Selection box - A very talented dude behind the wheel - Kubica's potential return and how motorsport is changing
Published by Christine
Here it is, then, the summer break that splits the Formula One season not quite in half with an enforced rest. Some greet the break with enthusiasm - a moment to take a breath and consider what has happened whilst resting and preparing for the final push to the title. Others can't wait for the racing to return. The following links might help to entertain, no matter which side of the fence you fall on!
Let's start with one of the big stories of the week. Following the Hungarian Grand Prix, teams stuck around for two days of testing but there was only one driver who dominated the headlines.
It’s a good sign because a lot of people think you improve only by driving but you can improve also by thinking. And thinking where you can improve and this is what happened. If I was in the car tomorrow I could improve and would feel more familiar with the car.
Kubica never really left the world of F1 – not in the traditional sense, anyway. He didn’t bow out as he felt his abilities ebbing away. Indeed, he was cruelly ripped from his opportunity to do so at the beginning of the 2011 season, having just set the fastest time during testing in Valencia.
You can only imagine how happy this makes me. Kubica was one of my favourite F1 racers and the Lone Pole was a very talented dude behind the wheel. I felt incredibly bad when he had to leave the sport so suddenly. Of course, Kubica is not yet signed with any team at the moment and while the afore-mentioned Palmer has had an underwhelming start to his F1 career, the Renault team has not confirmed that he’d be on his way out.
Now that the testing is over, it is officially F1's summer break, but that doesn't mean that we all have to power down and just wait the four weeks till it all starts up again in Spa.
The teams have to officially close their factories down for two weeks and are not allowed to do any work on their cars, or even use work email. But team bosses and drivers have mobile phones, and there is a lot to sort out in the coming weeks.
In last week's collections, I gathered together links from other motorsports, and this week I have another couple - but it's more about how the various categories of racing are starting to cross over and face competition from each other.
The last eight days have seen a shift that not even the most informed and insightful observers of our sport could have imagined. Porsche and Mercedes entering Formula E – both dropping one of their seemingly critical motor sport programmes to do so – and the FIA legislating that the halo must be used in Formula 1 from 2018 onwards.
For the past few years, racing fans who tuned in to the FIA World Endurance Championship could watch Porsche, Audi and Toyota duke it out in the series’ top LMP1 class—a class that featured the most advanced race cars in the world going at it in the 24 Hours of Le Mans and some of the best tracks on Earth. But Audi is out, and as of Friday, Porsche is too, all for the much lesser electric open-wheel series that is the FIA Formula E Championship.
And my final collection of three unconnected links, including a chat with the reigning world champion, a glimpse inside the paddock, and another angle on the halo.
Motorsport was always a passion and something I just wanted to be around. No one in my family was involved, but my nan knew someone who was involved in a local single-seater race team and so passed on a telephone number. I made the call and from that, I started washing wheels and helping out on events, basically doing anything just to be involved and learn more about the sport and make as many contacts as possible in the industry.
But aside from the aesthetics and the nebulous idea of what comprises the ‘DNA’ of Formula One car design, interesting has been the argument put forward to the effect that mortal danger – the risking of life, the possibility of death – is the beating heart of Formula One.
