Today, Renault F1 sent out the following press release confirming the immediate departure of both its managing director and executive director of engineering:
The ING Renault F1 Team will not dispute the recent allegations made by the FIA concerning the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.
It also wishes to state that its managing director, Flavio Briatore and its executive director of engineering, Pat Symonds, have left the team.
Before attending the hearing before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on 21 September 2009, the team will not make any further comment.
After revelations in Autosport magazine last week, that Honda were considering dropping their Earth Dreams campaign in order to bring back traditional racing sponsorship, a much bigger dream appears to have been shattered this evening. Pitpass are reporting that the team now plan to withdraw from Formula 1 altogether before the start of next season.
Grandprix.com suggested earlier today that a number of personnel were seeking employment with other teams and although there are suggestions Honda has two prospective buyers in mind, selling a team that has manufacturing capabilities but will lack an engine isn't going to be the work of a moment.
Aside from the implications this decision has for the team's employees, it also raises questions about what will happen should the grid be formed of only 9 teams by the time the season starts again in Melbourne?
Christine has more over on F1 Minute, while the BBC are stating that Nick Fry and Ross Brawn informed those attending today's FOTA meeting in London that "they have a month to find a buyer, otherwise they are closing the team."
I don't know about anybody else, but I don't find personal pronouns that difficult. If you're talking about yourself you say I, if you're talking to someone, it's you. If you didn't learn this from speaking out loud your whole life, then you'll probably have learnt it practicing some verb tables.
Whilst the action at Valencia kept us all talking about what happened in the pit lane, I was more interested in what those in the pit lane were talking about.
I've found something slightly fascinating about the personal pronouns the drivers used over the weekend. For the longest time, we have had to listen to the corporate line from teams and drivers. Sharing in the joy and the pain in equal measures.
Now it seems things are changing, and as the competition hots up, all this "It's not you, it's me" business seems to be over. My first example is Raikkonen, who is still bemoaning his lack of pace going into a Grand Prix.
We need to get things sorted in qualifying...
Yes, you do, Kimi. Okay, perhaps this can be excused because it may just be a mechanical problem that means he hasn't qualified on pole since France. I think perhaps he knows that it is something he needs to sort out himself though. The team certainly believe that Raikkonen has his own issues to sort out.
He isn't happy with the way the car enters corners. He would like it more aggressive, and this influences him. It's up to us to carry on giving him a hand.
Clearly, Ferrari are sure they're giving him the best they can and it's not them underperforming. Which is fine if it's true, but it's very unusual to hear blame being apportioned quite so obviously. Normally you would find carefully constructed sentences that avoid pointing the finger, and share the burden.
As a team sport, you could argue it's the right thing to do, but perhaps this is the way forward - honesty. Bourdais has another take:
I am still having my problem of not finding grip on the "option" tyre, so we need to work on that.
A little bit of both worlds there. He's recognising the problem as his own, but is looking for help from the team for that. This seems a little fairer on everybody.
My favourite example from Valencia, however, is from Button. After bombing out of the early stages of qualfiying, ITV caught up with him for a quick chat. Here's an audio clip:
This is the one that is most telling. It's almost as if he suddenly realised he was blaming the team for the setup choices, and had to suddenly back track. Then he tries to bring it back, but starts to stumble, and the personal pronouns go wrong.
I'm not trying to cast aspersions on any of the drivers with the above, but having read many quotes recently, I wanted to share these thoughts with you. Should the drivers be taking a vocal responsibility for their performances, should there be more team spirit or is apportioning blame the right way to go?
Please do not forget to update your Fantasy Racers team.
How I do look forward to the Friday of a race weekend, when I get to share my latest scheme for my Fantasy Racers team.
You've got until 5 o'clock BST to alter your teams, which gives you a good few hours. You can even wait until after FP2 if you so desire.
Personally, I have no need to watch those drivers pootling round that track, I can make all the decisions I need based on a simple system. This week it is all the drivers whose surname falls between A and C.
Here is my team:
Driver
Price
David Coulthard
6.4
Fernando Alonso
9.9
Jenson Button
6.5
Rubens Barrichello
6.5
Sebastien Bourdais
6.5
Total
34.4
I predict that this will not be a strong weekend for Sidepodcast Racers, but I have faith in the arbitrary system. Anything can happen at a new track.
So, make adjustments to your team, or not, as you desire, and let us know in the comments who you've chosen and why.
Please do not forget to update your Fantasy Racers team.
Ah, it's that time of the week again, where we must review our Fantasy Racers selections.
I have done some extensive research, and evaluated all the drivers comparitively during Free Practice 1 in Hungary. I have decided upon, drum roll please, a completely arbitrary selection. You knew that already, though, didn't you?
Here's mine:
Driver
Price
Adrian Sutil
3.9
Giancarlo Fisichella
5.5
Jarno Trulli
6.0
Sebastien Bourdais
5.1
Sebastian Vettel
5.2
Timo Glock
5.8
Total
31.5
My thought process this time was to pick the cheapest drivers and stack my team full of them. Discounting the Super Aguri boys (because even I'm not crazy enough to choose a driver that's not even racing), I started at the cheapest - Sutil - and kept clicking the next most expensive driver until I ran out of cash. I'm quite annoyed I have some money left over, but I don't want to spoil the system.
So, don't forget to visit Fantasy Racers and update your team, or sign up if you haven't already and want to feel the satisfaction of beating Sidepodcast Racers. Let us know what your team is in the comments, and feel free to poke fun at my selection.
It's that time of year again, when F1 descends upon Hungary. All the drivers appear to like it, but is it a matter of protesting just that little bit too much?
Vital Statistics
Date: 3rd August
Circuit: Hungaroring
Length: 4.4km
Laps: 70
2007 Winner: Lewis Hamilton
Preview
Glock returns to action and is looking forward to the race, as many of our drivers are. It seems that Hungary was a time of firsts for a lot of them, first win for Button, first race for Vettel. Nakajima is slightly nervous as he's never driven on the track in an F1 car before. All this, plus a dusty track and no overtaking should lead to a less than stellar race.
Once again, we're reviewing other people's websites, this time looking closely at the teams to see how they fare. The first five can be found here, in Part 1 of the series, and this is Part 2, looking at the final five. I'll be checking out how good they are from a fan's point of view, whilst the geeky one will lift the hood on the technical bits.
Toyota
There’s more detail here about the car than anywhere I’ve seen so far, Toyota don’t seem afraid to share things with the fans. There’s an incredibly deep interactive experience looking at the team’s setup for Grands Prix, the motorhome, etc. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of connecting with their fans, but there are videos, images, wallpapers, and a nice set of features that will keep you reading for a short while.
Toyota's site is stuffed to the rafters with content. With technical details, images, videos and an immersive factory tour, you'll want make sure you have some free time before visiting this place.
Considering the breadth of information available, the navigation is okay. The virtual tour opens in separate window making it feel like a bit of an afterthought, and there seems to be a couple of different routes to the same content, leaving me confused as to what I'd seen and where I'd been.
Generally though, this is a nice site and you can't argue with a team that merrily answers the frequently asked question - "Please let me drive for the team - I am loads better than the current drivers!". No doubt a hangover from the 2007 season, that one.
As you would expect, Toro Rosso is very similar to the Red Bull site, including the flashing timings that don’t actually do anything. I can’t find anything that makes it stand out, in fact, except a newsletter sign up. Does anyone still do that?
Hmm, this is a typical example of corporate branding gone wrong. Apparently STR aren't even allowed to stand on their own two feet online. But while the homepage may look like a second-rate version of the Red Bull site, there's a couple good things hidden under the covers.
I especially love the interactive car on the Flash version of the site. It displays specific details about the inner workings of their F1 challenger, yet when you rollover the tyre information hotspot, it simply says "Wheels". That's my kind of education. Additionally much kudos should be given for text displayed as the image gallery starts up. The message reads "Loading page XML". Even for me, that's one step too geeky.
Points must be deducted for the annoying engine noises that endlessly loop, never wanting to go away.
The Honda site opens up a new window that takes over the screen, and it moves around a lot before settling into a homepage. I feel like either I’m being a bit backwards, or the site isn’t quite right, because I clicked on the GP link expecting results or news from Canada, and it took me to images. Still, if you can work out the navigation, and put up with the switch between screens, there’s the excellent Honda Racing TV to watch, and a fans area to upload your photos and videos.
Considering how uneasy on the eye Honda's current Formula 1 campaign is (think dumbo wings, earth livery and green pants), I had low expectations of their home on the web. Those fears are unwarranted though as this is a surprisingly nice looking site. I personally prefer the HTML version (although I'm denied access to the videos from there), because the pages are clean, simple to navigate and they get the information across with little fuss.
A brief excursion into the hi-band, flashy pages sends my processor and accompanying fan into overdrive. I get the impression whoever designed the interface had plenty of fun doing so, but the constant flipping around gets tiresome quickly. The TV section of the site works well though, and Honda are the class of the field when it comes to online video production, although the embedded player is unfathomable in its refusal to rewind or forward anything, ever.
The Force India site seems a bit rough and ready about the edges, things open in new windows and some of the links are confusing, but they really embrace the online culture. There are widgets for you to download, so you can have a Force India count down to the next race, and there are embed codes for badges to support the team. As I look at it today, there’s even a poll about budget capping. I like its homely feel, like it’s been cobbled together by a fan.
I'm a fan of this site. Everything in moderation seems to be the motto, it's not extravagant, but neither is it understated. The homepage provides a quick-fix of the latest information and the rest of the pages contain the in-depth detail. Talking of which, some of the those could do with more content or layout revisions, the contact page for example looks positively lost in a sea of grey.
Club Force, the social network for all FIF1 fans is a worthy addition to the site and the team have really got this right. From personal experience I know some of the interfaces in the section look half finished and 50% of the time videos we upload simply never appear. But while I think it needs more work, I appear to be in the minority given there are 15,855 registered users and counting (currently twice that of Renault), so they can't be doing much wrong.
The McLaren site could be considered the exact opposite of the FIF1 pages, and represents the team perfectly. Looks pretty good, does what it does well, but is more interested in being corporate than being friendly. The only thing that even vaguely caught my attention was the link to the official Facebook page, and the information on Racing Line – the members only McLaren magazine. They also have a Fantasy F1 league, which is quite cool, but we all know how good I am at those, so I skipped past that.
Did this site get a lick of paint recently? I remember it being more imposing in the past, but I like the new airy feel. Navigation is consistent across every browser I could throw at it, but I dislike the links that appear to the right-hand side of some pages. I feel I have to tilt my head 90 degrees just figure them out.
The use of light-box popup windows when viewing pictures and videos is a nice touch, but good lord the videos are awful. Check out the "French Grand Prix Track Guide" from Heikki to see what I mean. I can only assume a team member's youngest child offered to do them for free, blindfolded, because they're not up to the McLaren standard at all.
Video complaints aside though, I did enjoy browsing around. I would probably suggest a wider window for displaying content as reading tended to involve a lot of scrolling, because panel width had been constrained, but that's about all.
One final thing to mention, and this isn't strictly related to McLaren's site, but we know how much people enjoy F1 games. Santander have created their own version of a pit-stop game at santander-racing.com and it is worth 5mins of anyone's time.
That's it for our team website reviews. As ever, we'd love to hear what you think about them below - and watch out for our circuit website reviews coming up shortly.
The girl never stops, she really doesn't. As Ollie pointed out on this weeks show, Christine has written a guest post for BlogF1 today.
The post is part of a series that compares team mates from the top four teams. Christine was challenged to look at the relationship between Alonso and Piquet Jnr, and yesterday Clive made a fine fist of tackling the BMW boys.
It's worth five minutes of your time to give them a both read and do check back to see who's guest blogging on Monday and Tuesday.
