The Motorsport Thread 2015

Yeah it's a shame he has "only" 2 titles because I think he's one of the top 3 drivers of his time with Schumi and Kimi.  

So, we've had our first major controversy of the year. Seems Sauber had originally signed Geido va der Garde to partner Jules Bianchi for this year, van der Garde brings lots of cash, and paid up front as part of being their test driver last year while Bianchi brought heavily subsidesed engines from Ferrari. Bianchi's accident forced a reworking of the plan, with Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr both being signed up to race and bringing more money than van der Garde does, and also paying some of it upfront which got them through the winter.

As you'd expect, van der Garde was rather pissed as he had a valid race contract and had payed a lot of money up front for the privalige of driving for them (some reports put it as much as $24 million) so when the contract was broken he took them to arbitration in Switzerland and last Monday they sided with him and ordered Sauber to put him back in a race seat. Sauber ignored the ruling so he's taken them to court in Australia where the Supreme Court in Victoria State also upheld the arbitration ruling on Tuesday and this morning an appeal from Sauber, largely based on the incredibly disingenuous position that it would be dangerous to put him in the car, has been thrown out. As it stand Sauber now has 3 drivers signed for 2 cars, not sure how that one's going to work out but the fallout wont be pretty might even force the team under.

Sutil also had a valid contract for this year but apparentley a few things weren't met on his side so he's only suing for damages and not pushing to be reinstated in the race team since he's not in such a strong legal position.

I have a lot of sympathy for Sauber's financial plight as BMW left them in trouble and the commercial climate makes it damned difficult to get any kind of money but this is pretty much fraud and a terrible mess of their own making. I also detest the amaeturish way they've gone about this, their lawyer seemed to know nothing about F1, like what day of the week practice starts on, and Kaltenborne has treated everybody like idiots.

PRACTICE TWO TIMES:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes	1m27.697s	-	29
2	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1m27.797s	0.100s	25
3	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1m28.412s	0.715s	33
4	Kimi Raikkonen	Ferrari	1m28.842s	1.145s	33
5	Valtteri Bottas	Williams/Mercedes	1m29.265s	1.568s	32
6	Daniil Kvyat	Red Bull/Renault	1m30.016s	2.319s	27
7	Carlos Sainz Jr.	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m30.071s	2.374s	41
8	Pastor Maldonado	Lotus/Mercedes	1m30.104s	2.407s	11
9	Romain Grosjean	Lotus/Mercedes	1m30.205s	2.508s	37
10	Nico Hulkenberg	Force India/Mercedes	1m30.473s	2.776s	30
11	Felipe Nasr	Sauber/Ferrari	1m30.755s	3.058s	33
12	Sergio Perez	Force India/Mercedes	1m30.980s	3.283s	32
13	Jenson Button	McLaren/Honda	1m31.387s	3.690s	21
14	Max Verstappen	Toro Rosso/Renault	1m31.395s	3.698s	6
15	Marcus Ericsson	Sauber/Ferrari	1m32.303s	4.606s	14
16	Kevin Magnussen	McLaren/Honda	1m33.289s	5.592s	4

Ricciardo had an engine change and Massa a water leak so neither ran in the second session, and Manor are still trying to finish their cars. I understand Van der Garde started contempt of court proceedings against Sauber yesterday but it was adjourned until Saturday morning but it looked like they were actually making progress in communicating with each other to sort out this mess.

Who wants to bet that Alonso won't return? Enjoy your 2015 ride Mags!

^Kind of like last season's Ferrari. Sweet. 

Perhaps Alonso crashed on purpose in order to avoid having to debut with that coffee-maker 

Man With Hat wrote: Vettel looks weird in Red.

Edited by JJLehto - March 18 2015 at 00:53

Given how far both Kvyat and Magnussen got on Sunday I don't think it would have mattered!

Really surprised at how badly a job Red Bull and Renault have done this year, both seem to have gone backwards and the RB11 seems to be only very slightly faster than the Torro Rosso.

If anything Merc are even further ahead, and Hamilton seems to have Rosberg completely covered, though it's only been one race. Also, looks like we wont get a German GP this year, Nurburgring is financial dificulty and Hockenheim has been unable to come to an agreement with Bernie for this year and have said no.

Sebring 12 hours this weekend.

Suprisingly Lewis was actually the smoother driver last year, Nico was the one hanging it out on the ragged edge. It's thought that thats why he got more poles but Hamilton had the wins. It's also the complete oposite of what everybody was expecting.


Edited by sleeper - March 20 2015 at 16:38