I heard hotel rates are much better this year than last year.

I found this to be interesting. I'll bet that's some expensive paint. I wonder if Bernie has relatives or old friends in the paint business?. (Boy, I'm a cynic, eh?)

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I will see you there, hopefully. Worked turn 6.6 last year and sat through the clown show of the Ferrari encounter with the valve box.

Got accepted to work Baku. So that should prove to an interesting week

Right on, would be great to meet you.

Baku would be a cool event to work.

Liberty Media being investigated by the DOJ for antitrust issues regarding the rejection of Andretti Motorsports joining the F1 grid .

https://speedcafe.com/liberty-media-faces-antitrust-investigation-over-andretti-f1-rejection/

The appeal filed by the woman accusing Christian Horner of misconduct has been denied .

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/red-bull-f1-boss-horner-misconduct-appeal-dismissed/10643097/

Wow, Andretti has some powerful friends, I guess when you invest that much money it’s worth pursuing everything.

This would be an interesting driver pick for Audi . He is talented .

2-time Indycar winner to Audi F1 https://thejudge13.com/2024/08/09/2-time-indycar-winner-to-audi-f1/

It may have more to do with General Motors, than Andretti. They're carrying the suitcase full of cash. But either way, I'm not sure forcing your way into the swanky country club is the best way to use the swimming pool.

I watched a super interesting 90 min long interview of Cyril Abitboul - ex Renault F1 (and before that caterham etc)... It was an open window on the backroom dealings in F1 right before F1 exploded with netflix and Liberty... At a time where teams could have floundered and F1 was losing popularity... actually he made a drive to survice like movie about renault from the inside, with some drama and famous directors and they showed it to netflix, which sorta convinced them to move forward with DTS !

He was there (in another role) when Briatore cheated in singapore and had to be the one to fire him... He then played a high wire act of trying to keep the team afloat with little money and little internal support from Ghosn, who actually killed the team one friday evening... Rather than giving up, Cyril contacted the F1 owners ( just before liberty - forgot the name) and got them to help out money wise to keep F1 afloat because it could not survive with the Renault engine gone at the time, as it supplied a couple teams and they were trying to sell F1 for 4 billions or something to liberty..

Lots of interesting anecdotes on how screwed up the caterham deal was, etc... Said Sainz was a fantastic guy as well as driver, very well surrounded and just a good person... the day he hired ricciardo he told his wife, "good news I've secured Daniel, bad news I'll be fired next year for sure, because the car is not good enough this year and with daniel here it's gonna be blamed on me".. Ricciardo essentially came one year too soon as the car was actually not bad the following year... as it turned out ricciardo left early anyway, then managing F1 thru covid etc...

Some poker with Redbull and Marko (you can tell he's not a fan of helmut). At some point redbull asked to breach their engine contract (after 4 WC) because they thought they would get a mercedes engine. Abitboul agreed to let them go because he was 90% sure the mercedes engine deal would not happen and it was a trick of Lauda... it did not, and RB had to come back to renault tail between their legs allowing renault to get the upper hand contract wise (that was when the engine was actually still good, ironically then it was no longer good but RB has already shot themselves in the foot contract wise). That is also how they got Sainz for peanuts as part of the deal! anyway I forgot soem stuff, but the backroom dealing in F1 are amazing... it's in french though (legend podcast).

Captains buddy is back at Bonneville!

The machine looks exquisite.

Best of luck, Alastair!

"After last year's race was unfortunately cancelled due to bad weather, Alastair is now back in the U.S.A where he will be attempting to break an AMA Land Speed Record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

He will be racing his BMW 1938 R51 Motorcycle in two separate classes; The 500cc Modified Frame Vintage Engine on Fuel as well as the Modified Partial Streamlining."

https://ci3.googleusercontent.com/me...jpg?width=1200

Paul, thanks for posting, awesome stuff

Think that might be his dad's old bike

Paul, thanks for posting, awesome stuff

Think that might be his dad's old bike

Jack Doohan officially promoted to the vacant seat at Alpine for 2025 . I believe that makes him the first to move up from Alpines junior academy . Congratulations

Tis a bit wet!

I thought the Sauber's had to be re-branded in Belgium because of their gambling laws.

Logan Sargeant just put an exclamation point on his F1 career by stuffing the car hard into the barriers . Not sure what he was thinking but putting 2 tires on wet grass isn't going to work .

McLarens be fast, could be an interesting race.

Ham got a 3 place penalty. Didn't look like he deserved that, seemed he tried to
get out of the way of who ever it was. IMO Be starting near the bottom of the grid now.

I agree, Hamilton could not have done any more to get out of Perez’ way.