Korean GP

Mallya forced to relinquish Control, Ecclestone U-turn, Tooned Cancelled, Sky F1 reporting gets even worse

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London GP: Ecclestone says the race is off that was never on. London – city or Olympic Park http://www.cityam.com/sport/central-london-grand-prix-says-ecclestone. I love how he then goes to great lengths to explain why it would be cost efficient and a great idea though. Maybe this undying enthusiasm for pointless ideas and lost causes is how Mokpo not Seoul ended up with the Korean GP (South Korea, Ecclestone and The Emporer’s New Clothes)

Tooned: is cancelled due to Lewis leaving the team – so for the rest of this year at least. Would love to see it return with Jenson and Perez next year. Perez character could be based on being a relative of my childhood favourite cartoon, Speedy Gonzales, a very very fast mexican mouse. For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure…(YouTube). If you enjoyed that and want a free box set worth of them…(YouTube). More importantly Tooned is a way of attracting kids interest in F1 and was a good idea. I think they should just do a best mates breakup story about Lewis and Jenson anyway. My best mate aged 22 didn’t speak to me for a year – its life.

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Massa honoured as Buddh InternationaI Circuit (BIC) name a kerb after him

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It appears Felipe Massa had an impact on the BIC, beyond anything he could have imagines when he retired from the inaugural 2011 Indian GP with broken left suspension after hitting a kerb. Some drivers have corners or grandstands named after them but it appears the first kerb in F1 to be named will be the new ‘Massa kerb’ at turn 8, says the BIC.

Its fascinating when F1 returns to a new circuit for the first time following its inaugural event. All kinds of snagging is required after the first race and no wonder when the entire facility is often only finally completed a couple of weeks before the F1 circus arrives.

Korea was no exception. The pit lane entrance and exit were so badly conceived by Tilke that for year 2 the FIA took an unprecidented step by deploying a set of traffic lights at the exit of the pit lane to prevent cars re-joining the track in the path of others approaching turn 1 at high-speed. The pit lane entrance was also redesigned because the final turn was a blind apex, taken flat out but the problem was the drivers couldn’t see in advance those cars slowing to enter the pit lane – a highly dangerous situation. For year 2 the entrance was moved but even this wasn’t sufficient and prior to this years event the final corner was flattened to give better visibility for the drivers as the entered the curve.

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Monday Post Korea Blues: Mercedes woeful slide continues, BBC story panics Red Bull and more…

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Funny how from week to week the Monday morning feeling following and F1 weekend can be quite different. With Japan and Korea being back to back the contrast is stark. Last Monday, I was still buzzing from the Japanese GP. not that the battle for the win was great, but there was a lot of good racing down the pack, the fans were amazing, Kamui getting his podium at last before he loses his F1 seat, Grosjean’s latest incident…lots of stuff to think about and write about.

Today…Zzz…I’m struggling. Part of the reason is I think my post race thoughts posted yesterday for Korea was more comprehensive than the one from Japan, so there are fewer loose ends to tie up today. Another the reason is that the F1 circus is battling its way back from the remote part of S. Korea and today is a quiet news days. Any way let’s see what’s going on.

BBC – Old News and Wrong News

You can spot quiet news days, for example, today the BBC F1 story is a re-hash of something we have known about for months – Vettel/Ferrari possibly/maybe 2014. Even so, someone at Red Bull just told me the team have been forced into action and brought forward their post race debrief from Tuesday to today 3:30pm – to quash the rumours.

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Korea GP review: Alonso and Kobayashi know the game is up. More poor marshalling ruins the race

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The rather limp wristed waft of the chequered flag by Psy, of “Gangnam Style” fame, probably encapsulated the event that was the 2012 Korean GP.

The headlines are, Vettel takes the lead in driver’s WDC from Alonso for the first time since Valencia, and Red Bull extend their lead in the constructors’ table, with Ferrari significantly overtaking McLaren for 2nd place.

Marshalling ruins another race

As I suggested following Singapore, the marshalling of the event had a significant impact today and  robbed us of what could have been a very exciting race. How it took until lap 10 to move Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes is beyond me, particularly when considering where it was. Races with high tyre wear are often fascinating in strategy and can produce exciting finishes. By lap 2 when the DRS was available, the cars were still tightly bunched any number of drivers may have been able to have a go at Vettel and a number of position interchanges would have occurred.

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S. Korea, Ecclestone and the Emperor’s new clothes

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The Korean GP is held at the Korea International Circuit is a 5.62 km (3.49 mi) Herman Tilke designed circuit located near the port city of Mokpo. It is estimasted the cost of building the 135,000 capacity facility (including Tilke’s fee) was around $264 million (250 billion won). The promoters of the race are Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO – a joint venture between the mysterious M-Bridge Holdings and Jeollanam-do regional government) and the inaugural race in 2010 was close to being called off due to delays in construction. 

Crowds in the past 2 years at the Korean Grand Prix have hardly been significant in their absence. Empty grandstands and comments about no atmosphere at the circuit from TV reporters hardly substantiate the organisers claim to have sold 85,000 tickets last year. Even if we believe this exaggerated figure when compared to the venue’s 135,000 capacity, this indifference from the Korean public is not really helping the organisers financial woes. The Korean Times in its article “is it worth the tax payers money” tells us the local government will lose $60m every time they hold the race.

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Ecclestone to load a mountain of debt on F1.

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It’s not possible to in a single article convey the mess that is F1 and its financial arrangements, and I’m not feeling inclined to write a book. Yet there are severe storm clouds on the horizon for F1 and it appears the governing body and the teams are oblivious to this.

The Korean Times reports the organisers’ of the F1 race are facing again huge losses. It is claimed they have avoided the contractual 10% escalation in fee from last year but still have a total budget of $67.5m to find.

The national government picks up about $5m and the rest is shouldered by the South Jeolla provincial government. Of course there is the ticket receipts, but the event has not been a raging success with mass crowds attending. The losses the provincial government has had to fund are 2010 $65m and in 2011 $54m. With a contract to 2016, local commentators are not sure they will be able to fulfill this commitment.

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