Sebastian Vettel has warned his team Red Bull Racing and himself of any complacency since his team has started the new season on a dominating note with himself taking three pole positions out of three and two wins and a second place. But the second place seems to have miffed Vettel a bit. Hamilton had beaten him in the last grand prix. Like a true champion Vettel hates losing and has therefore egged his team on. It should be remembered that for all their other achievements, team RBR has a recalcitrant KERS unit that has especially been puncturing Mark Webber’s races and also Vettel’s to a lesser extent. Good thinking from a very young man.
Yearly Archives: 2011
Last year all F1 teams signed an agreement on the new engine formula for F1 from the year 2013 onwards. This agreement mentioned a 1.6 litre turbocharged four cylinder engine. However, since the beginning of this year, murmurs of dissent have started emerging. The biggest came from Bernie Ecclestone who is concerned about the lack of noise from the new engines and the negative impact that it will have on TV viewership. He has expressed fears that TV networks may shy away from F1. Adding weight to this was old crony Luca Di Montezemolo of Ferrari who said it made no sense to participate in F1 for Ferrari with a such an engine formula since Ferrari will never make four cylindered cars. Now Eric Boullier of Renault who is the Vice-Chairman of the Formula One Teams Association has said that the existing V8’s could continue for some more time and that he was hopeful that teams will find a solution to this imbroglio soon.
Irrespective of the spiel that Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh give about what a wonderful and fair team McLaren is, they have the penchant of getting themselves into controversy seamlessly every once in a while. After being hugely hit by the espionage scandal one would have thought McLaren would be more careful in its dealings. It is now being revealed that McLaren were very close to signing a sponsorship deal with the oppressive regime of Muammar Qaddhafi. It has now been disclosed that Qadhafi’s son Saif was contacted and a deal to put “Visit Libya” stickers on McLaren F1 cars was almost made but was aborted in the last minute. McLaren already has money from the troubled regime of Bahrain. What was that we said, its all about money honey, right? To be fair to McLaren even Mercedes has Middle Eastern money in the form of Abaar Holdings equity in the team and so does Ferrari in the form of Mubadala.
You can trust Bernie Ecclestone to always spice up things. Whether it is senility, or an enigmatic personality or just mischievousness we shall never know, but Bernie Ecclestone will always do things that contradict themselves by saying this sometimes and that at other times and neither some more times. With him you can never be sure. Yesterday he said things which made most believe that Rupert Murdoch and Carlos Slim could be taking over Formula1. He has now changed the tune again by saying that their chances of taking over are zero. The problem with Bernie is that he does not even let time to clarify things. No wonder he runs F1 the way he does, with a vice like grip.
There has been a lot speculation recently about the future of the Turkish F1 GP. It was being reported that it would be scrapped from next year onwards since the attendance to the event was poor. However, now the news coming out of Turkey is that the possibility of holding races next year and beyond in Turkey are fairly bright. It may have something to do with Bernie Ecclestone who owns a large part of the circuit. He is also someone who does not attach too much significance to track side audience preferring to concentrate on TV audience. That will be the reason if the Turkish GP still finds a date on the F1 calender next year.
Bernie Ecclestone the famous ring master of the F1 circus wants to give more time to Bahrain for deciding whether it will be in a position to host a race later this season given the political problems that it is facing in the form of an uprising demanding democracy and freedom. Bahrain could not host what was to be the season opener in March and was given time up to the 1st of May, to decide on a later date. But there is yet no end to the political crisis there even as the deadline looms large. Bernie Ecclestone is all for extending that deadline to give some time to the regime in Bahrain to set its house in order. Ecclestone obviously does not sympathize with the pro-democracy protestors and seems to have chosen to ignore that open letter written to him by the protestors through Facebook. What did we say before? Its all about money, honey and good old Bernie loves the stuff.
A couple of days ago we had reported that Mercedes Benz was going to launch two new products in the Indian market. Now the details are out. The new products are the SL 350 and the GL 500 and they will be out on the 3rd of May, 2011, just a couple of days from now. This according to Indian Autos Blog is commemorate 125 years of automobile manufacturing by Mercedes Benz. If you have bag loads of money head for your nearest Mercedes Benz showroom.
Just a couple of days ago, Daimler AG, the makers of Mercedes Benz cars, trucks and buses received a green signal from the Government of India to set up their own finance arm for financing the purchase of their vehicles. Mercedes Benz in India has taken a hit from BMW in India which has been outselling them consistently. Mercedes Benz is fiercely competitive and does not want to ever give up the number one status. So all strategies are being devised to regain that slot. Also Mercedes Benz buses are steadily increasing sales and Mercedes would like to beat the present market leader Volvo. In the truck segment Mercedes has set up a new unit at Oragadam near Chennai and has decided to brand its trucks Bharat Benz. This is an all out attack, no doubt.
Following the news that Toyota and Honda are implementing production cuts in India due to the shortage of parts coming from Japan news is now trickling in that new launches from both these manufacturers could be delayed by quite a bit. Toyota has already been facing huge problems in clearing the bookings for its Etios sedan and therefore had originally delayed the launch of the Liva by a few months. It now looks as if the launch of the Liva will be further delayed. The same is the case with Honda. It was believed that Honda was fast tracking the launch of the Brio hatchback but with this new problem the launch of the Brio also is likely to be setback by quite a bit. Another news from Honda is that it will launch its next generation Civic only next year and not this year. That could be good news for some since many believe that the existing Civic looks much better than the new Civic which goes back to Honda’s conservatism.
The Biennial Auto Expo in India is the biggest in Asia and one of the biggest in the world for reasons that are unique to it. It does not have the same pride of place that auto shows in Thailand, China and Japan have leave alone places like Germany and Switzerland. The Auto Expo has a record number of footfalls that are in excess of 2 million and that means that there is a surging mass of people, congestion and inadequate space despite Pragati Maidan being a fairly big place. The last Auto Expo in 2010 saw all kinds of organizational glitches and a lot of complaints especially from the motoring journalists. In order to avoid the pandemonium of last year, the Expo organizers (SIAM) are considering splitting the Expo into two different venues one in Pragati Maidan and the other in Greater Noida. The thinking is to shift the ancillaries and parts manufacturers to another place to decongest. But how this proposal will be received is yet to be seen. The problem is that a large number of people go to the show not to look at the vehicles on display but the women who are on display along with the vehicles. We think that if the women are taken out of the equation, footfalls will fall drastically and the Expo can be held peacefully in Pragati Maidan itself. But then what of the revenues? Its all about money, honey.