Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri, Circuit de Catalunya, 2020

AlphaTauri shuts factory following Italian government lockdown

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In the round-up: AlphaTauri has closed its F1 factory until April 3rd following new restrictions imposed by the Italian government due to the pandemic.

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F1 needs to broaden its official video game licence, says James:

I figured the whole thing would be a laugh when I saw they would be playing the F1 2019 game. I’ve been saying that licensing a single game has been a misstep from the beginning. They need to license cars out to any studio that wishes to include them in their game, not lock it down to a single title. F1 Esports will never take off as long as this is the case.
James (@Knewman)

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On this day in F1

  • 30 years ago today Ayrton Senna took pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix after the race was moved back to his home city of Sao Paolo

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13 comments on “AlphaTauri shuts factory following Italian government lockdown”

  1. @Knewman COTD makes a good point, restricting access is hardly the way to get your product out there. Their ongoing commitment to pay TV is going to turn around and bite them I think.

    1. Well technically every team can still sell licenses to use their car in any video game but it just can not be called an F1 car because f1 is trademark* owned by the liberty media. As far as I know several past and present f1 cars have been in video games that are not official f1 games. In the end it is not even about the cars, it is about the series.

      And unless f1 has made a two way exclusive deal with codemasters it is at least technically possible f1 could use another game for their championships or individual events even if they have exclusive deal with codemasters about who gets to make a game about the series.

      *or is it?
      https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/60734/formula-one-bosses-fail-in-trademark-case

      1. @socksolid the term “F1 car” is, I believe, not owned by Liberty Media because there are F1 Stock Cars, which are single seater oval race cars that has used the terms “F1” and “Formula 1” to describe both the cars and their championship since the late 1970s.

        They only have a specific right to the term “FIA Formula 1 World Championship” i.e. a term which explicitly references a particular series. Attempts at making the term more broad ranging, though, have usually been struck down because there are other series which have a legitimate claim to that term.

    2. I feel like they’d be best served licensing their cars out to maybe 1 arcadey, accessible game, like codemasters F1 series, but then also give them to iRacing for eSports. That would make the eSports series so so so much better imo, and also make these races better. I like eSports and I enjoy the series that they do, but the F1 games online just aren’t that good, iRacing has everything sorted pretty well.

  2. pastaman (@)
    24th March 2020, 1:46

    Only now shutting down the factory? In Italy, arguably the worst hit country (by pctg)? Almost laughable it took them this long to do so.

    1. @pastaman stopping productions in non-essential facilities is not a simple decision to take: millions of workers are involved and this will have huge consequences on our economy. Please respect our country and the hard decisions we’re making, the line between the sanitary crisis and economic crisis is very thin. Stay at home if you can.

      1. @m-bagattini I think it’s more that some are surprised Alpha Tauri continued working for nearly two weeks after Ferrari shut down all production at their factory and ordered all of their staff to go into self-isolation, and in a period when there are meant to be significant movement restrictions on people around Italy – it would seem to contradict the advice that was begin given by the Italian government to their citizens during that period.

        1. Does anybody know if they had already trimmed down their staff and were already taking great precautions? Personally I am not assuming that yesterday they had every staff member that works at the factory there and working in close quarters with each other. I think it is likely they were open technically speaking, but with very few staff, and now that the government has asked for closures, they have taken that final step and just shut it right down. Surely there were many workers who started to be concerned for their own safety and that of their loved ones at home weeks ago, such that nobody was being forced to go to the factory if they just didn’t feel comfortable doing so.

          1. @robbie Tost has made a statement indicating the factory was about to start production of a new line of parts when they were instructed to shut down – they might not have been at full capacity, but it sounds like there were still a reasonable number of people there.

          2. https://f1i.com/news/370672-tost-doing-his-best-to-keep-team-going-amid-forced-shutdown.html/amp

            https://www.google.ca/amp/s/f1i.com/news/370445-alphatauri-boss-tost-admits-life-in-italy-is-scary.html/amp

            Anon here’s a couple of articles that make it quite clear that there was no disregard for the situation nor for his employees well being on the part of Tost. Let’s not make it sound like the authorities had to go in and rip new parts out of the hands of his feverish workers and tell them to go home. Tost saying they were planning on making new parts is akin to all of us in the entire world having had plans but having to set them aside. But hey, as it goes amongst us humans, if we don’t like somebody we shade our wording and the facts in order to conjure the worst possible picture of said person.

      2. @Matteo
        there is much respect and concern in the UK for what you in Italy are going through and the measures you have had to take. Wishing you all the best.

  3. The shape of the steering wheel is reminiscent of that of Mclaren.
    I agree with the COTD. iRacing would be a better platform for this purpose.

  4. It’s São Paulo.

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