TBK-Light.com

Drivers' Title.

Lotus will launch their 2012 car on 5th February at 4pm. They've also confimed that Kimi Raikkonen will debut the car on the first two days of the Jerez test, before Romain Grosjean takes over.

Also, start times (UK) for the non-European races year:

Australia - 06:00
Malaysia - 09:00 (08:00 QU)
China - 08:00 (07:00 QU)
Bahrain - 13:00 (12:00 QU)
European races - 13:00
Canada - 19:00 (18:00 QU)
Singapore - 13:00
Japan - 07:00 (06:00 QU)
Korea - 07:00 (06:00 QU)
India - 09:30
Abu Dhabi - 13:00
USA - 19:00
Brazil - 16:00

Australia an hour earlier as it is before the clocks go forward; Canada an hour later, presumably not to clash with a Euro 2012 match.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Is this the assualt in the nightclub case? Any chance of Sutil actually getting convicted?

Yes and yes, but it is unlikely he will be.

Meanwhile, the FIA has banned Lotus's braking stabilising system.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Only a week after declaring it legal?

Yep.

On the same day as this as well...

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/97106

¬_¬

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Dan Wheldon ¦ 1978-2011
Marco Simoncelli ¦ 1987-2011
Jules Bianchi ¦ 1989-2015
Justin Wilson ¦ 1978-2015

Yeah, I know he's mad and I don't care. I do not care. I did not care then. I do not care now. I'm here to race him.

Mark Gillan confirms live that reactive ride is banned @

Peterdwindsor @theflyinglap what a show, bringing you tech news as it happens. -- ScarbsF1 (@ScarbsF1)

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http://www.youtube.com/user/scarsurfing?feature=mhee

wow

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"An idea whose time has come cannot be stopped by any army or any government"


3x TBKL rFactor Hillclimb champion

Can't believe the FIA went back
And banned th reactive height ride system.

It seems that some teams have mentioned about it and the FIA scrapped it. They should go out and design something different and challenge themselves rather than discussing with the FIA and ban it.

At least they are consequent and ban it before the season starts rather then making a fuss throughout the entire year (as they did with double diffusor, as they did with the F-Duct, as they did with the blown diffusor recently...).

Yeah but banning an entire suspension system at this stage is a joke, especially when Lotus asked for confirmation before. Forcing them to do a redesign is ridiculous.

Totally agree with you, we are living a period where its really hard to make real big changes to a car design, and when someone come with a new system, FIA just ban it, that really piss me off, that could be a chance for Lotus to improve this season and make the championship more competitive, I hope they can still perform well.

Exactly, they ruined a whole design work from the team, at this time and with the few tests allowed with those new rules, it will be very hard for them, FIA, when we think they can't ruin it even more, they go and show they can

If it is illegal, it deserves to be banned.

However, it is frustrating to see innovations not given a chance. Like the F-Duct was a brilliant piece of engineering, Ferrari go and put it so Nando needs to drive one handed and they ban the whole system.

That said, it is very funny to visit Atlas and see the morons on there believing that it's a Red Bull conspiracy and that the FIA is deliberately screwing over Ferrari, Mercedes & Lotus. I never remember the FIA giving it the green light, it was just Autosport saying that they understood it had. Big difference.

They said it should gain about 0.4s a lap on heavy braking tracks so it is a big chunk to lose. Nevertheless, if you take a gamble on a device that isn't necessarily legal then it can go either way.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Not when the FIA was consulted throughout the design process and agreed it was legal. To backtrack at such a late stage is terribly poor and could have a severely detrimental affect on Lotus' season.

Yup, I can't see any logic in these actions. Also, I can't see how they can really get away with gags like this, a small fortune went into designing and testing the device. If they have allready said "yes" I dont think they should be able to just revoke the "go ahead" they gave to Lotus.

In recent years, the FIA have been on a massive cost cutting hype, so they were/are all about reducing costs on the behalf of the teams, yet to allow a team to go ahead with this system, and then once developed tell them is illegal is highly hipocirtical of the FIA in financial terms to allow them to carry on developing it and shows the lack of clarity and certainty in the FIA's decisions and may rock the faith FOM has in the FIA itself.

Really sucks for Lotus though, I was really hoping to see somthing special come from that system.

That's exactly what I thought when I read the news. It's not even a month till the first tests kick off so I really can't understand the decision. But after a while I thought, well, it's the FIA. So what do you expect?

Idiotic that they ban this system after declaring it legal first. I cannot believe that an organisation like the FIA can make so many stupid mistakes, without people or teams saying: "This is it, we had enough of you".

Got to love how clever advances in technology which do not hurt the safety of the cars or the quality of the racing get banned, I thought this was the pinnacle of motorsport technology??