Sebastian Vettel has kept his reputation as a pole setter alive. Towards the end of qualifying at Sepang for the Malaysian Grand Prix he made sure that he was the fastest. Team mate Mark Webber has yet again been beaten in qualifying. The McLarens and the Ferraris also did quite well. Vettel will have to work hard to keep his finger pointed upwards at the end of the race tomorrow.
Yearly Archives: 2011
It may not even qualify as a miniscule step for most F1 teams but it was a huge leap for the Hardly ready Racing Team (or is that Hispania Racing Team). Both Vitantonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan managed to get themselves onto the racing grid tomorrow with Liuzzi in the penultimate starting position and Karthikeyan last. Well that must be better than watching the race from the pits, right?
Would you believe that the fairly depleted Motogp field has no fewer than four riders carrying shoulder related injuries? Loris Capirossi is the latest addition to a list which already has Valentino Rossi, Dani Pedrosa and Cal Cruthlow in it. Perhaps teams should make strong shoulders a pre-requisite for eligibility for Motogp.
Ducati became the first manufacturer and Rossi the first rider to test next year’s 1000cc bike in public. Rossi apparently gushed about how good it was and all that while Stoner and Lorenzo were supposed to have said just you watch. We will watch out and see which way the new regulations will take the manufacturers in 2012. More importantly we will have to see if the grid size improves or if it will still be a point guarantee situation for all those who start.
Remember Kimi Raikonnen, that man who won an F1 World Championship with Ferrari? If you do, then you will also remember that he was rendered subprime in the prime of his driving life by Ferrari. All because he was asking for too much money and doing too little and so they decided to replace him by buying his contract out and putting Fernando Alonso in his place in the team. A baffling decision that, considering the fact that Raikonnen had performed better than Massa generally. An explanation was when Alonso politely requested the Ferrari team to ask Massa to make way for him. Raikonnen did not have the win at all costs attitude that a certain Michael Schumacher and Alonso have in plenty. So Raikonnen went on to do the thing he liked most after F1 which was rallying. The Citroen junior team gave him a car and Raikonnen proceeded to have some spectacular crashes which made no impression on rallying as a sport. At the end of last year Raikonnen’s father passed away and speculation was rife that Kimi would hang up his helmet and all the other racing paraphernalia once and for all. That turned out to be inaccurate since Raikonnen has rented a Citroen and with the help on some personal sponsorship has submitted an entry for this year’s WRC. But Raikonnen has now surprised all by taking his first steps into NASCAR racing, home of a number of F1 refugees such as Juan Pablo Montoya. Raikonnen is not competing in the Sprint Cup series, which is the apex of NASCAR but in trucks which is more the entry level, if you like. Our own Narain Kartikeyan was there last year in the truck series also was racing in the Superleague Formula racing before signing up for this year with HRT and so far enjoying F1 racing by watching it from the pit garage of his team since the HRT cars did not qualify. Apparently like Narain last year, Kimi will compete in two series, in this case the WRC and NASCAR. As long as he does not end up at HRT next year, one can feel relaxed about him.
While certain F1 racers such as Sebastian Vettel and even Michael Schumacher are feeling optimistic about winning races or finishing on the podium, Narain Karthikeyan and Vitantonio Liuzzi are optimistic that they will actually qualify to race. Surprisingly, Colin Kolles and Jose Roman Carabante are not saying too much. Looks like they have left the talking to the drivers. The pit lane at the Sepang Circuit must be a happy place with optimisms at different levels coming to the forefront. Hopefully, Team Lotus will not have its car totaled by one Karun Chandok during any of its practice sessions. After all they would be distraught if they had one of their cars destroyed in front of the home crowd.
Hyundai did it, TATA did it and even Maruti Suzuki did it. Raising of prices of their cars that is. Mahindra which does not consider itself inferior to anyone so has joined the gang. Rising input costs have led to the raising of prices. What else?
Globally the mighty Toyota did it, Mercedes did it, Honda did it in India, why, even humble Tata did it without saying as much, so should Maruti be left out? It is to India what Toyota is to the world. So now it is a question of Total Recall. Maruti is recalling a specific batch of diesel powered Swifts and Dzires (we don’t take responsibility for the bad spelling) to fix a small glitch.
Oncars.in has reported that the diesel Beat is just around the corner. They say that the diesel powered beast er urm Beat will get XSDE badging. XSDE apparently stands for Xtra Smart Diesel Engine. Let us hope that future diesel Beat owners don’t find the engine acting too smart.
Change of guard at Ashok Leyland with Vinod Dasari taking over from Mr. Seshasayee seems to be galvanizing the Indian giant to look at global pastures. Mr. Dasari has said that the goal for Ashok Leyland is to be a player of global consequence in the next 5-10 years and use its overseas acquisitions such as Avia for this purpose. There is speculation that Ashok Leyland will change to Hinduja Leyland, something that sounds a little unbelievable. But who knows, even stranger things have happened.