F1 Fanatic round-up: 28/8/2010

Sorry for the problems with the site yesterday – see below for an explanation of what went wrong.

Don’t forget to make your Belgian Grand Prix predictions before final practice starts in a few hours’ time.

Here’s today’s round-up:

Links

Looking ahead to a new Concorde deal (Autosport – sub. req.)

“By reducing the number of teams Ecclestone is able to pay each of (say) ten survivors more while retaining a larger portion for himself – and hence his desire to see the number of teams reduced substantially and all being either Column 1 or 2 teams, with this differentiation being determined according to a complex formulae which takes into account championship performance over the previous three seasons, plus historic values.”

Win Rubens’ 300th GP Cartoon (Williams)

“The [Jim Bamber] print is poster size and was the very same one we had in our motorhome this weekend.”

27/08/10 – Belgian GP – Conference 2 (FIA)

Martin Whitmarsh: “There will be something next year, I suspect, on a car and we’ll all be talking to our engineers about why they didn’t think of it and talking about how they can catch up very quickly. There’s tremendous creativity, driven by the competitiveness of the sport. There are restrictions, I think they are probably in the long term in the interests of the sport. We have a duty to put a show on, we have a duty to make it affordable, to make sure that we can get new teams into the sport and that hopefully they can establish themselves, build and thrive, because we need that in the sport. When they happen to you it’s deeply frustrating but you’ve got to really say ‘OK, we had a run, now let’s invent the next thing that’s going to cause controversy in future years.'”

Comment of the day

Stat-master Bleu got wondering how many drivers Rubens Barrichello had faced in his 300-race F1 career and came up with 132:

* Prost, Senna, M Schumacher, Hill, Alesi, Lehto, Patrese, Blundell, Andretti, Wendlinger
* Alliot, Brundle, Fittipaldi, Berger, Zanardi, Herbert, Capelli, Comas, A Suzuki, Katayama
* Warwick, de Cesaris, Barbazza, Alboreto, Badoer, Boutsen, Martini, Apicella, Lamy, H?â?ñkkinen
* Naspetti, Irvine, T Suzuki, Gounon, Frentzen, Morbidelli, Verstappen, Panis, Bernard, Beretta
* Gachot, Brabham, Larini, Ratzenberger, Belmondo, Coulthard, Mansell, Adams, Dalmas, Noda
* Schiattarella, Lagorce, Salo, Inoue, Deletraz, Montermini, Moreno, Diniz, Boullion, Papis
* Lavaggi, Tarquini, Magnussen, Villeneuve, Fisichella, Rosset, Marques, R Schumacher, Nakano, Trulli
* Wurz, Fontana, Takagi, Tuero, de la Rosa, Zonta, Gene, Sarrazin, Heidfeld, Button
* Mazzacane, Burti, Montoya, Raikkonen, Bernoldi, Alonso, Enge, Yoong, Massa, McNish
* Webber, Sato, Davidson, da Matta, Firman, Pizzonia, Wilson, Kiesa, Baumgartner, Pantano
* Bruni, Klien, Glock, Karthikeyan, Monteiro, Friesacher, Albers, Liuzzi, Doornbos, Rosberg
* Speed, Ide, Montagny, Yamamoto, Kubica, Hamilton, Kovalainen, Sutil, Vettel, Winkelhock
* Nakajima, Bourdais, Piquet, Buemi, Alguersuari, Grosjean, Kobayashi, Hulkenberg, Petrov, di Grassi
* Senna, Chandhok
Bleu

From the forum

Polishboy808 asks what was the ugliest F1 car ever.

From the archive

The discussion about this year’s IndyCar championship battle reminded me of this series of posts from two years ago:

• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 1
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 2
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 3
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 4
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 5
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 6
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 7
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 8
• CART drivers who raced in F1: From Andretti to Zanardi part 9

Site updates

Apologies for the down-time again yesterday which was caused by further work being done by our web host which is out of my hands. The site has been up and running well since midday yesterday and my expectation is it should remain so for the rest of the weekend.

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

Philippe Alliot made his final F1 start in the Belgian Grand Prix on this day in 1994. He started 109 races in F1 but drove some pretty poor machinery for the likes of RAM, Lola, Ligier and Larrousse.

He made a single start for McLaren at the Hungarian Grand Prix two weeks earlier and on returning to Larrousse made a comment which landed the British team in trouble with the FIA. He noted that the Larrousse did not have an automatic gearbox up-shift like the McLaren – the FIA investigated the device and subsequently banned teams from using them.