In the round-up: Toro Rosso’s technical director Jody Egginton says not having to change engine supplier during the off-season for the first time in four years is a “significant” development for the team.
What they say
The change in regulation has brought its challenges and we’ve also changed a lot of stuff in the background, the way we develop the car in the wind tunnel. The structure of the team’s changed a little bit, people coming, people going. We’ve really had a big evaluation after last year and thought about a lot of things. We’ve got quite a young engineering team but the guys have worked hard over the winter.
Importantly for Toro Rosso it’s the second year with the engine provider. This is significant for Toro Rosso. We do a lot of engine changing year-on-year historically which is a big challenge. This year we’ve not had that so the guys have been able to focus a bit more on really getting to grips with all the details, the all-important packaging. Everyone knows what to expect, there’s no curve balls. The relationship with Honda, we keep saying it, but genuinely it’s fantastic.
They’re a strong partner and they help us and they push along so we can really focus on some things. The reliability of the car’s been better. We’ve hit the ground in a reasonable state and the car build’s gone well. So so far, touch wood, we’ve been able to sort of move along and tick the boxes and answer a few questions probably a bit more successfully than last year when there was a new relationship.
Quotes: Dieter Rencken
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
NEEEUM: The fastest remix of all time
WGTT15000BPM F1 NEEEUM MIX by @ChemBros#F1 #TheChemicalBrothers #NEEEUM pic.twitter.com/yslEhhino9
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 7, 2019
#indy500 Simulator day. @McLarenIndy @TeamChevy @IMS ✊️✊️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/0AEk33sSZO
— Fernando Alonso (@alo_oficial) March 7, 2019
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Links
More motor racing links of interest:
FIA announces World Motor Sport Council decisions (FIA)
"Following the approval of the 2020 LMP Technical Regulations by the Council on 5 December 2018, today’s meeting approved the following update to these regulations: Expansion of the 2020 LMP Technical Regulations concept to allow a 'Hypercar' developed from the road cars sold by the manufacturers to enter, while preserving the previously-approved regulatory format. This expansion is designed to enable additional manufacturers to enter the championship."
Andretti rejects IndyCar favourite tag (Autosport)
"We have a strong belief in our capabilities and we go to every race believing that we can win. But you have to keep reminding yourself of the depth of the field."
Netflix’s F1 series offers a captivating, candid glimpse behind the curtain (The Guardian)
"Their argument was that they did not want to be distracted from competing for the world championship. The show’s other executive producer, Paul Martin, believes they did a disservice to the fans and the sport by not taking part."
Williams Now by Peter Windsor (Omologato)
"Inexplicably - and powered, it must be said, in part by Adam Parr and Toto Wolff - Jonny was sidelined by the Williams board when succession was mooted. Instead, it was Jonny’s younger sister who was empowered to sign the cheques."
We always endeavour to credit original sources. If you have a tip for a link to feature in the next RaceFans round-up please send it in via the contact form.
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Comment of the day
Alec Rossiter, an editor on the new Netflix F1 series Drive to Survive, got in touch to address a point I raised in yesterday’s review of episode four:
The radio news report, refereed to at the top of this article, is a genuine archive clip of a radio broadcast – it was a radio archive clip provided to us by the fantastic archive team working on this series – what fantastic research and sourcing they did. It was many months ago that this edit was first put together (by me), but I hope I remember correctly that the clip in question is taken from a BBC5 live radio broadcast.
Alec Rossiter
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bull mello (@bullmello)
8th March 2019, 0:36
Williams Now by Peter Windsor is very much worth the read. A candid assessment of their current state, how they got there and maybe how to get past it.
@HoHum (@hohum)
8th March 2019, 0:48
Indeed, sadly it confirms my suspicions of what has been happening at Williams. Ferrari has put itself into the same situation several times and been able to rise again (credit LH) only with a new broom and a massive cash injection, unfortunately I don’t think Williams have the cash or the will to embark on that route to recovery. RIP Williams F1.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
8th March 2019, 1:50
Agreed, it’s a very enlightening article. Great read from someone with actual insight.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
8th March 2019, 2:28
Definitely worth a read.
I can’t quite make out though who he’s pointing the finger at. Seems to be the age old story of a family run business that for the usual reasons has become quite dysfunctional.
Obviously way more to the story than just an F1 team in disarray.
Leroy (@g-funk)
8th March 2019, 3:10
There seems to be a lot of revisionist history occurring with Williams. Their decline started beginning in 2004 when Sir Frank was still running the show. There’s plenty of blame to go around but to say Williams would have be in a better place if Sir Frank were running things or if, as Peter Windsor suggests, the closest thing to Sir Frank, his son Jonny, were in charge, is disregarded the facts. Every now and then they overachieve, and that brings a smile to everyone’s face, but this is a team that has been in steady decline for close to two decades.
Darryn Smith (@darryn)
8th March 2019, 5:16
Yeah. I don’t get all this recent revisionism. They have been bad for a long, long time now. I would even argue the decline started in ’98. They have something like 10 wins in the last 21 seasons. 9 of those in the 7 seasons between ’98 and ’04. How old was Claire back then 20? This is Frank’s team and when he goes so will the team. Reminds me of Tyrell.
bosyber (@bosyber)
8th March 2019, 8:41
It also reminded me of people clamoring for Ron to come back and save McLaren @darryn ; a buzz, not the needed fix.
Aldoid
8th March 2019, 11:22
Revisionist indeed. Especially the insinuation that Toto Wolff and Adam Parr not putting Johnnie in charge is what doomed Williams… they finished third in the championship in ’14 & ’15 (the car was good, but much credit to the Mercedes engines that Toto got them) for Pete’s sake! They slipped to 5th in ’16 & ’17 (Red Bull got it together & Force India stepped their game up) but if we’re honest, they didn’t start looking hopeless until last year.
GeeMac (@geemac)
8th March 2019, 9:13
Yeah, it’s a good read, firmly directed at Williams current C-suite. No doubt he’ll be getting a few phone calls in the coming hours. Peter Windsor must have been a bit reluctant to write that given his links with the team, but he clearly thinks the time is ripe for a wake up call in Grove.
That said, I don’t think simply replacing Claire Williams with Jonny Williams will immediately transform the team. Jonny has an encyclopaedic knowledge of Williams, right down to knowing which gearboxes ran in which FW08s, but what does that matter in modern F1? Claire has a different background and also served a racing apprenticeship, simply taking her out the picture won’t fix everything in the short term.
frood19 (@frood19)
8th March 2019, 9:26
it’s eye opening certainly, but I think his conclusion is naive. F1 teams cannot exist in the current climate without the money men, the corporate minds. it is undoubtedly a bad thing that ‘true racers’, as he calls it, are insufficient sidelined players, but in a paradigm where money is so unfairly distributed this is a sad necessity. as @g-funk said it’s not new – they’ve been losing ground ever since BMW ditched them. in recent years, williams had to rely on the likes of maldonado and stroll because they had to spend insane amounts of money simply to make it onto the grid – without an angel investor (e.g. Geni capital before renault, stroll’s racing point, even the mclaren shareholders and red bull parent company) the sport isn’t viable for teams.
hence, the “non racers” – they make ruthless decisions to detriment of the team’s short and long-term sporting prospects, but the save the team from utter ruin and collapse. even that cannot continue forever.
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
8th March 2019, 0:55
Love that boxy Volvo estate racer. In some ways it’s more sleek and elegant than the current gen of single-seat stretch limo F1 cars.
socksolid (@socksolid)
8th March 2019, 1:18
It’s even funnier because modern f1 cars are half a meter longer than that volvo 850 estate…
Phylyp (@phylyp)
8th March 2019, 1:40
Ouch!
frood19 (@frood19)
8th March 2019, 9:33
@socksolid wow, that is worth thinking about. they do look like absolute boats from above. I’d love to see smaller, lighter F1 cars, but the current complex power units make that impossible, which is a real shame. the mclaren mp4/4 (1988) weighed 540kg!
Picasso 1.9D FTW (@picasso-19d-ftw)
8th March 2019, 14:09
They actually raced with a family of 5 and a couple of labradors in the back, did pretty well.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
8th March 2019, 2:35
What was the story about the NEEEUM thingy? There’s an official statement from Liberty Media account about ‘sonic identity’ but doesn’t explain anything.
Phylyp (@phylyp)
8th March 2019, 3:18
@ruliemaulana – I thought @jimmi-cynic was joking in this comment y’day, but turns out he wasn’t.
I think this will be the sound snippet used either to transition from/to the broadcast to the F1 logo (e.g. think of cutting away to ads during FP/quali), or it’ll be used to transition to a full-screen information screen during the race.
The only memory of NEEEUM that I have is during the 2018 US GP there was someone (a vocal artist?) making those racecar sounds. Liberty apparently thought that was a thing worthy of inclusion on the broadcast. Not pre/post race, during the actual race! Back then, I thought that one of the cameras was accidentally picking up the audio from a playful kid nearby, but no, it was intentional.
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
8th March 2019, 5:05
@phylyp Lucky you… You knew it was racecar sounds. I had to google it, and the only NEEEUM I found is an old Indian Tamil song…
Phylyp (@phylyp)
8th March 2019, 8:56
@ruliemaulana – ha ha, I realize that “Neeum” translates to “You too!” in Tamil. And that’s in a romantic sense, not as an opposite of #MeToo :)
Here’s the sound from the US GP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mztna-4IeLw
And here’s the chap making that sound: https://twitter.com/lbaeza06/status/1057834937263497216?s=21
ruliemaulana (@ruliemaulana)
8th March 2019, 9:02
LOL… I never seen that…
Jimmi Cynic (@jimmi-cynic)
8th March 2019, 5:34
@phylyp: I never joke about the serious negotiations by Liberty to obtain the rights to a 3 second remix for F1 sonic identity purposes. Or maybe it’s the full soundtrack for their proposed shortened race weekend.
Here’s the track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWX0_ikJ0Q
bosyber (@bosyber)
8th March 2019, 8:43
Good stuff @jimmi-cynic, @phylyp
GeeMac (@geemac)
8th March 2019, 8:59
I was more excited than I should have been seeing a picture of a Volvo 850 Estate in the round-up…
JimG (@jimg)
8th March 2019, 12:41
@geemac Me too :-)
For the young ‘uns, as I recall it was (apologies in advance) part of a corporate strategy to shake off the image that Volvos had at the time of being slow, boring cars of the sort that an ageing parent might drive. Estate cars doubly so, so to take their estate car racing was in my opinion a stroke of genius. And quite quick too I think.
GeeMac (@geemac)
8th March 2019, 13:38
Indeed, it was primarily a marketing exercise but if I recall there were minor aerodynamic advantages to running the estate rather than the saloon as well.
Jere (@jerejj)
8th March 2019, 9:25
The Chemical Brothers, I had never even heard of them before.
nase
8th March 2019, 10:20
@jerejj
Really now? Admittedly, they’ve gone awfully quiet for the last decade or so, but they were all over the radio in the early noughties, when British trip hop’s popularity went from insular to global.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
9th March 2019, 22:19
@jerejj They were famous enough a few years ago that one of their songs (“Galvanize”) ended up in the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympics. However, it’s not the targeting of youth that appears to be the intent, because they’ve been recording since 1989 and I believe a lot of their audience is in their 40s. Granted, that’s younger than the mid-50s average for many motorsports series, but it’s still younger than the average age of a human on planet Earth (which, last I heard, was 37).
rpaco
8th March 2019, 10:27
“The Chemical Brothers, I had never even heard of them before.”
They will never achieve the greatness of Fleetwood Mac. For all of Fleetwood Mac’s musical transitions, traumas, loves found and lost, their excesses, Fleetwood Mac, even now in their dotage are touring, selling out and would easily fill every F1 stadium.
For most of us old gits “The Chain” was, is, and always will be the signature sound of F1.
Now that would be a proper promotional deal, a mega group like the Mac or the Eagles to play ALL the F1 races. 21 races these guys do hundreds!