[F1] Nieuwtjes topic deel #78

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Hakkinen did not call Schumacher 'tragic ex-hero'

Mika Hakkinen has denied calling Michael Schumacher a 'tragic ex-hero' after the newspaper attributing the comments to him apologised.

This week, the Finn was quoted by Munich newspaper TZ as saying Michael Schumacher had made "a ridiculous mistake" at the start of the recent Abu Dhabi Grand Prix and should retire immediately.

TZ has now issued an apology and correction, admitting that the column had not been authorised by double world champion Hakkinen.

"The statements attributed to Mr Hakkinen, particularly in relation to Michael Schumacher, were not true and were not authorised. We regret this and apologise to our readers, to Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher, and as a consequence we are no longer working with the staff member concerned."

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F1: Team Orders To Be Regulated Not Banned - Todt
The FIA will not completely abolish the rule prohibiting team orders in Formula One...
^{SPEED Staff / GMM | Posted November 19, 2010 GMM Newswire}

Team orders will be "regulated" rather than allowed in Formula One, FIA president Jean Todt has revealed.

The issue came back onto the agenda in 2010, when Felipe Massa was ordered aside for Fernando Alonso at Hockenheim by a Ferrari engineer telling the Brazilian: "Fernando is faster than you."

"Personally, I'm not against team orders, but I am against lying," the Frenchman is quoted as saying in interviews this week.

He said covert team orders "deceive the audience and the media" and subsequently require teams and drivers to lie afterwards.

"Team orders have been banned since 2002, but I ask myself how many have been issued in a 'soft' way. The difference with that and what Ferrari did (at Hockenheim) is that it was anything but soft.

"It was a provocation against the regulations," Todt told Italy's La Stampa.

But when asked if the FIA will react to the latest affair by simply abolishing the rule, he answered: "It will be regulated.

"F1 is a team sport and each team will have responsibility for their behavior. We will not tolerate lies or coded messages like 'Save fuel.'"

Fascinatingly, former Ferrari team boss Todt blamed Rubens Barrichello for the original team orders controversy of 2002, when the Brazilian was explicitly ordered on the radio to 'Let Michael (Schumacher) pass for the championship.'

"I shouldn't have had to say anything," Todt said this week.

"We had agreed beforehand that if he (Barrichello) is in front after the pit stop, he was to let Schumacher pass without making a fuss.

"It was agreed, and drivers are paid to accept certain decisions.

"But he made me call him 50 times and he moved at the last corner - the audience booed, Schumacher gave him first place on the podium and Ferrari was fined $500,000 for violating protocol," he explained.

Asked if he regrets the affair, he admitted: "Yes, because with hindsight it could have been avoided. Schumacher would have won the championship anyway.

"But I would have regretted even more if we had lost the title by a couple of points," added Todt.

And in an interview with France's L'Equipe, Todt said he thought the works Renault drivers "helped" Renault-powered Red Bull to win the 2010 championship by holding up key rivals in Abu Dhabi.

"They (Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov) helped Red Bull, even though this team often complain about the lack of competitiveness of the Renault engine," he said.

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Porsche Ready To Return To F1 In 2013?

The new chairman of Porsche, Matthias Mueller, made the shock announcement at the 2010 Paris Motor show that Porsche were considering re-entering F1. He stated that it was no longer desirable for Porsche to be competing with sister company Audi at Le Mans. However, many people were still sceptical with memories still fresh of the recent withdrawals of Honda, BMW, Toyota and Ford. Indeed, Toyota became famous for failing to win a single race on an annual budget of $400 million. This was a statistic that literally reduced the Toyota chairman to tears when announcing the car manufacturers withdrawal from the sport. BMW meanwhile, now focus their attention on the German Touring car championship, citing a closer link to road car developments as the reason. However, in F1s favour is the fact that it is hugely popular, and manages to pull in 600 million viewers worldwide every year. It has even managed to make Nigel Mansell attractive to companies looking for advertising opportunities, with the 1992 world champion appearing in the latest Moneysupermarket car insurance advertisements 15 years after his retirement. So how likely is it that Porsche will return?

The new formula

New FIA president Jean Todt has realised the need to improve the sports image, which has been damaged by repeated scandals over the past ten years. On top of this, critics claim the sport is out of touch with the real world, as it is simply wasting valuable fossil fuels. Todt has aimed to rectifying this problem by improving the sports green credentials with the following 3 steps:

Banning on in race refuelling- For 2010, the teams are no longer allowed to refuel their cars during the races and must start with enough fuel to get them to the end. This has made it more important for the teams to be fuel efficient in order to benefit from reduced weight at the start (through having to carry less fuel) and reduced tyre wear (through having a lighter car).
The return of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS)- Todt has persuaded the teams to bring KERS back for 2011. This was previously withdrawn for cost reasons, but the relevance of the technology to road car developments of the future was reason enough for Todt and the teams to agree to re-introduce it for the start of 2011.
Smaller engines- The sport will reduced engine sizes from 2.4 litre V8s to 1.6 litre turbos for 2013.
The aim of this is to make sure that the sport is more relevant to road car developments, as car manufacturers strive to improve their fuel efficiencies. Although the sport is only at step one of Todts process, it has still increased the importance of fuel efficiency with the championship winning Red Bull Renault thought to be the most fuel efficient car on the grid in 2010. The KERS system is perhaps the most important element of this plan, with Ferrari having already implemented a KERS device on their 599 hybrid road car model. Therefore, the reason why BMW left the sport appears to have been addressed.

Money

The Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) has made huge strides in its attempts to reduce spending in the sport by drawing up a resource restriction agreement which all the teams have agreed to. This reduces the amount all teams spend on their F1 programmes, thus allowing smaller teams to be competitive on a smaller budget. It was this agreement which led to Brawn GP being able to win the championship last year, and has allowed Virgin Racing to close the gap by over a second to the leading teams in six months despite operating on a $40 million budget, which is 10% of what Toyota were spending as they failed to win a race.

It is therefore now possible to be competitive in F1 with a very small budget. Richard Branson actually believes that it is possible for a team to be profitable and competitive in the sport, which would make his F1 team one of the most cost effective marketing platforms available. F1 has therefore changed significantly, and the reason why Honda, Toyota and Ford left appears to no longer be a problem.

Will Porsche enter F1?

All the problems that the car manufacturers previously had with the sport have now disappeared. Even the domineering Max Mosley no long has any involvement in the teams affairs. It therefore makes perfect sense for Porsche to take the opportunity presented by the new 1.6 litre turbo engine formula in 2013 and enter the sport. The fashion at the moment is to create your own team and aim for a profit, as Virgin, Air Asia (Lotus), Kingfisher (Force India) and Mercedes have done. However, dont forget that Porsche have collaborated with Williams in the past, with Williams supplying Porsches GT programme with KERS technology. Williams shareholder Toto Wolff has also driven for Porsche in the same GT series. This would help the team avoid a painful building process as they at first struggle to get all the ingredients in place for success, as Toyota did. Buying a former championship winning team would surely allow them to hit the ground running in 2013.

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Van der Garde wins $1.9m in Force India ruling

Giedo van der Garde has won a long legal battle with Force India.

The Dutch driver had pressed for a $2 million refund because, when the team was known as Spyker in 2007, he did only 2270 of the 6000 kilometres of testing that he was contractually promised.

Media reports reveal that a court has agreed that Force India must pay van der Garde $1.865 million.

Fascinatingly, van der Garde's manager Jeroen Schothorst said the ruling could help in his talks with Force India about a race seat in 2011.

"A few years ago this topic was a disadvantage, now it could be beneficial to us," he said.

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Op vrijdag 19 november 2010 19:18 schreef kepler het volgende:
En nu besluit Massa snel te rijden

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Op vrijdag 19 november 2010 19:18 schreef kepler het volgende:
En nu besluit Massa snel te rijden

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Pirelli exceeds drivers' expectations

[...]

Pacesetter Felipe Massa also complained of the degradation, and suspects that changes will be made to the compound before Pirelli finalises its tyres for next year.

He added that the performance of the soft tyre possibly surpassed that of the Bridgestone super soft, which was allocated as the option tyre for last weekend's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

"The harder compound has a lot of degradation and it's not as quick as I expected," Massa said.

"As for the softer tyre, I was very happy with it. It's quick, degradation is very good. I did long runs with both and the one I did with the softer tyre was very good, possibly better than what I had last Sunday in the race.

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Op vrijdag 19 november 2010 19:22 schreef nils7 het volgende:

[..]



wellicht passen de banden beter bij de ferrari

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Op vrijdag 19 november 2010 19:23 schreef ElmarO het volgende:

Italianen onder elkaar hé.

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The Red Bull driver (Vettel) completed 28 laps this morning, and caused a brief red flag when he suffered a second tyre failure. This followed a similar failure yesterday that Pirelli confirmed was caused by the tyre being cut.

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Rosberg also described the degradation rate as "quite heavy", but added that despite his comments about tyre wear and pace, he felt the Pirellis could still be very good for the racing.

"If that's what they want and it's the same for everybody, then okay," he said. "Tyres like that always give more exciting racing as well. So it's not necessarily a bad thing."

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Op zaterdag 20 november 2010 11:54 schreef SjaakVilleneuve het volgende:
BBC, 14:00.. seizoens overzicht!

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Op zaterdag 20 november 2010 17:09 schreef LWD-Godius het volgende:
Had Kubica trouwens nog een penalty gekregen voor die actie van hem bij het uitkomen van de pit-straat (4 wielen over de witte lijn - abu dhabi)?

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Op zondag 21 november 2010 12:58 schreef Googolplexian het volgende:
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Op zondag 21 november 2010 12:58 schreef Googolplexian het volgende:
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Op zondag 21 november 2010 12:58 schreef Googolplexian het volgende:
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Op zondag 21 november 2010 12:58 schreef Googolplexian het volgende:
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