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denise
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Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
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 Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 21:06:09 Post subject: |
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Yay for Loeb, i just looove to watch him!  Expected more something from Adam Carroll, but meh... nothing came lol
And had enough of Ham, and his brother, and his father all the time...  |
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Kinga
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Joined: 07 May 2008
Location: Hungary
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| Posted: Mon Dec 15, 2008 07:05:36 Post subject: Re: |
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| denise wrote: |
And had enough of Ham, and his brother, and his father all the time... |
yeah, when I saw them yesterday... I was like  nooooo, please not again!!!!!! Do they go to Lewis' datings also???!!!!
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denise
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Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
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| Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2008 01:30:06 Post subject: |
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^^ LOL!
Apart from them was funny tho, some strange accidents occured with those weird cars  i'd like to see Kimi taking part in RoC too, i think he may enjoy it, the rally car and competing with all those guys...  |
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Gilraen
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Joined: 15 Feb 2007
Location: the Netherlands
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| Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:19:26 Post subject: |
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Since he was driving in Cart I have always liked Alessandro Zanardi. His comeback after his horrific accident is really still amazing. Autosport has a very nice article on him on the subscribers section. It's an old interview.
Plse do not copy this onto other boards:
| Autosport.com wrote: | Alex Zanardi Uncut
An Autosport journalist comes away from any event with several interviews that would never normally see the light of day - not everything can fit into one weekend's worth of articles. In what will be the first of many features of this kind, autosport.com brings you the the full transcript of Alex Zanardi talking about his sportscar cameo in 1995 and how he made his way into IndyCar the following year
By Mark Glendenning - Autosport's WTCC correspondent
As far as I can tell, being a motorsport journalist and film director really only have one thing in common, and that is that fans would be amazed at what ends up on the cutting-room floor.
Interviewing drivers and team figures is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job. Most of the time, an interview is conducted with a specific purpose in mind - access at the top levels of the sport can be quite tightly controlled, particularly during race weekends, so time constraints usually demand that you stick to the subject or risk reaching the end of your slot before you've gotten everything you need.
The flip-side to this is that when you do have the chance to wander off the main subject, you can't always find a way to use the material that you get. As a result, plenty of interesting stuff never makes it any further than the journalist and their voice recorder, purely because it's not relevant to the angle of the story.
This was brought home a couple of months ago. I was at Okayama in Japan for the penultimate WTCC round of the season, and I'd sat down with Alex Zanardi to get some quotes for an edition of Photo Finish in Autosport magazine, where we'd decided to revisit his brief cameo as a sportscar driver in 1995. It's an often-overlooked chapter of his career - even his autobiography blips over it - but an important one, for reasons that I'll leave it to him to explain.
I was hell-bent on getting through the conversation without bringing up the Lausitz accident, partly because it wasn't remotely relevant to what I needed to talk to him about, but mostly because he gets asked about it in pretty much every interview he does. Zanardi thwarted me by bringing it up himself, but in retrospect I'm glad he did because what he had to say offered an interesting glimpse of how he views the consequences of the crash seven years on.
Autosport magazine readers will already be familiar with Zanardi's account of his extraordinary drive in the Lotus Esprit Sport 300 in the wet Silverstone round of the 1995 BPR Series, as the piece that came out of this interview was published in the December 11 issue. But given Zanardi's status as a world-class raconteur, we thought we'd share the full transcript of the chat. It's a classic Zanardi interview - ie, four or five questions yielded about 1300 words. We spoke on the Saturday evening, a couple of hours after he'd endured a rather disappointing qualifying session for the following day's race.
It's not by any stretch the 'definitive Alex Zanardi one-on-one', but rather a snapshot of the sort of things that can come out of conversations that any Autosport journalist will have a dozen times over the course of a race weekend, and which rarely end up being using for much more than background information.
Running the full transcript of chats is something that we might do more often in future, depending on whether it is interesting enough (we do cut out an awful lot of flab), and whether there is any demand for it. In the meantime, enjoy Zanardi - the director's cut.
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Last edited by Gilraen on Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:32:00; edited 3 times in total |
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Gilraen
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Joined: 15 Feb 2007
Location: the Netherlands
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| Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:20:44 Post subject: |
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Continued - 2 -
| Quote: | Q: OK, so today I'd like to talk to you about racing the Lotus sportscar back in 1995...
Alex Zanardi: "Wow! (laughs) That would be a pleasure."
Q: The big result that year was at Silverstone in the wet, sharing the car with Alex Portman
Zanardi: "That is correct. I remember most of all the argument that we had with George Howard-Chappell, who today is the technical director for Prodrive. At the time, the team literally had no money, and I was driving for them and that was a very important race because they had a lot of people from Lotus cars there, so they were really hoping for a good result to get some money from the factory to promote the programme.
"And they were very scared. I wanted to start with slicks and they kept saying, 'No Alex, please, no, no no. It's too big a risk.' And while the discussion went on, we got to the point where it was too late to change back. Actually, when people took the blankets off, most people were on slicks. It was the right thing to do because the circuit was getting dry, and sure enough four laps into the race we had to pit for tyres.
"At the time you didn't have proper pitstops like in Formula One, so you lost a lot of time. As a result of that it was amazing that we were able to unlap ourselves in a GT2 and finish only 19 seconds behind Andy Wallace in the McLaren. Had it not been for that, we would have won the race in a GT2, which would have been unbelievable. We had 300 horsepower in comparison to the 700-plus that they had. It was a good race.
I remember at one point it was pouring down with rain and in a certain part of the race I was eight seconds faster than anybody else! That's how we recovered so much time. The car was really good - flying."
Q: Career-wise, that was a very difficult time for you. The Lotus F1 programme was off the radar, and you didn't have a lot of other options.
Zanardi: "That's right. That [sportscar] was the only ride I got that year. The only other job I got was as a safe driving instructor. It was the only thing I had. But I have always been a very optimistic person. If I look back at the guy I was... man, there was not a lot of reason to be optimistic. But I was. I didn't think my career was over.
I thought something would be around the corner, and in fact it did happen. It was at that race actually where I saw Rick Gorne, and it was then that he said, 'Alex, looking at you doing what you are doing tears my heart into two pieces, so when you have time come on over to the factory and we will talk about something, because to see you without a ride is a waste of talent.' "So the following week I went to see him thinking he would help to get me a ride here in Japan for Formula 3000. And when I started to talk about that he said, 'no, you don't want to do that, it's a waste of time. You want to be driving in IndyCar.'
I said, 'What? I did not even think about that; it is too much for me'. But he said, 'come over to the States for a couple of races, I will introduce you to some people, and we will get you a ride there'. "That was the year that he pushed Gil de Ferran to drive for Jim Hall with a Pennzoil car, and Gil was doing very well. I think to a certain degree I owe him a lot, because he opened the road for European rookies.
Before then people were very sceptical because the ovals, powerful cars, this and that, you need experience... they were not open-minded. They would not even consider a young gun from Europe." |
Continue reading in the next post
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Gilraen
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Location: the Netherlands
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| Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:23:46 Post subject: |
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Continued - 3 -
| Quote: | Q: If you hadn't had that conversation with Rick that weekend, would you have considered sportscars as a full-time career?
Zanardi: "You know, everything I have done in my life, I never felt it was like a B-choice. That [sportscar] was what was available and I was very enthusiastic about doing that. Had it been possible to stay with Lotus for the whole season for the following year, I would have seriously considered that as a good option.
"Fortunately for me, things went even better. That was really a very important turning point, not just in my career, but in my life, because I went to be from an unknown European driver who had been kind of promising at one point in his career but never really lived up to his promise, and people were doubting whether I could ever be worth another chance. "To become number one, the cat's meow in the United States... the guys who would break the news every week were talking about me like I was the new Ayrton Senna of American racing - which was a big switch!"
Q: It's amazing how quickly your situation can change.
Zanardi: "It really is. But honestly, I have always appreciated the compliments I received then, as I do today. You see a guy with no legs and people think that everything he does is just a miracle just because he stands up. "And that's the way it was when I first started to drive over here. Just because I was able to pull away from the garage, people would start to clapping and saying, 'Wow, super guy. Wow. What he is doing is fantastic'. "Now, people tend to come to me like today because I didn't qualify very well and say, 'what happened?' And that's very good - that's a very big compliment, because it means that I have changed in people's minds, the expectation. You know that they know what I can do.
"But at the time, nobody would expect that somebody with no experience like me could do so well. But in reality it also doesn't happen very often that a newcomer, unknown like I was then, would find himself driving the best car in the field. Because that is what I had in my hands. Ganassi gave me a fantastic car. People tend to forget that Jimmy Vasser won the championship in the year of my debut. And the following year, OK, I won but he finished third. But it was a hell of a car."
Q: Speaking of qualifying, what did happen today? You seemed to lose time behind [Takayuki] Aoki at the last corner.
Zanardi: "Yeah. In reality, today is one of those 'very normal for WTCC' cases where if you don't have the super speed that the Schnitzer guys have, you get stuck in that area where 0.1s could have a big, night-and-day difference. "I think I had a good lap in line - I did my best sector in P1, best sector in P2, so I was looking at a mid-37, which could have been from P7 to P15 (laughs). But for sure it would have been better than where I am now. "I was getting closer to Aoki, but in reality he didn't do anything wrong. It was just a case where Alain Menu was warming his tyres, getting ready to start his lap, and he saw him coming, and had he been a white BMW he probably would have let him by. "But because he was Aoki, a newcomer, Menu didn't pay a lot of attention so he held up Aoki, and as I was coming Aoki was probably swearing, like, 'What the *** No swearing *** are you doing?' "He didn't realise I was coming so when I arrived he just panicked, he didn't know what to do and he held me up. Nevertheless, that was my fastest lap of the race, despite the fact that he held me up and we made contact and I bent my car a little." |
Plse do not copy this onto other boards
He has also written a book about his life including how he recovered and started racing again. I found that a great read 
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Gilraen
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red
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Joined: 28 Mar 2007
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Feb 05, 2009 12:42:38 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | EXCLUSIVE: Senna rules out GP2
By Charles Bradley Wednesday, February 4th 2009, 15:52 GMT
Last year's GP2 Series runner-up Bruno Senna will not return to Formula One's feeder category, autosport.com can exclusively reveal.
Senna, who holds the key to this year's junior single-seater driver market with GP2 teams waiting for his decision before firming up their plans, tested impressively for Honda F1 before Christmas.
He had been expected to return to iSport after Honda announced its withdrawal from F1 soon after his run at Barcelona.
However, Senna informed iSport early this week that he will hold out for an opportunity in F1 this year, rather than return to their GP2 line-up.
His only option for a race drive would be at Scuderia Toro Rosso or whatever form Honda F1 might take on if the Brackley-based team continue to operate under new ownership.
Autosport.com can also reveal that Norfolk-based iSport have now set the wheels in motion to sign another Brazilian, former DPR racer Diego Nunes, to partner Giedo van der Garde for GP2 in 2009. They hopes to tie-up the deal by the end of the week.
For the full background to the story, read this week's Autosport magazine. |
Source
Wow - imho I think that's a risky move by Bruno. Of course it could work out for the best, but he risks not having a ride at all this year - and that's not good. 
Well - with the announcement this morning of Sebastien Bourdais staying on at Toro Rosso - why do I get the feeling Bruno has shot himself in the foot.
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verena
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Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Location: Austria
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Emilie
Joined: 26 Feb 2007
Location: France
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Klyster
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Joined: 18 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 06:31:42 Post subject: |
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RIP Henry & Flavio 
Not a good day for motorsport. |
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icegirljenni
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Joined: 22 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 06:34:16 Post subject: |
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Deepest condolences to surtees family. just goes to show how dangerous motorsport can still be
R.I.P Henry
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enigma
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Joined: 24 Aug 2008
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 16:34:31 Post subject: Re: |
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condolences to the family. So tragic and reminds us how dangerous motorsport can be. Watching the video he was so unlucky - hopefully the world of motorsport will continue to improve the safety in all formulae. |
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Gilraen
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Location: the Netherlands
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AnnieM
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Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Location: Glasgow, UK
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| Posted: Mon Jul 20, 2009 18:05:29 Post subject: |
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| Tragic, so young, sad indeed. |
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denise
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Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Istanbul, Turkey
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| Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 09:53:00 Post subject: |
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| Thats so sad, what a terrible thing to happen at such a young age, it was a freaky accident indeed... |
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Adam
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Joined: 26 Feb 2007
Location: USA
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