Bernie Ecclestone, Sochi Autodrom, 2019

Eight-part Ecclestone documentary series coming from Senna producer

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: The producer and writer of ‘Senna’ has created a documentary series about the life of Bernie Ecclestone, called ‘Lucky!’

In brief

Eight-part Ecclestone series to use extensive F1 archive

Manish Pandey, who wrote and directed documentary film Senna, has written and created an eight-part documentary series about Bernie Ecclestone called ‘Lucky!’

The series will use archive Formula 1 footage, as well as interviews and is made in partnership with Ecclestone himself.

“Bernie has been able to reflect, not just on his days as one of the greatest sporting impresarios of all time, but also on his life,” Pandey said, describing the series. “In his 90 years, he has travelled the world and met everyone who is anyone, yet he remains incredibly personable and immensely funny.

“It is a joy to tell his extraordinary story, in full, for the first time.”

VeeKay returns at Mid-Ohio

Rinus Veekay, Carpenter, IndyCar, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 2021
Carpenter’s number 21 car is back in VeeKay’s hands
Indianapolis Grand Prix winner Rinus VeeKay will be back at the wheel of an IndyCar this weekend after missing the Road America round due to injury. The Carpenter driver fell from fifth to sixth in the championship due to his absence, during which time Oliver Askew took his place.

McLaren Racing Engage launched to aid team diversity

McLaren has announced it will work with four partners in order to further the causes of diversity broadly in society and motorsport and specifically within its organisation.

The four organisations working with McLaren are Women’s Engineering Society (WES), EqualEngineers, The Smallpeice Trust and Creative Access. McLaren will provide membership and mentoring opportunities to both its staff and engineering students looking to further their careers. McLaren have committed to sponsoring events for three events for WES, EqualEngineers and the Smallpeice Trust and will contribute to the Arkwright Engineering Scholarship scheme for A-Level students and to the Creative Access Career Development Bursary.

The team will also work with the groups in a reciprocal way to improve its own diversity, from looking at policies with Creative Access to training on providing more inclusive spaces.

Ferrari achieves three-star environmental accreditation

Ferrari have become the latest Formula 1 team to achieve the highest level of FIA environmental accreditation, joining McLaren and Mercedes as three-star accredited organisations.

To achieve the certification, teams have to show an ongoing and continuously improving commitment to sustainability, from an executive level and with annually reported outcomes.

The Mugello circuit, owned by Ferrari, was also granted three-star environmental accreditation last year.

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Comment of the day

In response to Stefano Domenicali saying that numbers about manufacturers’ commitments to electric cars are “not real,” putting paid to the idea of fully electric F1 in the near future, JohnH says that regardless of what the F1 boss thinks, change is happening rapidly.

Okay Volkswagen are stopping all sales of internal combustion engines in Europe by 2035, Honda have said they will fully electric in the US by 2040. GM has just announced they are going full electric by 2035.

Ford is moving a bit slower saying they expect their global fleet to be 40% electric by 2030. Toyota will stay with hybrids for a while yet.

Renault have just signed a deal with a Chinese battery company to build a factory in France. Nissan are building a new battery plant in the UK shortly.

The push from the public via governments should not be taken lightly and must be taken into account as attitudes are changing and with them the laws regarding pollution. The ball is in F1’s court, let’s see what they do with it.
@johnrkh

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On this day in motorsport

  • 20 years ago today Michael Schumacher won the French Grand Prix for Ferrari, followed home by brother Ralf in his Williams

Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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25 comments on “Eight-part Ecclestone documentary series coming from Senna producer”

  1. Too bad F1 is against going electric. Presumably they could open up the rules and allow innovation again.

  2. The “Senna doc” has nothing on Brazilian made senna docs. 8 parts, looking forward to it.

    1. Could you link one of the good ones? I’d love to see them!

    2. A documentary about Ecclestone sounds interesting, but not by the maker of Senna as that was horribly slanted which means this will be too. No doubt it will be all about how great Ecclestone was.

  3. Jockey Ewing
    1st July 2021, 1:50

    Was this London Electrobus Company from 1906 to 1910 a serious thing?
    I mean, based on what I have read about them, their buses have been very very reliable compared to their contemporary competitors, but the company itself was a quite shady effort, and then eventually ceased because of lawsuits and accusations of fraud. Based on the buses great reliability at that time history could have been different.
    Is this company a well known thing in the UK, or it is just an urban legend? How it is percieved? I think I have read some articles about them some years before, and it is quite amazing.

    Meanwhile, I like historic cars, and we are lucky to have the opportunity to drive them in great simulators, luckily it ensures that these will not be forgotten in a way. One aspect I like at simulators, that I enjoy finding out the characteristics of various cars by myself, and finding my own setups, even if I’m not very good otherwise, it just teaches a lot for anyone, who can enjoy this aspect.

    1. It’s an obscure bit of transport history but yes, it was real; dogged by not being as innovative as it claimed, they ended up having to refund investors and were generally poorly run. There was a lot of questionable transport contract jostling in that era (as now) and the Electrobuses weren’t really part of that – just a badly run company whose financial planning was as poor as they were naiive in terms of how they could roll out public transport routes.

      They ran fewer than 20 buses for less than three years, so were pretty massively a failure compared to other efforts. Relatively, at the time, trolleybuses were being installed very successfully elsewhere. Although arguably the Electrobus battery system was easier to install (needing no overhead wires) they just weren’t a very well-run company, despite being technologically interesting.

      So yeah, an obscure episode of London’s transport history. In reliability terms, early electric vehicles were extremely reliable – delivery vans, in particular, carried on being used for decades. Compared to anything that required a starter handle, a BEV at the time was ridiculously easy to operate for the driver and, as now, pretty low maintenance compared to a combustion car.

      Early batteries were low power density but otherwise fairly stable and they were a genuinely good solution for anything that – like a bus or a delivery van – made frequent stops. But for buses, they couldn’t really compete with trolleybus systems, which turned up in the UK in 1911 and (getting seriously interrupted by the first world war, as everything, aside) were much, much more popular and widely used.

      Should add the only reason I know this is cus I write about electric vehicles and propulsion tech not cus it’s especially trips-off-the-tongue knowledge. Most people would’ve never heard of the London Electrobus Company because they were a very limited operation for an extremely short time.

      1. Jockey Ewing
        1st July 2021, 20:01

        Thank you!
        Yes, the 20 buses is and was very few in big cities like London. They planned a bit more, but then they were not able to do it. So they were quite far away from changing the history, but a really successful Electrobus company at such big city could have changed history, as the success could have been seen by many.

        For me the most surprising fact in the story was the reliability, and the usefulness of the batteries from more than a century before. Although, as you pointed out, I got a refresher, yes at those days electrified underground and trolleybuses were starting to spread at bigger cities. I totally forgot about trolleybuses, as I traveled by a trolley only a few times.

        The other fact I did not know that electric vehicles were quite successful as delivery vans, like the milk floats.

        Haha, I have found some funny things about the earlier days of public transport today, as I have googled about the subject. I have found it obscure by itself that they tried non-electric trains at the underground of London, for all of it’s health concerns, but maybe the funniest is:
        “The Metropolitan even encouraged beards for staff to act as an air filter.”
        (from Wikipedia)

        Greetings, and thanks again for the answer, and for this nice and contentful Round-up.

  4. Jockey Ewing
    1st July 2021, 2:00

    How long ago that Red Bull car is hanging on that cliff? Are they leaving the car there at winter seasons too?
    According to Wikipedia, Graz is not exactly alpine, but still receives a good amount of snow, 62cm yearly, and around 15cm monthly in December, January and February.
    Nice stuff anyway :)

    1. Snow should be easily managed with the blown diffuser… :)

  5. As for clarification – “Senna” was directed by Asif Kapadia, written and produced by Manish Pandey.

  6. In case anyone’s wondering, the car isn’t an actual one. Look closely, and you’ll notice.

    COTD has an interesting point.

  7. Imagine Helmut Marko showing you the dummy that was hung up there in memory of Max’s successes – and then it’s an RB6.

    1. I wonder when they erased the 5 and replaced it with a 33?

      1. Can’t be long as it appears to be the 2020 livery, it’s not only the number. And I was wrong, it’s actually an RB5 dummy.

  8. McLaren is such a wokish & virtue signaling propaganda machine, sickening to see this once great organization being taken over by the “one-thought-only-is-permited” machine. Aston Martin and Williams are equally wokish entities as well…
    That said, improving diversity in F1 is a definitely a very commendable effort. Just do it, don’t advertise it.

    “We are bored as one”

    1. @gpwaon20 I take it you didn’t follow McLaren during the Ron Dennis years then? If ever there was a tyrant in charge of an operation… Ron’s way or no way (which brought them much success by the way).

      I take it you are unwokish (whatever that means, but assuming it’s the opposite of the equally incomprehensible wokish thing you seem to use to hold yourself up with?)

      1. @psynrg

        Tyranny and wokeness go hand in hand, so I don’t see how Dennis being (allegedly) a tyrant is inconsistent.

    2. They are based in Woking after all…😉

      1. @spencer Wish that had occurred to me! 🤣

    3. Agreed, it is tiresome and is turning off fans. Concentrate on sport and excellence, leave politics out of it.

  9. Southwell’s woke round-up

  10. Exactly what F1 needs! A documentary about the man who made F1 what it is! Let’s hope it will be released during Bernie’s life… But from my side can’t wait :)

  11. It’s hard to keep up with the woke messaging. Is there no more significant oppression of gays and should they not worry about coming out of the closet? Or is there significant and systemic oppression of gays?

    Or does the message just change depending on what the goal is, without any consistency?

    (rhetorical question, btw…)

  12. We have to prove that we’re just as good as men are,’ Visser says. ‘It’s a pity that we always have to demonstrate our ability to race. If we do well, then they often say that it’s just luck.

    Indeed, no one ever questions male racing drivers. Just look at how nothing negative is ever said on this board about Lewis or Max. It’s just female racing drivers that get criticism.

    Or…could it be that acceptance of criticism of women is less accepted, including by themselves? Note that these is strong scientific evidence for this, as women score higher on neuroticism on average. Of course, if you present it in a misandrist way (men are bad for being stoic), then woke people tend to agree with this anyway.

Comments are closed.