I don't mind Autosport not being quite first with the news as long as the extra time means it's because the pieces are carefully considered and accurate. Because of that, I was a bit uneasy about a few aspects of this story:
http://www.autosport...t.php/id/118950
I felt it had a couple of unnecessary distortions to make the story even more dramatic than it was.
In a bold statement, though, Arai has not only predicted a podium finish will come before the British Grand Prix in early July, but the likelihood McLaren-Honda will be firmly challenging Mercedes by the end of the year, then dominating in the near future.
Arai's words are likely to raise eyebrows...
the story raised my eyebrows too when I read on to see he didn't
quite say that:
"There has been quite an improvement from Jerez in pre-season to Barcelona [Spanish GP], a big change," he added.
"There has been a huge effort. Power-wise, and also the characteristics [of the power unit] have changed. It is almost a new power unit.
"I have already prepared a plan to apply many parts race-by-race, changing, improvements, more sophisticated data application.
"This kind of plan is to achieve our target by the middle of the season.
"Unfortunately the Spanish Grand Prix was an unexpected situation. We believed we could get points, but unfortunately we had trouble on Fernando's car [with the brakes], so it was a very pessimistic result.
"But maybe in Monaco or Canada we will have a much better chance of getting points, and then to achieve a podium in the middle of the season - we hope.
"It is a very important home race at Silverstone - high-speed corners, average speed is so high - so we want to achieve that target by the middle of the European season."
Asked of Arai whether he felt Ferrari and Williams could be caught in 2015, he replied: "Yeah, sure."
'Plan', 'can', 'want to' 'hope', 'expect', 'chance' - his words are stuffed with enough qualifiers to make it quite clear this is a target they are hoping to achieve, which is not the same thing as a 'bold' prediction of success.
I really hope this sort of bait-and-switch doesn't represent a change of approach in which everything eventually gets tabloided up in an effort to grab attention. It only erodes trust and respect for both the subject at hand and the readers when that happens. I want to read the beginning of a story and trust what it says, not wait until I've read the small print to find out, well, he more or
less said that. Sort of. If you squint a bit.
On a more positive note, great work in the magazine in getting the team payments out in the open. Amusing seeing papers like The Times quoting Dieter Rencken's work as a primary source and writing their own stories based on it. Great example of Autosport revealing/challenging difficult aspects of the sport!