Manor’s 2017 car ‘was 90% ready’

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: The car Manor would have raced in the 2017 F1 season was 90% ready before the team collapsed.

Comment of the day

Shanghai International Circuit has one of the highest average Rate the Race scores for a track built in the ‘Tilke era’, but not everyone’s a fan:

Now this is a circuit I wouldn’t mind seeing the back of. I’ve watched every single grand prix here, and I’m not proud of that!

Liberty would do well to sack off this track and move it downtown so we can see the amazing Shanghai skyscraper backdrop, a la Singapore. A win for F1, a win for China and Shanghai.
Unicron (@Unicron2002)

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On this day in F1

Hermann Lang, who raced for Mercedes during their first stint in F1, was born on this day in 1909.

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68 comments on “Manor’s 2017 car ‘was 90% ready’”

  1. It’s a travesrty for F1 Manor aren’t on the grid. 26 cars not 20.

    1. Still heartbreaking…

    2. And a tragedy that there wasn’t at least one other team looking to take their place. I’m just about old enough to remember when there were so many teams they needed prequalifying to limit the number of competitors. It’s over 20 years since we last had a full grid, sad times all round.

      https://www.racefans.net/2015/05/28/20-years-ago-today-f1s-last-race-full-grid/

      1. I love the liveries of old the old midfield and back markers, obscure Euro companies ahoy!

      2. The team selection process takes nearly a year (it starts in spring, for inclusion the next spring), forbids mid-season entries, and is only open when the FIA wants it to be. They are very picky about who they will allow folloing the 2010 mess (which had the opposite problem because Max Mosley thought he might have 13 vacancies to fill, rather than the eventual 3, requiring a much lower bar than usual to be set – and the circumstances were such that no team could protest the FIA’s handling of it, unlike now). Had a team expressed an interest, and it was funded to a level the FIA found satisfactory, the FIA would have politely told them to re-apply in spring, since the earliest possible entry would be spring 2018 either way.

        There are a number of reasons why an application would not have been expected at that point, one of which is that Liberty was in the process of takeover. Now that the dust has settled, “replacement” applications for Manor may or may not be made.

        1. Yeah Inremember we had a Lola offer rejected by Mosley in favour of USF1 who realeased a couple of CAD drawimgs then quit prior to the 2010 season starting… Loved that HRT in dustbin grey as well 🤔

        2. @alianora-la-canta
          I was thinking more about there being no potential new entries, rather than the technicalities of a new team joining. Back in the 80’s there were always teams looking at joining, almost every few months Autosport would have an article about some engineering firm looking into building their own car and putting together a team, and former drivers in the pit lane trying to find some engineers and sponsors to help them start theirs.
          F1 was the place to be, and almost everyone with a link to racing or engineering was tring to get there.

          1. In the 1980s, the FIA didn’t nix underfunded entries at the administration stage. That in itself has a chilling effect on marginal applications, and vastly reduces the number of people who think they can start. It means losing some good entries, but also a lot of no-chancer entries.

          2. I’d also add that the FIA also insists the application be so far in advance of the entry itself, that there is no point in an entry requesting staff for a project until the application is successful. Even with the long lead times for design work, they are rarely long enough to justify hiring pre-approval. Sponsors unwilling to do the leap of faith pre-approval are not going to get a team to apply for post-approval unless some sponsors decide the other way. So it is necessary to get the money first, then apply, then get the people, then race. And the FIA makes it so that it has to be in that order (even if “the money first” isn’t enough to pay for F1’s real costs).

            In the olden days (until the very early 1990s), the restricting factor for start-ups wasn’t the FIA’s demands, it was the people. So it was necessary to get the people, then get the funding, then apply and race – hopefully in that order.

            That’s why the teams always look for money first, staff second, in contrast to the olden days when it was largely done the other way round.

    3. I think it is good for the rear end of the grid though. When top10 teams get paid and there are 11 teams it is very rough for the 2 teams at the rear trying to pay the bills and plan ahead when you have no idea about the budget next year. Now with manor out of the picture sauber can plan ahead and get healthy which is only good for f1. Sauber is a solid midfield team when they get their economics under control and now finally they have the conditions to plan ahead.

      And let’s face it. Manor were never going to finish higher than tenth unless they get lucky and score point or two and the other scores none, which is what happened in 2014. Which was pure luck although the bianchi’s pass was kinda nice. On merit they never had the budgets to compete with healthy sauber and the competition they had for the tenth place almost destroyed both of the teams. Better manor gone than sauber.

      I think it is good for f1 to have 20 strong cars instead of 20 strong cars and 2 gp2 cars. In the end the most important thing for f1 team is money. Manor never had it and they were never going to get it just like the caterham and hrt. Haas has shown how it is done and now that manor is done the prospects of new team coming into f1 are imho higher than ever when the warning example manor is not there showing what can happen.

      In the end it was not really manor’s fault. It is bernie’s fault when only top10 teams get paid and you have 11 teams. If there is anything that needs to be fixed immediatelly it is the prize money distribution. All teams need to get paid no matter if you have 10 teams or 15. That alone could have saved manor. But now manor gone at least it saved sauber.

      1. I think it is good for the rear end of the grid though. When top10 teams get paid and there are 11 teams it is very rough for the 2 teams at the rear

        That would be a cruel way to solve famine in Africa!
        .

        I think it is good for f1 to have 20 strong cars instead of 20 strong cars and 2 gp2 cars.

        More likely now ’18 strong cars and 2 GP2 cars’ (financial incentive gone) :p
        .

        It is bernie’s fault when only top10 teams get paid and you have 11 teams.

        Actually all teams get paid.
        Still Bernie’s fault though (and Liberty’s to solve) as payments are extremely distorted/unfair.

        1. Actually all teams get paid.

          One can’t actually fault the accuracy of your statement because even if Manor Racing was given just $1 by the retired Media Rights Executive you would still be correct. Manor Racing received F1 Management’s Extra Paltry Payment of only $10M instead of the regularly payment of $42.7M given to the other teams in 2015, and, just to make sure Manor Racing weren’t financially viable, the TV cameras were pointed at other cars and not them for almost the entire season, meaning they had the most difficult job in earning revenue from advertising. I don’t agree with either the unfair distribution of TV rights payouts, nor the unfair TV coverage given to the teams running “at the back of the grid”, but then I don’t run F1. If I did then maybe I’d have come up with an excuse that justified the lopsided payment and the looking the other way TV coverage, but I don’t.
          Sadly, there is one only reason to justify the bankruptcy of Manor racing, and that is if they didn’t go bankrupt then F1 itself might have gone bankrupt.
          Unfortunately being 90% ready isn’t good enough in F1, you need to be 99.9% ready before the season starts.

          1. @drycrust, AFAIK Manor/Marussia received their normal ‘fixed payment’ (3rd leg next WDC bonus and special/historic payments), which is available for all teams which (continue to) participate.
            Manor received roughly €50M in 2015 from FOM.

            But as mentioned above, the “payments are extremely distorted/unfair”.

          2. Manor should have been eligible for Column 2 payment (considerably more than Column 3), as they were in the top 10 for 2 of the previous 3 years. If they didn’t receive that, then there were bigger problems than merely whether they were covering the shortfall they should have expected – it implies that they were owed money by FOM. Which points to larger issues with the end of Bernie’s stewardship.

          3. @alianora-la-canta, as @f1-liners notes, the indication is that Manor were receiving Column 2 payments. The indication is that, even with Column 2 payments, Manor still had a major budget deficit (at least $40 million, if not more) as Fitzpatrick was looking to try and maximise his profits from selling the team and was therefore cutting off funding for it.

          4. @f1-liners @alianora-la-canta
            This link below is the source of my claim, it is the payout for the 2015 season. My recollection is it is similar to others I saw published at the time. Note the exclusion of Marussia, the forerunner of Manor Racing, from the Column 1 “Top 10 equal shares” and their exclusion from Column 2 “Top 10 Perfomance”, so Manor racing were paid out from a prize pool of $10M for the 11th and 12th teams, and because there was no 12th team they received the entire prize pool.
            As I said, my experience was it was rare to see a Manor Racing car during a race, maybe it was different in other TV feeds around the world, but I suspect it wasn’t. So advertising would have been very difficult for them.
            http://www.totalsportek.com/f1/formula-1-prize-money/

          5. @drycrust, looking at the article on totalsportek and the sources of information that he has used, I think that the author of that piece has been a bit careless with some of his figures and terminology in a way that makes me question the validity of his model.

            For a start, the author seems to be a bit confused about which year he is referring to. In that article, he claims that the payments are for the 2015 season based on the revenues from 2014 and refers back to one of his earlier articles which gives the source of that revenue.

            However, in that earlier article, he starts by saying that the figures are for 2014, then contradicts himself by saying later that the financial figures were for 2013, which immediately makes me wonder what year he is actually talking about.

            Furthermore, he is also a bit careless about his terminology – he says that the figure of $1,800 million is the total profit of the sport, when in fact that is the total turnover, and that is actually quite a meaningful difference.

            That also plays into my concerns over the author using the wrong financial figures to calculate his percentages. The public accounts released in late 2014 gave a total turnover of $1.7 billion, but that was for the year ending on the 31st December 2013 – he has forgotten to take into account the fact that there tends to be a significant lag between the accounts being submitted and the results being formally published.

            There is also a question over the percentage split to the teams – it is claimed in the article that the revenue was split 50-50 between the teams and FOM, but other sources talk about the split being closer to two thirds to the teams and one third to FOM (see here for an example https://www.raconteur.net/business/f1s-high-octane-profits )

            I think that the graphic in the article by totalsportek is very misleading and, at best, was what he believed was the breakdown between the teams for 2014 based on the revenues and finishing positions in 2013. In that case, Manor wouldn’t have yet been eligible at the time for Column 2 payments – that much I agree on – but would have been eligible for those payments in 2015.

            However, even allowing for the fact that the information which the report author has used is a bit suspect, the source you have linked to would appear to directly contradict your claim.

            The report author claims that Manor did in fact receive that $42 million payment, with another $14 million on top of that for finishing in 10th place. They state that Manor was paid a total of $56 million in 2015, not the $10 million figure that you are stating (unless you are mistakenly looking at what they were supposedly paid in 2014 based on their 2013 performance).

          6. Thanks for the reply. It is frustrating when you find something that looks credible, site it as credible, and then find it has mistakes in it.
            My apologies to anyone offended for relying on what looked like a credible report.

          7. anon (the one who mentioned me, on the off-chance that the anon critiquing the Totalsportek item is different), I would agree with you that there was still a hole in the finances, even had the hoped-for 10th-place payments (with the $10 m that Manor directly lost as a result of its 11th-place 2016 finish) been in place. As far as I can tell, this is why FRP wanted such a large amount to be put forward by any prospective buyers – having been bitten once in its previous administrative stint with Manor/Marussia, it didn’t want to have to handle it a third time, so was asking for an amount from people that would genuinely cover costs in a way that the Fitzpatrick era had not.

            @drycrust The Totalsportek version of the report had made me worry that FOM might have declined to pay its end of the Concorde Agreement before the second administration period, which would of course have made Manor’s situation even worse. If its author had provided the 2014 figures instead of the 2015 payments in their table, then things start to make sense – I seem to remember Joe Saward had a graph of this type on his blog that looks structually the same (possibly with a different year’s figures). It would not have been difficult to put a different year’s figures into the chart and thereby generate the table numbers.

            As far as I know (and it’s difficult to check because this version of the Concorde Agreement is a better-kept secret than the last one), the breakdown given is likely to be accurate. 50% of the money goes directly to the teams, but part of the 50% that the Formula One Group gets also ends up with the teams – the Constructor’s Championship Bonus fund that is so hated by people who like balances between big and small teams is filtered through the Formula One Group’s hands first, as is half of Ferrari’s historical payment and the Column 3 payment that Marussia used to be eligible for before they earned Column 1 and 2 payments. All of these are fixed amounts (so the Ferrari half-payment is always $45 m, the Williams CCB payment is always $30 m…) The owners of F1 only get what’s left after that, if this model is correct. This is how the teams get (typically) 2/3 of the money despite only getting 50% directly. (There was a time when they literally only got 50%, but that was back in 1997).

            As it happens, we know how much Manor got paid in 2015. This is from two things: 1) there were multiple statements during the winter of 2014 – both from Manor/Marussia looking for a buyer and from people analysing the amount to be split between teams if it foundered at that point – that the 10th place was worth $40 m to Manor/Marussia (meaning Columns 1 and 2 were worth $50 m combined, to compensate for losing the $10 m of Column 3 that was only for new teams finding their feet), and 2) Manor/Marussia, as far as anyone can tell, never got paid for Australia due to Bernie (unlike the FIA) not accepting their attendance there as sufficient to qualify for payment. 2015 had 21 races. So Manor’s payment would be 18/19ths of $40 m. This would be $37.89 m.

            If you really want to, you could have a go at estimating the other teams’ FOM incomings for 2015 from this information.

      2. I’m sorry but aren’t Sauber using last year’s Ferrari engine? Does that not make it a GP2 car basically? Maybe because I liked how Manor went racing more than Kaltenborn’s multiple driver fiasco and am biased.

        1. The 2016 Ferrari is still a good engine. It is hardly the 2015 Honda “GP2 Engine”.

        2. Sauber is not a GP2 car, though I would sympathise with its drivers if they would have preferred to try racing an actual GP2 car on the F1 grid.

    4. +1 – that car was looking a damn site better than some of the ones that where set to appear on the grid. who knows what they could have managed this year, so many changes to rules and regs – teh biggest damn shame for a long time – lets hope someone come in to rescue them and restore them. but even then they will be back behind again.

  2. I kinda agree with CotD, Shanghai’s not a track I get remotely excited about, and not one I’d miss in the slightest. I don’t even really have many strong memories of the races there.

    Other people seem to enjoy it, though… so I can accept that it’s just me who doesn’t “get it”.

    1. @kanil It’s not just you. Even though the track layout is pretty much a carbon copy of Malaysia, this GP has failed to wow a lot of people. Maybe it’s the timezone maybe it’s the gloomy atmosphere, or maybe it’s just because as all high G tracks, the cars can’t really follow each other.
      I think the reason why the ratings of the Shanghai GP are well above average is due to the fact that many races were dramatic, weather or championship circunstances but perhaps the biggest factor is that it’s been a great GP for British teams and drivers.

    2. I actually kinda like it, mainly as it doesn’t go to the extremes other Tilka tracks do of trying to include a little bit of everything and keeps a better flow because of it which doesn’t stifle overtaking if you try to do it outside the “designated overtaking zones”. I’d still think Istanbul Park was by far his best track, mind.

    3. China hasn’t done much for me since it got moved to an early-season slot, but I have strong memories of its first few outings. A rare day in the sun for Barrichello in 2004, Schumacher v Albers and Montoya v drain cover in 2005, the intra-Renault confusion of 2006 and Hamilton playing “hunt the gravel trap” in 2007…

  3. Contrary to COTD I actually like the Shanghai circuit. It’s got a nice mix of corners & I think the initial complex (Turns 1-3) is interesting, somewhat unique & a nice challenge for the drivers.

    It’s also a circuit which wet or dry has tended to produce good racing & some very entertaining races.

  4. 90% completed…. that’s still farther along than Honda has come this year, anyway.

    1. I’ve found that 50% of the time 90% done means 33% of the work is still remaining.

      Maybe they just needed to give 110%.

      1. @slotopen: I like it! ;-)

        Or as we say in software development, the first 90% of the work takes the first 90% of the time, and the other 90% of the work takes the other 90% of the time ;-)

  5. I remember the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 especially, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 and 2016 to be decent races, which is why I quite like the Shanghai track, as due to cars often being able to follow closely and we tend to get multiple cars fighting at the same time, somewhat similar to Silverstone.

    1. @mashiat Since when do long high G corners allow cars to follow each other. These tracks on dry conditions are bore fests, nothing to do with the tracks it’s just that they play on F1’s weakness, aero. I agree with @fer-no65 . Why isn’t Ferrari favourite, I wouldn’t have bet on Ferrari for Melbourne, too much of a power track but now I’d say much more reasonable bet. Great odds though.

    2. A lot of those races were helped by rain, some others by rain in qualifying or turn 1 incidents mixing up the field, the early years had a date late in the championship battle, and in the degrading-tyres-years the tracks heavy punishment for front tyres (when most tracks were harder on rears) did catch some teams out and provided a minor shake-up of relative strengths.
      Yes, a race at Shanghai quite often comes with a bit of action, but that doesn’t make it a good track, it just sorta saves it from being bad. Neither onboard-qualy laps nor driving it in sim-games feels particularly exciting, the vast runoff-areas do not only take away any punishment for driver-errors, but also move any kind of scenery to far away from the track to be seen on TV, and on top of that the track itself is just too wide, cars get lost in the sea of tarmac, drivers are never “threading the needle” through a small gap, and the incredibly long straight may provide overtaking (as in the order changes), but those are mainly highway-passes.

      That said, we have a possibility of rain again this year (the climate really is a major point for racing there), we’ll likely have someone at least slightly out of position on the back of the grid (gearboxes and engines didn’t seem bulletproof till now), and the teams are still in the process of adopting to strategies with the new tyres, so this weeks race very well could be good entertainment again. Unless its dry, they all go through the first turns orderly and the tyres behave exactly as calculated by the teams.

  6. I like the track, but i do not belive it deserves the rating it has. I always say the same (and I’ll get the same replies I got last year) but that race in 2011 wasn’t that good. Not a race to be a contender with Brazil 2012 and 2008, that’s for sure.

    It turned out to be the first to be decided by tyres and DRS, which I also didn’t like. And that tended to be a huge influence in the outcome at this particular GP.

    I liked the 2006 and 2010 editions tho.

  7. Hulk’s comments about the engine sound inspired what I think is a poignant analogy (and sorry for a further engine noise rant):

    The V10s/V8s are a bit like London taxis or Routemaster busses. You can make logical arguments about why alternatives might be better, or more advanced, or more with the times etc – but the association of them with the place make it integral to the DNA of the city and represents a value that far exceeds the on-paper/bean-counter arguments.

    In the same way, the V10/V8 noise that we miss is still what most people associate with F1 and the pinnacle of motorsport (rightly or wrongly). Eliminating the noise has is diminishing this association in my view is damaging the long-term value of the sport.

    1. @fletchuk

      Yep, that is a good way of putting it. Whilst I understand the arguments from those who are now able to take their young kids to the races, etc, the fact remains that we still have F1 cars that sound a bit like kitchen waste disposal units, and that is just fundementally not right. Well, to me anyway, and it’s not going away, this issue.

    2. @fletchuk,And you probably think the music from the 80s/90s or whichever decade you were a teenager is way better than the music of the 60s or the 200?s, it’s just the way we experience stuff. And anybody who thinks the music from the 60s (my teens) has, or will ever be surpassed is just delusional. That’s my fair and totally unbiased opinion.

      1. @hohum

        An interesting post regarding the music. I may be a bit different since it is what I do for a living, but I am not especially attached to the music that was current as I was growing up. There is even good music out there right now, if one looks for it, although mainstream ‘chart’ type stuff seems to have taken a terrible dive in the last couple of decades. Seems to me as a musician performing all kinds of different stuff for 3 hours pretty much every night, the 60’s was indeed a spectacular decade, musically.

        Taking this onto F1, I started following in the late 70’s, but really what I grew up with were the 80’s turbos. Those were monsters, and I do think of them with affection in some ways, but although they sounded a lot better than the current cars, they were still pretty underwhelming alongside the N/A engines. I actually went to Silverstone one year, 1988, where we had both N/A cars and the turbos. That was a real eye (or ear?) opener, the turbos were visibly quicker, but hearing the Judd V10 in the Williams was just unforgettable, with Mansell amazingly finishing second in it in the rain. The next year, of course, we got V12’s and for me it never really got better than that.

        I know the sound discussion gets some folks who post on here very upset, so when commenting on this I am always prepared for some minor meltdowns, but it is very interesting to me this discussion is still lingering. I think that does show that to a lot of people, this really is a fundemental part of the live F1 experience for them. The ‘ technological cutting edge’ argument does not really now work for F1, as Ross Brawn recently pointed out, since if we go that route, we would probably see F! looking to develop electric, driverless cars, and I don’t think that would get much support.

        So, there are more than a few of us out here really hoping that come 2021 we will have something viscerally awesome again!

      2. The assumption that people will automatically prefer what comes out in their teenage years is by no means reliable. For example, while I like some of the music, particularly in pop, that came out in my teens (late 1990s/early 2000s), I dislike other songs from that era. Indeed, my favourite artists were either at their strongest before that period (70s-to-early-90s-peaking rock from the likes of Queen and Meat Loaf) or later (late 2000s/early 2010s heavy metal from the likes of Within Temptation and Nightwish). My specific objection in terms of sound is to do with elements of the aural quality, which is why Formula E’s engine sounds more like an engine to me than F1’s engine does*.

        Also, F1’s fanbase has been falling for most of the last 10 years, largely due to not replacing older fans with younger ones. So preferences would be expected to be 10 years behind where they would be if F1 was in full health. A healthy F1 fanbase would want the engines used in the race they are watching live, so it stands to reason that a 10-years-displaced fanbase wants engines from 10 years ago… …what was the last year any V10s were allowed, again**?

        * – The fact that a Formula E engine is only audible in a straight line under acceleration is immaterial to me – I’d rather have a quiet engine that has good tone and is both smooth and raw (Formula E) than a noisy engine that sounds like it’s got a headcold and an early-1990s PC speaker stuck in drone mode (Formula 1). (I like WEC’s mostly-noisier engines that have good tone, smooth and raw too, but it and the Formula E sound like engine sound genres. F1, in its current sound, doesn’t sound like “music” and wouldn’t even with the volume turned up).

        ** – Toro Rosso had an exemption to run detuned V10s rather than V8s in 2006 and 2007, making the latter – 10 years ago – the last time V10s ran in F1.

    3. Peppermint-Lemon (@)
      6th April 2017, 7:00

      Cotd

    4. This is the first comment regarding the sound that has ever made sense to me. I usually stop reading when I see a sound bleat in a comment. I’m still for the current format though as technology is 80% of my reason for watching since the 1960’s.

    5. @fletchuk, and yet there is something of a rather ironic twist in using the example of the classic London taxi, since the manufacturers (The London Taxi Corporation) went into administration in 2012 since it was barely able to sell the cars because they could not meet modern standards on disabled access or emissions.

      They’re now owned by the Chinese manufacturer Geely, and they are currently in the process of replacing the current models with petrol hybrids and electric cars – the very technology that you are repudiating.

      That historic association with London might have made for a nice appeal to nostalgia, but had no value to the company when it couldn’t sell any cars – it may have been worth something to some, but not enough for them to actually think it was worthwhile buying the cars. In that same sense, I think that perhaps you are overvaluing the association between the noise of the V8’s and V10’s and that of the image of the sport.

      1. @paulguitar,and @alianora-la-canta,@fletchuk,@blik,@anon, Thanks everyone for a polite and rational discussion on this thorny subject.

        1. @hohum

          Always a pleasure.

        2. @hohum Thank you very much – I like the sort of discussions that happen here :)

  8. Oh yes great COTD! Just what we need. Another street track…

    1. Yes, let’s have it at night in a pea-soup fog, souper!

  9. Absolutely correct Fletch

  10. About COTD, if they moved it downtown you still wouldn’t see the sky scrappers due to the smog. Talk about global warming’s blanket

  11. It’s not only the track layout that’s the problem with Shanghai, it’s those ginormous runoff areas. Originally when the circuit was built, the effectiveness of tarmac runoff was a lot less known than now. If I were the promoters, circuit owners, or whoever makes these decisions, I would have brought the barriers in a lot to reduce this. The Grand Prix normally attracts a significant crowd, but you never see it because they are a mile from the circuit. Equally all the camera angles are distant, and therefore mostly very boring.

    That part of the circuit seems to be resurfaced every year or two. I seem to recall that the track was built on swampland (or was that Sepang?), so it sinks and shifts. I’m really surprised they built a track on this rather than completely stabilising it first, if that’s even possible.

    Interlagos is a circuit that everyone loves and wants on the calendar, and I’m sure the new folks at Liberty Media know it. Is it possible that Bernie might try to use that as a bargaining chip?

    1. @strontium your first paragraph sums my feelings up very well. I generally don’t like to make negative comments on here… but I had nothing positive to say on the matter! I know it’s F1 Fanatic but in an ideal world I want to be fanatical about all 20 circuits. Melbourne – check. Shanghai International Circuit – nope, nothing I’m afraid. Hoping for a good race though!

  12. So is this Bernie’s last revenge, buying up tracks and making race negotiations tough for the pure petty satisfaction of it? Certainly wouldn’t put it past him.

    1. I can only pray that Liberty negotiates with him, like Bernie blackmailed track-owners/cities in his days ;)
      @maciek

      1. Indeed. I would laugh so loud you could hear it from the top of everest if he bought the track and then had his fees tripled by liberty!

        1. My thoughts exactly. If Ecclestone buys Interlagos I hope Liberty fleece him for every penny that he has, make unreasonable demands of the facilities and have nothing but bad tempered grumpy comments to make about the circuit owner…
          Karma 1, Ecclestone 0

  13. Michael Brown (@)
    6th April 2017, 3:41

    I like Shanghai, but Sepang is superior (and it’s leaving!). Turns 1-4 allow for multiple lines to set up a move into 6, and 6 is far enough away from the DRS zones so the drivers will actually attempt a move there.

  14. Don’t agree with the COTD. Shanghai is one of the few tracks on the calendar that can serve a classic without weather or safety car related incidents, 2011, 2012, 2013 races support this view point.
    Yes, it doesn’t ‘look’ that good on TV due to the large run-offs, empty grand stands and the grey smog; but the actual racing is very good here. I think the best Tilke track after Bahrain (considering those which are on the calendar now)

  15. Neil (@neilosjames)
    6th April 2017, 7:19

    I really like the first third of the lap in Shanghai – definitely one of my favourite Tilke sectors, with the snail shell part especially – and I like the end of the lap too, with the giant straight and the last two corners. But overall the place just strikes me as being sub-par… for whatever reason… and I struggle to get excited about Chinese Grands Prix.

    Could be worse, though. I’d get even less excited about a street circuit in Shanghai, for example.

  16. But Prost told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport: “I would even let them use different tyre types in one set — so a soft for the left and a hard for the right, or vice versa.”

    Exactly what I think aswell, more liberty.

  17. I think Shanghai is a good circuit in the sense that it creates decent racing, yet I couldn’t really say anything about the track is interesting or spectacular. The opposite of, say Bahrain, which looks incredible yet tends to have fairly dull races.

    In terms of Tilke tracks, I just lament the loss of the excellent Istanbul Park, which was both a fantastic track which the drivers enjoyed (with the fearsome Turn 8 being a real highlight), and a location which tended to produce entertaining races. But there you go.

  18. Hi @keithcollantine

    I guess the original maximum-26-car-grid was set for safety grounds? I know that we are far away from achieving that at the moment but, ignoring that fact, are there any compelling reasons for the FIA to look at possibly changing this number in the future?

    Thanks
    Shimks

    1. @shimks Do you mean adding more than 26 Cars?

    2. Presumably 26 max is for Safety and Pit Garage Space?… though I’m guessing teams need more garage space than they would have had in the 80s? not sure if someone knows?

    3. 26 cars is set because that’s the maximum carrying capacity of the Monaco grid and garages. Most of the other tracks could accept more – for example, Silverstone has a capacity of 30 F1-level cars in its old pit lane, let alone the new one.

      Garage requirements have increased since the 1980s, but as far as I know, only Monaco would have a problem if the limit was increased to 28. (Several tracks – notably Canada – might have problems if the limit went to 30).

  19. There was an article on the BBC saying Manor were given permission for 2017 to use last years chassis with new bits added….I must admit I found that surprising, but if it kept them racing……so to read that 90% were in place, either the 10% was the chassis, or someone is wrong

    1. 10% was specific parts of manufacturing. There may well be part of a full-size 2017 car somewhere.

  20. Quita todas tus pertenencias y basura de la guantera.

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