The Motorsport Thread (Part 2)

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Nice that Vettel and Hamilton don't hate each other yet. I'd give that about two months.

[Ambient Sheep]

Hah!!

Turns out that during the smog-bound FP2, FOM got so bored that they developed a sense of humour when showing a shot of one particular fan in the grandstand:



_{(Stolen from https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/comment/86021436#Comment_86021436.)}

Talking of grandstands, am I the only one who was dying to add a big red signboard saying "BABYLON" above the empty one at the hairpin?

[Blumf]

Huh, Red Bull fan, would have thought he'd be a Ferrari Tifosi.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Didn't they sponsor Red Bull at one gp? Perhaps it's viral marketing and it isn't all as off script and bantersaurus rex as it looks.

[EastHastings]

Well this is a shock. Anything to get out of driving the MCL32.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/alonso-to-skip-monaco-gp-to-contest-indy-500-892869/

[EastHastings]

Didn't they sponsor Red Bull at one gp? Perhaps it's viral marketing and it isn't all as off script and bantersaurus rex as it looks.

Yes they did, back in 2005.

[Ambient Sheep]

Well this is a shock. Anything to get out of driving the MCL32.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/alonso-to-skip-monaco-gp-to-contest-indy-500-892869/

Whaaaaaatttt???  Wow!  Thanks for the heads-up.

Still, seems that it's been done in conjunction with McLaren and Honda, and that he'll be racing an Andretti car in McLaren orange.

Bernie must be exploding somewhere, he would NEVER have allowed that (look at the shit-fit he threw about Hulkenberg (was it?) contesting Le Mans a year or two ago on a weekend off).

Guess it might be "Monaco, baby!" one more time for Jenson, then.

[Ambient Sheep]

Meanwhile, looks like we might be going back to Turkey...

https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2017/04/12/talking-turkey/

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

However, it is impossible to pass judgement on individual countries because when one considers all the countries visited and all the human rights issues alleged (and that includes Western countries) F1 could go almost nowhere without some pressure group making a fuss. Thus, we either go everywhere, or we go nowhere.

Disappointed by this fuckwitted apologism to be honest.

[Blumf]

Never mind the moral question. Isn't it also a big risk in simple terms that the country is right next door to a war zone filled with various peoples who are quiet open about their desires to attack public events?

Think it'd be more pragmatic to suggest waiting a few years before jumping back in. Sure the money can't be that good.

[Ambient Sheep]

Disappointed by this fuckwitted apologism to be honest.

I think that's pretty unfair, to be honest, and taken a bit out of context.  He's been very vocal in the past about the wisdom of visiting countries like China, Bahrain and especially Russia -- after his scathing words (especially in the comments) about Putin smothering himself all over the first Russian Grand Prix ("...the whole Putin in the cool room business [...] was outrageous...") I was amazed he ever got another visa.

However when people started pointing out that virtually no country in the world is free from human rights abuse claims of one sort or another, he did -- to his credit, I feel -- take that on board.  (He did his history degree about underhand CIA operations during the Vietnam war, after all.)  Would you rather he just said blindly West=Good, East=Bad?  (For the record, he was very anti- that riot-hit Bahrain GP taking place, joining the voices asking for it to be called off; then he went there for the race when it finally went ahead, went round the city talking to some of the locals, then he changed his mind.  Better an open mind than a closed one.)

I think that broadly speaking he has it right: it's not necessarily wrong to hold a race in dodgy places, provided the race isn't used as an overt propaganda tool, which in Bahrain and Russia it most certainly has been.  As he says, it's a "complex issue" as to when dodgy is too dodgy.  He's also pretty against the Turkish government in his penultimate paragraph.

Never mind the moral question. Isn't it also a big risk in simple terms that the country is right next door to a war zone filled with various peoples who are quiet open about their desires to attack public events?

I think this is also a very good argument for not going back there.

[Ambient Sheep]

As for the Indy 500 thing, I'm rather surprised that McLaren's Zak Brown is going to be out at Indy too, on what's traditionally the biggest weekend on the F1 calendar for gathering sponsorship.

Either he feels they don't need any more now they're tied up with Honda, or he's hoping to recruit some sponsors out in America...

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The paragraph is fuckwitted.

'There is always some pressure group, thus we go everywhere or we go nowhere'

Where is the nuance or subtlety there? There isn't any, hence you were forced to transplant some from outside sources to shore it up. The statement itself is a crock and disrespectful to use as an argument for the consumption of intelligent readers.

[Ambient Sheep]

I agree that taken in isolation it's not a great sentence.  I'm not going to attempt to defend it 100%.   I strongly suspect (from memory) that it's basically a copy-and-paste from a much more nuanced post he wrote a couple of years ago on the same theme, that I can't be arsed to find.

However there is some other nuance and subtlety on the subject of Turkey even elsewhere in that same piece.

I'm sure that one could pull out many single sentences from your posts (or indeed my posts) and pull them to pieces in isolation were we so minded.

When you can write even a quarter as well as Saward on any subject under the sun, especially when flying around the world jetlagged, do come back to me.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I'm sure that one could pull out many single sentences from your posts (or indeed my posts) and pull them to pieces in isolation were we so minded

It's not picking a sentence at random, it was the cornerstone of the main point of his post.

If my job for money involved blogging I would treat it as part of my job. Trying to excuse it through imagining reasons for this purported 'lapse' just makes you look like a fanboy.

It shouldn't be necessary for me to be as good a writer as him to criticise his point. And you'll note I am not criticising his writing. You claim it was not his point and are trying to speak for him. That alone if true is evidence enough he has not written well this time. Howevet, I disagree, I think he does mean that, and I think it's a fuckwitted piece of logic.

I enjoy his posts as well but for the sake of our own integrity let's call out shit where we see it.

[EastHastings]

Went to WEC qualifying today at Silverstone. Highly recommend it if anyone is thinking of going. Full day of cars on track and races from three categories. Was able to get free pit walks in both the ELMS/F3 and the WEC/World Series V8 paddocks. Amazing access, was touching distance to the Toyota that had just set pole. F1 could learn from these guys...

[Blumf]

You've probably seen the news about the horrific F4 accident this weekend involving Billy Monger:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-39651283

Donation page (although it's struggling under load):
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/BillyMonger23

[im barry bethel]

Lanky Frenchie pulls off the save of the century

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mqthX3QX49k

[Ambient Sheep]

I was out all day yesterday, but apparently Indycar did a Youtube live stream of Fernando Alonso testing at the IMS.  You can catch up with all 6h42m36s of it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXh9uxthFnk

It's only had 1.2 million views...

[im barry bethel]

Poor old Nicky Hayden, knocked off a pushbike

"The young man, who is still in the intensive care unit of Cesena's Bufalini hospital, has suffered a serious polytrauma with subsequent serious cerebral damage.

"The prognosis remains reserved."'

http://m.crash.net/wsbk/news/247586/1/nicky-hayden-condition-remains-extremely-critical.html

[im barry bethel]

Now dead, which is a shame as he always seemed a decent guy.

[Ambient Sheep]

Very sad.

[Ambient Sheep]

This is a weird one, wonder if it's got lost in translation.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns36517.html

Apparently Toto Wolff's told the biggest Finnish daily newspaper that Valtteri only got the Mercedes drive 'cos he was bringing one of his sponsors with him; otherwise they would have gone for Pascal Wehrlein.

WTF?!  Quite apart from being a bit pay-driver-y, that's REALLY gonna motivate poor old Bottas, innit?

[Dex Sawash]

_{anyone watching America's Cup racing from Bermuda?}

They have some proper racing now, a lot better than the last one as far as format. Boat speeds near 50 mph now.

[im barry bethel]

Could that Bottas thing be about contractual handcuffs rather than bringing budget?

[Ambient Sheep]

Fernando Alonso's speech at the Indy 500 awards ceremony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s69XiUdzbWg

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Wehrlein has potential, maybe Sutil/Heidfeld standard, but Bottas has got the goods. Too soon to know whether that means a Rosberg or a Berger type career. Even so, very quick driver and won a race very quickly after being given a car capable of, which says a lot.

[im barry bethel]

Fernando Alonso's speech at the Indy 500 awards ceremony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s69XiUdzbWg

Did he thank Honda for letting him race there?

[Dex Sawash]

_{anyone watching America's Cup racing from Bermuda?}

They have some proper racing now, a lot better than the last one as far as format. Boat speeds near 50 mph now.

There was some good carnage today in the challenger series.  Big capsize by the Kiwis

https://youtu.be/Jli_m5zm91g

[im barry bethel]

There was some good carnage today in the challenger series.  Big capsize by the Kiwis

https://youtu.be/Jli_m5zm91g

They had some of that on just before the Alonso race (if it's the Oracle/Land Rover boats), up on those hydrofoil type things it just looks plain wrong, even going around the turns I expected the hulls to drop back down but they didn't, it's fucking witchcraft!