Maldonado to demonstrate Williams in Venezuela

F1 Fanatic round-up

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Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez will watch Pastor Maldonado drive a Williams in Caracas next week.

Links

AT&T Williams to Fire Up Caracas (Williams)

“The demonstration will be held just outside of Caracas around one of the country’s most renowned national monuments, Los Proceres, in front of an anticipated capacity crowd. President Chavez is also expected to attend the show.”

Your Help is needed to “Save The Nurburgring” (GoPetition)

“From 2007-2009 the German government built a huge Leisure Park at the Nurburgring. It is based on fake visitor numbers, over sized and badly executed. Most of the time it is an empty ghost town. Once promised as private investment, it is now based on a debt of ?óÔÇÜ?¼350 million-plus public money.”

Rosberg convinced he will win in 2011 (Autosport)

“For me, it’s important that I have a better car next season and I am able to win races.”

Lead Technician/Producer, Formula 1 (LinkedIn)

“Kangaroo TV is looking for an F1 Lead Technician that will be responsible for the success of the broadcast operations of the Kangaroo TV product within Formula 1.”

Banker held in $50m F1 pay probe (Financial Times)

“Gerhard Gribkowsky, the former chief risk officer at BayernLB, is suspected of receiving $50m in return for concessions made when the state-owned bank sold a stake in the Formula One holding company in 2006.”

Whitmarsh becomes F1 in Schools patron (F1)

“We met a number of the students after the 2009 World Finals in London, when the winning team was given a tour of the McLaren Technology Centre. The students’ knowledge of the sport and their depth of engineering understanding were very impressive, so we know that F1 in Schools is playing an important role in preparing students for further education and, ultimately, careers in industry.”

Comment of the day

Narain Karthikeyan is expected to be confirmed as one of HRT’s drivers today and judging by yesterday’s comments not many readers were impressed by the news.

But who will get the second seat at the team?

In all seriousness though, does he bring enough sponsorship to leave the seat open for either Bruno Senna or Christian Klien? Or will they have to draft in Sakon Yamamoto?

I think this means the end of Karun Chandhok at HRT, can’t see them fielding two Indians.
Ben N

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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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48 comments on “Maldonado to demonstrate Williams in Venezuela”

  1. I’ve been doing a bit of research. In retrospect, Karthikeyan isn’t a completely random choice for Hispania. He and Colin Kolles know one another, and they’ve collaborated twice before. The first was when Karthikeyan was at Jordan; Colin Kolles was also at EJ’s team. The second time was a bit more obscure, with Karthikeyan being drafted into Kolles’ Le Mans team in 2009. He was set to drive an Audi R10 with Christjian Albers, but injured his shoulder shortly before the race, and the on-site medics didn’t clear him to participate. If we’d known or remembered this sooner, Karthikeyan would probably be a favourite for the seat, not a rank outsider.

    1. Oh, bugger. I meant to put this in the Karthikeyan-ro-Hispania thread.

      1. And the Liuzzi fan club frontman Saward projects Mallya to buy the second seat to load off a superfluous driver so he can run Sutil and DiResta in his own car.

        That would at least give HRT a driver lineup to make the most of whatever car they will bring out.

        1. Yes, Saward likes Luizzi, but also, as a practical solution, this method would be much cheaper for Force India than trying to terminate his contract.

          1. I’d say that depends entirely on the wording of Liuzzi’s contract.

          2. From what Kolles said in an interview with Autosport confirming this news it seems this is a pretty likely option.

            While talks continue with a number of interested drivers, Kolles reckoned that HRT could sit back and aim high by perhaps grabbing a big name.

            “Some surprises might happen,” he said. “Maybe some drivers who have contracts might not have seats. We are in a waiting position. We just want to have the best package possible.”

            HRT could surely do worse and Liuzzi will get the opportunity to prove this is Mallyas mistake.

    2. Maybe he will be paired with Christijan Albers then? Last June, Albers (mind you, not Kolles) came with the news that given a good sum of money, Kolles would love to have him as testdriver.

      According to Albers, Albers is a very good car developer.

      So, maybe we’ll finally have a dutchman again in F1. Although I’d rather would’ve seen Guido van der Garde.

      1. According to Albers, Albers is a very good car developer.
        But not very good at refulling. Remember that time at Magny-Cours where he left too early and dragged the fuel hose with him?

        Anyway, I expect Davide Valsecchi will fill the second Hispania seat, which is effectively the last open seat on the driver market. Assuming they make it – a Madrid court has ruled that Cabarante owes his former business partner fifty million Euros.

      2. According to Albers, Albers was go(o)d at most things, as far as I remember…

    3. lol, Its okey! KARThiyan is a hot topic now!

    4. Here in Kuwait we call it “wasta”, which i think is extremely unfair becsue there are alot of better indian drivers than him.

  2. Happy birthday Lewis!

    I’ve just noticed, Hamilton has always driven a McLaren whose specification number was his age that year.

    1. Good spot lol

    2. An he always will lol, he was born when Ron Dennis’ mob was first brought in by Marlboro then. Funny that.

      1. Not quite, Lewis was born in ’85, Ron bought McLaren in ’81.

        … But in the “old days”, they didn’t have a new car model-name every year. There were a few different revs of MP4/2, and a couple of different MP4/1 and MP4/5 that raced across multiple years.

        So it took a little bit of early buffering to get eveything nicely in sync and matched-up.

        1. And then there is the slight posiblity that in his Mclaren future they will design another mp4-18 shocker and he’d have to instead race a developed version of the previous car.

    3. Happy Birthday Lewis! (being hopeful that he reads F1F)

      Lol! I guess that makes him a McLaren boy even more..

    4. Coincidence or planned! I see some dark theories here.

      Happy birthday to Lewis Hamilton.

    5. Yeah cause in his title year – he was 23, driving the -23 but they didn’t give him #23!!

  3. Rosberg/Schumacher is going yo be so interesting next year. No doubt Schumi will beat him a good few times and continue where he left of near the end of last season. I think if the Mercedes is up too it we will have a very close in-house Mercedes battle for the title.

    1. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’ll be title contenders, because they’ll need to go through McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari (at least; possibly Lotus Renault as well) to challenge for the title, an they need to play catch-up. But if they have a decent 2011, they could be title contenders in 2012.

      1. I doubt they’ll be title contenders either, but they could be challenging for wins which would be good to see.

      2. Depends really, they’ll be further on then say McLaren got last year due to the extra development time they gave themselves, although they’ll not start from scratch a lot of what they had this year won’t be useful to evolve onto the next car.

        Front wing, depends on what direction they take as to where they want the air obviously but it has seemed so far, apart from Lotus, there has been no sudden complete change in front wings, only evolution. Even that super simple Ferrari.

        Don’t know what anyone’s gonna do about rears, reckon the cars are gonna look realy quite monotonous till the shake up in 2013.

        1. Depends really, they’ll be further on then say McLaren got last year due to the extra development time they gave themselves, although they’ll not start from scratch a lot of what they had this year won’t be useful to evolve onto the next car.

          Ah, but their head start is offset by the amount of ground they need to recover just to be on par with McLaren in 2010. And then they need to do extra on top of that to make up the difference to 2011 performance.

          1. Ummmm, Brawn GP too distant of a memory?

            Do not underestimate the capabilites of Ross Brawn when he has millions of dollars at his disposal and a few months head start on everyone else.

          2. It’s unlikely the MGP W02 will be a repeat of the BGP-001. That car was built over the course of a full year and designed to capitalise on incoming design regulations. Mercedes have none of that to work with.

          3. Idk PM, the changes for this year are pretty fundamental, who will get the best out of the new diffusers and adjustable rear wings?

          4. And the tyres. Don’t forget the new tyres.

    2. I doubt Mercedes will really be in the WDC battle next season, but I would love them to mix that up and win a couple of races for the both of them.

      I would expect Rosberg and Schumi to be about the same on speed with different tracks giving one or the other driver the edge.

      Would be great to have another season with some 7-8 race winner.

      1. Well, I’ve tipped Schumi for the 2011 title…

  4. Well, i’ll guess we’ll see, I get the feeling Red Bull won’t be a major threat this season. McLaren will most likely be up there and Ferrari/Alonso will probably pick up where they left off.

    As for Mercedes they did start development on the WG02 very early, plus Schumacher will have had major input into it to make it more suited to him. We won’t know until Bahrain though I guess.

    1. hmm… the team isn’t changing much… do you really think Adrian Newey will go down the wrong technical path in the new year?

      I might just be being patriotic and wanting Webber up there once again, but I think Newey’s designs will stay there for the next few years now he is there.

      I guess it all comes down to their KERS effectiveness…

    2. Well, i’ll guess we’ll see, I get the feeling Red Bull won’t be a major threat this season. McLaren will most likely be up there and Ferrari/Alonso will probably pick up where they left off.

      There is no reason why Red Bull should not be comeptitive. The RB6 was the best car on the grid in 2010; the RB7 will be a continuation of it. If there is anybody you should worry about, it’s Ferrari – in both 2009 and 2010, they launched cars that were basically Greatest Hits versions of everyone else. They took all the best parts of the other cars and spliced them together, but they didn’t do anything new or exciting the way McLaren did with the F-duct. And in both 2009 and 2010, they struggled to begin with when everyone else was on their game from the beginning (Alonso might have won Bahrain 2010, but Ferrari had a massive slump in form after that).

  5. Anyone know if this concession deal thingo will have any implications for CVC/Bernie and the new contract after 2012?
    So far they are saying they had no knowledge of it but i wonder what the FIA will think of it…

    1. The FIA has no power over it.

      1. Not entirely true. In theory the FIA could step in to prevent the sport being brought into disrepute based on new information about the CVC takeover.

        But i agree that is a VERY long shot and not going to happen. But both the FIA and FOTA might want to use a bit of it for bargaining a better deal for themselves from the new concorde agreement.

        1. What a great way of getting rid of Bernie.

          Bringing the sport into disrepute ?.

  6. Happy Birthday Hamilton enjoy the day.

  7. Hap. Bday to Lewis

  8. Anyone here signed up for the “save the ring” petition yet? I would welcome some background on what is going on there, if any of you got a bit more information.

    1. No, I’ve read the statement a couple of tiomes, but is not clear enough and too far fetched for me to sign.
      The writer wants ownership between ring park and the ring itself be split.

      The only possibility for this to happen, is if there’s any substance to the claim that there is a company misusing it’s monoploy position to create unfair competetion.

      I think that’s rather complex to substantiate and I believe that a petetion is not the way forward. It’s just the wrong process to start a competion/monopoly claim with.

      The only way I see for the demands to become reality, is an official complaint by the parties who feel their business is threatened by these package deals.

  9. Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez will watch Pastor Maldonado drive a Williams in Caracas next week.

    Yeah…Do well Pastor or be shot. Is this Bernie’s next target? A race in a strong arm country? Yeah I kinda get the Hitler thingy with Chavez and it would fit like a glove with Max and Bernie.

    What’s with F1 leadership and Nazis? I’m not trying to harsh the vibe or anything but this is just STUPID on the part of Williams!

    1. I don’t know (and don’t care) how it would be done, but I think it would be great to have a race (sometime in the future) here in Venezuela, there’s a huge amount of F1 fanatics here, so… I don’t see why not

      1. I understand your point and I didn’t mean to say that a race in Venezuela was a bad idea or to offend any F1 Fanatics in Venezuela.

        It’s the mentioning of Chavez and F1 in the same sentence that kinda rubs me the wrong way. I detest politicians in general and when they start sticking their fingers into a sport that I like I get a bit irritated.

        1. Yes, I understand what you mean, sadly everything here is linked with politics, so imagine how it is for us here. But at least we have a driver in F1 this season!

          1. I hope it goes well for you there. It’s a lovely country and I’d love to see another South American F1 Race other than Brasil.

            F1 is popular enough to do rotating seasons. A few fixed classic venues on the calendar every year but rotate the other venues from year to year. That way more races could be added.

    2. Yeah I kinda get the Hitler thingy with Chavez and it would fit like a glove with Max and Bernie.

      What’s with F1 leadership and Nazis?

      Oh yes, there’s nothing more Nazi than a socialist.

  10. Autosport runs a great piece from Ben Anderson visiting and using the Toyota F1 simlator.
    http://plus.autosport.com/free/feature/3235/autosport-tries-toyota-$1m-f1-simulator/

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