In the round-up: Red Bull team principal Christian Horner downplayed the impact of chief technical officer Adrian Newey’s recent absence due to injury.
In brief
Newey in good shape after crash – Horner
Newey rejoined Red Bull’s trackside team two races ago having missed several events after being injured in a cycling accident. Horner downplayed reports elsewhere which claimed Newey’s return was the reason for a sudden improvement in Red Bull’s form.“Things get blown out of proportion sometimes,” said Horner. “Obviously he had an accident whilst he was on holiday and thankfully he’s back, fully fit, has been for a few weeks now. He was in Istanbul and here [in Austin] and is in good shape.”
Davidson announces retirement
Former Formula 1 racer and Mercedes simulator driver Anthony Davidson has announced his intention to retire from motor racing. Davidson has raced in the World Endurance Championship since losing his F1 drive when the Super Aguri team folded in 2008.
“One more to go, which I’ve decided will also be my final race as a professional racing driver,” he told his social media followers. “It’s been an incredible and unforgettable journey and I thank all those involved along the way.”
First F3 test for Van Amersfoort
FIA Formula 3 newcomers Van Amersfoort will participate in their first test alongside their rival teams today at the Ricardo Tormo circuit in Valencia. This year’s runner-up Jack Doohan will drive for them alongside Reece Ushijima and Rafael Villagomez.
Other notable names at the test include Italian Formula 4 champion Ollie Bearman at Prema and Formula Regional Europe champion Gregoire Saucy with ART.
Villeneuve takes first Euro NASCAR win
The final round of the Euro NASCAR season at Vallelunga saw 1997 F1 world champion Jacques Villeneuve claim victory (above). His last win came in the Euro Le Mans Series at Spa in 2008 driving a Peugeot 908 shared with Nicolas Minassian and Marc Gene.
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Social media
Notable posts from Twitter, Instagram and more:
- Find more official F1 accounts to follow in the F1 Twitter Directory
Links
Motor racing links of interest:
F1 Pit Building being converted into medical facility for Covid-19 patients (The Straits Times)
"The F1 pit building has been identified as a suitable temporary venue as it has ready facilities and is not used for F1 race activities this year."
Sorry, but we can’t fix planet just by buying our fruit locally (The Sun)
Jeremy Clarkson: "After the murder of George Floyd, he had Mercedes paint the cars black, he talks about how he’s now green because he sold his jet and has urged everyone to be vegetarian. All this might work well on social media but in the real world, where people live, it doesn’t work at all."
Formula Regional Europe round 20: Monza (Formula Regional Europe via YouTube)
Italian F4 round 21: Monza (Italian F4 via YouTube)
https://www.facebook.com/f4italianchampionship/videos/1946577025516328
We always endeavour to credit original sources. If you have a tip for a link relating to single-seater motorsport to feature in the next RaceFans round-up please send it in via the contact form.
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Comment of the day
Is it too soon to think F1’s popularity in America could sustain a third round of the world championship?
We’re not there yet. I imagine part of the reason for the large crowd at the USGP this year was because people have been locked down for 18 months. And the Miami race has been rumoured for seemingly a decade, fine.
I, for one, think the Miami street and parking lot circuit will be abysmal. Maybe it will be amazing, or just fine. But I think it would be foolhardy to saturate the market with three races when there have been concerns in recent years whether one even made sense anymore.
@Hobo
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to Joe Jones, Rits and Tara!
jd007
1st November 2021, 2:01
Wonder why Davidson quit? I thought he was decent at WEC?
some racing fan
1st November 2021, 10:44
Age, I imagine. As of now he is 42.
Balue (@balue)
1st November 2021, 12:37
I wonder how big of a contribution Davidson’s simulator work has been at Mercedes. Especially this year, I’d’ve thought it was considerable.
Sensord4notbeingafanboi (@peartree)
1st November 2021, 12:52
You’re funny.
reg (@reg)
2nd November 2021, 5:02
I’ll always remember him as the driver that wrecked the GT2 leading Corvette in the Porsche curves
Tristan (@skipgamer)
1st November 2021, 3:18
Jeremy Clarkson is good for one thing. Laughing at…
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
1st November 2021, 11:57
Why, he’s correct of course.
Luca Goodoer
1st November 2021, 11:58
He and The Sun are a match made in heaven
grat
1st November 2021, 14:26
No, unfortunately, far too many people don’t realize that Clarkson is full of it, and treat his drivel as gospel.
Fortunately for Clarkson and his nightmare future, it’ll be up to politicians who are only interested in covering their posteriors and lining their pockets, so society will keep half-assing their approach to climate change until civilization collapses.
The planet will be fine. Humanity will be just another species that drove itself into extinction.
Plossl (@)
1st November 2021, 14:55
How ever bad climate change gets it will not lead to the extinction of the Human race, after the Toba catastrophe around 75,000 years ago the population was around 10,000 and still survived, a future World War or the tinkering of the genetics in food will most likely lead to a close call, but not extinction.
Nature has a way of self regulating the overpopulation of a species as it has done for millions of years-Food shortage and Disease.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
1st November 2021, 21:42
Yeah, it’s certainly pretty to think in such broad general terms, but the devil is in the details. Good luck to you and your in the coming Jackpot!
nelson
2nd November 2021, 5:30
Silver lining huh?
Steve Clark
1st November 2021, 15:14
I gave up on Clarkson and the rest of the crew when he assaulted a staffer and the other two also left the show. He’s in the same file as Bernie for me. His time has come and gone.
Gusmaia
1st November 2021, 4:31
on COTD, besides the fact that US market/audiences seem insatiable to sport/entertainment, one must also consider that any event in the US, particularly in Miami, also captures a marginal audience from South America.
A GP in argentina might not attract americans down there. but a Miami GP is almost a home race for F1fans in argentina, brazil, coloombia. An airplane ticket to Miami can be less expensive than some domestic flights in Brazil.
Yes the race will probably ressemble some of the worst in Sochi, Valencia, but I have no doubt it will make financial sense.
For a country famous for the lack of paid vacations and for the number of worked hours – compared to europe – it is amazing to figure how Americans find time and money to attend/travel to midweek afternoon games.
If Italymcan host twp GPs, definitely a third GP does not saturate US market.
Gusmaia
1st November 2021, 4:45
A bogota miami flight takes 4h. A bogota sao paulo, 6h.
It may makes more sense to a colombian to travel to the miami gp than to the sao paulo gp.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st November 2021, 7:25
@Gusmaia But weekend games in sports are the ones occasionally occurring in the afternoon or earlier.
Overall, your post has some good points, although using Italy having two as an argument for a 3rd USA event is weird.
Aapje (@aapje)
1st November 2021, 7:39
@Gusmaia
Americans having less time off actually means that they have more money to spend on the holidays they do take (and their incomes are higher than those of Europeans anyway, as well as more unequally distributed), so your comment is a bit strange. A GP also runs during the weekend, reducing the amount of required time off.
In general, a GP is a lot more easy to fit in a American schedule than a vacation to Europe or such.
some racing fan
1st November 2021, 10:49
A GP in Brazil or Argentina would not attract Americans to go down there, sadly. A flight to Sao Paulo is 10-11 hours from California or any northeastern part of the US, and a flight to Buenos Aires from any of those parts of the US is around 11-12 hours, and from Miami its minus 2-3 hours. I personally would love to go to Buenos Aires because it seems like one of the world’s great cities, but I personally would not want to spend much time in Sao Paulo- Rio seems more interesting.
Jere (@jerejj)
1st November 2021, 7:26
Sudden form improvement because of a single individual attending?
COTD has a valid point.
some F1 fan
1st November 2021, 10:42
I don’t agree with the COTD. People here in America have been attending live events for sometime now, without masks and unvaccinated- even when COVID was way worse than it is now. Some people in this country just don’t care and/or are not all that smart.
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
1st November 2021, 12:03
Or they recognize that the virus has a very low fatality rate and without certain underlying conditions, has an even lower rate, for those that are healthy. This isn’t Ebola and people learned to act accordingly.
grat
1st November 2021, 14:37
5 million people would like to disagree with you– Unfortunately, they’re dead.
Many of them were very healthy people, without any underlying conditions, who died within a few weeks of contracting the disease.
And then there are the survivors– anyone with severe covid symptoms almost certainly has permanent damage to their lungs (Lewis Hamilton has admitted he’s having a harder time staying in shape since he had covid). And eventually, we might even find out what those long-term changes to the brain’s structure mean (most patients who had severe covid symptoms have permanent changes to their brain according to neuroscientists I work with).
We’re going to be hearing about “long covid” and “covid survivors” for the next few decades.
If people had actually treated this like Ebola (which has killed about 16,000 people), then we wouldn’t have had the delta variant, or it’s offspring, and we’d have all gone back to our former lives. Something which isn’t going to happen, thanks to people like you who refuse to take it seriously.
Robbie (@robbie)
1st November 2021, 15:21
grat Exactly
@jblank It’s not ‘Or’ as you have started your comment. Imho it is a fact that “some people in this country just don’t care and/or are not all that smart.” I will in no way profess that Canada has treated the pandemic perfectly nor the best of all countries, but just for comparisons sake here in Canada we have had approximately 29,000 deaths. That, translated to the U.S. population which is about 9 times greater, should have meant about 261,000 deaths per capita. Instead the death rate sits at 746,000, nearly 3 times higher per capita than Canada. Perhaps you have an explanation other than “people learned to act accordingly?”
Another interesting reality was/is that the US got a big head start on vaccinations, having had supply much sooner and in much greater numbers than here in Canada, so initially it looked like things were going great in the US. However, what became clear was that in the US people who wanted to get vaccinated did so as soon as they could, and then the health care system started running out of people to vaccinate, with supply not being the issue. Here in Canada we got off to a slow start with supply falling quite short of demand, but once supply started to catch up so did of course the number of people vaccinated. As we sit today the US has only 58.4% of it’s population double vaccinated, whereas we in Canada now sit at 74.4%.
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
1st November 2021, 15:25
Sheeple gonna sheep. 0.4% fatality rate boys and girls, 0.4%.
Aapje (@aapje)
1st November 2021, 19:49
@grat
The fatality rate for young, healthy people without any underlying conditions is miniscule. Stop spreading misinformation.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
1st November 2021, 21:46
@jblank Blanky, please keep your death cult ideas to yourself. Literally 1 in 500 American citizens died of Covid-19 and it’s complications. Show some respect.
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
1st November 2021, 22:52
As usual, go f yourself. Believing people have a right to make their own decisions on vaccinations and masking isn’t a “death cult” idea. Freedom still matters and you can support getting vaccinated, as I have and not believe in the hysterical fear spread by the media and the political left.
Jason Blankenship (@jblank)
1st November 2021, 22:54
Oh and the 0.4% is from the NIH directly, so if you don’t wanna “trust the science”, that’s your problem @ferrox-gildeh
George.be
1st November 2021, 22:55
For Belgium the figures are:
0.23% deceased on the total population.
That’s about 2% of the tested positives. Maybe the total positives is 50% higher but that’s still a long way to the 0.4%
Mortality: About 20% are under 60 years, about 14% without underlying conditions. So here you can say, mostly the elderly are affected.
Long Covid patients (with +6 months symptoms): About 15% of all covid patients. No discernible pattern between ages or medical conditions, 35% females, 65% males.
Figures for September and October indicate large infection rates in -20 year olds (100% unvaccinated under 12, 70% partial vaccinated under 18)
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
2nd November 2021, 0:58
@jblank To compare Covid-19 to Ebola is silly, and beside the point. Getting vaccinated and wearing a mask helps yourself, your family and your fellow humans from catching a dangerous sickness. I guess that as long as healthy, young, mostly well-off (lemme guesspeople don’t die of Covid then everything’s okay?
I think that you are looking at the problem in the wrong way, and that real freedom is never free. The reason we have the delta variant is that people didn’t want to sacrifice their convenience for the greater good by getting a needle and wearing a mask and staying away from public gatherings for a while.
Balue (@balue)
1st November 2021, 12:35
Clarkson telling it like it is again
Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
8th November 2021, 0:49
Hardly. It’s nowhere near that extreme. It’s all just misinformed useless waffle for the sake of it. Pointless drivel.
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
2nd November 2021, 1:01
@jblank Oh, I enjoyed your predictably charming rejoinder, as usual.
JMDan (@danmar)
2nd November 2021, 1:58
It’s interesting that people in F1 appear to have more cycling accidents than car accidents. :-)