Renault just launched their 2016 challenger and I love the look. It's a glossy black with bright yellow accents. Oh and Carmen Jorda is still on the team so i'm sure Ted Kravitz cameraman will be ready for the challenge.
Would be surprised if the final livery wasn't a bit more yellow than that, mate. This was the Renault Are Back announcement, with the new car launch and the first race still to come, so time for them to corporate up those colours yet.
I very much enjoyed the Formula E race this afternoon. I'm not overly struck by some of the gimmicks like Fanboost and the tech being unable to cover a full race distance is an obvious issue, but the on-track product is bearing up better than I thought it would once the tech rules were opened up.
Great battle at the front at this point with a lot of variety. The McLaren looks like the fastest car but it has a hard time finding a way past the brutes that are the AMG and Bentley.
Had to fire up Forza 6 to run some laps around Mount Panorama, what a track.
Red Bull launched it's new car. They've dropped the purple Infiniti sidepod logos for a Red Bull branding and gone with a dark non-glossy blue. I've never been a fan of their liveries but this one is even less appealing to me.
Rodster wrote:Red Bull launched it's new car. They've dropped the purple Infiniti sidepod logos for a Red Bull branding and gone with a dark non-glossy blue. I've never been a fan of their liveries but this one is even less appealing to me.
I don't mind it so much but it reminds me in some ways of the branding they had on the 1995 Sauber. I'm not entirely sure that was the ambition. A very odd memory to evoke if so...
Meanwhile at Manor, the super quick Pascal Wehrlein will be partnered by the less rapid but healthily funded Rio Haryanto. 3 GP2 wins in 92 attempts for young Rio and I think they were all reverse grid races too. I dimly recall seeing him race in Auto GP at Donington a few years ago and don't remember him being on the same piece of track for two laps at a time - certainly, he did nothing to quicken the pulse, though one assumes that some Indonesian government assistance has elevated heart rates within Manor's commercial team to a level beyond Alexander Rossi's reach.
I think that's a shame for Alexander, who I'd hire over Haryanto on their driving merits every day of the week, but if talent alone isn't getting him a seat and his financial clout isn't sufficient to help, at what point does Rossi cut his losses and look to WEC or IndyCar? Surely another year of Manor reserve duties isn't going to cut the mustard.
Rossi should scrap the F1 dream. He's never going to get a top-line F1 drive, instead trundling around in backmarkers like Manor.
American businesses don't support their own trying to make it big in motorsport in Europe. Hell, they barely support American drivers competing on these shores, outside of NASCAR.
I also sense little clamoring by American racing fans for Rossi to get an F1 ride simply because he's an American. We took that route already with Scott Speed, and that was borderline embarrassing. Rossi has some talent. But if he was truly good, a team besides Manor would have snapped him up for duty. Hell, the American Haas F1 Team didn't even consider hiring Rossi. That's telling.
The most famous racing Rossi in America remains Valentino. And his recognition factor outside of motorcycle racing fans is almost nil here.
I would love to see Rossi in the WEC or in a proper LMP 2 prototype or GT Le Mans factory car in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship in 2017. He probably doesn't bring enough money to buy his way into an IndyCar ride. The only multi-car teams paying all of their drivers in IndyCar are Penske and Ganassi. Even the low guys on the totem pole at Andretti are bringing money, as IndyCar continues to sail merrily toward a financial iceberg.
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
I totally agree with the opinions on Rossi. If there's one consensus in Formula 1 is to have it grow in North America and that includes a gifted American driver. I think Rossi definitely has talent and held his own last year but if he were truly worthy of a ride he would have been scooped up already.
Regarding Hass and Rossi, no surprise he wasn't picked up as Ferrari, according to Ted Kravitz was trying to get Gutierrez a seat with Hass because of his simulator work. Keep in mind regardless of what either side says, Hass is Ferrari's B-Team.
I hope Rossi can crack a drive in F1, he's definitely better than Scott Speed. Hell, i'm better than Scott Speed. Well at least in a Codemasters F1 game.
There's a question, Rod: if I'm a promoter looking to get a race off the ground in North America, how many members of my inaugural race day crowd will be faster than Scott Speed?
pk500 wrote:The only multi-car teams paying all of their drivers in IndyCar are Penske and Ganassi. Even the low guys on the totem pole at Andretti are bringing money, as IndyCar continues to sail merrily toward a financial iceberg.
I'd automatically assumed Chilton was paying for a Ganassi drive, on grounds that there's a link between the sponsor and his Dad's insurance firm, and that he's Max Chilton. Not so? Or are Gallagher & Co. paying his wages?
I forgot about the illustrious Max Chilton. Yes, he's bringing Daddy's money.
So Penske probably stands alone as the only multi-car IndyCar team paying all of its drivers. Hell, Michael Andretti is trying to auction off Ryan Hunter-Reay's Indy 500-winning car to raise funds even though Hunter-Reay is still racing the car.
Still, IndyCar continues to tell us the future is bright. Further proof that the land inside the Interstate 465 beltway in Indianapolis could be better termed Bizarroworld.
"You know why I love boxers? I love them because they face fear. And they face it alone." - Nick Charles
"First on the throttle, last on the brakes." - @MotoGP Twitter signature
Well, that didn't take long. Rossi and Maldonado are rumored to be the leading contenders to replace Gabby Chaves in the new combined Andretti Autosport-Brian Herta Autosport entry:
Haha Maldonado on an Oval? Now that's something you don't want to watch trackside, maybe away from the track so as to avoid any flying car parts.
To show you what a BIG name can do for you in Motorsport, here comes Mick Schumacher, heir apparent to his Father, Michael. He's being moved up racing categories faster than he drives. He's around 16 y/o and he's now heading to Formula 4 with Perma. At one point there was news Ferrari had signed him to their drivers academy program beating out Mercedes who also wanted to sign him but so far he's doesn't belong to either team.
There's one color that's also synonymous with Ferrari and that's Ferrari "Yellow". A Ferrari bright yellow F1 car would be bitchin.
This year Ferrari has gone with a push rod suspension which according to James Allison should help both Seb and Kimi and Seb won 4 titles at Red Bull with a push rod suspension.
Olivier Gendebien at Spa, in a yellow Ferrari because he's Belgian and that's the national racing colour, or was when these things still existed. Not every F1 Ferrari since then has been red but none of them have been yellow, which is the colour I buy my first Ferrari in every night in my dreams.
I don't buy it in red and white with a bit of black, because that'd look like an absolute dog's breakfast.
I wouldn't mind seeing the Silver and Black McLaren that Hakkinen drove in the late 90's. That is one helluva zero package on that McLaren. The Ferrari is also using an extreme zero package as well.
Ans here's Hass Racing. There was a rumor that they were going with a yellow livery.
Well done to all involved. It matters not a whit whether the FIA are unhappy either, not since they cunningly manoeuvred themselves into a position as a governing body with no mandate to govern. One wonders whether Todt has looked up from his road safety campaign and UN brown nosing for long enough to actually notice.
I see what Bernie's doing with some of the comments he's made recently. The complaint Sauber and Force India made to the European Commission was unofficially backed by BCE, who fancies that if the sport is found to be fundamentally anti-competition, the changes and renegotiations required will help him to wrest back some of the power he lost. Whether he knows or cares about how this conflicts with his role as F1 promoter is something I don't see at all, any more than I see how he expects the world at large to automatically know which hat he's wearing on any given day.
What I do see is that neither he nor anyone else involved in the rule-making process has even the faintest idea of what might be wrong with the sport.
The sport badly needs Max Mosley. Currently with Todt at the helm, Formula 1 is a rudderless ship. Unfortunately IIRC, Todt was handpicked by Mosley. If there's one thing that's not a priority to fix in F1 is the current qualifying format. Most of the problems in qualifying is that the teams are handcuffed with a certain number of tires they can use during the race weekend so teams hold back in qualifying to save their tires for the race. Maybe giving the driver 1 point for pole might spice things up and allowing additional tires could help.
Make no mistake, F1's problems were all created by the FIA and it started back when the FIA and FOM tried to deliberately level the playing field during the Ferrari/Schumacher 2000-04 dominance. Bad decisions have continued to pile on since then but one thing they got right was the qualifying format.
