F1 Junior

How many will follow in dad's footsteps?

Tuesday 20th March
When Nico Rosberg took his Williams-Toyota to seventh place and two championship points at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, he highlighted the current wave of racing dynasties within racing. It seems only a matter of time too, before Nelson Piquet Jnr takes the step up to the premier category.


Greg Mansell

Back in Britain, this week Freddie Hunt – son of the late 1976 F1 champion James Hunt – unveiled his plans to race in the British Formula Ford championship this season. While in British F3, both Greg and Leo Mansell will line up on the grid at Oulton Park on Easter Monday, 9 April. With a famous name comes an easier access to media coverage and sponsors, but perhaps, a greater amount of pressure too.

So far in the PH bunker, we’ve managed to come up with 14 F1 drivers whose offspring have taken up motor racing. How many can you think of?

Schumacher gets his own turn in the 'Ring

Posted Mar 26th 2007 8:28AM by Damon Lavrinc
What better way to immortalize one of the most prolific drivers in F1's history, than to name a fast, left-right hander in the man's home country? That's exactly what's going to happen before the German Grand Prix opens this July, where seven-time World Champion Michael Schumacher will have his name appended to a set of curves to be dubbed the "Schumacher S."



The corners are located on the Nurburgring's Grand Prix course, not to be confused with the Green Hell of folklore and fantasy.

This honor is partially due to Schumacher's German heritage, but also because the former Ferrari F1 pilot has the most wins at the Eifelland circuit, taking the pole in 1995, 2000, 2001, 2004 and during his last race there in 2006.

[Source: BBC Sport]

Traction control banned from 2008

By Jonathan Noble Friday, March 30th 2007, 13:02 GMT

Traction control has been banned from Formula One from the start of next year in a move supported by all teams and rubber-stamped by the FIA.

A meeting of the FIA's World Motor Sport Council earlier this week approved a number of changes to the 2008 F1 Technical Regulations - the most significant of which appears to be a complete ban on traction control.

Article 9.3 of the newly amended rules states: "No car may be equipped with a system or device which is capable of preventing the driven wheels from spinning under power or of compensating for excessive throttle demand by the driver.

"Any device or system which notifies the driver of the onset of wheel spin is not permitted."

Traction control returned to F1 in 2001 following years of suspicion in the sport that some teams were running clever engine management systems to get around a ban that existed at the time.

It was felt that with it was virtually impossible to guarantee that teams were not running such systems, so the teams agreed the only way forward was to free up the regulations.

However, the move to a standard ECU in 2008 means that it will be easier for the FIA to police engine management systems – and it is believed that this has been the catalyst for engineering such a major rule change.

F1 drivers split on traction control ban

Posted Apr 12th 2007 7:03PM by Frank Filipponio
For those who think this is shaping up to be an exciting F1 season, next year should be a stunner. The FIA has confirmed that traction control will not be allowed in 2008. With traction control about to be banned from F1, Formula One Drivers are split on the decision. Most have said they support the move, but most racers will usually say they prefer fewer electronic aids getting in the way of pure mechanical feel and control of the vehicle. At this level of performance, however, the drivers often like to talk a good game and downplay the significance of the devices. It's more driver skill, they'll tell you. But for some of today's drivers, electronics have been fitted to every car they have raced at this level of competition. The aids themselves have been used since 2001.

F1's drivers have generally welcomed the impending ban on traction control.

The FIA confirmed last month that the electronic driver aid will not be allowed in 2008, after it was reintroduced to formula one in 2001 following a previous ban that fell in 1993.

"I think it's going to be more fun," said Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen, "although for sure it's going to make it more difficult to drive over the race distance, so it's not going to always be fun."


The reintroduction of the ban is understood to have been made possible because of the standardisation of F1 cars' electronic control units (ECU), which will make it harder to illegally replicate traction control.

Renault's Giancarlo Fisichella described the ban as a "good option" for the sport.

"It's good to make it more difficult for the drivers," the Roman said.

"When I first drove in formula one with no traction control it was more fun, more difficult because it's more in the hands of the drivers to judge the traction at the exit of the slow corners."

Veteran David Coulthard, however, played down the probable impact of the ban, insisting that the only noticeable difference might be in wet races.

Indeed, it emerged recently that Super Aguri ran nearly the entire 2006 season without a traction control system -- and almost no-one knew.

Coulthard, a Scot, said: "I think in dry conditions, the driver has an in-built traction control system and that won't change."

Williams' Nico Rosberg agrees that the impact of traction control is usually overestimated, arguing that with or without the system it is difficult to drive an F1 car.

"I think you still need to control (the car) yourself with the foot occasionally," he said, "so it is not going to make a huge difference."

But Renault test driver Nelson Piquet Jr, fresh out of GP2, observed that in F1's feeder series - where traction control is not allowed - there is usually more overtaking per race.

He said "a big part" of the difference in quality between F1 and GP2 races "is the driver controlling his foot on the accelerator" on the exit of corners, leading to more mistakes and more variable tyre wear in GP2.


We probably won't learn the truth until testing for next season begins. In the meantime we're sure to hear stories like those about Super Auguri, that tell us some teams have been without traction control already. Even if it's only in the rain, we hope it makes enough of a difference to justify the change, and add even more excitement to the show.

[Source: PaddockTalk]

Surprise! Turkey gets away without paying full fine

Posted Apr 17th 2007 10:06AM by Noah Joseph
It seems that the FIA wanted it to go un-noticed, but the motorsport governing authority has let Turkey get away without even paying the slap on the wrist they imposed in the first place.



For those who may not recall, at last year's Turkish Grand Prix, the leader of Turkish-occupied Cyprus was introduced to give the trophy to race winner Felipe Massa in a deliberate politicization of the motorsport competition. Turkey's dominion over Cyprus is not internationally recognized, and the FIA warned of fire and brimstone. Threatening to take away not only the Turkish Grand Prix but also possibly to revoke Turkey's WRC rally stage and blacklisting the entire country from holding any FIA-sanctioned races, the sanctioning body declared that motor racing was not to be manipulated towards political ends. Following a tribunal that considered the issue, the FIA instead imposed a relatively minor $5 million fine and let Turkey keep its races.

Half the fine was paid by the race promoters, who were subsequently dismissed from responsibility for organizing the grand prix, which passed into the hands of Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Management. The remaining $2.5 million was to be paid by the Turkish motor sports federation TOSFED, but after pleading with the FIA and explaining that the fine would send them into bankruptcy, the governing body let them off without paying.

Mercy is a laudable attribute, but by failing to hold TOSFED to any punishment whatsoever, the FIA is leaving the door open to further manipulation of motor racing by others in the future.

[Source: GrandPrix.com]

Bernie Ecclestone loves Turkey! Buys Turkish GP track

Posted Apr 21st 2007 5:42PM by Damon Lavrinc
Formula One Czar boss, Bernie Ecclestone is apparently a "big, big" fan of bikes, and partnered with his place in the F1 hierarchy, decided to purchase a controlling stake in Turkey's Istanbul Park.



Supposedly paying close to $180 million for an interest in the circuit, this recent acquisition brings the total number of tracks owned by the Andy Warhol look-alike to two – the other being the Paul Ricard circuit in France.

The move solidifies Turkey's position as a host of Formula One races in the future, but questions regarding the $2.5 million fine that was levied on the organizers after last year's trophy debacle remain. Rumors about Eccelstone's possible involvement in helping to pay the fine have surfaced, but regardless, it's a sweet circuit and we're glad it's sticking around.

[Source: TSN]

Grandprix.com je napisal/-a:Toyota spies guilty

APRIL 24, 2007
The long-running case against former Ferrari engineers Mauro Iacconi and Angelo Santini, who were accused of stealing Ferrari secrets and giving them to Toyota, has concluded at the Tribunale di Modena with Santini condemned to nine months in prison for industrial espionage and Iacconi facing 16 months in jail for receiving the information from Santini and passing it on to Toyota. Both sentences were suspended but both men say they will appeal the decision.

The case relates back nearly five years to the start of the 2003 season, when there were suggestions that Toyota was running a copy of the Ferrari design. Santini, who worked at Ferrari from 1995 until the start of 2002, had moved to Toyota, which was planning to use a second windtunnel called Aerolab, located at Bologna Sant'Agata, just up the road from Ferrari. This employed a number of former Ferrari engineers. The construction of the new windtunnel began around the same time and was completed by January 2005. It is now being used by Spyker after Toyota built a second tunnel at its Cologne headquarters.

Ferrari suspected that aerodynamic information had been stolen from Maranello and had ended up in the hands of Toyota engineers and so filed an official complaint. Police investigations led to police raids in both Italy and Germany in 2004 and charges were then made in 2005. The case went to court a year ago.

It is possible that German investigators will pursue others who may have been involved. The Cologne public prosecution service has charged former team principal Ove Andersson, chief designer Gustav Brunner and the team's head of aerodynamics Rene Hilhorst but they have not yet been indicted as the Germans decided to wait until the Italian court cases were over.

The appeal process will slow that down still further.

All of this will be watched closely by Red Bull and Spyker as the two quibble over drawings which Spyker obtained from Red Bull Racing.

Honda's F1 car gets elephant ears, but doesn't get any better

Posted May 8th 2007 3:05PM by Jonathon Ramsey
If you try out something never seen before, and it works, it's called innovation. If you try out something never seen before, and it doesn't work, it's called an experiment. And this particular experiment, carried out by Honda's F1 team, was called "elephant ears."

During last week's test session at the Barcelona F1 circuit, Honda was trying out fixes for its car's notoriously bad handling under braking. One of the attempted fixes was these arced winglets on the nose. The wings were of no use: Honda set the slowest time of the day. Hence, we've probably seen the last of them. Nevertheless, even without the wings, Honda F1's Engineering Director, Jacky Eeckelaert, said "The braking is definitely better now and the lap times have improved and become more consistent, but there is still a long way to go to bring the team back into contention." For a team with Honda's history of winning, the arrival of their new car can't come soon enough.
[Source: TSN]

It's been twenty five years since Gilles Villeneuve died

Posted May 8th 2007 6:32PM by Sam Abuelsamid
When I was a kid growing up in Canada, I first got into Formula One racing when Gilles Villeneuve took the Grand Prix world by storm. After dominating Formula Atlantic for a couple of years, he ran a couple of races with McLaren at the end of the 1977 season. Shortly after that he signed with Ferarri as second to Carlos Reutemann and really captured the F1 world's attention at the Long Beach Grand Prix where he flung his car around on the beach front streets, leading the first half of the race before crashing – something that happened all too often in his career.

At the end of a tumultuous rookie season, he won his first race at home in Montreal at the track that would ultimately be renamed in his honor. He finished second in the 1979 championship to new teammate Jody Sheckter before a couple of fallow years with Ferrari. In 1982, as the Italian team was making a resurgence, teammate Didier Pironi ignored team orders at the Imola race and passed Villeneuve for the win. At the next race in Belgium, Gilles went all out in qualifying to beat Pironi and pushed too hard, crashing into Jochen Mass. His Ferrari was launched into the air and came down nose first. The crash took his life, and one of tne of the most exciting drivers of all time was gone. Villeneuve may not have been the best technical driver, but watching him force some evil handling cars around a track was always a pleasure, and F1 has never been the same since.

Espionage in the fast lane: Ferrari F1 secrets given to McLaren

Posted Jul 5th 2007 10:33AM by Jonathon Ramsey
With no disrespect to Fernando Alonso or Michael Schumacher, the first eight races of this year's Formula 1 World Championship have probably been more entertaining on- and off-track than the previous four or five seasons combined. The latest shenanigans come via the two front running teams, McLaren and Ferrari. Ferrari has been saying for a while that someone gave away its technical secrets, finally fingering Technical Manager Nigel Stepney last month. Ferrari said it had evidence of illicit behavior, but Stepney claimed it wasn't him. Now it turns out that Michael Coughlin, Chief Designer at McLaren, has been suspended by the team for receiving Ferrari technical information, which was found when police searched his house. No one's been charged yet, but Stepney and Coughlin have known each other for 17 years, and Stepney was miffed last year at not being promoted by Ferrari to fill Ross Brawn's shoes. McLaren, meanwhile, says it has conducted a thorough investigation and found that no Ferrari information was given to any other team member or used in the design of its cars. The FIA is now investigating.

[Source: F1 Technical]

USGP may be cancelled in 2008: F1 not coming back to Indy

Posted Jul 12th 2007 2:29PM by Frank Filipponio
It looks like there won't be any United States Grand Prix (USGP) next year, at least not at Indy. According to all of the reports we've read, the 2008 Formula One schedule won't have a slot for a United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. After eight years of races at the Speedway, the FIA and Tony George apparently couldn't reach an agreement for future GPs at Indy. It seems F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone made some less-than-flattering comments about the event following the June race this year, and July 12 was the deadline IMS had set for a decision on future races. The two parties had been on a one-year extension of the prior contract, but it looks like there will be no extension this time around. There is still some remote hope that an agreement could come in the future, but even if Indy fails to secure a new race, Vegas and New York have been mentioned as possible future USGP locations. No info on those developments has surfaced yet.

McLaren je sicer spoznan za krivega vendar pa ne bo kaznovan.

Šport se sestoji iz vrednost, etike in poštenosti. Očitno pa sodniki v formuli ena ignorirajo te vrednote.