TBK-Light.com

HRT are up for sale again:
http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/104183

not really surprising. Thesan is an investment company. They probably sell it with profit.

Michael Andretti: Ron Dennis and Bernie Ecclestone conspired to make me look bad.






http://www.gordonkirby.com/categories/c ... no361.html


Christ, talk about being bitter.

Some of what he says is intriguing. I don't believe that Ron would compromise his second ride for some kind of circumvoluted plan to 'take over the world' with Bernie, though.

lol, Michael. Wondering why he was not popular when he would be away from the F1 circus and back to the US as soon as he could.

a story that I'd really like to read is what exactly happened between Montoya and Ron. From A to Z.

This is the same Ron who refused to even talk to DC and referred to him as "them" when talking to Mika. So I don't find it THAT hard to believe. Why has this come to light now? And I really don't think Bernie was involved.

Well, blah, blah, this story has been repeated so many times now. While his F1 season wasn't very flattering, he should have moved to Europe to make the most of it. We all know that he was better than what the results say.

IF it where true, I'd recon Bernie would be involved.

He's right that CART was growing momentum in Europe by that time. Talks of races in Europe. I even remember that Dutch RTL could only get F1 if they also agreed not to broadcast CART.
So Bernie and FOM did fear CART around that time.
So there would be some sense in it to discredit the series by taking it's biggest star, putting it in one of the best F1 cars and making him look like a fool.

While the story sounds plausible there is no way of telling it's true though....

Until Tony George came along.........

well, yes but that's a different story for another night children :P

I reckon Ron may have hated the fact that Senna once, quite publically, considered a move to CART. Maybe it was an ultimate try to keep Senna at McLaren?

I believe that was more of publicity stunt by Senna during his on going contract negotiations.

Maybe but he was also getting fed up of the increasing role of driver aids in the sport and he probably saw CART as a genuine alternative for himself as he was getting older. It's no coincidence that F1 hurriedly announced a ban on driver aids for 1994 a few months after Senna's CART test at Phoenix in December of 1992.

It's almost the same Alonso said after 2007.

Montoya also felt he was threaten differently by Dennis after Dennis felt betrayed by him because of the "Tennis" incident in 2005.

What was the Tennis incident Fish?

Montoya fell off a motorbike or mountain bike but claimed he fell playing tennis. He was forced to miss the Bahrain and Imola GPs due to the shoulder injury he sustained.

_________________
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Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

Michael Andretti was a much better driver than his part 1993 F1 season suggested. He may well have been treated differently by McLaren (Wouldn't be the only driver to claim this sort of thing while a #2 at McLaren) & maybe this did harm him in some way, However he could have done a lot of things differently to help himself.

Don't forget that Michael did a couple test's with Mclaren in 1991/1992 & by all accounts did an impressive job & this was the reason he got the 1993 race seat. However once he got the race seat refusing to move to europe (Because Mario hadn't when he raced in F1) meant he wasn't getting to know the team, wasn't getting to know/understand the F1/European culture, Maybe didn't have as good an understanding of an F1 car as he needed & most importantly wasn't do as much testing as he should have been doing in order to get to grips with the car.

If he had done all that he'd have been much more prepared & he almost certainly would have had a better season which may well have seen other teams show an interest in hiring him should McLaren have still dropped him.


Move forward a few years & look at what Jacques Villeneuve did, He moved back to Europe, did as much testing as he could & spent as much time around the team as he could. So by the time the 1996 season started he knew the car, the team & quite a few of the tracks which allowed him to be competitive from race 1.



As far as Bernie goes, Its been suggested since the early 90s that he did see CART as a threat, Not sure he'd go as far as conspiring with an F1 team to sabotage a CART champions F1 career to make CART look bad but been honest nothing would surprise me when Bernie's involved.

I pretty much agree with you there. He shot himself in the foot by his stubbornness/ arrogance by not moving. Yes he probably didn't have equal treatment from the team, for the life of me I can't believe that they would have turned off his traction controll, there would have been copious amounts of telemetry data for this, and he would have screamed high heaven at the time if this was the case. More like he didn't get aero updates or springs and other components (not uncommon for the whole history of F1 and still happens today!) I think this coupled with his everybody in F1 is out to get me attitude has made him build this up in his mind to the point where he has no other conclusion to draw apart from "conspiricy".

I think there is a mitigating circumstance for Andretti and the moving-story.

Let's not forget that Senna that year used to turn up minutes before practice, the team not even knowing if he would drive that weekend or not. It's true that there could have been a lot mor involvement of Michael in the team, but let's not forget Senna treated the team pretty badly too.

Ron always had his favourite drivers and the fact that he made Senna a three times champion would have always been difficult for Andretti to cope with.