rec.autos.simulators

> >Well, wether we agree or not on this topic, at least you got the last
> >part right John, Ferrari got the win back............

> Incredible isn't it? FIA measure a part an find it illegal, Ferrari
> look at it and admit that it is, then the ruling is overturned because
> it actually isn't when "measured more accurately". Were they using
> guesstimations in Sepang then?

> Good luck to Eddie and Mika, but the whole thing utterly reeks of
> incompetence and is a shoddy way to run the world's premier racing
> series far less to win it.

> Cheers!
> John

> "The barge boards at the centre of the dispute were first run at last
> month's European GP, and have been kept covered at every opportunity.
> Before Sunday's race, Eddie Irvine said that they had significantly
> improved performance....[insert previous quotation here]"

> I'm more curious than ever, now: while I've found the Irvine quote that
> begins "An all Ferrari front row is not bad for tomorrow. The car is
> pretty much the same as before the Nurburgring..." several times
> (including Autosport), I still haven't found the all-important
> contextual prolegomenon that you've quoted above. If you have the
> Autosport issue (paper mag) or E-zine quote at hand, please let me know
> the date of (better yet, a hypertext link to) the quote. I've been
> through every online archived story from the Sepang weekend at
> Autosport's site, and I just can't find it. I'd truly appreciate help in
> solving this mystery, moot point though it may seem to some...I'm
> keeping a chronicle of this season, and I hate to miss a direct quote as
> important as this.

> Speaking of moot points, did anyone seriously expect the FIA to rule
> otherwise? The F1 Drivers' and Manufacturers' championships are a
> business, not a sport -- though I still believe that on the track and in
> the pits, it's very much a sport for the drivers, engineers, and
> mechanics. On the track, the racing is real; it's the Championships that
> are manufactured and manipulated. Stirling Moss had a very interesting
> thing to say about the subject of his one-point miss of the 1958
> Championship in his book with Ken Purdy: [my rough paraphrase] "If I was
> leading the race that would win me the championship today -- far in the
> lead, car going like a bomb, tires and oil to burn -- do you know what
> I'd do? On the last turn of the last lap, I'd pull over, park the car
> under a tree, pull of my helmet, and watch the end of the race. Why?
> What would winning one championship mean? Mike Hawthorn won a World
> Championship; did that make Mike a better driver than I am? I liked
> Mike, he was a wonderful chap, and when he was "on" he was very good.
> But Mike had a lot of "off" days, and when he was off, well...if Mike
> was a couple laps behind, he just gave it up. If I won five
> Championships, would that make me as good a driver as Fangio? Not on
> your life: I always felt I was better in sports cars than Fangio; he
> just didn't like them -- but in a GP car, he was the best, in my day. If
> I won the Championship TEN times it wouldn't have made me as GOOD a
> driver as Fangio."

> The last decade or so of F1 has seemed to me to have artificially
> blurred the drivers' side of the racing equation, Enzo Ferrari's 'ratio
> of car to driver." In Moss' era, and to a lesser extent on into the '60s
> and '70s, the good drivers picked the cars, not the other way around.
> Moss won GP races in Vanwalls, Maseratis, Mercedes, and Loti. Fangio in
> Ferraris, Mercedes, and Maseratis. Except for the Italian drivers, for
> whom driving for Ferrari was the Holy Grail, the good drivers who could
> afford to pick and choose picked the best, whatever they were; the rest
> got what was left over. When teams started getting the commercial
> wherewithal to fund an arms race, part of that arms race was buying the
> best drivers -- the relationship between manufacturers and drivers had
> changed, quietly but fundamentally. It changed even further in the
> Cosworth kitcar -- or, in Ferrari's pungent phrase, "garagiste" -- era,
> when there was less and less "manufacturer" identity, that role
> gravitating more toward the commercial entities -- tobacco companies and
> the like -- that provided the money. As has been cited many times, when
> Lotus gave up its name to become "John Player's Specials," a fundamental
> cog in the cosmos of F1 racing moved quite significantly. It has never
> moved back, though with the trend toward nationalism and "manufacturer"
> identity seen in the Stewart-Ford/Jaguar and "More Mercedes, Less
> McLaren" prospects for 2000, even THAT pendulum may be on a sort of
backswing.

> So that leaves the drivers: the hired guns, loyal to none. Their world
> is, of necessity, different from that of the manufacturers': they
> maneuver for the best salaries, yes. They play the near-NASCAR game of
> "well, my Marlboro/Nokia/Tampax/Grecian Formula/Arrows was running
> pretty well...", yes. But just like In NASCAR, or anywhere where men and
> women have endured the many hardships required to get to the top of any
> motorports series, in the end they race. If you took Michael and Mika
> and Eddie and DC and the entire F1 field of drivers and dropped them
> into NASCAR sedans, likewise took Dale and Dale and Jeff and Bobby and
> the entire field of Winston Cup and dropped them into F1 cars, they
> would race...it might not be pretty, but every one of them would give it
> all they had within themselves to give. That's why we still watch --
> after all the Byzantine politics, commercial maneuvering, internecine
> power plays, and just plain bullshit, these people race. Drop Moss in
> the middle of them, and he'd race, too -- anyone who caught this year's
> Monterey Historics would have to -- however bitterly -- agree to that.
> These men and women who strap themselves in and have a go, a *real* go,
> are special: they represent us; the level of commitment, skill, and
> dedication that we all, as humans, strive for, but rarely have the
> chance to demonstrate in such a simple, direct, and unequivocal way.
> Unlike most sports, the drivers perform alone, as we, in our deepest
> hearts, perform alone. They skirt the edge of danger which we --
> civilized, coddled, and compartmentalized -- rarely, if ever, confront.
> That we live vicariously through them is trite, yet completely true.

> >Pshaw!   It hasn't been fit to carry that classification since Ecclestone
> >sold Brabham in order to concentrate fully on FOCA!!

> It may not have been fit to, but as much as it has declined nothing
> else has risen to replace it. How could any sport (other than
> football) have competed on world terms with the 1988-1990 F1 series
> involving the Senna/Prost cauldron with bit parts also for Mansell,
> Piquet etc?

> Cheers!
> John

> BB

> > Well, if not a surgeon, you're a writer....or should be.

> > Nice piece, Bart.  One very minor point....Lotus became "Gold Leaf"
before
> > they became "John Player".  I think the gloss started to dull when they
> > became the former.

> > BK

> >I'm more curious than ever, now: while I've found the Irvine quote that
> >begins "An all Ferrari front row is not bad for tomorrow. The car is
> >pretty much the same as before the Nurburgring..." several times
> >(including Autosport), I still haven't found the all-important
> >contextual prolegomenon that you've quoted above. If you have the
> >Autosport issue (paper mag) or E-zine quote at hand, please let me know
> >the date of (better yet, a hypertext link to) the quote. I've been
> >through every online archived story from the Sepang weekend at
> >Autosport's site, and I just can't find it. I'd truly appreciate help in
> >solving this mystery, moot point though it may seem to some...I'm
> >keeping a chronicle of this season, and I hate to miss a direct quote as
> >important as this.

> From an earlier post, the quote is lifted ad nauseam from the
> Autosport of 21st October 1999, page 6, column 3, paragraph 7.

> >Speaking of moot points, did anyone seriously expect the FIA to rule
> >otherwise? The F1 Drivers' and Manufacturers' championships are a
> >business, not a sport -- though I still believe that on the track and in
> >the pits, it's very much a sport for the drivers, engineers, and
> >mechanics.

> No, I fully expected Ferrari's points to be reinstated and so perhaps,
> with hindsight, my recent posts have been as a result of getting angry
> in advance and hence quite acerbic. My apologies for that being the
> case!

> I lost faith with F1 for their ineptitude over the treatment of Senna
> in 1989 and early into 1990, and watched incredulous at Senna's manner
> of winning the 1990 championship going unpunished. Since then the
> racing has been as good as the rules have allowed, but the balance of
> sport versus commercial interests can no longer even remotely be
> considered a balance.

> For all that I still love it, and with no way back and no way to turn
> the clock back see little point in yearning for the old days.
> Nostalgia is fine, but ultimately fruitless.

> Cheers!
> John

>Wow.

>The Mocker

> There is nothing wrong with the environment that about 3 billion less humans
> wouldn't cure, but then that would mean for humanity to exercise a collective
> process of thought.  Very unlikely.  We spend all of our time at the same time doing
> everything we can to both increase the population and destroy the resources we need
> to maintain a livable planetary surface.

>>> The car was ILLEGAL as defined by the FIA,
>>the meeting stewards and by Ferrari...

>>No, John, it was not.

>Yes Bart, it was. Or did we all just imagine that trial to overturn
>the decision? The five trial judges decided to it wasn't, but the FIA
>tech representative, the stewards and Ferrari said it was.

>>Nothing _needs_ to arise as a replacement.  If F1 has declined then it is
no
>>longer the pinnacle and just falls into the general topography that is
>>commercialised and manufactured "sport".

>Just as nothing is perfect, nothing is perfectly level - SOMETHING is
>always best. The vast majority of indexes to which you can refer will
>place F1 at the top of the pile, ergo it is still the world's premier
>form of motorsport.

> >(snip)
> >"Nostalgia is fine, but ultimately fruitless".
> >(unsnip)

> >If you would just like to spread that message out to those whackos
amongst
> >us who want to do things like save rain forests, plant more trees, reduce
> >hydrocarbon emmissions, rid the waterways of plastic bags....you know,
all
> >those yukky things that have happened and continue to happen to this
planet?
> >Tell them that it's no good being nostalgic about what the environment
was
> >like 40, 50, 60 years ago.  Make it your lifes work, John.  Oh....but
don't
> >get nostalgic on the way, will you?  :o)

> Ah nostalgia, "a fond remembrance of an earlier time in one's life".
> You sit at home and fondly remember those trees, see how many of them
> get saved by doing that. It's ultimately fruitless.

> The odd action or two will save infinitely more trees than nostalgia
> ever will.

> Cheers!
> John