The Maldonado thing...

[Aysedasi]

Actually, he's quite a big sh..... person, isn't he?

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by chunder

Get him in an F1 stock car, soon knock some sense into the spoiled little s***

It would be a brave man that would take him or his cohorts on in or out of a car. As has been said earlier, there seems to be nobody in F1 capable of 'reigning him in'... and that's for good reason !

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by davyboy

Hulkenberg, diResta, Kovalainen etc... really only have themselves to blame for their predicament. They're clearly not good enough to secure a paid seat in F1 - not my opinion but that of the teams that offered paid seats. All that remains are seats that require funding. We can winge and moan that F1 shouldn't work that way, but it does. If these guys really want to stay in F1, they need to be spending every waking hour sourcing and securing funding to buy a seat. Guy Edwards and many others were doing this back in the 1970s so it can't be beyond them today.

An interesting take on this here from Cyril Abiteboul of Caterham. Given that a budget cap looks all but impossible to achieve, it seems that F1 may well become the preserve of the more 'commercially astute' driver.

[Aysedasi]

'Astute'. Hmmm.

That's a very polite way of putting it!

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Long time, no post.

I suppose everyone is still fuming that someone arrogant, reckless and with better-than-average speed with stacks of cash has been chosen over a nice, quiet driver who has more outright pace than almost the entire of the motorsports community...

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Anyone reckon the cost-cutting in 2015 will consign Maldonado to the back of the grid?

[Aysedasi]

I was rather hoping for the back of the car park, but whatever.......

[Hawkwood]

Originally Posted by Biscuits In A Red Bull

Anyone reckon the cost-cutting in 2015 will consign Maldonado to the back of the grid?

In all honesty, no.
If the budgets were capped at £50m and you have a driver who could bring half that, you only need to spend £25m.
As long as he has that kind of money he'll be around.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by Hawkwood

In all honesty, no.
If the budgets were capped at £50m and you have a driver who could bring half that, you only need to spend £25m.
As long as he has that kind of money he'll be around.

All of the top teams can afford £50 mill, so he's looking at midfield teams at best.

[JacobP]

50M budget cap is totally unrealistic. The customer engines alone cost in the neighborhood of at least 20M and the top teams can easily spend in the neighborhood of 30M on driver and top staff salaries. Last time I heard about caps, the proposal was 40M _not_ including the engine costs and driver salary, and the teams still rejected this. Realistically, with the influence welded by the top teams, it will never be approved. But still, a team like Sauber or Lotus would still need to raise at least 70-80M for a campaign even under cost caps. At the same time this won't have any effect on the team like Ferrari or Red Bull. I can imagine the Red Bull income statement:

Engines from company X: $10K
Carbon fiber parts from company Y: $5 a piece
Investment in new wind tunnel and simulator facility: $100M (but only 4% of its total cost will count as "expense" due to depreciation for budget accounting purposes).
A supercumputer grid from company Y: free (donation from a sponsor)

I am sure accountants will find a way to shuffle things to work around the caps.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

As I thought - no.

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by Biscuits In A Red Bull

Long time, no post.

I suppose everyone is still fuming that someone arrogant, reckless and with better-than-average speed with stacks of cash has been chosen over a nice, quiet driver who has more outright pace than almost the entire of the motorsports community...

I don't understand why anybody should be fuming at this. F1 is not a meritocracy and is moving further away from, not closer to, that ideal. Blame the teams as they're the ones that have chosen this business model. With the inexorable decline in viewing figures and the relentless increases operating costs, we're heading for a situation where the entire grid will be composed of pay drivers - like Maldonado. We're just going to have to get used to that... or join the hoards that are abandoning F1 and switch off.

Given the global decline in interest in single seater racing and the growing interest in supercar based 'stuff' i.e. gaming, Top Gear, Fast/Furious movies etc... I'm just wondering whether some form of GT-centric series based around these cars would be a better platform for us to see the world's best drivers slug it out each weekend. It would be far cheaper, drivers could share cars, customer teams could vie works teams etc..., there would be a secondary market for road cars etc...

... just a thought.

[davyboy]

Monisha Kaltenborn is highly critical of the current system in this article here. There's also plenty about the flawed commercial arrangement of F1 in this week's F1 season review in Autosport Mag.

[Mr V]

Originally Posted by davyboy

Hulkenberg, (.........) really only have themselves to blame for their predicament. They're clearly not good enough to secure a paid seat in F1 - not my opinion but that of the teams that offered paid seats.

Had Lotus paid Kimi during this season then Hulkenberg would have ended up at Ferrari in 2014, he was plain unlucky.

[Biscuits In A Red Bull]

Originally Posted by davyboy

I'm just wondering whether some form of GT-centric series based around these cars would be a better platform for us to see the world's best drivers slug it out each weekend. It would be far cheaper, drivers could share cars, customer teams could vie works teams etc..., there would be a secondary market for road cars etc...

... just a thought.

CONTROVERSIAL!!!!!!!!!