F1 - GP (General Purpose)

Chode ^ | 8/5/2009 | Chode

[Paal Gulli]

There's not much "plain English" interpretation of the rulings and their impacts in he news reports, so this is my "good faith effort" at boiling it down to the bullet points:

British High Court has ruled that Felipe Massa's law suit based on the 2008 WDC may go ahead, but with conditions.

#1. The court affirmed that the (6 year) statute of limitations on Massa's case began when Ecclestone shot off his mouth in a 2023 interview with F1 Insider magazine, as Massa claims, not when the events occurred, as was the defendants' claim.

#2 The Court won't entertain the motion to overturn the outcome of the 2008 WDC because any conspiracy involved in Piquet Jr's crash equally impacted Hambone, so there's no justice in taking the WDC away from him on the basis of the conspiracy just to give it to Massa. The Court ruling otherwise, they said, would come dangerously close to ruling that the FIA was not entitled to run its own sport.

#3, Massa can't hold the FIA liable for breach of duty or breach of contract because the FIA's diligence in those matters was only due to its members, not to Massa personally.

If I'm following all this correctly, all that's left of Massa's suit is the claim that the there was an "unlawful means conspiracy" that resulted in a loss of income, so his claim of damages on that basis can go ahead against Ecclestone, the FIA and Formula One Management.

And if British court is anything like American court, Ecclestone, whose 95th birthday was three weeks ago, will long since have joined Max Moseley in the Choir Eternal before the discovery phase is done, much less the trial proper.

And as far as loss of earnings goes, the only "damage" I can see is that he's unable to fetch the same sponsorship and promotional fees as he might have if he'd won a WDC. Which, again, comes down to a "difficult-to-prove" claim that if the FIA had simply disqualified the whole of the 2008 Singapore event, he'd have won the WDC. Which I see as by far the hardest claim of all to prove, and the least likely to be resolved in Massa's favor.

I hate to see him put himself through this because I'd bet a large stack of Dead Presidents that's he's going to be nothing but disappointed in the outcome. And in the end, nobody will be entirely happy except the lawyers.

I've not included any links because the articles posted on the sports sites all are reporting in dribs and drabs, and the ones on business and legal websites are all written in gobbledygook. If you're interested, just search on "felipe massa" and "high court" and read to your heart's content.

[Paal Gulli]

Ralf Schumacher is saying the quiet part out loud. They need to fire Hambone and hire Ollie Bearman while he's still on the market.

"...[Hamilton] makes a lot of mistakes, his speed is just okay, but not better....I see a young Bearman working wonders with the Haas. He costs only a fraction of what Hamilton earns...."

"...“I wonder if Ferrari is saying, 'this has been like this for a year now, Hamilton has basically stood still'”... “'He did get a little closer, but we'd rather spend the money differently' 'We'd rather bring in Bearman: a young, fresh driver who drives the brand forward and who we can build something with toward the regulations of the future....'"

Robert Doornbos: “[Ferrari] are happy to transfer 2.5 million (pounds sterling) to Hamilton every weekend, but he doesn’t deliver anything for it."

F1 commentator Davide Valsecchi said, "Hamilton spent three years with [George] Russell at Mercedes. Twice out of three times, he lost the comparison...He comes to Ferrari, he’s a year older, and he’s been destroyed by Leclerc. If you say to me, ‘Next year we’re betting on Hamilton,’ I say, ‘Think again,'”

2025 Season Thus Far:

Ferrari hired Hambone thinking he'd displace Leclerc (who is paid less that half what Hambone gets) as their #1. Now they're throwing bad money after good.

In fairness, in the latter half of the season, Hambone's qualifying deficit has come down to about 0.1 secs on a 5-race rolling average. However, these days the difference between pole and outside first row is often a hundredth or less. A tenth puts you three rows back.

To keep Hambone on for 2026 is to gamble the start of an entirely new era on him, aged 41, being able to shake off whatever as-yet unidentified ailment has made him mostly irrelevant for the last 3.8 seasons.

On the other hand, Ollie Bearman is the hottest commodity in F1. The top teams in F1 will offer him more than he's worth, not just to have him driving for them but also to keep him from driving against them.

And here's the tricky bit I've not read anybody else talking about. Ollie Bearman was only two years old the last time the Scuderia had a driver win the F1 title. And since he was five, the only teams whose driver has won a WDC are Red Bull and Mercedes.

There's only so long Ferrari can trade on past glories, and considering the era he's grown up in, I'm not so sure Bearman is 'eat up' with the thought of driving for Ferrari just because they're the team with a horsie painted on their car. How much is the Ferrari mystique going to mean to him if he gets a ride next season with a team that puts him in the chase for a WDC while Ferrari is still dreaming of getting on the podium once in a while?

To cut to the chase, if Ferrari doesn't get Bearman now, they might never.

Hambone thinks he has an unbreakable contract through 2027, but in 2025 F1, there's no such thing as "unbreakable." In 2009, Ferrari gave Kimi Räikkönen a "large severance package" to buzz off so they could hire Fernando Alonso. In 2022, McLaren paid Daniel Ricciardo nearly £24m to break his contract so they could sign Oscar Piastri. And just this season, Red Bull paid Christian Horner £80m to go away.

According to Bild.de, there's been a rumour up and down the paddock for some time that the same fate awaits Hambone.

Which makes all the sense in the world to me.

[Seaplaner]

Repeating what I've observed before...

Formula I...

Ten teams...

Nineteen drivers...

One diva.

[Carriage Hill]

Good post!

[Paal Gulli]

It don't get any better than this:

Why it's time for delusional Lewis Hamilton to RETIRE -
- and finally end this woeful decline, writes JONATHAN McEVOY

...Hamilton’s woes since he joined Ferrari are too obvious to require retelling in detail now. Suffice it to say, that other than for his win in China,*** his podium-free season has been dire. This is not only my verdict – as others chuck around excuses like confetti – but his own. He called himself ‘absolutely useless’ in Hungary and said Ferrari should replace him.

Now, there is an idea. How can he live with pocketing £60million a year for this? To qualify not an uncharacteristic last but a representative last?

I could qualify last. You could qualify last. Literally, we could put it in the wall. We could have not started it, or stalled it. We could have gone round Sin City in 9min 35.8sec and come bottom of the heap.

Hamilton clings to the hope he could win an eighth world title, but this is delusional. Even if Ferrari devise a blockbusting car next year, he would still lose out to Leclerc, as he has so far....

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*** Hambone's car likely was E-LEGAL in the sprint at China, it just wasn't long enough an event for the surfboard wear to catch him out.

[Paal Gulli]

‘I’ve had 22 bad weekends’ – Lewis Hamilton

Well isn't that peculiar? At the EXACT same time, I was having 22 glorious weekends.

There's a quote from Timothy Olyphant as US Depity Marshall Raylan Givens in the TV series, "Justified." It's called, "Raylan's Law." It goes,

“If you run into an a**hole in the morning, you ran into an a**hole.
If you run into a**holes all day, you're the a**hole.”

There's a corrolary to that (which I just created) called "Hambone's Law":

“If you have a bad weekend, you've had a bad weekend.
If you have 22 bad weekends, YOU SUCK.”

It's time for Hambone to give up F1 and follow his lifelong dream of becoming a hair dresser.

[Paal Gulli]

Former Red Bull boss, Christian Horner is linked with a shock move to Aston Martin to replace Andy Cowell.

I'm not buying this. Why did Adrian Newey abandon Red Bull, where he'd performed more miracles than Cecil B. DeMille?

Was it because of the chaos that enveloped Horner over the "sexting" thing? Or was it -- as some claimed -- that he grew weary of having less capable men in positions of authority over him interfering with his vision for the car?

Because even if it was the latter, that's still under the purview of the Team Principal (Horner) to manage. So it's a difference without a distinction. Either way, Newey left RBR on account of Horner.

There even was widespread speculation that Newey's contract with Aston Martin included a clause precluding Horner following him there. Or maybe in his exalted position of "Managing Technical Partner," Newey has the authority to tell any position that Horner might occupy to Go Get Stuffed.

In any case, I'll believe it when I see it, but not before.

[Paal Gulli]

Okay, ... now there's this ....

Christian Horner plots shock F1 return with record-breaking legend who ‘didn’t want to be in the same room as him’

"...Horner was dogged by allegations of inappropriate behaviour against a female employee, which he has always denied and was cleared of by two international investigations.

"Yet the BBC reported that Adrian Newey - F1’s greatest-ever designer - left the team over the situation.

"Ironically, Newey has since joined Aston Martin in a deal said to be worth a staggering £30million per-year, thanks to his 12 constructors' and 13 drivers' world titles.

"At the time the BBC claimed that a Red Bull source said Newey told colleagues he ‘did not want to be in the same room as Horner’.

"However, their relationship is said to have since thawed, with the pair attending an Oasis concert together over the summer...."

__________________________________________________________

Newey apparently isn't as brilliant as I gave him credit for being.