Well, its now official. The rumors had been out there for a while, and we even tried to make some sort of sense of them back a few weeks ago on our podcast. Group Lotus has purchased, with the assistance of Genii Capital, a share in the Renault F1 team. During the 2011 season, the team will be known as Lotus Renault GP and will sport the black and gold livery that Mr. Fernandez’s Lotus F1 Racing had previously announced that its team would be using. The partnership between Lotus…
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F1 – Williams Abandons Their Flybrid for 2011: Shocking!
In what could end up being a shocking turn of events, Williams F1 has elected to abandon its flywheel-based kinetic energy recovery system in favour of a fully electric storage design, according to a recent article at Autosport.com. “I think it’s fairly well known that we’re going to be running a battery system,” said Head. “It’s not that we… Had we run KERS in 2009, and we did run the flywheel in the car, but not at a grand prix, it was a flywheel-based system. “The flywheel, by the very…
Read MoreF1 – Ferrari Succeeded in 2010
As headlines ring around the world hailing Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel on his world championship, there have been some very vicious headlines as well regarding Ferrari and their strategy that lost the title for Fernando Alonso. While I have distanced myself from Ferrari and latched on to Mercedes (Schumacher), I still think these attacks are ridiculous after you compare 2009 and 2010. For that very reason alone, Ferrari should be praised and their season should be viewed as successful. look back at 2009 for just a second. Felipe Massa…
Read MoreF1 – Our Thoughts on Abu Dhabi and the 2010 Championship
Well, the long 2010 Formula 1 season has finally come to an end. Ultimately, it has come to the end that we sort of expected toward the beginning of the year, but given the results of the last few races, there was some serious doubt regarding the final outcome of the drivers championship. Red Bull Racing lead out the season strong taking pole position in the first seven races. With a bit of foreshadowing, the team would only realize victory in three of those first seven. In fact, the eventual…
Read MoreOP-Ed – Raikkonen Acts Ridiculous…Boullier Impressive
I have been very happy out of what Eric Boullier has put on display during the Kimi Raikkonen potential of 2011. We all know that now it is not going to happen, but what was most shocking was Kimi’s childish reply to the team. Earlier this week we had mentioned Kimi was not going to Renault and was very upset with the Renault team boss for even using his name. He accused Boullier and Renault of using his image to further the team commercially. I was shocked at the response…
Read MoreF1 – Team Lotus Gets Serious About Improving
We already know that Lotus Racing …er… Team Lotus (whatever they’re going by now days) will drop the Cosworthless lump in favour of Renault. Today, Team Lotus has gone further toward improving their technological position by confirming that they will use Red Bull Technologies’ gearbox and hydraulics for the 2011 season rather than the Xtrac equipment. “The announcement that we have reached a multi-year agreement with Red Bull Technology for the supply of our gearboxes and hydraulics from 2011 is obviously a massive step forward for us, both in engineering…
Read MoreF1 – Renault Excercise Caution…Rightfully So!
Eric Boullier and the Renault Formula 1 team have worked very hard this season with driver Robert Kubica to turn around what was a joke last season. A team that nearly folded shop has seemingly been returned to prominence this year and it has had to be THE feel good story of the year for F1. Kimi Raikkonen is still on the fence for his 2011 plans and Renault said today that they would not mind meeting Kimi face to face in order to understand what Kimi actually wants. I…
Read MoreOpEd – Will the real Lotus please stand up?
Group Lotus, Team Lotus, Lotus Racing, Lotus Motorsports, Lotus Cars, Lotus Engineering… we have a whole field of Lotus and its downright confusing to us fans! To add to the confusion Group Lotus is suing Lotus Racing over the rights to use the name Team Lotus. …er? what? Yeah, that’s how I felt at first to. It would be simpler if one group was the production car wing of the larger parent company and the other group the motorsports wing. However, that’s not exactly how it is. Group Lotus has…
Read MoreF1 – World Motorsport Council News and Ferrari
So the World Motorsport Council met earlier this morning and have confirmed a few points of business already. There will be no new team on the grid, and the schedule has been proposed with 20 races set for 2011. We still are waiting on the Ferrari stuff to fall out, but it looks as though Ferrari are prepared to lose out on the decision as they have announced a poor performance in Monza will lead the team to begin full development of next year’s car. We here at the paddock…
Read MoreF1 – Thoughts on the Austin Track Map
One more step has been taken toward having a Formula 1 grand prix race in Austin, Texas. The proposed Tilke-designed track map including elevations has been released. My first thought is that this can’t be a Tilke track. There’s no chicane in front of the hairpins. (tongue firmly planted in cheek) 3.6 miles in 20 turns with 133 feet of elevation change, hairpins, high-speed sweepers, medium-speed technical sections, the circuit really does seem to have everything you need in a quality grand prix track. It is interesting to me that…
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