The Motorsport Thread 2015

Yeah that was the fear one expressed...while all assumed its just a power move, he said something along those lines, that Bernie has only the money interest in mind ultimately. 

^True, but that's because Enzo is morta.

Edited by SteveG - September 08 2015 at 19:40

SteveG wrote: ^True, but that's because Enzo is morta.

I'd say it was because Jean Todt left, he was excellent at the political side of things.

Less machiavillian and more of a sh*t stirer, Ferrari should have achieved so much over the years but needless animosity between team members was a constant problem and all Enzo's fault.

SteveG wrote: ^Enzo pitted teammates against one another along with other psychological tactics. If you drove for Ferrari, you knew what you we're in for and you had to play that game. Some played it better than others, obviously. But this was also evident in drivers that claimed, like Prost, that his teammate was favored and played it up to the press in much the same way that Enzo played things up to the press.. This is life and some will always play this game better than others.   Even GM has a well seen sword hanging over the heads of it's United Sports Car Series Corvette drivers. So, se le vie.

No it was much more than that. As far as I can remember there weren't many team mates that had any kind of problem with each other, with Lauda-Regazzoni and Villeneuve-Pironi being the most famous examples. Enzo liked pitting his people against each other and the result was a lot of infighting and problems, I mean why do you think team manager Romalo Tovoni and star designer Carlo Chiti walked out after winning the 61 title to set up ATS, they were fed up with the way Enzo ran things. Another example would be the famously bad relationship between John Surtees and team manager Eugenio Dragoni, Surtees was trying to build the team around himself in the same way Lauda did in the 70's and Schumacher would decades later, but Dragoni was trying to score points with Enzo and in the end Surtees walked for Honda. It would be nearly 10 years, until Lauda turned up, till they got a driver that good again. Fangio only spent a year at the team for the same reasons.

With talent over the years like Chiti, Forgheiri, Surtees, Lauda, Villleneuve etc and resources beyond what pretty much any other team could muster they should have dominated F1 for years. It's interesting that the only person that really ever surpressed that back bitting culture was Luca di Montazemelo, both in the 70's and on his return in the early 90's.

Singapore this weekend. Alexander Rossi will be getting his debut at last, replacing Roberto Merhi at Manor for 5 of the remaining 7 races (missing Russia and Abu Dhabi due to GP2 commitments).

Never understood why people were linking him to a Haas seat, it made absolutely no sense for either he or Raikkonen (another name linked) to go to a guranteed backmarker. Apparently he's favourite to retain the second McLaren seat for next year with Magnussen a possibility for one of the Haas seats. The other one at Haas will definitely go to one of the Ferrari reserve drivers, so either Gutierrez or Vergne, I hope Vergne as Gutierrez hasn't done much of note since winning GP3 5 years ago.  

I've got to let people know about the revamped Trans Am series and their TA2 category that has 500 HP 'muscle cars' racing on bias ply tires. During the race, as opposed to this caution lap, the cars are completely sideways and the tire's squeal. Excellent stuff that has to be seen in person and you can actually smell the tire smoke at the braking areas. 

Edited by SteveG - September 19 2015 at 10:43

Only 40 times your money back with that top 3, which is a relief because I could have seen myself betting on something like that. I didn't expect Mercedes to be that far from the pole lap though. It'll be interesting to see how they'll do in the race.

That is pretty shocking, I'd say maybe this can finally be a Kimi win but I'll pull my head out of fantasy land for once