Both Renault and Sauber are launching their 2010 cars on the same day - just before the first pre-season test gets underway in Valencia. We're interested in both cars, naturally, and both teams also have a surprise to offer in terms of the livery as well. Peter Sauber has managed to buy back his team from the clutches of BMW, so he will want to put his own mark on things, I'm sure.
Credit: BMW Sauber F1 Team
The new C29 chassis from BMW Sauber.
Sauber will have their two confirmed drivers at the launch, in the form of Kamui Kobayashi and Pedro de la Rosa. They make an odd pairing, so it will be interesting to see how they get on. Plus, de la Rosa will be making his return to a race seat, and will probably be pretty happy to get things going.
Credit: BMW Sauber F1 Team
The C29 full frontal.
We haven't had two teams launch on the same day this year, so it will be interesting to see who gets the majority of the headlines. We'll be watching the news with a keen eye, and looking out for pictures and any gems from Twitter to keep you updated.
Credit: BMW Sauber F1 Team
The business end of C29 with blanked out diffuser.
A constant discussion within the Sidepodcommunity is the validity of news, and how best to check sources. Here, RG shows how easy it is to make a mistake, even if it is a deliberate one.
Twitter can highlight both the best and the worst of F1 on the internet.
I could fool you. I could fool the whole world if I wanted to. It would only take a little bit of effort and time, and possibly a bit of luck, to do it. The funny thing would be that hardly anyone would question it; they would believe every single word that had been written down in front of them.
In 2009, Twitter took off big time. It does indeed feel like the majority of the world is on it. There are, admittedly, some very good uses for using the service, especially if you are a fan of Formula 1 (which I suspect you are, considering you are on this site). Follow the right people, and you are given the latest information within seconds of it being released to the media. Instead of having to wait for an article to appear on Autosport, it is out on Twitter and can be discussed even before the first update on that page is out on the internet.
But that is only if you manage to follow the right people.
Peter Sauber. In my own mind a simple legend, of course, I am totally biased. He is, of course, the owner of the returning Sauber team. Now, I don’t wish any offence onto the great man, but can you really see him being the type who uses Twitter? No, I can’t see it either. Perhaps his son, Alex Sauber might be the type (now in charge of the team’s marketing activites).
So I do indeed wonder why a certain Formula 1 “news” agency opted to pick up on the fact that Peter Sauber, on an unverified twitter account, said the following:
“second driver to be announced next week. The team is ready to work. happy new year.”
This was posted on the 30th December 2009. Sauber has only just confirmed Pedro de la Rosa this week.
Amazingly, when a certain “news” company picked it up, it spread round the internet quicker than Usain Bolt down 100m. It didn’t take long for a reliable account, in the form of Jonathan Noble, of Autosport, to make a quick check with the real Peter Sauber, to prove it was a simple fake account.
To fool the world, though. It does sound like a bit of a challenge, doesn’t it? You would think it may require me to be on the television. Or indeed, turn into a taxi driver and spot Cristiano Ronaldo walking out of White Hart Lane (fans of the BBC live text of transfer deadline day will know what I am talking about).
In fact, all it needs is a half decent connection to the internet, a Twitter account and the ability to use hashtags. When Tom G suggested in the comments that we should lead a certain “news” company up the garden path, the following tweet, on my own Twitter account, followed:
“I've heard from some sources that Campos Meta will announce Vitaly Petrov as their new driver. Bringing in 7million euros to the team #f1”
I can confirm that I have no sources inside the F1 paddock. I will also happily say that seven million Euros was plucked from the air. I don’t know however if Vitaly Petrov will go to Campos Meta 1 or not. That will have to be seen in the future. What I love about my rumour, is that it is perfectly possible, but the way to spread a good rumour is the use of a hashtag. Some F1 fans that use Twitter do indeed follow the #f1 hashtag to possibly catch up on the news.
Originally, I was disappointed at the end of the Sunday evening, that only five non-Sidepodcast people had retweeted that message. I was indeed sure that more had read it. I’ll take this time to apologise to the people who believed that message, yes, I did lead you all up a one way street. Block me if you like.
I did think all was lost, but that was until Tom (once again) came across a link on a Spanish speaking website. Although the use of Google Translator was required, it did appear that the main structure of my tweet was involved. Seven million Euros is indeed mentioned, with a company called Megafon, which is a Russian mobile phone operator.
Easy. Too easy. I could do it again if I wanted to as well, I bet some people won’t read this article properly, so won’t realise that when I say:
Ralf Schumacher is going to USF1.
That I am totally lying. It won’t happen but a select bunch of people don’t read the whole story. That is the important thing, the whole story.
My tweet could have easily been caught out; it was on my own account, in the middle of me discussing the West Ham v Arsenal game on at that time. Odd timing for a breaking news story. I have clearly no previous history of correctly breaking Formula 1 stories and I never backed it up with anything.
Check the sources, how important is that. I’m stating the obvious but probably 90% of Formula 1 fans on the internet don’t know about the best and worst places. Sidepodcast sorted that out a year ago, a page which is still relevant today. Sadly, the “news” sources which produce the most incorrect stories still seem to end up everywhere I go. Be it something like the BBC Sport website, a forum or even in general chat with friends. (When football isn’t the main discussion)
So if you are reading an article with a three letter abbreviation or a certain German newspaper near it, it is more than likely to be incorrect. If you see something on Twitter, not by an inside source, or a journalist, again, it is likely to be incorrect.
The internet. Used by bunch of liars. Me included.
Never looking backwards. Pedro de la Rosa requests a wing mirror adjustment.
Spanish driver Pedro de la Rosa was confirmed on Tuesday as the second driver for BMW Sauber. He will partner Kamui Kobayashi at the Swiss team.
The 38-year-old driver, who has previously managed 71 Grand Prix starts, will make a return to full-time competitive Formula 1 action after spending seven years as McLaren's test driver.
Team Principal Peter Sauber, who today completed his 2010 team lineup, said of the signing:
"Pedro has spent many years working for a top team at the highest technical level
"We as a team stand to gain from his experience, and the same goes for young Kamui. The combination of a seasoned racer and an up-and-coming young driver has repeatedly proved a very fruitful one. I don’t expect either of them to disappoint in 2010."
During his tenure as a McLaren test driver, de la Rosa stood in as a reserve driver for a number of races. In 2005, he finished fifth in Bahrain, the circuit that will open this year's race calendar. Speaking about his new position, Pedro said:
"I’m really excited about the season with Peter Sauber’s team, which has been a solid fixture in Formula One ever since 1993."
Pedro's team mate Kamui Kobayashi was confirmed at the team last month.
This is the F1 Advent Calendar 2009, brought to you by Sidepodcast. We are working our way through the 2009 season by means of peeking through a door for each day of advent, and recounting a key moment from the year. Yesterday we were looking at politics, and it's not quite time to get back to the racing yet. Here's Day Sixteen - Goodbye From Us.
At the end of July, BMW quit Formula 1. It was eerily similar to the way Honda had quit, in that rumours began a couple of days beforehand, and then it was confirmed by the team and the parent manufacturer. The BMW board held a press conference, with Mario Theissen present, and Dr. Norbert Reithofer used a lot of long words: "Premium will increasingly be defined in terms of sustainability and environmental compatibility. This is an area in which we want to remain in the lead. In line with our Strategy Number ONE, we are continually reviewing all projects and initiatives to check them for future viability and sustainability. Our Formula 1 campaign is thus less a key promoter for us."
Or... we haven't really been getting the results we want. BMW, the team, always had a plan, and had been sticking to it pretty well. They wanted to get points, then the next year they wanted to get a win, then the next year they wanted to win a championship. Ah. When things didn't go to plan, they weren't amused. Kubica has frequently admitted how impatient he got with the team when following their one win, they were happy to check that to-do off their list, and focus on the next year. Never mind the job in hand.
Anyway, having confirmed their intention to leave at the end of the year, BMW continued to race the rest of the season. Heidfeld kept on racking up the points, and Kubica kept on complaining about the car. Mario Theissen said they were looking at offers from interested buyers for the team, and in September, they announced they had been bought by the mysterious Qadbak Investments. To look into detail at the strange and unreliable nature of these investors would be a whole other mini series in itself, but suffice it to say, no one, bar Theissen, was really convinced.
Mario was confident they would be on the grid in 2010, despite the fact the team had declined to sign the Concorde Agreement in the summer, and that all the grid slots were filled, including the three new ones. He signed up Ferrari to supply them with engines. Kubica, though, was ready to move on, confirming his move to Renault for next year before the season was over. Nevertheless, the team wound up the rest of the season in continued unspectacular fashion.
In the middle of November, it became clear that the Qadbak deal was not going to happen. There were a few days of concern, but on November 27th there was good news. Original owner Peter Sauber was prepared to buy back the team from BMW, on the condition that they had a grid slot for 2010. It was clear that the announcement was a big relief for Sauber, who had been concerned about the future of the team, and had tried to come to a deal with BMW beforehand. With the team back under his control, he said: "Our staff here are highly competent and motivated, and I look forward to taking on this new challenge together with them. I would like to thank BMW for four shared years that have in the main been very successful."
With the post-season news that Toyota were leaving the sport, Sauber were granted that oh-so-important 13th grid slot, meaning they will still be around next year.
That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to our F1 Advent Calendar 2009, and I hope you'll join me tomorrow to look through the door of Day Seventeen.
Hello! RG here and as today’s first ever guest writer for the Daily, I believe it is my duty to welcome you to the weekend. For me, I am delighted it is the weekend, having spent the past day and a bit stuck in bed feeling ill. Not ideal, but yesterday saw some awesome news to keep me happy.
The brilliant ‘Tonio Liuzzi was confirmed at Force India alongside Adrian Sutil. Fantastic news there, Force India managing to keep two decent drivers and with more testing for him, I do think Liuzzi will go out in 2010 and score a few good results. Especially since he is awesome.
Then there is the news of Montreal being confirmed for the 2010 season. Brilliant. One of my favourite tracks on the F1 calendar returns. Of course, that is where BMW Sauber scored their one and only victory in 2008. All we need now is a race in the USA and to get rid of a few other circuits. I am looking at Valencia and Abu Dhabi for starters.
So to top that off, there will have to be something really special. That something special came in the form of BMW selling the team back to Peter Sauber. To a lifelong fan of the team, this is simply the best news ever and has kept a smile on my face. Of course it is with conditions, but I am certain Sauber will be on the grid next season. Can’t wait to have Sauber next year, perhaps a return to the popular blue liveries? I have my fingers crossed.
Of course, I won’t go away without some plugs. My Timo Glock dedicated blog at Only One Timo Glock and my general blog The Northern Waffler. Do also check out one of the ten kazillion posts that were wrote yesterday, a personal favourite of mine being Predictions Revisited, showing how many of us were wrong more or less this time last year. Have a fun Saturday!
Oh, nearly forgot to mention, it is the birthday of a certain Rob Smedley.
Guest writer Stuart Codling is working hard on getting his own site together, but has found time for one more post here before he takes up the reigns. This time, he untangles the mystery of BMW and Qadbak.
As Richard Nixon once said to Dwight Eisenhower, with admirable directness but a certain lack of politesse, “There comes a time when you have to s**t or get off the pot.” Similarly, if you’re planning on buying a Formula 1 team, then at some point you’re going to have to convince the seller that you’ve got the money to buy it.
It’s over this crucial point that the BMW board, after weeks of curious dithering, finally changed tack and decided to halt the sale of its team to Qadbak Investments Ltd, an offshore investment vehicle about which very little is known.
Formula 1 has made many of its participants very rich. But it’s also a sport in which, over the years, a motley procession of rogues, charlatans and mountebanks have spent vast swathes of other people’s money before disappearing into the ether. To identify potential dangers you need to ask questions; and the harder you dig for details about the people behind Qadbak, the more elusive they become. The trail takes us from the British Virgin Islands to Pyongyang via Zurich, Dubai, and, er, Nottingham.
It was Somerset Maugham who described Monaco as “a sunny place for shady people.” Most tax havens are like that. Individuals who create networks of which-shell-is-the-peanut-under offshore companies are usually doing so in order to mask their wealth (or, indeed, the lack of it) from the scrutiny of tax inspectors, alimony lawyers, intelligence organisations, and auditors doing due diligence. If you’re registered ‘on shore’ – in the UK, for instance – then your accounts are open for public scrutiny. A talented accountant can work wonders with the figures, but for real financial acrobatics you have to look offshore, where with the right advice you can really make your balance sheet stand on its head and sing Jerusalem.
On the other hand, F1’s undisputed king of the offshore tax haven is Bernard Charles Ecclestone. He has never scurried off with the goods, even though for those of us on the outside, trying to ascertain which mattress Formula 1’s cash is stuffed under is like playing that fairground game where you have to whack the gophers over the head with a padded stick.
Consider also the reclusive Barclay brothers, David and Frederick, whose business empire includes London’s Ritz hotel and the Daily Telegraph newspaper group. Although former Telegraph editor Bill Deedes famously described them as a “stinking mob”, and questions have been tabled in the House of Lords (most recently by Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, this June) regarding their tax avoidance activities, they have never been accused of any crime.
So there are many reasons why one would wish to conceal one’s paper trail offshore, and not all of them relate to outright criminality. We merely assume that because someone is hiding something, it follows that they have something to hide. But that something isn’t necessarily fraud. I need to point this out because, like my phone, my copy of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists is set to both ring and vibrate, and the ‘F’ word sets it off.
Announcing the €80million deal on September 15, BMW described Qadbak as a Swiss company that represents “the interests of certain Middle East and European-based families.” This June it acquired Notts County football club via a specially created subsidiary, Munto Finance, persuading the supporters’ trust to sign over its controlling stake for the nominal sum of £1. It subsequently acquired former England manager Sven Goran Eriksson as director of football, who reportedly accepted a salary of much less than the going rate in exchange for equity in a company called Swiss Commodity Holding, which shares at least two directors (Nathan and Peter Willett) with Qadbak.
So we’ve got a Swiss foundation representing Middle East and European-based families, but registered in the British Virgin Islands. And we have a football team who, when called upon to reveal its anonymous benefactors, either complains about a media “vendetta” or names people who subsequently deny any involvement (Anwar Shafi and Dr Moeen Qureshi). Are you still with me?
Let’s introduce Russell King. ‘Dubai-based businessman’ would no doubt be his preferred appellation, although my favourite is the delightfully Germanic collision of nouns used by the Zurich weekly Sonntagszeitung: ‘Finanzjongleur’ (literally ‘financial juggler’). My former boss, in the pages of F1 Racing, perhaps unkindly described him as ‘disconcertingly obese’. Or we could, owing to the business of an insurance claim for a car that was never actually stolen, say ‘convicted fraudster’ without a tremor from the bookshelf.
He has also been connected with the failed company Belgravia, which had £1.9million of assets frozen by a court in Jersey. Although King has denied any connection, the court acknowledged an affidavit that showed a company bearing King’s initials (RK Holdings Ltd) owned 50 per cent of BG International Holdings Ltd, which owned 90 per cent of Belgravia.
King first appeared in F1 as an associate of Essentially Sport, the agency that mismanaged Jenson Button’s career so disastrously that Jenson had to buy himself out of a contract he’d signed with Williams. Together with Essentially Sport’s John Byfield and, ahem, Belgravia, he tried to set up a Dubai-based F1 team in 2004 – through Grand Prix Investments, a company registered in Gibraltar (yes! Another tax haven). “I have to say,” McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh told reporters at Suzuka this year, “I started being concerned for BMW Sauber when I heard his [King’s] name.”
King’s name also rang alarm bells in the football world. Qadbak passed the Football League’s ‘fit and proper person’ test on October 20 after giving assurances that King’s sole involvement had been to provide strategic and media consultancy, and that he had relinquished that role and was no longer part of the set-up. Indeed, Notts County hired former Sky Sports presenter Matt Lorenzo to be head of communications – but he quit two weeks later.
On October 22 a delegation from Swiss Commodity Holding visited Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to present a gift to Kim Yong Nam, the country’s second in command. North Korea has mineral reserves worth between $3.7trillion and $6trillion, depending on which figures you believe. This is entirely consistent with Swiss Commodity Holding’s claim to be involved in the mining industry – although it also claims to be the world’s biggest mining group by asset value, according to figures it has produced to support a proposed stock market flotation. This came as news to established mining giants such as Rio Tinto and Anglo American, who told the Daily Telegraph that they’d never heard of them.
In an official photograph produced by the state media service, Kim Yong Nam is pictured with SCH delegates Shanti Sen, Nathan Willett (who also sits on Notts County’s board) and… Russell King. Although SCH’s logo now appears on the club’s badge, Notts County pointed out that neither King nor anyone else were in North Korea on club business.
Earlier, on October 15, Swiss Commodity Holding agreed to buy First London Asset Management, part of a group that includes the company that signed the £5million guarantee of funds for Munto Finance to back the acquisition of Notts County. This guarantee has also recently been called into question.
Over the past month, a number of national newspapers have been investigating the complex structure of the deals to acquire Notts County and BMW Sauber. Whenever lawyers and large sums of money are involved, the threat of injunctions always looms large, so the papers have to be sure of their facts before they go to press.
Today the Guardian broke the story that the Football League is to reopen enquiries into the sale of Notts County. “Guardian investigations into the companies that own County have revealed that they are part of a complex and confusing structure with many connections between individuals associated with the project,” it said.
The story in Sonntagszeitung last weekend made much of the claim that Qadbak intended to finance the continued operation of BMW Sauber through the team’s share of the 2009 TV money. This isn’t unusual; it’s how Brawn GP survived and ultimately prospered, making its partners a healthy profit thanks to the Mercedes buy-out. But you also need to know and trust who you’re dealing with. Ultimately it was this uncertainty that convinced BMW to reconsider who it was selling its team to; having a smaller sum in the bank is better than having a bigger sum on a promise.
And selling the team back to the person whose name is still partially above the door is preferable to selling it to – who are they, anyway?
BMW has announced that it will sell its F1 team back to Peter Sauber, after the sale to Qadbak Investment fell through recently. Sauber will only buy the team if they have a confirmed slot on the grid for 2010.
A happy Peter Sauber said of the announcement:
"I am very relieved that we have found this solution. It means we can keep the Hinwil location and the majority of workplaces. I am convinced that the new team has a very good future in Formula One, whose current transformation with new framework conditions will benefit the private teams."
It's not all good news though, with the announcement that the operation will be cutting over 100 jobs, and couldn't rule out the possibility of more in the future.
The condition of a grid slot is still a very real one too, as Mario Theissen spoke out recently confirming they didn't have any more news on that front and they didn't know if they would get one.
It's Friday at last, and that means we're heading into another weekend. We know that Jon is busy this weekend, and will most likely return sans voice, but what are you up to? Let us know. Meanwhile, here are some of the things we're talking about:
Peter Sauber is not at all happy with BMW and their decision to essentially stop him buying the team. We've covered this in F1 Minute, and F1 Big Picture as well, but Sauber says this is the worst time in his entire motorsport career history. That is pretty bad!
Mr Brawn has admitted that he can totally see Schumacher winning at some point in this season, if not at Valencia. The Ferrari appears to be on the way up, and Ross knows how the man works, I guess.
Yesterday, Whitmarsh has said they aren't giving up on this year's car. Having won their first victory of the year, McLaren are going to keep on developing, and are hoping that this car will be the basis of next year's as well. It better had be, or they'll just repeat this year again, won't they?
That'll do it for now, I reckon. Don't forget to let us know if you have exciting plans for the weekend, and equally if you're not. I'll see you in the comments.
Hello one and all! I have missed you, and I have missed writing these little posts every night. We have only been away a few days but we are back... sort of. Check out our explanation of what went wrong for us last week, and what we're doing to try and fix it here. Now, on with the good stuff.
Some quotes were doing the rounds today, supposedly from the mouth of Massa but it looks as though they were not things he actually said. The man himself is reported to be doing his first interview since his accident today at some point, and that will be an excellent thing to read, to confirm that he is getting better and better every day.
Peter Sauber has confirmed that he will do his level best to find a solution for BMW, to save hundreds of employees finding themselves out of a job. Sauber admits he can only advise the BMW board and the final decision will be theirs, but he is on the hunt for possible routes to salvation, even if time is short.
And finally, the Concorde Agreement has been signed, after months and months of talking about it. As Steven has pointed out in the comments, this should calm the politics down a little. I'm surprised the agreement only runs until 2012, but perhaps long-term thinking isn't too advisable at the moment. I can relate to that!
So, there you have it, a return to the daily posts as we know and love them. That means it must be time for me to wheel out that old phrase, I'll see you in the comments.
