F1 Fanatic round-up: 8/10/2010

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Practice for the Japanese Grand Prix starts in two hours’ time so join us here soon for live comments.

Here’s the round-up:

Links

Alonso says he is title favourite, Webber more guarded (BBC)

“Asked if he was favourite, Alonso said: ‘If you see the last two races, then yes. We need to keep the momentum.'”

South Korean GP on track for inaugural start – organisers (Reuters)

Korea Auto Valley Operation’s Peter Baek: “We are in the late stages, but we’ll get it done before the event. Everything is on schedule and everything will be done.”

Renault hits back at Raikkonen’s claims (Autosport)

Eric Boullier responds to Raikkonen’s criticism of Renault: “We have not piggy-backed on Kimi’s image at all, which is what he has been claiming in the press. We were contacted by his managers after Spa. They wanted to enter into discussions and at that time we said: ‘Please wait. Yes, we are very flattered that you have contacted us, but we need to finish the evaluation of Vitaly’s [Petrov] potential and from that point, when we have our own conclusion, we will get back to you.’ There was nothing else. Since then, I had not got back to them because we had not finished the evaluation of the potential of Vitaly and there was nothing else to say. I never used the media, and I don’t see the benefit of telling to the media that Kimi is interested and chasing us. What would be the purpose of this?”

Comment of the day

David BR has his eye on Sebastian Vettel this weekend:

Showdown time for Vettel. This is the ideal race for him to get pole *and* the win. I can imagine him and Lewis performing well here.

The question is – can they finish the race? Hamilton I’m sure will just drive the same as usual, knowing that the McLaren is less competitive and he has no real choice now but to go for broke.

Vettel, though, should know he’s had the car to take the title this year – and still has if he can outperform Webber (and everyone else) over the next four races. That simple.
David BR

From the forum

Australian F1 fans have formed their own support group.

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Michael Schumacher became the first Ferrari racer to win the drivers’ championship in 21 years ten years ago today.

The 2000 Japanese Grand Prix was all about the championship showdown between himself and Mika Hakkinen. Schumacher took pole position by nine thousandths of a second but Hakkinen squeezed by to take the lead at the start.

But taking an extra couple of laps’ worth of fuel at his first pit stop allowed him to take the lead back via the pits at his second visit. Schumacher led home Hakkinen and won his third drivers’ championship title. He held onto it for almost five whole years.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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26 comments on “F1 Fanatic round-up: 8/10/2010”

  1. Hmmm. For some reason I’m having trouble commenting here.

    1. Weird. Anyhow, I just realized that FP1 starts in less than two hours, shortly after I arrive home from work this evening. I’ll be firing up live timing on the official site for the first time since the Chinese GP.

      1. Didn’t you watch Canada live?

        1. No, that was the start of the 4 races in the middle of the season that are broadcast on FOX instead of SPEED, with no prerace coverage, and it was delayed by about 5 minutes or so, just enough that live timing was basically just a spoiler.

          1. I absolutely hate that. Now that Speed shows FP1 online, I can only hope to see that at least Quali, Q3 is shown live. Because as is now with the delay they have on quali Q3 is over by the time they start showing Q3.

          2. Yeah, I really hate the delay on qualifying. That’s the time when I want to use live timing the most, and they render it useless. I’ve emailed them about it before and gotten a form letter response about how they try to offer live racing events as much as they can but sometimes it’s not always possible. It was a total load.

      2. Don’t forget live streaming on SpeedTV’s site http://stream.speedtv.com/ however my guess only available from US but then US_Peter would have to “guess” your in the US by name and previous comments ;)

        I’m excited a 8pm practice time legally streamed online (no hunting for online streams this time).

        1. Wow, didn’t realize they were streaming FP1. Thanks for the tip.

          1. Macahan has saved the day!, well done dude, I salute you.

            I can’t get to sleep here so I’ll be watching from BBC iPlayer.

          2. Okay. I have all my windows arranged around the screen and I’m reading for some streaming and live blog to begin.

  2. There’s a lot of talk as to whther or not Korea will make it in time – but it’s nothing compared to a street circuit the Chinese are building for Stupid Football Thing:

    http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/87242

    It’s a street circuit around Shunyi, the rowing basin constructed for the 2008 Olympic Games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_International_Street_Circuit), but it failed its FIA inspection and was therefore not awarded FIA Grade-2 status, the minimum needed for a Superleague Formula race. The race itself will still take place, but it will be a non-championship event. The problem seems to be a stretch of track that is too narrow for the regulations – even under yellow flag conditions.

    You would think they’d have learned after the disaster that was the A1GP race at Yizhuang, when it was discovered that cars could not make it around the hairpin because it was too tight and there was no room for them to use – so they had to resort to moving the hairpin back down to the pit entrance an using part of the entrance itself as the racing circuit. I still remembr seeing them having to cut back across as soon as they made it around the corner so as to avoid going into the pits or ploughing into the dividing wall.

    So by comparison, I’d say the Koreans are doing quite wel for themselves …

    1. Oh so true! What’s more, from questions by a Japanese journalist in the thursday press conference it seems they have started doing the top layer in Korea this wednesday!
      Lets hope it’ll stick and be a tyre killer.

  3. inc0mmunicado
    8th October 2010, 3:20

    Korea’s circuit is a Tilkedrome, i don’t think there’ll be a problem with the track not being wide enough for a turn!

  4. Interesting story from the UK about kids being unable to distinguish fact from fiction (ie they believe Buzz Lightyear was the first man on the moon and the Death Star is the furthest planet from earth):

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8101639/kids-name-buzz-lightyear-as-first-man-on-moon

    That’s right. They believe Barack Obama is actually Lewis Hamilton.

    1. Now that is incredibly worrying…

    2. Hey, but “Close to 65 percent of the children knew Britney Spears had shaved her head”

    3. I thought the fact that they confused Obama with “Mr T” was much more disturbing.

      They couldn’t be any more different. One of them is a ludicrously outdated character who has no legitimate place in today’s cultural conscience, and yet still somehow exists.

      The other one is afraid of flying.

    4. They think that Noel Edmonds invented the telephone. Noel Edmonds.

    5. Children might think Obama is Hamilton, but more worrying is the number of American adults think he is a secret Muslim terrorist

  5. Bloomberg is running a story about what all of BMW’s old F1 people are doing today. It’s pretty interesting, but a bit sad from an F1 fan’s point of view. We need F1 to be relevant to the manufacturers.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-07/bmw-recycles-ex-formula-one-racing-engineers-to-develop-electric-engines.html

  6. I think the Kimi-Renault thing is mostly just press-created, with some added wishfull thinking of F1 fans (yes, I am one of those hoping for a erturn of Kimi to F1).

    I say mostly because I do feel that if Boullier had elected to answer the questions straightaway with the reply quoted above, instead of saying things like: “I would want to speak to him about his motivation…” it would have been less of a story.

    So I think they have been a bit piggy bragging at Renault.

  7. Nathan Bradley
    8th October 2010, 11:26

    Hi guys,

    Totally off topic, but have the dates and venues been released for next years pre-season testing yet? It’s a nice cheap way of seeing some F1 cars pound round for a day!

    Thanks,

    Nathan

    1. No. When I find out I’ll post them.

  8. I just found an interesting article about the current F1 engine suppliers wanting to talk with the FIA about retinking a completely new engine formula from 2013 onward, stating it will cost a lot of money to develop a new engine.
    Here’s the article translated from Dutch (it refers to the German “Auto Motor und Sport”, but i could not find the source there)
    http://translate.google.cz/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=cs&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.formule1.nl%2Farticleview%2F15097

    1. Very interesting. First rumors of Porsche jumping in in 2013, and now Honda apparently wants to come back as an engine supplier if it changes to a small turbo engine. I thought the current suppliers had been in favor of the change earlier this year. Could it be they’ve now changed their tune due to the prospect of some stiffer competition? Personally I think it would be fantastic if there were six engine suppliers rather than four.

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