F1 Needs More Time In India

Formula 1 needs at least another decade in India to create a racing culture in the country, believes Force India driver Adrian Sutil.

Sutil said the first two races have shown that F1 and motor racing could be big in India.

“I have come to India many times and I see racing is not so big here. One way we can make it big here is by keep coming back year after year. In the 1930s, people in Europe used to race with whatever car they had. Now motor racing has become a high-tech sport, after so many decades,” said Sutil ahead of the Indian Grand Prix this weekend.

“Apparently, your country is improving all the time. The roads are better than what they were two years ago. I hope people start buying sports car. When you have that, the first instinct is to race,” said the German.

He hopes F1 returns to India after the one-year break in 2014. “It would be sad if it didn’t happen,” said Sutil.

James Hunt F1 McLaren Up For Auction

Want to own a piece of F1 and movie history ? Here’s your chance.

The LA Times reports that one of the cars used in the move Rush, formerly driven by James Hunt will be going up for auction. James Hunt’s 1977 McLaren M26 is still in working order. It has been raced in recent vintage events, and even more recently seen in the Ron Howard drama RUSH.

RK Motors Collector Car Auctions will be selling the M26 that Hunt drove the season after winning his only world championship title in 1976. It was that season that Hunt’s rivalry with Austrian racer Niki Lauda came to a head, the events of which were chronicled in the recent film.

The auction service has not released the name of the current owner, but did say the estimated value of the racer that Hunt drove has a pre-sale estimate of $1.2 million to $1.8 million.

McLaren F1 Official Shares Memories at ‘The Glen’

Jack Brubaker, right, of Seneca Lodge presents Alastair Caldwell with the McLaren team shirt he once stripped off while partying at the Lodge. / RON LEVANDUSKI / STAFF PHOTO

Forty years after tossing his McLaren Racing team shirt into a crowd of revelers during a United States Grand Prix after-party at Seneca Lodge, Alastair Caldwell was reunited with it Sunday night.

Seneca Lodge co-owner Jack Brubaker had kept Caldwell’s orange-liveried, Yardley-McLaren shirt for all those years. On this occasion, he presented it back to the former chief mechanic and later teammanager of the McLaren Racing team at the famed Tavern Room bar at the Lodge, located on the hill across from Watkins Glen State Park.

Caldwell, 70, of Maidenhead, England, returned to the Lodge for the first time since 1980, when the last Grand Prix was at held at Watkins Glen.

He spent the evening sharing memories with old friends and watching highlights of 10 years of Brubaker’s home movies, which featured the mechanics’ parties held there in the 1970s. One of the movies captured Caldwell’s striptease of his McLaren shirt after the 1973 race….

For the rest of the Aricle click over to StarGazette.com’s Ron Levanduski

Ron Levanduski is the Star-Gazette’s racing columnist. E-mail him at rlevandu@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @SGRLevanduski.

NJ Grand Prix Now in Doubt

Formula One fans in the United States are looking forward to two events on next year’s Championship calendar being on home circuits. Now that possibility is in serious doubt.

According to reports in Autoweek Magazine the money is not in place to make this race happen for 2014. Mac Morrison reports:

“It won’t happen, at least not next year”,

according to heavy-hitting industry sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Their demand to remain nameless is always a journalist’s nightmare — and no surprise in the clandestine world of motorsports business, let alone F1 business.”

Will This be the Last Indian Grand Prix?

With the scrapping of the 2014 Formula One Indian Grand Prix, speculation has been rife that the 2013 edition could be India’s last tryst with the marquee sport. Although there is some hope of the event returning in 2015, this would require significant lobbying on the part of promoters, Federation of Motor Sports Clubs of India, and the Indian government. That such an effort is worthwhile is beyond doubt. Against the backdrop of the current economic slump, retaining the Indian Grand Prix would bring myriad benefits to the economy.

There’s no denying that F1’s global reach has raised the country’s profile significantly. The Buddh International Circuit is the only one of its kind in the sub-continent to host the showpiece event. In fact, the track and the sports city coming up around it exemplify the kind of infrastructure development that F1 can catalyst. Add to this the booster shot that local tourism receives every time the Grand Prix is held. It’s a well documented fact that F1 fans are heavy spenders, which translates into more revenue for local hotels, restaurants, malls, etc. Having F1 in India could work in tandem with other measures to boost tourism, such as offering visas on arrival.

McLaren / Red Bull Battle Over Aerodynamicist

In a turn of events that surprised many, McLaren Team Principal Martin Whitmarsh has announced the signing of former McLaren employee and current Infinity/Red Bull lead aerodynamicist Peter Prodromou. While many may see this as a gigantic signing that could have dramatic effects on the success of Team McLaren in 2014, Infinity/Red Bull’s Team Principal Christian Horner says, not so fast.

With undertones that more ‘big name’ signings are to come for the struggling McLaren team,

Webber Tips Hat to Grosjean

Pole sitter Mark Weber once classifying Romain Grosjean as a “first-lap nutcase”, but when the 2013 Japanese Grand Prix was over, he singing a different tune.

Surprising the lot of them, Grosjean, starting fourth on the grid after a great Q3 run, slipped to the inside and running three wide headed towards the double apex ‘first curve’ coming out headed for the “S” curves in front of them all. Having a great run at the front of the pack and a possible shot at the checkered flag, in the end he was passed by Sebastian Vettel while pitting and could not regain the lead. Grosjean did however manage to hold off a charging Webber, for the rest of the race and come home in second place.

Last year’s Japanese Grand Prix also started with Weber in P1, but he was taken out by the Lotus of Romain Grosjean early, just after the start of the race.

Lotus Paddock Tells Grosjean and Raikkonen, “Just Race”

In an era where fans are all too used to team principals and paddock bosses making calls as to who will win or lose a race, leaving drivers to obey or disobey their Team’s wishes, Eric Boullier simply says, let them race!

When last weekend’s Korean Grand Prix came to a close as Sebastian Vettel crossed the finish line in P1 for the fourth consecutive race, fans and the motor-racing press were left with lots of talking points. Tire degradation, track condition, Red Bull’s continued dominance and the question of that dominance being gained ‘legally’, were all hot topics. Another was the radio communications between the Team Lotus pits and Romain Grosjean as he asked for a free team-sanctioned overtake of fellow Lotus pilot Kimi Raikkonen.

A Record $758 MIllion in F1 Prize Money

By: Christian Sylt on October 6, 2013

Formula One’s teams received a record amount of prize money last year as the return of races in the United States and Bahrain gave the series its biggest-ever calendar and boosted its fortunes.

The Bahrain Grand Prix was cancelled in 2011 due to a civil uprising in the country but it was back on the calendar in 2012 along with the U.S. Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Texas. The annual race-hosting fees from these two races alone came to $66 million in revenue to F1, according to F1 business publication Formula Money. Those two races took the total number of Grands Prix to 20 and contributed to an 11.8-percent gain in revenue last year at Delta 2, the highest-level F1 parent company which files publicly available financial statements.

Those documents confirm that “despite the continued effects of the [global economic] downturn, …

Vettel’s Arrogance Rises

As reported by Motorsport.com

Photo credit Motorsports.com

Caution: Language Rated PG:

Oct.3 (GMM) Nico Rosberg has admitted he took objection in Singapore when world champion Sebastian Vettel suggested his rivals are lazy.

After dominating the floodlit Grand Prix, German Vettel explained Red Bull’s advantage by insisting that while his team works “very hard”, the others are “hanging their balls in the pool very early on Fridays”.

It may have been a joke, but Mercedes’ Rosberg did not laugh.

“Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking about my balls,” he is quoted on Thursday by Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

“It was definitely inappropriate,” added Rosberg. “My team works its ass off. And he can’t possibly know how much we work compared to them.

“My boys work like crazy.”

And as F1 figures puzzle over why Vettel is being booed on post-race podiums, Rosberg said comments like the one made in Singapore do him no favours.

“He is in very clear danger of losing the respect of the other drivers,”

he said.

McLaren’s Jenson Button agrees: “It was a wrong and unfair thing for Sebastian to say.”

But Vettel said he found it “strange” that his comment was so controversial.

“It was not my intention to say anything against someone else,” he said, “but only to show that our success is no accident.”

Sources:
http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/vettel-risks-losing-rival-drivers-respect-rosberg/