and from the Not What We Were Hoping For department

[waider]

This weekend saw the Monaco Grand Prix, the high point - stylistically speaking - of the Formula 1 season. George Lucas and some of his recent directees were present, and two of the cars - from Red Bull Racing, nee Jaguar, nee Stewart - were reliveried as Star Wars cars complete with laser burns, etc. on the, er, hulls.

Neither car finished the race. More embarassingly, what is normally a high-attrition race (due to the very tight nature of the course, which tends not to forgive mistakes) had an high proportion of finishers (14 of 18 starters) this year.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Weak. I was amused when i noticed Red Bull Racing, though. What about Renault, who were they before? Maybe Prost (ex-Ligier)?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

They used to be Bennetton. They ran Renault engines for a while before becoming the official Renault team.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Ahah. Did Prost fold, then?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Yep. Someone tried to buy them (a guy called Charles Nickerson, who used to race Jaguar saloons with Tom Walkinshaw), but was basically told to "Fuck off" by the FIA, when he showed up in Malaysia (I'm not certain, but i think this was 2003) with the previous year's cars and a couple of drivers.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Meaning, what, FIA told him to go to hell because he wasn't putting money into R&D, or was FIA just being FIA?

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

More of the latter, IMO. He'd made the purchase at fairly short notice, and he claimed that the purchase included Prost's entry into the championship (cf BAR buying Tyrell, Red Bull buying Jaguar or other examples from recent years). The regs hadn't changed significantly, so using the cars from the preceding year wasn't too much of a problem (Ferrari were doing it too), other than the fact the the previous year's Prost was a shite car. However, the FIA refused to recognise his right to Prost's entry, and told him to bugger off: they may have demanded the usual "new team bond" of something like US$50 million as a way of telling him to bugger off, but memory fails me on this point and i'm too lazy to google.