Author: Pat W

Taking stock

Okay, let’s take stock and see where we are. I don’t mean to be downbeat about all of the crappy news we’ve had over the last six weeks, but I do think it prudent to give a summary of what has changed since the end of the 2008 racing season.

– Honda out of F1. Big news for all concerned. Since last week, Honda has claimed they have 3 potential buyers lined up. I’m not sure how likely that is. I hope someone does buy the team and continue, even if they have to make swingeing cuts to survive. If nobody buys it we’re down to 18 cars and dangerously close to the other teams having to field a third car per Bernie’s contracts. Team orders? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

– Audi out of ALMS and LMS. I’d half-suspected they’d only do the LMS for the one year, the bigger surprise to me is dropping the ALMS almost entirely apart from Sebring. Instead they choose to take a new car to Sebring and Le Mans (and I bet they show up at Petit as well). Methinks Peugeot will win Le Mans.

– AGR out of Acura/ALMS and into A1GP. I’m sure if they jumped or if they were pushed, either way you have to think running the A1 car is a significant cost-saving over developing a prototype sportscar – I’m assuming they were helping develop it.

– Penske out of ALMS, and seemingly no Porsches at all in P2 in America OR Europe. Weird. In the US someone needs to run a customer car to go against Acura, and in Europe there are are easy wins going begging.

– I was going to mention GT1 collapsing globally, but I think that was happening anyway.

– SEAT out of BTCC. This was an announcement a couple of months back. SEAT are out of British Touring Cars, although they seem to be continuing in World Touring. The claim at the time was SEAT UK had met its marketing expectations and had reached the end of the programme. Now we’ve had all these other announcements, I’m not so sure that’s true.

– If any of the US carmakers go under (particularly GM) then it will knock on to racing activities somewhere or other, especially NASCAR but all over the world as well in Aussie V8s (Holden), WTCC (Chevrolet), BTCC (Vauxhall), and who knows where else.

– Don’t forget Super Aguri’s collapse earlier in the year.

There will have been more I’ve missed here (let me know in the comments), and more will unfortunately follow I’m sure.

One thing is very clear. 2009 is going to have a VERY different look.

Don’t get too disheartened though, think of this as a natural correction. Things got way out of hand especially in Formula 1. It’s time for a bit of restructuring before we head into the eco era.

Some good news:

– Acura is still moving up to P1 in ALMS as well as running a couple of P2 cars.

– BMW will have a new GT2 car in ALMS which will be run by Rahal/Letterman. A group of BMW’s WTCC drivers have been out at Road Atlanta developing it.

– Audi will have their new R8 GT car out. I saw it marked as a GT3 but I’m sure I’ve seen word of it going into GT2.

– More independent/privateer cars entering touring cars and world rally. This is a mixed blessing. Sometimes these teams and/or drivers are delusional no-hopers making up the numbers, yet sometimes it allows an underfunded but otherwise excellent team to take part and prove themselves. I like those guys, I always root for them.

– Honda’s F1 woes will not affect their IndyCar, MotoGP, ALMS interests or any other racing activity.

– IRL will seemingly still get 24+ cars at each round.

– We still have shitloads of racing – Too Much Racing for one person to follow, and long may it be so.

Again, let me know of any more good news in the comments.

Sorry for not posting on Friday as promised.

Honda out of F1 with immediate effect?

A few of the F1 news websites are abuzz with talk of Honda pulling out of Formula 1 with almost immediate effect. I must stress at this stage: this is just a rumour.
However, this looks to be more than the frequent will they / won’t they rumours we usually see about Renault. From the tone of the reports it looks as though SOMETHING is up at Honda. Whether that is a budget cut, a sale, or a shut down we just don’t know yet. Anyway, to the reports:

—–

GrandPrix.com is reporting that their US car sales are down 32% (and so was Toyota’s) compared to last year. They are scaling back on production and their plans to build more factories are on ice.
In terms of the F1 team the story includes this note:

On Thursday afternoon we received a flurry of reports that Honda F1 personnel have suddenly started applying for jobs in large numbers. We have been trying to contact Honda Racing F1 this afternoon but have thus far been unable to reach anyone.

The very next story on the site suggests that they are looking to sell the team by Christmas. Pitpass.com reports that a sale must be made before March 2009. I would suggest either date to be a very tall order although the Pitpass story suggests they have two potential buyers lined up already. Pitpass also says that Honda won’t supply engines to the new owners.

Again that second GrandPrix.com story notes of much higher than usual staff movement:

There is no confirmation from any Honda company officials, but teams across Europe are reporting that they have received a rush of applications from Honda F1 personnel in the course of the day. The fact that the team is not responding to requests for statements is a bad sign, as if the rumours are not correct they would need to be killed as quickly as possible.

It should be noted at this point that there is always a fairly big amount of movement between the F1 teams at this time of year among all levels of staff. GrandPrix.com knows this too, so it must be an unusual pattern for them to comment on it, and a ‘flurry’ in one day is certainly unusual.

The lack of activity from the PR / communications department is highly unusual too, as Honda (along with Renault) usually appear to be among the best at supplying info to the specialist press or TV, at least to my layman eyes.
As GrandPrix.com says, it may be best to wait a few hours and see what the parent company in Japan says after their business day begins.

My thoughts….

This was a complete surprise to me. That this is supposedly a full pull-out is also a surprise as after seeing the news, I thought they’d at least supply engines to the new owners, even if only for a year or two.

While this might not be big in terms of where the team is on the grid at the moment, this is absolutely huge in terms of a major manufacturer leaving Formula 1 – if indeed they are. I hope that they aren’t because, well, this is Honda! If any car company can turn around the fortunes of a badly performing F1 team then surely that company is Honda.

I also feel for the people at Brackley and other sites. I’ve been through a redundancy, it isn’t a nice experience. I hope this is either a) budget cuts, or b) a sale – and I hope it is not c) a shut down of the team.

The other consideration is this: If this is true and they are pulling out, what does this mean for the IRL and ALMS programmes? Are Honda looking at other savings, or are the costs sufficiently smaller that they are able to continue? ALMS can live without Acura/Honda, the series would be weaker (combined with Penske/Porsche out) but long-term it would get over it. IndyCar would be a different story. That would be a world of hurt.

Anyway. This is all conjecture. Let’s see what the Japanese parent company says on Friday.

Just to be clear, I must stress that these ARE just rumours at this point. I hope the websites aren’t putting 2 + 2 together to get 5. Both are known names in the F1 world and both have sources within it. I trust GrandPrix.com because they keep their ear to the ground when it comes to the business side of F1. I also know that Pitpass does some fact-checking before posting stories like this.
I strongly advise checking both. Autosport.com also fact-checks but they don’t have anything on this as I type – keep an eye out for something soon.

If it had been a lesser site I wouldn’t have pointed it out. I wasn’t going to post anything at all today as I have an exam in the morning and need to cram like crazy, but this couldn’t wait!

UPDATE @ 23.38 UK – an announcement is due in Japan at 4.30am UK time. The BBC now has a report up citing Reuters, it seems Fry and Brawn told the other teams at the FOTA meeting earlier this week. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Quick update

I’m currently revising for an exam I’m sitting on Friday (taxation, yay!), hence the recent lack of updates. I haven’t watched many of my recordings either. I did see GP2 at the Hungaroring a week ago, which was fairly tedious actually. The only decent racing at the Hungaroring happens when it rains, which is hardly ever. I ignored most of it while I was doing coursework. It was that sort of race. Think IRL at Sonoma, you won’t be far off.

Much more interesting was the Live Fast Racing podcast, and I’m still two behind, I listened to #19 about two days before they released #21. I will catch up! Jeff has one as well now, which I’m looking forward to hearing (sorry for not getting around to it yet).

After this exam I’ll catch up on podcasts and a couple of races, and write the first in a series of ‘top driver’ posts. I haven’t decided whether I’ll do Top Tens or just the ones I think did well, could be 8, could be 11… I mean what if there aren’t ten? Or what if it was a great year and the 11th is actually really good?
What I’d like to do is finish it off with the Top Drivers Of The Year (all series combined), a la the annual Autosport Xmas Bumper Issue. I feel I should do some form of quantitive analysis in Excel, a few years ago I would have. But I think I’ll do this the old-fashioned way – gut feel.

Music recommendation: Sigur Rós – Hoppipola
On condition you only watch that video on a cold night, with lights turned down low, preferably wearing headphones. It might be best to ignore the vid and just listen.

See also:
Untitled 1 [Vaka] and especially Svefn-g-Englar.

There are lots of others, go from there to the tracks page and press the little play buttons, anything at random.

I promise to suggest something more up tempo and rockier next time!

BBC F1 2009 – broadcast team

EDIT – I’ve noticed people are still arriving on this older post via Google. Please go ahead and read this, but then make sure you check out the update here – thanks!
* * * *

From the BBC Sport website:

David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan have joined the BBC as part of next year’s presentation team in Formula One.
Coulthard, who retired as a race driver at the end of the 2008 season, will join former team boss Jordan as a pundit alongside anchor Jake Humphrey.
Jonathan Legard moves from 5 Live to commentate with ex-F1 driver and award-winning broadcaster Martin Brundle.
…
The pit-lane reporters will be Ted Kravitz and Lee McKenzie.
…

This is excellent news! Can you just imagine Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard as analysts? These are probably the most outspoken, witty and fun guys in the paddock. DC has certainly grown into himself since leaving McLaren, at least to the outside world’s perception. This is going to be fun! Now, I’m not sure either will be in the commentary box, or “the booth” in American parlance. I think they’ll be in a studio role either in London or trackside. It’ll still be great and I fully expect them to interject into the race commentary.

Jake Humphrey as main anchor will bring the F1 coverage away from the “grey-haired old anchorman” style we’ve had for the last however many years (always?), which just does not fit with the image of Formula 1 as a young, dynamic sport. More so since Red Bull joined the party. He’s a capable guy in his 30s who has covered the Olympics, the Euro 2008 football tournament, and a host of other sports for the BBC. He’s very much the up-and-coming man at BBC Sport and has been for the last year, this can be considered his first major long-term anchor role as his other stuff was for annual events, magazine shows or for the Olympics, a results roundup show.

Jonathan Legard (no Wiki page) was the main commentator for BBC Radio Five Live from 1997 to 2004, before taking on a football role for the station. Five Live is the BBC’s main sports and news talk radio station. I’m not familiar with his work in either of those roles and I’m not entirely sure what TV experience he has, so I’ll be watching with interest to see if he can translate to the less descriptive style of television. Because of this he is potentially the weak link in the chain.

Side-note: David Croft currently holds the F1 commentary role for Five Live and looks like retaining that job. Croft also covered GP2 for ITV4 this year, leading to speculation that he was training himself for the Big One. I’m pretty sure Croftie is going to be gutted with this decision, and while he is fairly good, he does make a fair few mistakes on the GP2 coverage. I’m not saying it’s an easy job, but still..

Ted Kravitz became ITV’s pit strategy reporter when James Allen was promoted to lead commentary on Murray Walker’s retirement in 2002. Kravitz is hot on the strategic side of the sport and has definitely improved over the years. It used to be that Allen was the best pit reporter in town and Ted did well to fill those shoes. Allen turned out to be a good but not great commentator – he did get better, no matter what many people on the internet may say (I’m by no means a big fan, but you have to give credit where due). Kravitz has done some anchor work for the BTCC on ITV4 and you have to say he hasn’t been great in that role. I’m glad he continues in his element next year.

Lee McKenzie is not the token female, just as Louise Goodman wasn’t at ITV. McKenzie has experience in the pitlane role for Sky Sports’ coverage of A1 Grand Prix as well as covering WRC and many other motorsport events. It says on Wiki she has her own company looking after several top drivers in several championships, which I never knew. I think she’ll be good if the BBC doesn’t relegate her to Louise’s more recent role of simply trailing after drivers who have crashed out for whatever reason. We need that but some idea of what the lower order are doing in the pits would be nice too.

This is such a brilliant line-up, I’m like a little kid at hearing this! The article quoted above says the practical side of things will be announced later but I can tell you this:

Race coverage will be live and exclusive on BBC One (home of ‘Eastenders’, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ (AKA the origination of ‘Dancing w/t Stars’) and ‘Spooks’ (‘MI5’)) for the entire 2009 season. In full. With no adverts. At all. Ever. Unless you count BBC self-promos. Of which there are many.

All qualifying sessions will be aired live on BBC Two (the home of ‘Top Gear’ and ‘Heroes’, fact fans) for the 2009 season.

There is speculation that there will be enhanced coverage available on digital TV via the ‘red button’ interactive service, including alternate camera angles and live timing, similar to the service on the Premiere channel in Germany.

Okay… so you’ve convinced me… NOW the licence fee is worth it!

Music recommendation: Fleetwood Mac – ‘The Chain’ (BBC F1 intro 1996)

If the Beeb doesn’t bring back their iconic Grand Prix theme tune in some form or another then they are utter, utter, fools.

Note to international readers: This is about BBC taking back the rights from ITV for the first time since the close of the 1996 season. If you didn’t grow up to this music then you probably don’t ‘get it’, but believe me: This is Very. Very. Cool. Goosebumps every time I hear it.