We’ve had our fair share of stupid moments in F1 this year and Andrew Davies has rounded up some of the best (or worst)…
Christian Horner started the year as he meant to go on by refusing to turn down the fuel flow on Daniel Ricciardo’s car at the Australian Grand Prix. Red Bull didn’t accept the figures from the new FIA-approved fuel flow meter and decided to go on their own readings. And so Daniel’s debut podium at his home race was ruined. (Little did he know that this was just a temporary blip in his meteoric progress).
Bernie Ecclestone was full of throwaway remarks in 2014, one of which was “we don’t need the small teams” and that the small teams were “like women who overspend on their credit cards”.
Bernie was famously against the reduced sound produced by the new hybrid engines. He soon rallied his comrades to join in the criticism, such as Ron Walker promoter of the Australian GP. Ferrari’s Luca Montezemolo didn’t like them either and on the eve of the Bahrain Grand Prix described the new F1 as “like taxi cab racing”. We then had one of the greatest taxi cab races of all time and Luca shut up.
It certainly wouldn’t have happened after the Japanese Grand Prix, but at the German Grand Prix, Adrian Sutil spun his Sauber at the exit of the final corner and Race Director Charlie Whiting didn’t bother putting a Safety Car out to recover it. Instead it was recovered under waved yellows. Afterwards some of the drivers expressed surprise seeing as in the past there have been Safety Cars for “a piece of a front wing” on the track.
Colin Kolles led a ‘group of investors’ who wanted to take over Caterham, except they didn’t want to invest enough to buy it outright from Tony Fernandes. The team then faltered and failed – and despite the usual ‘interested parties’ circling aound, as of yet, a blue chip investor has failed to appear.
He may be 84 but he’s still down with the kids. No, hang on, he’s down on the kids. Bernie Ecclestone doesn’t want to make F1 exciting to a new generation of F1 fans, he told the press he wasn’t interested in attracting teenagers.
We had an amazing race for the Russian GP at Sochi, where Nico Rosberg pitted for tyres at the end of the opening lap and then drove the rest of the race on the same set. It was a massive misjudgement of the tarmac surface by Pirelli who confessed they hadn’t actually tested it out beforehand. The result was a snore-athon.
In the battle over the 2015 engine regulations – freezing and unfreezing – Christian Horner aired a suggestion that was as convincing as his 2014 beard. That we switch back to the old V8 engines. Hardly the pinnacle of motorsport, that… When Red Bull came into F1 as a team owner Christian said they were going to bring the fun back and certainly his facial fungus along with that suggestion put a smile on a lot of people’s faces.
Marco Mattiacci was new to the sport in his short stay at Ferrari for 2014, but he did manage to stay long enough to question the single most unquestionable thing. Is Fernando Alonso motivated enough? Having beaten up his team-mate in Team-Mate Wars 16-3 this year, having carried the Scuderia’s season in 2014, it was the craziest thing.
McLaren failed to re-sign Jenson Button before the end of the season. They may still do it, but it’s been a PR disaster. For this most British of teams to treat a national hero as though he were seasonal staff, shows a lack of respect and forward planning. Jenson’s been all over British TV this year advertising Santander, so to suddenly drop him is not the best of messages for the bank, either. He may be a star of the future, but nobody’s going to take out a 1-2-3 account after listening to Kevin Magnussen…
Related Link
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