Draco-REX Posted March 17, 2012 Report Share Posted March 17, 2012 F1 2012 is on! I forgot to post this earlier, so qualifying is over, but the first race is tomorrow! New rule changes, some driver shuffling, and the shadow of Vettel and Red Bull Racing looming. McLaren and Ferrari are confident they can challenge RBR this year. And a lot of people think Mercedes may be surprisingly good this year. Oh, and Formula 1 comes to the US this year, 11/18 in Austin TX. ..if they finish building it in time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crossle Posted March 17, 2012 Report Share Posted March 17, 2012 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draco-REX Posted March 17, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 17, 2012 :megusta: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draco-REX Posted March 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 18, 2012 Wow.. got caught up and finished watching qualifying. SPOILER: This season is not going to be Red Bull dominated unless Newey has another epiphany. I can't believe a Lotus and a Mercedes qualified ahead of both RB8s. McLaren is looking really fast again. Ferrari is in even worse shape than they were last year. Domenicali is going to EXPLODE. Mercedes has a trick up its sleeve. I'm sure it won't stay secret for much longer. F1 2012 should be really exciting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturg1647545502 Posted March 19, 2012 Report Share Posted March 19, 2012 pretty much http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2012/03/formula-one%E2%80%99s-unlikely-juggernaut?fsrc=scn/fb/wl/bl/fizzyfrontrunner FOR the last two years, Formula One racing’s grandest names have put up with an upstart Austrian drinks brand literally running rings around them. Red Bull Racing, named after Red Bull, a best-selling energy drink which goes well with vodka, won both the constructors’ and drivers’ championships in 2010 and 2011. The team entered the sport just six years earlier. As this year’s season starts on March 18th with the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, Red Bull Racing is the strong favourite to win for a third year. For Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes, some of the most storied and long-established teams in the sport, watching Red Bull triumph again would be a catastrophe. Unlike Red Bull, after all, they have cars to sell. As Lewis Hamilton, McLaren’s driver, put it last year, dismissing Red Bull as just a drinks company, “Our teams have got status they would like to keep”. Dieter Mateschitz, the Austrian entrepreneur who created and marketed the drink, started Red Bull racing in 2004 when he bought the Jaguar team from Ford. Jaguar had never won a Grand Prix. In 2005 Red Bull’s newly signed driver, David Coulthard, admitted that for Red Bull, winning a race was just a “pipe dream”. How did they do it? According to Christian Horner, the team’s manager, Jaguar had a revolving door at the top, no technical direction and was failing to work well as a team. With Ford as its boss, it had a big-company mentality. Mr Mateschitz and Mr Horner, on the other hand, have a reputation for giving people freedom and stability. Mr Horner’s big coup was undoubtedly hiring Adrian Newey, Formula One’s foremost car designer, away from McLaren. Mr Newey was the brilliant boffin behind a long succession of wins by the Williams team in the early 1990s, but had not recently won with McLaren. “He was tired of the environment at McLaren and joining a new outfit reminded him of his early career,” says Mr Horner. Mr Newey’s reported pay package of £7m ($11m) also played a part, leading some to mutter that Red Bull Racing’s success is chiefly due to the prodigious sums of money that Mr Mateschitz, whose company had revenues of €3.8 billion ($5 billion) in 2010, is able to pump into the team for staff, technology and race simulations. The size of the budget has already caused controversy: late last year Red Bull Racing, along with Ferrari, pulled out of the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) in part because it disagreed with the spending restrictions FOTA had imposed. Mr Horner notes that Red Bull Racing’s budget is only the third or fourth-largest in the circuit. Several car manufacturers who have entered the sport in recent years spent a fortune and achieved little. Toyota, BMW and Honda, which all left Formula One during the financial crisis, never attained anything like Red Bull’s succes. And Sebastian Vettel, the reigning champion, was not poached away from another team, like Mr Newey, but instead came up through Mr Mateschitz’s own junior driver development programme. This season’s big question is whether, after two remarkable years, Red Bull Racing still has the hunger to carry on winning against rivals who by now are desperate to knock it off the podium. Only three teams have ever won three constructors’ championships in a row: Williams, Ferrari and McLaren. Mr Mateschitz is certainly still committed to the sport. According to Christian Sylt, a racing journalist, the entrepreneur has spent some £400m on Red Bull Racing since 1994. That has been offset by the value of the advertising his fizzy drink has received from its association with the sport. Prize money helps too. That a brash newcomer can come in and wipe the floor with Formula One’s proud giants is part of what makes the sport so compelling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sturg1647545502 Posted March 19, 2012 Report Share Posted March 19, 2012 wat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Draco-REX Posted March 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted March 19, 2012 It's not going to be a breeze this year for RBR. But they can still do it. Newey is still a Master the likes of which you rarely see outside of a kung-fu movie. And Vettel is still a fantastic driver. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.