Bill32

Look out World of Outlaws, they're coming for you next,

Bill32

I was at Mid-Ohio, Pocono, etc.

Though the best times were at the Glen.

Bill32

By far, the most fun cars I've ever driven, they beat the crap out of you.

At least, we can still run them in SCCA.

And I did a ground up on this '84 Reynard last fall for vintage racing.

To tell you the truth, the only races I like going to as a spectator are the vintage races, SVRA, HMSA and the Monterey Sportscar Reunion.

63Corvette

Hi Bill. I spectated at the Glen from 1973 thru 1977. (Yes, we were there in 76 when they burned the bus......................it was scary in the bog at night, so we camped in the Family camping area). Those WERE the days....when you could walk around the pits and garage areas and talk directly with the drivers and principals.)
I don't remember seeing you there tho
However, I do look forward to seeing you at Indy in June, and at CoTA in the Fall

Bill32

I was the guy with soot on my face.

I was there in '76 and other years but didn't get a dash plaque, a guy sold those out of his van and you had to get to him by Thursday nite to get one. Did a parade lap there in '71 in my 63 Convert but didn't drive it anywhere near the Bog.

Bill32

The cars looked better then too.

63Corvette

Yes, and you could get much closer to the action then and talk with the drivers.

The following year both Lauda and Montezemolo autographed this picture for me. (Not Marielle though, she had been replaced)

argonaut

Awesome pictures and stories guys...thanks! Can one of you elaborate on burning of the bus in '76? And where is the 'bog' on the property?

Zoxxo

This is a great post from Will Buxton. Couldn't say it better than this, folks.

"Red Bull Wants To Quit? Let It..."

https://willthef1journo.wordpress.com/



Z//

PS. an important thing to note (especially re: Coulthard's "warning") is this bit: "[Red Bull] is locked into the sport until 2020. The only way it is getting out is by selling up."

miracle_whip4130

I totally agree! I'm so sick of their bitching and moaning the second everything doesn't go their way. The FIA just needs to call their bluff and tell them to sit down and shut up. If they grow a pair and make good on their threat to quit, that's fine too.

Bill32

Best line:

"Perhaps it is time to leave racing to racers."

63Corvette

This is getting "off topic" but.............
The "BOG" is located outside the infield tunnel near the heel of "The Boot". In 1976, Emerson Fittipaldi's Brazilian fans flew into the US, and took a charter bus to Watkins Glen.
The "Bog" is an area where NYC hooligans drank, took drugs etc, and enticed other drunk idiots to drive their cars (or their parents) into a muddy bog until it got stuck, then torched it with Molotov cocktails.
Some of these hooligans stole the Brazilian charter bus and drove it into the bog, then torched it.............with ALL of the baggage, passports, documentation etc of the passengers still on it. It burned for 6 hours.

VetteDrmr

My favorite quote: "Perhaps it is time to leave racing to racers. And the bile for the fizzy drinks."

Works for me!

Have a good one,
Mike

Zoxxo

Something else re: Red Bull's crying from grandprix.com:


"Once again it was clear the current set of technical rules, combined with the limitation of testing, makes it tremendously hard for the manufacturers to guarantee the reliability of their Power Units. It is also difficult to explain to the average fan why some of the systems don't work. The sport has overcomplicated matters and would do well to dumb down the rules in order to be attractive to more people.

"Having said that, Red Bull's reaction to Mercedes' domination reminded me of the kids that couldn't really play football but owned the only ball on the street, as they would threaten to take the ball home if their team didn't win the game. Yes, it's terribly frustrating to work hard and come away with a poor result, but if only the teams that are winning would stay in Formula One, then we'd have just two or four cars racing all the time and no one would watch that.

"Besides, Red Bull was not just trashed by Mercedes in Australia: they clearly lost out to Ferrari and Williams and, in the race, Daniel Ricciardo finished even behind Felipe Nasr's Sauber, so before Red Bull tries to convince the FIA to change the rules, in order to cut Mercedes' advantage, they should work to become the second most competitive team in the field - not the fifth one, as they are at the moment."

Z//

NemesisC5

With more observation and thought it becomes more clear with each passing race why the "power units" are largely the crucible where a teams finishing order is determined. The smooth integration of high yield electric drive, energy recovery/storage with an internal combustion engine placed in an aero optimized Formula 1 chassis is an engineering challenge of the highest order.

Although Mclaren/Honda is far behind at this point it's good to hear they are working on reliability before speed can be addressed. Meanwhile MB having the luxury of a proven package continue to improve reliability and are able to put additional focus on speed. Ferrari seems to have the most improved package although too early to say after just one race. Very disappointed that Bottas was unable to compete, Williams will be a force again this year and I would be more surprised than not if Bottas does not have a victory or two. Red Bull's whining is shameful especially with their junior teams much improved results (so far).

Personally I'm just very happy to have the F1 circus back on television, it was a long winter without my favorite sport...Moto GP is a close second.

Zoxxo

from today's (March 21) www.telegraph.co.uk:

Red Bull's threat to quit Formula One in face of
Mercedes dominance leaves a sour taste

It is one of the mysteries of our time that a sickly-sweet energy drink,
with enough caffeine to keep the average mammal awake for a week, should
morph into a cultural phenomenon worth over £5 billion. But in the
sporting sphere at least, Red Bull have reached a moment of reckoning.
Confronted by a likelihood almost as unpalatable as the syrup they flog,
that they will not win a Formula One World Championship for a second
whole year, they are issuing none-too-coded threats to forsake the sport
altogether. The 2015 season is just one race old and already Dietrich
Mateschitz, the team’s eremitic owner, appears to believe that the
indignity of finishing sixth in Australia is too much to bear.

Christian Horner is a measured, thoughtful man, but his reaction to
Mercedes’ dominance in Melbourne, claiming that it was "unhealthy for
F1", was risibly churlish. He compounded the lapse by arguing that Red
Bull, during their four-year stranglehold on the sport from 2010, were
"never winning to the advantage that Mercedes have." Seriously?
Sebastian Vettel won 13 grands prix in 2011, tying Michael Schumacher’s
record. He took nine victories in a row 18 months ago, an unprecedented
feat for a single campaign. And if you thought Mercedes held a monopoly
over processional, soporific racing, it pays to recall Lewis Hamilton’s
reaction when Vettel cruised home in Korea in 2013.

Hamilton, referring to the old Schumacher supremacy at Ferrari, said: "I
remember watching the start of the race, and then going to sleep and
waking up when it ended, because I knew what would happen. I am pretty
sure a lot of people are doing that today." They emphatically were on
Sunday morning, when Hamilton waltzed off with the win at Albert Park in
an awful race, which featured just seven overtaking manoeuvres in two
hours. The reaction over the in-car radio from his race engineer, Peter
Bonnington - "P1, Lewis, great job," delivered with all the emotion of
an airline steward telling passengers to put their seatbelts on - made
the whole affair seem quite gloriously mundane.

This is hardly Mercedes’ fault, though. After a winter of minimal
regulation changes, the latest installment of the Silver Arrow happens to
have become, in the manner of Vettel’s 'Kinky Kylie’ - the name he
bestowed upon the RB7 chassis in 2011 - an unassailable machine. With 19
races to go, it is incumbent upon the rest to graft, not to gripe. After
all, there is no record of Mercedes having grumbled about quitting when
Vettel kept streaking over the horizon in a purple-and-yellow blur. And
yet the German’s pre-eminence was, to all besides kitchen-fitters in the
Milton Keynes area, ready to pounce on the five-figure bonuses that
every employee at the Red Bull factory received for winning the
championship, no less deathly for F1’s image.

So, the hypocrisy of Red Bull’s position is astounding. Horner declares
that the FIA, F1’s governing body, ought to invoke the "equalisation
mechanism" within their rulebook to level out the competition, as if
there is one set of protocols for Mercedes and another for all their
rivals.

Except there are few companies in sport who love being in control as
much as Red Bull. In most of their other adrenaline-junkie dabbling, from
air-racing to extreme diving to motocross, they set the rules and put on
the events to create their own self-governing circus. The impression is
that Mateschitz, sequestered in his Salzburg lair, is growing
disillusioned with F1 simply because of his inability to dictate events
to the same degree.

In sport, dynasties rise and fall. And at the pinnacle of motor racing,
the power shifts constantly. For the past 15 years, marques from McLaren
to Ferrari, Red Bull to Mercedes, have seized the constructors’
championships by vast margins. But until Horner’s outburst, there was no
impulse for a team principal to "cry out", in Toto Wolff’s words, after
the first race.

There was, admittedly, a sense that both Horner and Helmut Marko, the
outspoken team director, were simply doing the boss’s bidding.

We will never know for certain, since Mateschitz never grants
interviews, but given that he is understood to be dismayed by the
decline in results and the departure of Vettel for Ferrari, the sense
grows that Red Bull are seriously considering their exit strategy.

That is a great pity. Beyond the fact that such a move would strip F1 of
a fifth of its grid, it suggests that sport for Red Bull is little more
than a billionaire’s exercise in glory-hunting. They have spent the last
decade seeking to associate their brand with adventure, danger, and
pulling off the notionally impossible - think of Felix Baumgartner’s
space dive, for one - but at the first sign of threat on the track they
look to run for the hills.

Greatness in sport was never meant to exist in perpetuity. Some of the
richest men on the planet had to fail, and fail again, before their
sporting dreams came to fruition.

If Mateschitz throws a tantrum and walks away now, he risks leaving a
feeling that his involvement in F1 was only ever about cold commercial
calculation. Red Bull gives you wings, or so the slogan goes.

But it is telling how petulantly the power-brokers react once those
wings are clipped.

//

NemesisC5

Comments by Red Bull's Horner and Marko are childish and without dignity. Thinking through to the end game their threat of quitting rather than engineering a superior package can only bring even more shame than their incessant whining. Maybe Red Bull Team F1 needs an overhaul like Ferrari did. Vettel leaving may have been two-fold, the lure of the red legend and seeing from the inside a once well oiled machine not working in synchronization as before. Looking forward to next weeks race to see who makes progress.

NemesisC5

1 Australian Grand Prix Australia Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, Melbourne 15 March
2 Malaysian Grand Prix Malaysia Sepang International Circuit, Kuala Lumpur 29 March
3 Chinese Grand Prix China Shanghai International Circuit, Shanghai 12 April
4 Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir 19 April
5 Spanish Grand Prix Spain Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Barcelona 10 May
6 Monaco Grand Prix Monaco Circuit de Monaco, Monte Carlo 24 May
7 Canadian Grand Prix Canada Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Montreal 7 June
8 Austrian Grand Prix Austria Red Bull Ring, Spielberg 21 June
9 British Grand Prix United Kingdom Silverstone Circuit, Silverstone 5 July
10 Hungarian Grand Prix Hungary Hungaroring, Budapest 26 July
11 Belgian Grand Prix Belgium Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, Stavelot 23 August
12 Italian Grand Prix Italy Autodromo Nazionale Monza, Monza 6 September
13 Singapore Grand Prix Singapore Marina Bay Street Circuit, Singapore 20 September
14 Japanese Grand Prix Japan Suzuka Circuit, Suzuka 27 September
15 Russian Grand Prix Russia Sochi Autodrom, Sochi 11 October
16 United States Grand Prix United States Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas 25 October
17 Mexican Grand Prix Mexico Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Mexico City 1 November
18 Brazilian Grand Prix Brazil Autódromo José Carlos Pace, São Paulo 15 November
19 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix United Arab Emirates Yas Marina Circuit, Abu Dhabi 29 Novemb

Zoxxo

I'm not sure how that could happen. Ferrari's foundation is one with corporate overlords who, while being Ferrari fans and boosters (maybe) are now operating the thing as a business and seem to be far more dispassionate about the racing team than were previous bosses. In today's financial environment this is probably a good thing - somebody in power needs to have a (semi) clear head.

On the other hand, with Red Bull the corporate overlord *is* the boss and who can say just much ego and selfishness is in play (although the evidence is strong that the answer is "very much" or "lots".) Given the almost lock step, parroting, "talking point" nature of the spew that the team emits after every new negative experience, one has to think that folks like Horner, Marko, Coulthard, etc., are very aware of the nature of Mateschitz and are doing what they can to keep the gravy train on the tracks. And the boss will probably like that (at least for a while.)

I'm very much in tune with the idea in one of the recent articles that suggested F1 pisses Mateschitz off because he can't simply dictate that his teams win and, like the spoiled brat who doesn't get his way, has a tantrum and doesn't care whit about who sees it.

I suspect that Vettel's own ego was telling him through all those championship years that it was his amazing driving skill that was the reason and not the design and aero genius of Adrian Newey. When the rules changed and Newey couldn't match the new car to Vettel's strengths and Ricciardo proved to be the driver who could better handle the change, reality came knocking on Vettel's brain and, denial being a very well-developed human "strength", he did what any good human does and changed the subject and changed the picture. (Plus he gets to drive for Ferrari which is clearly a powerful beacon to those Euro drivers - mystery to me...)

I'd bet that it's a very strange place for one's mental health inside the world pf Red Bull Racing.

Z//

VetteDrmr

Fixed that for 'ya.