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Below are headlines of stories over the past couple of days
Mercedes confirms Alonso is plan B to F1 champion Hamilton for 2016
Bottas to stay at Williams – for the long haul
2015 Calendar According to Maurice Hamilton
Formula E Driver tests positive for a variant of Cocaine
Mercedes confirms Alonso is plan B to F1 champion Hamilton for 2016
With the 2015 season yet to start it appears the “off” season has allowed some people to think… Yesterday Autosport published a story stating Toto Wolf said Alonso would be their primary target should they not be able to get Hamilton to extend his current contract, due to expire at the end of the 2015 season.
Second on Wolf’s shopping list, in the event that Alonso is not interested/available (delete as applicable), is the young Valtteri Bottas. This would come as no surprise to the TJ13 jury as we all know the Fin is managed by Wolf.
The key question here though is why make a statement like that over your current World Drivers Champion?
Read the full Autosport article here.
Bottas to stay at Williams – for the long haul
AS was to be expected, Claire Williams quickly rebuffed claims that they may lose Bottas. Speaking to Autosport Claire said Bottas had no reason to leave Williams as they provide him with a competitive car.
“And why would he want to leave when we have a competitive car [and] he knows the plans we have for the future success he can achieve with Williams?
“It’s not like we’re fifth or sixth in the championship. Why would he go to another team when we’re able to provide him with the car he needs in order to win? Why would he go elsewhere?”
She does acknowledge that the lure of Ferrari may prove too much for the young Fin’s loyalty to the team however, for now Claire believes they are committed to each other…
Gushing Claire says “We’re so lucky with our driver line-up. We’ve got one of the best driver pairings on the grid, I’d suggest.”
Read the full Autosport article here.
2015 Calendar According to Maurice Hamilton
Every year, as the new Formula 1 season gears up, we normally get the same kind of statements from the team bosses… things like ‘This year we are confident we have learnt from last year’s failures and we will be stronger this year’ to ‘We have great partners, our finances are in order for a competitive season’ etc.
Well over at ESPN F1 Maurice Hamilton has compiled a calendar for 2015, taking a more wry look at how the season will unfold.. it’s a good laugh!
Read the full article on ESPN F1 here.
Formula E Driver tests positive for a variant of Cocaine
How exciting is Formula E races to take part in? Here at the TJ13 towers we are still in discussion if it’s really worth watching however if driver behaviour is anything to go by, the cars may need some tweaking to be more exhilarating to drive.
Former Formula 1 driver, Franck Montagny, tested positive for the use of a cocaine derivative. Competing for Andretti Autosport during the second round of the Formula E Championship, Montagny was tested prior to the race.
While he was enjoying the ride (not sure which one that was) tests were done on the sample he provided. Montagny states, “At the end of the race, I see the guy who tests signalling me. There, in my head, I understood immediately. I knew it was dead.”
While Montagny is fearing a lifetime ban for using a banned substance we are left to ponder on the question; if motorsport bans athletes for life when using a banned substance, should other sports follow suit?
Read the full Autosport article here.
Button off the market
And, Buton get’s hitched. While the rest of the world celebrated the end of 2014 and the beginning of a new year Button did it in style when he wedded long time fiancé Jessica Michibata in Hawaii.
For pictures and more on the Mirror click here.
Guess someone’s still hungover from all the New Years celebration, today is Friday Jan 2nd…. 🙂
Oh Fortis, don’t complain! Off now, go design your 2015 t-shirt: is it L3wis or LewIIIs?
what Hamfosi delight can we come up with this year @fortis96? 😉
It was John who came up with it on one of the podcast. So i can’t take credit for that.
I think TJ13 should bring out a couple of shirts… not necessarily with Hamilton on it but witty quotes from the guys could be ace??
Wasn’t a complaint, just pointed out an error.
Sorry Fortis. Just meant to poke a little fun at the Hamilton t-shirt picture of you I saw a couple days ago. And a Vettel shirt of mine!
The Maurice Hamilton piece on ESPN is super funny. I stumbled on it last night, it sort of sums up F1 perfectly.
“McLaren confirm Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen were driving for team in 2014.” made me almost spray my beer into my monitor.
Here’s the actual link to the cocaine story….
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117253?source=mostpopular
Lifetime ban seems a bit excessive to me.
A bit farcical.. wasn’t there a suggestion that coffee would be a legal performance enhancer? But I wouldn’t put anything past the FIA!
Coffee is classed as a stimulant and is acceptable in all sporting arenas, it’s not a performance enhancer.
Yet weed is forbidden when it does anything but enhance performance. And if one drinks to much green tea they might think you are positive because it covers up some sorts of drugs…
Teams are now allowed to develop their engines throughout the season, after the FIA admitted to the loophole within the regulations… However development is still not allowed beyond the 32 tokens…
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/117259
You would have thought they’d have put in a definitive date for the power trains to be set in stone. Perhaps this is why Honda’s not really committed to anything in terms of opening up the development on the power trains so far.
I’m not sure I understand the benefit (but then I’m not an F1 engineer).
All this does is lengthen the development cycle which means that, while the manufacturers have longer to design the new, go-faster bits, they also have to use the old, go-slower bits for longer.
It seems to send an unfortunate message that Ferrari and Renault aren’t good enough to produce improvements with 48% of the engine within the space of a year. Which rather highlights why they are behind to begin with………
Good point. I think what it allows is instead of having to rush through their upgrades they can refine them a bit better before introduction. I think the benefits are that when the changes are introduced they are much more effective, if they had rushed them through and the changes are no giving their peak performance then it’s kind of waisted tokens, they want to get the biggest bang for each token they spend, I would imagine most of the manufacturers will use their tokens up in the 1st quarter or third of the season, otherwise running a low spec engine for too long kills any gains through bad results.
Just means they can take more time developing the new parts and test them on the dyno to make sure they work as expected before they go into a PU that actually races. Or they’ll be sneaky and run them in specially modified sports cars….. I suspect Ferrari and Renault will upgrade the critical parts of the PU and then spend the rest of the season refining the other parts to gain performance.
Of course this is likely to be a boon for Honda, they don’t have to spend an entire season developing new parts but not being able to introduce them until the following year. And it will likely mean Mercedes gains even more. There’s nothing quite like an Engine Development War.
What the article stated was that Honda would NOT be able to upgrade during their first season, as engine manufacturers were not allowed to this year. This is mentioned with the comment that it is only fair that Honda face the same first year constraints all the teams did in 2014, i.e. homologation of the engine by February 28, 2015, and no upgrades during the season.
We shall just have to wait and see if Honda developing it’s power train outside of the sports restrictions pays off. Anyway If Mercedes make another leap forward, then I suspect Honda, Renault and Ferrari will likely try and get the rules changed. Depends on how they perform. So far it seems Honda is not really concerned with the rules, it’s more about making the power train reliable. If you believe Ron it’s got plenty of power.
Any word on what exactly was the cocaine derivative? Cocaine is cocaine is cocaine. It’s a plant based drug. Methamphetamine is quite the opposite. Just curious, in my profession there are a lot of false positives in the stimulant category for illicit drugs from over the counter medications and supplements such as energy pills and weight loss pills.
but he more or less admitted that he took something.