There's been talk about VW joining NASCAR. I know what most of you think about that style of racing, so we can spare the "that's boring and stupid" stuff. Just pointing out that there are other forms of racing that VW is looking at.
That might actually not be such a bad idea. I don't know much about NASCAR and its audience, but it could be a good promotion in the US where VW is not doing so well.
While Audi is clearly closer to BMW or Mercedes, Only a Southern German (;-) ) would say that VW is a mass-producing car-maker in the sense that Opel or Ford are. VWs do carry a premium price tag (just look at what Seat and Skoda offer), VW is somehow stuck in the middle (again, also compare Touareg or Phaeton to their competitors, or actually the Passat). I realize this is slightly off-topic, but I wouldn't be surprised to see VW join F1 instead of Audi. Agree that Nascar could work for them, too. Not too sure about DTM or Rallye racing, though, tbh. It seems comparably low-key. They are trying to become the #1 car manufacturer in the world...
I've always been surprised that VW is not in any racing other than Dakar (now no longer). If anybody races in F1, I it should be Audi (or cousin Porsche) as they do in the endurance racing series. That just does not seem like the VW market, but they could use it like Toyota or Honda (even if there have been failures on that front). I know Rally has Skoda, but why not? For a while there was Citroen and Peugeot both racing. Do VW and Skoka have the same market, or are they different? I can also see VW enter NASCAR (I thought they would do it before Toyota - I drove a Jetta with the aggressiveness of a NASCAR driver, but fewer wrecks)
I dunno...at least in Europe and China, VW is the #1 brand, which does make it a mass market manufacturer in my book. I don't have any hard data on this but my guesstimate would be that the brand VW is the #2 most selling car brand in the world after Toyota...Ford might be close, but I don't see any other brand up there. I still think that of all the brands under the VW umbrella, Audi would be the most natural fit for F1. Especially with Porsche returning to the highest class of sports car racing in LeMans and presumably the new World Endurance Championship (WEC). I agree with you that I can't see VW race in DTM, as I don't see a car in their line-up that would fit in...a racing Passat? Or a CC? Neither really makes sense as a racing car IMHO, because neither car sells on racing pedigree. The remaining cars however are either too big or too small. Plus, Audi is already there, so again they'd compete against themselves. They could however go for rallying (WRC) or touring cars (WTCC) with either the Golf (GTI) or the Scirocco. But as I said, Skoda occupies the WRC while Seat is in WTCC. They do however run Sciroccos at the Nürburgring 24 hours, but that's only once a year and not that well known. So I guess NASCAR would make sense. It's very popular in North America which is pretty much the only place on earth where VW is really having problems (Japan as well AFAIK) and it's one of the few major racing series in the world where the VW group isn't present yet. The only problem is that just like with DTM, I just don't see which car they would want to race there...or rather which car the livery would mimic. The Jetta? Probably, but it certainly doesn't scream "race me" when you look at it...
I also think Audi should be in F1, but I wouldn't advise Porsche on doing so. Yes, they built very successful F1 engines in the 1980s, but sports cars is where they're at home, that's what this company has been built upon. If I was in charge of VW, I guess I'd rather have Lamborghini join F1 than Porsche.
To get back to F1 for a moment, there were a couple of news over the last couple of days: 1) Williams has announced a return to Renault engines for next year, making it the fourth Renault powered team, breaking the symmetry of 3 teams per engine manufacturer. 2) HRT has been sold to Spanish investment company Thesan Capital, which wants to give it more of a Spanish character. 3) Virgin has announced a technical partnership with McLaren, giving Virgin access to McLaren's facilities such as the wind tunnel, similar to an agreement that McLaren already has with Force India. 4) Virgin also announced that it has purchased the business of Wirth Racing Technologies and its facilities in Banbury to provide a technical base for its future. You remember, Nick Wirth has built the Virgin chassis, but was kicked out after the bad results this season. Now Virgin has taken over his business outright. 5) The never ending engine story is still going on...Bernie Ecclestone has now threatened to sue the FIA over the new engine regulations if they are introduced as planned. He's afraid that F1 will lose it's characteristic sound, which is especially important to people coming to the tracks. These people are however the only source of income for the track owners and apparently 17 out of the 19 tracks have threatened to leave F1 and switch to IndyCars or something else, should the new engine come as planned, because they fear that the people will stay at home. The major area of contention is the 15.000 rev limit that the FIA and the teams have decided upon. Let's see how that will all turn out...
So in case you missed it, F1 is really shaping up to become a soap opera. A lot of off-track drama happened within the last 24 hours. So let me try to start at the beginning. It all has to do with the limit on the exhaust blown diffuser (EBD). The FIA announced long ago that from this Grand Prix in Silverstone on, the engine will only be allowed to open its valves by 10% and no fuel will be allowed to be injected when the driver is off the gas pedal. Mercedes then talked to Charlie Whiting, FIA's technical director and explained to him that their engine layout is such that they need to inject some fuel into the engine off throttle to reduce pressure and ensure reliability and they proved it with data from pre-EBD days where they also did that. So FIA allowed all the teams to inject fuel into 4 of the 8 cylinders into the engine off throttle. On Friday morning, Red Bull went to Charlie Whiting and also lobbied for some concessions. His argument was that Renault engines are built differently and their EBD wouldn't profit as much from hot-blowing (blowing exhaust fumes, not just air, which is called cold-blowing) as Mercedes. Incredibly, Whiting gave in and gave all teams with Renault engines a special rule, namely they were allowed to open their valves by 50% while all the other teams were still limited to 10%. FIA announced this 20 minutes into the first practice session. Of course all the other teams were annoyed. During Fridays second session, the Mercedes powered teams also ran with 50% opened valves out of protest. Then came the press conference with Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh and the two had a go at each other. This was really hilarious in its own right. You can read a full transcript on the FIA site here: http://www.fia.com/en-GB/mediacentre/f1_media/Documents/gbr-conference-fri.pdf Anyway, after that a sh*tstorm broke lose and FIA, Red Bull and Renault got a lot of heat. Because at the end of the day the decision meant that Red Bull could just run as they used to. They never opened their valves more than 50%, at least not during the race, only in qualifying. The other teams on the other hand got seriously handicapped by only being allowed to run the engine on 10% off-throttle. Apparently the FIA then changed its opinion over night once again and returned to it's pre-Friday-morning stance where all teams were allowed to run the engine on 10% off throttle while injecting some fuel. Immediately after this was announced, Christian Horner and Adrian Newey ran to Charlie Whiting in protest. The FIA then called for a extraordinary meeting with all team principals and all technical directors which ended moments ago but apparently hasn't changed much. But I'm sure the story is far from being over...anyway, on with the qualifying...
So it appears as if the FIA is ready to make yet another U-Turn regarding the EBD regulation. They now want to go back to where we were at the beginning of the year, so no limit on engine mapping whatsoever, or possibly to the Valencia spec, where the mapping in qualifying had to be the same as that in the race. However, there's one problem, they'll only do it if all the teams agree. After todays qualifying, it appears as if Williams and Ferrari profited quite a bit from the 10% rule and I can't see them agreeing on this, not to mention HRT who have supported the EBD clampdown from the start. If they can't reach an agreement, the season will probably finish with the current 10% rule.
Well I don't know enough about the EBD regulations to comment, in fact, I agree with Mark Webber that it's boring, especially for us fans. Finally, a bad pit stop by Red Bull on Vettel, and Fernando and Ferrari take the British Grand Prix! I'm glad they finally got one. Also Hamilton despite fuel problems is able to maintain position over Massa. Good race for him considering he started at what... 10th? I'd like to think Alonso still has a chance at the championship, although they're going to need a few more races like this. P2 wasn't bad at all for Vettel today. Of course, it sucks that Webber was told to "maintain the gap" when he was about to take his teammate. BS. Oh well... not the first nor last time this will happen on any team.
And... What happens when rules are changed midseason? I just saw the race last night and other than a few collisions and the misshappenings in the pits it was a very boring race.... The Ferraris have improved to where they can almost compete with the Bulls, but without the pitstop gaffe by RB, Vettel would have won the race.. Unless Webber couldn't hold the gap... yuck.. McLaren looked competitive but the big misshappening at Button's stop and the overly aggresive racing by Hamilton (burning too much fuel) let them with little to show from a very favorable race... Lotus Renault seems to be the team that was hurt the most with the rules carrousel, now they look like another middle of the pack team... Ah yeah, there was some interesting battles for P11...
Surprisingly, all F1 teams have agreed to go back to the Valencia rules come the German GP. That's why I won't do another ranking before then, even though the Silverstone race brought many changes in relative performance, especially Ferrari benefitting a lot from the diffuser controversy. So till then, here's a fun vid that should kill some time till the: Sebastian Vettel on Top Gear: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBUr6sDYcms"]Top Gear Sebastian Vettel Interview + Lap‏ - YouTube[/ame] Great guy.
It is funny how quickly people forget... I've been reading opinions on the last race and suddenly Hamilton is the best driver in the world and Vettel is just a pseudo champ that can't drive on traffic... Pulleaze.... For starters, I think this is by far the best race so far given the almost identical performance by McLaren, Ferrari and RedBull.. The battles and the passing, the strategy changes, the race was focused on P1 not on the las points position.. It was great to see these 3 teams battle each other in every aspect of racing.. In that respect, kuddos to Hamilton whose aggresive style finally paid off (after 6 races, 3 DNFs, 6 penalties and knocking like 20 drivers out of the race) specially his final passing over Alonso.. Yes, he got the win, but I feel that they won't happen oftenly enough for him to battle for the World Title. Secondly, Webber is definetely RB2, the guy can't hold a position from the starting grid and lacks the speed to make moves on the top competitors. Overall I feel that RB does not have the top speed that Ferrari and McLaren have and that they only manage to stay competitive with their superb handling in curves. More on this later. Alonso is the anti-Webber. He's cut off to be his team's leader and he will make his car look half a second faster than Massa's just by sitting on it. He's driving on the edge and he knows it... I really don't think the performance is there for him to challenge for the world title. Finally, Vettel finished fourth and every one deems him unworthy of the World Title. Yes, it was probably one of Vettel's worst races in the last two years and yes he looked lost, ineffective and out of place in traffic.. Remember, the guy has been driving in front for basically a year now and it is not easy to get back to the middle of the pack. But I really do not think that he had a specially bad day, his car was just not good enough to compete, as shown by his "poor" qualifying and his lack of speed on the straights.. Furthermore I feel that he was driving that car on the edge and that his two spun offs were caused by taking wider paths to compensate for his lack of trust and that wet grass just made the track trickier than usual.. Oh yeah, and the cold weather didn't help with the grip or the aerodynamics of his RB7. Other than that, the championship is still his to loose and since neither Hamilton or Alonso will win every single race and Vettel will be most likely amont the top 5 it will take almost a miracle for somebody else to be crowned this year...
Maybe your post would have been more appropriate if he had actually driven like a lunatic to cause that incident and then talked like an arse afterwards. But hey, why let facts get in the way when you've got an axe to grind...
Well.. I saw the race... And while he is not to be fully blamed for his crash how many DNF (crash) has he piled this season? Don't get me wrong.. I do not particularly dislike him.. Just think that he has regressed so much this season.. His judgment is so poor when compared with the other top drivers and the worst part is that he usually takes someone else out and tries to put the blame on the other involved drivers... Probably this was not the best example and Koba has been also very erratic of lately.. But in an expert's words: http://www.planetf1.com/driver/3265/7136676/Conclusions-From-Belgium The issue with Hamilton, no matter how you share the play of the blame game, is that it always seems to be Lewis. Massa and Maldonado in Monaco, Button in Canada, Kobayashi in Belgium. The common ingredient is always a chunk of Hamilton's McLaren. He's involved in far too many of these incidents for his own acceptable good. The nuance to such an obvious point is that Hamilton's penchant for controversy and crashes is largely a natural and inevitable off-shoot of his refusal to play safe, to alter his style, to bide time and wait for a mistake. There is, as stated previously, only one pace in Hamilton's repertoire: flat-out. That's his strength. But it's also his weakness. He doesn't know how to avoid trouble because he has never tried to. The stewards' decision to instantly dismiss his latest race-ending prang as a racing incident is subtle reinforcement of the underlying cause. Racing accidents are an occupational hazard for a racer who is always racing. What Hamilton must decide when the time comes - and that time is already now - to pick the bones out of this season's carcass is whether he wants to be a racer or a winner, or at least be a little of the former to be more of the latter.
If you don't dislike him and you agree that this wasn't even really his fault anyway then why post what you did?
It was only marginally his fault.. In this ocassion... Nonetheless was another piece for the "Hamilton Crashing His Wayout of World Title Contention" collection..
I'd rather watch Hamilton, Kimi, Villeneuve and Montoya reck havoc then sit pretty ala schumacher all those years in Ferrari and complain on how aggressive Montoya was going around him b/c his Ferrari was the cream of the crop. Lewis is entertainment. He's won his championship and is still young enough to win another. Senna and Mansell made plenty of mistakes as did other champions. I'm not a Lewis fan but I give him credit on his driving. People complain that F1 is a parade well, Lewis and Koboyashi say otherwise...
I'll agree with almost every bit of this. Repped for the find. He may not have been at fault for some of his wrecks, but you gotta wonder as he keeps piling them up if he needs to change something as well.
There has to be a balance... I agree with you that 10 years of Ferrari/Schumaher dominance with little passing was not good for the sport and that suddenly all the overtaking and 3 teams being so close plus other two being close in certain circumstances bring back some respect to the circuit.. In that sense it would be stupid to (for lack of a better word) cripple the agressiveness of some drivers in lieu of safety... But..... In order to win and in order to be considered among the greatest drivers of all time, you need to finish the races, better yet if this is accomplished without leaving so much wreckage in your path.. Hamilton style might be appealing to some people and of course some of his moves are masterful and probably unmatched in the current field, but bottomline is that a) he's not finishing races while his teammate finishes in the podium (DNF awards no points), b) he's taking out competitors that can be as exciting as him (is Lewis' birth-right to be aggressive or can Koba, Maldonado and some others bring a little flavor of their own?) and c) he's compromissing the safety of the sport on a regular basis. Exactly my point!!!! I mean, great drivers usually are controlled agressors, they pick their spots and they know what they have to do to win... Furthermore, in order to win you do not have to be as fast as possible, only faster than everyone else... Of course there is a learning curve and the promissing rookie prone to mistakes usually takes a few crashes before becoming the accomplished veteran, but at this point of his career you'd expect Lewis to have figured that out and honestly I think he is regressign rapidly in his judgement and ability to compete for the F1 Title.
I would say that the crash was most definitely 100% Lewis's fault. I agree that it was a 'racing incident' which goes unpunished, but it was still his fault. And the bottom line is that Lewis goes home without points once more.
In my mind Koba was always a little behind and hit the brakes late to try to set up Hamilton and came a little unexpected to Lewis... I just saw this picture and changed my mind.. Hamilton should have known that Koba was there!!!!
Yep. Koba is holding his line and has just as much right to that piece of asphalt as Hamilton. I wish I could rep you again.