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Marko's comments were tough. But so was Webber squeezing Vettel at the start in Brazil when there's a title on the line. I think it's just a payback for that. Every action and all that.

I just think he is seriously vindictive guy. I've seen no evidence to the contrary.

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And now for something completely different:

Pedro de la Rosa has been hired by Ferrari as a development driver.

"Pssst...Pedro...over here...Hush! Have you tried the *wink wink* in the *nudge nudge* with the new setting?"

"Nando, how many times I have to tell you we both work for Ferrari now!"

"Sorry, old habits die hard"

Seriously, I'm happy for the old chap. He might never be remembered by his F1 accomplishments, but he certainly has lots of experience in testing cars, at least. And I think that some of his races in that HRT were the kind of titanic feats that go unsung.

I do have to admire at Ferrari's ability to sign pretty average (at best) older drivers to do...absolutely nothing.

Still, it makes them feel useful I suppose.

I guess Ferrari is the motoring equivalent of Help the Aged.

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I do have to admire at Ferrari's ability to sign pretty average (at best) older drivers to do...absolutely nothing.

Still, it makes them feel useful I suppose.

I guess Ferrari is the motoring equivalent of Help the Aged.

Yeah, I mean...geez, man...just imagine some other team hiring Nikki Lauda har, har har! Or that other guy....Helmut Marko was his name? Ho, ho, ho! ;)

Nah, seriously, as a test driver (if that is what 'development driver' really means) he has huge respect. I doubt that you can find a guy that has been around so much having accomplished so little and with so little support. He has been around at McLaren, Sauber, Arrows, (Jaguar?), HRT, Force India...hey, he even was supposed to drive one of the USF1 cars wasn't he? :P

And he was also a Pirelli tire tester...geez...the guy has a better resumé than 80% of the grid. Certainly more impressive than "I run like a scared little girl, got rear ended by Kimi and almost murdered a rival F1 team member" for a resumé :)

Make all the jokes you want about his accomplishments, but don't doubt that even if he was never perhaps even midfield car material, there's something about Pedro...

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Yeah, I mean...geez, man...just imagine some other team hiring Nikki Lauda har, har har! Or that other guy....Helmut Marko was his name? Ho, ho, ho! wink.png

Nah, seriously, as a test driver (if that is what 'development driver' really means) he has huge respect. I doubt that you can find a guy that has been around so much having accomplished so little and with so little support. He has been around at McLaren, Sauber, Arrows, (Jaguar?), HRT, Force India...hey, he even was supposed to drive one of the USF1 cars wasn't he? tongue.png

And he was also a Pirelli tire tester...geez...the guy has a better resumé than 80% of the grid. Certainly more impressive than "I run like a scared little girl, got rear ended by Kimi and almost murdered a rival F1 team member" for a resumé smile.png

Make all the jokes you want about his accomplishments, but don't doubt that even if he was never perhaps even midfield car material, there's something about Pedro...

I agree with you, he's not a brilliant GP driver but he's a meticulous and hard working guy with thousands of km. experience in F1. His experience at McLaren with simulators and cars' design process from end to end probably better than that of most drivers in F1. There's always something to do in an F1 team for a guy like him, maybe the work no one driver loves to do.

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PIlbeam is leaving Mark Webber's side to become Head of Race Engineering at Lotus. So the rumour goes, anyway. I shall miss trying to trip him up most days, on his run around Caldecotte Lake in Milton Keynes.

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I agree with you, he's not a brilliant GP driver but he's a meticulous and hard working guy with thousands of km. experience in F1. His experience at McLaren with simulators and cars' design process from end to end probably better than that of most drivers in F1. There's always something to do in an F1 team for a guy like him, maybe the work no one driver loves to do.

It's good to have people around who fought in WWII lmavfa.gif

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It's good to have people around who fought in WWII lmavfa.gif

Did they sign Marko? rolleyes.gif

Signing Pedro is probably a positive step for Ferrari.

I know you will say it was because of Pedro if they win a title in 2013. nono1.gif

Since we were discussing Helmut Marko and the Targa Florio:

That was dangerous!!! yikes.gif

Anybody knows the name of the song on 5:25?

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I fear we may lose Force India. Mallya is in all sorts of trouble and only Bernie can sort this out. Expect gifts from the East and a fat man in a bikini.

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I fear we may lose Force India. Mallya is in all sorts of trouble and only Bernie can sort this out. Expect gifts from the East and a fat man in a bikini.

That can only mean Flavio.

Or Barney Gumble.

Not that anyone would really be able to tell them apart, anyways.

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Could be Borat having eaten all that good American apple pie and all that jazz....

....or....this guy?

385548.jpg

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Could be Borat having eaten all that good American apple pie and all that jazz....

....or....this guy?

385548.jpg

Ok, listen. First of all, Paul told me that he would never, ever publish those pics, that they were only to be uploaded to his facebook, his public Picassa, Flickr and dropbox sites and to be broadcasted by the most powerful satellite dish in an attempt to contact advanced civilizations on other solar systems. Second, I was wearing those only because the other two bikinis I tried made me look really fat!

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While we are taking our off season nap, some interesting stories keep developing:

1) Timo Glock gets the boot, Marussia needs pay drivers. That's an opportunity for Petrov if he can collect a few more rubles. Sad to see Timo go, he was quite capable with those Sh#tty bottom of the grid cars. Not sure he was top of the field material but F1 has no shortage of those either. And Pic&Glock was the most endearing duo since Itchy&Scratchy Pic and Petrov just does not has the same ring to it.

2) Toto Wolff to join Mercedes, while still being at Williams, except that he will be a Mercedes shareholder, as he will be at William's, but he will not work for Williams, nor for Mercedes. Wait, he will work for Mercedes but...oh, what the hell, too confusing.

Anyways, this guy is moving up and is moving fast. I am not sure what Mercedes expects to do with all these big names, though, as none of them seem to be directly involved with Mercedes main issue, i.e.: their car is an authentic, 100% certified PoS.

On the plus side, they will have plenty of people to lay the blame upon when it fails, now that Haug is gone.

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Ok, listen. First of all, Paul told me that he would never, ever publish those pics, that they were only to be uploaded to his facebook, his public Picassa, Flickr and dropbox sites and to be broadcasted by the most powerful satellite dish in an attempt to contact advanced civilizations on other solar systems. Second, I was wearing those only because the other two bikinis I tried made me look really fat!

Excellent :lol:

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Could be Borat having eaten all that good American apple pie and all that jazz....

....or....this guy?

Errmmm, why do you have this pic exactly ?? :whistling::lol:

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Kovalainen and Glock probably could have had a lot more in an alternate reality. Such is F1. Glock must have known his time had passed when, for the first time in a good six years, he had not been linked to Team Poochie at any point in the season.

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A shame. I'd kind of been looking forward to seeing Glock humiliate Chilton...

Very tough time to be a driver in Formula One away from the top four or five teams. It does seem unfortunately, that F1 is no longer about the best drivers in the world, but simply the richest. But I can't say I really blame Glock. Marussia is in all sorts of financial problem and will probably be the next team to go. They've also been pretty awful for three years. HRT finished ahead of them in the championship for two of those three years. They don't really seem to be making that much progress either.

Timo's a racing driver, and will want to win, regardless of whatever form of racing he moves to. It looks very likely that he'll end up at BMW in the DTM. Not a bad trade off to go into a competitive car in a high profile championship where he will continue to earn a decent salary.

A shame though. He was kind of wasting his time with Marussia. I can see why he chose a drive with them over Renault when there was all that uncertainty about whether Renault would even be in the sport in 2010, but he definitely had unfulfilled potential. Still, I look forward to watching him race in DTM this year.

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It does seem unfortunately, that F1 is no longer about the best drivers in the world, but simply the richest.

I am sorry if it seems as if I am picking on you every time, but you appear to have this wrong idea that F1 was ev about the best drivers in the world, as opposed to the richest. It was never either, but if you pressed me to choose one of those (not mutually exclusive!) extremes I'd would say that drivers were usually rich first, then good.

Pay drivers are older than F1 itself. Rich drivers were part of the sport since its mere inception.

Fangio was not notable only because of his many championships, he was also one of the few drivers coming from a rather middle low class family in a sport were having two nobility titles usually helped a lot in your career.

Ayrton was very talented, yes, but also came from a wealthy family, ditto for Piquet. I have no idea if there were dozens of better Piquets and Ayrtons in the favelas of Rio and we will never know.

F1 needs money, lots of it. There's a fine balance between money and talent, but thee never was a golden age were your skills were more important than money.

Teams rarely want to pay for talent, if ever. They rather make the driver pay or get a driver which in turn can atract some sponsor to pay for his salary. Alonso, Vettel, Lewis...they probably don't cost a single penny to their respective teams. Sponsors surely pay most of their huge salaries more or less indirectly.

If you want a sport were talent can take you to the top despite your money then take a look at your much despised football :P

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As long as they are the fastest closed circuit race cars in the world, I need not care who drives them or how they got those positions. It was never about the best drivers in the world because it was about the best cars in the world. Those who drove them, by virtue of driving them, became known as the best drivers. It was that inherent connection to the car that made them the best drivers, not some measure of talent or socio-economic status.

Moreover, today's pay drivers are professionals (Pérez would have no career if Telmex did not carry him, yet he's also one of the top prospects in F1 right now), and while we can lament the losses of Adam Carroll or Giorgio Pantano, any talented young driver without funding could have gotten that dream ride and done nothing with it. Then we'd be here complaining how they screwed someone else out of a ride when, instead, we say they were the ones who got the raw deal.

You have 22 seats. Whoever fills them, whatever, I'll be filling my own in front of the TV when Australia's round starts. There will always be a winner and a champion, and the battles closest to the front will always get my focus. Right now, the guys who run up there are damn good, and evenly matched in both ability and equipment. No complaints here, even if it means that instead of finishing P18, the Marussia will now finish P19.

That is, of course, just my personal view.

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'Lowe jumps ship to Mercedes', we read. I have met Paddy Lowe a couple of times. I never took to him. Overly arrogant and a little ignorant were my lasting impressions. Though he engineered him for a while, he has never been a JB fan and it's not surprising that Macca spent the summer break trying to fix inherent problems with Buttons car. In reality, they should have been identified and dealt with long before it got to the 'back to the drawing board' phase. They knew what they were getting when they signed Jenson; a proven winner in a working car. The other side of the coin can be pretty ugly and following Lewis on set up was never going to help. McLaren's working motif is to 'double team' their rivals and harvest points. At least, that's the plan. Through twenty years service, Lowe knew that but the last two or three seasons have been lean and lately, reliability has been a highly unusual feature for the team. I have to say, Dennis and Whitmarsh must have looked at the option of replacing their Technical Director before now. Unfortunately, this move will look like extreme disloyalty less that two weeks from pre-season testing. Personally, I feel it is a positive move. The only downside is that Sam Michaels may end up as the 'fill in'.

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