Episode 48 - We Got Told To Call Him Kubica, So That’s What We’re Trying To Stick To
- File: Episode48.m4a
- Length: 18:09
- Size: 16.6 MB
- Transcript: Episode48.pdf
This episode brings you up to date with the most recent launches, plus discussion of some of the more controversial rule change suggestions, all with an irritating helping of sampling fun.
Intro
The new keyboard, what it does and why he loves it.
Good Week / Bad Week
This week has been good for the environment, and for Hamilton’s long term future, whilst his and ITV’s bank balance look set to suffer from a bad week.
News and Views
The FIA seriously consider budget caps - perhaps one of their more sensible decisions, unlike the new engine penalty twist to the rules. We also discuss testing at Jerez and Valencia, with Alonso showing us all how it’s done, BMW suffering with the weather, and Super Aguri staying tucked away in the garage. Two more cars launched this week, and complete opposites, a grand affair from BMW and a more sedate rollout for Red Bull.
Housekeeping
We found the Mark Blundell clips to try and clear up the pronunciation discussion. However, we’re probably going to kick it all off again with a particular country’s name. Finally, we discuss our inability to promote things properly, thus the need to clarify just exactly what you can find in the RSS Feeds section.
January 22nd, 2008 at 12:12 amSteven Roy said:
According to the FIA calendar http://argent.fia.com/Web/fia-public.nsf/vcal/00.20/File/2008FULLCALENDAR.pdf all GPs are known as Grand Prix of (Insert country or Europe) so they believe that Grand Prix of Singapore is the correct designation but no-one is going to call it that.
Budget caps
I am absolutely 100% against budget caps. It is very unusual for me to agree with Ferrari but this time I do. I don’t believe that anyone can ever accurately measure a formula 1 budget. Below are two examples of how a simple idea will become unworkable.
Toyota
According to http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19988.html Toyota are going to LeMans with a hybrid car. If they spend 3 years and millions of yen developing technology for this program and then transfer it to their F1 program is there a cost against their budget? Does this count as free technology? If so every F1 team is going to enter a team in every championship it can find where useful technology can be developed which is massively countr-productive.
McLaren
From the same site at http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19987.html they give a list of the companies within the McLaren Group (below). Imagine how many transactions per year there are between those companies before you even think of the number of transactions with suppliers etc. Who decides whether McLaren Grand Prix have charged McLaren F1 a fair price for something or if there is something not quite kosher about it? To use an example I have used elsewhere. If McLaren want to buy exhaust manifolds for their GP cars and they buy them from the same people who make exhaust manifolds for their road cars they could easily take 25% off the cost of the race units and add a little to the cost of the road car manifolds.
Budget caps will end in disaster. We will end up with someone losing the world championship because they need a piece that costs 7 pence but they have reached their budget limit.
The McLaren Group is the holding company of a number of different businesses which include McLaren Automotive, McLaren Composites, McLaren Electronic Systems, McLaren Marketing, McLaren Racing plus a number of non-trading companies such as McLaren Cars, McLaren Formula One Ltd, McLaren Formula 1 Ltd, McLaren Grand Prix Ltd, McLaren International, McLaren Research and Development Ltd, TAG McLaren Electronics (Holdings) and TAG McLaren GT Ltd.
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:04 amme said:
cheers steven. apologies that your thoughts keep ending up in the moderation queue. i’ve no idea why, but we’ll keep an eye on it so none go missing.
re: budget caps - you raise a really good point regarding the 7p scenario. but teams currently juggle similar risks already, don’t they?
f1 is slowly falling out of the realms of self-governance and spilling into the real world. the sarbanes-oxley act means that the big manufactures are already used to accountability and responsibility in the modern era. whether or not you see that as a good thing is another matter, but i’m reasonably confident that in this day and age, a budget cap is a workable solution.
in terms of mclaren, i guess the fia could use historical data to validate costs / prices maybe? last year they spent x on y parts, and this year it was a broadly similar arrangement. etc.
good questions though… must give them further thought.
we’ll brush over the ferrari sympathising this time, eh?
January 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 pmdoctorvee said:
There doesn’t seem to be an standard convention for the ‘unofficial’ name of a grand prix. If you were to follow the convention for the majority of races — British, German, French, etc — then it would be the Singaporean Grand Prix.
However, I am pretty sure most people will just call it the Singapore Grand Prix, probably because most people don’t know the demonym for Signapore. After all, the most glamorous GP on the calender is not known as the Monegasque Grand Prix… And the same goes for the poor old Bahraini Grand Prix and even the American Grand Prix (although that is more understandable since America is the name of two continents as well as the United States).
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:04 pmSteven Roy said:
I agree that teams juggle risks now but do we really want the world championship decided by whether or not someone bought a pencil or someone posted a letter today instead of tomorrow when it would be in next season’s budget?
I really don’t get budget capping. To me it is purely a political move to keep the manufacturers interested. Max has created a situation where almost all the independents have been driven out of the sport because they couldn’t compete with manufacturer’s budgets now he is going to give those same manufacturers an easy ride. F1 is supposed to be survival of the fittest not an old boys club. Especially as most of the old boys are new arrivals.
Had this been done 10 or 20 years ago to protect the real racers I could see the point but now it looks like Max has painted himself into a corner by creating a situation where the manufacturers control the future of F1. The two spying cases showed that if you are a company who is primarily interested in racing you will get hammered whereas if you are a manufacturer whose CEO is going to have a hair-trigger response to any punishment you can do what you like. I really don’t like the direction the sport has been heading since Max took charge.
I remember when fuel limits were brought in to limit the performance of the turbos in the 80s. You had drivers nursing cars to the finish trying to preserve what little fuel they had left. There were races which were lost by the fastest car and driver because they ran out of fuel. There was uproar as a result. If that was the response to a technical regulation how is the world going to respond to a race or a championship decided by budget limits?
This is also going to limit the chances of a young driver with a top team. Could McLaren have risked Lewis Hamilton last season with a budget cap in place? They must have expected him to crash a few cars and maybe write off a couple in his first season. I think back to 1982 (I think) when deCesaris drove for McLaren and over the course of 16 races meetings he trashed 18 cars. Were such a thing to happen under this system the team would be forced to miss the last 6 races because they had no more money.
I want to see teams taking risks on trying the best, the fastest young drivers. I don’t want to see the grid full of people who ‘always bring the car home’. I also don’t want to see a team who start the season with a bad car forced to stick with it all season because they can’t afford to make the B spec car they have already designed.
The really stupid point about this is that teams are not going to sell sponsorship for less. They are simply going to make more and more profit as their income is maintained and their costs drop. They are going to have to take that money and spend it on something other than motor racing. Where is the sense in that?
Sorry if this is a bit of a rant but I think budget caps are not only a bad idea but utterly unmanageable. I have also just read two articles with Max spouting off about how people will lose their jobs as a result but that is a good thing. Idiot. Max losing his job would be a good thing but for anyone else it is awful.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:56 pmme said:
steven, again a good argument. i don’t have answers to half of the points you raise, but to cherry pick a few that immediately come to mind:
i see it more as “how to ensure williams make the grid in ‘09″, because if something isn’t done soon, they may not make it.
isn’t this down to good organisation? if they make a bad car, they suffer. incidentally i don’t remember the last time a b-spec car introduced mid-season actually made much of a difference? mclaren tried it once and the car never raced, toyota tried but failed. can’t say that last years spyker made that much difference either.
it’s called good business practice. i’m 100% behind race teams making a profit and being profitable in motorsport. it makes a huge amount of sense, especially if you’re trying to introduce independent teams.
otherwise, you’ll just end up with a bunch of car companies + red bull
February 5th, 2008 at 5:35 pmLee Vilenski said:
It’s PC gone crazy. F1 should be about winning races with the best cars in the world, and this stuff is getting in the way of that! Come on guys.