107 replies to this topic

[Risil]

Someone else from the Audi family, a Jarvis or a Bonanomi. Question is who will step up in their place? However, the answer there is probably just as simple and it spells out non-F1, probably someone like Harry Tincknell, who is a protege of Allan McNish and has been blindingly quick in LMP2 this year.

 

Tincknell would be great.

 

Question is, will Audi retire before Kristensen does? 

[TF110]

Kinda related, but Nissan are testing their lmp1 today and tomorrow at their facilities in Arizona.

[Imateria]

I regret to say but......

As good as the Peug and the Toyota looked, these cars are for me the symbol of Bernie Ecclestone's worst character points: his greed and zeal to kill off anything that could be even remotely more off a success than F1 and thus had to disappear from the scene, possibly with the teams that were left in the dark coming to his circus and thus to his benefit.

These cars almost caused the end of Le Mans and for sportscars in a long time. I find it difficult to fancy anything about them other than their spectacular looks and creditable speeds.

I can't care that they lasted for such a short period of time. They replaced the real Group C, a well liked era in sportscars, even today.

 

 

Henri

I thought it was Balestre that brought in the 3.5 rules, not Bernie, and had been trying for years.

[Exb]

Kristensen holding a press conference tomorrow about his future. Dr Ullrich will be present.

So, who do you think will replace him if he announces his retirement?

Kinda related, but Nissan are testing their lmp1 today and tomorrow at their facilities in Arizona.

Maybe its time to start a 2015 thread???
(I don't mind starting one if no-one else wants to but I'm sure there are people who know a lot more about WEC than me)

[Victor_RO]

I thought it was Balestre that brought in the 3.5 rules, not Bernie, and had been trying for years.

 

Slightly OT: there's a recording of the '91 Indy 500 floating around, and at some point during that recording one of the commentators suggests that the FIA were looking at forcing the 3.5 rules on CART as well as WSPC. 

[Henri Greuter]

Slightly OT: there's a recording of the '91 Indy 500 floating around, and at some point during that recording one of the commentators suggests that the FIA were looking at forcing the 3.5 rules on CART as well as WSPC. 

 

 

I remember that one! I was at Indy that year! had a talk with Alfa PR manager Paul Bryan about it and suggested to him that it would be great for Alfa because they had that stillborn V19 (Procar) and also the Ferrari V12 that could be rebadged.

Bryan told me however that for Indy that formula would be a disaster since the GP engines were designed for running a little over 300 kms. Remember this was way before the engine limits per season. But Indy called for at reliability for least 800 km and at more that 90% full throttle so that was something entirely different than an F1 engine needed. besides that, Indy insisted on using methanol instead of gasoline so the metallurgica of the engines was also completely different. perhaps the same capacity but entirely different engines. very much like the differences between the F1 V10s and the V10 of the Peugeot 905 that was introduced that year.

Not mentioning the fact that at that time in Indycar you had Lola and other customer chassis and then such a company had to built bespoke chassis for either V8, V10 or perhaps V12 engines, as the teams they sold the cars to made their own choise. Sticking to one concept (2.65 turbo V8) and a variant (stock Block v6) was much more suitable for the chassis builders.

So he predicted it would never happened and he was right.

 

 

Henri

[Henri Greuter]

I thought it was Balestre that brought in the 3.5 rules, not Bernie, and had been trying for years.

 

 

To my knowledge, Berrnie was behind it and he was clever enough to get Balestre so far to cooperate and take the lead in the matter.  Bernie knew all too well that if sportscars disappeared that there would be fingerpointing who was resposible for that. He definitely wanted it to happen to see newcomers in sportscars with suitable 3.5 liter engines coming to F1 instead since they had a suitable engine. He only got Peugeot.

Bernie was also behind the move to get the TV rights of sports car racing (Gp C) in his hands and then market it. Before that, Brian Kreisky and his company Videovision were allowed to cover the Gp C races and these reports were shpwn on Sky Channel's International Motor Sport. That program and these reports created a lot of interest with the audience for Gp C racing. When Videovision had to deal with Ecclestone, the reports ended and popularity of Gp C other then Le Mans went down.

Ecclestone then came up with the idea to market shorter sprint races that could be easier to sell for live TV reports but the original Gp C rules had lead to cars that were not down and outright sprint cars so a change to lighter, more agile cars, more suitable for sprint style racing came handy. And that pretty much spelled the end for anything longer than 500 km and thus endurance racing as we knew in from the original Gp C. It was suggested that F1 equipment could come handy in that too. But the real aim of Bernie was the opposite. F1 did not need to bolster the Sportscar fields but sportscars first had to be much closer to F1 specifications and then killed off so the factories could make the step to F1 easier.

 

from 1982 till 1990 you had the Groep C(lassic)

From 1991 till 1993 there was the Group C(atastrophic)

Courtesy the greed of Bernie Ecclestone and the lack of intelligence of Balestre to underestimate Bernie's real interests and focus.

 

Henri

[FerrariV12]

Had to be away from home this weekend, just caught up with the end of the recording last night, great race, congrats to Davidson/Buemi on the championship.

 

Love the commentary duo, don't see the problem with them, in fact it's a breath of fresh air to see commentators genuinely enthusiastic about the sport and the race rather than putting it down, stark contrast to for instance Will Buxton's GP3 commentary "well it wasn't the most exciting race was it?", or F1 commentator's aversion to races where the tyres don't fall to pieces. Only time I disagreed with them was when they insinuated the #7 should maybe hang back to let the GT battle go on another lap, as opposed to just running their race and letting the cards elsewhere fall.

 

Oh and (not sure if I'm imagining this, but) the fact John Hindhaugh appears to be making an effort to pronounce the vowel in words like "road" and "Oak" more like the Queen's English, as opposed to how his North East and my Cumbrian accent pronounces it

Edited by FerrariV12, 19 November 2014 - 10:38.