Michael Schumacher’s aborted comeback with Ferrari after Felipe Massa’s season ended with a head injury may have been canned prematurely.
And while we were all disappointed that Schumi’s return to F1 didn’t materialize, we now have rumors that the seven-time world champion may be returning to race in 2010.
Schumacher and Mercedes GP (formerly Brawn GP) are in ‘preliminary talks’ over the prospect of Schumi driving for the team in 2010. With Jenson Button’s sudden defection to McLaren, Mercedes GP has yet to find a teammate for Nico Rosberg and Schumacher’s name has been brought up recently. If Schumi does decide to race for Mercedes GP, it would create a vaunted all-German pairing that could rival both Ferrari and McLaren.
Looking deeper into all of this, it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it sounds; after all, Schumacher’s relationship with team principal Ross Brawn has been well-documented with the pair being responsible for Ferrari’s dominance for the better part of the decade.
In the event that Michael Schumacher ends up in Mercedes GP, it automatically makes the 2010 F1 season all that more tantalizing, so much so, that March can’t come soon enough.
McLaren Mercedes’ 2010 Formula One driver’s line-up is finally set and as expected, a world champion joins Lewis Hamilton – a former champ himself – in the fold.
The twist is, however, it’s not the world champion we all first thought.
Jenson Button, the current F1 drivers champion has made his transfer to the Woking-based team, creating an all-British team with 2008 champ Lewis Hamilton. Button’s move to McLaren comes as a surprise to a lot of us, especially considering that Kimi Raikkonen was long rumoured to be the one teaming up with Hamilton at McLaren.
Nevertheless, the allure of pairing two world champs – and are compatriots, no less – on one team was good enough for McLaren to sign Button away from its new sister team Mercedes GP (formerly Brawn GP).
For the record, the last time two world champions raced for the same team happened 20 years ago (1989) when Alain Prost and Aryton Senna drove for McLaren.
Continued after the jump, photo courtesy of Brawn GP.
Those who remotely showed any interest in forking over 2 million euros for Michael Schumacher’s 1994 Benetton F1 car will be disappointed to know that the entire auction may have been a hoax from the beginning.
Then again, they should all be relieved that they didn’t just lose that kind of money over nothing.
A few days ago, reports surfaced that Schumi’s ’94 Betton car – the exact same one he used to win his first F1 championship – was being sold on eBay with bids reaching well over 2 million euros. But as the deadline for the auction neared, the eBay auction for the car mysteriously disappeared hours before the supposed deadline was to pass. Now, sceptics are saying that the whole thing may have been a ruse after all.
As if that wasn’t enough to draw a few chuckles from a lot of people, a new auction has started for another 94 Schumi-driven Benneton has now been listed on eBay with a starting bid of 1.15m pounds.
Nobody needs to remind us of the historical significance of this car, but all these faux auctions are slowly becoming ridiculous.
Toyota’s abrupt departure from Formula One has left a lot of people in stunned disbelief, especially when you consider that the supposed 2010 car was already completed well before the 2009 season ended.
Now that Toyota’s out, the question is what becomes of their 2010 car - and their whole design technology for that matter?
Well, they’re not putting it to waste, that’s what. According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the Toyota F1 Team now has plans of selling off the data and designs of the car, preferably to one of the new teams that are set to make their debuts next year.
Out of the four teams – Lotus, Capos, Manor and USF1 - that are scheduled to have their inaugural race in Formula One in 2010, the two most logical teams to buy Toyota’s designs are Manor and USF1.
We don’t know exactly as to how much Toyota is selling their F1 technology, but we’re pretty sure that it’s going to come up for bid pretty soon between any of these new teams.
The obscene budget that Toyota has shelled out for its F1 division has finally caught up with them and combine that with the fact that the company is now re-directing its attention towards its core road car business prompted the Japanese auto giants to pull out of Formula One.
For 2 million euros, you can buy just about anything you’re heart desires. But if there’s item where 2 million wouldn’t be enough, it’s Michael Schumacher’s 1994 Benetton Formula One car.
The said car, which is actually the exact same one Schumacher drove on his way to his first Formula One championship, is being auctioned off at eBay with the current bid price now reaching 2.6 million euro (£2.3m).
The car’s owner and seller has advertised the car on the German eBay site and in addition to the car itself, the whole package comes with two extra sets of wheels and tires, plus a data laptop that monitors the car’s fluid levels and temperatures.
The car has also been restored to its original appearance. If you recall back in 1994, Schumacher crashed into Damon Hill in the last race of season. As a result of the crash, Hill – who finished second to Schumi that season – was forced to retire from the race, thereby handing over the title to the German.
In the event that you’re interested in making the purchase, you have until Monday to make a bid for the F1 car, although at 2.6 million euros, we strongly advise you to just hang on to your cash – unless of course you’re the biggest Michael Schumacher fan in the world.
If you can remember just how excited we were just to get close to an official Formula One race car wheel from Enkie, then you can imagine how tickled we were to be in the presence of a bona fide F1 racing engine from the English racing engineers at Cosworth. However this isn’t just any old exotic high revving open wheel motor, the "CA" is a 2.4 Liter V8 that was introduced back in 2006 when the FIA mandated the switch from the more expensive ten cylinder power plants to an octet of pistons working in harmony on the Grand Prix circuit. This version of the 750 HP racing V8 was originally equipped on the Williams F1 machines and when it made its debut at the 2006 Bahrain GP and during qualifying spun to the tune of 20,000 RPM; a feat that still impresses to today. The F1 V8 wasn’t the only piece of machining art, Cosworth also had a massaged 4B11 from the EVO X complete with cutaways to let us in on what the new turbocharged four cylinder from Mitsubishi looks like on the inside.
First it was BMW. Then Toyota followed next. Now, it looks like Renault is headed out the door too.
Renault’s F1 team executives met in Paris recently and rumors have spread that the French-based company is contemplating on following Toyota in leaving Formula One.
After a tumultuous – and that’s an understatement – season that involved the sacking of team principals Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds, Renault is now looking at the possibility that participating in Formula One may not be in their best interests anymore.
Although the meetings have gone on continuously, an announcement is not expected in the coming days because the company, led by president Carlos Ghosn, is scheduled to have an event promoting the brand’s new direction in introducing zero-emission vehicles, as evidenced by the recent news that the Zoe Zero Emissions Concept will be launched in 2012.
In the event Renault does pull the curtains on their F1 tenure, it would make them the third team from the 2009 grid to leave Formula One, following the recent departures of BMW and Toyota.
By our count, that’s now four major teams – including Honda last year - that have left Formula One in the past year and we’re beginning to fear that this could be the beginning of what is already becoming a mass exit out of the sport.
The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes MP4-24 Formula One car wears a set of very special wheels from the Japanese rim manufacturer Enkei. By the very nature of the sport, components must be extremely lightweight and resilient in order to give the teams every competitive edge possible while standing up to spinning at 200 MPH and hitting FIA curbs at triple digit speeds. The wonderful thing about the SEMA show in Las Vegas is that you have a chance to get up close and personal with these types of items, as well as the wide assortment of their everyday offerings. As the Enkei representatives turned their backs, we took the opportunity to lift the wheel from its stand, and because of its size and shape considered playing a game of football with it. The wheel was so surprisingly light, and being significantly wider than it is tall makes for a rare sight to see. To get this kind of contact with a piece of a Formula One race car you would have to risk being shot in the paddock by a mechanic, however in SEMA up close and friendly atmosphere, anything goes.
The Formula One off-season is barely a day old and we already some major news on that front. Bridgestone, F1’s sole tire supplier has decided that 2010 would be its last season in Formula One.
The news was announced by the Bridgestone Corporation in Japan after the tire manufacturer decided not to extend its contract past 2010. Bridgestone has been the exclusive tire supplier of Formula One after its chief rival, Michelin, decided to leave the sport in 2007.
According to Hiroshi Yasukawa, Bridgestone’s chief decision-maker in the company’s motor racing division, the decision to leave Formula One stemmed from Bridgestone’s intention in re-directing its “resources towards the further intensive development of innovative technologies and strategic products".
Loosely translated, the company would rather spend some of its allocated budget for F1 development on other more important endeavors.
Bridgestone’s apparent exit after the 2010 season marks the end of a 13-year partnership with Formula One, which began in 1997 when the Japanese tire company entered the sport to go head-to-head with Goodyear.
As the final curtain of the 2009 season comes down, BMW closes its paddocks one last time and bids goodbye to a sport that it has been an integral part of for a decade.
Despite not winning the World Championship since it re-entered Formula One in 1999, BMW – which returned as the BMW Williams F1 Team - closes the latest chapter in their storied F1 history with a resume that includes ten wins, 17 pole positions, and 45 podium finishes from 2001-2005.
After 2005, the team became BMW Sauber F1 and since then has accumulated over 300 World Championship points, including the team’s first-ever win at the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix. This year – the team’s final season in Formula One – BMW Sauber F1 finished a disappointing sixth in the Constructor’s Championship after an off-season that saw the team as one of the upstart challengers to the supposed Ferrari-McLaren tug-of-war.
Now that the season has come to end, BMW’s tenure in Formula One closes along with it. It’s been a great ten-year run, to say the least. And while we won’t be seeing BMW in the pit lanes in the foreseeable future, we’re not closing our doors to the day when BMW makes another comeback in Formula One.
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