Probably much to Bernie Ecclestone’s displeasure, both Manor F1 drivers have been given permission to race in the 2015 Malaysia GP by the FIA race stewards, which include the no nonsense Mick Doohan this weekend.
Ecclestone yesterday described the team as a “disgrace” and said they should have been “thrown out” of Formula One.
Will Stevens’ car never made it out on track during qualifying, as the team battled in vain to fix a fuel pressure issue before the end of Q1.
Roberto Mehri missed the 107% cut by 0.4 seconds, though Graham Lowden was bullish that the progression in lap times would convince the stewards to allow Manor into the race.
After the debacle of Australia, where just 15 cars made it to the grid and by the end of lap 2 just 13 remained, the FIA will be keen to give the fans a spectacle at the start of the race.
Romain Grosjean was invited to explain his actions as he apparently jumped the queue of cars awaiting the green light for the start of Q2. He has been moved back two places for tomorrow’s grid to 10th, for a ‘pit lane infraction’.
F1 lost 200 million viewers within a year or two Bernie; when are you going to be thrown out of the sport? Manor is doing what it can with no money, what are you actually doing with boatloads of it?
Off topic, but Judge, could you put a countdown clock for sessions and the race, as well as a time zone converter, up where you have the ‘3 Days to Race’ displayed? That would be very helpful to we who live elsewhere than England.
I have the next race countdown widget from jimsoft on my phone. Check it out!
Good idea. BadgerGP does the same on their app and is very useful, along with the times it starts on TV.
Not only a proper countdown for *all* sessions (the current countdown on TJ13 still displays 1h till Malaysian GP…), but also a Season schedule. Basically, all those bells and whistles that still make me troll autosport.com/f1 from time to time, but really should be available on TJ13.
So, in what seems the last effort of F1 management to expulse yet more audience from the screens of TV channels that are paying a zillion quids for the privilege of broadcasting the races, now we cannot even see the times charts during qualy broadcasts.
There you have it… a business firm offering less and less value to their customers every year. Astonishingly.
@regis said:“now we cannot even see the times charts during qualy broadcasts”
I agree that F1 in general is on a downward trend. Are you talking about todays broadcast? Commentators mentioned that the world feed was having a problem with timing data.
Sorry for not being clear: I am talking spanish TV Antena 3. Normally we see the times of the 10 first drivers being updated when they cross the line. Today we did not. Makes not much sense to watch a qualifying if you cannot see what’s happening.
Doesn’t matter wich channel. It’s a world feed. And they did mention to have problems with it.
they really need to offer the Sky broadcast as part of their app. Then they would see some traction.
The F1 app? I’d buy that if it included the stream.
re: Manor, Justin King, Bernie.
Just musing. No wonder Bernie is annoyed. Prior to joining the Manor board, Justin King had little experience of the business of F1, even though he was being touted for great things. Now he is learning really quickly from the inside, JK becomes a more realistic prospect for Bernie’s job.
I would think that Bernie would be doing everything that he could to save the sport that provides his income.
The toad is too old to care about these things, and too rich to need any income. At this point he does things for the fun of it, and for experiencing and having power over others…
If there is one thing that Bernard knows, it’s power struggles…