Loeb Wants Kimi Raikkonen To Continue Rallying
Kimi Raikkonen
Sebastien Loeb has urged Kimi Raikkonen to remain in rallying for one more season rather than return to Formula One.
Robert Kubica last week dropped a clear suggestion he would love to see Raikkonen join him at Renault for the 2011 F1 campaign.
Raikkonen has collected just 15 points from six of the seven rounds he has competed in so far on his debut season in the World Rally Championship.
The suggestion is the 2007 F1 champion, driving this year for the Citroen junior team, will give it another crack.
Loeb, on course for a seventh successive WRC title, feels it would be in the best interests of the Finn if he did so.
“He should because this year he is only learning,” Loeb told Autosport.
“He cannot be competitive this year, and if he stops then he has lost this year.
“If he continues next year he will arrive on the rallies knowing where he is.
“He has the notes, he can modify them, which is much easier than this year when he had to make them all from the start, and he will know better the stages in his head.
“He can improve a lot from this year to next, especially because we are all changing cars, so he will get in the new car and we will also.
“I’m sure he will have more chances to succeed next season.”
The possibility is Raikkonen will remain at the Red Bull-backed team before switching to their F1 operation, likely as a replacement for Mark Webber whose contract expires at the end of next season.
Raikkonen has confirmed he will soon make a decision on his future, likely to be early next month.
“I don’t miss Formula One and I am enjoying what I am doing now,” said the 29-year-old.
“I have still not decided what I am doing next year yet. Soon I have to decide, maybe it will be just after Rally Finland.”
Rally Finland takes place from July 29-31.
Courtesy of The Telegraph
HAVE YOUR SAY: Where would you like to see Raikkonen based next year and why?
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Eddie Jordan: Schumacher’s F1 Return An Error
Michael Schumacher
Seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher’s return to Formula One at the age of 41 was a “huge personal error”, according to his former boss Eddie Jordan.
It was Jordan who first handed the German his chance in Formula One, signing him up as a driver for his Jordan team in 1991 when Schumacher was 19 years old.
But Jordan said his return to a young man’s sport was a miscalculation.
“Michael Schumacher’s return was an excellent thing for the discipline, but for him personally, it’s a huge error,” Jordan told Sport Bild.
“To make a comeback at 41 years of age, to pitch yourself against young men 20 years younger than you, is simply against the laws of physics and medicine.”
Jordan added Schumacher had nothing to gain.
“Except for maybe feeling good, but even that, that’s not the case. Do you think that it would please him to be beaten by (Mercedes team-mate) Nico Rosberg?,” Jordan said.
Schumacher finished ninth at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone on Sunday, with Rosberg in second.
In the overall standings, Schumacher sits in ninth spot with 36 points from 10 races, more than 50 points off Rosberg and 100 off table-topper Lewis Hamilton.
Courtesy of stuff.co.nz
Surprises At Bahrain GP Practice Session
Adrian Sutil in his Force India posted the quickest time in the Friday practice session.
With limited practice sessions in the run-up to the 2010 Formula One season, the best indicator of form will be the Friday practice sessions.
And what a surprise it was for F1 fans when Adrian Sutil topped the timing sheets after 18 laps on the Bahrain circuit in the morning’s practice session. The Force India driver posted some solid results last year, and he and the team are looking to continue the improvements from 2009.
Sutil’s time of 1:56.583 was just 0.2 of a second quicker than Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, the man all F1 watchers are picking to set the early pace this season.
Robert Kubica in his Renault was third, followed by the second Ferrari driver, Felipe Massa, in fourth spot.
Other hot favourites, the McLaren duo of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, posted the fifth and sixth fastest times respectively, with not much to split the dueling British duo.
And where, you’re probably asking, was Michael Schumacher in his Mercedes? The 40-year-old German posted the 10th fastest time, and he was surprisingly pipped by his teammate Nico Rosberg in eighth.
More results are expected in the second practice session.
12 Days Until F1 Season Starts
Formula One
There is 100 days until the World Cup, but only 12 days until the Formula One season starts off.
Now that testing is done we can only wait in anticipation to see who is rearing to go.
Testing in Barcelona showed that it is going to be an interesting season as there were only fractions of seconds between the top five teams.
Ross Brawn also believes Michael Schumacher’s is “pretty close” to the driver he used to be before retiring from F1. Can he comeback and beat all the other contenders even in a Mclaren?
The is also the diffuser war of 2009 which could rear its head this season as Formula One awaits the rumoured introduction of Mercedes GP’s new super diffuser.
Throughout the final week of pre-season testing, speculation was rife in the Barcelona paddock that Mercedes GP, headed up by Ross Brawn, would unveil a new diffuser design at the season-opening race in Bahrain, which could give them a healthy advantage over their rivals.
And although the team has confirmed that major upgrades are on the agenda, they have refused to confirm rumours of the diffuser.
“We have a new package for Bahrain and I hope that’s going to make the difference,” said Brawn while Nico Rosberg revealed that “the car will make a big step forward in Bahrain. It’ll be almost like a new car, so everything might be completely different once we are there.”
The team’s refusal to acknowledge the diffuser – or test it at Barcelona – has some questioning whether the rumours have any substance to them.
In fact, even Brawn admits there could be technical wars between the teams going into the new season.
Can’t wait.
Courtesy of Planet F1
Ferrari Attacks Max Mosley’s ‘Legacy’
Ferrari slams former FIA president for encouraging second-rate teams to enter F1 at the expense of established teams.
In an explosive editorial on the Italian marque’s website, entitled ‘*The Horse Whisperer — For whom the bell tolls*’ — Ferrari described the uncertainty swirling around the four new entries in Formula One as Mosley’s “legacy”, stirring up a hornet’s nest with less than three weeks to go until the new season kicks off in Bahrain.
“Of the 13 teams who signed up, or were induced to sign up, for this year’s Championship, to date only 11 of them have heeded the call, turning up on track, some later than others,” Ferrari said in reference to Lotus and Virgin Racing.
“As for the twelfth team, Campos Meta, its shareholder and management structure has been transformed, according to rumours which have reached the Horse Whisperer through the paddock telegraph, with a sudden cash injection from a munificent white knight, well used to this sort of last-minute rescue deal.”
Campos claim that Spanish entrepreneur Jose Ramon Carabante is behind the deal that saved the Spanish team from oblivion, but Ferrari are clearly hinting that F1’s commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone had a hand, adding in a note of caution: “However, the beneficiaries of this generosity might find the knight in question expects them to fulfil the role of loyal vassal.”
Ferrari, who last year threatened to quit the sport over the FIA’s attempts to drive through a budget cap, also accuse another new team, USF1, of “impudence” in trying to claim “that everything is hunky dory under the starry stripy sky” despite strong rumours the North Carolina-based outfit are close to folding and describe the Stefan GP, who have sent equipment to Bahrain despite having no official entry, as “Serbian vultures”.
“Firstly, they launched themselves into a quixotic legal battle with the FIA, then they picked the bones of Toyota on its death bed,” Ferrari said.
“They are now hovering around waiting to replace whoever is first to drop out of the game, possibly with backing from that very same knight in shining armour whom we mentioned earlier.”
“This [situation] is the legacy of the holy war waged by the former FIA president,” it goes on. “The cause in question was to allow smaller teams to get into 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.
“In the meantime, we have lost two constructors along the way, in the shape of BMW and Toyota, while at Renault, there’s not much left other than the name. Was it all worth it?”
Ferrari’s views on this subject are well established. In a similarly colourful statement released last autumn in the wake of Toyota’s withdrawal from F1, they compared the FIA’s “war on the big car manufacturers” to Ten Little Indians, the Agatha Christie novel in which the murderer is discovered too late.
“In Christie’s detective novel, the guilty person is only discovered when everybody else is dead, one after another. Do we want to wait until this happens or should we write Formula One’s book with a different closing chapter?”
With thanks to the telegraph.co.uk
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