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I couldn’t agree more with Mr Saward. In a great post on his blog (with an awesome URL, check it out), Joe Saward sums up the thoughts of Formula One fans everywhere.

This comes after the news that the rotting zombie corpse that is the FIA/FOTA war has broken through the coffin of the WMSC agreement of last month, clawed its way up through the earth and is now stumbling lopsided down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, hungry for brains.

Today the FIA issued a press release after the teams met at the Nürburgring to try to agree on a final set of regulations for 2010.  It starts off positively with the following:

All changes have now been agreed subject only to the maintenance of the minimum weight at 620 kg and the signing of a legally binding agreement between all the teams competing in 2010 to reduce costs to the level of the early 1990s within two years, as promised by the FOTA representative in Paris on 24 June.

Great!  But wait!  What’s this next paragraph?

The eight FOTA teams were invited to attend the meeting to discuss their further proposals for 2010. Unfortunately no discussion was possible because FOTA walked out of the meeting.

WTF?  Seriously, WTF!?!

FOTA subsequently issued their version of events.

During the course of this meeting, the team managers were informed by Mr Charlie Whiting of the FIA that, contrary to previous agreements, the eight FOTA teams are not currently entered into the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship and have no voting rights in relation to the technical and sporting regulations thereof.

This is just bizarre.

So the FOTA teams are not entered into the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship?  Then what the hell was that list the FIA published on 24 June? This one here.  The one that says “The following teams have been accepted for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship” and then goes on to list the 13 teams, including all FOTA teams.

I can’t say it any better than Joe.

Stop!! Who cares about this shit? What about the racing?

Image: Williams

After a long three week break the season continues with the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring.  It is the home Grand Prix for fully one quarter of the drivers on the grid but realistically there is only one German with a chance of standing on the top step on Sunday.

Sebastian Vettel comes to the Nürburgring fresh from his victory at Silverstone and he will be hoping to maintain that momentum in front of his home crowd and further narrow the gap to Championship leader Jenson Button.  It will be Vettel’s first time around the Ring in an F1 car but he has raced (and won) there before in everything from karts to F3 and Renault World Series.

Timo Glock is another German yet to experience the Nürburgring in Formula One but, like Vettel, he has won there before in other classes.  After making it through to Q3 in Britain Glock just missed out on points in the race but he is hopeful of a strong finish in Germany:

I’ve had some good races so far and it has been nice to be battling at the front quite often. This weekend is another chance to do that and I can’t wait.

Despite having a famous Finnish father, Nico Rosberg is actually a German citizen.  He set the third fastest lap at Silverstone and ended the race in fifth which boosted him to seventh in the Drivers’ Championship and Williams to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship – ahead of McLaren.

Rosberg is obviously at home on the circuit.  In this video he talks us through a lap of the Ring – blindfolded.

Nick Heidfeld will be sporting a special helmet design for his home race but it will take more than a fresh coat of paint to turn the BMW Sauber F1.09 into a race winning machine.  Two years ago Heidfeld became the first driver in 30 years to pilot an F1 car around the old Nordschleife circuit, christened The Green Hell by Jackie Stewart.

Heidfeld is in real danger of being beaten by compatriot Adrian Sutil on Sunday.  Force India have been steadily improving all season and if Sutil hadn’t gone off in a big way in qualifying he may have finished in the points in the British Grand Prix.  There is a chance of rain on Sunday and if that happens then it is quite possible Adrian Sutil could score Force India’s first points.

To make your predictions in round 9 of the F1 Buzz prediction game (and be in with a chance to win some nice prizes), just leave a comment on this post with your driver predictions for the race in the following format:

Pole:
First:
Second:
Third:
Fastest lap:

Remember, the deadline for entries is start of qualifying on Saturday, that’s 12:00 GMT.

Good luck!

Image & video: Williams

The German Grand Prix, to be held at the Nürburgring on Sunday, will be the home Grand Prix for five drivers.

There are more Germans on the Formula One grid than any other nationality and this got me wondering how successful different countries have been in Formula One.  Which country has produced the most World Champions and which nationality has won the most races?

If we look at the number of Drivers’ Championships won then Britain tops the list with thirteen Championships won by nine different drivers.  Brazil comes a distant second with eight Championships split between Nelson Piquet (3), Ayrton Senna (3) and Emerson Fittipaldi (2).

Third and fourth places are each the result of a single driver that dominated their time in the sport.  Juan Manel Fangio won the Drivers’ Championship five times between 1951 and 1957, a record that stood until Michael Schumacher broke it on the way to his seven World Championships.

Drivers’ Championships won by nationality

Looking at the total number of races won, the Brits are even more dominant with almost twice the number of Grand Prix wins than the Germans in second place.

France moves up into fourth place and many more countries make the list, including Mexico.

Races won by nationality

This Mexican racing car driver was Pedro Rodríguez. His brother, Ricardo, also raced motorbikes and cars and the two of them were known as “The Little Mexicans”.

Pedro’s first F1 victory came in only his ninth race, in South Africa in 1967 and he went on to win again in Belgium in 1970.  He was a great all-round driver, competing in CanAm, NASCAR, rallies and even ice racing.  He won at Le Mans in 1968 in a Wyer-Gulf Ford GT40.

In 1971, when he was just 31 years old he was killed in a Ferrari 512M at the Norisring in Nuremberg, Germany.

The first hairpin at Daytona International Speedway is named the Pedro Rodriguez curve, and the Mexico City autodrome is named after him and his brother, who was also killed while practicing for the 1962 Mexican Grand Prix.

Last week, Keith Collantine at F1 Fanatic wrote a nice post about one of my favourite London buildings, the beautiful art-deco Michelin House on Fulham Road.

That building was the UK headquarters of Michelin from 1909 to 1985 before Sir Terence Conran bought it and turned it into the Bibendum Restaurant, named after the cigar-smoking, bicycle-riding, rubbery mascot of the Michelin Tyre Co.

But only a short walk away is another historic art-deco automotive building that Conran has converted into a restaurant; the Bluebird Garage on Kings Road.

When the garage was built in the early 1920’s, it was Europe’s largest motor car facility at some 50,000 sq ft.  As well as selling petrol and servicing automobiles, it also provided overnight accommodation for lady motorists and their chauffeurs in the two wings on either side of the main building.

The land speed record holder Sir Malcolm Campbell had a connection with the garage although it is hard to determine what it was exactly.  Some say the garage was where he built his famous ‘Blue Bird’ cars, others that he just sold cars there when he took over the Itala and Ballot concessions in London.

Campbell competed in Grand Prix racing, winning the 1927 and 1928 Boulogne Grands Prix but he is best known for breaking the world speed record on land and water several times in the 1920’s and 30’s.

His first land speed record was in 1924 when he piloted a V12 Sunbeam 350HP to 146.16 mph at Pendine Sands in Wales.  Between 1924 and 1935 he broke the land speed record nine times and on September 3 1935 he became the first person to drive a car over 300 mph when he hit 301.337 mph on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

Campbell drove four Blue Bird cars (his son Donald drove a jet-powered Bluebird in the 1950’s) culminating in the 1935 Campbell-Railton Blue Bird.  This car had a 36.7 litre supercharged Rolls-Royce R V12 engine producing 2,300hp.  The car was so powerful that double rear wheels had to be fitted to stop the wheels spinning.

Here’s a video of Campbell driving Blue Bird at Daytona Beach.

Below are some pictures of the Bluebird Garage.  The tennis balls are a Wimbledon thing. 🙂

Images: Conran & Partners, David Keen

It’s been a while but I knew that it was impossible for Bernie to go more than a couple of months without saying something completely outrageous.  And boy was it worth the wait.

He’s called Ferrari idiots, he’s insulted black, Jewish women drivers and now he’s expressed his admiration for Adolf Hitler.

In his latest interview in the Times, Bernie suggests that perhaps Adolf Hitler was misunderstood; he didn’t really want to dominate Europe and exterminate the Jews.  He just wanted to get things done.

A bit like an über-David Allen:

In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done.

He also thinks the Iraq war was a bad idea:

We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban].