Posts Tagged ‘F1’

Formula One News – Mclaren sign young Nyck de Vries

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

As with all teams McLaren are always on the look out for fresh talent and are keen to nurture the up and coming potentials to hopefully one day race in Formula One. On thursday they announced that they signed Dutch karting star Nyck de Vries to their young driver development programme. Lewis Hamilton’s father, and their HamiltonManagement Group will act as manager for 14 year old Nyck De Vries and will be with him as he makes his way though the ranks in motor racing. 

McLaren said that they have a long-held commitment to assisting young talent - they believe it’s part of the responsibility of the motor racing community to encourage and nurture junior racers. Team principal Martin Whitmarsh said “Nyck appears to be a very exciting prospect, and we are looking forward to assisting his junior career, providing him with the support and training he requires to succeed.” 

Anthony Hamilton commented that “Nyck is an extremely promising youngster. His father Hendrik has been fantastically supportive of Nyck’s career, and has been instrumental in raising him up to not just be a great young racing driver, but also a fine young man. Together, we both believe that, with the right level of support, we can take his career to the highest level”.

They will be working very closely with Dino Chiesa, who will be managing Nyck in Italy this year. Dino also previously managed Lewis and Nico Rosberg in Team MBM, so he knows everything about nurturing and developing young talent. This will definelty be a very exciting partnership.

Upon visiting the Mclaren Technology Center Nyck De Vries said that it was a fantastic experience and was very grateful and honoured for the support the Mclaren team have showin him in helping him develop his career. They obviously have a lot of resources to throw at the youngster which proves they beleive him and and will go a long way in furthering his skills, fitness and experience.

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Formula One News – Maclaren confirm January launch for 2010 car

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

McLaren are now the latest team to announce that they will reveal their brand new 2010 car at the end of January. They have not released the location but it will be the 29th – only 9 days away.  
2009 saw a very hard start for the Maclaren team but soon began to pick up the pace with victories in Hungary and Singapore. They eventually ended the season third in the standings, albeit over 100 points adrift of champions Brawn.

With two world champions, Lewis Hamilton and (former Brawn driver) Jenson Button, in their line-up, the team are hoping their new machine will see them once again challenging for titles. The Mercedes-engined car will be called the MP4-25.

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Formula One News – The 2010 season sees the return of the Cosworth engine

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

It has been a long time but the 2010 season of Formula One finally sees the return of Cosworth supplying engines to teams. Their first batch of V8s are now ready to be used by the five teams who they supply for pre-season testing. The teams which will use Cosworth engines are Williams and the four new teams, namely: Campos Meta, Lotus, the US team and Virgin.

Mark Gallagher has confirmed that the first batch of engines are boxed and ready to be “fired up for initial testing”.

The Northampton-based engine manufacturer powered both Williams and Toro Rosso in 2006 before departing the sport. Their return will see them supply engines to all five of their customer teams over the next three seasons, from 2010 to 2012

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Formula One News – Lotus to make Formula One debut in February

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Mike Gascoyne, the new Lotus team’s chief technical officer, has confirmed that the team are a week ahead of schedule on their build process and making excellent progress in all key areas in their efforts to be ready for the forthcoming Bahrain Grand Prix in March.

Updating us on Lotus’s progress Gascoyne said “We had been looking at firing up our engine for the first time on 12th February, but with the efforts everyone’s been putting in we have now been able to bring that forward to 5th February. This is obviously a great boost for everyone involved in the team, and shows how much hard work has already gone in since we had our entry confirmed on September 12th.

As a result of the new engine fire up date they are also able to confirm that they are on track to take part in the third official test in Jerez from the 17th February and then Barcelona from the 25th.

Gascoyne also looked ahead to the forthcoming season and announced that the development programme will see a major update at the Spanish Grand Prix in May: “We have said we are aiming to be ahead of the new teams when we all reach Bahrain, but we would also like to be pretty close to the midfield teams after the first few races of the season.

It is speculated that the update they have planned for May will see a big boost in performance which will give them a chance to start fighting with the other established teams.

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Formula One News – Renault announce Eric Boullier as new team principle

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

On Tuesday 5th January Renault announced Eric Boullier, a Frenchman, has been appointed as their new team principal with immediate effect. Boullier first started out in motorstort as an engineer ten years ago and then went into management. Previously, Boullier was the Managing Director of Team DAMS in 2003 and oversaw their racing operations in various categories including GP2. The 36 year-old has also acted as team principal for Team France in the A1GP Series between 2007 and 2009. He is taking over from Bob Bell who was acting as temporary team principle for Renault after the departure of Flavio Briatore last September.

He commented that he was very proud to be joining the Renault Formula One team as their principle and that he considered Renault to be the most famous and sucessful name in motorsport. Renault has proven before that it can be one of the top teams in Formula One and he is sure that this position can be acheieved again with hard work and determination.

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Formula One News – Michael Schumacer to return to Formula One

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

It has been confirmed that Michael Schumacher will be making a return to Formula 1 to replace injured Ferrari driver Felipe Massa after his reak accident at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion retired at the end of 2006 but will drive at the European Grand Prix on 23 August.

Ferrari have said that Schumacher will stand in as Massa’s replacement for as long as he is out of action following the accident. Schumacher is said to feel very loyal to the team and that is the main reason that he has decided to step in and help them out.

Schumacher met with team principal Stefano Domenicali and Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo and together decided that he will prepare himself to take the place of Felipe.  Michael is obviously still a racer a heart and said that being the “…competitor I am, I also very much look forward to facing this challenge.”

Schumacher has not actually driven a Formula 1 car since April 2008 so he will need all the time he can get to fully prepare himself for his comeback at the European Grand Prix at the end of August.

One can only imagine how annoyed the Ferrari reserve drivers Marc Gene and Luca Badoer must feel after having their chance at driving in a Formula 1 championship race taken away from them by the multiple Grand Prix winner.

It will definitely be amazing viewing watching Schumacer’s come back and it will be interesting to see where the bookies place him before his come back race. One thing is for sure it will be one of the most anticipated Formula 1 races for a long time…and one which I will not be missing.

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Formula One News – Lewis gets his first win of the 2009 season

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

After a rather large drought of wins for Lewis Hamilton he has finally clenched his very first win of 2009 at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The 2009 Formula 1 championship has been dominated by Brawn GP however for the first time since October of 2008 Mclaren has managed to turn things around.

Lewis Hamilton did pretty well from the start when pole sitter Fernando Alonso made an early pit stop which allowed Hamilton to get in front.

Ferrari also had a major boost as their only driver of the race, Kimi Raikkonen, managed to finish in second place. Raikkonen was left as the only driver for Ferrari after Massa was hit on the head by a spring which came off the back of a competitors car which left him with a fractured skull.

Hamilton was quoted as saying: “Maybe I can speak for all of us, but today was a sad day given what happened with Felipe”

Some people think Lewis Hamilton’s change of luck is in part due to the revised aero-dynamic set up which Mclaren introduced in Germany two weeks ago. This amazing result is most certainly a turn around from the beginning of the season when Mclaren had a very uncompetative car which struggled to even get into the points in most races until now. But a new front wing, diffuser and engine cover introduced at the last race have improved the car’s pace by about 0.8 seconds a lap.

Lets hope Formula 1 sees a continuance of the results shown by Hamilton in this race – perhaps he could even begin to challenge Jensen Button’s huge lead.

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Formula One News – Massa’s Huge crash in July 2009

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Well well well…The past few weeks have certainly been eventful for Formula 1. The Formula 1 world was shocked at the accident that Massa had the other week during qualifying of the Hungarian Grand Prix. The accident which involved a spring falling off the Brawn GP car of Rubens Barrichello came only came six days after 18-year-old Henry Surtees was killed after being hit on the head by a wheel from a crashed car in a Formula Two race.

Massa was travelling around 160mph when the spring hit his helmet, he was then knocked out and careered into the tyre wall. Formula 1 experts say that is life was saved only because of the new style fibre glass helmets that were introduced four years ago over safety concerns.

Brawn GP team boss Ross Brawn described the incident as “a freak accident” and said Formula 1 needed to fully investigate what had happened before deciding whether changes needed to be made. Ross Brawn was also quoted as saying that if there is something that needs doing with regards to safety he is sure that Formula 1 will react promptly and make sure that they do not make the situation worse.

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Formula One News – Brawn Sure they will compete in 2010

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Ross Brawn, owner of Formula 1 racing team Brawn GP, has said that he is confident that his team will compete in the 2010 championship. This is despite the fact that they still haven’t submitted an unconditional entry to the FIA and so technically cannot take part.

The budget row emerged when the FIA announced that it was going to impose a budget cap of £40 million per team in the 2010 season. Many see this as being impossible to stick to and threatens to ruin Formula one as we know it.

Ross Brawn thinks that the argument will be resolved soon enough and will enable all current teams to compete next year. He say he is not supporting a breakaway championship but feels that his priorities lay with Fota because of the help they received when they were setting up the team in 2009.

However, the FIA are seen to be rather angry at the claims from certain members of FIA that nothing came of the meeting between the FIA and Fota members. Some of the teams said that is was a big waste of time and no agreements were made, this is something which the FIA refute.

The FIA will soon be publishing a detailed report on their dealings with Fota.

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F1 Drivers Still Against New Budget Proposals

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

As the row over the newly proposed budget plan hots up the drivers within F1 have announced that they will back their teams if the argument is not resolved. The teams have said that they will go it alone if the strict spending limits that the FIA want to impose are indeed brought into place.

A meeting was held Prior to the Turkish Grand Prix in Istanbul to discuss the subject. Renault’s Fernando Alonso said “I prefer to race in any other category before the new F1.” However, FIA President Max Mosely is still determined to cut costs and implement his £40 million spending cap. He has announced that there are already 11 perspective new entrants who want to compete next year who are prepared to stick to the £40 million budget.

There are rumours that a break away series led by teams aganist the proposals could come about but Toyota Motorsport president John Howett confirmed on Friday that the Formula 1 Teams Association (Fota) had discussed a breakaway series as “a worst-case scenario”.

It is obvious from some of the drivers comments who they are backing with Trulli saying that it is obvious which side to be on . There are obvious problems with regards to the development of new technologies and the need to maintain Formula One’s prestigious reputation. There is no way that the current pace Formula One as a sport has can be maintained.

 With the drivers, especially Alonso, thinking that they have made all the comprimises they can possiblely make the ball is now firmly in the FIA’s court. If an agreement is not reached then there is a chance that a parallel championship will be set up competing with Mosely’s £40 million cappage scheme. That will be an interesting prospect thats for sure!

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