The F1 thread.

And Rave's father owns a pub.

Actually, that's my one failing.

It's not my fault.

Ravenstone wrote:

Well, final race of the season. I didn't manage to do much except watch snippets, as I was busy cooking this afternoon (I know - it's hard to believe, isn't it? All this. and a domestic goddess. 'Imself is such a lucky, lucky bastard ;) ).

Two whisky cakes, if anyone was interested.

Anyway, I find it difficult to believe there was really anything wrong with Vettel's gearbox. You can't tell me those clever boffins as Red Bull (with Adrian Newey, no less) can't make computers flag up problems that don't exist. And Webber seemed distinctly underwhelmed by his win.

Schumacher needs a lot of good luck to get him through customs tonight. Him and Alex Wurst. Not only does he have a coming together with a Brazilian racing driver, but he has to do it at the Brazil Grand Prix, and with Bruno Senna of all people. Unforgivable. It looked like a fairly straightforward racing incident to me, but Wurz was on the panel that gave Senna a drive-through, so his name will be on the customs officials lists tonight.

Two full body cavity searches there, I reckon.

Beautiful smooth driving from Jenson again. When he's in the zone, he's fan-bloody-tastic.

I hope Barrichello doesn't retire. I'll miss him.

So that's it until March 2013. Bugger....

Thanks Rave. Another excellent race summary. I won't waste time studying the drab old Reutes summaries.

tiffanywint wrote:

Thanks Rave. Another excellent race summary. I won't waste time studying the drab old Reutes summaries.

I wonder if I could manage to prostitute myself enough to work for Sky commentating on the F1?

Well, if there's enough zeros at the end of the cheque, I suppose I might think about it. After all, they may buy my talent, but not my soul, eh? ;)

Plus it would be worth it to wander down the pit lane and tell a few home truths.... :D

"So - Panzer Michael...... " :D

I was going to use this post to comment on Raikkonen's comeback … but halfway through typing it, I lost my motivation for it.

I'm looking forward to it. Finns being generally good for racing.

I liked him.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I was going to use this post to comment on Raikkonen's comeback … but halfway through typing it, I lost my motivation for it.

As he has.......

A big mistake in my opinion. It's not good for the sport to recycle its garbage. Raikonen is bored. He claims he'd missed the challenge of racing against others rather than against a stopwatch. I say that's just PR. I think that when he realised that WRC was no longer a place for him(after the crashes, the I-don't-travel-abroad-to-race attitude) he thought "Hey where it'd be easy for me to kill my time?" Everybody welcomed the idea of a six-world champions grid and the rest is on the papers.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I was going to use this post to comment on Raikkonen's comeback … but halfway through typing it, I lost my motivation for it.

I guess it's happened before

Lauda came back
Prost took a year off
Schumacher
but they were "legend" status drivers and very politicaly connected individuals

did Mika Hakkonen ever try to come back?

Wasn't Raikkonen more or less forced out of F1 by his Ferrari contract? He couldn't drive for anyone else; they refused to release him from his contract; and they wouldn't let him race?

Besides, he did tell Schumacher to fuck off. ;)

It was a shame his world championship was over-shadowed by Alonso and Hamilton behaving like spoiled toddlers and throwing their toys out of the pram at every available opportunity.

Ravenstone wrote:

Wasn't Raikkonen more or less forced out of F1 by his Ferrari contract? He couldn't drive for anyone else; they refused to release him from his contract; and they wouldn't let him race?

Raikkonen was bought out of his contract by Ferrari and Santander. As a condition of him accepting the money, he was "encouraged" to exit the sport. Ferrari do this with almost all of their departing teaam members - they basically pay them to take an extended holiday so that they cannot take any knowledge of the team's development to another year. Look at Pedro de la Rosa; he tested with McLaren in 2009, and joined Sauber in 2010. Sauber were the first team to introduce a passive F-duct (an active F-duct was impossible, because it passed through the survival cell, which could not be altered) - they beat everyone else by months. Although Raikkonen was said to be in talks with several teams for a 2010 start, he had an extensive list of demands, and the negotations fell apart very quickly. The cynic in me thinks he might have done this to make it look like he was not simply taking the Ferrari/Santander money and leaving the sport

Interesting!

It gets even more so: Romain Grosjean has replaced Vitaly Petrov at Renault. I suspect that he was drafted in because Kimi Raikkonen is already in the team; if Petrov were staying and there was one vacant seat, then I doubt Grosjean would take it. Grosjean is managed by Eric Boullier, Renault's team principal, and Boullier has been lobbying for a French driver for a while now. Raikkonen is going to have to overcome several hurdles in 2012, chief among them the Pirelli tyres. As we've seen from Schumacher, it can be dificult to come to terms with them. However, Romain Grosjean already has experience with the Pirellis, since GP2 used them this year. I suspect the early races could see Grosjean being very close to his highly-favoured team-mate, making him look better than he might actually be and make a "name" out of Grosjean. So I think this is the latest in a string of mistakes from Eric Boullier. I’m not saying that because I’m a Petrov fan – looking back on some of Boullier’s decisions, I think a split was the best thing for Petrov.

- Neither Kimi Raikkonen nor Romain Grosjean bring sponsors to the team. Raikkonen was also said to be asking for a $12 million salary for 2012. Petrov, on the other hand, had $15 million in sponsors to his name. Boullier has left the team some $30 million out of pocket, nearly a quarter of the team’s 2011 budget.
- The team has a close association with Dany Bahar, who was perhaps the most-hated man in Formula 1 after the war of words with Tony Fernandes, a legnthy and pointless court case, and the general attitude up and down pit lane. Most people think that Bahar’s plan to sponsor racing teams is only a good idea if his ultimate aim is to send Lotus into receivership.
- Boullier dropped Nick Heidfeld in the middle of the season in favour of Bruno Senna. In retrospect, this was a mistake because Senna under-performed and Heidfeld could have aided in development of the R31.
- Speaking of the R31, the car itself was dismal. Renault started the season as the most promising team with two podiums to their name. They finished it with just one point in four races.
- The team’s internal finances are a mess. Genii bought the team with a host of loans, and the Malaysian government suspended Lotus’ payments to the team because they did not like the way taxpayer funds were being used to pay off a debt to a Lithuanian bank. While we’re on the subject of that Lithuanian bank, its directors have just been arrested on fraud and embezzlement charges.
- Vitaly Petrov’s contract forbade him from speaking out against the team. I’m willing to bet that Heidfeld and Senna had similar arrangements in place. I can understand a team not wanting their drivers to bad-mouth them at every turn, but most drivers have the ability to call for change if change is necessary. Renault’s drivers weren’t even allowed to do that because of a totalitarian contract.

I see Renault are fast haeding towards the bad old days of Flavio Briatore. Ironically enough, Boullier was brought into the team when Renault wanted to distance themselves from Flav.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I reckon it's a career-ender. For both of them.

Anyway, Vitaly Petrov's girlfriend reckons there will be an annoucement from Marussia on Friday about Petrov. Even weirder are reports out of Russia that suggest Petrov will join McLaren and replace one of their drivers mid-season (implied to be Hamilton).

Hope not. I think the Button/Hamilton pairing works very well. They're well-matched.

Any more news about Kubica?

Only that he won't be starting the season. Eric Boullier has said that if he feels ready to race, then the team will make a seat available to him, even if it is in the middle of the season. Until then, there is a spare testing chassis (probably an R30) waiting for him.

Buemi and Alguersuari are out of Toro Rosso. Ricicardo and Vergne are in.

And here we were, thinking we'd have a nice, easy silly season for once ...

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

I reckon it's a career-ender. For both of them.

Anyway, Vitaly Petrov's girlfriend reckons there will be an annoucement from Marussia on Friday about Petrov. Even weirder are reports out of Russia that suggest Petrov will join McLaren and replace one of their drivers mid-season (implied to be Hamilton).

That's the worst rumour I've heard in a long time. It seems that people in Russia are thinking of everything to get their paid-driver back on play. Pathetic. He had two seasons with his highlight being his 6th place last season in Abu Dhabi that costed Alonso the championship. I say that's more than enough to give him the boot. Grosjean has much more to offer.

Sutil is out of Force India (he's been with the team longer than Vijay Mallya has!), with Hulkenberg alongside di Resta. That, I think, was a mistake - I don't see very much in Hulkenberg. All anyone can ever remember is his pole in Brazil, but that came in variable conditions. Otherwise, he had a habit of finishing lower than he started, and was consistently the worst driver off the start line.

Aris wrote:

He had two seasons with his highlight being his 6th place last season in Abu Dhabi that costed Alonso the championship.

And a podium finish in Australia. Once again fending of Fred.

I never thought there was much to the Petrov-to-McLaren rumour. I just posted it because I thought it was funny. I daresay he'll wind up at HRT or Williams next year, especially if the Venezuelan congress pulls Maldonado's backing.

Adrian sutil will face a German court later this month, charged with assault occasionaing grievous bodily harm for the incident with Eric Lux in Shanghai's M1NT club last year. If convicted, he faces the possibility of a one-year prison sentence and a possible ban on entering China. His superlicence would likely be revoked.

With Sutil in court, Bruno Senna has been tipped as the favourite for the second Williams seat, though Rubens Barrichello remains hopeful. Jerome d'Ambrosio's manager has also said that he is in contention for a seat, and that Sutil is their "only real" competition for it.

HRT have said that it is unlikely that they will take a Spanish driver for 2012. Several drivers - including Jaime Algeursuari and Vitaly Petrov - are believed to have been approached, but all have turned the team down. Right now, Giedo van der Garde seems to be the favourite to join, and an announcement could be made as early as this week.

Vitaly Petrov is also believed to be lining up a seat at Caterham, replacing Jarno Trulli. The team's unofficial Twitter feed has reported as much, though I cannot determine how reliable that feed is. However, the popular consensus is that an annoucement about his future will be made on or before this coming Friday.

Bruno Senna has joined Williams.

They are no longer recogniseable as the team that won 9 WCC, 7 WDC and 113 Grand Prix.

A couple of changes since I last posted: Narain Karthikeyan has taken the second seat at HRT, whilst Vitaly Petrov has replaced Jarno Trulli at Caterham. This means that when the cars arrive in Melbourne in a month, it will be the first time since the 1973 German Grand Prix that no Italian driver has taken part in a race (Lavaggi was at the 1996 Japanese Grand Prix, but took part in qualifying).

Well, Formula One cars continue to get uglier every year, I hate those funny little step / bumps that have appeared on the nose this year

However I can't complain about the racing, with a different winner every week, it takes me back to the 70s and 80s

At least the McLaren's managed to avoid the ugly stepped nose.

I do wonder what name Vettel has given his car this year.

And I agree - it's great seeing a new winner every race. I love seeing Raikkonen back - always one of my favourites. Takes no shit from anyone. And blimey hasn't he made a comeback! And with a new team as well. Amazing.

Massa continues to be a moving chicane though. I really hope Ferrari dump him. He can't get close to Alonso, so he utterly useless in terms of a backup. Not that I'm fond of Ferrari, though - can't stand the scarlet s***s - but it's a waste of a ride.