The Formula One Season 2005

Thought it was worth starting a new thread to cover the off-season and the new season next year. Amazingly it looks like we will still have 10 teams on the grid now that Jordan have Toyota engines and financial backing, Minardi have worked something out and Red Bull have taken over Jaguar.

Still the issue of the voluntary testing limitations "agreement" which Ferrari has not agreed on. Whilst I'm all in favour of reducing testing I think this "gang of 9" proposal has really been orchestrated by Ron and Frank to shaft Ferrari and is not really about reducing costs at all. The way the whole thing was linked by Bernie to the saving of the French and British GPs is also complete bullshit as the 18th and 19th GPs that were "saved" are in fact China and Turkey, not France and GB. As for cutting costs for the smaller teams, reducing the number of test days to 24 will do absolutely nothing for them as none of them test even close to 24 days anyway. Really, its about hurting Ferrari since a test reduction will hurt them a great deal more than the rest as they are the only significant team using Bridgestone tyres.

Anyway, what prompted me to start this thread was that I wanted to mention an excellent article on AtlasF1.com this week which is the editor (Biranit Goren) interviewing Pierre Dupasquier of Michelin. Read it here:

http://www.atlasf1.com/2004/nov17/goren.html

...requires an AtlasF1 subscription but that interview alone is worth the annual subscription. Explosive would be an understatement .

Would love to hear Ian's comments on it. Especially the bit where PD is saying that BAR basically saved Michelins bacon this year because without them they wouldn't have looked too clever.

Another quite incredible statement is that PD belives that if Ferrari switched to Michelin tyres they'd be as much as half a second quicker! Basically, that Bridgestone are actually holding them back, that the Ferrari is an even more amazing car than it appears. Clearly PD has something to gain from claiming this so that one can be taken with a bit of a pinch of salt but it will be VERY interesting to see how Sauber fare with Michelin tyres next year. If their improvement is on a par with BAR's 2003-2004 improvement then you've got to start asking questions about the Bridgestone tyres.

Back to the interview, aswell as being dynamite, it's refreshing to see someone so high up in F1 giving such a frank interview devoid of the usual PR speak. Excellent.

Michael.

 

And of course there's this.

Paul

 

Bloody hell - that took me by surprise. And to think that Button was (allegedly) questioning Honda's commitment to F1...

Michael.

 

I wonder if Zerogain and other hi-fi fora look as weird to an outsider as the Atlas F1 BB looks to me? A lot of people getting worked up about basically nothing, and defending this, that or the other team or driver. Oh, hang on ...

 

I rarely post on the BB over there. It's just a bunch of kids except for "The Nostalgia Forum" but that's a bit too "flat cap, pipe and slippers" for me

Michael.

 

Seems official, Richards to leave BAR.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/4025815.stm

 

Not quite sure why. If Honda is punishing him for mis-managing the Button affair that seems a tad harsh, especially as he seems to have done a lot to turn BAR's performance around.

Michael.

PS: Dev, you know you can edit a post, you don't have to delete it and re-post

 

It was deleted in error I tell you!!!

Edit: I thought one of the posts above had already covered this story and deleted it. Then I re-read the post and realised that it only mentioned the Honda interest so re-posted it.

 

maybe honda feel that prodrive has ties too close to other major manufacturers and may forsee a conflict of interest looming? or it may just be the old 'new broom' thing.
cheers


julian

 

I'm not sure it's that harsh, when Richards joined BAR, he didn't get off to a good start. IIRC, there were issues with JV which perhaps shouldn't have become so public. Also what was that story about withholding payments to JB which might have pissed him off to start looking for a drive with Williams. We need inside information. Ian???

Or it could be wot Ju said.

 

The "official" line is that it's a mutual agreement. Richards' and hence Prodrive's contract to "sort out" BAR and make them competitive has come to an end. They delivered what they were contracted to do and Honda are saying, "thanks chaps, we'll take over from here".

Personally I don't buy it but then what do I know?

Michael.

 

Hi everyone,

Not in a position to say too much but will try to add a bit to the discussion where I can.

May require a couple of posts as various issues have been raised.

DR is leaving BAR along with Prodrive because the Prodrive management team has achieved all it's targets in 3 years instead of 5. This is the positive view that I think is spot on. He (shoud read they really) have done a very good job. Equally I feel that most of the rest of the team has done a very good job to enable this to happen. And in fact DRs job was to put in place the structure to enable us to make it happen.

There may be negative reasons such as the Button saga which people are using as a very clear reason for this to happen. But I don't think that is the case.

Nick Fry (ex Prodrive) now works as MD for BAR to give the board level management structure some continuity.

Ian

 

Will post some more later as I am having a few problems with invalid threads, which after typing a lot of tecxt is frustrating!!

Ian

 

"Another quite incredible statement is that PD belives that if Ferrari switched to Michelin tyres they'd be as much as half a second quicker! Basically, that Bridgestone are actually holding them back, that the Ferrari is an even more amazing car than it appears."

It isn't that simple. BS and Mi tyres have very different characteristics. Mi are faster on one lap. BS in general have less degradation. For Ferrari that is the best solution. For other BS runners it isn't as they end up so far back down the field that along with their start performance differential (Mi is better than BS) they have no chance to deliver.

However, mid season BS introduced a tyre halfway between Mi and BS performance. It didn't really affect Ferrari but did improve the Sauber performance. Now this has another knock on for Ferrari. Their splatter gun approach to tyre development (well BS + Ferrari) which required an enormous testing mileage suddenly becomes unsustainable.

Lots of factors came together for Ferrari + BS to do what they did this year.

For BAR we were very happy to be the 2nd best Mi team. We were by far the most consistent Mi team which gave Mi hope. We showed that they Mi tyres were very good and that the other teams messed up in their development. They then blamed Mi for their failings which was not clever.

I hope that makes things a bit clearer.

Ian

 

So Davidson is not going to test-drive the Williams car. That >plopp< you hear is Nick Heidfeld opening a bottle of champagne.

 

Using what criteria? I thought you were the best!?

 

Hi Markus,

"Using what criteria? I thought you were the best!?"

Thanks for spotting that typo!

Ian

 

About time too

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4071879.stm

P.S. What happens now?

 

So what do we think of the new cost cutting measures then?

Strikes me as a desperate attempt by the Michelin teams to eradicate the advantage Ferrari have built up over the past few years. If I were at Ferrari, there is no way on earth I would agree to the proposals as they stand.

I expect a long winter

 

Well, the 9 teams (all except Ferrari) launched their very cynical "cost cutting" measures which, as you say, were just an attempt to kill Ferrari's advantage. Ferrari yesteday lauched their own cost cutting proposals which gave the testing advantage to Ferrari but were somewhat less unfair IMO. Not surprisingly the other 9 rejected them. Hopefully they'll agree to a sensible middle ground.

With Berniegate happening aswell though I expect, as you do, a long winter

Michael.