Fernando Alonso, McLaren, Albert Park, 2018

Alonso ‘doesn’t care too much’ about former teams

RaceFans Round-up

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Quotes: Dieter Rencken

In the round-up: Fernando Alonso says he isn’t concerned about the successes of past teams he has driven for.

Alonso was asked in China about the performance of Toro Rosso and McLaren’s former engine supplier Honda in the Bahrain Grand Prix.

It was a very nice weekend for them, they were performing. here also they are competitive

To be honest after 18 years in Formula One to answer after one good qualifying, one good result from any team, it makes no sense. I did not answer it about Ferrari in 2015, 2016. After I left Ferrari, every win, every podium they were achieving you asked me if I regret when I left Ferrari. After four years, Mercedes keep winning both championships, you are not asking me any more about Ferrari.

Or Renault in 2005 and ’06 I won two championships and now they are again competitive. I don’t care so much about other teams. It’s funny how people get excited about ex-teams when they are OK and they ask me, I don’t care too much.

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Josef Newgarden, Penske, IndyCar, Barber Motorsport Parkk, 2018
Josef Newgarden, Penske, IndyCar, Barber Motorsport Parkk, 2018

The IndyCar championship continues at Barber Motorsport Park this weekend. Reigning champion Josef Newgarden was one of several drivers who spun off yesterday but conditions are expected to get trickier on race day as heavy rain is forecast. Join us to follow the race live tomorrow evening.

Comment of the day

Is a ban on teams using ‘mission control’ centres realistic?

What’s the difference between the staff at a team wanting to watch the race in the office and a virtual garage? F1 is famous for teams getting around rules, so why should this rule be different?
Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)

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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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41 comments on “Alonso ‘doesn’t care too much’ about former teams”

  1. Regarding comment of the day: this proposal would bring it more in line with other rules. For example, teams are banned from testing cars on track and also have restrictions on using driver simulators and wind tunnels at their facilities. Teams are known for finding loopholes and the rulebook is known for closing them

    1. I think it would be way too hard to enforce, and that is what COD is trying to say.

      Obviously there is nothing wrong with a group of work colleagues hanging out and watching F1 together in the office.

      There is also nothing wrong with communicating with the teams – for example over Twitter – during a race.

      I think if Liberty were to ban every type of communication it would have more negative impact than the positives it would create.

      In which case, as COTD states, what’s the difference between a group of F1 workers watching F1 together and a virtual office?

      1. It’s not that hard to make sure they don’t have internet connection to send and receive data. Without the data and with only the TV, there is not much they can help with.

        1. And how would you, in this day and age, make sure teams don’t have an internet connection? I guess limiting the amount of sensors on a car during a race weekend would make more sense. but that would mean the importance of other tests and simulations increases. In other words: the costs will only rise if you prohibit a cheap solution.

  2. Are Renault not the perennial experts in over promising and under delivering?…

    1. +1

      But if anyone complains, it’s their fault not Renault’s.

      Even their statements are vague and contradictory most of the time.

      “No there wasn’t a shortage of parts” … “but we weren’t expecting any issues this early”……

    2. Not by a long shot. How many times have Honda said we are equal on power over the last 3 years? Or ‘close to podiums’ ?

  3. @keithcollantine : As a Spaniard F1 fan, I’d like to advise you to avoid “Diario Gol” as a source of information. This website is known for its fake news and bombastic headings whose sole purpose is to gain visits. It is especially harsh with Fernando Alonso, Real Madrid or Barcelona FC’s player Gerard Piqué. As trustworthy Spanish F1 websites I’d suggest motorsport sections of El Confidencial and Marca as well as SoyMotor or TheBestF1, among others.

    1. Marca trustworthy? There is an immense gallery of front pages promising earth-shattering signs for Real Madrid that never happened.

      (But like, really immense)

      1. I totally agree with you about Marca’s lack of credibility when it comes to football and Real Madrid, but I’ m talking about its motorsport section. It is very focused and optimistic on Fernando Alonso, yes, but that is something you have live with in most of spanish media. In addition, there is an inmese difference between been a viased media (as Marca can be cosidered) and a F

        1. … and a Fake news site (as Diario Gol).

    2. Agree, Diario Gol is even worse than The Sun.

      And Marca is not very reliable

      1. Diario Gol said that Lando Norris was replacing Fernando Alonso next year, so was that just a lie?

  4. OmarRoncal - Go Seb!!! (@)
    21st April 2018, 1:14

    The difference, regarding the COTD, is that telemetry can be banned to be broadcast beyond the circuit. I don’t think it could be so hard to control.

    1. Great Idea! Simple but effective. But how to enforce it when the broadband connection was available everywhere?

    2. Makes sense.
      (and some extra customers for ‘F1 TV Pro’ if they ever launch it in the UK)

    3. @omarr-pepper I don’t know how much the bandwidth and latency you need for smooth communication with the factory, but how can you enforce someone with hidden laptop or PC transmitting the data with cellular network instead of their usual connection? We have reached the time when cellular network connection is more than adequate for most uses and I bet a circuit that hosting international event will have priority from a cellular provider to have 4G capability.

    4. I recently had an interest in building my own radio based data network. As far as I can tell I could do this with an outlay of less than $100 (writing the software myself). I eventually decided to opt for sending the information as a text message via one of the local mobile phone networks (there’s only one left that uses GSM), writing the software myself. The modules that do this cost in the region of $12.67 (US). There’s no reason why a team, with far more resources than I have, can’t do better. For example, for $3.91 you buy a 2.4 GHz transmitter – receiver that’s claimed to have a range of 2. 5 km and a data transmission rate of 10 Megabits per second. So how can you ban telemetry being sent when anyone with even a modest budget can do it?

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        21st April 2018, 21:27

        I honestly don’t think teams would bother to cheat to get around this. They could put a disproportionate punishment on it – if you get caught sending data outside of the circuit, you are banned for 5 races and get no prize money at the end of the season. Done. No-one will cheat.

        They aren’t reliant on doing this – it’s just currently completely legal so if it provides a benefit, why not do it? If money is unlimited, why not spend it on anything that will help you?

      2. All it takes is one member of staff changing teams and ‘whistle blowing’.

  5. That Spanish website is far from reliable…

  6. Further to the pros and cons of the telemetry debate: Isn’t Tata a major sponsor of F1, and isn’t it’s raison d’etre the high-speed coms between the track and teamHQ ?

    1. @hohum – Tata is primarily the FOM partner for connectivity, so they do things like connectivity for the various circuits back to FOM/F1 HQ, host the F1 website, aggregate camera data from across the track for broadcast, etc. All of this is FOM-oriented, not the teams.

      I don’t think Tata helps (much, if at all) in transferring telemetry for teams back to their HQ, and teams are free to engage whichever partner they like for this. Mercedes is one team that has partnered with Tata for their trackside/HQ operations. Red Bull have done so with AT&T, on the other hand.

      There might be some small overlap in terms of internet infrastructure that Tata provides at a circuit being used by teams for telemetry to HQ, but Tata’s role in that is more that an ISP (doing it on behalf of FOM), than a direct enabler.

      1. @hohum @phylyp All the data that is transmitted from car to pit, Including team radio now goes through the FOM/TATA Network.

        This was something that was done a few years ago because the network setup around the circuit (Primarily for the in-car & trackside cameras) provides full coverage around the track while the teams own systems in the pits/paddock tended to have dead spots around some circuits. Additionally it also saves teams a bit of money as they don’t have to setup there own systems & has the benefit of giving FOM/FIA full access to team radio & all telemetry data (Which will be used more with the launch of F1TV).

        All the the team radio & Telemetry as well as all live video feeds produced at the track are sent via the TATA fiber network to FOM’s Biggin Hill base in the UK. All team radio broadcast’s, Telemetry data, in-car cameras, Replays & the various extra content feeds are now produced at Biggin Hill rather than the track with team radio, replays & telemetry sent back to the trackside TV tent upon request from the director.

        1. Very useful info, thank you, @gt-racer

  7. The debate around ‘mission controls’ is one that has me incredibly conflicted.

    On the one hand, I can understand the argument around getting “back office” support and not letting the racers race. Particularly since it implies that teams that are able to staff a larger mission control, with more telemetry, more expensive computers, are better positioned to leverage that.

    On the other hand – and partly as a technical geek and IT professional, the idea of harnessing telemetry in real-time is impressive. It is somewhat easy to sling gigabytes of telemetry around the world once it is off the car, but to sift through it and make it useful in near real-time is in itself an achievement. And this is something that is not done often (the exceptions would be spacecraft and possibly defence applications). Even aeronautics doesn’t use such telemetry in real-time (the loss of MH370 served to illustrate just how little telemetry is transmitted outside a plane).

    So, in its own way, mission control is a demonstration of information technology, just as the MGU-H/K demonstrate engine technology.

    F1 has always been a team effort, with the drivers as the most visible members of that team, and in some ways mission control is just an extension of that, and an illustration of the pervasiveness of IT in numerous walks of life.

    There seem to be many options available around mission control:
    1. Ban transmission of telemetry off the track (hard to enforce, someone could just initiate a video call to pick up telemetry displayed in the pit garage)
    2. Ensure that mission control costs are included in the proposal around cost cap – to paraphrase Claire Williams – “it’s not what the cost cap is, it’s where you allocate it”
    3. Permit mission control in its current form

    I am curious to see where this discussion leads, and what the eventual decision is.

  8. FA has a very valid point. I’m of course referring to the quotes above the links.

  9. Vettel fan 17 (@)
    21st April 2018, 7:55

    Isn’t McLaren one of his former teams technically? A bit ironic really.

    1. Now he is 110% focused on Kimoa F1

  10. The snapshot is brilliant if you’re Brazilian; in Brazil they call bad drivers “barbers”.

  11. The journalists should burry this subject for good. It’s a dead subject now and they could spare ALO of such “pain”. The only regret… if it was any… was over the departure from Ferrari. Might not any regret now. Overall it was a mistake to leave Ferrari indeed, but it’s more than 3 years since that happened. Things are pretty much arranged at the top regarding the drivers, so almost impossible to return to Ferrari. Or get a Mercedes drive. RBR is out of talks completely, they a completely different philosophy (young and fast drivers, but with small salary demands) and ALO doesn’t qualify at all. 0 regret over Renault, after 2006 they never were title contenders anymore. Actually, 2007 aside, Renault never was a top3 material team anymore, he’s almost 37 so he’ll be out of F1 by the time they become title contenders again.

    1. @mg1982 I agree with most of you said, but why leaving Ferrari is a mistake? His tenure there is a period that famous with blaming politics and sacking people just for the sake of having a scapegoat. Ferrari at that time also never looked they’ll be able to contest for WDC. In fact, it was a good surprise how suddenly competitive Ferrari last year and they still improves on that this year. The only clear bad decision on his career is (blackmailing and) leaving McLaren in 2007 where they obviously have the best car.

    2. @mg1982 It is definately possible that Ferrari might not have turned around the way they did with Alonso still in the team, however.

  12. I’m not sure if this was covered in an earlier round-up, but Kvyat’s been testing a Ferrari at Fiorano, as part of Pirelli’s wet tyre testing programme.

    1. @phylyp
      Even better, it’s covered in this very round-up. ^^
      (See “Social media”)

    2. Ah, the joys of checking the site using a workplace internet connection, it strips out social media content (so I don’t see the embedded tweets). Thanks nase :-)

  13. @keithcollantine My thanks for selecting my comment as Comment of the Day. It has been very interesting reading others comments.

    1. Have to say its not the most informed comment. As mentioned, the regulation would be enforced via telemetry and data transfer, not a few guys watching it on telly and sending whatsapps!

Comments are closed.