Toyota, the world’s largest car company, has become the first team to start selling real parts of its F1 cars online. A complete rear wing is €2,000 a plain front wing a snip at €800. Apparently the parts have all been used at some time on the F1 cars either in racing or testing and come with a certificate of authenticity. The parts are on sale on Toyota’s official website at http://www.toyota-f1-shop.com If things don’t get resolved in the next few days between the teams and the FIA over next year’s championship then there could a lot more of this More…

Following on from my earlier post, Frank Williams said some very interesting things on Saturday afternoon, so here they are in more detail. He covers the current 2010 entry crisis, explains Max Mosley’s motivation, looks at the problem of engine supply if there is a split and talks about possibly housing one of the new teams on his site. What is the situation with FOTA, you are suspended, will you go back? “We are out of FOTA, expelled. Normally when you are expelled, you don’t go back to school or not that one, anyway. In or out, that’s fine. If More…

“Williams needs a budget cap. Hopefully it will bring the others down to us.” This was the view of Sir Frank Williams on Saturday afternoon, discussing the ongoing crisis over the 2010 rules. Frank has signed up for the FIA championship next season. After years of almost bankrupting itself to stay competitive in F1, the Williams team welcomes the budget cap as an opportunity to take a financial breather, make the team profitable again and shape it up for a possible sale down the line. Frank is also attracted by the idea of housing one of the new teams on More…

The drivers working for the eight remaining FOTA teams got embroiled in the 2010 entry crisis today when they met with team principals and agreed to stand solid with them in opposing the 2010 rules package. Afterwards, rumours began to circulate that a repeat of Indianapolis 2005 might take place where the drivers would do the formation lap only and then park the cars, leaving only the Williams and Force India cars to race. Much as Nico Rosberg, looking for his first win and Vijay Mallya, looking for Force India’s first points, would have loved it, there was no substance More…

Jenson Button won the Turkish Grand Prix today, by 6.7 seconds over the Red Bull duo of Mark Webber and pole sitter Sebastian Vettel. It was Button’s sixth win from seven starts and sets him up now for the world championship and an emotional homecoming to Silverstone in two weeks time. “You have built me a monster of a car,” he told the team over the radio afterwards. He later added, “The car felt the best it has felt all year.” It was a dominant performance by Button, who started second on the grid, but passed Vettel on the opening More…

Formula 3 team Litespeed has announced that it’s F1 team name, if it’s 2010 entry is accepted by the FIA this week, will be Lotus. Last week we had a team using the Brabham name and there are rumours that March is going to be recycled. If it carries on like this we’re all going to have to start growing mutton chop sideburns again. Litespeed is owned by two ex Lotus engineers and they have persuaded David Hunt, who owns the rights to the name, to let them use it. Lotus won the world championship with Jim Clark, Graham Hill, More…

The fuel loads have been published by the FIA and, as expected the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel is a shade lighter than Jenson Button’s Brawn. Vettel will stop on lap 15, two laps before Button. Button has the tactical advantage for the race because his team will be able to watch what Vettel does at his first stop and will then have around 2 minutes to calculate what strategy to employ for Button at his first stop to give him the best chance of winning the race. Button will have to watch out for Webber, who is on the More…

Sebastian Vettel was fastest in all three qualifying sessions today at Istanbul and picked up his second pole position of the season for Red Bull. Pole position changed hands three times in the final moments of a terrific session. First Mark Webber grabbed it, then Jenson Button went faster, but Vettel got the lap which mattered. Jenson Button again had a quiet build up, with various set up issues to be resolved in practice, but delievered a big lap at the end to start alongside Vettel on the front row. But the early indications are that the Brawn may have More…

We’ve had a great response to the post about what the teams mean to F1, some great thoughts. Picking up on Max Mosley’s analogy of F1 as being like a restaurant we had this very well considered contribution from Bradley, “The restaurant at Le Mans is open for 24 Hours and remains great, no matter who the diners are. “Ferrari ate there for a while and left, so did Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and others, then they left too. And the race stayed great. “I’d suggest that, as long as there are diners coming to the restaurant, it doesn’t matter who More…

I wrote a piece on the ITV F1 website yesterday looking at the prospects for the FOTA teams to start their own breakaway series, which they are being encouraged to do by FIA president Max Mosley. I mentioned that Max always makes the point that the FIA owns F1 and if teams don’t like it they can go and race elsewhere. The teams of course believe that they are the show. Mosley compares the role of teams in F1 to patrons in a restaurant; they may eat there every day and spend a great deal of money doing so, but More…