Red Bull

Alguesuari to get nod from Force India, Renault: Renault blame RB over fuel, Nicole up’s the pressure on Lewis, India voted 2nd worst race of the year

by

FIA to stamp out bad language: La Stampa reports the FIA are looking at sanctions for this behaviour. This follows the podium misdemeanours on Sunday and the revelations that teams use bad language in radio transmissions to prevent FOM TV transmitting them – thus keeping them secret.

The paper doesn’t tell us what is proposed, but its likely to be fines rather than grid penalties or points deductions.

Bahrain strips opposition of nationality: The Bahraini authorities today stripped 31 opposition figures of their Bahraini nationality in a move described by Amnesty International as “frightening and chilling”.

Read more

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

by

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.

Read more

Ferrari in for Lewis Hamilton

by

Ok. This may seem a bit out there, but I’ve heard a couple of whispers tonight that Ferrari and Lewis are having a conversation.

This of course goes against how we believe Ferrari operates. They predominantly [not always] have had a number 1 and number 2 driver and clearly Lewis would never accept being a number 2 to Fernando. So would Ferrari change their historic approach and have (at the start of the season at least) 2 equal drivers?

On the con side of the debate, McLaren and Lewis are still making noises about staying together, but they are starting to sound like a couple whose relationship has run stale and are about to break up. Really, it’s not that hard to agree terms that have publicly been on the table for many weeks – and we were led to believe by Lewis this would all be dealt with and put to bed during the Summer break.

So the fact that McLaren and Lewis have not yet done the deal adds credence to the view that they are too far apart in negotiations to get over the line. I’ve pointed out in earlier articles how aggressive McLaren and Ron Dennis have been in staking out the ground that Lewis is going to have to take a pay cut. It’s feels like it’s become too personal.

Read more