Court to hear Ecclestone bribe case

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Gerhard Gribkowsky is to stand trial over claims he accepted a bribe from Bernie Ecclestone.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Banker to stand trial on F1 bribe charges (FT)

“A Munich court confirmed on Monday that it would hear the case against Gerhard Gribkowsky, the former chief risk officer at BayernLB, the Munich-based Landesbank.”

UBS leadership fail to attend Singapore Grand Prix (Daily Telegraph)

“The no-show came despite the bank spending $200m [£128m] on sponsorship of the sport.”

Formula one success revs up Red Bull Racing’s profits (The Guardian)

“Energy drinks company Red Bull made a £2.8m pre-tax profit last year from winning the Formula One championship and diversifying its racing operations, according to team boss Christian Horner.”

Where’s your head at, Lewis? Racing legend Stewart expresses Hamilton concern (Daily Mail)

“I am a bit confused because he certainly knows how to drive and has a very large amount of natural talent. But if he is going to be a great driver he cannot have serial incidents. And none of the great drivers ever drove in that fashion.”

Craig Scarborough on Twitter

“Paolo Filisetti, a long established journalist, who is FIA accredited media, attends races, sells content to websites/magazines, ex-F1.com tech editor, cuts and pastes my work verbatim and translates it to Italian, sells and distributes it as his own to 422race.com, GPWeek and who knows where else.”

Via the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app

Di Resta hopes Renault can be caught (Autosport)

“Hopefully we can keep the form we have got and Renault can struggle a little bit more, and we can certainly put a fight to them until the end of the year.”

F1 Fanatic on Twitter

“For those who say tyre marbles ruin racing: the great exchange we had between Rosberg and Perez began when Rosberg ran wide on marbles.”

Via the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app

Singapore Grand Prix from the pit lane with Ted Kravitz (BBC)

Video covering the aftermath of the Singapore Grand Prix (UK only).

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

Comment of the day

Frood congratulations Paul di Resta on his ‘first’ points finish:

To my mind this is Di Resta’s first points finish and a very good drive indeed. This is not to denigrate his previous drives, but I do mean to impugn those who laud “points finishes” in the same way that they/we did when points were only available to the top six.

Imagine that, for example, Jean Alesi had finished 9th or 10th on his debut; it would not be remembered now, whereas his fourth is rightly remembered as a stunning debut. Similarly, Hamilton, Jacques Villeneuve and the ultimate, Giancarlo Baghetti.
Frood

From the forum

Mclaren asks who is currently the quickest driver in F1?

Site updates

Apologies for the downtime yesterday which was beyond my control. Steps are being taken to ensure the problem does not recur.

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

Jacques Laffite scored his final F1 win 30 years ago today in a streaming wet Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal.

Alan Jones spun out of the lead early on, leaving Alain Prost to head the field.

But his compatriot Laffite came by on lap 15, demoting him to second. That became third when he was passed by Gilles Villeneuve.

Villeneuve collided with Elio de Angelis later but kept going despite a badly deranged front nose. John Watson passed him for second but the Ferrari driver kept going to finish on the podium in his final race at home.

Laffite’s victory was also the last for a Matra engine in F1.

Here’s the irrepressible Villeneuve doing his thing:

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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37 comments on “Court to hear Ecclestone bribe case”

  1. Bummed for scarbs! Can’t believe somebody would steal his work!

    1. Disgusting behaviour all right. Funny that in the digital age thieves notice that it’s a lot easier to steal content, but fail to realise it’s also a lot easier to track the theft. 40 years ago he might have got away with reprinting an english tech article in an italian magazine like that.

      Not nowadays.

    2. and I actually thought he had permission from Scarbs to republish his work!

      1. Next time you see, rather ask Scarbs about it, I guess :-(

    3. Pretty awful but also a pretty big compliment. Of course, that doesn’t make it alright.

  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Caracciola

    I came across this featured article on Wiki by accident, quite interesting – it’s about a German racing driver who won 3 Euro Championship’s – the equivalent of F1 pre 1950.

    I thought it was rather apt, given the current and future world champion. ;)

    1. Interestingly it says he was nicknamed ‘Regenmeister’ – rain master, like Schumacher and Vettel. Although I’m not surprised it almost seems genetic that UK and German drivers are good in the rain. :P

      1. Yes, the famous real/orignial Regenmeister Caracciola. Who knows what he would have been able to achieve, had there been a world championship while he was in his prime.

        1. I like to think of drivers like him and Nuvolari as de facto world champions.

    2. I saw it a few weeks ago ad thought the same. The opposite points system (more poins for the lower-ranked drivers, the one with fewer points wins) confused me but I’m sure he and Nuvalorai would have been F1 heroes, and as Icthyes I consider them as orld Champions although their series wasn’t callaed “Formula 1”.

    3. From that I found this spectacular machine.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_T80

      1. Am I the only one who finds that T80 jaw-droppingly gorgeous?

        1. Not at all. It’s incredible.

  3. Has anyone else experienced performance issues with the new F12011 game on ps3/xbox/pc?

    1. The xbox version does that thing where it randomly freezes for a second or so, did the same last year.

      Its a weird one, it wont do it for a few hours and then do it twice on the next lap when im te only car on screen, it needs fixing.

    2. The game freezes on my Xbox 360 Slim. One would assume this is down to an old Xbox but my unit is just seven weeks old.

      It happens at least once every 10 laps or so, and usually in the worst possible moment = mid corner…

      1. I’ve had a few freezes too. Is it an issues to do with not using an HDMI?

        1. More like an issue arising from using a console that was out of date for the games that were being made for it 2 years ago. Yet microsoft are to this day still trying to pump more pixels out of it like an electrical piñata.

          1. Clearly a load of rubbish. More than likely a glitch that can be fixed with an update.

          2. Nice metaphor though :) “Electrical pinata” it’s like a beck lyric!
            No such problems with my electrical pinata the PS3..

          3. Think you need educating in the world of console gameing andrewtanner.

            The xbox 360 came out in november 2005 almost exactly 6 years ago at first game makers made games well inside the 360’s capabilitys because it was a powerfull machine at the time. Now how ever it’s 3.2ghz dual core and 512mb of memory is pretty feeble, in 2008 when fallout 3 came out (note that was 3 years ago i was not exaggerating) and probably much before game makers decided they could do alot more when not working within the confines of xbox specs. They still wanted to sell to the xbox market but they also wanted to pioneer new and better graphics. This resulted in pc/xbox games ever since having minimum spec requirements that met the maximum power of the xbox 360 but maximum specs that were far greater than what the xbox is capable of. That means that all pc games that come out on the xbox are toned down so that the xbox can run them. That also means that whilst the xbox is running a new game for instance f1 2011 it is doing so flat out. That means when you get to highload situation e.g fable II when you owned all the houses in the land the ammount of information being generated was so much that it ment the game lagged from the second you loaded it to the moment you turned it off that’s an extreme example because fable II tho wonderfull was especially badly made.

            It can vary depending on how well games are programmed and even how you play it but the long and short of it is xbox 360’s are out of date.

  4. Yeh i have it on PS3 and the framerate online is dreadful, i’m sticking to sinlge player for now where it’s a bit better till the issue is sorted.

  5. Something I noticed Keith, even though Rubens confirmed Hamilton told him he hadn’t made derogatory comments about him (https://twitter.com/#!/rubarrichello/status/117713391455449088 & https://twitter.com/#!/rubarrichello/status/117713671509127168) it sadly hasn’t stopped Alan Henry stirring the pot (http://www.autocar.co.uk/blogs/racinglines/archive/2011/09/26/hamilton-courts-more-controversy-with-barrichello.aspx)

    Pretty poor journalism really on his part.

  6. there’s a scene in senna where jackie stewart is tearing into ayrton: “what if i told you you where involved in more incidents than all other f1 champs put together?” or something like that. he was right then, and he’s right now.

    1. Its interesting to see that Stewart counts himself as one of the greats (not that I disagree, just tells us something about his mindset). He compares drivers from F1 until the eighties to modern drivers when it comes to accidents which I think isn’t right. Back in his day an accident often meant death on some side so everyone tried to avoid it for that reason. Today a collision usually means wing change or retirement so obviously drivers will take much greater risks. Still, Hami is overdoing it by far, but I’m sure he can get back on track. Or have drivers stopped being intimidated by his overtaking style?! I don’t know but but my idea would be some kind of psychological advisor. In many kinds of sports psychologists are being used to improve performance under pressure, its a tool like a personal trainer for fitness and it might help. But none of us knows Lewis so we’ll never find out whats really going on inside him.

      1. I think there is hope for Hamilton improving. After all, when we compare his Monaco race with Singapore there is a big difference.

        There he got a penalty and went on to collect himself another one later in the race from ragged and aggressive driving. Here, after his penalty he did just about everything right.

      2. Clearly there its still a risk, like you said, but it’s not his safety we should solely be concerned with. Admittedly he has not caused any serious accidents for himself or any other driver but it’s just general etiquette to take care.

        1. 1. it’s not the seriousness of the results of the crashes, it’s the potential for serious results, as well as sporting behavior.

          2. what has been massively downplayed is the fact he was knocked unconscious in his spa crash. “i just had the wind knocked out of me”…no dude, you were out cold for a few seconds. that’s a concussion, where the brain strikes the inside of the skull.

  7. I once showed a friend (who is also a race fan) the clip of Villeneuve’s entire wheel coming off at the Dutch Grand Prix and said “THAT is racing.” He very firmly disagreed stating how dangerous it was and that someone could have been killed by the flying bits of wheel carcass. While I agree some of the things he did were dangerous, I still think Villeneuve had a pureness to his racing. His “master of destruction” style was not simply a matter of tearing the cars up, but that he was going to finish the damn race no matter what. For that, I wish I had been alive to watch him drive. Where ever you are, Gilles, thank you for the gems you gave us. You were a memorable and fantastic driver.

  8. Here’s a youtube link to the Ted Kravitz interview (via tinyurl) for any non UK viewers.

  9. From the forum

    Mclaren asks who is currently the quickest driver in F1?

    Had a bit of a double-take at that!

    1. Lewis, of course! ;)

    2. Perhaps this is how Whitmarsh is hedging his bets for 2013! :)

      1. themagicofspeed (@)
        27th September 2011, 19:41

        Alonso, who is Ferrari property and would never return to McLaren anyway.. and Vettel, who is unlikely to leave RBR any time soon.

        When he can keep it off the track/other peoples cars, Lewis is quick.. Give him a good car with a good front end, and Button is the man as well. Massa belongs in Formula 3 and Webber will be collecting his pension soon so doesnt leave much choice.

  10. themagicofspeed (@)
    27th September 2011, 19:37

    the best thing that can happen to F1 by far, is for him to be found guilty, be removed from his post by CVC, and spend the rest of his days rotting in prison where he cant suck all that is good out of F1 like the greedy, disgusting little leech he is. I hope he goes down, and that we never have to see him again.

  11. Hamilton has had head problems since his rookie year when he should have won the title as a rookie but ****** it away.

    Perhaps Lewis should put those vertical sticks on the corners of his front wing (like truck drivers do on their bumpers) so he can better tell where his nose is.

  12. Stewart has not changed one bit, here he is talking to senna about the same thing

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ko94oniszuA

Comments are closed.