Narain Karthikeyan was brought back to Formula1 after a five year hiatus by Colin Kolles the team boss of Hispania Racing Team. His reasons are obvious. Narain enjoys a tremendous amount of good will among the corporates in India, Tata being one of them. Amaron has been another one. Narain is a pioneer in Indian motor sport annals since he went to motor sport and succeeded internationally at a time when motor sport was the hobby of the rich. Narain has taken Tata money with him to HRT and now Indian vehicle battery manufacturer Base has also thrown its weight behind Narain which means that HRT gets another sponsor. Let us hope that HRT does not do to Narain what it did to Karun Chandok last year.
Yearly Archives: 2011
Mark Webber has a contract with Red Bull Racing till the end of this year. Given his strained relationship with the team no one including Webber can be sure of what is in store for him next year. Webber has however clarified a few things. He is open to driving for another team next year but will not proactively pursue the matter. First RBR will have to decide if they want him or not. There are suggestions that he could find a drive at Ferrari if Massa does not perform well. But it is well known that Ferrari likes to designate its drivers with numbers 1&2 and Massa is clearly the latter. So ‘good performance’ in Ferrari speak would be that Massa should let Alonso win and himself collect as many points as possible to facilitate the team winning the constructions championship. If Massa fails in this limited objective he could be out. But that does not mean Webber would want to be there. The feisty Australian is all guts and glory and wants to be World Champion and not a helper to someone who wants to be World Champion. Webber has stated that this year his intention is again to fight for the championship. But Sebastian Vettel fan Helmut Marko probably will not want that. So for Webber the decision could be to race again next year with some uncompetitive team or just give up racing and retire gracefully.
The imbroglio over the Bahrain F1 GP continues. Arm twister and F1 Supremo Bernie Ecclestone seems to have prevailed over the FIA to extend the deadline given to Bahrain to take a decision on hosting this year’s Grand Prix from May 1st to June 3rd. The last time out the organizers said something like we want to be back soon without qualifying what soon meant. This situation could be a bit of nuisance for front running teams and drivers who will not know if their strategies should involve 20 races or only 19. Not a big thing but still a bore. But in terms of TV revenues it is great for all in Formula1. Maybe the Bahrain organizers should enlist the services of good old Bernie to negotiate with the protesters. He will probably make them go back satisfied when in effect they would not gained anything or even lost something.
The great thing about auto journos is the liking for speculation. Motorbeam.com however seems to have garnered some reliable news about the launch of a sub Punto car in India next year. Motorbeam has said that they have contacted people within Fiat India and also have quoted its CEO Rajiv Kapoor as saying that a small car is important in India. Kapoor has said that small cars which are volume driven do not make too much money but they are important in India because they increase the awareness of a brand and also contribute to the sales of other products of the brand. Sound thinking. So which is this new sub Punto car? Anything based on existing cars elsewhere in the world like the new Uno or the new Palio or a specific model for India? We just can’t wait. Fiat deserves better than what it gets in the Indian market and it is unfortunate that it is languishing in sales.
Skoda, a Volkswagen group company, shares platforms with VW cars. The Skoda Fabia is built on a platform that is slightly older than the platform on which the VW Polo is built. The Polo spawned a Vento which is doing well thanks to a diesel engine option being available. Autocar India has announced that Skoda will also do a sedan on the Fabia platform and that this car will be called Rapid. The Hindu Businessline claims that production for this will begin by the end of this year and Sidharth Vinayak Patankar, the presenter of the Car&Bike show on NDTV has mentioned on the Car&Bike page of Facebook that the Rapid is likely to go on sale early next year. So we can look forward to a Rapid and a Rapide (from Aston Martin) next year.
What is this European fetish for diesel engines? One can understand in the context of India, where the fuel receives subsidies and thereby is cheaper than petrol and so Indians look to diesel to save a few precious bucks. But the Europeans? In many European countries diesel is more expensive the petrol where prices are decided based on calories and diesel is calorifically richer. However to get diesel to be environmentally friendly greater investments go into the refining process and diesel engined cars to match petrol engined cars have to use greater number of components such as turbo chargers and intercoolers, that push up the price. Still the Europeans love diesel. Porsche shocked the world first by making the Cayenne an SUV based on the Volkswagen Touareg platform. Then it shocked the world further by adding a diesel engine to the engine options for the Cayenne. Now Porsche seems to have decided to administer yet another shock by announcing a Panamera with diesel engine options. The Panamera like the Cayenne was shocking, whoever thought Porsche would want to make a four dour family car? Anyway we are now bracing ourselves to hear the news that the iconic 911 will be available in diesel.
Boy oh boy, don’t we Indians love to talk big. Some years ago the Andhra Pradesh Government wanted to build an F1 track and host the Indian GP in Hyderabad when the city had (and still does not have) a proper road infrastructure to transport huge loads of equipment from airport to the venue. In those days Hyderabad did not even have the new and bigger airport but the then Chief Minister talked about hosting a race and even led an entourage of film stars and socialites to meet one Bernie Ecclestone. The said Chief Minister lost elections and out went the F1 project. But undettered the Jaypee group stepped in and built the Buddh(a) International Circuit which is due to host the Indian GP for the first time ever in the last weekend of October. Even before this race has been organised the Goa government has been saying for sometime that as a part of a tourism package they will build an F1 spec circuit. Our question is for what? To have go kart racing?
Now this is a complete bummer. All this while we were innocently believing that the huge trucks used by racing teams carried only motorcycles, spare parts, tools and mechanics. In a mind numbing news it has been revealed that Kawasaki World Superbike Team’s truck was stopped in the border of Italy when it was on its way to Monza and the police found a hand gun and ammunition to go with it, 8Kg of Cocaine, 100 Kg of Cannabis and 71 kg of amphitemine pills. So what do we infer? Kawasaki team trucks are also used as transporters of illegal merchandise or is it that Kawasaki team personnel are drug addicts? If it is the latter then it is good indication why Kawasaki always wins the wooden spoon without dispute and if it is the former, then this must be Kawasaki’s way of finding additional funding for the one extra bike that they added this year. Paul Bird who runs the team must be in some serious soup as must be the truck driver and mechanics who were acting as the “Transporter(s)”. And we complain that movies are having a bad effect on our kids.
Many websites are reporting that the Land Rover Freelander2 will be assembled in India from CKD kits from this month onwards. This step by Land Rover’s owners Tata was mooted to bring the cost of the vehicle down because it was selling for a price which most Indians would be happy paying for a BMW or an Audi. This idea was mooted before the Finance Minister came up with the preposterous idea that CKD assembled vehicles will have to pay 32% higher duty. Still the CKD route will work out cheaper than the CBU route and therefore it is not surprising that Tata has decided to continue with its earlier plans.
Well this is yet again Indian Autos Blog but there isn’t too much new here. The report says that Tata is readying a goods carrier on the Magic Iris platform and that it will also have a pan India launch of the passenger version of the Magic Iris which was launched in Jaipur last year, ostensibly for test marketing. Aesthetically challenged the Magic Iris maybe, but we think it is the ideal replacement for this horrible contraption called autorickshaw which plays havoc in city traffic in India. Four wheels without power steering in our opinion is good recipe to keep drivers from driving free style and trying to squeeze into openings where the rear of the auto does not fit. We say bring on the Magic Iris and ban the autorickshaw. Now that we have finished that part let us go on to the other vehicle that is likely to be launched. The Safari Merlin is being touted as a replacement for the Safari and test mules have been spotted for God only knows how long. If the test mules are anything to go by the only upgrade seems to be the front end, the rest of the vehicle looking the same. But since it is undergoing prolonged testing can it be assumed that Tata is using the old body as a decoy? Maybe or maybe not.