Boullier praises Lotus’s “great achievement” in 2013

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In the round-up: Lotus team principal Eric Boullier says his team have made significant progress since last year.

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Eric Boullier Keen to Maintain 2013 Form (Lotus)

“We’ve taken eight podiums from ten races so far, which is a great achievement for the team and shows that once again we’ve clearly made a step forwards from the previous year.”

Fans can watch Indian GP for Rs. 1500 this year (Hindustan Times)

JPSI managing director Sameer Gaur: “Formula One lovers now have every reason to cheer as single day race tickets have been launched together with the season tickets in order to draw more and more number of spectators for the race day. With one of the cheapest tickets available on the F1 calendar, we hope to put up another memorable racing weekend at [Buddh International Circuit] in October.”

Turbo V6: A sound decision (ESPN)

“I actually heard the Mercedes on the dyno at Brixworth back in January. It immediately reminded me of the turbo era in the 1980s and a perfectly acceptable sound from the Renault and Ferrari V6s and the BMW four-cylinder.”

Why Concorde is still a long way off (Autosaport, subscription required)

“Consider the ease with which Todt was able to force through changes to Pirelli’s specifications and pitlane safety – a year ago such amendments would have been impossible without protracted bargaining. Without a full-scale Concorde Agreement the FIA’s position and, by extension, Todt’s rule, is all the stronger.”

Embrace ‘Romance of Racing’, the book, personally (Kickstarter)

“Romance of Racing: A quality 128pp book of essays by triple Indy 500 winner Dario Franchitti, allied to brilliant motorsport images.”

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Comment of the day

As usual we had lots of amusing suggestions for yesterday’s Caption Competition. Among my favourites were those from Scalextric, Bwal87, TomSK, JamieFranklinF1 and MichaelDobson13.

But I chose this topical one from Nigel Bates (@Nigel1) as my favourite:

“I’d prefer Mark.”

We’re got another Caption Competition running at the moment – the winner will be chosen next week so post your suggestions here:

From the forum

Happy birthday!

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On this day in F1

John Surtees scored his first grand prix victory 50 years ago today at the Nurburgring Nordschleife.

He battled Jim Clark in the opening stages before the Lotus driver dropped back with an engine problem, eventually minute down in second. Richie Ginther was third for BRM.

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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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53 comments on “Boullier praises Lotus’s “great achievement” in 2013”

  1. Why does Alonso still persist with the “#samurai”? Who’s he trying to kid?

    1. I’m more concerned about the grammar…

      1. @electrolite I’ll let him off considering English is not his native language but the samurai thing is terrible in every language!

      2. Traverse (@)
        4th August 2013, 0:30

        He might be drunk…

    2. Traverse (@)
      4th August 2013, 0:28

      The way of the samurai is to fight a fair fight, a rite that Massa (and Pique jr) isn’t afforded. He should drop the “#samurai” tag.

      1. In theory, maybe, but in wars a lot of them did everything to win.

      2. JimmyTheIllustratedBlindSolidSilverBeachStackapopolis III
        4th August 2013, 3:29

        “The way of the samurai is to fight a fair fight”

        It actually really wasn’t.

        1. Fits quite well, Ferrari always tell us things about team spirit, wanting to do the right thing etc, but in the end its only about winning with whatever means possible. Pretty much like the Samurai then!

          1. @bascb true enough, true enough ;)

          2. @austus @bascb & @vettel1
            Yes but, I just watched the film ‘The Last Samurai’ (which is a 100% accurate historical re-enactment) and all of the samurai – including Tom Cruise, have bags of honour… I’m confused now. :)

          3. @hellotraverse that and a few national geographic documentaries were my basis of them, which is why I’d apply the matador philopshy to Alonso instead!

          4. Hopefully people get my sense of humour; I’ve never seen ‘The Last Samurai’, in fact, you couldn’t pay me enough to watch such formulaic nonsense! :)

          5. @hellotraverse I figured you couldn’t have been entirely serious at least with the “100% accurate” comment! ;)

          6. I did see the last samurai – my wife used to be really a fan of Tom – its not too bad, but mostly riding on a wave of chinese kung fu movies at the time, glossed over with hollywood melodrama for a bit.

            The movie is mostly about adapting to a strange world. And militarism for a bit (including “military honor” if you want).

    3. @vettel1, think if you had to make a tweet for publication every day, If it were me, I think I would; a- delegate, or ;b- get hold of a book of quotes and pick 1 I thought could be relevant each day, maybe we will get Churchill or Will Rogers next year.

      1. @hohum it’d be an improvement either way! @tifoso1989 the thing is he is neither Japanese, of samurai origin, abiding by samurai code of conduct or a disciplined as a samurai. It would only be more misplaced if it were me!

        1. or a disciplined as a samurai

          How can you tell? I don’t think you get to his level of performance just by…being. More to the point, as another poster said on another article, the drivers have different personalities and their twitter posts reflect this. Some like to post pictures of places they travel to, others like to post quotes that somewhat represent how they think. I always found very impressive the amount of composure, motivation and self confidence which Alonso displays in the championship. I don’t know how many will still be standing after narrowly missing out two WDCs in the last race and seeing that you go into next year full of hope, just to have it crushed by your own team.

          1. I’m just not a fan of twitter in general (I prefer Facebook personally) so I suppose that is an influence in that I just find tweets in general annoying but in my view he’d be far better using “#matador” or “#torero” – that’d be much more appropriate in the context @alexx_88!

          2. +1 I too find some of his samurai tweets very inspiring. Some people are so fixed against Alonso that will find a fault in everything he does. Hate tweeter, wrong context etc…yeah right…

          3. @klaas no I genuinely don’t like twitter – I have never seen the point in telling everybody your life story so I only ever use it for F1F Live or for events such as the Caterham garage tour or during FP sessions.

            And I don’t really see why you’d argue against me stating that “#torero” would be far better in the context: he is Spanish and he is fighting against bulls, do you not think that’d be a perfect match as appose to samurai which doesn’t really fit at all (he’s an quite an aggressive driver; samurai would fit more with Button’s style).

            Besides, I’d say from your reaction that you’re more likely to be worshipping your carboard Telfonso…

        2. So what? Vettel tries to be british every chance he gets, let Alonso be japanese.

          1. @starbuck you just can’t beat Monty Python though. :P

    4. He just like anime.

      Samurai 7 is his favorite ;)

    5. @vettel1 You are taking this twitter stuff way to serious, if that’s his way of showing to his followers that he is preparing to take the fight back to the bulls then let him.

      I wonder what you’re comment would be if Vettel retweeted it tomorow :-)

      1. @force-maikel good thing Vettel doesn’t have twitter – I may start to find him annoying if he were to constantly post generic and un-captivating rubbish ;)

        I’m not stopping him: in fact I’d be thoroughly surprised if he read this blog. Merely voicing an opinion, which personally I see nothing wrong with (in fact I actively encourage people to do just that).

        1. Merely voicing an opinion, which personally I see nothing wrong with (in fact I actively encourage people to do just that).

          People use tweeter to express their opinions and you DO seem to discourage that. Sounds like hypocrisy to me… Or for you only the songs of praise to Vettel count as opinions?

          1. @klaas have I said otherwise for Alonso to stop tweeting? I’m just voicing my opinion that the whole samurai thing is a bit cringey.

            Why bring Vettel into this anyway – where today have I mentioned Vettel besides in reply to yourself?

          2. By that logic, simply disagreeing with one’s opinion would be considered discouraging it.

          3. @vettel1 Well it kinda is when you are saying someones post on twitter is rubbish (no insult intended)

            @force-maikel good thing Vettel doesn’t have twitter – I may start to find him annoying if he were to constantly post generic and un-captivating rubbish ;) “

          4. @force-maikel I don’t quite understand what your qualm is; can you elaborate?

          5. @vettel1 Dammed only now do I spot the wink wink at the end of your quote, apologies thought you was being serious about what I put in between the ” ” (no idea what you call those in English), my sincere apologies sir

          6. @force-maikel no problem, I’m as susceptible to misinterpretations as any! It’s quotation marks by the way :)

    6. @vettel1 @hellotraverse @hohum speaking of… my knowledge of samurai only comes from movies and anime. But a samurai must commit seppuku after insulting his “master or country”?

      Maybe Alonso should think of that next time he choose to criticize his team. ;) :P

      1. @celeste I believe that is correct, yes. Or one whom is cowardly in battle I do believe (so he’s okay in that respect at least)! :P

      2. @celeste Seppeku was only committed by a very small number of samurai over the course of history. It was not honorable at the time (and it still is not). It was not an original system, belief, requirement or any other such thing. It was just a bunch of half-important, lower class samurai (at the time when samurai were just not cool or valued) and they wanted to look important.

        I might be off slightly. It’s been a few years :)

    7. as samurais were somewhat enslaved to their masters I think it quite fits… :)

  2. Traverse (@)
    4th August 2013, 0:19

    The winning caption is good but my fav was by @nackavich:

    “As they turn to each other, they both realise how good their reflections look in each other’s glasses..”

    1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
      4th August 2013, 5:02

      I liked the one about “can you see with these sunglasses? me neither”

  3. It’s pretty impressive what Lopez and Boullier achieved in the last 2-3 years. I thought Lotus will become a permanent mid-field team with the occasional podium finish, but now they are a top-team. I just hope it wasn’t all due to Allison and they can carry on in the years to come.

  4. Great idea with the “romance of racing” book! thanks for the link Keith.

  5. Apparently Raikonnen hasn’t received any wage this year because Lotus seems to have some problem paying him (source in french, reliable)
    And he prefers a system based on result than a fixed amount … But this could prove another factor for his move to RedBull which can probably afford to pay him way beter.

    1. According to Kimi it is not an issue. The way he brushed it off on the interview with French TV he genuinely seemed like it didn’t bother him. He really just wants to be competitive in a comfortable environment.

      The “may be stupid to some” comment gives me the feeling that he will stay.

    2. I think the wage is the smallest problem, if it were only down to this then Kimi would have signed with RB already. But there are other things, the Ice 1 sponsorship money and I’m pretty sure other teams besides RB also made an offer for next year.

  6. I just read this article. About a method to calculate how a young driver will perform. Interesting stuff! Watch for Serotkin in the article.

    1. That’s a thoroughly interesting article: thanks for posting that @verstappen! I’m now very interested in Nico Hülkenberg as a result – I’d like to see him getting a top drive very soon (perhaps with Ferrari next year provided Massa finally gets the sack?).

    2. interresting point of view indeed :)

    3. Very interesting indeed! Sirotkin is indeed quite a talent. It would be a shame if such talent is wasted by bringing the kid into F1 too early. Same thing happened with Alguersuari (although perhaps not the biggest talent ever) and with Jos Verstappen himself as well back in 1994.

  7. What achievement. What is Boullier on about. He has one good driver and the other likes to crash into everything. they finish second half the time and with a better 2nd driver they could easily be better in the WCC. Every time Boullier makes these comments.
    Grosjean said his first win was around the corner. He could
    have won in Hungary. Had he overtaken Vettel into turn 1. could have switched to a 2 stop and challenged with hamilton. instead he crashed into button and did an illegal pass on massa (open to debate) and finished 6th. Get grosjean out and get hulkenberg in there next season.

  8. Why cant Silverstone drop their prices. If Silverstone dropped their prices by £100. The attendance would be insane

    1. As long as there are people willing to pay ridiculous prices for tickets, the powers that be won’t lower the price. Supply and demand.

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