Becoming a bit like the Senna scenario between 1992 & 1993. Will he drive, won't he drive, he'll decide when he drives the new car.
The **** heap that Honda have given him this year means I think that's pretty fair. At the end of the day, if they deliver the same rubbish again whats the point in McLaren paying a huge salary of a World Champ driver powerless to make a blind bit of difference? It makes sense for all parties. Regardless of the struggle, it was and is the right decision to be a works team. Its an incredibly hard job yes, but look at the rubbish midfield at best performances from Williams, Force India and Lotus. The works team always hold the aces. It sounds to me like the Honda issues are not a million miles away from those that Ferrari had last year, and they made a huge step. The reliability is more of a concern than Ferrari though. Didnt Ferrari have the same ERS issue last year (as I remember Alonso being passed by a Caterham down the straight)?
I believe the Honda deal that Ron managed to negotiate means Honda pay Alonso's salary!!!!!!!!! I think Honda know exactly where they went wrong in their design. Turbo not big enough to harvest spare energy, 'battery' too small, and their many reliability issues. So with FIA changing to extra exhaust for wastegate Honda should have enough tokens to sort out most if not all of their performance issues. Hopefully they can sort reliability. I'm really hoping the 2016 PU from Honda is competitive. Maybe wishful thinking but 2016 could be a great season IF redbull get/create a decent pu, Honda get their act together, and Renault/Lotus get sorted. Could be great.......
Just read that 2016 All engine manufacturers will now have 32 tokens not 25 tokens! 25 in 2017 not 20, 20 in 2018 not 15, 15 in 2019 not 3! So 32 tokens plus changes to turbo to allow wastegate exhaust pipe. Hopefully this gives Honda the tokens they need plus helping Renault and Ferrari to get closer to Merc. Plus 'New engine manufacturers will be given 15 tokens in their first year and 32 in their second.' Which might give Red Bull more of an incentive to produce their own PU if they were not already working on one. One weird thing is FIA have published 21 race calendar with 'the European Grand Prix at Baku in Azerbaijan' a single week after Canada and clashing with LeMans. Then a 2 week gap to Austria!!! Seems a bit tight to block any drivers from LeMans!!! Really hoping 2016 will be more competitive.
Just read this on the BBC- great news for everyone concerned that engines can develop more freely in season. Finally a season where we aren't locked into a pecking order. Great news for Honda and Renault but it's still a massive task to close the gap enough for the racing to become close. In other news, U.S. GP in doubt due to. 20% cut in state funding. Hope they save it as its an absolute diamond of a track.
Seems like news is emerging on a few things. It is being reported that Renault have now signed to buy Lotus as they have an agreement with Bernie over historic payments (no mentions of what has been agreed). Tag Heuer is the brand name on the Red Bull PU. With Red Bull 'developing PU components' and guiding the development path. I assume this is one of the reasons for Bernie and Todt being given power to make changes? They have to report back by 16thJan16 and the changes if agreed by WMC by 31st Jan. Which is in time for Red Bull to use their Renault+ PU at the first tests!!!! Last snippet is the teams tyre selection will be made public 2 weeks before each race before that is will be secret!!!!
Indeed. My Counter proposal: 1) Give the teams a fixed number of each compound for races and quali 2) Teams can bring a maximum number of sets (about 8) to a race weekend. 3) Do what you like from there, use them all or don't. Run hards at Monaco and save super softs for other races. Etc. 4) Practice tyres are additional sets, unmarked and have to be nominated to Pirelli ahead of the weekend.
So Friday is official news day! Renault confirming their deal to buy Lotus, must be very welcome to all the staff especially just before xmas. Rumours are Renault have negotiated a similar historic payment figure that Williams receive. Red Bull finally announce that their PU will be Renault but with a Tag Heuer sticker placed over the Renault name. So that will obviously convince us all how good Tag Heuer watches are!!! Just buy cheapy watch mechanism and put it in a fancy case no one will ever know, only joking. Wonder how Bernies mate Rolex is feeling about Tag Heuer name attached to the Red Bull name? It seems that Illmor will work with Renault to develop the Renault PU. So I am guessing that along with the big hike in PU price that Red Bull will be paying they are also contributing to the development costs, maybe even developing components at their own facility? So Renault get more income from Red Bull plus benefit from Red Bull development work as you can't have 2 PU homologated by same manufacturer! Hope the Renault staff that negotiated both those deals are in for a great Xmas bonus. They must be happy to get a little payback for the way Red Bull publicly humiliated them. Then again if Renault had produced even a low power reliable PU their would have been nothing really for Red Bull to use against Renault. So probably call it quits now
More official news. Torro Rosso will use Ferrari PU but 2015 spec. Believed to be the spec that was used by Ferrari at the last race of 2015 i.e. the one Ferrari had to homologate. 2016 might be interesting watching the battle between Red Bull with their pseudo Renault PU vs Torro Rosso with their 2015 Ferrari engine. The 2015 Ferrari was more powerful than the Renault and TR chassis wasn't far off Red Bull. Could be fun.
This has a familiar ring to it.... Mercedes in "data theft" legal action against Ferrari-bound engineer
So if he had been able to take the information over, Ferrari would be thrown out of the 2016 championship for having that data? Probably not, because they're not called McLaren or managed by Ron Dennis. This was proved back in 2007 when FIA kicked McLaren out of the champtionship, but gave no punishment to Renault despite them having done, and admitted, the exact same thing. From a legal viewpoint, when does taking over intellectual property extend to what the engineer knows in his head?
The legal action would have to be with the employee - he either works for them or can't work for a competitor for a certain period of time. How can you sue him for taking his knowledge with him?
Thanks for working with Mercedes benz. Please look into this. You no longer remember any race data or any secrets of the the Mercedes AMG high performance engine. In fact you will be awful from now on.
Yes if he does anything for Ferrari on gardening leave, but once his contract is out, what is classed as intellectual property that he can't share with Ferrari and what is simply considered to be knowledge gained from his experience working for another team, which he can use?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/35041681 The BBC article suggests he took race data. I would imagine the cleverclogs at Ferrari could learn an awful lot from that. No wonder Merc want it back.
From my own area of expertise (chemistry), if I was to move companies and draw out a late-stage drug candidate from memory for my new employer, that'd create serious IP issues. But knowing how to make a drug dissolve better based on a feature of that drug candidate would be OK. To try and apply that to this example, I'd imagine recreating the latest Mercedes front wing from memory would be IP theft. But knowing the benefit of a feature if that front wing design, and displaying that knowledge would be fine.
Yellow is Haas' normal colour, right? Besides if Ferrari are prepared to lend them engineers and a wind tunnel, why not a colour?
