2009 Formula 1 Pre-Season Thread

Here's a great article about Niki Lauda. (Although the title is stupid)

http://austriantimes.at/index.php?id=11248

Lauda hits out at newbie Hamilton on 60th birthday
By Thomas Hochwarter

Niki Lauda, one of Austria?s most iconic sportsmen, important business players and society personalities, turns 60 on Sunday.

Austrian weekly news magazine "profil" asked Lauda for an interview on the occasion of his 60th birthday, which will occur on 22 February. And Lauda, again, proved to be charismatic and quick-witted.

Austrian Times has the best bits of the interview conducted by society journalist Angelika Hager and economic journalist Michael Nikbakhsh, Austria?s Journalist of the Year ? exclusively in English.

Read here why Lauda has no friends, what he really thinks of F1 champion Lewis Hamilton and what his tombstone will say one day.

The three-time Formula 1 champion successfully started his own aviation companies after his sporting career ? first, Lauda Air in 1979, which was taken over by competitor Austrian Airlines, and FlyNiki in 2003, which today cooperates with German carrier AirBerlin.

Asked how much he is worth, Lauda says: "You don?t talk about money. I learnt that as a child. When I asked my mother: ?How much money does granddad (the iconic industrial Hans Lauda) have??, she slapped me in the face."

Asked about what differentiates today?s generation of Formula 1 drivers from the pilots of his active years, he says: "Back then, death was always an option. Today?s chaps have no idea. They drive go-karts until they turn 18 and then start their Formula One career. They know nothing apart from accelerating and handling the steering wheel."

Lauda adds: "They haven?t got a chance to develop a personality. The only kind of charisma someone like 22-year-old (2008 F1 champion) Lewis Hamilton has is his Ms Scherzinger (Hamilton?s girlfriend and singer with the girl group Pussycat Dolls)."

Lauda in the past always claimed he had no friends at all. Confronted with this statement now, he says: "That is absolutely true. There were no doubts about that while I was active, anyway ? everyone was ready to roll over someone else?s head to win. You have to be a loner to have success in motorsports.

"I don?t need anyone to help me get out of a rut ? because I don?t get into one. I am always prepared for a worst-case scenario. If someone approaches me to give me some advice, I am already two steps ahead of him."

Confronted with the rumour he is infamous for leaving get-togethers without previous notice, he reveals: "That?s true. I sometimes simply get up and leave. It?s not like I don?t say anything ? I have good manners. When sitting together at a table, I ask the person next to me to apologise for me because I need to leave for a minute. I simply don?t return ? I hate to waste my time."

There seems to be a contradiction since Lauda seems to be a regular at various Austrian and international VIP events. But he says: "All those parties and presentations annoy me terribly. I attend as few as possible, and only as often as necessary to satisfy my sponsors. And I always leave as soon as possible. Having to make small talk is just dreadful."

For years, Lauda pledged never to marry again after getting divorced in 1991 from Marlene, whom he was married to for 15 years. But last August, he married his long-time girlfriend Birgit Wetzinger, a former stewardess. Lauda never provided any details about it but just said the procedure ? which he managed to keep secret for weeks ? had lasted only four minutes.

Now he says: "It?s great my wife is 30 years younger than me. It means I am confronted with completely new challenges."

Lauda, however, is quick to point out he needs neither Viagra nor glasses.

Asked how content he is with how he raised his sons Matthias, 28, and Lukas, 30, Lauda says: "They are honest, straight-forward lads. No affectations, no ?Paris Hilton syndrome.?"

Lauda, however, admits he is burdened by his failure to create a relationship with his illegitimate son Christoph, aged 27.

Lauda became a legend by surviving the accident at the N?rburgring racing court in 1976 when his Ferrari caught fire. He says today he does not remember a thing. But he adds: "Only once, when I went with [former wife] Marlene to Ibiza, there was something in my subconsciousness ? after smoking some strong weed. When I felt I was about to fall into the sink, I remembered I had tried to defend myself back then, thinking this can?t be how I have to die. I have never touched any herbs since that night."

Asked what the biggest insult he had to suffer in his life was, he says: "That was when a journalist asked my soon after my accident whether my wife would file for divorce because of the way I looked. Another hard blow was when Germany?s ?Bild? newspaper asked ?What is it like to live without a face??"

Lauda also remembers how he decided to become a race-car driver. He says: "My grandfather terrorised my whole family with his dominance. Getting into this ?idiots? sport? was the best way to escape from all that."

Reminiscing about when a LaudaAir plane crashed in the Thailand jungle in 1991, killing 223 people, he says: "Those eight months until we knew the mistake was not ours but a construction failure were like hell."

Asked whether he sometimes cries, he says: "I sometimes cry watching films, [Clint Eastwood?s] ?Million Dollar Baby?, for example. Or when I?m driving and there?s a romantic song on the radio."

Asked whether books affect him the same way, he reveals: "I don?t read. I hate to read books! When I go on holiday, I don?t take any books with me. And if you are wondering how much general knowledge I have, I will tell you: about zero."

Speaking about current business developments, Lauda says about the issue of almost bankrupt Austrian flagship carrier Austrian Airlines (AUA): "It?s the first case of its kind in history. It?s okay that AUA, which was managed catastrophically for years, is being sold to Lufthansa for 362,000 Euros. But that the government is putting another 500 million Euros in is incredible. If [the European Commission in] Brussels gives the deal a green light, I will need to come up with something."

Remaining with politics, he reveals: "I didn?t vote [at the last general elections in September 2008]. I expected the same big argument between SP? and ?VP to continue with different faces. I don?t approve the swing to the right, but I understand the young people ? they are literally pushed there by the big parties."

Asked what his tombstone shall say one day, Lauda ? who carries a kidney from his brother as well as one from his wife ? replies: "Fly Niki."
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http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73333

Mateschitz: Teams should own F1

By Matt Beer Wednesday, February 18th 2009, 10:02 GMT

Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz has called for the Formula One teams to be given a share in the ownership of the sport.

At present, private equity company CVC Capital has a majority 70 per cent share in the Formula One Group, with the remainder owned by financial services firm JPMorgan and Bernie Ecclestone's family trust.

Mateschitz, who owns both the Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso teams, believes this situation is unhealthy for the sport - especially during a time of economic crisis.

He fears that the financial groups will be more concerned with getting a return on their investment than securing F1's future.

"They have neither expertise nor passion about and for motorsport," Mateschitz told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency.

"Their engagement, which is natural under the circumstances, is simply a financial one, geared towards maximising profits.

"It is the teams that are carrying all the financial risk. It is the teams that not only have the necessary competence, they also have the necessary passion for motorsport.

"There is just one logical and ethically justifiable owner of Formula One and that is the teams. That is the only way that the survival of motorsport is guaranteed on a long-term basis.

"The teams need to maximise their marketing value, but they also need to own the assets.

"Everybody can see that the value of Formula One is not that which it was a year ago."

The F1 teams have become more proactive in their efforts to safeguard the world championship and shape its future in recent months, having set up the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) and worked with the FIA to implement dramatic cost-cutting rule changes.
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Herr Mateschitz is right on the point, and the fact that he used to be a good mate of Max&Bernie shows how the changing times also change your outlook on the world in which you operate. But this statement means one thing: we're getting closer to all-out war, but this time all the teams will be united against the FIA. Unless Ecclestone throws a dollop of $$$ towards Honda.


EDIT: Does anyone here think that Richard Branson looks a bit like Keke Rosberg?
 
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The guy is right about this, and to any person who isn't into F1 this would seem obvious...its just that we're used to this type of shit that's happening all the time...
 
Interesting development, and probably a good one for the Spanish Grand Prix:

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns21203.html

A new Jarama?

The Real Automovil Club de Espana (RACE) built the Jarama racing circuit near Madrid back in the mid-1960s in order to compete with Barcelona's Montjuic Park. The two tracks shared the Spanish GP for several years but then the race moved permanently to Jarama between 1976 and 1981, after which it disappeared. The RACE seemed to lose interest in F1 after that and the event was revived in Jerez in 1986 and moved to Barcelona in 1991, where it has remained ever since. RACE is now making noises of building a replacement for the old circuit in the same area, not far from Madrid's Barajas international airport. The goal is for the new circuit to be used for testing, although there is little doubt that eventually it would bid for the Spanish Grand Prix.

RACE has now presented a feasibility study to the regional government, which would see the track on land in the San Sebastian de los Reyes municipal area. This would not be affected by noise concerns because of the proximity of the airport.

There has been talk of a new circuit in Madrid for some years but for many years RACE seemed more interested in the development of its own sports complex in the Jarama area, including two golf courses, tennis courts, swimming pools, horse riding facilities, a soccer field and a basketball field.
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Remember how the last race at Jarama ended?

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiVyLEM-0wE&feature=related[/YOUTUBE]
 
FIA set to refine engine usage rules

The FIA is set to refine the 2009 F1 engine rules so that teams cannot make a change after the start of Saturday morning practice, autosport.com can exclusively reveal.

Race director Charlie Whiting had already indicated that changes after qualifying would only be allowed if there was a proven problem with the original engine, and that ruling will now apply to the whole of Saturday, ensuring that teams use the same unit for P3, qualifying and the race.

The move, set to be ratified during this week's meeting of the FIA's Sporting Working Group in Nice, is a direct response to a request from the teams. They feared that allowing changes after P3 would force everyone to routinely swap engines on both cars over the course of Saturday lunchtime, and that would entail bringing extra staff to each race.

"As the rules stand at the moment, you could change your engine after P3," Renault engineering director Pat Symonds told autosport.com. "And there's some incentive to do that, with the limit on engines.

"All the teams I've spoken to feel that that's a little bit against the way we're trying to do things, and it will mean that you will have to take more people to the races. If we blew an engine on Saturday morning, of course we have enough people to change it. But we don't have enough people to systematically change two engines, so we don't really want that to be the case.

"I think there's enough in the parc ferme rules to say that you couldn't change an engine after qualifying starts, although of course now if you had to, there's no penalty associated with it.

"If everything was left completely open, it would soon degenerate. You put in your engine on Saturday. Let's say you spin in qualifying and have to start at the back, you might say I really ought now to use that old dog of an engine, because this isn't a good weekend anyway.

"Or you could come in on Saturday and it's raining, and say I know one engine's a bit iffy, so I'll put that one in now because I'm not going to load it up so much. It would soon degenerate into something completely unintended, so I hope we apply a little bit of sense to it."

This year each driver has eight engines for the whole season, and grid penalties are only applied when a ninth unit is used.

Source: http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73396
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Are we getting more daft with these rules or are we getting somewhere at all ?
 
Good summary of what's to come tomorrow with USF1. Some notes someone took on the Autosport forum about an interview Windsor had on SpeedTv's Wind Tunnel:



"Everything will be American..."

...except the engines. Because the US car manufacturers are in dire trouble economically and the current engine freeze rules refuse to allow a new supplier into F1

"We have the money to compete in F1"

On Danica Patrick: "She has road dust on here, therefore, we'll consider her."

They would ideally like an all American driver line up, but they are looking into having an experienced driver to begin with

When queried as to why he believes he will be successful when many other have failed, Windsor responded: "We have winning staff on board..."

The team will be based in North Carolina due to the location of the Windshear Wind Tunnel that they'll be using

When asked whether the US will embrace his team, Windsor said that his intentions were to bring the US to F1 and not the other way around, which is what Bernie has been trying to do. He also mentioned that NASCAR had the right idea in making the sport as fan friendly as possible. Then he mentioned that there will be Webcams in the USF1 factory etc. Windsor basically said that typically, F1 teams go out of their way to be incredibly secretive and USF1 would go in an opposite direction.

Credits to: Dank on the Autosport Forum
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Then he mentioned that there will be Webcams in the USF1 factory etc. Windsor basically said that typically, F1 teams go out of their way to be incredibly secretive and USF1 would go in an opposite direction.
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That worries me.
 
Well I think they realize that they will be a backmarker so they will whore themselves out for a bit to keep interest high.
 
Niki Lauda seems like kind of an asshole.
 
According to Andrew Baker, Fleetwood Mac is making a return:
Andrew Baker's Telegraph blog said:
Forget - with due deference to David Coulthard and Murray Walker - the presenters.

The bombshell news is that the return of Formula One coverage to the BBC will also bring the return of the best, the most evocative, the most spine-tingling piece of theme music in the sporting world.

Yes, Fleetwood Mac's The Chain is back, and while Coulthard, the venerable Walker and their colleagues will all be welcome on our screens, there cannot be a petrolhead in the land who is not already humming those opening notes in anticipation.
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He doesn't supply any supporting evidence, but if true, I say: Good News!
 
Let me see, team inventory: 1 Trillion American Flags, 20 cheerleaders, 18 Lawyers with two brief cases each, 15 Security Guards - armed to the teeth with night sticks and various assorted pistols and larger weapons, 7 Canine Guard Dogs trained as attack dogs, 1 Engineer, 2 drivers and one car sans engine, sponsorship from WalMart - America, Go for it!!!!
 
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