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Archive: business

The bad and ugly sides of the new F1 teams

5 March 2010 00:54

Categories: Formula 1

Yesterday, I began looking at this year’s new F1 teams. This was following Ferrari’s controversial blog post and the news surrounding some of the new teams that has dominated the F1 news websites.

Yesterday I looked at the good aspect of the process — the relative success of Lotus and Virgin. Today, I turn my attention to the bad and ugly sides.

The bad side of the process

Campos’s fall from grace

It is unfortunate for Campos. At first they were regarded as among the most credible of the new teams. But unfortunately the money seems not to have been coming in. It looks as though the team has been saved. This week, as part of the process, its name was changed to Hispania. And today the car was finally launched.

But the car won’t get any proper running until it arrives in Bahrain for the first race, which doesn’t bode well. The last time a Formula 1 team turned up to a race without having tested was Lola in 1997. Running up to six seconds off the pace, the Lola remains one of the worst F1 cars of recent years.

Campos had previously run a successful GP2 team, and had signed a big name driver in the shape of Bruno Senna. For whatever reason, though, the prospect hasn’t brought in the sponsors.

Up until very recently, the driver line-up was still uncertain. For a period, it seemed as though Bruno Senna wasn’t safe. I do wonder if, counter-intuitively, Bruno Senna has been hindered by his name.

I have an immense amount of admiration for Bruno Senna. For my money, he was the class of the GP2 field in 2008. Yet, look at the other GP2 drivers from that season who have made the transition to F1 on more solid foundations: Lucas di Grassi, Romain Grosjean, Sébastien Buemi, Vitaly Petrov. Now you can add Karun Chandhok to that list.

I guess teams avoided hiring Bruno Senna for fear of being accused of only signing him up because of his name. So instead, shaky drivers like Jaime Alguersuari get parachuted in.

Hopefully Bruno Senna will be able to make something out of this mess. Considering he was unable to race for ten years in his youth due to his family’s wishes, he has done an amazing job to become as good as he is.

The situation at Campos / Hispania has been messy, and it’s clear that the team almost failed to make it. But it looks as though things are coming together. The new team principal Colin Kolles has experience in running a lean team from his Midland / Spyker / Force India days. Meanwhile, former Red Bull and BAR / Honda technical director Geoff Willis is also linked to the team.

We’ll have to wait and see if the Dallara chassis is any good. But while Campos were unable to pay the bills, there can’t have been too much work being done on it.

USF1: Another kick in the teeth for American F1 fans

The situation is even worse for USF1. Regarded very early on as a clown-like team, things have gone from bad to worse. It has to be said that Peter Windsor often comes across as someone with a rather child-like over-enthusiasm. Apparently we can add child-like naivety to his list of qualities too.

It seems as though Peter Windsor was genuinely the last person in the world to twig that USF1 wouldn’t arrive in Bahrain with a car. Stories from disgruntled USF1 employees have been leaking out for weeks now. The verdict on his management of the team, along with that of his business partner Ken Anderson, is damning.

With just weeks to go until the first race in Bahrain, USF1 was left with no car, and having done no testing. Peter Windsor was allegedly in tears when he broke the news to its sole announced driver, José María López (a driver who, incidentally, has not raced an open-wheel single-seater in anger for four years). He has apparently been lying low, having not been seen at the factory recently.

This week, when USF1′s employees were finally put out of their misery and told that the game was up, neither Peter Windsor nor Ken Anderson were present. When considering also the news that USF1 apparently had offers to save the team, but the shareholders rebuffed all of these efforts, I begin to assume that this entire exercise was all about ego, and nothing to do with any of the patriotic clap-trap they came out with.

Yesterday, the FIA finally kicked them out of the championship, too late for a more credible team such as Lola or Prodrive to be brought in. That didn’t stop one shady outfit from sniffing around though…

The ugly side of the process

Second hand car business Stefan GP

Serbian outfit Stefan, led by Zoran Stefanović, originally attempted to enter F1 along with the other teams last summer. It was not viewed as credible by anyone. It was noted that the way Stefan went about securing an entry was rather unconventional. For instance, they did their best to upset the FIA by complaining about the entry process itself — which won’t exactly get you in the FIA’s good books.

However, fast forward to this winter. Quietly, Stefan has secured the intellectual property to Toyota’s car, with the manufacturer having recently pulled out. Clearly, actually having a car is a fairly good weapon in an F1 team’s arsenal, particularly considering that certain teams (not naming any names, but I’m talking about USF1) did not even have a car, despite having been preparing for at least a year.

With the shit hitting the fan at USF1′s factory in Charlotte, Bernie Ecclestone was apparently trying to help Stefan make it onto the grid in an attempt to keep the field full. The trouble was that, despite having a car, Stefan still wasn’t terribly credible.

Their preferred form of communication was by bizarre press releases bemoaning everyone and everything in broken English. And when they attempted to test their car a couple of weeks ago, everything was all set, apart from the minor fact that they forgot to arrange a tyre supply!

And I hardly know where to begin with the drivers Stefan are rumoured to have been talking to — the likes of Jacques Villeneuve and Ralf Schumacher. Michael Schumacher’s comeback is cynical enough, but at least he is talented and has the ability to come back after a few years away. Jacques Villeneuve couldn’t even spend half a season away in 2004 without coming back even worse than normal.

All-in-all, this entire process hasn’t been F1′s proudest moment. And Formula 1 in recent years is littered with bad news. Here is hoping that Jean Todt will manage to bring some sense into the FIA’s processes. I won’t hold my breath though.

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The state of the new teams (part 1)

3 March 2010 21:00

Categories: Formula 1

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Ferrari have raised eyebrows by choosing to speak the truth about the new teams in Formula 1:

This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

This week, that fourth team — USF1 — finally threw in the towel, after weeks (indeed, months) of speculation. And this evening they have been officially removed from the entry list. But I’ll discuss USF1 in further detail later.

However, this news once again shines the spotlight on the new teams, and the FIA’s process for selecting them. Right from the beginning there was controversy surrounding some of the choices. There is also the fact that new entrants were seemingly forced to use Cosworth engines.

It is worth remembering that there were at least two highly credible entries that were rejected by the FIA, to the surprise of many. David Richards and his Prodrive operation has been looking at entering F1 for years, and indeed had a slot on the 2008 grid until the future of customer cars was thrown into doubt. Lola were another highly credible entry with the ability to field a strong car.

So, what’s going on with the new teams? In this short series of articles I will take a brief look at the five main protagonists — Lotus and Virgin (the good side of the process), USF1 and Campos (the bad side) and Stefan (the ugly side).

The good side of the process

The Lotus position: last?

Lotus driver Jarno Trulli openly admits that the team expects to turn up at Bahrain four seconds off the pace. And yesterday Heikki Kovalainen back-pedalled from comments attributed to him that this year’s Lotus is worse than the Minardi he tested in 2003. The Finn claims the comments have been taken out of context.

Nonetheless, for my money the Lotus team has good long-term prospects. The jury is out on Mike Gascoyne’s abilities as a technical director. He is well regarded and appears to do a good job, but critics point out that he has never produced a World Championship-winning car.

Lotus are at pains to point out that they have had just five months to create this F1 car. That is nowhere near long enough to produce a competitive package. In the long term, they could be headed for a respectable role in the midfield.

The driver line-up of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen is unadventurous, but at least it is credible. Trulli and Kovalainen have both won just one race each, and neither is particularly convincing during the race. But at least they are two established and experienced drivers.

Virgin’s CFD gamble

Virgin — the Richard Branson-backed F1 entry of Manor which has been highly successful in lower formulae — has taken a gamble by exclusively using CFD to design the car, without ever having put the car in a wind tunnel. The car has been blighted by several reliability issues, while typically lapping five or six seconds off the pace. If testing form is anything to go by, there is little for the team to be optimistic about.

On the plus side, they have a credible driver pairing in the former Toyota driver Timo Glock and experienced GP2 racer Lucas di Grassi. Perhaps more important, given the current climate, is the fact that the team appears to have been highly successful in attracting sponsorship. I guess sponsors are magnetically attracted to the golden Virgin brand.

Lotus and Virgin are the two teams that are described by Ferrari as “limping” into the start of the championship. That is the best side of the new teams. The other two new teams, Campos and USF1, have both teetered on the brink of collapse. But that is for the next article…

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Fondly remember the past of ITV? Try living with STV today

30 January 2010 00:50

Categories: Entertainment, Media, Nostalgia, Scotland, Television, The Pod Delusion

This the accompanying article to my contribution to this week’s edition of The Pod Delusion. Parts of it are based on a previous article, What is STV playing at?

You can listen to the full podcast below.

In a recent episode of The Pod Delusion, Mark Thompson spoke about the good old days when ITV was still a federation of regional television stations. He outlined how, in England and Wales over the past ten or fifteen years, ITV’s regional diversity has given way to a bland umbrella brand.

But not all of the nooks on the ITV network have succumbed to the juggernaut. Four of the ITV regions are still independently owned, and three avoid using the ITV brand. In the Channel Islands, Channel Television still owns the franchise, even though it uses ITV1 branding. But in Northern Ireland, viewers are greeted by idents for UTV. And where I live, in Scotland, the two ITV regions operate as STV.

I can say with authority, given that I live here, that the reality of regional broadcasting on Channel 3 is not quite as rosy as Mark Thompson would like to remember. It certainly is not as quaint and charming as the ITV we remember from our youth — and, incidentally, it was delightful to hear the idents and jingles during Mark’s report.

Sadly, STV is a bit of a basket case. Apparently strapped for cash, for the past year or two it has been embroiled in a dispute with ITV plc that has only served to disadvantage viewers. ITV is trying to gain money that has been allegedly been owed by STV for over ten years. Meanwhile, STV is dropping as many ITV programmes as it can get away with in an apparent attempt to stop owing any more money.

This means that many of the ITV network’s most popular drama programmes have been dropped by STV. This has left Scottish viewers with no options if they want to watch some of the best British commercial television programmes.

Publicly, STV say this is all a brave stance for regional broadcasting in Scotland. That does not really explain why most of the replacements have been cheap imports, films and repeats. As amusing as South Park may be, it is not exactly an adequate replacement for the likes of Kingdom. Incidentally, South Park is seemingly supposed to count as Scottish programming because, in the words of STV director of broadcast services Bobby Hain, it is “mischievous and cheeky… just like the Scottish people.”

Bobby Hain often singles out Al Murray for particular criticism. He reckons that Scots cannot relate to a comedy cockney landlord, forgetting that there is in fact nothing Scots enjoy more than laughing at English stereotypes.

This strategy certainly is not being done for the benefit of the Scottish people. We can tell this because the ratings have largely fallen through the floor. Infamously, STV once ditched Agatha Christie’s Marple in favour of the film Blue Crush — because crap surfing movies set in Hawaii are really Scottish, right? It was a disaster for STV. You could almost have squeezed the viewers into a large football stadium. With just 6% of Scottish television viewers watching it, this made it the least watched of the five main channels in Scotland.

STV have recently broadcast Fitz, the woeful 1990s American remake of Cracker. Presumably they have done this because it is supposed to count as Scottish, despite the fact that it is American. In fact, Fitz more accurately describes what STV viewers go through when they realise that their favourite programme has been replaced by a low budget michty-me, jings, crivvens and help ma boab bag of shite.

Because when STV are showing “regional” programming, it is a parochial embarrassment. One of the programmes it’s pushing most is The Hour. Imagine a cross between The One Show and Live From Studio Five, with a twentieth of the budget and presented from a shed. That barely describes the horror.

In the evenings, STV broadcasts STV Casino. This is the sort of gambling programme I railed against in a previous edition of The Pod Delusion.

More ambitiously, STV sought to find out the Greatest Scot. Among the nominees for the title was John Logie Baird, the inventor of the television. What Logie Baird can’t have foreseen was that his compatriots would be unable to watch anything decent on it.

Soon enough, STV will run out of “Scottish” topics to make programmes about. What next? The History of the Word ‘Outwith‘? Barry Ferguson’s Greatest V-Signs? Susan Boyle’s Ten Favourite Ditches?

Maybe there will be a celebration of the Scots language and / or dialect, with a version of Countdown played in the Scots tongue. Sadly, the only exciting action would be a Buckfast-fuelled brawl surrounding the precise spelling of words like ‘airse’ (‘erse’?) and ‘bawbag’ (‘ba’bag’?).

This new found love for “local” programming really is rich coming from STV. This is a station that, just a few years ago, would do anything to avoid showing locally produced programmes. It transparently sought to meet its quota of regional programmes with cynical late-night repeats of Weir’s Way and extra editions of Scotland Today Interpreted For The Deaf.

This all makes me wonder just what the ‘S’ in STV stands for. Is it ‘Scottish’? Or is it ‘stultifying’? ‘Stupid’? ‘Sellotape’? In fact, I think it’s probably ‘shite’.

Mark Thompson’s idea is a nice one, but is based on a rose-tinted view rather than the reality we Scots have to live with just now. It is true that something needs to change in order for ITV to survive. But the solution to that is surely obvious when you think about it — they should bring back Blockbusters.

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Mercedes Schumacher move – crass marketing stunt

23 December 2009 12:33

Categories: News, Opinion

After weeks of speculation, it is set to be revealed today that Michael Schumacher has signed a three year deal with for Mercedes. The rumour first surfaced when Eddie Jordan opened his notoriously big mouth. Everyone laughed at the time, but as the weeks went on it became clearer that the prospect was serious.

By my reckoning, this is the first major decision taken by Mercedes since they bought the Brawn team. I feel that it is very revealing about the way a manufacturer approaches Formula 1, as opposed to a privateer team that is in it for the racing. While the lure of attracting the sport’s biggest name must surely attract any team owner, only a manufacturer would set their sights so firmly on the notion.

After all, aside from his reputation, there does not seem to be much going for Schumacher. At 41, he will be the oldest F1 driver since Nigel Mansell in 1995 — and we all know how that went. And it is difficult to think of someone who has taken a sabbatical of three years and made a successful return to F1.

Furthermore, I would have thought that after the embarrassing spectacle of the summer, when Schumacher threatened to return to race for Ferrari before deciding he wasn’t up to the task, he everyone concerned would have learnt their lesson. Michael Schumacher is struggling with what are now quite well-documented fitness problems.

His neck issues are now well publicised. James Allen revealed earlier this year that Schumacher also had problems with his back towards the end of his career in 2005.

With so many question marks surrounding his abilities, I find it difficult to see the justification for expecting Michael Schumacher to be truly competitive. There is no doubt that Michael Schumacher is the most successful driver of all time, certainly as far as statistics go. But the conditions surely just aren’t right for him to make a competitive return.

Yet, as we can all see, the prospect of Michael Schumacher returning to F1 generates a tremendous amount of publicity. It makes little sense in terms of racing, but in terms of marketing the possibility is apparently irresistible.

In other words, Schumacher is coming back to F1 for all the wrong reasons. And Mercedes have signed him for all the wrong reasons.

This move seems to be little more than a crass marketing stunt by Mercedes. Brawn would not have made this decision. Nor would any team other than Ferrari. Even Ferrari went off the idea after this year’s shenanigans.

I must say that I am disappointed in Mercedes. Throughout their involvement in F1 in the past couple of decades, they have seemed to be a very sensible operation indeed. They were a world away from the attention-seeking but ultimately hollow nature of other manufacturers, notably Toyota and Honda.

But as soon as they have been released from the leash of McLaren, Mercedes have revealed their mad side. This is a decision made by money-men, and I would be amazed if this approach doesn’t end in tears like it has done for Toyota and Honda.

I am also stunned at Michael Schumacher’s decision to bite. Just a few months ago he was talking about his flirtation with replacing Felipe Massa as though it was a moment of madness. Now he has let the blood rush to his head again and is putting his considerable reputation on the line.

It also reveals his supposed passion and love for Ferrari to be just as shallow as his sportsmanship. As soon as another company will promise to stuff more money into his wallet, he will move like a shot. Very passionate, very romantic!

This whole thing comes across to me as the world’s most public mid-life crisis.

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Brawn — another historic name disappears

16 November 2009 21:58

Categories: History, News, Opinion

Okay, so Brawn may only have been in Formula 1 for less than one year. But undoubtedly it is a name and a team that will go down in history.

There was a magnetic attraction to the Cinderella story that was the life of Brawn GP. Until March, the existence of the former Honda team hung in the balance. A last-minute lifeline and some punchy Mercedes engines (which required the incredible generosity of McLaren) saved the day for the employees at Brackley.

The car turned out to be devastatingly quick. In its short life, the Brawn team achieved some juicy records. This made it, by many measures, the most successful new team there has ever been in F1. Today it secures a status as the only team ever to have a 100% championship-winning record.

The shortest-lived legendary team

Despite a lifespan of less than a year, Brawn will go down in legend. Its rapid success ensured that it had become a household name. And its livery — with the distinctive chartreuse swooshes highlighted by bold, black borders — will surely become as iconic as a JPS livery, a Marlboro livery or a Gulf livery.

People quickly became attached to the Brawn colours. Just look at how many of this year’s F1 books are decked out in a snot green that tries to replicate the fluorescence of the car itself. It is such a strong image.

A livery change was widely expected as soon as Brawn started to get more sponsors. But a livery change never happened. Despite the fact that most of Brawn’s sponsors over the 2009 season actually had red logos, thereby clashing awkwardly with the neon yellow, Brawn stuck with the original livery because it worked so well.

Mercedes to ignore Brawn heritage?

Maybe I am over-egging the pudding a little. But I genuinely think the sport has lost an icon. Today’s announcement that the Brawn team will be bought by Mercedes brings to an end this incredible story of the plucky underdogs who won against all odds.

It is yet another stage in the rollercoaster existence of the Brackley-based team whose history can be traced back to Tyrrell. In the past five years alone, the team has been owned by British American Tobacco, Honda and Brawn. The Mercedes era should finally bring some stability to this team.

Mercedes Grand Prix possible livery

In its press release today, Mercedes has included a mock-up of the sort of livery it presumably wants to run with next season. All trace of the Brawn heritage has apparently vanished.

Maybe I am just too romantic for my own good. But I would like to see the splashes of Brawn chartreuse remain, with the rest of the car remaining silver. After all, the current McLaren livery has “Rocket Red” in more or less the same places as Brawn’s chartreuse.

There is much talk about how the “return” Mercedes to F1 as a works team will mean a return of the legendary “Silver Arrows”. That’s funny, because I seem to remember everyone saying the same thing when McLaren switched to a silver livery in 1997. Maybe it doesn’t count any more.

McLaren’s colours: If not silver, what?

Speaking of McLaren’s silver livery, their press release today says that it will remain the same. Against expectations, McLaren have extended their engine deal with Mercedes to now last until 2015. But Daimler AG will be selling back the bit of McLaren that they own, and McLaren will become a Mercedes customer team rather than the pseudo-works team they had become.

As speculation increased over the past week or so, I began to wonder what colour scheme McLaren would adopt were they to part ways with Mercedes. Obviously that is a bit academic now, but it’s interesting to think about.

Nowadays most people think of McLaren as a silver (or, for the less charitable among us, grey) team. But it is probably more accurate to think of McLaren’s main colour as being red.

Red is the most prominent colour of the most evocative McLaren livery — the famous Marlboro scheme it ran in its 1980s heyday. Historically, McLaren ran with an orange livery.

The team describes the red colour that features in today’s livery as “Rocket Red”. It is not a scarlet or a Ferrari red. It is rather orangey, perhaps in a nod to the team’s history running in orange.

In recent years, McLaren have been known to run test cars in an orange livery from time to time. It would be really neat if McLaren toned down the “Rocket Red” a notch or two, and made its colour orange once again.

Or am I just being too romantic again? Maybe not. It is a good sign that McLaren Automotive use orange prominently in their marketing.

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