When Ross Brawn took a sabbatical last year from Scuderia Ferrari, the rumors started flying. Would he return to Ferrari? Would he sign with another team? Or would he retire from racing altogether? The rumor mill can stop churning now, as the mastermind behind Ferrari's dominance of the Formula One circuit, it has been announced, is heading over to Honda.
When Schumacher moved to Ferrari from Bennetton ten years ago, Brawn came with him and took up the position of technical director, the number-two spot on any F1 team, and together the pair built the team up. But when Schumacher retired, Brawn took a sabbatical, leaving his options open for a return. Some pundits speculated that Brawn would return to Maranello and take over management of the team from overworked CEO Jean Todt, but in the post-Schumacher era, Brawn will be hawking his wears elsewhere.
Honda, meanwhile, has one of the biggest budgets in F1, but has seen little success in return. This past season, the Honda team has been embarrassed by the comparative success of their B-team Super Aguri... along with just about every other team, big and small. With Brawn behind the proverbial wheel, however, Honda is bound to become a force with which to be reckoned.
Every year the Race of Champions makes for an enjoyable spectacle. The event, set to take place this year on December 16 at a tarmac-filled Wembley Stadium in England, pits drivers from all different forms of motorsport against on another to determine who is the best of the best, alongside a second competition, the Nations Cup, in which two drivers from each participating country strive for the glory of their homeland.
The team to watch this year is Germany, which puts together one of the most promising young drivers with the most decorated old champion. Sebastian Vettel, who recently left his test seat at BMW-Sauber for an impressive race debut with the erstwhile back-marker Scuderia Toro Rosso, will be teaming up with seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher.
It's not the first time the two have crossed paths, but it is the first time the two will be racing together. Aside from both driving Ferrari-powered F1 cars for Italian teams, the two played together in the Nazionale Piloti soccer tournament in Italy, and Schumacher presented an up-and-coming Vettel with the trophy at a karting race years ago. Schumacher made his F1 debut when Vettel was only four years old, and it'll be interesting to watch the two race back to back for victory at the settling of the drunken bar bet of the year.
Instead of beating each other's brains out and assuring that nobody wins, SAIC and Nanjing have decided to stand close to each other on the playground. While they may still avoid eye contact and kick pebbles instead of developing a friendship, they will be carrying out what they're terming a "comprehensive collaboration." Design, production and sales efforts will be pooled in an effort to make China's automakers competitive with outsiders like General Motors and Volkswagen, who currently dominate China's vehicle market. The weekend announcement of the effort was mum on a merger, but did mention an asset swap as the two state-controlled businesses go forward splitting resources. At the very least, it seems like the cooperative effort will quell the bickering over the carved up carcass of Rover Cars.
An F1 team owned by a rapper? You've got to be kidding, right? Well, he might be, but Sean "Puffy" Combs is reportedly considering buying a team. If car manufacturers, retired drivers, clothing labels and even beverage companies can own F1 teams, why can't a recording artist? In the fast-changing world of Formula One, if you've got the green, you can have the team. And nobody's more about the Benjamins than Puffy.
The notoriously impulsive hip-hop icon made the announcement that he intended to buy an F1 team at a party in London celebrating the launch of his new cologne, where he was seen spending most of the night talking with Lewis Hamilton. We'd be seriously surprised if Diddy actually went through with it, but at the very least this looks like the premise for a movie only slightly better than Soul Plane.
Feel free to post your jokes and speculation in the comments section below...just keep it tasteful, biotch!
We must confess that, from time to time, many of us drift into daydreams and wonder what it must be like to work for Ferrari. But surely the reality can't be all that good, right? No, no ... it is. This according to the Great Place to Work Institute, which named the company Best Place to Work in Europe for 2007.
The decoration comes as the result of a corporate initiative called "Formula Uomo," which sought to better the working conditions and lives of the company's considerable workforce. As part of the initiative, over the past decade Ferrari has spent considerable sums of money on new facilities, employee training and family benefits. Just the revitalization of the facilities in and around the factory -- the building of Maranello Village serves as just one example -- has totaled some Є200 million. Employee perks also include staff education, extensive medical coverage and company events.
Ferrari can add this to the Best Place to Work in Italy award which it received in 2003, along with all the race trophies and road-car accolades that the company has won over its 60-year history.
And here we thought, after watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that those Oompa-Loompas had it pretty sweet. If anyone from Maranello is reading this, would you happen to be in need of any bloggers?
Click on the image above to jump to our gallery of 16 high-resolution images
Enthusiasts and consumers may contend that F1 racing provides only negligible benefit to road cars, but automakers evidently think otherwise, as more and more buy into the top-tier motorsport each year. Each has its own way of bringing its racing success to the road: Ferrari makes nearly-unobtainable supercars; McLaren's even more so. Renault, on the other hand, translates their immense success on the F1 circuit into some of the hottest hatchbacks on the market (even if they're not currently offered stateside).
Renaultsport launched the Clio F1 Team R27 edition to coincide with the racing team's launch of the R27, the Formula One single-seater they'll be fielding in the 2007 season that kicks off in a week. The new hot hatch made its public debut at the Geneva motor show last week. Along with special decals and a "Sirius yellow" finish, Recaro racing buckets, lightweight 17" anthracite rims and a few other special touches, the Clio R27 gets an upgraded "Cup" suspension. The limited series goes on sale this month, and once it's been sold out, the Cup suspension will be made available on the "ordinary" Clio Renaultsport.
The Clio R27 follows on the same formula as last year's Megane Renaulsport F1 Team R26, featuring the same livery and treatment, which was displayed alongside the new Clio R27 and the new F1 car on the Geneva show floor. Check out all the action in our high-resolution image gallery below.
It looks like teeny tiny (and tinny) Pentastars could be coming. They could even be good. Tme will tell, as the DaimlerChrysler supervisory board has given its blessing to teaming up with China's Chery Motor Company. The Chinese government still needs to sign off, but that appears to be a formality at this point. What Chrysler gets out of the deal are Chery products to sell here and in Europe with Chrysler branding. This sort of harks back to the 1970s and '80s, when Chrysler was rebadging Mitsubishi products for domestic consumption. The upside is that Chrysler gets small cars in their livery immediately, though we're sure that federalization is the next hurdle to overcome before the models go on sale.
It could be a good thing for Chrysler, as they get a point of entry into segments and markets abroad that they currently have no offerings for. Domestically, they can crash the small-car party without having to engineer an entirely new platform and its associated production labyrinth. While this may help keep DCX afloat, it doesn't help the domestic workers much. Not only that, execution of the products that do make it to the US market will absolutely kill or king the Chery-sourced cars. DCX badly needs to follow up the waning success of the LX cars, and we hope they do so with more attention to dynamics, materials and fit-and-finish then they did with cars like the Sebring and Compass.
The motorsport press rumor mill is grinding away at full speed on a juicy bit of gossip and speculation that Michael Schumacher is being groomed to take over as head of Scuderia Ferrari. After his retirement, Schumacher took on a role as a special advisor to Ferrari chief Jean Todt. It was supposed to be a low-key, backstage kind of position that would let the seven-time world champion continue to impart his experience to the team, but it apparently hasn't been as hands-off as they made it out to be: Schumacher has reportedly made more visits to Maranello and sat in on more key meetings in the past few months since his retirement than he did during the entire 2006 season.
An unnamed source inside Ferrari was quoted as saying that Schumacher's current level of involvement points to only one conclusion: that he's preparing to step in as team leader -- and it would make sense. A lot of F1 pundits said that it would be entirely likely for Schumacher to head up a team after retiring from active racing, but how could he leave Ferrari for another team? Ferrari today is the house that Michael built. He brought in the key staff, revamped the way the team works and turned it into a winning tour de force. Jean Todt has been looking to step away from directly managing the team since being promoted to overall head of Ferrari, but hasn't been able to up to this point. He's needed a capable successor.
Of course, Schumacher's representatives have denied it up and down, but it's hard to avoid the logical conclusion when all the pieces fit.
Ferrari wins world championships and it applies the knowledge to building a beast like the 599 GTB Fiorano. Renault wins the championship and they make... a supermini. But that's cool, we remind ourselves, because everyone does what they do best, and nobody makes hot hatches like Renaultsport, the performance division that builds the F1 cars and the hottest of pocket rockets.
So to coincide with the launch of the new R27 Formula One race car, Renaultsport has taken the wraps off their latest offering: the Clio Renault F1 Team R27, complete with checkered-flag decals, special "Sirius" yellow paint, red brake calipers and a numbered plate. With all that frivolous fluff, what more could you ask for? Inside, this special Clio is outfitted with Recaro racing seats, but the only real "meat" of this special edition is the Cup-based suspension, lowered with new shocks and springs, plus 17" Anthracite wheels at all four corners.
The Renault Sport Clio Renault F1 Team R27 will be officially launched at the Geneva show in March, but somehow we're just not all that excited. After producing special edition after special edition, we're left wondering when Renault will actually build something really special, worthy of its on-track achievements.
Evidently undeterred by the breakdown in negotiations to get himself into the Busch series, and ever-determined to make it into NASCAR one way or another, Jacques Villeneuve is making some fine progress in starting up his own team.
The former world champion has reportedly reached an agreement with Roush Racing, Ford's biggest fielder of stock cars, to help him set up his own team. After winning the Indy 500 and the CART title, JV moved to F1, and has raced for half a dozen teams since then. As such, he may have a good scope of how teams are run, but running his own team in NASCAR should present a whole new slew of challenges to the French-Canadian driver.
What the Jacques needs now is more than love, sweet love...he needs to secure $18 million in sponsorship to finance the venture. Certainly not an impossibility for a name like Villeneuve, but any way you cut it, that's a big lump of cash for a series rookie to raise on his own.
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