Chandhok hoping for more F1 race chances

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Karun Chandhok says he believes he’ll get to race again for Lotus.

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Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Indian Chandhok hoping for more races (Reuters)

“I believe I’ll get some more chances because Tony [Fernandes] seems quite happy with the job I did, the engineers seem happy with the job I did. Bernie [Ecclestone] is very happy as well, he came to see Tony and me on the grid yesterday.”

F1 tide turning against Red Bull (BBC)

“From Friday lunchtime onwards, in other words after first practice, Vettel was wearing a frown and looked decidedly unhappy. His boyish smile occasionally burst through but mostly to the cameras. He clearly was not satisfied with the handling of his car and was fed up having to answer questions about Silverstone team orders.”

Martin Whitmarsh: "Sebastian made a couple of mistakes?óÔé¼?ª" (Adam Cooper)

“"We can’t bring about his failure, all we can do is put pressure on him, and I think Sebastian made a couple of mistakes today. To balance that at the start of the year he was supreme in his confidence, not making any mistakes whatsoever.”

From the Nurburgring to Budapest: a team divided into two parts (Ferrari)

Stefano Domenicali: “Traditionally our cars are easier on tyres, a factor that offers an advantage over long distances as we have seen this year, but it is harder for us to get them up to ideal working temperature.”

Formula 1 Game on Twitter

“To those who’ve asked about the safety car, we’ll be able to tell you whether it’s in or not by Gamescom in August.”

Via the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app

Williams reinstates KERS on both cars (Autosport)

Sam Michael: “We have had doubts over KERS in the past with controlling the brake balance under braking, where you end up with quite a difficult situation.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

TommyB89 on Sebastien Buemi’s penalty:

Tough weekend for Buemi and now his next weekend has been ruined too.

I thought they were doing everything they could to make sure penalties were given in the race. It’s not like they didn’t have enough time to decide either. The incident happened on lap 11 of 60.

Hamilton was given a time penalty for his collision with Maldonado in Monaco so why not the same for Buemi?
TommyB89

From the forum

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On this day in F1

Mika Hakkinen won the Austrian Grand Prix on this day in 1998.

He came under intense pressure from Michael Schumacher at the start until the Ferrari driver ran wide, briefly allowing Giancarlo Fisichella’s Benetton past.

Schumacher’s pursuit of Hakkinen was further delayed when he went off the track later in the race, damaging his front wing.

Though he recovered to finish on the podium, he could not prevent a one-two finish for McLaren, Hakkinen leading team mate David Coulthard home.

Here’sa video of Schumacher and Hakkinen’s brief battle:

Image © Team Lotus

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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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52 comments on “Chandhok hoping for more F1 race chances”

  1. re buemi’s penalty… would it not make sense for him to completely skip qualifying, start dead last but save all his tyres. It shouldn’t take him long to pass the new teams and we’ve seen the advantage that can be gained from saving tyres in qualifying. ALG has reached the points twice because of it

    1. That’s about the strength of it isn’t it! I would laugh if this gave Buemi an 8th place on Sunday ;) Though he won’t be passing much in Hungary, it’d be more a case of making less tops I would have thought.

      1. I doubt he can do that…;) He is not Alguersuari…;)

    2. That would most certainly work. Or perhaps do his best to get through Q1 then conserve his tyres.

    3. I thought Liuzzi was going to do that in Q1, as he had a 5 place penalty, but he didn’t.

  2. Mike Griffin
    26th July 2011, 0:12

    Re COTD: Difference between Hamilton penalty and Buemi is, Hamilton’s was undeserved (IMO) and Buemi’s was justified by his absolute brain fade at that moment. Grid penalty was the right choice there for sure.

    1. Maybe a better comparison would be the penalty to Jenson in Canada when he did the EXACT same thing Buemi did only it was to his teammate. Oh wait, that’s right… he never got a penalty.

      1. There is no way Button saw Hamilton there. At best he heard the other engine behind and wanted to make sure Lewis couldn’t take the outside line to squeeze himself on the inside into turn one.
        Buemi could have seen Heidfeld (it was dry) and still went straight towards the grass expecting Heidfeld to give in (aaah the old german is a loser, he’ll surrender).

        I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again, to me a lot of things that happen are just that, things that happen in racing. But some things need punishment and a drive through would have been the minimum. That kind of punishment was given for it this season but maybe they thought that at 300kph its a bit more dangerous and compared it to Schumacher last year. Who knows their reasoning but thats what they decided and I guess it won’t change no matter how we discuss it here.

        1. Buemi was looking in his left mirror, I assume to check if Heidfeld was going to lunge up the inside, so there’s no way Buemi saw Nick either. The incidents are far too similar to deserve such vastly different punishments.

          As for it being given so late, I guess it’s because they’re midfield and they don’t particularly care about them :( there’d be outrage if this was done to one of the big 3 teams.

          1. But he did know he was not on the inside then, so maybe he should have expected him on the outside. I don’t know. Heidfeld was also partly to blame, but he was anyway out of the race.

      2. Maybe a better comparison would be the penalty to Jenson in Canada when he did the EXACT same thing Buemi did only it was to his teammate.
        Actually, it’s not the exact same thing at all. In Canada, Jenson Button followed the racing line that he had been using on previous laps, and which the previous driver – Schumacher – had followed. In Germany, however, Sebastien Buemi changed his racing line because he was defending against Heidfeld. The change in race line directly implies that Buemi knew Heidfeld was nearby. However, the replay clearly shows that Buemi was looking left at the time of the incident, in anticipation of the next corner, when he moved back to the line needed to negotiate the chicane.

        You also need to bear in mind that Lewis Hamilton took responsibility for the incident in Canada himself.

        1. That last line is very true PM.

          So yes, the two of them being teammates has significance,. Button and Hamiltom seem to work well enough together, and are sensible enough to prefer their teammate to take the win if they can’t themselves.

          So even if HAM didn’t feel it was entirely fair, he had the whole race to think it through and little to win by making a fuss, but he gained a bit of grace from it.

          Heidfeld had good reasons to excuse himself and blame Buemi for his DNF.

      3. @Cacarella Not the best comparison. There was a slight difference in Canada: water. Tons of it. Also JB didn’t change his racing line and LH took the responsibility.

      4. Typical Mclaren

    2. Doesn’t explain why the punishment was so different though. Clearly they felt it was deserved in both cases!

      1. I thought the penalty was way too harsh – drivers constantly squeeze other drivers off the road, and Buemi simply stuck to the racing line.

        1. No, he didn’t. He was on the left, then came back across to the right. As we saw with Petrov playing the defensive card, the left-hand side of the circuit is the defensive line. Buemi moved over to defend from Heidfeld, which means he knew the Renault was there. But then he came back across to the right in order to take the optimal line through the chicane. However, he was clearly looking left at this point. This means that although Buemi knew Heidfeld was in the vicinity, he wasn’t paying attention. If he had been, the contact wouldnt have happened.

      2. Exactly the comment as not to say “Buemi doesn’t deserve a penalty” it’s to say why has he had his next race ruined too because of it.

        49 laps to give him a drive thru or a stop-go and they did nothing.

    3. Why on earth was a grid penalty reasonable?

      We are not discussing about the fact a penalty was given, but about the fact it was handed out only half an hour after the race, when the incident happended after only 11 laps.

      There were loads of time to hand him a drive through, its not as if this was in the closing stages and they had loads of otherincidents to investigate. Even then they could have given him a time penalty to adjust the race results.
      They c

      1. I agree completely. I guess the proper way of expressing this nowadays is typing:

        +1

        … or some other number. Anyway, it was yet another example of pretty bad stewarding in F1.

      2. I think thats beside the point. I suppose they wanted to give him a harsh punishment. They maybe felt like a drice through when he is nearly last anyway is no punishment or they compared the incident to Schumacher last year .. whatever the reason, the punishment stands and if they anounce the grid penalty right away or later doesn’t matter.

      3. Consistency is the key and once again the FIA has failed to show it. A lap 11 incident should not be carried over to the next race. Poor driving by Buemi, but defiantly not intentional, a mistake at the most with plenty of punishable time left within the race. It’s not as if the race was jammed packed with other investigations.

      4. I also have trouble with the moment and nature of the penalty, yes. I don’t pretend to understand it.

        Maybe the result of their collision scared them, it looked pretty impressive to me. Didn’t Buemi skid over the gravel earlier in the weekend (or was that somewhere completely different?)?

        It could be that the drivers were especially warned to be careful with pushing each other off the track there.

  3. Does anyone know the minimum specs for F1 2011 on the PC?? I don’t have the money for a PS3 or Xbox but still want the game!

    1. http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

      This should do the trick. Just put in the information and the system will tell you if your computer can handle it.

      1. Used to be easier when i last tried it but hope it helps.

        1. It’d work if I knew the minimum specs first…

    2. It uses the same engine as F1 2010, so that’s a pretty good guideline if your comp can run it.

  4. MVEilenstein
    26th July 2011, 0:34

    If the tide is turning against Red Bull, does that mean everyone can stop griping about Vettel? Because if so, I’m all for it.

    1. I’m not done yet! Vettel can’t pass! ;)

    2. @ MVEilenstein

      I would like to see less griping about Vettel along with less regarding Hamilton’s attitude and Alonso being Alonso. Vettel has improved his starts, hasn’t taken anyone out, and is less “impetuous” than 2010. Hamilton is kind of like John McEnroe… great entertainment from all three IMO

  5. The only other event I want to see Karun is at the Indian GP that’s off course for the PR event.Bernie is happy cause that he at least though last can finish the race which is important for the Indian GP.

    1. But drivers shouldn’t be chosen to race simply because they will bring a team publicity. They should be chosen because they are the best person for a team. Otherwise, we’re just going to get teams replacing their drivers every other race because of the PR boost they’ll bring.

      1. Fair comment but I don’t think swapping once in a while will do any harm.

      2. Wont publicity bring a bit of money though? So it’s not too dissimilar to having a pay driver.

      3. Otherwise, we’re just going to get teams replacing their drivers every other race because of the PR boost they’ll bring.

        Apart from the fact that teams have had this option for years now and it’s not become a problem yet…

        1. Maybe they’ve only just hit upon the idea recently. Stranger things have happened. It’s like that story about NASA scientists asking the Russians (after the Cold War) how they got around the problem of writing in space. NASA had invested millions in trying to make a pen that would write, but no matter what they did, they couldn’t get it to work because the ink would not move in zero gravity. The Russians said that they got around it by using lead pencils as soon as they worked out that pens would not work. It seemed like an obvious answer at the time, but the Americans never thought of it.

          1. Love the anecdote about the pen and the pencil PM, not sure I feel it fits the situation here, but thanks for posting that :-D

      4. He said that he believe that he will get more chance & the only event that will come is the Indian GP,at the moment with his performance in the race in Germany I doubt that he will get a chance to race again.

        1. He didn’t do that bad up untill last weekend he’d had about 10 timed laps in total for the year. Every single driver spun at least once or more in preseason testing some alot more. A few spins were inevitable and he was in good company for doing it in the race vettel schumacher alonso certainly had some time off the track to.

          He got the car home. Daniel ricciadro(who is pretty much considerd a prodigy after his young driver test last year, where i believe he went half a second faster than any lap made by vettel that weekend in the same car.) was 6 tenths off liuzzis qualy time at his first race. 8 tenths down by karun to (to be honest) a superior driver in heikki. Is genuinely not a bad result and warrents further investigation I feel.

  6. If the stewards deam an incidient is a particular drivers fault (such as the Buemi/Heidfield) why don’t they make that person/team responisble pay for the repairs to the other teams equipment.

    A couple of million dollers in repair bills and I bet they would suddenly start “avoiding” these incidents before they occured. It’s a non contact sport after all.

    1. Absolutely ridiculous. That would lead to a two tier race. The likes of the Lotus, Virgin and HRT teams, as well as Pastor Maldonado, Vitaly Petrov Sergio Perez and Jaime Algusuari who pay for their drives will be driving around on tip toes fearing they even sneeze on another car. There will be no entertainment value.

      I do not condone crashing, but crashing is often the result of a gutsy move. If we remove this from the sport, it’ll be a precession.

  7. Hi guys, just thought I’d let you all know about this:

    http://www.pjtierney.net/2011/07/f1-posters-no-longer-available.html

    FOM weren’t happy when they saw my posters (though they did say they looked great) and have asked me to stop selling them, which is exactly what I’m doing.

    1. Really a great shame. Those were great poster designs.
      At least you got a lot of praise for it and even had the opportunity to present one for the F1 cancer charity auction!
      (Hm, maybe that got them interesed in the first place?)
      FOM would have done better to allow them and spread the word, or get you to put their Logo on it and take credit!
      Guess they were to not expensive enough for Bernie’s taste and commission.

      Does it also mean we won’t be seeing the designs with integrated posters for the race weekends here?

      1. I don’t know what will happen with the integrated posters. If Keith decides it’s better to remove them then fair enough, I don’t mind.

        Provided the posters are not being used for commercial purposes (ie they aren’t being sold, you haven’t licensed them to others for use on websites, you are not gaining any revenue from them etc) then you would be free to exhibit them in your portfolio provided they are accompanied with the following wording:

        That pretty much says that I can’t let people spread them around online.

        1. good!

          I take this as an acknowledgement for how good they are, that FOM got looking into them.

          Great designs and hopefully the start of more to come then!

          1. Regarding the posters, if you featured them on your site you don’t need to take them down unless you’re contacted (by me or FOM) to do so.

            Just tweeted, FOM have been great with everything regarding this issue at the moment.

            Also, if you spot any sites trying to sell these designs or turn them into something saleable, FOM and I would have serious issues with that. :)

        2. Was very sorry to read on twitter about this. But it was great while it lasted, they were, and are, a great set of designs, so thanks for creating them!

          At the least it should inspire FOM to think about better posters, and now they know your name!

          Also, as they say: all publicity is good publicity: this bit of news got me to check your site out again. I really like the Ridge 4 piece too. “Kinetic”, and vibrant in a two (three?) tone poster. Nice.

          1. That’s a real shame, first time i have seen them but they are fantastic.

          2. Thanks for the comments mate, glad you like the Ridge 4 poster too, I plan on selling that one soon!

  8. It was also on this day in F1 when Lewis Hamilton took the first win for a KERS powered car in Hungary in 2009.

  9. Chandhok nice bloke but made a pigs ear of the weekend. Still I’m sure he’ll be in the car come the Indian GP.

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