In today’s round-up: CVC has appointed its co-founder Donald Mackenzie as chairman of F1’s holding company Delta Topco.
Links
Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:
Donald Mackenzie takes wheel as F1 chairman (The Telegraph)
"CVC, the private equity firm which majority owns Formula One, has appointed its co-founder Donald Mackenzie as chairman of the sport’s holding company Delta Topco."
Williams F1 shares stuck in reverse (The Telegraph)
"Shares in the Williams Formula One team have fallen by 40pc since it floated on the Frankfurt junior exchange six months ago."
Lewis Hamilton must copy Jenson Button to be champ (The Express)
"Lewis Hamilton has been told to learn from fellow McLaren driver Jenson Button if he wants to be crowned world champion again.
"Austria’s three-time former champion Niki Lauda, 62, said: "Lewis could learn a lot from Button. Lewis outqualifies Jenson and is the quicker driver, but in Belgium it was Jenson who finished third while Hamilton crashed out again. "You can’t win championships if you are crashing."
"Scuderia Ferrari development driver Giancarlo Fisichella has just completed a series of Philip Morris International events in the Middle East, aiming at bringing Formula 1 to a wider audience, specifically in areas with little previous motor sport involvement."
Jenson Button’s wing mirror from Spa (Ebay)
"From the 2011 Belgian Spa Grand Prix 28th August – I have to sell the actual right hand wing mirror that came off Jenson Button’s McLaren during the first incident of the race on the first corner."
"Really looking forward to Monza! Last race [GP2 Series race] with @damsracing before flying to oversee GPs with @OfficialLRGP."
Win: Be part of the McLaren F1 pit crew at the Korean Grand Prix! (The Daily Star)
"The Daily Star Sunday has teamed up with Mobil 1, the world’s leading synthetic motor oil brand, to offer the motorsport trip of a lifetime."
‘My problem was not Michael, it was Flavio’ (Hindustan Times)
"It doesn’t take much to get three-time Formula 1 race winner Johnny Herbert to talk about his illustrious former teammate. Herbert, who is to be the drivers’ representative on the stewards’ panel for the Indian Grand Prix and raced in the ‘Legends’ category of the Volkswagen Scirocco R Cup, set the record straight about his relationship with Michael Schumacher when the two were teammates at Benetton from the end of 1994 to 1995."
"After a bit more arguing, I dealt what I felt was the killer blow. ‘Everyone knows they stole the idea for F1 from Scalextric anyway,’ I wrote. And I stand by those words. But for some mad reason it only seemed to inflame the argument."
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Comment of the day
Kate has a few questions about attending the Japanese Grand Prix – can you help?
Hubby and I are heading to the Japanese F1 – staying near hotel in Nagoya and would appreciate any help or info on trains, what to wear, what to take etc etc
Kate
Read more: 2011 Japanese Grand Prix discussion
From the forum
ginnerchris has some F1 magazines from 1995 to 2001 to give away to a good home.
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
Peter Gethin scored one of the most incredible Grand Prix victories ever seen 40 years ago today.
He crossed the finishing line at Monza with four cars behind him, all covered by six-tenths of a second. Ronnie Peterson, Francois Cevert, Mike Hailwood and Howden Ganley were the four cars chasing Gethin at the finish.
It was the only BRM driver’s sole F1 win – he only scored two points in the rest of his career.
AndrewTanner (@andrewtanner)
5th September 2011, 0:33
Lauda has a point. It’s one that’s been made before but a good point nonetheless. However, if Hamilton was in Vettel’s position perhaps he would be able to tone it down a little, you can’t fault the guys determination!
Not the usual scything ramble you get from Charlie Brooker, we should probably take that as a compliment
Jake (@jleigh)
5th September 2011, 0:43
i think if Lewis was in Vettel’s car he would be even further ahead than Sebastien. I think the crashes are due to the frustration of not having a fast enough car.
Hamish
5th September 2011, 4:12
When you look at Vettels results this year I find that call very hard to take seriously.
Hamish
5th September 2011, 8:05
Plus, what makes Lewis so special? 22 drivers on the grid don’t have the fastest car, they seem to bring it home in one piece.
smifaye (@)
5th September 2011, 8:43
Where would the evidence be for this? You can hardly do much better than Vettel is already doing. So Hamilton would win every race?!
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 9:51
I am with Hamish here. There is hardly a race where it was possible to do better than Vettel did. Maybe in Canada, probably in Germany, but that’s it.
Doubtfull Hamilton would have done better, consitency is not his most notable strength.
@HoHum (@hohum)
5th September 2011, 14:00
Yes but if Hamilton were Vettel he wouldn’t have been beaten by Hamilton would he.
matt90 (@matt90)
5th September 2011, 0:44
If he’d wanted to rip into F1 he could have done so quite well (although clearly not actually knowing much about the sport would hold him back). His attacks on people/shows, on Screenwipe in particular, are brilliant and scathing.
I read his tweets the other day and thought some of them were rather ignorant, but then I thought how many times I’ve laughed at him putting down subjects that others take seriously. It’s just his style, and that he didn’t attack the sport or its fans with much force is quite surprising (especially if you read the comments).
My favourite tweet was his last:
gabal (@gabal)
5th September 2011, 7:19
I’m a big fan of Charlie Brooker and yes, this is just his style of comedy. “You Have Been Watching” was hilarious even though I haven’t ever seen half of the shows they are talking about.
matt90 (@matt90)
5th September 2011, 11:29
You Have Been Watching was fantastic. Watched a few episodes on youtube recently. Also saw him when I went to the recording of 10’o’clock Live. His segments on that were often brilliant.
f1alex (@f1alex)
5th September 2011, 22:07
I had the full series recorded, I need to dig it out sometime because it was an awesome series!
bosyber
5th September 2011, 7:42
Lauda does have a point. And he now totally comes across as a hypocrite/panderer to public opinion for everyone who reads that after having heard his fulminations about how dangerous Hamilton is on RTL Germany in Belgium, Canada, and Monaco.
On those occasions, he was not just happily putting all the blame on him, and virtually none on his competitors, in all those incidents (even Maldono in Spa was “unwise”, but clearly provoked by an over-aggressive, bullying Hamilton), but also saying that HAM would get people killed.
Had he said on TV: yeah, he’s a competitor so we like to bash him, he was stupid and didn’t help himself, it would have come across as mature, but not now. Sorry, I was shocked about the maliciousness of his demeanor.
TribalTalker (@tribaltalker)
5th September 2011, 11:48
Agreed – Lauda comes across as a grumpy old man.
But he is from an era when the sort of aggression that fuels Hamilton would definitely get someone killed, and quickly.
Things have changed but Lauda seems mired in the past. Given his personal history, maybe that’s not such a surprise.
matt90 (@matt90)
5th September 2011, 0:45
I wonder if Grosjean following the team around is just to get used to the team or whether he’ll be driving in many practice sessions.
Hamish
5th September 2011, 4:18
Unlikely I’d say. Given we are heading away from Europe a lot of the circuits Senna and Petrov have little if any experience on. I can’t see him taking Sennas seat for a practise and Petrov is very much a confidence driver.
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:12
I think he will get to be the 3rd driver role now, wouldn’t be supprised if he got a bit of track time, but certainly not in Singapore!
Ned Flanders (@ned-flanders)
5th September 2011, 0:49
That Williams story is pretty shocking. How badly must that team have been managed over the last 10 years to have fallen so spectacularly from grace?
I could say that I hope they turn things round in the coming years and go on to be championship winners again, but they’ve become so mediocre that frankly I don’t really care anymore.
In fact, assuming that Lotus and Virgin should both make big steps forward in the next couple of years, you could argue that things could get even worse for Williams before they get better…
Prisoner Monkeys (@prisoner-monkeys)
5th September 2011, 3:05
I think Williams’ problem is that they got complacent. They’ve been inching forwards and called it “progress”, blissfully unaware of the way everyone else around them has been making leaps and bounds. Their technical team has been in dire need of a shake-up for some time. Promoting Sam Michael in 2004 was a mistake – he inherited the role from Patrick Head, and the first car he designed was 2005’s FW27. Ever since then, Williams have been sliding backwards, occasionally yo-yoing for a season, but inevitable spiralling downwards and all in pursuit of this “aggressive” design philosophy that has so far failed to a) appear and b) deliver. At the presentation of the FW33 earlier this year, Michael’s comments suggested that they had deliberately designed the micro-sized gearbox for the sake of being innovative and aggressive rather than because it would benefit the car. Michael should have been dropped years ago.
Mike
5th September 2011, 6:07
In his defense, I think that gearbox will appear on all the cars next year. It just saves so much space.
gabal (@gabal)
5th September 2011, 7:47
It isn’t really shocking that share prices has dropped – Williams has been forced to take a pay driver and is experiencing the worst season since the founding of Williams Grand Prix Engineering.
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
5th September 2011, 11:43
It’s not like it’s the only share price that has fallen, however.
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:28
I think the problem with the technical team was rather they put too much on one plate and then gave too little substance (ppl and money) to the team to make everything work.
beneboy (@beneboy)
5th September 2011, 13:22
Williams’ problems started when they let Adrian Newey leave and they’ve been in terminal decline ever since.
bosyber
5th September 2011, 7:45
But I did think that quote of a former pr-guy from Williams could at least have been followed by a call to WilliamsF1 for a response, that wasn’t very solid journalism, that put down.
smifaye (@)
5th September 2011, 8:47
I still care because they are what part of what F1 used to represent, an independent team who are there not for selling cars or publicity, but there for racing.
Williams are still the team for me but I do get where you are coming from as it gets increasingly hard to support them when they are running around the back of the field.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
5th September 2011, 11:14
It is pretty shocking. Williams have slowly become the new Tyrrell and like them I would rather someone bought them out instead of languishing in mediocrity. Changing staff is only going to do so much, they need proper investment and I think the stock market approach was born out of a sentimental refusal to actually sell large parts of the team. They need a Vijay Mallya kind of figure if they’re to survive into the future.
@HoHum (@hohum)
5th September 2011, 14:12
I suspect 2 major causes for Williams demise: Poor treatment or contempt for their successful drivers, which may mirror a general attitude towards their “workers”. And the FIAs drive to cheaper, 1 design or severely restricted design cars which has made innovation an expensive risk.
F1Yankee (@f1yankee)
5th September 2011, 1:04
the biggest problem with hamilton’s driving is his risk management. all competitive drivers take risks, but hamilton often chooses actions that have poor risk/reward ratios. what did he have to gain by going full steam into the pits in china, or lesmo 2, and so forth? very little, maybe nothing. what did he lose? the 2007 driver’s title, lots of wins and podiums, and he’s cost his team plenty of points and mountains of money. sometimes you look like a genius and sometimes you look like a donkey, but when the result is “donkey” too often you have to step back and look at what you’re doing wrong.
does this mean we have a successor to the throne?
F1Yankee (@f1yankee)
5th September 2011, 1:10
what the hell? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ won’t work for me. is it blocked outside of the uk?
F1Yankee (@f1yankee)
5th September 2011, 5:30
it works now
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
5th September 2011, 7:41
I understand they were hacked yesterday.
wasiF1 (@wasif1)
5th September 2011, 2:49
The problem is Hamilton is trying things were you can’t or have a risk where Button is doing a lot of maths in making move that’s why Button have strong result then Hamilton where Hamilton many times has been the crash test dummy.
Scalextric (@scalextric)
5th September 2011, 4:03
Yes, Charlie, they did. Not.
Mike
5th September 2011, 6:41
Clown cars would get very boring very quickly. It’s like a scary movie, the effect wears off.
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:39
yeah, funny for one or two times (or up to ten if your a small kid), not much after that.
DavidS (@davids)
5th September 2011, 7:27
Lewis doesn’t need to emulate Button, he needs to emulate Vettel, obviously. The only way to be WDC now is to win everything.
AdrianMorse (@adrianmorse)
5th September 2011, 7:39
I don’t think this is Hamilton’s best season, but I don’t think all the bashing is called for, either.
From the Express:
A collision in Monaco didn’t cost Hamilton anything (poor qualifying strategy did), and his DNFs in Belgium and Canada were hardly his fault alone.
smifaye (@)
5th September 2011, 8:50
It’s just journalism really. The newspapers seem to be doing most of the Hamilton bashing and it always comes across as a way of grabbing the readers attention. Yes Hamilton isn’t driving the best this season but I don’t think drastic action has to take place. If he makes anymore mistakes, next thing the papers will be saying is he isn’t good enough for F1 blah blah blah.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
5th September 2011, 9:59
We saw this all in 1995 with Hill, the bandwagon-hopping is painfully transparent.
@HoHum (@hohum)
5th September 2011, 14:18
And of course the Hamilton Fan boys and girls take the bait and scream about the persecution of St.Lewis of Hamilton.
smifaye (@)
5th September 2011, 8:41
Wow, Charlie Brooker on the round-up that wasn’t something I was expecting. Ha sports fans getting annoyed at non sports fans.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
5th September 2011, 9:57
Ehhhh the usual “Hamilton should be Button” stuff just because Button is doing well of late. We heard it all last year after China, but who challenged for the title until the last race? The worst thing Hamilton could is to become like Button, driving 9/10th races, he just needs to know when he’s beat that day and not throw away 15 points for the sake of an extra 3.
Tom
5th September 2011, 10:09
Button didn’t finish that far behind Hamilton in 2010 and Hamilton lost the 2010 championship because of two stupid overtaking attempts at Monza and Singapore.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
5th September 2011, 10:51
My point is he didn’t finish behind Button in 2010 even though he didn’t drive like him. And the Singapore one is subjective at best, considering Kubica did the same to Sutil and got away with it.
Also, last year Hamilton lost more points from mechanical problems than Button did (and Vettel hitting him). In fact, Hamilton still beat Button 12-7 last year, despite failing to finish four times to Button’s 2 and both times Button retired Hamilton was already ahead of him.
Even this year, Button has scored a better result than Hamilton 5 times out of 12; only slightly less than half (which is good going) but not beating him. It’s only the points system that sees him ahead, which brings me back to my own point (pun not intended): it’s not the driving style he needs to adopt, what he has to learn to do is play the points better, which means being more careful around other cars.
Which is in fact exactly what Lauda is saying; it’s not him I’m arguing against. What I’m saying is it’s premature to say that Button’s style is better because he is beating him at the moment, when we still have many races to go. As I recall, Hamilton’s passing served him very well in Germany and especially in China, where he took the lead with only a few laps to go. Imagine if he hadn’t done that move on Button and been held up for another three laps. It’s not really Hamilton’s style of passing that’s let him down, more that he has sometimes failed in their execution, with big consequences. He needs to learn to respect the space around his and other cars better.
Icthyes (@icthyes)
5th September 2011, 11:07
tl;dr version:
There’s a difference between “Hamilton should be a fraction calmer, like Button is very calm” and “Hamilton should be as calm as Button”. The first would be good, the second would just be the antithesis of what Hamilton’s about, and probably not win him much – unless he lucks into a dominant car.
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:44
Yes, I think you are right on Hamilton having to get to accept some risks are not worth it and wait a bit longer for a better opportunity / drive the points home at times.
But I must say i am getting pretty allergic to Lauda, he keeps torching Hamilton (and others at times) on German language TV so much, this almost feels like a big turn for him!
A bit like JV saying thing just to get some quote in.
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
5th September 2011, 11:47
Hamilton vs Button is an interesting hare vs tortoise situation actually.
Give them a totally dominant car – the ’92 Williams for example – and who would win? Hamilton is almost certainly faster most of the time. But he makes mistakes, especially in the wet. Button is faster sometimes, and very, very rarely makes a mistake in any conditions. There’s no point being faster if you then crash and don’t finish the race (Hungary). Alternatively there’s no point veing careful if that care means you’re not fast enough.
Fascinating.
TomD11 (@tomd11)
5th September 2011, 14:52
I just don’t understand this ‘he should be more like Button’ shtick; where has Button’s consistency got him? He’s still miles behind Vettel, even if you allow for his mechanical issues. If people think that if Hamilton could be as consistent as Button then he’d be able to challenge for the WDC, surely that means that if Button is being consistent he’s not extracting all he should from the car, which is just as much of a weakness. It also seems to indicate that over the course of the season neither driver has maximised the potential of the car and that even if they had, the points deficit is such that they still would not have been able to challenge.
Even if Lewis were to just mix Jenson’s restraint with his own skills, if he can, I don’t really see the point of laying into him this season when there’s no real chance of the title and he’s just hurting his own race win tally. I could understand the criticism if he had a realistic chance at the title but then surely part the problem is that he hasn’t been able to consistently challenge and his ensuing state of mind has led to these incidents.
Craig Woollard (@craig-o)
5th September 2011, 11:48
Completely agreed. Different drivers have different ways of winning races and titles, you can’t slam one driver’s method because it provides a bad patch of incidents and everything. If Lewis drove like Jenson, he would not have won a WDC.
Fixy (@)
5th September 2011, 10:13
Why do we never get pictures of those? (Not referred to Keith, but to Ferrari) :(
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:44
Guess not, would take away the exlusivity of it, right :-(
topdowntoedown (@topdowntoedown)
5th September 2011, 11:52
Presumably you can’t get a decent photo for all the smoke.
And who’d want to be caught in a photo handing out tabs to five year olds?
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 11:46
Anyone tried that Mobile 1 Ultimate Track Challenge included in the link yet?
WarfieldF1
5th September 2011, 14:37
hamilton has had issues by being too agressive/impatient in the past; monza last year was a prime example………….however i have looked at the SPa incident several times and just dont see he was to blame for this one; i think Jenson had several agressive/strong overtakes or attempts at overtakes (eg on Massa )and Vettels overtake round the outside of Alonso was never going to work…….but it did.
It was a funny GP, Red Bulls appeared to be stuffed after the 1st pit stop, then seemed to have time in hand on their second set of tyres, then the full course yellow gave the free pitstop……considering how they were feared not to make it on the podium they ended up doing very well; the season seems to be over!
Whincup v Lowndes and Power v Franchitti look like keeping it going down to the wire, but F1 could crown Vettel now!
Avada Kedavra
5th September 2011, 18:48
Suggestions for tommorow’s round-up
Thailand bid for grand prix, Imola return
refrences:
newsonf1.com
madelnmotorsport.com
crash.net
cnngo.com
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
5th September 2011, 18:55
If you have a tip please send it in: Contact F1 Fanatic
BasCB (@bascb)
5th September 2011, 19:35
The official F1 Spa race edit is online at formula1.com. A full 3 minute 20 seconds of action, including some beeped out swearing when Alonso and Massa squabble on track!
Calum
5th September 2011, 20:57
DC has just beaten 2009 F1 Champion Jenson Button on ITV’s gameshow Red or Black. The game they played was called Cruise Control, and involved DC in a Black go kart, JB in a red go kart taking turns to punt tyres down a rink to a scoring zone, in a similar manner to curling.
DC went first and sent a tyre into the 3 zone, Jb took the lead at the end of round one with a marvelous
4. DC hit another 3 with his second shot, JB could only manage a 1 – the score was 6-5 in the Scot’s favor. The final round saw DC score another 3, but one of his tyres was pushed into the 4 zone – his total was 10. JB failed to score with his final shot, however the tyre pushed another of his tyres into the 5 zone, for a final score of 9.
A narrow victory for the 2004 F1 runner up, 10-9 in the end. In a post game interview with Geordie duo Ant and Dec, JB told of how his defeat was due to lack of grip on the rink and failure to get enough heat into his tyres.
:P
DominikWilde (@dominikwilde)
5th September 2011, 21:55
It’s my birthday today :)
BasCB (@bascb)
8th September 2011, 11:51
happy birthday (better late then never, right ;-) )