f1buzz.net

Formula One has a two week break between the Bahrain Grand Prix at the end of April and the Spanish Grand Prix to be held in Barcelona next Sunday.

This has allowed plenty of time for Bernie Ecclestone to be let loose on the press and produce a couple of choice quotes.

According to the Guardian, at a dinner for local Spanish motor sport journalists, Bernie said that he would like Formula One to be “surrounded by controversy all the time.”

Obviously disappointed the whole McLaren controversy was dealt with so quickly, he decided it was time to give his enlightened views about the future of the sport:

Personally I don’t really mind who comes in, but if I had a choice I think that formula one needs a black, Jewish woman who, if possible, wins some races too.

This comes after he compared the signing of a new Concorde agreement to the Arab/Israeli conflict:

It’s like Israel and the Palestinians — always about to reach an agreement but never quite signing it.

The World Motor Sport Council have been busy in Paris.  Besides dealing with McLaren,  the WMSC have also announced that a budget cap will be introduced in 2010.

FIA president Max Mosley has wanted to introduce a cap for a while and in a meeting held in March the FIA originally set the cap at £30m.  This has been increased to £40m but it still represents  a massive cut of up to 90% for the biggest teams.

The cost cap is optional but those teams who sign up for it will be allowed greater technical freedom, specifically:

1. Movable wings, front and rear.
2. An engine which is not subject to a rev limit.

The teams will also be allowed unlimited out-of-season track testing with no restrictions on the scale and speed of wind tunnel testing.

The following will be excluded from the £40m cost cap:

• Marketing and hospitality
• Remuneration for test or race drivers, including any young driver programmes
• Fines or penalties imposed by the FIA
• Engine costs (for 2010 only)
• Any expenditure which the team can demonstrate has no influence on its performance in the Championship
• Dividends (including any tax thereon) paid from profits relating to participation in the Championship.

It is interesting that engine costs are excluded for 2010.  According to a Q & A document issued by the FIA, this is “in order to attract manufacturer owned teams to take up the cost capping option.”

Does this mean there will effectively be unlimited engine development for 2010 or is it just that teams may turn the revs up on their existing engines?

And what about the regulations regarding the number of engines a team may use in a year?  Will they stay the same?  Will the number of engines still be limited in 2011 when engines are included in the cost cap?

Ferrari have been leading the protest against a budget cap and it will be interesting to hear Luca di Montezemolo’s response.  He will probably be able to raise the cap to £50m or more but it’s clear that costs need to be contained and, as the FIA say, “unfettered technical competition is part of Formula One’s DNA.”  Far better to allow greater freedom of technical innovation within a budget than to go down the road of standardising everything on the car.

The World Motor Sport Council has handed down a suspended sentence on McLaren in a meeting held in Paris on Wednesday.

The team were charged with bringing the sport into disrepute by not being truthful with the stewards in Australia and Malaysia, telling them that Lewis Hamilton had not been instructed to slow down to let Jarno Trulli pass him in the closing stages of the Australian Grand Prix.  In the days that followed, McLaren sacked sporting director Dave Ryan, Lewis gave a full public apology and Ron Dennis stepped back completely from all operations of the F1 team, although he denied his move was linked to the affair.

McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh attended Wednesday’s hearing alone and admitted the team’s guilt in all charges.  Here is the statement issued by the WMSC:

At an extraordinary meeting of the World Motor Sport Council held in Paris on 29 April 2009, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes admitted five charges of breaching article 151c of the International Sporting Code relating to events at the Australian and Malaysian Grands Prix.

The following decision was taken:

“Having regard to the open and honest way in which McLaren Team Principal, Mr Martin Whitmarsh, addressed the WMSC and the change in culture which he made clear has taken place in his organisation, the WMSC decided to suspend the application of the penalty it deems appropriate.

“That penalty is a suspension of the team from three races of the FIA Formula One World Championship. This will only be applied if further facts emerge regarding the case or if, in the next 12 months, there is a further breach by the team of article 151c of the International Sporting Code.”

The full reasons for this decision will be issued shortly.

The penalty is similar to that handed down to Jenson Button’s BAR-Honda team in 2005 after they raced with an underweight car in the San Marino Grand Prix.  In that case, although the team was not proved to have definitely committed fraud, BAR was given a two race ban and a suspended sixth-month expulsion.  The FIA had originally wanted to throw them out of the Championship for the rest of the season.

In giving a similar sentence to McLaren the FIA have shown a remarkable (and uncharacteristic) consistency in their decisions.  Now McLaren and the sport as a whole can move on with what has so far been an exciting start to the season.

It was Whitmarsh’s 51st birthday today.  I suppose this result was the best present he could hope for from the FIA.

Image: McLaren

Formula One and ads don’t really go together any more now that the BBC has taken over from ITV (at least in the UK.)

No longer do we need to worry about missing something vital just as the producer cuts to an ad break – although for those without the ability to pause live TV this has been replaced with the new problem of when to go for a ‘comfort break’.

But just because we hate ads interrupting races doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate a good commercial on our own time.  So with that in mind, here are five of the best F1-themed adverts, ever.

Sky – Monsters: The awesome Sky ad on the right is by Italian advertising agency 1861.  It is worth having a browse around their site just to see some of their other print and video work.

Tag Heuer – The Duel: In 1969, Tag Heuer introduced the world’s first automatic chronograph.  The ‘Monaco’ was radical for its time in also being the first square-cased, water resitant watch in history.  A year later Steve McQueen wore a blue Monaco in the classic motor racing film Le Mans.  Now, forty years later, Lewis Hamilton stars alongside Steve McQueen in a video promoting the Monaco.  If you guess who will win you can win some nice prizes including a limited edition Monaco watch.

Honda – Impossible Dream: At the end of 2004 Honda were on a high.  Their engines had driven BAR to second place in the Constructors’ Championship in a season dominated by Schumacher and Ferrari.  In September of 2005 Honda purchased the remaining 55% of BAR to become an F1 constructor in their own right for the first time in nearly forty years.  Over the next few years Honda would slip further and further down the results before selling the team to Ross Brawn in 2009.

But in December of 2005 the future still looked bright for Honda and they released the ‘Impossible Dream’ commercial, featuring British actor Simon Day riding and driving various Hondas through the New Zealand countryside.  Starting on a monkey bike, he progresses from a Super Cub scooter to an ATV, an S500 sports car to a huge Gold Wing motor cycle to a FireBlade superbike.  He blasts an S2000 down a gravel road and a TT bike up through a forest.  An NSX, the supercar designed with Ayrton Senna’s help, makes an appearance before the beautiful 1965 RA272 F1 car morphs into the BAR 007.  Finally, Day drives a powerboat off the edge of a waterfall only to emerge in a hot-air ballon.

Unfortunately for Honda, it really was an impossible dream.

Shell – Refuelling: In 1997 Shell took an airplane, a Formula One car and some cameras deep into the Mojave Desert.  What they came out with was pure, unrefined awesomeness.

Shell – Circuit: We finish with another Ferrari/Shell ad that could possibly be the greatest motoring advert of all time.  ‘Circuit’ features a stunning array of Ferraris from the last 60 years driving the ultimate street circuit through Rome, New York, Rio, Hong Kong and Monaco.  The cars are beautiful but the sounds they make are sublime. Turn it up.

The results for round 4 of the prediction game are up and there were some big winners.

Three people correctly predicted the first two places, getting a big haul of points and allowing Andrew to jump to the top of the standings, five points clear of second place.

I was the only one who thought there would be a Toyota on the podium and a few people thought Alonso should have done better than eighth.

Still, Fernando’s single point doesn’t look too bad when you consider that his water bottle had broken and he drove the entire race in 50 degree heat without water only to collapse when getting out of his car.