Formula One is an expensive business.
Teams employ hundreds of staff and spend millions of pounds not just in travelling round and round the world to compete in the 19 races but also in developing their cars day and night to stay on the pace.
A resource restriction agreement limits the number of staff sent to races and puts constraints on the use of tools like wind tunnels and CFD computers back at base, but there is still a massive cost involved just to … More
s Formula One expands its reach into the United States, there’s still a missing ingredient that could keep some fans away from the stands – an American driver on the grid.
There hasn’t been an American in Formula One since 2007 when Scott Speed drove for Toro Rosso. But the pressure is building for an American to make the jump now that the United States successfully hosted the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, last year and is set to hold second grand prix in New Jersey as soon as 2014 … More
Mark Webber has announced that he will leave Formula 1 at the end of the season to join Porsche’s new LMP1 sports car program.
The Australian’s decision leaves the second Red Bull seat alongside world champion Sebastian Vettel available for 2014, with Kimi Raikkonen already strongly linked to the drive.
Webber was first linked to Porsche … More
Diversity is a good yardstick. The key to Le Mans’ success in influencing real-world motoring technology is diversity, even perversity. For the motor industry, Le Mans remains both a public stage and a sharp-end testbed that they can no longer find anywhere else in motorsport. That function certainly doesn’t exist in F1 any more, because F1 design and the race format are so far removed from everyday issues as to be essentially meaningless. In fact F1 barely does diversity at all any more, except on a molecular level.
The closest F1 came to true freedom in modern guise was the sometime choice between turbocharged and non-turbocharged engines, but it was invariably a financial necessity and long since gone. So what you get now is … More