TBK-Light.com

The Force India was the class of the field that weekend. Besides he didn't just have to beat a Force India, he had to beat 18 others and Luca Badoer.

While Michael Schumacher looked on holding his neck....

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

There's a really long explanation about the 2008 season out there. Basically Ferrari was shit at doing what Kimi wanted.

Supposedly the mechanics were astounded that Kimi won that race in 2009.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

And maybe, just maybe, pre Hungary 09 Massa was better than 2010 and after Massa.

Firstly, no-one is saying Massa is better than Kimi. Rather it was a couple of jokes that myself and Fish88 made, let's not take these things too seriously...

And secondly. In 2008 Kimi was as good and fast as he was in 2007. It was rather circumstance and a minor adjustment to that year's Ferrari that worked against him. Kimi was fantastic in the early part of 2008. A couple of victories, then bad luck and reliability went against him:

- Monaco should have given him more, but for Ferrari not putting his tyres on in good time while on the dummy grid
- Canada, got ahead of Lewis at the pit stops... and then while waiting alongside Kubica for the green light to come on we all remember what Lewis did next
- France, leading comfortably and then has an exhaust issue
- Britain, carving into Lewis' lead Ferrari opt to leave him on used tyres at the first pit stop just as the heavens were about to open

In the second half of the season Kimi did seem to go into his shell and never look like the Kimi of 2007 or the first part of 2008. But by that time the damage was done to his title chances.

Another point is that that 2008 Ferrari had a more understeer characteristic compared to the 2007 car. This suited Massa but didn't suit Kimi and meant he was unable to build up good tyre temperature in qualifying. Which meant he was perceived to have lost his quali skill. What you'll notice is that in 2008, Kimi achieved more fastest laps in the race than any other driver. Why is that relevant? Well, it is relevant because it shows that once Kimi got good temperature in his tyres that he was able to still be competitive. It is just that because he qualified badly thanks to what I've already mentioned, he'd be stuck behind Kovalainen, or the BMWs or the odd Toyota for large portions of a race and then not be able to make progress until the latter portion.

So was Massa better than Kimi in 2008? Yes, in the points and in handling the car's understeery characteristic that year. But does it also mean Kimi was slow or not competitive? Absolutely not, if you understand the real facts of what happened that year.

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

I just wanted to share this beautiful work of art with you guys. If was randomly searching for some nice Formula 1 pictures when I came across this. It just hit me. It's allmost midnight here in Holland and I was about to fall asleep but I'm right awake now. I think is a masterpiece, the emotional amount in this picture is very high. I didn't want to put in in the Motorsport picture section or whatever is called becouse I'm afraid many people will miss it if I do so.

Mario Andretti claims that Michael will enter F1 as soon as the series allows customer cars.

http://motorsport.nextgen-auto.com/Mich ... 66480.html

So, never. Sadly.

That might change if two or three current teams with financial issues drops out.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

If your budget relies on you having a cheap car that everyone else can also have, sorry, you won't do well in F1.

Michael Andretti and Formula One don't mix.

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"Well we've got this ridiculous situation where we're all sitting by the start-finish line waiting for a winner to come past and we don't seem to be getting one!" James Hunt - Monaco 1982

that kind of thing make me wonder which was the last F1 team based in US, it was Penske?

EDIT: just saw here, Shadow and Penske were based in Britain, actually it was Parnelli

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

I really don't see the problem with customer cars. Up until the late 60's it was the norm and IIRC even in the 70's teams used them.

There are two channels of thought against it, litigation and competition.

Litigation - a customer car part brakes leading to someone's death, who is responsible, the team (b), the driver, or the team (a) who supplied the part to team (B).

Competition - to quote Frank Williams, "I don't want to be racing 6 McLarens".

That worked fine when standards were lower. A customer car designed to be bought and used will never be as good as a factory effort. See Le Mans for a perfect example.

Andretti wants a customer car and to be competitive. He won't get both.

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theRacingLine.net
SportsCarArchives.com

what's the estimated price of a last year car, with all features, engine, transmission and electronics?

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Motorsports trend for 2024: everything is a bad taste joke now

Depends on the budget, but I guess the lowest team budget is £60m (Marussia). Then work out the costs from there.

Customer cars won't work because you end up with an independent team (such as Williams or Sauber) eventually losing out. Three cars would be better, but only if we went down to seven or eight teams.

The only way to allow Customer cars is if they are ineligible for Constructors' points.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Marussia has stated that most of their budget goes for transportation and wages. R&D is merely £2M for them. So there's really not many options to cut the costs than having more European races, rather than going to far east so many times during the season.

You've got a valid point, it might be a better long term solution to allow third car for every team, who feels like running it, than going for customer teams.

However, I don't think customer teams should be outside the constructors points system. Imagine a situation, where BrawnGP kind of domination escalates. Suddenly we'd have One driver going for the win, while three other cars are "blocking" the next three spots. And with BrawnGP's domination, it was fun for a while to see McLaren and Ferrari being the teams that try to catch the new number one. Imagine if Red Bull had Toro Rosso right up there with the prime team. Suddenly Alonso, Hamilton and Räikkönen would be fighting for the 4th to 8th position, while Vettel would be the only driver going for the wins. The championship would be pretty much over after 1/3rd of the season done.

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"Indy doesn't give you a second chance. You have to earn it."

But if you have a customer car, you're not a constructor...

Marussia's budget is tiny, they really are a glorified GP2 - or as Kals pointed out before, possibly even F3 - team. The guys there do a cracking job on the budget. They've put their eggs into 2013 whereas Caterham didn't build a new car for this year and has been focusing heavily on 2014.

I think it'd be cool if every now and then you could get a third car - like if Force India wanted to run a third car for Calado at Silverstone or something, but it wouldn't happen.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

There's also the issue with engines. Buy a Red Bull, and you are either forced to put a Renault engine or forced to modifying the entire back end just for the sake of putting another powerplant. And that would affect the overall performance.

It's not like a few decades ago anymore, where a high percentage of the field used Ford-Cosworth engines.

If it happens in an unlikely future, I think they should try to policy it, so that it doesn't just become a field of works and satellite teams made up just for extra track time and testing purposes.

Nicolas Todt has told Brazilian media that Massa had planned to leave Ferrari & that he finally decided to make the move because after he qualified 4th at Monza not one person from Ferrari went to him to say 'good job', The only response he got was people from the team asking why he didn't do a better job helping Alonso with a tow.

Luca di Montezemolo had also said that Massa will drive to help Alonso for the rest of this year.

Massa however has said this today on GloboTV: