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Archive: Richard Branson

Blue flags debate reveals F1′s problem

5 October 2010 22:59

Categories: *, Formula 1

Two influential figures in Formula 1 have begun to argue in favour of getting rid of blue flags in F1. The problem is that neither appears to understand motorsport.

Both are businessmen who are in F1 to make more cash. They both also happen to be involved in F1 teams that are stuck at the back of the grid, so are more heavily disadvantaged by blue flags.

Tony Fernandes and Richard Branson are the ones calling for blue flags to be removed from the sport. But it’s funny, because I don’t remember Mr Branson being so concerned about blue flags not being “fun” enough when he was backing the championship-winning Brawn team last year.

The pair seem confused. They try to justify their stance by talking about how exciting it would be. Apparently it would increase overtaking! Er, no. Fans at home don’t think that Lewis Hamilton in 1st place is racing with Sakon Yamamoto in 21st place — because he isn’t! The idea that people would tune in for this, or derive entertainment from it, is nonsense.

Worst of all, an F1 without blue flags would be wide open to corruption. If you didn’t like the team orders controversy of Hockenheim, you had better cross your fingers that blue flags remain in F1. Because it would open up a situation that would be like team orders on steroids.

Take, for instance, the 1997 European Grand Prix. It is a weekend memorable for many reasons. How about that moment when Norberto Fontana, a lap down, held up Jacques Villeneuve but allowed Michael Schumacher to breeze by?

As Martin Brundle pointed out in his commentary as it happened, Fontana’s Sauber car was powered by a Ferrari engine. What a coincidence! Or was it? Nine years later, Fontana claimed that he was asked to do whatever he could to help Schumacher win the championship. It is an allegation that was denied by Jean Todt and Peter Sauber, but the suspicion remains.

Now let’s say — for the sake of argument — you have a backmarker team that is disgruntled with its current suppliers of engines and transmission systems. It is in negotiations with one front-running team to supply better engines, and another championship-leading team to supply a gearbox and hydraulic system. It might make the negotiations go more smoothly if the backmarker team could do certain things on the track to benefit particular front-running teams.

I’m not suggesting that any team would do that. But the scope would be there if any unscrupulous team wanted to do so.

It is true that backmarkers can be unfairly disadvantaged by blue flags. But this is an occupational hazard of motor racing. It is the case that the blue flag rules have become stricter in the past couple of decades or so. It may be a good idea to relax the rules a little. But blue flags have been a part of motor racing since the 1910s.

To talk about “the days of Ken Tyrrell” is a bit misguided in my view. In those days, blue flags may have worked well as a gentleman’s agreement. But that was in the days when there were still gentlemen in the sport. Today it’s full of money men constantly looking after their self interest.

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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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The (very brief) history of Virgin in F1

19 February 2009 19:35

Categories: History, News

There seems to be a fair bit of excitement in the F1 world over the idea that such a well-known brand as Virgin may associate itself with F1. Despite the megabucks involved in the F1 world, and the massive worldwide exposure it can provide any brand, it is fair to say that F1 has failed to attract most of the major brands in the world.

Aside from tobacco companies, a few alcohol companies, and latterly electronics firms and a few financial institutions, it is interesting quite how many big brands have never touched F1 with a barge pole. Coca-Cola? Nowhere to be seen. McDonald’s? Nope. Virgin? It could be about to happen.

It wouldn’t quite be the first time Virgin has been involved in F1. A few articles have pointed out that Virgin Mobile had a relatively minor deal with Jordan in 2002. That is the full extent of Richard Branson’s involvement in F1 to date.

There was something else in the back of my mind. I remember in 1999, Arrows (then led by the big-talking and ambitious Prince Malik ado Ibrahim) was very proud of itself for bringing the Virgin brand into F1 for the first time. It had secured a minor sponsorship deal with Virgin Records, whose logo appeared in a tiny red area just in front of the cockpit. You can just about see it if you use your imagination while looking at the picture on F1 Wolf’s 1999 liveries post.

But with the world of the Virgin brand being rather complex, Richard Branson had nothing to do with it. As this article on Grandprix.com, written when the deal was made ten years ago, points out, Virgin Records had been sold to EMI seven years earlier.

So if a deal between the Virgin Group and Honda goes ahead, it won’t be the first time Richard Branson has been involved in F1, and it certainly won’t be the first time the Virgin brand has been in F1. But such a deal would easily eclipse the earlier forays, so it will still be momentous for F1.

Not bad for a sport that’s supposed to be in the doldrums. No wonder Bernie Ecclestone is so enthusiastic about the prospective deal.

5 comments

Honda can't even leave F1 properly

18 February 2009 18:58

Categories: News, Opinion

I truly feel deeply sorry for anyone who follows / followed the Honda F1 team. The team has been a walking joke for years. The events of the past few months have shown that Honda can’t even disappear from F1 without making a total hash-job of it.

It wasn’t always like this. Of course, the BAR team was always a bit of a loony show. Expertly (ahem!) led by a ski instructor, the team was a shambles. They couldn’t even get their livery done correctly.

But things took an upswing towards the middle of this decade. David Richards hauled the team up the grid and in 2004 BAR’s performances were consistent enough to earn it 2nd place in the Constructors’ Championship on merit. Then David Richards left.

He was replaced with Nick Fry, a smirking, over-confident fool who seemingly couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. At round 4 of the 2005 Formula 1 Championship, the team was caught out when an illegal second fuel tank was discovered. After that point, the team’s performance plummeted for some reason.

Since then, Honda have bought the team outright. You would have thought that would be a good thing. Oh no. Those clever people decided to bring in a motorbike designer, Shuhei Nakamoto, with minimal experience with designing cars, as technical director. He replaced the perfectly competent Geoff Willis, who now works at Red Bull Racing. After Nakamoto’s disastrous design was unveiled, Honda spent two years in P-nowhere. Can’t think why.

2009 was supposed to be better than this. They had brought in Ross Brawn specifically to make 2009 better than this. This was going to be Honda’s big comeback year! We could see what the man who masterminded every single one of Michael Schumacher’s World Championships could do. Then Honda pulled the plug on the entire F1 project mere months before lift off.

Now, fair enough. Honda can’t exactly help economic circumstances and if they need to make cutbacks (even just for cosmetic reasons) then that is just the reality they face. But have they managed to do it in a vaguely dignified way? Of course not. This is the Honda F1 team. They make a botch job of everything.

If anyone can make head or tail of all the contradictory news stories about Honda that have emerged over the past week or so, could you please explain all because I am at a complete loss. The deadline of the end of January has long been forgotten about. The management buyout was supposed to have been done and dusted by now.

Now, having seen off all of the other potential buyers with all the talk of a management buyout, something seems to have gone badly wrong. Rumour after rumour has emerged over the past week or so, and it seems as though the Honda team don’t have a clue what they are doing.

A week or so ago I read that, despite the fact that things had gone quiet on the Honda front, things were looking up for the team. Since then, there has been an explosion of peculiar rumours that suggests that all is not well.

First of all, it was rumoured that Bruno Senna had signed for the team, that Honda would continue to supply limited funding and that Bernie Ecclestone would provide further financial backing. But it turned out that Bernie can’t supply funding to Honda, even if he wanted to.

Then we were told that Honda had secured backing for the first four races of the season, mostly as a result of funds raised from Petrobras via Bruno Senna. But the four races thing sounded ominously similar to Super Aguri’s 2008 season.

Petrobras poured cold water on the suggestions pretty quickly, pointing out that not only are they not interested in Honda, but they don’t do driver sponsorships either. So the rumours were a load of hogwash all along.

But all was not lost!, we were told. Honda were in talks with a major company that could provide solid backing and had a reputable brand that was known worldwide. James Allen revealed that the company could be Virgin. Grandprix.com outlined why a deal with Virgin could make sense, because of the links between Richard Branson, Adrian Reynard and the Honda F1 team.

But then Pitpass phoned up Virgin, whose Brand Development and Corporate Affairs Director, Will Whitehorn, was very negative about the idea. And that it was Honda who approached Virgin, not the other way round.

Now Reuters have reported that the deal is possibly on. The BBC have since reported that a Honda spokesperson has now confirmed that talks with Virgin are under way.

In out, in out, shake it all about. Part of me wonders if Honda are deliberately spreading these rumours just to try and generate some interest in the team. To be scrabbling around like this with mere weeks until the beginning of the season is not good.

Then there are the engines. Soon after Honda announced their withdrawal, Ross Brawn practically said that an engine deal with Ferrari was a given, which was news to the Scuderia. Now apparently only Mercedes are interested, and that is only if they can be guaranteed that Honda have “bulletproof” backing. Which Honda clearly do not have.

Even if they do get it together by the start of the season, Honda’s prospects for the 2009 season are utterly doomed. Even if the car is fundamentally good, the late change of engine supplier is bound to result in reliability problems, as pointed out by James Allen. Honda will also arrive in Melbourne having had very little testing.

It is such a shame. 2009 was supposed to be Honda’s comeback year. They had literally given up on 2008 so that they could focus on 2009, and I was genuinely excited to see what they could come up with. Unfortunately, if there is one thing you can rely on in F1, it is that Nick Fry and his merry men are 100% guaranteed to cock it up. What a shame.

See also F1 Wolf’s Honda rumours summary post

12 comments

The rebirth of Fopp (and the death of music retail?)

21 September 2007 10:51

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Edinburgh, Entertainment, General, Internet, Music, Personal, Scotland, Technology

The other day I took my first trip to Fopp since it re-opened. After Fopp’s flopp, HMV bought the name and six of the stores (a far cry from the 120-or-so stores there used to be). HMV probably bought it to stop Gordon Montgomery from making an easy comeback, but they have promised to run the remaining Fopp stores as Fopp themselves ran them.

Immediately people were wondering if HMV had bought the right stores. I guess they are in a much better position to know which stores are profitable and which are not. But they bought the Rose Street store in Edinburgh. It’s a good shop, but there are already two HMVs within a stone’s throw. The one on Cockburn Street was smaller but only has that dusty Avalanche for competition. And it was closer to the university, which, for purely self-interested reasons, made it automatically better for me.

Also, a lot of the point about Fopp was the fact that it wasn’t HMV. Nor was it some indie-wank shop. It was something in between, which I thought was just perfect.

During my trip there, I was pleased to see that almost nothing has changed in the Rose Street store. There are only very slight cosmetic differences that only the most anal people (like me) will notice. Price stickers are now HMV-style, as are the receipts. But apart from that, most things have pleasantly remained the same.

The prices are still in nice round numbers. There is none of that £X.99 nonsense. It feels good just to hand over a twenty and be done with the transaction with no fuss.

I did try to do my usual thing of looking for a cheap Can album, but although they had loads of Can albums, they were all £15! The same was true for Brian Eno. I guess it’s not inconceivable that this would have happened in the old Fopp, but it did ring a minor alarm bell. Hopefully it is just my imagination. Thankfully, in general, the prices are still pretty good. I bought four albums for £20 (including one Stereolab CD which was just £3! Bargain!), which is pretty good going.

There was something quite striking about my visit to Fopp though. I was browsing there in full knowledge that the shop was almost wiped off the face of the earth, so I was thinking about the business side of things as I was shopping. The thing I noticed above everything else was that almost every single other customer there was a middle-aged man. I was probably the youngest person in the shop. It’s true — kids just don’t buy music these days.

On my way down to Rose Street, I passed the folk specialist Coda store on Bank Street. I wondered to myself, “I wonder how long before that goes?” In fact, I have often wondered that to myself over the years (before today’s music retail woes), but that probably shows my narrow-mindedness about folk music. Today, I suppose most of its customers will be the more loyal middle-aged men. That was probably a curse just a few years ago. It’s surely a blessing now!

I am a big fan of the CD format, and I love to have a physical copy of any music that I have. Then it feels like I really own it, and is a signal that I really value the music rather than just downloading any old crappy MP3 and throwing it in the recycle bin if I don’t like it.

It’s a bit like a story I read about in a very exciting book called A Logic of Expressive Choice by Alexander A. Schuessler. It’s a bit dry, but it has some neat examples to demonstrate its points.

(I don’t have the book to hand, so my memory of this example is quite sketchy, but you will get the general idea.) One of them involved a man who, every year, would camp outside to buy tickets to something or other. He waited an extraordinarily long time to ensure that he was at the front of the queue so that he could get the best tickets.

One year the venue decided to just give him the best tickets anyway, as a kind of token of appreciation (or probably as a publicity stunt). The man was outraged and refused to accept the tickets. For him, his value came from the waiting, not from acquiring the tickets themselves. He took pride in waiting for ages. It was his way of saying to the world, “Look how much I love this thing! I will wait for ages to make sure I see it!” When the theatre offered him the tickets, he was robbed of his chance to express himself in this way.

I think I am the same with music. Sure, I could illegally download every song in existence for free. I could even download them legally and pay for them. But I wouldn’t have anything to show for it. I like to look at my music collection and think to myself, “blimey, I’ve got quite a lot of CDs now”. Even though this means that I am losing space in my room.

I think most people growing up these days won’t value music like this. They have access to far more music than they can possibly consume, and they just do it. They just download disposable albums without thinking about it and don’t give the music their full attention. (I can see myself as an old man with my pipe and slippers, fondly remembering the days of CDs, when youths respected music.)

But a lot of people are saying that CDs are doomed. Vinyl will still have its niche, but CDs won’t be around any longer. Imagine that! I could end up having the opposite dilemma to the previous generation — I will have to convert my entire CD collection into vinyl!

As much as I dislike this situation, it has to be said that there is not much going for music retailers these days. They are dropping like flies. And when they are not dropping like flies, they are hurriedly rearranging their deckchairs in preparation for the sinking.

HMV has launched its “next generation” stores. “Download hubs”, “gaming stations” and smoothie bars. Just don’t mention music.

Richard Branson has just sold his Virgin music stores. This is incredible because it is the first time in three decades that Richard Branson hasn’t had his fingers in the music retail pie. It was music retail where he started, so for Virgin to be pulling out of it altogether, you know that things are just not going well at all in the music retail world.

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