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wj_gibson

Maybe so, but ITV's marketing of F1 in 2007 and 2008 was so massively Lewis-centric that Allen could do little else. This reached absurd levels at the 2008 European GP, when Allen more or less promised his viewers a time penalty for Massa for an unsafe release from the pits and therefore a Hamilton ...

wj_gibson

He wasn't "fired". It was simply that when the BBC took over the rights they chose to promote fro within their own internal commentary teams (i.e. Legard). And, yes, he was under pressure to milk (firstly) Button (Allen's commentary as Button crossed the line at Hungary in 2006 is among the most exc...

wj_gibson

Yeah, but what if Maldonado moves? Lotus are supposed to be after him, no?

wj_gibson

It makes me wonder just how far Marussia, Lotus, Williams and Caterham really might be from seriosu trouble. I can't see where these teams are getting their money from. Well, we know where Williams is getting a lot of it from.

wj_gibson

Given Lotus's apparent financial issues I would think Maldonado will be very high on their shopping list.

wj_gibson

Massa again. It seems to work out well for them. Then either Hulk or Bianchi to replace Massa for 2015 and Vettel as Alonso's eventual replacement in 2016 or 2017. If Alonso does bag title no. 3 then I think he'll retire sooner rather than later (i.e. before 2016). Once that happens Vettel is taking...

wj_gibson

There will still be a significant chassis element to performance next year given some of the aero changes to the car. And where there is an aero change, Adrian Newey is more likely than anyone else to be on top of it.

wj_gibson

Hasn't Maldonado been linked to Lotus quite extensively now for a while? They could do with the petrol money if nothing else. And he crashes considerably less frequently than Grosjean anyway.

Though quite where that would leave Williams financially is anyone's guess.

wj_gibson

Sutil had a couple of races running whereby car failures cost him but he kept quiet about it.

Di Retsa never seems happy.

wj_gibson

It's all very well to say the fans want more and more races, but the stress it puts on the engineers is going to be intolerable. F1 loses a lot of staff to the aerospace industry as it is.

wj_gibson

It will be Honda corporate colours, much like the Williams BMW. They have been talking about it being more than an engine supply deal alone.

wj_gibson

What a mess.

It will be messier still when the F1 team has to be renamed again.

wj_gibson

I don't even know which stats make sense when looking at Lotus. Is this counted as the same team that won world titles in 1995-95 and 2005-06 or not? Is it therefore counted as the team that was an opponent of Lotus in the 1980s? Or as the same team that, in the record books, won various titles in t...

wj_gibson

Alonso always has been a bit of a "percentages driver" in these sorts of scenario (cf Montreal 2007, where he allowed Sato to overtake him and ended up 7th in a race that Hamilton won). At least you can say he scored more points than did Kimi, who was racier in Monaco and perhaps ended up paying the...

wj_gibson

I don't see any other tyre manufacturers beating a path to F1's door, either. Short of someone like Kumho I really can't see where else the tyres are coming from if not Pirelli. With the whole cloud of uncertainty currently enveloping F1 anyway it's a risk for anyone to get involved from the outside.

wj_gibson

Not even Bernie Ecclestone can continue to run a global enterprise if convicted of a criminal offence as serious as this one. A speeding fine or whatever then ok, but criminal fraud? It would bring F1 into further disrepute. He would have to go. Unfortunately, the real damage was done to the sport y...

wj_gibson

Guttierez struggled to beat a Caterham yesterday. Absolute peaky.

wj_gibson

sic98 wrote:I feel that the Doornbos thing is over blown. There was probably some behind the scenes stuff leadinig up to it. People talk about it as if Senna never tested people out.

Or, indeed, simply barged perceived inferiors out of the way, e.g. Hungary in 1990.

wj_gibson

He already is one. Every year that he has had a car with a sniff of a title in it he's been in contention in the final round, and against significantly tougher opposition than Schumacher faced for most of the time. It's always easier to look back in retrospect on a retired driver and declare him to ...

wj_gibson

I wonder what else Sir Stirling Moss thinks women lack the mental skill for? Running companies, perhaps? Oh dear, a woman runs the one I work for and puts in regular 6 and 7 day weeks and has done so since 2000 and has succeeded when a lot of other comparable SMEs have collapsed over the financial c...

wj_gibson

It strikes me that Stirling Moss has reached that point in life whereby he realises he isn't going to be around too much longer and just decides to say what he thinks - i.e. that he prefers to live in an imagined, James Bond esque past and can't be bothered to engage with the contemporary world. Dod...

wj_gibson

The softs are lasting six laps at best. Vettel and Button are going to be in trouble.

wj_gibson

Massa is so poor at defending.

wj_gibson

Anyone who tries to end this race on the soft tyres (I.e. vettel) is going to be absolutely stuffed IMO. McLaren have got the right idea with Perez, putting him on the sorts now.

wj_gibson

Surely Alonso has got this bought and paid for, reliability notwithstanding?

wj_gibson

Q. What did Bilbo Baggins remark at 4.55pm of a Friday afternoon after a particularly hard week?
A. "I could 'mordor' a pint."

wj_gibson

The Raikkonen-to-RBR is quite interesting. Just assuming for a second that is the case (just for the sake of argument) then either it says poor things about the Red Bull view of the STR drivers or else it's a means of ensuring they have at least one top line driver in the event that both Webber AND ...

wj_gibson

Why doesn't he just say he wanted to win the race? It's a little like Schumi pushing Barrichello on to the top step in Austria to "make amends" at the minute.

wj_gibson

You can only get rid of them if you go to one car teams. Otherwise, forget it.

wj_gibson

"Seb will have protection as usual." Quote of the year, that!

wj_gibson

Three happy drivers on the podium there!

wj_gibson

He'll be even happier now.

wj_gibson

He'll be even happier now.

wj_gibson

Red Bull blatantly organising it so that Webber doesn't leapfrog Vettel there.

Actually, no, Webber's in front!

wj_gibson

There have been one or two driver switches on performance-related grounds over the years. The most obvious one being Michael Schumacher's move to Benetton in 1991, but there was also Johnny Herbert's sudden shift to Ligier in late 1994, and Justin Wilson's move to Jaguar in mid-2003.

wj_gibson

He is indeed looking great.

Now think that the driver who pipped him to last year's FR3.5 title is on the sidelines whilst Geido van der Garde plods round in the Caterham.

wj_gibson

FWIW, Mosley stated several times afterwards that the Alonso-de la Rosa-Coughlan-Stepney emails from March 2007 were not the only evidence the FIA had that knowledge of the data leakages from Ferrari to McLaren - this was simply the evidence that it chose to use in the September 2007 second hearing ...

wj_gibson

There are those who like to arrogate for themselves a "policing" function regarding matters over which they have no control (in this case, tying themselves in increasingly intricate knots about Ferrari team strategies). A piece of friendly advice (because I've been there in the thankfully increasing...

wj_gibson

Alonso set considerably faster lap times after he vaulted Massa than he had done when stuck behind him. I think anyone claiming that Massa could have won the race if only he'd pitted ahead of Alosno in the second stops is kidding themselves. Most likely Ferrari would have had a 3-4 rather than a 2-4.

wj_gibson

Finland has such a strangely melancholic sounding anthem.

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