks.

First of all, thanks to all of you who sent messages of congratulations by email, over Twitter and here in the comments on F1 Fanatic.

Second, and just as importantly, I must pay tribute to the excellent job done by Cari in managing the site during my honeymoon.

As well as writing and editing much of the content for the site Cari also had to take control of comment moderation, which is a different skill to master. And do not underestimate the particular difficulty of taking over a site which has been almost exclusively the work of one person for five years. Cari excelled in every sense and I look forward to working with her again in the future.

I must also say thanks to Ed Marshall who was once again on hand to help us out with a few technical problems which have caused a couple of brief outages. Please accept my apology for those problems, neither of which were the fault of Ed or Cari.

As for me, I’m fully refreshed after my longest holiday in four years, to say nothing of my great personal joy in getting married.

With that, I’m greatly looking forward to the final seven races in what so far has been a gripping season of Formula 1.

Links

New Car Insurance ad from Moneysupermarket feat. Nigel Mansell and Omid Djalili (Youtube)

Cheesy, but I love the joke at the end:

Historic Formula 1 @ Monterey Motorsports Reunion (Video)

F1 cars on the Laguna Seca Corkscrew! Check it out – thanks to Rahul Nair for the tip:

Chris van der Drift Go Karting Evening (Facebook)

Chris van der Drift, whose frightening Superleague Formula crash at Brands Hatch was featured here a few weeks ago, is in trouble because his manager apparently failed to ensure he had the necessary accident insurance. A karting event is being held to help raise money for him.

Help the Heroes karting event

Another charity event, this one taking place this weekend, which F1 Fanatic reader MouseNightshirt is involved in.

In conversation – Ecclestone & Schumacher (Formula 1)

Ecclestone: “Fernando has a different character. He will not achieve at Ferrari what Michael did.”

Comment of the day

Jolien is at Spa this weekend and went autograph-hunting yesterday:

I started at Virgin Racing and got both drivers’ autographs. I moved on to Force India where both drivers where also outside for the fans. While Sutil was very patient and signed load of autographs, Liuzzi signed just a few autographs and got back in his car to try some adjustments.

At Renault, both drivers where also present, but there were so much people there (lots of Russians!) that I missed out on one of their autographs.

At Williams I managed to get Nico’s autograph, while Rubens was gone very quick after some autographs.

I walked back to Lotus where it was less crowded and got Heikki’s autograph. I did’t see Jarno though?���?�

After that I tried to walk to Ferrari, Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren, but it was just way too crowded there. Because there was no way out at the start of the pit lane, everyone sort of ended there at the top teams, where it was already very busy. It was definitely too crowded there, so no autograph for me from one of the big drivers!
Jolien

From the forum

Mattclinch has a question for F1 history experts.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to vettelfan!

On this day in F1

Mika Hakkinen won a thrilling Belgian Grand Prix on this day ten years ago.

He led the race from pole position but slipped behind Michael Schumacher after making a mistake on the drying track. In the closing stages of the race the McLaren driver was trying everything to pass the Ferrari.

On lap 39 Schumacher nearly pushed Hakkinen off the track on the 200mph Kemmel straight, in a shocking move that was criticised by many. It went unpunished at the time, but ten years later it seems attitudes have changed.

Schumacher’s current team mate Nico Rosberg last year said the move marked a new low in driving standards.

And when Schumacher tried a similar move on Rubens Barrichello in the last race he was handed a ten-place grid penalty for the following race and came close to being disqualified.

Back at Spa on that day in 2000, Hakkinen made another bid to pass on lap 41. But this time took advantage of Ricardo Zonta’s lapped BAR to complete an impressive three-abreast passing move and take a famous win.

That was his last victory of the season – Schumacher won the final four rounds and, with it, his first world championship for Ferrari.

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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37 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 27/8/2010”

  1. The amount of arguments I’ve had about Hakkinen’s move not being the best ever (or even in my Top 5)…ho-hum!

    Please accept my apology for those problems, neither of which were the fault of Ed or Cari.

    Where’s my text message? ;-)

    Great to have you back Keith!

  2. thanks Cari! great job.

  3. Jolien, Same happened to us in Spa last year. Luckily Red Bull Racing were No.14-15 back then and next door to STR. So we just waited outside Vettel’s garage and managed to get all 4 Red Bull guys autographs. We walked up towards Ferrari and McLaren but you can’t even move up there!

  4. That really was a beautiful move from Häkkinen.

    I think Bernie’s right about Alonso at Ferrari.

    1. I spotted that one as well. It seems Bernie feels he is pretty much responsible for some serious image damage to F1

      Must have been with McLaren, as he does not seem to mind Singapore too much. And Team orders is evidently something he is OK with, otherwise he would not be so much in favour of Schumi.

  5. Magnificent Geoffrey
    27th August 2010, 0:45

    Spa 2000 was ten years ago already… Life’s going by far too quickly.

    What an incredible overtake. As in, seriously. It was so good it’s hard to put it into words. Take however good you think Mika’s pass was, but times it by 5. THAT’s how good I think that move was.

    1. How immense was the closing speed of that McLaren. Both times in that clip Hakkinen was nowhere near the Ferrari going through Eau Rouge then all of a sudden there he was.

    2. Funny how Mika was just as amazed by the move as we were. Schumi must have been pretty suprised as well.

  6. i think Alonso can go on and win a few more championships. he has a very positive, optimistic attitude at ferrari

  7. Thanks Cari for all your help and work for the past few weeks. The content produced was of equal quality and accuracy. Managing and moderating the entire site is a task that is far from simple or easy with its volume.

    -Lord Stig

  8. Far out, poor Chris van der Drift

  9. Karun get to drive at korea next week, did u miss that keith?

    1. Oh yeah, almost forgot that that wasn’t in the roundup after halfway expecting it to be…

      More importantly Karun driving for RBR! That’ll be interesting. It might end up being like Alguersuari’s Dominican beach run if they don’t hurry up and lay the asphalt in Korea. Will Buxton was tweeting today that it’s still not laid, and supposedly will take two months to fully dry. Hmmm. Wouldn’t that be the thing you’d want to finish first, and worry about finishing infrastructure and buildings at the last minute? Hope it doesn’t all fall through still.

      1. But in those reports it said, that Karun was driving on the asphalt of the track, so some of it has to be there already?

  10. Cari did a good job.

    That move by Haikkinen on Schumacher & Barichello on Schumacher in Hungary last weekend are some of the thrilling best overtaking I have seen in my life.

  11. F1 cars successfully navigating the corkscrew??? NO WAY.

    /sarcasm

    I could never understand why people thought they wouldn’t be able to take that drop when Indy cars have done so for years.

    Also, (at risk of sounding like nothing but a negative nancy in this comment) I still don’t consider Hakkinen’s pass to be all that phenomenal. It was opportunistic, yes. But it was mostly luck that Zonta was in the right place at the right time. It had little to do with Hakkinen’s actual skill and more to do with circumstances being right to prevent another block from Schumacher.

    1. But part of overtaking is seeing that opportunity, the little gap that can be used to good effect.

      Often it ends up not being a good move, and there not having really been a usable gap, and then the drivers have to backtrack.

    2. As for that pass, it is a great pass, exactly because it was the right move at the right time. Very good reaction to a chance offered.

      The corkscrew is great with F1 cars, i would love to see such a sequence on a new circuit. And Toyota proved a couple of years back, it can be driven without too much trouble (their record lap time), at least Zonta can.

    3. That Mansell add is very nice. I also think he should get the facial hair back where it belongs to get back to form behind the wheel!

    4. Let the flaming commence…

      Seriously though, we’ve seen passes into La Source before, they’re nothing special. What Mika did was make sure Schumacher couldn’t block him again by going to the other side of Zonta.

      It’s certainly one of the most clever moves in modern F1. The late braking is also pretty good. But greatest?

      I’ve always wondered if it was hyped because it was on Schumacher, like Alonso’s at Suzuka in 2005, when Michael didn’t even bother defending his position that much.

  12. Welcome back Keith, and thanks Cari for these lovely two weeks.
    One thing i had to point out is: you posted the Ecclestone & Schumacher interview twice already, it was in yesterday’s roundup too.. might want to considering changing it? :)

  13. Welcome back Keith and lot of thanks to Cari, excellent work, very professional.

    1. HounslowBusGarage
      27th August 2010, 8:17

      Ditto to above, and well done to Ed Marshall too.

  14. welcome back Keith, keep keeping us informed and entertained!

    and thank to Cari etc who kept the site running, great job

  15. welcome back Keith :-)

  16. Congratulations, Mark Webber. Turning 34 today isnt he?

    1. Wow, he must be willing to celebrate that with a nice win.

      But after this afternoons session i am afraid he is going to have all sorts of problems with the car again, like he had after the middle of last year as well.

  17. Still some problems with the server at the moment as I’m afraid you’ll have seen this morning. The root problem is some work on the system being done by our host. I’m obviously very frustrated as steps could have been taken to avoid it causing a problem with the site and will be taking the matter up with them. Naturally we’ve avoided making any changes to the system in recent weeks as I knew I was going to be out of the country and wanted to ensure stability.

    1. There must be a lot of that going on. I had some connection problems on our side as well (DNS suddenly not being available etc).

      A shame i missed the live blog this morning because of that.

    2. I thought ’round up’ is probably the place to post questions about technical problems, and here I am, and there already is a post describing the problem. Nice to see you’re on it Keith!

      By the way, I also had no access in the afternoon, only from 14:45 the site was available to me again (and other sites were availble, so no DNS failure here). Just to inform you, may be this helps.

  18. Tonight or tomorrow we will also have a chance to find out, weather Ferrari or Red Bull might still have to change something (or already did) to their front wings or deflector plate etc. after the new tests in scrutineering.

    That said, i did have the feeling RBRs wings were not bending down as much as before here (but still close to the ground with the car having more rake), but it might just be my imagination.

    1. That will be very interesting to see!
      I’ll bet they still bend.

  19. Tonight or tomorrow we might also find out weather Ferrari or Red Bull have to change anything on their wing or diflector plate with the changed tests. Or maybe they already changed things, but keep quit about it.

    I did have the feeling those RBR wings bend down less than before, their close to the ground because the car runs with a higher rake. Not too sure about that though.

    1. sorry about the second one, i thought it did not get in (some pretty bad lag in updating the page)

  20. Team orders would ruin F1, Sure, some drivers would laugh and say, Lol no! but the drivers who aren’t as confident, or feel their place in F1 is insecure, may say “for sure”

    And then it ruins it for all of us.

    There’s a difference between, Mclaren’s “please hold position” and other instances we may have seen.

    If team orders are not dealt with in the strictest way, we are opening the door for Singapore to repeat.

  21. When Alonso and Ecclestone did an interview together, Ecclestone had a different explanation for why Alonso would not achieve what Michael has achieved:

    “Bernie Ecclestone: Still there is a big difference between Michael and Fernando. When Michael was with Ferrari he barely had any rivals. The usual procedure in these years was that Michael got pole and won the race. But take a look at Fernando’s opponents today: both Red Bull pilots, both McLaren pilots and Fernando can get pole position and win the race. The competition is far bigger, so you cannot really compare the two situations.”

    http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2010/6/10934.html

  22. You been away, Keith? :)

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