F1 2016 Season: Lineup's - Rumours - News

maybe they'll do a deal for engines that includes Kimi.

 

"We'll give you engines and £20m if you take Kimi"

 

I get a sneaky feeling that JB will not be driving next year, or at least for McLaren. More and more focus on his deal having an option and given that he was the key decision makers 1st choice and he is likely to cost 10 times the amount Mag or Van would cost.

 

This made me chuckle:

Christian Horner insists he's staying at Red Bull after rival boss' sack claim
Unnamed team principal rang the Red Bull team principal 'to commiserate' on morning of team's home Austrian GP

Christian Horner has insisted he is staying on at Red Bull after a rival team boss rang him on the morning of the Austrian GP claiming he was going to lose his job.
Red Bull are enduring their worst season since 2008 and are yet to finish on the podium - a feat they have achieved every year bar one since entering the sport in 2005.
According to The Times, ‘a rival team principal even rang Horner on Sunday morning before the grand prix to commiserate, claiming that Gerhard Berger was in the frame to take over’.

 

Who do we think it was?

 

Boullier or Arrivabene.

 

Graeme Lowdon having a good giggle?

 

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Berger himself who called

 

Would Seb Vettel ever agree to allow Hulkenberg into the team? Nico is not exactly what you call a "no 2 driver" now is he.

 

Probably irrelevant, Ferrari won't sign Hulkenberg because he is German... just when you think big teams have ran out of reasons not to sign him.

Over the years we've had

He's too young.
Too inexperienced.
Not enough sponsorship brought
Too tall.
Too heavy

and now we have

Too German.

We just need a seat at Mercedes to open up for him to be "Too Nico" for.

And by the time decent seats start to open up again he'll be

Too old
not experienced enough in a top car
not a proven winner at this level.

He's sadly destined for a career in the midfield, probably his best bet is to join the endurance racing full time.

Definitely Arrivabene! haha

 

Hulkenburg has yet to have a truly impressive full season. I think questions remain over his consistency to deliver drives of quality all the time.

For too many races, he seems to go AWOL, before coming back into some form. Has done it with both Perez and di Resta when he was teamed with them for a couple of seasons. Whist he generally does come out on top over the season, he has hardly been convincing about it for someone who generates so much hype.

He needs to show (again) that the last two races are not simply glimpses of what he can do and that he carries those performances through to the rest of the season, rather than drop back for 3 or 4 races in a row and gets made to look ordinary again (as Perez has done to him quite often already this season).

Remember, this is a man who has still not set foot on a podium in F1.

 

Looks like some reasonably big changes coming in later this season.

Manual starts have been agreed apparently, which should shake the starts up.

Engine penalties possibly reduced.

 

Strategy Group looks at Saturday sprint for third drivers

One of the ideas considered by the F1 Strategy Group for 2017 is a Saturday sprint race for third drivers.

The FIA said yesterday that “several exciting and innovative changes to the qualifying and race weekend formats have also been discussed and are being evaluated by FIA and FOM for a 2016 introduction.”

The third driver sprint would involve one entry from each team, with up to 11 cars – with the addition of Haas for next season – taking part.

The idea is that the top four finishers would progress to the Grand Prix on Sunday, and would be allowed to start from the back of the grid. Clearly these cars would also have to practice and qualify, which would give the teams extra track miles.

The complication is that teams would have to take a fully prepared third car to each race, and with the extra freight and crew clearly huge costs will be involved.

However the intention is that the sprint race would not happen at every Grand Prix weekend, and it would be logical for example to miss the early flyaway races when teams might not have enough new parts to fully service three cars.

An alternative path could be a sprint race for the race drivers which determined the grid for Sunday.

“I think it’s very embryonic in its discussion,” Christian Horner told this writer. “It’s good that there’s a discussion going on about that kind of thing. I think it needs to be fully and properly considered. It’s just ideas floating around at the moment.”

 

Lol Can the lower teams afford to build a 3rd car? Seems like more power to the already rich and powerful. Imagine Manors entry to the sprint!!

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Could Aston Martin join forces with Red bull and bring Mercedes engines? Wild rumour

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/c...nd-mercedes-benz-be-a-winning-f1-combination/

 

Its an interesting concept and does have its merits, but I fail to see how Aston Martin could fund such a programme alongside their sports cars programme. In addition, another Merc partnership can not be healthy for the sport as a whole as we are getting closer and closer to a one make series. Whilst Honda's plight has undoubtedly highlighted the risk and heightened caution from any would be engine suitors, if the VW group can not be tempted with a rumoured 400+ million a year budget on their Le Mans projects (Circa 250 million in Audi alone!), I fail to see - what is in comparison a minnow - how Aston Martin could realistically compete and gain from such a venture.

 

I don't see that having an engine manufacturer dominate is necessarily a bad thing, provided there is more than one team competing at the front.

It is the general lack of competition to one team alone that is causing some fans to turn off.

Remember, Cosworth dominated the sport for many years, but with lots of teams, so the fact they all had the same engine was neither here nor there, there was at least competition amongst the teams which gave good racing.

If Mercedes are happy to let Red Bull have their engines, maybe under an Aston rebrand, then go for it, and well done to Mercedes for 'allowing' another top team to have a go at them. Not that they are adverse to this as they showed with McLaren for many years when they kicked the ass of Mercs own works team.

 

Does anyone know how long the Sauber drivers have on their contracts? Sirotkin has been quite impressive in GP2 lately and I think he could probably take Ericsson's place soon?

 

If Sirotkin can bring in more money than the other two, am sure either of their contracts could mysteriously disappear.

 

Good point, but I get the feeling (as Ron has eluded to) that with Merc being a manufacturer as opposed to an engine supplier that there may/will always be evolutionary priorities over 3rd part teams.