Fuel To The Fire

Something that caught my sight today on PlanetF1.com. The site is okay for F1 news, more tabloid-like than the usual F1 sites. A decent enough source for F1 news on the odd day. I make a point of dropping by the main F1 sites to keep up to date, compare and contrast.

The piece in question was an editorial done by Andrew Davies titled ‘The FIA: Not taking any chances” concerning the recent racism issues in Spain. What caught my eye was this statement:

“if you went into a branch of Banco Santander you'd see a very telling poster. Given that Hamilton arrived on the F1 scene like a rock star, you'd expect to see a poster of the McLaren team featuring both Fernando and Lewis. Nope. The poster they used in branches was Alonso and reserve driver Pedro de la Rosa.”

One hand he shows facts, on another he shows ignorance. Sure it’s great to point out that Santander did not promote Hamilton in Spain. Shame on them for using Spain’s top F1 drivers on their posters in their home nations, shame on them! (Yes, that was sarcasm, since I know text at times fails to convey it.) Does Mister Davies not watch British television? The Abbey adverts showcase Hamilton and Hamilton alone, and – wait a minute! Abbey is part of the Santander group! Then there are also the Vodafone adverts over here which only feature Hamilton despite been a McLaren sponsor! The only advert that the two appeared together in was that ‘friendly’ race ad – how ironic that one came to be!

It really puts his comment into context. Of course a sponsor will want to maximize the popularity of home grown talent. It’s just good business sense. To point at them and try to in some way blame them for not sticking Hamilton onto the post thus adding fuel to the fire is wrong.

To-mato, To-mat-o

After a few weeks of relative silence in the F1 world we finally got some action both on and off the track the past week.

Spygate round two ended up with a result that has baffled many with Renault guilty but not penalised for it. This response has set many raging bias towards McLaren. Interestingly enough people seem to forget that McLaren were guilty but not penalised on the first hearing as well. Still the fact that Renault got away without penalty just adds more fuel to the fire. It’s just added to the ire of fans who claim that the FIA give Ferrari a different set of rules to the rest of the field.

The FIA aren’t making any friends right now especially with issuing a writ against Brundle for his piece in the Times. So I suppose I should be careful what I say here in case they try to lamp me up as well for expressing an opinion based on the facts put forward!
McLaren won’t have their car designs looked over till February which again is another strange decision. Why can’t the FIA delegates decide now looking at the blueprints that would be different come February when the car is built? It just once more puts questions marks over 2008 which we all hoped were to be left behind after this year’s politics.

Elsewhere Alonso finally decided to rejoin Renault, no doubt having waited to see if the team was going to be penalised over Spygate II. The choice of Nelson Piquet Junior as his team-mate I predicted at the start of the year, but not at the expense of Heikki. With more and more noise been made about de la Rosa for that second McLaren seat – due to his Spanish ties and his inability to cause Hamilton any problems – it could mean the talented Finn is going to spend a year off the grid. This is something I find baffling especially given some people that will make grid next year that really shouldn’t.

On the topic of drivers seeking seats, Ralf seems suitably unimpressed of the Force India after finishing slowest of those in the shoot-out for the second seat. Not long after the test he announced he wasn’t going to peruse the seat in what seems like salvage some pride attempt. Shame it came after he chose to drive the car and not before.

In another interesting decision by the FIA, they have released the 2009 and 2010 calendars for the WRC. With 24 events on their books all events are now only going to be bi-yearly. While it’s great to see Ireland with a place it’s an odd way to go towards the future, especially when it means that long standing events like Monte-Carlo, Britain, Finland are going to only happen once every two years. While a series should be all for expanding, it should also remember the foundations that it was built on.