Executive Fails to Execute Manouevre

It's the second Detroit IndyCar race this weekend.  Someone has decided that GM’s Head of Product Development, Mark Reuss, can drive the Pace Car as the racers prepare for the start.

 

So, in an interesting development for this particular GM product -

 

he crashes it...

Oh Dear.

 

He nearly took out the following IndyCar too.  The story is here from Autoguide and here's the video:

Autoguide are looking at it from the "all publicity is good publicity" angle -

"According to Apex Marketing Group, the exposure that Chevy got during the second Indy race of the weekend, the one in which the ZR1 crashed, was worth more than 70 times more than the exposure it got at the weekend’s first race, on Saturday, during which the ZR1 didn’t even crash a little bit."

This may well be true but Mark Reuss looks quite a bit of a prat right now.

Pace Cars (AKA Safety Cars) in most motorsports are usually driven by people with some sort of racing (or test-driving) experience.

They are often deployed to slow down the race after a crash.

This is technically what happened here.

Apart from the experienced driver bit.

And the safety bit.

UKIP on wheels

Ugh!

 

I did consider calling this post "Grumpy Old Men" and making some reference to Clarkson & May but I think the UKIP similarities are more apt.

 

UKIP are basically elderly Conservatives who have fallen out with their constituency parties and gone out alone.  Some of these then fall out with UKIP and go out further alone - quite funny really and I do like the way they split the right-wing vote in a Tea Party sort of way.

 

But let's get this back to cars - specifically F1 cars. 

 

The elderly conservatives here are Dietrich Mateschitz, Bernie Ecclestone & Ron Walker.

 

I recently read this interview Dietrich gave to the Austrian newspaper Kurier and I didn't understand a word of it - presumably because it isn't in English.  However, someone at the BBC could understand it and explained it to Andrew Benson who wrote this article for the BBC F1 Website.

 

The gist of the interview is that Dietrich is unhappy with the way F1 is being run - especially the new rules about the engines and engine-noise.  He is also unhappy at his Red Bull driver, Daniel Ricciardo's exclusion from the Australian Grand Prix for fuel flow issues.  Anyway, he is so disgruntled that he is talking about pulling his two teams (Red Bull & Torro Roso) completely out of F1.

 

Yeah - right.

 

Meanwhile, moving from an Austrian to an Australian, Ron Walker is chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation and is also unhappy with the noise (or lack of it) from the new engines.  The Telegraph report this here.  The story continues in The Independent here.  There is much threat of litigation for breach of contract. Tracks are saying they will pull out because the new engines do not provide the noise (and therefore excitement) that was paid for.  Ron & Bernie are old chums so are probably both very publicly arguing for the same thing (we know Bernie hates the new engines) to wind up the FIA.  Sort of playing UKIP to the FIA's Conservative Party.

 

Ronnie is also threatening to drop F1 and switch to Indycar Racing.

 

Yeah - right.

 

 

None of this affects me after I gave up on F1 years ago.  But, even so, what's so bad about racing cars that sound like goats?

Indycarn't

Saw this F1 story yesterday in my new favourite car news site, Autoguide.com. It claims that "many companies associated with the commercial side of the sport are very concerned about a decline in popularity" possibly as a result of rule changes such as reducing the number of engine cylinders and the max rpm.

I don't see these changes affecting the popularity of the sport - maybe the engine notes won't be quite as roary - but that won't affect the majority of spectators - ie viewers at home. Those at the circuits may survive longer before deafness kicks in as well.

As for the reduction in engine revs, it's already having a positive impact with considerably more cars finishing races. Mind you, the cameras do enjoy a big engine blow-out and cars skidding on dropped oil.

The biggest threat to the popularity of F1 at the moment is Sebastian Vettel winning every race. Last year was much more exciting.

The promoters are considering moving over to Indycars.

This may be fine if they are American-based but the rest of the world is not interested in Indycars. It's a bit like the sport Americans call "Football" and the rest of the world calls "American Football".

Looking at the official Indycar Website, they have a lot of drivers, currently led by Britain's own (OK Scotland's own) Dario Franchitti but the only other ones I've heard of are Danica Patrick and Takuma Sato. They do, rarely, travel outside of the US but only as far as Brazil, Canada and Japan.

I don't ever see Indycar rivalling F1. A1GP tried and failed to do so - they will never have the magic of Monaco or Silverstone or the personalities or the glamour.

They've managed to find an awful picture of Bernie for the article - nearly as bad as his black-eye pics. He seems to have some sympathy for the argument. I don't.

I think I generally like Bernie - he is a ruthless businessman - but not a Rupert Murdoch. He was good fun on Top Gear last week directing Jeremy around the Monaco circuit. I don't even hold it against him that he is a co-owner of Queens Park Rangers Football Club - although some QPR fans might! He also sometimes gets it wrong like when he was reluctant to postpone or cancel the Bahrain GP - as time goes on, it still looks very wrong to go there.

There is one thing that Indycars has over F1 though...

I bring you back to one of the three drivers I'd actually heard of, Danica Patrick.