2010 new teams discussion

[SUPER NUMBBER]

So a toast to the death of a disgusting blemish on this sport, that simply happened to have the support of a powerful nation. I will shed as few tears over it as I did the Serbian effort (which, just as USF1 was not truly a US national team, StephanGP was not a truly Serbian national team). Good riddance to bad column inches.

Wrong.

Lotus has the support of a nation behind it. USF1 never did, otherwise you can be sure it would be alive today. Ok, you hate USF1 for whatever little they did to your dog during their pseudo-existance; fine, but don't say USF1 somehow made people think less of the sport. Lack of overtaking is a disgusting blemish, the politics in F1 are a disgusting blemish, the ambiguous and ever-changing rules are a blemish....not a private business imploding.

 

[Famine]

Lotus has the support of a nation behind it.

It does?

I presume that nation is Malaysia, because I've heard jobby all about the UK lending all its support to Lotus, who are just one of the eight F1 teams based in the UK, and one of the six of those teams who are not majority-funded by UK industries.

 

[Ardius]

Wrong.

Lotus has the support of a nation behind it. USF1 never did, otherwise you can be sure it would be alive today. Ok, you hate USF1 for whatever little they did to your dog during their pseudo-existance; fine, but don't say USF1 somehow made people think less of the sport. Lack of overtaking is a disgusting blemish, the politics in F1 are a disgusting blemish, the ambiguous and ever-changing rules are a blemish....not a private business imploding.

You couldn't be more wrong, SN. In Malaysia, Lotus Racing and Tony Fernandes are publicly mocked. I've heard that in Malaysia the team have handled their PR horribly.
Do not mistake the group of Malaysian companies as "support of a nation". Proton, NAZA, Tune and Maxis do not bring a lot of cash to Lotus and the team is actually very close to its budget limits. Currently Lotus are desperately looking for long-term backers, fortunately they are getting the results and generating the international profile to help this.
Although Proton is involved with the Malaysian government and Lotus Racing have the blessing of certain government figures, its hardly "the support of a nation" and its not exactly like Toyota bank-rolling an F1 team is it?

As Famine says, Lotus doesn't get any support in the UK either.

senamic may be referring to the Argentine money with Lopez, which was partly government money. Although I still disagree with his wording, he did bring a lot of money to that team.

 

[Stevisiov]

.....the ambiguous and ever-changing rules are a blemish....

Really? For me, a significant amount of enjoyment in F1 is derived from the constant technological battle engineers face. Without the 'constantly' changing rules, this aspect of F1 would become more and more stagnant over time. A change in rules can allow new area's for development. The 2009 season was a great example of such, and even this year, we are still trading off the success of last years major shake-up. We have 4 majorly competitive teams. With a midfield that is still capable of podium finishes. Constantly changing rules are anything but a blemish, in fact, if done correctly, they are a blessing.

 

[peterjford]

Really? For me, a significant amount of enjoyment in F1 is derived from the constant technological battle engineers face. Without the 'constantly' changing rules, this aspect of F1 would become more and more stagnant over time. A change in rules can allow new area's for development. The 2009 season was a great example of such, and even this year, we are still trading off the success of last years major shake-up. We have 4 majorly competitive teams. With a midfield that is still capable of podium finishes. Constantly changing rules are anything but a blemish, in fact, if done correctly, they are a blessing.

But they are not good for keeping spending down. Every year the teams develop new cars, but if they have to keep redesigning everything to conform to new rules, they can't build on what they have done in the past. Everything gets thrown out and they have to start all over again. Ok, that is an over-exaggeration, but hopefully you see my point.

Only big teams with big budgets can stay on top with constantly changing rules.

 

[Peter]

And so ends the tale of an American F1 team. Half of me is saying "Good riddance, all they did was embarrass america and make the world think they are incapable of handling F1" and the other half is saying "Poor USF1, looks like they just had bad luck "

 

[SUPER NUMBBER]

It does?

I presume that nation is Malaysia, because I've heard jobby all about the UK lending all its support to Lotus, who are just one of the eight F1 teams based in the UK, and one of the six of those teams who are not majority-funded by UK industries.

Regardless of what the UK does about the team, it's backed by the Malaysian govt. Even if they were HQd in England, it's being pushed by them.

From the official Lotus Racing profile @formula1.com:

Company Name: 1Malaysia F1 Team Sdn Bhd
Team Name: Lotus F1 Team
Country: Malaysia
Team Principal: Tony Fernandes
A partnership between the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs, 1Malaysia F1 Team returns the Lotus name as a constructor to Formula One for the first time since 1994. The team will initially be based at the RTN facility in Norfolk, UK, some 10 miles from the Lotus Cars factory. A 50,000 square foot fully equipped facility, RTN was built by Toyota for its initial Formula One programme and then used by Bentley for its successful Le Mans programme.

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2009/9/9934.html

You couldn't be more wrong, SN. In Malaysia, Lotus Racing and Tony Fernandes are publicly mocked. I've heard that in Malaysia the team have handled their PR horribly.
Do not mistake the group of Malaysian companies as "support of a nation". Proton, NAZA, Tune and Maxis do not bring a lot of cash to Lotus and the team is actually very close to its budget limits. Currently Lotus are desperately looking for long-term backers, fortunately they are getting the results and generating the international profile to help this.
Although Proton is involved with the Malaysian government and Lotus Racing have the blessing of certain government figures, its hardly "the support of a nation" and its not exactly like Toyota bank-rolling an F1 team is it?

Regardless of what you classify as "support of a nation", I'm sure there's been no team that exemplifies that expression like "Lotus" Racing as of now. I mean, I don't even know how to respond to that; what else do you need to see before you're convinced? Not only is Lotus backed by a company with government ties, the actual name of the company is 1Malaysia! Lotus Racing is a government initiative! It doesn't matter that you said the people of Malaysia don't support it; in the context of senamic's post, neither did NASCAR USA support USF1. So again, where do we get off saying USF1 had the "support of a nation" when it didn't have neither a) political or b) demographic support?

senamic may be referring to the Argentine money with Lopez, which was partly government money. Although I still disagree with his wording, he did bring a lot of money to that team.

I don't know in who's book Argentina (which he never mentioned) qualifies as a "powerful nation" (direct quote). My point still stands.

 

[Stevisiov]

But they are not good for keeping spending down. Every year the teams develop new cars, but if they have to keep redesigning everything to conform to new rules, they can't build on what they have done in the past. Everything gets thrown out and they have to start all over again. Ok, that is an over-exaggeration, but hopefully you see my point.

Only big teams with big budgets can stay on top with constantly changing rules.

Actually I beg to differ. 2009 brought all the teams closer together than what was seen in the previous season, regardless of budget. The bigger teams still obviously improved the most (the one who didn't scrap development of their car), however they didn't start miles ahead of the pack like they did in 2008 and 2007 and 2006 etc. This resulted in a much closer season and a lot more enjoyment for those who like to see technical innovation and improvement.

The notion that major rule changes also increases spending is one I disagree with. Teams have a fixed budget based on how much money they have available to spend. Having more to develop or less to develop just re-allocates what area's you spend your money on.

In formula 1 you don't say 'oh the regs haven't changed, so I can save that 1m I was planning designing a front end that conforms to the regs, i am going to stick it in the bank'. Instead they say 'Oh the regs haven't changed, that means I don't have to spend that 1m I'd allocated on designing a new front end, instead I will spend it on developing our old front end even further.'

Obviously that was a very crude example, but F1 teams don't think too dissimilarly to that, when it comes to spending money on RD. Put simply, there is ALWAYS somewhere to spend money in order to try and go faster, how much money you spend developing in f1 depends on how much money you have to spend, and not on how much you have to develop.

 

[Ardius]

Regardless of what the UK does about the team, it's backed by the Malaysian govt. Even if they were HQd in England, it's being pushed by them.

From the official Lotus Racing profile @formula1.com:

Company Name: 1Malaysia F1 Team Sdn Bhd
Team Name: Lotus F1 Team
Country: Malaysia
Team Principal: Tony Fernandes
A partnership between the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian entrepreneurs, 1Malaysia F1 Team returns the Lotus name as a constructor to Formula One for the first time since 1994. The team will initially be based at the RTN facility in Norfolk, UK, some 10 miles from the Lotus Cars factory. A 50,000 square foot fully equipped facility, RTN was built by Toyota for its initial Formula One programme and then used by Bentley for its successful Le Mans programme.

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2009/9/9934.html



Regardless of what you classify as "support of a nation", I'm sure there's been no team that exemplifies that expression like "Lotus" Racing as of now. I mean, I don't even know how to respond to that; what else do you need to see before you're convinced? Not only is Lotus backed by a company with government ties, the actual name of the company is 1Malaysia! Lotus Racing is a government initiative! It doesn't matter that you said the people of Malaysia don't support it; in the context of senamic's post, neither did NASCAR USA support USF1. So again, where do we get off saying USF1 had the "support of a nation" when it didn't have neither a) political or b) demographic support?



I don't know in who's book Argentina (which he never mentioned) qualifies as a "powerful nation" (direct quote). My point still stands.

I just think that using the term "support of a nation" is intentionally attempting to overstate how much backing Lotus really have. Ok, so it is true by your definition, regardless of how much support there is. However, its not an argument you can use to say how much easier Lotus have it or why they are successful.
I would term it "support of a government", "support of a nation" suggests the whole country is behind the team and all the businesses are getting behind it. Which is far from true.

 

[yeti]

I'm with Ardius here - saying the "support of a nation" is a bit disingenuous really...

Especially as Lotus was traditionally a UK company - and therefore you imply that the nation in question is the UK.

C.

 

[SUPER NUMBBER]

I just think that using the term "support of a nation" is intentionally attempting to overstate how much backing Lotus really have. Ok, so it is true by your definition, regardless of how much support there is. However, its not an argument you can use to say how much easier Lotus have it or why they are successful.
I would term it "support of a government", "support of a nation" suggests the whole country is behind the team and all the businesses are getting behind it. Which is far from true.

I was merely comparing USF1 and Lotus on the context of his own use of the term to make a point that senamic's criticism of USF1 is unjustified. The only team you can possibly use the term to describe as such (semantics aside) is Lotus, because it has more government involvement than any other team my memory can recollect in history. If "using the term 'support of a nation' is intentionally attempting to overstate how much backing Lotus really have", then inversely applying it to USF1 is a gross exaggeration given that they had nothing in terms of national support either way you define the term.

How much of 1Malaysia's success is attributed to government backing? That's a discussion for another day. But you can be sure that if Obama had appointed a "Racing Czar" to get major corporations behind the USF1 effort, they would've still been alive.

I'm with Ardius here - saying the "support of a nation" is a bit disingenuous really...

Especially as Lotus was traditionally a UK company - and therefore you imply that the nation in question is the UK.

C.

If you think it's "disingenuous", direct your concerns to whomever used the term first. And I wasn't refering to the UK - keyword is "traditionally", just like McLaren was at one point a New Zealand team.

 

[senamic]

Whoah, take a step back. What I was referring to was the moral support of a nation (namely, all of the US patriots [not saying there is anything wrong with that, I am quite an Australian patriot]) that were slamming anyone and everyone that even hinted as to USF1 not making the grid. By backing, I was not reffering to financially. I was referring to morally. Lets face it, if anyone from say, Australia, Britain, Switzerland et al said 7 months ago that USF1 was an ego trip doomed for failure, (almost) evey US poster jumped to mock them, citing the Eagle team, the great Andretti and so on in defence of USF1. None of which, I might note, had anything to do with Windsor and Anderson's movement. So I was simply stating that a large amount of US motorsports fans, who happen to be one of the most powerful motoring nations on the planet, were supporting USF1 as a US national team. Settled???

 

[senamic]

Sepang Results:

1. Lucas Di Grassi
2. Karun Chandhok
3. Bruno Senna
4. Jarno Trulli
5. Heikki Kovalainen (finished more than 75%)
N/C
Timo Glock

Points after Sepang:

Drivers

Kovalainen 22
Chandhok 12
Di Grassi 10
Trulli 9
Senna 4
Glock 4

Constructors

Lotus 31
HRT 16
Virgin 14