Red Bull F1 Archives - Page 2 of 2

Stewards “fiddle while Rome burns”, Mercedes up budget for 2013 by 50m euros, Alonso ‘perfect’ qualifying, Ecclestone calls for F1 personnel to snitch on their own teams, Murdoch wants to own F1

November 5, 2012 at 1:41 amNovember 3, 2012 at 5:09 pm by The Judge

Red Bull mislead FIA: It appears from the statement released by the FIA, that Red Bull may have initially tried to mislead the stewards. The statement says, “The stewards heard from the team representatives and the driver and studied the telemetry evidence that showed the reason why the car was stopped. The stewards accepted the explanation and considered the incident as being a case of force majeure.”

“However a report was received from the technical delegate that showed during post qualifying scrutineering an insufficient quantity of fuel for sampling purposes.”

Naughty naughty

Indian GP Review: Newey to Ferrari? Less races for Europe? Bernie’s birthday bash, Alonso’s dig at Vettel

April 24, 2015 at 9:52 pmOctober 29, 2012 at 12:36 am by The Judge

The news stories together with post race thoughts following the interviews. First some news…

Less races for Europe: Whilst Bernie is usually newsworthy and highly entertaining, he is either actually becoming senile – or I am just sick and tired of his monotonous monologue on a certain subject. The race calendar and new circuits. We were told in an interview on SKY that Europe will be losing another 3 races on Friday, and then on Sunday according to Mr. E France and the Paul Ricard is close a 7 year deal.

Then after Nurburgring telling us they have a contract for an extended race deal, Ecclestone contradicts this, “Yes, there are negotiations with Hockenheim about the race in 2013,” (Wirtschaftswoch).

I’m getting really bored with the silly track in/out game.

Bernie’s birthday bash: There was an unassuming gathering for champagne at breakfast on race day. Most team principals were there but only 2 drivers popped in – Grosjean and Hamilton.

Resource Restriction ‘Agreement’ – You’ve got to be joking

October 25, 2012 at 12:28 am by The Judge

Try and find the RRA?

What is the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA)? Try Googling it, try searching the mainstream F1 media sites, try Wikipedia, try even asking senior team F1 personnel. There’s plenty of articles to be found where F1 people are for it, against it and mostly there is an agreement that costs should be controlled. Yet there is nothing out there that defines the scope of the RRA.

Formula 1 has in the past been most profligate in the area of spending. Rumours have it that Ferrari in their dominant era were spending $100m a year on tyres that were bullet proof. Honda allegedly spent $1bn during 2008 on the present car and the design of the 2009 car. Ironically following Honda’s last minute withdrawal from the sport at the end of 2008, the car they had designed for 2009 won both WDC and WCC titles under the badge of Brawn GP.

At the other end of the spectrum teams have regularly run out of money and ceased to exist and even more that sell out and change their names due to funding problems. In the last 10 years alone, these teams have gone from the Sport: Jordan, BAR, Renault, Jaguar, Arrows, Minardi, Toyota, Honda, BMW-Sauber, Midland, Super Aguri, Spyker, Brawn and Virgin. So the casualty rate is high, and its mostly to do with a lack of funding.

BIC promoters only expecting half a crowd, Kingfisher employees to disrupt F1, Discord not Concorde in Paris, 1st Lap of COTA more F1 News

April 12, 2015 at 10:07 pmOctober 22, 2012 at 9:16 am by The Judge

FIA meeting today: Press release 18:05 GMT – “During a constructive meeting, Jean Todt, the FIA President, in co-operation with Bernie Ecclestone, the Commercial Rights Holder, has presented to all F1 Team Principals the new structure of governance, including the new conditions of entry for the Concorde Agreement, starting in 2013. All the participants in the meeting were encouraged to seek clarification which resulted in a fruitful and helpful debate on how the new structure would operate in 2013 and beyond. A further important step has been achieved today to secure the future of the F1 World Championship which should lead to a final settlement to be reached between the FIA, the Commercial Rights Holder and the Teams in the coming weeks. (FIA.com)

On the agenda. The FIA is insisting on only 6 teams, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Lotus to be part of the F1 Commision going forward. There were clarifications requested by the teams on the definition of customer cars and particularly the provision of 2014 engines. Renault has refused to increase the number of customers it supplies engines and with Cosworth up for sale this leaves Marrusia and HRT possibly without engines. Renault are objecting to the lack of competitiveness of these teams car designs, saying it is bad for their brand. A solution mooted is for them to buy a customer car from a larger team and then have an engine supplied.

Hamilton: The tipping point for Whitmarsh

March 2, 2016 at 9:37 pmOctober 1, 2012 at 2:53 pm by The Judge

It appears Martin Whitmarsh days may be numbered as Team Principle of McLaren Racing.

First a brief background of Martin and McLaren: He studied at Portsmouth Polytechnic attaining a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He joined British Aerospace and in his 9 years there, he had been promoted to Head of Manufacturing for the Hawk and Harrier airframes having a specialism in advanced composite materials.

He joined McLaren in 1989 as Head of Operations. On March 1^st 2009, he assumed the role Head of McLaren Racing, when Ron Dennis stepped down to concentrate on developing McLaren automotive, the road car division.

Each of the 3 previous years under Whitmarsh, McLaren have trailed home Red Bull in the constructor’s championship. And whilst having built a reputation for being the best team during the season to advance their F1 car development, have also failed to deliver a World Driver’s Title in this period.

Whitmarsh clearly set his stall out to retain Lewis as a driver for the team at all costs to himself, but it seems obvious that he on Dennis were not on the same page (link to prev article). The whole twittergate and telemetry saga was quite ridiculous. I’m all for freedom in the social media of F1 personnel and with regards to the previous “WTF?” Lewis tweet – who cares?

The telemetry tweet was a completely different matter, a most serious breach of conduct imaginable. Lewis was criticising his own teams’ judgement call in public as well as embarrassing he whole team by publishing confidential internal documents. Ask any one of the senior team members how much they enjoyed the flood of fun poking taking texts they received from t other teams following Lewis’ action.

Yet Whitmarsh took no action. All we had was a slightly embarrassed, “we asked him to take that one down” comment and nothing else. No reprimand, no fine and I don’t think we even heard Lewis apologise in public for the very public embarrassment he caused.