Both sides agree F1 row is close to conclusion

Last night it looked as though World War Three had broken out again between the F1 teams and the governing body, but having got to the Nurburgring and heard both sides, it seems to me that, bizarrely, a lasting solution is close.

Despite the fire and brimstone of various statements over the last 48 hours, in fact the two sides are close to signing a new Concorde Agreement which would return stability to the sport. This document would also be signed by venture capital firm CVC, who are majority shareholders in the commercial rights holder, with Bernie Ecclestone.

CVC and the teams have been talking directly this week and are both keen to get this situation resolved so they can get on with the future. From the briefings I’ve had today it seems as though the teams and CVC have, to some extent, marginalised Ecclestone and Mosley in this latest phase of the story, but I doubt that those two men see it that way.

Mosley is playing the strong man, looking for two key conditions to be met; the teams to sign the new Concorde Agreement and at the same time to agree a legally binding agreement among themselves (including the new teams) to reduce costs to early 1990s levels. The feeling is that once those two things have been done, he will not stand for re-election in October, because he will have achieved what he set out to achieve.

For the teams, their conditions are that the FIA must sign the agreement too and Mosley must step down in October.

The drama of the last 48 hours was all about Mosley giving the three new teams and the two non-FOTA teams (Williams and Force India) a voice in the 2010 rules. After the rather farcical situation yesterday when the eight FOTA teams were told they were not entered in the 2010 championship and therefore had no vote, the five remaining teams then simply voted through the package agreed in Paris on June 25th. This means the rules for next year will be as 2009, but with no refuelling and no KERS. There will be no budget cap and Cosworth will have no special performance advantages.

The FOTA teams, not surprisingly, were uncomfortable with the three new teams having a say in the rules, given that they have no experience of F1 and have contributed nothing to the sport so far. But they have entered the championship and Mosley wants to make sure that they are represented.

The FIA issued a statement this afternoon ‘setting the record straight’ about the events of the last couple of days, which led to the eight FOTA teams walking out of a technical meeting.

It is a strange document and one which, frankly, no-one in the media or among the teams fully understands. But that doesn’t really matter because the essence of it in is the last two lines; a new Concorde Agreement is being finalised and could be signed in the next week.

Once that happens, stability will be restored to F1.

The FIA surprised the eight FOTA teams by saying that as things stand they are not entered into next year’s championship. This message was delivered by the FIA’s Charlie Whiting during a technical working group meeting. I spoke to the FIA and the reason why they are not entered in the FIA’s eyes is simply that they have not physically put an entry in yet, even though they’ve said they will and the entry list was published by the FIA after the Paris meeting with the eight FOTA teams on it.

I’ve spoken to a few team bosses about this today and they seem quite calm. They are focussing on the facts as they see them and working with commercial right holders CVC in particular, towards a conclusion which will see them sign the new Concorde Agreement, possibly in the next few days.

They are still mentioning the word ‘breakaway’, as an alternative if things do not go according to plan and seem comfortable to do so, but the reality for them is that they will sign the agreement as long as the FIA signs it too. That said, if there has been no movement by the end of this month then the “B” word will be aired again.

Tonight a FOTA spokesman said, “We no longer have either the willingness of the intention of taking about the FIA president.”

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New teams on collision course with FOTA?

We are in for a fascinating weekend in Germany as we look to see whether Red Bull has its nose in front on all circuits now or whether Silverstone flattered their car.

But behind the scenes in Germany will be very interesting as well as the latest developments in the ongoing row over next year’s rules come into play.

Today’s development is a series of letters from FIA president Max Mosley to the Formula One Teams Association, to the non-FOTA teams; Williams and Force India and to the three new teams; USF1, Manor and Campos.

To the non-FOTA teams Mosley emphasises that they are part of the decision making process because,

“No change can be made to the published regulations without the agreement of all confirmed entrants. As a result, changes to the 2010 regulations require your agreement and consent.”

This gives this long running saga a new twist. in June Mosley was all for the FOTA teams signing up for 2010 and then changing the rules from within. Instead FOTA announced a breakaway series and forced Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone around the table to agree a peace deal. As far as FOTA were concerned the deal agreed in Paris was for them to go away and sort out the rules for 2010 among themselves, which would then be ratified by the FIA. This meant the death knell of the budget cap, the very reason why the new teams signed up.

But now they find that it will not be as simple as that. So at the meeting in Germany this weekend we will have three new teams plus two existing ones who signed up for a £40 million budget cap, asking the FOTA teams exactly how much they propose to slash budgets by and how they propose to police cost control.

What will enrage the FOTA teams is that potentially you could have the three new teams, who have never turned a wheel in F1 and who’s ability to stand the heat in this particular kitchen is yet to be proven, able to veto rules which FOTA has devoted thousands of hours developing.

My sense during Silverstone weekend was that the new teams didn’t want a fight with FOTA and just wanted to get on with it.

Here they are being set on a potential collision course because if the costs are significantly higher than £40 million with no real prospect of them being able to survive and prosper then they will find it hard to agree.

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Fresh round of cost cutting hits F1

The belt tightening in F1 continues. Today Toyota confirmed that it is withdrawing from a deal to host the Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji Speedway, as it deals with mounting losses. Earlier this year the company said that it expected to lose over $1 billion in 2009.

The race will now be held at Suzuka, which, ironically is owned by Honda, who withdrew from F1 last year.

The actual cost of hosting the race is relatively modest compared to the running costs of the F1 team. The event sanctioning fee will be in the $20 million per season range, around 10% of what Toyota is likely to spend this year with the cost cutting measures put in place last December by FOTA and the FIA. But Toyota is able to recoup much of that from ticket sales, so the withdrawal is saving quite a modest amount and is clearly symbolic more than anything else.

Toyota, as part of the Formula One Teams Association, is in the process of finalising the rules and cost saving measures for 2010 and 2011, as agreed two weeks ago in the breakthrough deal with the FIA.

Although there have been rumours all season that Toyota may be pulling out of F1 soon, the team has always denied this and implied that the rumours were being spread by people who would like Toyota to leave F1.

Today’s announcement does not make it more likely that the team will pull out, after all they recently committed to stay in F1 until 2012 as part of FOTA’s side of the deal with FIA and FOM, but it does show that the red pen is out at Toyota and it sends a strong message to the FOTA negotiators that the board is calling for deep cuts in F1 spending when the 2010/2011 rules are finalised. FOTA has committed itself to getting budgets down to early 1990s levels, that is to say around £40 million without engine costs.

On a personal level, although I love Suzuka, I shall really miss Fuji. Being close to Tokyo helped a lot, as Suzuka is very isolated. The Fuji event was much better than I thought it was going to be and the circuit has a tremendous atmosphere. It also lent itself to exciting racing.

Meanwhile it seems that in the UK and Germany the scrappage scheme, whereby you can recoup £2500 off the cost of a new car if you scrap your old one has slowed the fall in new car sales, giving some relief to troubled car makers.

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Bernie explains and gives F1 pause for thought

Bernie Ecclestone’s interview in the Times last weekend has brought a furious response from politicians and virtual silence from the F1 community.

Most people in F1 don’t really want to get drawn into it, as they argue he shouldn’t have allowed himself to be in the first place.

What most people don’t understand is why he did the interview. He didn’t appear to have a key message to sell, such as “I know the breakaway threat looked bad, but F1 is now in the best shape it’s ever been in, ” or something of that kind.

There are suggestions that it may have been to help his old friend and colleague Max Mosley and suggestions to the opposite. It certainly aroused some uncomfortable memories of last year’s News of the World headlines and their Nazi association, which Mosley successfully challenged in court.

But actually I think what has happened here is extremely timely in the current debate about F1 and what direction it should take next in terms of governance.

Ecclestone has spoken to Bild newspaper, the German equivalent of the Sun to say that he has been misunderstood,

“All this is a big misunderstanding,” he said. “In the interview we were talking about structures and that it can sometimes be good to act and make strong decisions without reservation. I wasn’t using Hitler as a positive example, but pointing out that before his dreadful crimes he worked successfully against unemployment and economic problems.

“It was never my intention to hurt the feelings of any community. Many people in my closest circle of friends are Jewish.”

Ecclestone himself is Jewish and on his Saturdays off he can be seen in a very famous London cafe with his largely Jewish friends, drinking coffee and discussing.

Although he has got into trouble for choosing some poor examples to illustrate his point, he seems to have been trying to make the wider point that democracy is on the wrong path, that politicians today are more concerned with their image, distracted by the 24 hour news cycle, than they are with getting things done. He believes that the best system of government is where people put their faith in dictators and trust them to make tough decisions and get things done.

In this his start point is his own experience in motor sport and it has some interesting reflections on the current situation in F1 with an uneasy truce currently in place between the teams and the men who run the sport.

It has been proven over the years in motor sport that the best way to run a racing series is by a ‘benevolent dictatorship’. This is true at all levels. Someone needs to get things done and make decisions and the rest abide by them. Series run by the teams themselves don’t really work, like CART in the USA for example.

F1 is where it is today because it has been run by a dictatorship and for many years the team owners like Ron Dennis, Frank Williams and even Luca di Montezemolo were quite happy to go along with it because their series became the biggest motor sport show on Earth.

But now times have changed and that is what the F1 power struggle is all about.

The key to it is the ‘benevolent’ bit. If a tough, strong, but fair leader is in charge then things get done and it works, as long as everyone is treated equally. The teams feel that this is no longer the case and they are highlighting instances like the selection of new teams, (with today’s allegations in the Telegraph that having a Cosworth engine contract was a requirement for entry) to show that this system of governance has gone down the wrong track.

What the F1 teams want, motivated by the manufacturers, is a more democratic F1. This is why Max Mosley’s message to the FIA members is that their institution is under threat because the Formula One Teams Association thinks it can run the sport itself. History would suggest that it would be a mistake for them to try to do that and I think it is what Bernie was trying to say (obliquely) in the interview with the Times. But the problem is, he chose some bad examples to illustrate his point.

His words have hurt many people it seems, but I think what will hurt him about this episode is the impression that he is out of touch, an accusation levelled at him over his response to the racism incident where Spanish fans mocked Lewis Hamilton.

The interesting thing will be whether anyone in F1 seeks to capitalise on this episode or whether the teams will remain focussed on Mosley and his ‘retirement’ in October.

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On Bernie, dictators and struggles for new teams

There are a few interesting threads around today. The Times has an extraordinary interview with F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone where he explores the theme of ‘dictators’.

Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo recently implied that FIA president Max Mosley was a dictator and Bernie sets out here to defend the breed as people who ‘get things done’.

“Politicians are too worried about elections, ” he says. “We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he was the only one who could control that country.

Warming to his theme, Bernie tackles the sensitive subject of Hitler, “In the end he got lost so he wasn’t a very good dictator. Either he knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it — either way he wasn’t a dictator.”

Meanwhile I keep hearing stories about the new teams struggling to come to terms with the fact that the F1 they will be entering next year is not the same as the F1 they have signed up to. They came in on the basis of £40 million budget cap and two tier rules which allowed their Cosworth engines to run at higher revs than the other engines and gave them some aerodynamic advantages too.

Although the deal struck between FOTA and the FIA last week will mean that F1 budgets will be dramatically reduced, it will still not be anywhere near the £40 million next year which was originally on the table. The idea is to get down in 2011 to the budget levels of the early 1990s, which was around £40 million without the engine costs, which were at least that much again.

John Booth, team principal of Manor, one of the new entrants, is quoted today in his local paper, the Yorkshire Post as saying, “”Hopefully, it should become clearer in the next couple of weeks. There does seem an intention from all concerned to get the costs under control. We have only been planning to join formula one for the last five or six months. Over the years it has not been feasible, you had to be a multi, multi-millionaire to even consider it.”

Meanwhile Manor is currently the subject of some controversy regarding the involvement of FIA chief steward Alan Donnelly in the team’s F1 entry.

According to the Guardian, Manor already has VIrgin as a 20% shareholder and Donnelly was working on finding further equity partners and sponsorship for the team in Saudi Arabia. The paper reveals details of a leaked email to illustrate the point. The email was allegedly sent on on 29 May, two weeks before the FIA announced the three successful new teams.

This is part of what looks like quite a systematic attack on Donnelly, following on from the stories about him lobbying teams in Turkey, particularly Ross Brawn’s to leave FOTA’s proposed breakaway and sign up to the FIA world championship.

It would appear that the tactic is both to undermine Donnelly and his FIA role by alleging conflicts of interest and possibly to force an enquiry into the process by which the entries for 2010 were made, with a view to getting the process re-run.

It’s all part of the ‘great game’; the battle between FOTA and Mosley.

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Fernando Alonso and Ferrari

Here we go again; summer’s here, the temperatures are sky high, there’s a long three week gap between races and Max Mosley and FOTA have gone quiet.

If a vacuum is created something will come along to fill it and in this case it is the Spanish sports paper AS claiming that Ferrari is set to announce its deal with Fernando Alonso at the Italian Grand Prix in September.

According to AS, Monza is where important Ferrari announcements are made (true up to a point) and the traditional end of season Ferrari celebration has been booked in for November at the Valencia circuit (the permanent one, not the F1 street track) in order to celebrate the arrival of the Spanish driver many in the team feel they should have hired in 2006.

“We are not going to waste our time commenting on speculation. Everyone should remember that Massa and Raikkonen have contracts which include 2010,” team spokesman Luca Colajanni is quoted as saying to Gazzetta dello Sport.

I’ve posted on this before, if anyone wants to look back it was during Monaco weekend and just after Christmas last year. Alonso is a Ferrari driver, the deal is done and it is looking increasingly possible that he will drive in 2010 rather than 2011. Who knows whether they will announce it at Monza, but the story fills the news vacuum at the moment.

What I will say is that back in 1995 there were many rumours that Michael Schumacher was going to be announced as a Ferrari driver. The Ferrari press office issued a press release on 20th June which said,

“Ferrari would like to express, for the umpteenth time and with maximum clarity that all stories relating to negotiations with the driver Michael Schumacher are totally false.”

A few weeks later FIAT patriarch Gianni Agnelli announced the signing of Schumacher and new era began.

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Remembering a brave F1 fan

You’ve probably not heard of Liam Fairhurst but he was a mad keen F1 fan and he died this week.

But there’s more to it than that. Liam was only 14 and he had been battling against cancer for four years. He thought he’d beaten it, but it turned out he hadn’t.

Liam was remarkable because when he was being treated the first time he made friends with another child who subsequently died. Upset by the loss of his friend, Liam was determined to raise money for Clic Sargent, the children’s cancer charity, of which Eddie Jordan and I are patrons, which helps children and their families through the struggle of dealing with cancer.

He raised over £320,000.

Liam had an indomitable spirit. Despite being wheelchair bound and through frequent rounds of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and operations, Liam went to a lot of fund raising events. He won a Pride of Britain award.

He was crazy about Formula 1 and was desperate to visit the McLaren factory, which he ended up doing more than once, because Ron Dennis got involved in a bet with him to see how many fish he could catch in the lake at the factory. That turned into another big fundraising initiative.

He was a brave little guy, who proved how much you can achieve if you are really determined.

It puts the struggles of the last few weeks in F1 into perspective really.

To find out more about Clic Sargent and donate please go to
http://www.clicsargent.org.uk

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Webber fancies a crack at Button

Mark Webber has come out with some perky quotes today about the second half of the season and his chances of having a run at championship leader Jenson Button.

Mark is 28.5 points behind Button (wish we could get rid of the half point thing, but without another rained off race we won’t be able to) and only 3.5 points behind his team mate Sebastian Vettel with a maximum of 90 points still available from the nine remaining races.

Webber needs to score an average of just over three points per race more than Button to beat him to the title. A run of Red Bull 1-2 finishes would start to make that a possibility.

“I’m still very confident that I can haul some good points in the future.” said Webber. “Whether it’s enough to be consistently ahead remains to be seen. I’m getting some pretty good results. I’ve had very consistent Sunday afternoons.”

That’s a fact and it marks a bit of a turning point for Webber in his career. Last season he had a reasonable run of points finishes up to the British GP, but this year he has shown the consistency which was missing in previous years, partly due to bad luck with reliability. Webber’s career is one of unfulfilled promise, which is why he needs to take maximum advantage of the problems of McLaren, Renault and Ferrari this year, because he doesn’t know when he may get the chance to win races and get podiums again.

After starting the season behind Vettel he has matched him recently and beaten him in Spain and Turkey thanks to race strategy. Webber started the season recovering from a broken shoulder and a broken leg, so he was a little slow out of the blocks as the team expected him to be, but he’s now right there with Vettel. He lost the initiative to Vettel at Silverstone when he blew qualifying because he got wrong footed by Raikkonen into Stowe corner, after that second place in the race was always going to be the best he could do.

Qualifying is the key, “Saturday is crucial, we know that, in terms of how tight it is between the four of us, and especially in the last few events, ” said Webber.

So true. Red Bull doesn’t want to favour either driver. Although it is clear when you stand in their motorhome or garage, which of the two drivers certain members of the management team want to win, the policy so far is that they are allowed to race. This is fair and it’s what the public wants to see. Webber is in the later stages of his career, Vettel at the beginning, but they must both be allowed to benefit from having a good car, because in F1 you can never be sure you’ll have another good one next year. Just ask Lewis Hamilton.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner confirmed the drivers’ status, “There’s no No 1 driver. Updates are being introduced to the cars equally at every race, and that’s the way it will continue for the rest of the season,” he said.

That said, if it were to turn out that the Red Bull car was superior at the remaining races, getting those 1-2 finishes, then there would have to come a time when the team throws its weight behind one driver. Currently they are having to give one driver the better qualifying strategy ( ie a bit lighter to go for pole) and the other driver the better race strategy. But neither is the optimum combined strategy.

If one of the drivers were to get in range of Button’s points total then that might well change, because this championship is not over yet.

Meanwhile Red Bull has confirmed that the reserve driver it shares with Toro Rosso is changing over. It has been Brendon Hartley up to now, for the second half of the season it will be British F3 champion Jaime Alguersuari, the 19 year old Spanish driver.

The benefit to him is that he gets to learn the F1 environment, listen in to briefings and debriefs.

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A chat with Richard Cregan about Abu Dhabi

The new Yas Marina Island circuit at Abu Dhabi is taking shape, ahead of its first Grand Prix on November 1st, the season finale.

Today the organisers launched a video game which offers fans the chance to drive a virtual lap of the circuit.

At Silverstone I sat down for a few minutes to chat with Richard Cregan, who is CEO of the project and responsible for bringing it in on time and to the highest F1 standards. We met in the new Ferrari motorhome, on the top floor. Aldar Properties, the company which is building the new track, has taken it for the season as a place to host its guests.

The massive undertaking of building the circuit is a new challenge for Richard, who for many years was the team manager of Toyota in sportscars and more recently Formula 1. A easy-going Dubliner, Richard is one of those guys about whom no-one in the paddock has a bad word to say, which is pretty rare. So he will be quite an asset for his employers when F1 comes to town. He understands how F1 works and will make sure that the teams fit in effortlessly to the circuit. When he was offered the Abu Dhabi job late last year he couldn’t turn it down.

Listening to Richard it is hard not to think of the contrast with poor old Simon Gillett at Donington who is fighting against all the financial odds to get his circuit revamped to host a race next year. Richard currently has 14,500 people working on his project, a rise of 2,500 for the summer months when, he tells me, efficiency drops off in the sweltering temperatures of 48 degrees! I can relate to that, I’m struggling to prevent my efficiency dropping off in the current UK heatwave and I’m not having to carry a hod around..

“We can now see that we’ve got a track, ” he said gleefully. “Our inspection by Charlie (Whiting of the FIA) is on August 1st and it has to be ready for then.”

The scale of the track is what makes it different, and the imagination which has gone into the design. It passes underneath a hotel, the pit exit is a tunnel, for example. The track has a waterfront stretch which passes a deep water harbour, like Monaco, which has 148 berths, for yachts up to 160 metres in length. Like Monaco the boats should provide a stunning backdrop.

“It’s going to put Abu Dhabi on the international map, for motor sports and tourism, it’s part of a very big picture, a tool to activate that and a centre of excellence for motorsports, ” says Cregan.

The F1 Circuit and the Grand Prix are only part of the story. The Yas Island will include the first Ferrari theme park, a Warner Bros theme park, a golf course and other attractions. But widening the view out further from there, the development project includes Sa’adiyat Island, which will be a centre for culture and education, al Reem Island, which will be the financial hub. Abu Dhabi is setting the ground for the future.

We were talking on the Sunday morning, barely 48 hours after FOTA had announced it breakaway from the FIA. I asked Richard whether this made him nervous, given Ferrari’s involvement in Abu Dhabi, both through the theme park and the Mubadala sponsorship of the team,
“We will wait and see, like everyone else, ” he said, “The Ferrari deal is not going to influence our situation.”

Since then a peace deal has been struck, of course, but then thrown into some doubt again by FIA president Max Mosley. It’s gone very quiet on that front since Sunday. The Abu Dhabi deal is with F1 management, so they will be hosting the F1 world championship, come what may.

Jenson Button has visited the track and he will have been delighted to hear that the expected temperature for race day on November 1st is 41 degrees, which will suit his Brawn car and the way it uses the tyres.

But he may well have it all wrapped up by then.

I’m really looking forward to going to this track. It’s timely because F1 is undergoing a debate about its own values and priorities in this FIA vs FOTA struggle and one of the hot topics is the extent to which new venues replace the classic circuits. I’ve always been of the belief that a mix of the classic tracks like Spa and Monza with exciting new venues that really add something is what is called for. F1 must innovate, but not at the expense of its heritage.

Looks like Abu Dhabi is going to be an asset to the championship. Can’t wait to see it in the flesh.

To drive the virtual circuit go to: http://www.yasmarinacircuit.com/experience

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Things that have caught my eye lately

In the parallel F1 world, away from FIA and FOTA, there have been a few interesting little developments lately.

Donington got its planning permission, thanks to the resolution of the legal row between Simon Gillett and the landowners Wheatcroft and Son. Also the company which is selling the debentures, ISG, an offshoot of IMG, broke cover and commented for the first time in ages about Donington. It’s now a year since Gillett said that he would be announcing plans for a ‘fan powered debenture scheme’ to pay for the developments.

In May this year he announced the plans. Debentures will be for three, five and 10 years, with prices between £1,200 and £4,000 a year, depending on level of access.

There are 40 days of entertainment in the package plus the Grand Prix, made up of other motorsport and music events and track days.

Gillett told the Express recently that the demand is there, “We’re only looking for 4,700 a year globally to buy into our idea. Our survey shows they are out there.”

And Andrew Hampel of ISG (an offshoot of IMG, which is in charge of the debenture scheme) said, “It is nonsense to say that the Donington Park figures and debenture scheme does not stack up. Through IMG and Bastion, ISG has vast experience and we are world leaders in the area of stadium and arena marketing.

“Without doubt, as paying customers, motorsport fans are ready for the same level of quality that fans of other leading sports have become accustomed to, and there is no reason that Donington Park cannot provide that.”

The Brawn team is running away with both championships and today I noticed that Alex Wurz, the former Honda test driver, has been talking to Auto Motor und Sport magazine about the car which Honda chose not to race. Now renamed Brawn, Wurz reckons that it is the “most expensive car with the lowest operating budget ever”, based on the assertion that it was developed in five windtunnels with three separate programmes running. I’ve heard rival teams mutter that this is the most expensive car ever made too, but thought that they were probably jealous! Meanwhile one of the designers, Jorg Zander, has left Brawn recently. Zander has moved around a fair bit in recent years between Toyota, BAR, Williams, BMW Sauber and Honda. He lasted a year at Williams, a year at BMW and two and a half years at Honda/Brawn.

Of the three new F1 teams who entered for 2010 thinking that there would be a £40 million budget cap, two say they are going ahead, while one says that it looks more difficult than it did before. USF1, which is backed by one of the You Tube founders, is the only one of the three which is building its own car, trying to be a genuine F1 team, just like the others. Manor is taking a car from Simtek, while Campos is taking a car from Dallara. Manor boss John Booth spoke recently about the uncertainty which still hangs over next year’s rules and I get the impression from other F1 teams that they think this project might struggle to get the funding, despite rumours of Virgin being interested in sponsoring them, which I can’t really see. Meanwhile Gianpaulo Dallara is quoted today as saying that they began work on the 2010 car three months ago and as for the collapse of the budget cap, “We are continuing as if nothing had happened,”

Like all of the F1 technical departments, Dallara gambled that the rules would be based on 2009, with no refuelling and he was proved right,
“We have worked on 2009 specification adding the extra fuel capacity required for 2010,” he said.

Campos is down to use the Cosworth engine, but as I posted here a couple of days ago, they will not be allowed to run at 20,000rpm, so it will be interesting to take a look at how they get that engine up to speed. Frank Williams, who used the engine in 2006, said recently that it was not even close to the package provided by the modern manufacturer engines, like the Toyota.

And speaking of engines, another little gem from Auto Motor und Sport says that Robert Kubica a contender for the season’s most miserable driver, has now chomped through five of his allocated eight engines for the year. He looks like making some unwanted history by being the first man to take a penalty for using a ninth engine. Apparently at Silverstone he lost two engines, one on Friday and then it’s replacement on Saturday. How he must look back on last season and his chance to fight for the title and wonder when that chance may come around again..

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