Posted on 08/05/2009 7:57:45 PM PDT by Chode
McLaren is taking it on the chin for Norris’s engine failure and Zandvoort.
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mclaren-says-norris-failure-was-its-fault-not-mercedes/
They claim the oil leak wasn’t Merc’s fault but the fault of their chassis, and the computer shut down the engine when it saw the indications of an oil leak.
Which reminds me of the Porsche 917. Instead of running oil lines from the mid-engine to the oil cooler in the nose, they ran the oil through the space frame’s tubing. Which not only saved a few ounces in weight, engine oil pressure then also served as a warning that the frame might have failed. Which would be a good thing to know, considering its top speed was 30 kph higher than anything that had ever been raced at LeMans* to that point.
*1969, 4.5 liters, normally aspirated, 520 bhp & 211 mph down the old 3.7-mile-long Mulsanne straight
As of the 2025 Dutch GP, Hambone has surpassed Ivan Capelli for the honor of second worst (least productive) driver in Scuderia history.
Capelli drove for the Scuderia the first 14 races of 1992, scoring 10 DNFs and coming no better than fifth in the four races he managed to finish, which makes for 14 starts for the Prancing Stallion without a podium finish. Then he was sacked and replaced by Nicola Larini for the final two races of the season.
The Scuderia today obviously is more inclined to suffer fools gladly because as of Sunday last, Hambone has had 15 starts for Ferrari without a single podium to show for it.
The article (link below) states that the honor of first place with most starts without a podium goes to Didier Pironi at 19. However, according to Wikipedia, Pironi podiumed on his 19th start for the Scuderia. If correct, that would mean Hambone will tie with Pironi for worst Ferrari driver ever at Singapore, and claim the title outright at the USGP.
https://racingnews365.com/lewis-hamilton-sets-painful-ferrari-record-after-dutch-gp-disaster
Pironi, I should add, was having a stellar season in 1982, and was on his way to a WDC title but he rear-ended Prost in the rain (then as now, ground effects makes for horrible visibility in the wet) at the German GP (Hockenheim) and crushed both legs. He already had claimed pole and was testing the new Goodyear ‘gatorback’ rain tires during untimed practice. So he missed out on the final four races but still came 2nd in WDC.
Pironi’s legs never recovered sufficiently to drive F1 again so he switched to offshore powerboating. He was killed in a racing incident off the Isle of Wight in 1987.
Which goes to show that much of the romance in racing comes from the danger, or at least the perception of danger. With today’s Nerf F1 cars and Nerf F1 circuits, there’s none of that.
Ernest Hemingway said, “There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.” Now you can move motor racing — F1, anyway — to the “merely a game” column.
On his 23rd lap, Hambone took a slightly higher line into Turn 3, entered the corner 3-4 kph faster, and braked a little later than before.
And ended up in the Armco.
Nicely done, Lewis.
And people wonder why his relationship with the new team hasn't "gelled."
https://tinyurl.com/5ee3t9aj
Grim news for Ferrari fans. Two of the Scuderia’s longest-tenured engine designers have abandoned ship (which the author says isn’t unusual for a team on a losing streak).
And an Eye-Tie motorsports journalist says it’s only three months to the homologation cut-off date and Ferrari haven’t run the complete power unit on a test bench yet.
Which I take to mean they might wind up homologating vaporware.
https://www.quotidiano.net/blog/turrini/grand-hotel-ferrari-gente-che-viene-gente-che-va-5.9153
"Big Ferrari" (the automobile manufacturer) began a death spiral after il Commendatore died in '88, and all that saved them was the return of di Montezemolo as company president in '91.
Not to mention Scuderia Ferrari has won neither the WDC nor the WCC since di Montezemolo was driven out in 2010 and replaced with the grandson of the chairman of FIAT (how do you say "nepotism" in Italian?). But Red Bull has won 14 WCCs and Mercedes 15 in the same period.
But now that Luca's image is no longer sullying the walls of their museum, that's all bound to change. [/sarc]
https://www.f1oversteer.com/news/ferrari-have-now-removed-photos-of-one-prominent-fred-vasseur-critic-from-their-f1-museum/
https://www.gazzetta.it/motori/ferrari/13-09-2025/montezemolo-ferrari-senz-anima-vasseur-un-uomo-solo.shtml
My apologies if you're on the 'ping' list and don't care to read this sort of stuff.
No Worries Mate...
.
I’m a NooB concerning F1 but
I Did just obtain the DVD
“Ford Vs Ferrari”.
Cadillac is offering staff of established F1 teams 3x their current salary to come over to the dark side.
Not so grim, according to Gazzetta dello Sport.
They're claiming the stories are being inflated by "the competition" to make it more difficult for Ferrari to recruit talent. They say the comments were politically motivated, just as the stories of the (alleged) superiority of the Mercedes powerplant were.
And of course La Gazetta would never (cough, cough) stoop so low as to be a shill for Maranello.
https://www.f1oversteer.com/news/ferraris-rivals-have-been-strategically-spreading-a-very-worrying-rumour-about-their-2026-car/
Lewis Hamilton calls out Israel ‘genocide’ in Gaza: ‘We cannot stand by and let this happen’
You can be sure this will curry him much favor with his equally antisemitic fans.
Max Verstappen will make his GT3 debut tomorrow driving a Ferrari at the Nürburgring Nordschleife. Race starts at 10 Zulu or 6 am EDT (I think). Details here:
https://www.gpfans.com/en/f1-news/1062954/max-verstappen-gt3-race-debut-how-to-watch-live-for-free/
You allegedly will be able to watch live and free here:
... or here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrxQ9O-0tYY
“Porsche Supercup driver Wouter Boerekamps has recollected a moment which highlights how Max Verstappen is able to jump between different machinery with ease and do what “nobody” else can....”
First time driving a Porshce 911 Cup car (which then had no ABS) at Hungaroring, he flatspotted all four tires on entry to the first turn. Seems he was more used to applying 140 kilos of force (308 lbs) to the brake pedal, like he does in his F1 car.
So Max when to his engineer and ask how hard he should be braking. Engineer says, 60 to 65 kilos.
Max says, well, which is it, 60 or 65?
Engineer says 65.
After that, at every corner entry, telemetry shows Max is using 64.8 or 64.9 kilos of pressure and all his braking is in a perfectly straight line.
Says Wouter Boerekamps*, “That’s not normal, nobody does that. Except him.”
*Obviously a Dutch name. I’m not saying he would embellish just because he and Max both are Dutch, ... I’m just sayin’....
https://racingnews365.com/staggering-max-verstappen-story-revealed-nobody-does-that
PG’s weekly F1 News Digest
Reading all the F1 click-bait so YOU don’t have to
Christian Horner’s buy-out from Red Bull comes to £80 million, near as makes no difference $140 million USD. After (formerly great) British taxes that leaves him a-buck-three-eighty. If he had served out his contract (ending in 2030) he stood to make £110m. So he made money getting fired.
Apparently, under these conditions, Horner’s contractual “gardening leave” provision only lasts for the remainder of the 2025 season. At season’s close, he can go to work for whomever he pleases.
There’s a rumor he might go to Alpine because he and Flavio are buddy-buddy. There’s another rumor he can’t go to Alpine because Mercedes thinks his ass leaks canal water, and Mercedes is Alpine’s 2026 engine partner. There’s yet another rumor that a move to Alpine would be contingent of him receiving stock in the team, most of which is owned by Renault. But Renault doesn’t like Horner because he bad-mouthed their engines when RBR was running them (and winning like mad with them).
And there’s one more rumor that Horner CAN’T go to Aston Martin because Adrian Newey’s contract at A-M expressly forbids them hiring Horner. There were all kinds of rumors as to what provoked Newey to leave RBR so abruptly, and one of them was that he wearied of the argy-bargy surrounding Horner. If he does have such a clause in his A-M contract, that would seem to confirm that rumor.
And there’s still another rumor (which I just made up) that Horner is done with F1 because he’s burned too many bridges.
Firing Horner now, after Newey already jumped ship, is like closing the stable door after Secretariat has already bolted. The money move would have been to get rid of him BEFORE Newey wearied of the drama.
And you can’t expect a team to lose an asset like an Adrian Newey and NOT experience a dip in performance. To fire him now seems to me to be a petty move, showing a lack of leadership.
https://www.nationalworld.com/sport/formula-1/christian-horner-receives-ps80m-red-bull-payout-net-worth-is-he-still-with-geri-haliwell-5328633
https://insidersport.com/2025/09/22/christian-horner-departs-red-bull/
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/christian-horner-next-f1-move-red-bull-f1-settlement-gardening-leave/
https://www.f1oversteer.com/news/christian-horner-could-be-blocked-from-joining-alpine-because-one-partner-really-doesnt-like-him/
Felipe Massa is pushing as hard as he can with his law suit to win the 2008 WDC. Ecclestone is arguing that (the late) Max Mosely didn’t do anything because there was nothing he COULD do. Apart from a race steward’s action, F1/FIA neither had nor has a mechanism in place to change the outcome of a race or delete what it did to the championships.
I think it would be a hoot if the British high court saw it differently, not because I’m a Massa fan, but because I’d love to see nonagenarian Ecclestone be knocked down a peg or two.
He was very “Don Corleone-like” in ruthlessness and quest for ultimate power, and Moseley wasn’t far behind, else he could have never connived his way into Bernie’s job.
I don’t have to have been there to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Moseley knew the instant it happened that it was Flavio’s doing, and yet he took the decision to do nothing because he knew by the time that any proof was uncovered it would be ancient history, and nobody gets worked up over ancient history.
There was no proof until the end of the season, when Piquet Jr got fired by Renault, which prompted him to confess in a lover’s snit. And the blowback hurt Piquet Jr. as much as anybody.
This week’s edition of Hambone-bashing:
Referring to Ferrari’s performance at Baku, Gazzetta dello Sport wrote this:
“Ferrari a nightmare, Lewis Hamilton does not respect team orders.”
“It should have been a great weekend for the Scuderia in Baku, that was written in the stars. Charles Leclerc underlined that even before the start of the weekend. However, with eighth and ninth place, the Scuderia left Baku after a weekend full of mistakes and wasted opportunities. A missed opportunity for Ferrari, which has yet to win a single race.
Leclerc has still grabbed some podium finishes this year, Hamilton none yet. He is still blocked during his first year at the Scuderia. On top of that, Mercedes has now also passed Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.”
“Some chaos ensued because Hamilton did not give his place back to Leclerc at the end of the race. That was not appreciated by the Monégasque. Leclerc paid an expensive bill for his mistake during qualifying.”
Like I keep saying, ....
Swiss former F1 driver Marc Surer:
“[Hamilton’s] already struggled alongside George Russell over the past two years. At Ferrari, he has a super-fast teammate in Charles Leclerc. I still thought he would be fast in the race because of his experience. But Lewis Hamilton is just a spoiled child who has always driven the best cars. If the car suits him, he wins the races convincingly. But if he doesn’t have the fastest car, he runs into problems. He’s not like Alonso, who can live with compromises.”
https://www.f1oversteer.com/news/spoiled-child-lewis-hamilton-told-why-hes-not-like-fernando-alonso-after-ferrari-disappointment/
https://www.ran.de/sports/motorsport/formel1/news/formel1-lewis-hamilton-von-ex-fahrer-marc-surer-scharf-kritisiert-verwoehntes-kind-594100
Amen, Brother!
And he can say that and not get branded “racist” because he’s Swiss, and the Swiss love EVERYBODY.
I’m surprised that RB will let him drive another venue during the F1 season.
Max won, naturally. It was a 2-man event and his co-driver was Chris Lulham. As I read it, Max built up a 20 second lead and Lulhum managed not to lose it all.
He tested a couple of weekends ago to get his Nordschleife racing license. He was driving a de-tuned 300 bhp racing Porsche Cayman. The un-de-tuned cars were 400 hp.
They had a competition and Max was lapping about 15 seconds slower than the 400 hp guys, but he was weeks ahead of his 300 hp competition.
Speaking of Horner and taxes, his tax on the £80 million buy-out was £36m, 45%.
Speaking of the Nürburgring, my favorite story of two common schlubs tear-assing around the Nordshleife in $1 million supercars happens to involve Michael Schumacher.
Schumey was driving a Ferrari 599 around the Nordshleife when he gets overtaken but another 599, also in civilian clothes. Flabbergasted, Michael follows the car back to the paddock and pulls up beside it and finds it’s being driven by long-time Porsche hired gun and world champion rally driver, Walter Röhrl.
Röhrl was there helping Stuttgart put the final polish on the 997 GT2 and took the Ferrari out to get a lap time to compare to the 911.
Schumey was there for Sachs, a Ferrari OEM supplier. When he saw it was Rohrl, he feigned not being upset because Walter was such a competent driver, but when he got back to the garage he tore the Sachs crew a new one for not better preparing his car.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a18567995/walter-rohrl-michael-schumacher-nurburgring/
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