F1 Today – 08/03/2016
Life after Berine
The Telegraph newspaper say the understand that board of directors will be told to prepare for life after Bernie Ecclestone in a landmark report on the crisis-ridden sport presented on Tuesday.
They say the board of the parent company Delta Topca was shown a dossier about the current state of F1. The newspaper says the report written by Jean-Marc Huet will address the sport’s stalling profitability, worrying lack of sponsorship revenue as well as key personnel, including succession planning after Ecclestone.
Ecclestone was criticised last week after saying he would not spend his own money on watching Formula One because it was the worst it has ever been. Donald Mackenzine is a huge admirer of the 84 year old however he threatened to sack him if he was convicted of bribery and corruption in 2014.
After the case Mackenzie wanted to bring in Paul Walsh, the former boss of Diageo to help run the sport but was blocked by Ecclestone.
But Ecclestone said last night “At the last board meeting we said somebody should have a look, and see if we’re doing things right, and if we want to make some changes.”
Asked what it would address, he added: “State of the business, people perhaps
Alonso repeats last team remarks
Fernando Alonso has once again said that McLaren will be his final F1 team saying 2017 could be his last year in the sport. The Spaniard has one season left on his contract after this season.
Last April he told the media “I will finish with a McLaren but the real one in Formula One and that will be one-third of my life with a great experience, with great memories, with great friendships.”
In an interview with Sky Sports News “Right now, to be honest, McLaren-Honda is for me the only challenger of Mercedes in terms of fighting for the world championship and stopping the domination of the Mercedes team in the recent years.”
He added with the planned changes next seasons he says he will see how it goes but will not move team. Alonso has been a critic of the regulations since 2014 and labelled the confusion over the new qualifying format “sad”.
Alonso says 2017 could be “the turning point for the sport” and could tempt him to prolong his F1 career.
Driver choices of tyres for Melbourne
Pirelli has revealed the tyre choices which drivers have made for the season opener in Melbourne. This season drivers are allowed choose their own tyres for each race expect the intermediates, wet and extreme wet.
Lewis Hamilton has opted for one set of the medium tyres, six sets of the soft and super soft tyres and Nico Rosberg opted for two mediums, six soft and super soft tyres. A spokesman said the simply a team decision to help it evaluate all options on Friday.
“For tyre compounds, we’re just covering all our bases in terms of our Friday programme, to properly evaluate the available compounds.” They said. Both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen have picked the same as Rosberg
Williams, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Renault, Haas and McLaren have opted for seven sets of supersofts. Manor chose to have four medium tyres.
the only other two teammates to choose different sets are Sauber’s Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson and Haas drivers Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez.
More mistakes – Wolff
Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff believes that the increased radio communications restrictions will mean drivers will make more mistakes this season.
He told Autosport “Because of the new regulations, we are so much more restricted in passing on information to the drivers during the race,” said Wolff Strategy, engine-mode deployment, tyre choices, even up to a point pit stops, a lot will be down to the driver to decide.”
He added “Things will be less optimised by algorithms and engineers, and it will give room for error.” One of his drivers Lewis Hamilton last week express doubts over the restrictions saying he didn’t “understand why they did that”, but Wolff described it as a good move to make the racing less predictable.
The move to clamp down has been made to make the sport less predictable and “that’s whats going to happen.” He added. Wolff says it will mean more variable and says the changes may have less understanding of the car.
The Channel 4 twelve
Steve Jones has been announced as the lead presenter of Channel 4’s F1 Coverage alongside David Coulthard and Eddie Jordan. The team will also see the return of the Prost Senna partnership.
The team includes five other former drivers Alain Prost, Burno Senna, Karun Chandhok, Susie Wolff, Alex Zanardi and Mark Webber. Lee McKenzie also joins around her BBC commitments with Ben Edwards commenting with Coulthard.
Murray Walker one of the sport’s most famous commentators will be carrying out interviews with key players and give unique insight into the world of F1. Nic Hamilton will also play a key role while his brother chose to remain with the BBC and Jolyon Palmer will write on the website like Lewis Hamilton does for the BBC.
Chandhok will be the Technical Analyst and will grill team bosses and engineers and commentate from the pit lane. While McKenzie returns to her BBC role as paddock interviewer
Channel 4’s Chief Creative Officer Jay Hunt said: “This is the dream team – we’ve brought together the very best on screen and off screen talent to make Channel 4’s coverage unmissable.”
Channel 4 coverage starts with Speed with Guy Martin where Coulthard and Martin will go head to head in the RB5 and the Guy’s superbike next Thursday.
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