Be Excellent To Each Other

Could be a buyout of sauber team yet. Good facilities and a cheaper F1. And it's not like there wasn't quite a bit of interest in joining F1 when new slots appeared.

And there's a whole lot longer than the Honda team had to manage it.

Looks like Schumi IS coming back pending fitness...

Whoo!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 172310.stm

What are the rules on points? Would Schumey inherit Massa's points? I'm guessing no, but he is driving a red car.

Imagine if he won the championship again, that would be awesome.

No. See, for instance, 1982. Pironi & Villeneuve.



That would be impossible. If he wins every single race, he ties with Button on points. if Button scores no more.

Then he'd win, wouldn't he? But yeah, that's not going to happen.

Schumacher would win on the tiebreaker - most wins. (7-6).

I bet he wouldn't be coming back if the car hadn't started to become competitive!

I'd absolutely love to see a few tussles between him and Hamilton though!

This is awesome news. I am a bit gutted we have to wait four weeks for this. Especially now the McLarens and the Ferraris are getting back on a bit of form.


Hope Massa gets well soon though. It all sounds a bit bad for him at the moment.

You do wonder about the him vs Raikkonen fight, given that Raikkonen won't have the same contract as Irvine and Barrichello did. While Raikkonen doesn't seem to be overly well integrated to the tea,, this would surely motivate him to do well.

Yes. I don't know whether this will fuss Raikkonen, but if he does get out-qualified and beaten in the race it won't reflect well on him.

I also think this might help boost the ticket sales for Valencia. A final couple of Schumi, in a competetive car, races are bound to attract some interest. I wonder if they will have time to make a special "limited edition" Schumi Ferrari flag. That could be worth a few quid.

I do wonder how much Schumacher: The Return had to do with the F1 bosses.

Hmm, I think it is unprecidented in the modern era that when a driver has been out injured he has not been replaced by the test/back-up driver. There is almost definitly some PR behind this. It seems to have worked though as I am excited. No other driver would have whipped up this much interest.

Senna would have

Last time Ferrari had a driver out ill they didn't use their backup driver.

Dudley: When was that?

Grim...: Yes It was a shame Senna and Schumacher couldn't have locked horns properly.

When Schumey broke his leg at Silverstone?

That's the one. He was replaced by Salo. Test driver was Badoer (who was driving for Minardi at the time, as compared to now where he's twiddling his thumbs)

Ooooh yeah, now I remember. So it is unprecidented that Ferrari actually use their test/backup driver. Interesting.

Neck too knackered, says Schumi.

Aw.

Aw

So the circus is avoided. Quite please about that.

It also means a better story, the chance of Luca to score points.

For the few who don't know the story, Badoer holds the record for the most races in F1 without ever scoring a point. He drove some awful, awful cars really quite well during that time.

But most notably he was running 4th in this next race 10 years ago in a Minardi, ahead of a healthy McLaren and Ferrari with 13 laps left until the gearbox decided on a change of career.

The man does not deserve that record and I'll be cheering very loudly for him to lose it.

It appears you weren't cheering loudly enough, Duds.

So. I think Button has this one by the balls now.

There would appear to be a lot of speculation that just because he wasn't recovered enough for this race doesn't mean he won't step in later in the season if he is recovered enough by then.

"So, Micheal, is there any chance you'll get into the seat of a Ferrari again?"
"For sure, for sure - my personal one at my house."

FTFY

Oh it'll take luck, I'm loving the idiots somehow being surprised the journeyman driver who hasn't race in a decade can't match Kimi. Frankly I think he's performing miracles (he got to within 1.5 seconds of the fastest lap in the middle of the race and was a second quicker than in qualifying) and spent the vast majority of the race ahead of drivers who are supposed to be champions in their prime. It's worth noting his first lap spin wasn't, he was punted by Grosjean.

There is no possibility Ferrari actually expect any more than they're getting. Of course what they're getting is one of the world's best development drivers doing 150 laps testing every 2 weeks in a season where testing is banned. It'll pay dividends next year.

Race itself was boring. Again.

Hamilton was unlucky, and I can't think of anything else of note.

Hamilton wasn't unlucky, Vettel was unlucky. Again.

Fisi confirmed in Ferrari seat for rest of season!

Oof. Poor (and/or stupid) Force India.

Well, Dudley was kind of right.

He did considerably better than I expected him to actually. I'd never have bet on him having a fastest sector time (S1 in Spa) and being within 2 seconds of Kimi. That kind of pace was easily points not long ago. F1 is just laughably close now. He's done better than Grosjean, who's taken other cars out on the first lap of both his races, taken himself out of one and spun it into the weeds in the 2nd.

Also notice that in a testingless season they've just got 300 laps testing from one of the best dev drivers in the business, probably with new stuff on the car. Strange they just scored their first win isn't it?

The only reason to replace him was with a driver who could guarantee points and that means a 2009 race driver (you'd have needed to beat Nico Rosberg's Williams for points at Spa) and in that respect they've made the right move, and nothing even then they only did that by getting Fisi long term.

He was an utter utter joke. Hopeless.

No, he was within 2 seconds of Kimi without driving an F1 car in 8 months, without racing in 10 years.

He was closer than, for example, Johnny Herbert was to Michael Schumacher most of the time when they were teammates. Hell, Ricardo Zonta was 4 seconds slower than Panis when he deputised at Spa 5 years ago, no-one noticed because that was 5 places on the grid. Now it's more than the gap 1st - 20th.

I take your point about him being a good test driver but he ain't near quick enough to compete today. With McLaren creeping up on Ferrari and having, arguably, a slight advantage they can't afford to lose their place in the championship, especially with the threats of more and more sponsors pulling out.

Yeah, the insane "top 4 within a tenth, top 8 within half a second" thing that's going on these days makes the worst results look spectacularly, unfairly bad. Apart from Grosjean continually stuffing it, that's just bad.

He'd done hundreds of miles in that car. He knows it inside out.

Ferrari have been caught napping. The idea is that you have a test driver who might just be up to the job of stepping into the car and putting in competitive lap times. When you have rookies in front of you in slower cars, you might just be crap.

This is a point. I thought with the shake up of he rules, KERS, less downforce, etc. would really sort the men from the boys. However, it seems that concentrating more on one area, KERS for example, with McLaren has depleted the overall package. However, however, this seems to be coming into it's own now with any track that has a reasonable straight being candy from a baby for KERS powered cars. However, however, however this is probably because they (Ferrari & McLaren) have focused on sorting out the aero package and this has paid dividends that 80HP for 7ish seconds couldn't make up for, but they have the resourses to pump into this.

Blimey it's all very complicated.

If by that you mean "Hadn't driven it at all until a demo run at Fiorano just before Valencia" then yes, he had. The last time he sat in an F1 car before Valencia was a test in the F2008 in December.

He's doing as well as can be expected - that doesn't stop him looking crap though. Two seconds isn't much five years ago, but it is today.

Indeed, just saying it's better than I expected and unless they're complete idiots, no worse than Ferrari did.

That said, 9th is as bad as 20th. He was in there for the testing and development, to get points you'd have to be quicker over a race than Nico Rosberg's Williams and that would be very tricky for anyone by an F1 09 race driver.

They've now snared exactly the right guy but there would have been no point at all replacing Badoer with say, Gene or even someone like an F2 driver.

Incidentally, I was researching the 1997 Australian GP on another matter (btw, if anyone remembers that 1997 Lola team, GP2 cars are now closer to the F1 pole than they were) and I noticed that if Badoer was the same distance off pole he'd have qualified 3rd. Crikey it's close now.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsp ... 250436.stm
"Renault say they are launching legal action against Nelson Piquet Jr and his father Nelson Piquet over race-fixing allegations made against the team."

WTF?

Far as I can understand it, it goes something like this. Renault did shit last year and were making noises about pulling out of F1 at the end of the year from about mid way through the season. Briatore and Symonds allegedly asked Piquet Jr to crash deliberately to orchestrate a good result for Alonso in the SIngapore GP. There are lots of details doing the rounds on various F1 websites. Piquet Jr went to the FIA with this after losing his drive in July.
Piquet statement excerpts
As for Renault launching legal action... well, in Piquet's defence, unless he has empirical evidence to back this up and not just hearsay, he's going to get hauled across the coals and Briatore and Renault must be counting on there being no evidence to support his allegations.

More information here... http://axisofoversteer.blogspot.com/200 ... ealed.html

Unverified, mind. and I've not seen any other site running it.

It does stink to high heaven this. I shall await the outcome with mild anticipation

The stink proved a rat it would appear.
Symonds and Briatore quit renault

Bye, Flavio. You can piss iff to London now and shack up wiht Naomi while you concentrate on bringing your 'sporting' expertise to poor old QPR.

Well, the fudge is out. Renault get two year suspended sentence. I understand they couldn't ban them due to the parlous state the sport is in allied to the fact they can't allow Renault to quit though they may still do, but they're required as engine suppliers or something. Anyway, Briatore gets a lifetime ban from all FIA events and anyone associated with him will (i.e. all the drivers he manages) will not get the necessary superlicences, so that's him suitably fucked then. Symonds got a 5 year ban. Alonso got a pat on the back for cooperating but there are still questions about him being fueled for only 14 laps and not being aware of the upcoming events.

Looks a bit mild compared to the $100m fine McLaren got last year, IMO