virgivaughn: Using team orders “wrong” at this stage – Horner

Using team orders “wrong” at this stage – Horner is an original article from F1 Fanatic. If this article has been published anywhere other than F1 Fanatic it is an infringement of copyright.

In the round-up: Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Red Bull won’t use team orders while both of their drivers are still in contention for the championship.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Webber free to race Vettel (Sky)

Christian Horner: “Sebastian [Vettel] has moved into the lead and Mark [Webber] still has a chance of winning this championship. I think it would be wrong to impose team orders while Mark still mathematically has a chance of winning.”

Motoring company Cosworth puts itself on sale (The Telegraph)

“Cosworth has been put up for sale by its owners Gerry Forsythe and Kevin Kalkhoven, the former IndyCar racing magnates-turned-venture capitalists, who bought the business from Ford eight years ago.”

Government criticised over refusal to back boycott of Bahrain Grand Prix (The Guardian)

“[The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee] said Bahrain should have been included by the Foreign Office on its list of ‘countries of concern’ in the wake of the ‘brutal’ suppression of anti-government protests last year.”

Williams has ‘many’ driver options (ESPN)

Toto Wolff: “[An announcement] is going to be this year, but we don’t know about the timing yet because we want to concentrate on this season and focus on our current drivers – that’s important. There are many options that we are looking at at the moment and it’s not an easy one.”

Webber: We will not get carried away (BBC)

“The big unknown is still the tyres. They have been such a challenge for everyone this year, and even now, with only four races to go, no team is getting ahead of themselves in believing they really understand what is going on.”

Bottas: Young drivers need more testing (Autosport)

“It is obviously really, really difficult nowadays for young drivers to come up and we don’t need to go so much further back, only a few years ago, there was a lot of testing and younger drivers could get much more mileage.”

Wolff drives an F1 car with De Villota on her mind (Reuters)

“We were in contact a couple of weeks ago and she told me to drive for the both of us now, that I would be out there representing us both.”

Susie Wolff makes F1 debut at Williams event

Hill to drive the RB6 in Barcelona (Red Bull)

“The 1996 Formula One World Champion will be on hand on Sunday at the Circuit de Catalunya to drive the 2010 championship-winning RB6, taking over from [Sebastien] Buemi, who’ll be at the wheel on Saturday.”

Interview with team principal Monisha Kaltenborn (Sauber)

“Professionally I’m sure gender plays no role. And as I’ve been around for such a long time, I don’t think I’ll be seen more in terms of a woman than a boss. People who are new to the scene might just do a double-take at first, but that will soon settle down.”

Haynes to sell e-books independently (The Bookseller)

“Books available at launch include a Bernie Ecclestone biography, Bernie; Tiff Needell’s Tiff Gear; and Formula 1 title Memories of Senna.”

Respect for Vettel with ‘strings attatched’ (Vinayak Pande on motorsport)

“It seems a little like saying that Jim Clark can’t be considered the all-time great that he is because he only drove cars designed by the late great Colin Chapman. Or that [Jackie] Stewart’s own achievements would be diminished due to Ken Tyrell being the constant in his three titles.”

Vettel seizes the initiative in F1 title battle (Unibet)

My new article for Unibet on Sebastian Vettel taking over the lead of the drivers’ championship and how Lewis Hamilton’s season went wrong.

Tweets

Check out this footage of @bsenna taking one of our guests on a hot lap of the @silverstoneuk circuit youtu.be/J7b-WUFGY7Y

— Williams F1 (@WilliamsF1Team) October 17, 2012

.@mikeycollier found this great pic the other day of us training in Lanzarote ’01 with @aussiegrit! It’s a beaut mate!! lockerz.com/s/253789315

— Jenson Button (@JensonButton) October 17, 2012

Comment of the day

@Raymondu999 appraises the poultry situation at Ferrari:

Hiring Vettel to partner Alonso would be against the Ferrari tradition of a clear hen and rooster driver line-up. However I’m not too sure on this. Think back to 2009 when they announced Alonso would replace Kimi Raikkonen. At that point in time Felipe Massa was a very good driver, putting in top drives in 2009 despite his car. Given what had transpired the year before, indeed 2009 he could have been driving as the reigning world champion.

I wonder – did they predict Massa’s slump in form back then? If not – and I have no reason to suspect they did, given their joy at his good performances in the first few races of 2010 – then they had every intention of pairing two roosters in the same henhouse.

On the other hand I feel anyone always has to be wary of their job security at Maranello. Montezemolo has shown in the past that he isn’t shy of ousting people as an almost knee-jerk reaction, as shown with replacing Schumacher for Raikkonen in 2006, and then replacing Raikkonen for Alonso in 2009.

Should Alonso fail to win the 2012 and 2013 titles, I don’t think it’s a big stretch of the imagination to see Montezemolo ousting Alonso for Vettel.
@Raymondu999

From the forum

F1 Fanatic readers planning trips to next year’s British and Malaysian Grands Prix
Great footage from the Super TC 2000 Callejero de Santa Fe night race
Which past drivers do the current drivers remind you of?

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On this day in F1

Nigel Mansell led a Williams one-two in the Mexican Grand Prix 25 years ago today.

With team mate Nelson Piquet second, Mansell remained in contention for the championship with two rounds to go.

The race was stopped shortly before half the original distance after Derek Warwick crashed heavily. Piquet led the second part of the race but with the race being decided on aggregate time Mansell only had to sit behind him to ensure victory.

Riccardo Patrese came third for Brabham, which turned out to be the last they achieved with BMW power, and only one more would follow for the team.

Here’s the start of the race: