Ferrari is set to launch its 2007 contender next Sunday January 14th. However, Autosport reports that the new car might not make it to the launch ceremony.
If the car doesn't make the showcase, the 2007 Driver line-up (the youngest Ferrari pairing since 1972) will provide something for photographers to snap. Unfortunately for our entertainment sake, new signing Kimi Raikonnen will have to sober-up and put on his corporate Finn-grin for the launch. If not Massa will just have to do all the talking.
In other Kimi news, some editors think that Kimi will seriously have to contemplate his partying ways if he is to be retained at the squad. After all, playboy Eddie Irvine did get the Scarlet axe - but was that down to his Saturday night antics or the fact that the boy lost the plot on the race track?
Kimi will win more races in his first Ferrari season than Eddie did his whole career (that being a massive 4 GPs), so the SOC isn't really worried about his success. As we have seen before, he doesn't lack in the courage or speed department. The only missing element is if he can build a team with Massa & Co.
The 29th edition of the famous Paris Dakar Rally kicked off today. This year's route actually starts in Lisbon, then hops over the Straights of Gibraltar for stages in Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, and Senegal, before the traditional finish in Dakar. As always, the field is a mix of super powerful SUV-ish things, gigantic trucks, and burly bikes. Contesting the premier category this year will be VW, Mitsubishi, and BMW, plus a few buggies and other oddities. In the bikes, the KTM is considered the make the beat, while in trucks, it will invariably be some chain-smoking ex-Sov bloc types who win.
The Dakar Rally is the last corner of motorsport that retains the level of danger that used to be found on the grand prix tracks of old. Fatalities are common, especially amongst the bikes, and huge shunts happen with terrifying frequency. Just ask Colin McRae, who had the biggest wreck of his career in the 2005 edition. Besides the element of danger, the other interesting part of the event is the contrast between the spectacular African terrain and the cars. Its a photographers dream event. Every day there are scenes of big trucks flying through African villages, while villagers look on in amusement. I've actually read some fairly compelling stuff that regards the Dakar as one of the last remaining examples of euro colonialism of Africa. White men engaged in leisure while the natives suffer, etc, etc...I frankly don't buy it because the commitment of these competitors is total, and the rally organization is actually quite active channeling development and aid money to the areas it visits.
Today's first stage was won by homeboy Carlos Sousa driving one of the new Touareg 2s. Vee Dub actually locked down the top five places. Former WRC ace Carlos Sainz sits third, just ahead of European Parliament member and Climbdance star Ari Vatanen. A Portuguese also took top honors in the bike category on a Yamaha, while a freaky deaky Dutchman won the first stage in the truck category.
Versus is taking time out from their busy Bull Riding, Bar B Que, and Hockey schedule to show daily Dakar highlights (just kidding, VS is the home of Mr. Suitcase of Courage, and we love ya). Here's the full schedule, starting today at 3pm EST.
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway CEO Joie Chitwood is set to hold a lecture talk in the coming months to determine the future of the U.S. Grand Prix at Indy for 2008 and beyond. It will be aptly titled "The Future of Formula One Racing in the United States" and be addressed to young and eager whippersnappers at Marian College in Indianapolis.
For over the last half-decade, Tony George has been pouring cash into this venture and despite that it's the largest attended Grand Prix on the calendar, it's hemorrhaging capital faster than Michelin tires explode. USGP at Indy is a prospective cash cow that's potential has yet to be realized but now is in danger of being omitted from the calendar altogether. The event was temporarily saved from the guillotine by Tony George with a one-off deal for the 2007 race.
That said, IMS CEO Joie Chitwood is one of Tony George's best troops. Unlike most of the number-crunching crass robots running IMS, he is a man solely concerned with entertaining fans. If he learned one thing from his stuntman/racer father, he knows how important it is to entertain the masses through spectacle.
A conference to discuss the future of F1 at Indy and thus America presents plenty of opportunity to explore how to improve the USGP. There has been much talk of a second Grand Prix (on either of the more motor-centric left and right coasts) possibly in Monterey or even as insane as New York City. While these ideas are great on paper, the lackluster success of Indy as a F1 venue won't exactly make investors in new venues sleep soundly. Elkhart Lake would be a fabulous track for a Grand Prix car but Elkart Lake is too remote, has too few hotels, and is most likely too fast (i.e. dangerous). The same could be said for Monterey, Road Atlanta and most other U.S. tracks.
Indy is the most economical and feasible option. In addition to the track facilities to being top notch, Indianapolis is a city built around holding massive automotive events. Perfect bedfellows then? Only if it was that easy.
To put it lightly, the track layout is a bore. Besides the epic Turn 13, it's as compelling as accelerating and braking for 1.5 miles on Indiana farm roads. Improvement in corner variety is imperative in the infield section. In the current form, Indy's challenge is not in measured in on-track bravery, but in skilled set-up. Where a track like Spa Francochomps is beautifully sculpted road matched to it's environment, Indy feels like it's was designed by a drunk bureautician getting carried away with electric scissors. Joie, something must be done. The track layout deserves a shake-up before the final judgement can be made on the USGP at Indy.
That is if you are the new kid on the block, Red Bull Racing and that thing you are building is an F1 car penned by uber-designer Adrian Newey. While SOC has been off in the wilderness, there is a row brewing amongst the teams over the suggested use of customer cars which teams like Honda and Red Bull are pushing. Honda and Red Bull's B-teams (Aguri Suzuki and Toro Rosso, respectively) are planning to use a chassis design from their parent teams. This engineering of customer cars has the the other 7 teams understandably miffed. BMW boss Mario Thiessen said that sharing chassis' will ruin the sport and went so far as to suggest he will even take STR and Honda in a courtroom. Save it for race day, Mario.
Who is to say that chassis sharing is a bad idea?
There is a knee-jerk comparison to the early years of F1 where customer cars were commonplace. Ferrari, Lotus and March used had customer teams. Lest we forget that Frank Williams began his F1 career racing Brabhams. There was the great Rob Walker who ran Lotuses and occasionally won against the manufacturers. In the 1970's, a heavily beared John Watson won in Austria with 'modified' March 761 dubbed a Penske. Did March complain or take them to court? No. These were the days where you could run a car from your VW van, a few wrenches and put a tenacious younger driver behind the wheel.
But we can't just see F1 through rose colored glasses anymore; F1 is completely different game 30 years on. It is the era of the manufacturers and their corporate oligarchs that see any sort of competitive or cost cutting measure as a threat. These ideas only make winning more difficult as it makes more teams competitive. In essence, if an Adrian Newly designed Toro Rosso beats the little BMW on race day, it will make Mario Thiessen's furried 'stache begin to wilt.
I am sure Mario & Co realize that F1 is a different game now, and the independent teams of yesteryear are not anything like Aguri or STR. In the end, fans just want to see more cars competing for the top. Not that F1 should turn into NASCAR, no, but its vision should encourage competitiveness no matter what your budget is.
In a year, this controversy will become a moot-point when customer cars become part of the rules. Prodrive's David Richards is entertaining the idea of a cost-efficent customer team upon their entry in 2008. It is sorta interesting to see who's true colors come out in this year of transition for F1.
Was Kimi's lack of success at Mclaren down to his wild partying and general inability to rally a team around him, instead of the (conventional wisdom) that the Mac was just too unreliable to be championship worthy? In the January edition of Car Magazine, columnist Matthew Franey rather hyperbolicly blows up the infamous Brazlian shit incident (see our previous post here) into a yarn about how Kimi is too irresponsible to step into the Schu's shoes at Ferrari. Here is the relavent part:
So why are the likes of Raikkonen immune from sanction when their feeble little minds are incapable of telling the line between good humour and bad taste? This, don't forget, came from the mouth of a driver who has already been hauled through the tabloids for 'fiddling with his gearstick' at a lap-dancing club just days before the official launch of his new McLaren F1 car in 2005.
...the Finn is no longer McLaren's problem but you have to wonder what the marketing men in Maranello are thinking as they replace the most professional and dedicated driver the world has ever seen with the monosyllabic Raikkonen.
Perhaps the step up to a team that offers him a more immediate chance of a world title might serve as the kick up the backside he needs, but I'd wager that there's a pretty good chance that the complex world of Ferrari with its political machinations, colossal pressure and the shadow of Schumacher might be too much for him. A tenner on Massa to outscore him next year is a bet I might would take.
This is pretty much the biggest piece of BS that I have ever read in other wise awesomely delicious Car (see the sweet Group B rally feature in the Jan issue). Franey pretty much ticks all of the Finnish driver stereotype boxes, and shows more reverence than I would for the ultra corporate, ultra boring Schumacher. If we are talking about who is the out and out fastest driver in F1 right now, I don't think there is any doubt that it's the Iceman. Alonso's two championships at Renault might suggest that he is poised to take over the "ultimate team motivator" role from Schumacher, but the Spaniard benefited from the technical competence of Pat Symonds and Flavio's willingness to take the media spotlight.
Frankly, I want to see some personality from my drivers, not just pure corporate BS. So as long as Ferrari can keep up the technical side of things, and Kimi is winning races, I don't really care whether he decides to whip it out after a couple of vodkas. I mean, it was a strip club, not church!
Historically motorsport has functioned as a sort of experimental lab for car manufacturers to develop technology that will eventually be passed on to the cars you and I drive everyday. ABS, traction control, and most of the techy stuff in our cars today was originally tried out in race cars to figure out how to make it reliable. Unfortunatly there has been a devolution of late.
The performance parameters of road cars have changed, no longer is it enough to just make a car that goes fast and makes a lot of noise. Now cars need to be efficient, recyclable, and most importantly, not belch out toxins like its no-bodies business. Kind of like the F1 circuit. No, actually nothing like the F1 circuit, which is founded on speed and excess. Alex covered this idea with his post on Toyota, but it seems Formula 1 is once again being left behind. Audi have announced that they are going to follow up this years success with their R10 TDi (Victory at Le Mans, undefeated in ALMS) by fueling it with biodiesel. Rumors also abound that Peugeot are also going to run their new challenger on Willie Nelsons favorite computable liquid.
Um, F1, aren't you the "pinnacle of motor sport?" Seems you need some help figuring out where the damn pinnacle is before you can get up on it again. So allow us to help, we want ridiculously fast cars (otherwise we'd watch cycling), dashing drivers, beautiful women, glamorous locations, loud noises, and technology that is going to help my road car be both bad ass and sustainable. Seems like a lot to ask, but so is a 3.0 liter V10 which revs to 20,000 rpms and develops 1000bhp and you got that down pat. As we Americans like to say, git' er done!
Yesterday marked the third edition of the IROC in Paris after the event moved there from the Canary Islands. If you haven't check out this event before, its really worth looking into. The International Race of Champions pits a field of winners from different disciplines against eachother on a Super Special style rally stage in the Stade de France, better known for racist soccer hooligans, the Boulogne Boys.
Two man teams gun for both individual and national glory racing in a variety of machinery including the Aston Martin Vantage Rally, Porsche 911 GT3, Citroen Xsara WRC, Renault Megane Cup racer, and crazy buggies. The idea is that you level the playing field and see who's really the best. Participants have included pretty much whoever you care to name; M Schumacher, Colin Mcrae, Jimmie Johnson, Sebastian Bourdais, and more.
2006 saw a final between rally phenom Sebastian Loed (he won the WRC this year even though he missed four rounds because he broke his arm mountain biking) and Mattias Ekstrom in the Citroen Xsaras. I don't think anyone would have given Ekstrom a chance, battling the Frenchman around a track in the French national stadium driving a French car that Loeb gets payed to drive all year. He did it though, and the stadium was stunned as Loeb emerged defeated by the former DTM champion.
Travis Pastrana had his work cut out for him in the Nation's Cup competing solo after first Jimmie Johnson and then Scott Speed injured themselves leading up to the event. (In a side note, Johnson's injury was particularly SOC worthy. Somehow he ended up atop a moving gold cart which of course ended in disaster. What is it with drunken golf cart expeditions these days?)
The last few days have seen some big arrivals in Jerez while Formula One prepares for next season:
First we'll start off with 19 year old Marco Andretti who made a solid debut in the Honda running at the pointy end of the time sheets. He was as high as third dicing with Lewis Hamilton and Giancarlo Fisichella. Pretty damn impressive. I have to temper teh enthusiasm somewhat by saying that testing times have little to do with driver's actually competing with eachother, many times they are simply doing instilation laps or testing certain components so they aren't actually trying to set times. That said though, I'm sure the timing screen made a few people at Honda smile when Marco's time was almost three seconds quicker than his Yankee brethren Scott Speed
-Next up Sebastian Bourdais impressed with Toro Rosso by getting quite close to Speed and Liuzzi's times after not touching an F1 car for three years. Either way though, this shouldn't come as surprise considering he is fresh off a threepeat in CART. We'll have to see if any teams come knocking for him in 2008, as that is his intention. Will Renault finally decide to put a decent French driver in their car? It seems crazy it hasn't happened already, but c'est la vie.
-And for the biggest news of the week we'll devote a seperate post. Check back soon.
Editor: You would think that all we do here at SOC is browse YouTube for content, which makes us look lazy and uncreative. We must admit that it's our daily vice but in our defense we aren't yet able to find a video that swings the mighty sword of drunken punditry like our writers do on occasion... so we are here blogging to keep a valued balance to meaningless discourse.
Pierre Scerri is one of those rare individuals who has tenacity that humbles us all. Since he was a child, he striven to own his dream machine - A Ferrari 312PB. Taking the rarity and price into account, it seemed that he would have to be rather unconventional route in getting that Ferrari into his garage. 15 years ago, he set out to build a complete, working replica that he would never ever get to drive. His work speaks for itself. The 1/3 scale car starts up, has its own gearbox, working gauges and is exact in every proportion. Not to mention, the exhaust note fulfills the Ferrari part. This astonishing video has circulated the blogosphere to tune of 260,000 views. But for anyone who missed it... LINK
Ferrari is set to launch its 2007 contender next Sunday January 14th. However, Autosport reports that the new car might not make it to the launch ceremony. 
