F1 - GP (General Purpose)

http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a31807/formula-one-wont-miss-nico-rosberg-and-he-wont-miss-it/

Formula One Won’t Miss Nico Rosberg and He Won’t Miss It

F1’s darkest cloud lightens in retirement.

Nico Rosberg saved his most honest performance for last.

Days after achieving his lifelong dream of becoming a world driving champion, the most complex Formula 1 driver of his era sent shockwaves through the sport by retiring at the age of 31. We should have seen it coming.

More duty-bound than passion filled, Nico had become a vision of discomfort. Racers refuse to accept the inevitable finish line awaiting their careers, but Rosberg was a unlike the other animals. The joy of the fight demonstrated in his formative years was replaced by a longing to find a graceful conclusion. At last month’s title-decider in Abu Dhabi, the exit door finally opened.

The German’s choice to quit after winning his first title confirms many of the suspicions I’ve held since he moved from Williams Grand Prix to join the new Mercedes AMG F1 program.

Trading a solid second-tier ride for a chance to eventually take over the No. 1 position at Mercedes fit his life’s preordained narrative; the son of Keke Rosberg, 1982 F1 world champ, was finally in a position to fulfill his destiny.

Cast as the eventual successor to his teammate, seven-time F1 champ Michael Schumacher, the spotlight became fixed on Nico’s every move. Rosberg soon had the look of someone angling for a return to the shadows. In hindsight, the switch to Mercedes also revealed Nico’s true personality.

Getty

Keke, the gregarious Finn, was nowhere to be found in his firstborn. The burning desire to compete—a hallmark of F1’s most evocative heroes—made fleeting appearances as Nico traced his father’s steps. Supreme talent was clearly part of the Rosberg bloodlines; the inexhaustible need to demonstrate it on the world stage, however, was not part of the DNA package.

Unlike his father, Nico gave the impression he could live without racing. Had the elder Rosberg chosen farming as the family business, I suspect his son would be tending soil in anonymity today.

My lasting memory of Rosberg will be of a young man who couldn’t stomach prolonged exposure to the soul-jarring presence of Lewis Hamilton. His former childhood friend brought misery as a Mercedes teammate. With tranquility lost and self-confidence eroding, Nico’s need to distance himself from the Briton’s antagonistic ways became one of the few relatable aspects of his character.

Without Hamilton in the Mercedes team, I doubt we’d be discussing Rosberg’s career in the past tense. During those pre-”Hammer time” days, and with Schumacher struggling to match his pace, Nico almost looked settled as the heir apparent within Mercedes. Sadly, beating a living legend in identical equipment proved to be a temporary relief valve; the arrival of Hamilton in 2013 to replace Schumacher spelled the end of Nico’s brief flirtation with inner peace.

Rosberg’s introversion was only hardened after Hamilton, already a world champion with McLaren, rode into the machine-like Mercedes team with cruel intentions. In Rosberg, he found someone whose foundation could be rocked with words. A free radical among droll, process-driven types, Hamilton’s anarchistic ways must have triggered Nico’s fight-or-flight response shortly after he arrived.

Being asked to coexist with his flashy counterpart—one who felt zero nostalgia for their shared past—resulted in a visible, personal decline for Rosberg. Retreating inward, the default move for a loner like Nico, was his coping mechanism. With Hamilton taking up residence in his subconscious, Nico lost his edge; No. 1 status at Mercedes was surrendered until he hit back in 2016. Four years in, the shaky foundation was slid beneath Hamilton’s feet.

What should have been a compelling story of redemption for Rosberg—of finally beating his bully—became muted by years of prickly interactions with all those outside his small inner circle. Rosberg, the intentional stranger, erected walls that made establishing bonds a significant challenge.

Getty Mark Thompson

In light of the retirement news, an F1 reporter friend rang on Friday to celebrate the evaporation of grand prix racing’s darkest cloud. Words and phrases like “He gives you nothing,” “cold,” “calculating,” “insincere,” and “zero personality,” were used to describe the tortured soul that was Nico Rosberg. The call was capped off with “he won’t be missed.”

Although his fans will surely disagree, losing Rosberg from the grand prix grid is far from a tear-shedding occasion. Replace Nico’s retirement with a Fernando Alonso or Daniel Ricciardo, and fans would be crashing pubs from Spain to Australia to sing songs and consume pints in their honor. As much as I’d love to think the same kind of reverie will take place for Rosberg in Germany, or wherever else his fans reside, I’m just not sure he’s made the kind of connections to warrant such a response.

Will he be missed? Of course. Will he be remembered? By an unfortunately small number, I fear.

Like four-time F1 champion Alain Prost, Nico did a lot of winning while at his peak, but the list of truly memorable performance—the kind that will be retold for generations—is revealingly thin. In a sport where its stars are expected to incite and inspire the masses, Rosberg was F1’s sensible pair of brown shoes.

When it came to exploring the scariest outer reaches of vehicle performance—that place where the Sennas and Villeneuves lived, Nico was never accused of being the fastest driver of his generation. But, to his credit, he was incredibly efficient, and like Prost, was capable of matching and out-performing his celebrated rival on numerous occasions.

With 23 grand prix wins and a stellar 2016 season that delivered nine of those victories, Nico will venture into the next phase of his life being introduced as “Formula 1 world champion.” It wasn’t a fluke, as some have suggested.

If there’s sorrow to attach to Rosberg’s retirement, it’s for the questions destined to remain unanswered. First-time champions, even for an introvert like Rosberg, tend to change in demonstrable ways. We’ve never experienced a championship-grade Nico rolling into a new season; I suspect the lightness and ease that made infrequent visits in years past might have washed over his title defense. And from that newfound place of inner assuredness, a proper fight with Hamilton—on equal mental footing—would have been fascinating to observe.

F1 is also losing its most compelling storyline. The warring teammates, the cold stares, bitter comments, and occasional wheel banging. . . all have brought heightened awareness to a series searching for an identity in the age of social media. For the casual F1 fan, of which there are many, the Silver Arrow-themed slugfest was guaranteed to entertain.

Watching Lewis feast upon whomever fills Nico’s seat is destined to disappoint. It certainly happened when Gerhard Berger replaced Prost alongside Senna at McLaren. F1, without the major discord among title contenders, might be a refreshing change from the recent norm; the lack of tabloid drama in the Mercedes camp will definitely require an adjustment period once the 2017 season gets under way. I doubt the new world champion will be pining for a return anytime soon.

I’m happy for Rosberg, and from all I’ve read since Friday, his decision struck a chord with many others who were apathetic to his presence in the sport. F1’s distant star finally connected with fans by citing the need to place marriage and fatherhood above pursuits of a second or third driving title. A burden lifted, a deep exhale after accomplishing a lifelong goal.

Stuck in a lingering cycle of distress at Mercedes, Nico set earning an F1 title as his personal finish line. In the end, we learned Nico’s truth: all he wanted was to bring a championship home to his wife and daughter and bid farewell.

GUILTY!!!

The Bernie Ecclestone mock trial: F1’s greatest advocate, or a scourge on the sport?

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone speaks to the media at the paddock area ahead of the Russian F1 Grand Prix in Sochi, Russia, October 9, 2015 Bernie Ecclestone’s legacy in F1 is the subject of heated debate Credit: Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

Sean Gibson

24 January 2017 • 1:28pm

The fateful day is finally upon us - Bernie Ecclestone is surrendering the reins at the zenith of Formula One.

Or, rather, he has had the reins wrested from him. New owners of the sport, Liberty Media, have finally called time on the 86-year-old businessman’s near-half-century career in the sport.

Throughout his decades in F1 Ecclestone has attracted praise and criticism, courted controversy with seeming glee at points, all the while maintaining his own preeminence.

Few, though, in 2017, are sorry to see him go. Some think he has given all he can given to the sport, others see opportunity in the inevitable power vacuum he leaves in his wake.

Ultimately the now-former chief executive of Formula One has managed to alienate too many people in recent years, with fewer triumphs to point to in response to any criticism.
Profile | Bernie Ecclestone

So what exactly has Bernie Ecclestone done to F1? Exploring which charges and which accolades we should lay at the supremo’s door is key to understanding his legacy.
He brought F1 to the world

Ecclestone has developed Formula One into a very different beast than the one in which he first took a stake in the late 1970s.

In that time the sport has taken great strides towards becoming truly global, making several concerted attempts to crack the United States market and taking in increasingly long tours of the Far East.

Forays to South Africa have been made, while most recently Turkey, Russia and Azerbaijan have been the scenes of F1’s expansion through eastern Europe into near Asia.
Could anyone have imagined even 20 years ago that. by 2009, F1 would race under lights in the twilight of Abu Dhabi? Credit: Dunbar/LAT/REX/Shutterstock

Key to this development has been the winning of new fans in previously untapped markets, via exposure on television; Ecclestone held a pioneering role in selling F1 as a single product, with the sport packaged as a season rather than a hodge-podge of Grands Prix.

The scale of this expansion can be seen in the recent purchase of the sport by Liberty Media - at a cost of £6billion.

Verdict: ‘GUILTY’
He made himself rich - at the expense of everyone else

Flavio Briatore, former team principal of the Benetton and Renault teams and hardly a paragon of virtue himself, said in 2008: “Nowadays Ecclestone takes 50 per cent of all revenues, but we are supposed to be able to reduce our costs by 50 per cent.”

Not just the teams have copped for Ecclestone’s hard negotiating; circuits come and go from the F1 calendar with alarming frequency, as race organisers struggle and fail to meet the ever-rising cost of hosting a Grand Prix.
Q&A: how can Formula One be worth £6bn?

Ecclestone’s acquisition of the commercial rights of F1, granted by his friend and former associate Max Moseley while the latter was president of the FIA, motor sport’s governing body, was viewed as a cheap deal at £360million in 2000.

Bernie has since profited from numerous sales of the company holding these commercial rights, which he himself had set up for the purpose.

He is certainly a fabulously wealthy 86-year-old, and all these F1 business dealings have underpinned his profits.

Verdict: GUILTY
He ripped the heart out of F1

Ecclestone has always been happy to play the villain when a Grand Prix’s place on the F1 calendar has been threatened - not least with several worrying moments for fans of the British Grand Prix in recent years.

Silverstone is hardly alone in feeling hard-pressed by Bernie’s F1 machine; traditional mainstays of the calendar in places like France, Italy and Germany have fallen by the wayside in favour of trips to remote locations and purpose-built arena circuits.
Fans fear the loss of the Spa-Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, seen here from the iconic Eau Rouge corner in 2007 Credit: Vladimir Rys/Bongarts/Getty Images

Is it wrong, though, in principle, to take F1 abroad from its heartland in western Europe?

Greater television exposure was always going to lead to broader popularity and rewarding fans in other countries with a race of their own not only makes sense but adds to the spectacle of Formula One.

And, sadly, many of these new races are suffering the same fates as their European counterparts. Though some fans deride the 21st century tracks as soulless, there was genuine sadness at the disappearance of the Indian and Korean circuits from the calendar after only a few years each. Meanwhile, Malaysia and Singapore are both struggling to justify the costs of continuing to host a Grand Prix.
F1 no longer visits the Buddh International Circuit, outside New Delhi in India

As the ongoing debates signify, there could and will be changes to how F1 is run and what priorities the sport makes. Nobody wants to see the sport leave classic circuits such as Spa or Monza, Interlagos or Suzuka; a return for Imola and the Nurburgring would be welcome. But expansion to other countries need not be a conflicting goal. Indeed, last season saw the calendar expand to a record 21 races.

In exploring new homes for F1, Ecclestone has not per se ripped the heart from the sport. But a better balance is required.

Verdict: NOT GUILTY
He nearly tore F1 in two

Back in the 1980s, as the owner of the Brabham team, Ecclestone had been a key figure in the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA), in a dispute with the motor sport governing body (FISA).

Having eventually reached a resolution that helped guarantee the sport’s future growth, Ecclestone found himself on the other side of the table some two and a half decades later.

The dispute in 2009 that saw the newly founded Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) threaten to form a breakaway series was rooted in planned budget caps for constructors in the 2010 season. Ecclestone, ever the deal-maker, spent months fire-fighting.
Former Renault boss Flavio Briatore attested to Ecclestone’s business-minded approach Credit: MAZEN MAHDI/EPA

Some of the teams, the big manufacturers particularly, were not acting without self-interest themselves. What makes sense to a car manufacturer does not necessarily square with the needs of a spectator sport.

The cost of the sport in the wake of the financial crisis has seen the smaller teams squeezed harder than ever, and the trend away from privately run teams towards teams operating as an extension of a car-making giant has been of growing concern.

The breakaway series was eventually prevented and F1’s future secured, though in the long run disagreements continue over the scale of permissible development and its associated costs.
Jordan was one team forced to withdraw due to increasing financial strain, in 2005 Credit: Andy Wong/AP Photo

Whatever people think of Ecclestone in this moment, the sport still stands as a single monument to all his work. Of that, at least, he made certain.

Verdict: NOT GUILTY
He failed to establish F1 with a new generation

This charge is evidently a major factor in Bernie’s removal by new owners Liberty Media.

Ecclestone resisted pressure to bring F1 up to speed with an increasingly digital world on the grounds that there was no money to be made in it.

But fears for the spectacle of the sport in the 21st century combined with moves away from free-to-air race broadcasts - and the F1 PR machine was in no shape to pick up the slack.

Instead, years of technical tinkering back and forth has seen the introduction of a number of variables which have, at best, enjoyed limited success. The drag reduction system (DRS) and the kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) have both been instituted to make the racing more exciting and to aid overtaking - but don’t sit well with purist fans.
Despite great efforts, Pirelli have found it difficult to manufacture tyres to please everyone in F1 Credit: Hoch Zwei /Action

Meanwhile, efforts to make the tyres degrade faster - with the aim of making F1 more unpredictable and challenging - are in the process of being undone following complaints from drivers that they could not drive at anywhere near 100 per cent.

It hasn’t been enough to save face for Bernie. Lewis Hamilton’s run-in with the “boring” traditional media routine at 2016’s Japanese Grand Prix gave the problem a very public showcase. At the autumn US Grand Prix, race organisers attempted to cushion high costs by making the race the centrepiece of a two-day rock concert extravaganza.

The sport is changing, and Bernie never changed with it.

Verdict: GUILTY
His terrible ideas made F1 a laughing stock

Ecclestone’s escalating unpopularity in recent years has been fueled by regular deliveries of poorly conceived ideas that appear to threaten the integrity of a sport that its fans hold very dear.

In 2016, Ecclestone dragged his feet on removing the universally unpopular new ‘elimination’-style qualifying format. Two seasons prior, Ecclestone had been a prime-mover in implementing the much-maligned double-points final race of the season - an experiment not repeated.
Ecclestone in conversation with Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton at the 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix Credit: Hoch Zwei/ACTION IMAGES/REUTERS

Let us not forget also the erstwhile supremo’s big backing of the abandonment of traditional points-based championships in favour of a medal system. Once again, the idea fell flat with the public.

We should also remember Ecclestone’s favouring of the ‘fake rain’ concept at the turn of the decade - an idea that prompted fears among those lobbying for greater safety in F1. Those fears could not have been more clearly substantiated than in the death of driver Jules Bianchi at the rain-soaked 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.

Verdict: GUILTY
His questionable conduct sullied the sport’s reputation

In a sport with such a paucity of women working as drivers, engineers and team principals, a savvy supremo might be expected to tread carefully around any issues of perceived sexism. Not so Bernie, though.

The idea that F1 was an extremely difficult environment for women to break into has been rather hammered home over the years by a number of ill-advised comments on Ecclestone’s part.

Speaking to Autosport in February 2000, Ecclestone did not expect women drivers to ever do well in Formula One, adding: “She would have to be a woman who was blowing away the boys. What I would really like to see happen is to find the right girl, perhaps a black girl with super looks, preferably Jewish or Muslim, who speaks Spanish.”
Ecclestone, here with Russian president Vladimir Putin, has always seemed unruffled by controversy Credit: Alexei Nikolsky/AP

In 2005, Ecclestone responded to IndyCar driver Danica Patrick’s fourth-place finish at the Indianapolis 500 by saying: “She did a good job, didn’t she? Super. Didn’t think she was going to make it.

“You know I’ve got one of those wonderful ideas. Women should be dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.”

Most recently, after a broadly opposed bid to establish a separate female championship, Ecclestone said women drivers “would not be taken seriously” in the sport.

The F1 chief didn’t restrict his controversy to women alone, though. In an interview with the Times in 2009, Ecclestone described Adolf Hitler as someone who was “able to get things done” - prompting Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, to respond: “Mr Ecclestone is either an idiot or morally repulsive.”
Danica Patrick, pictured in the build up to the 2005 Indy 500 race in which she finished fourth Credit: Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo

Ecclestone subsequently apologised. However, when he then heard that the World Jewish Congress had pressed for his sacking, he made reference to the ongoing financial crisis, saying:”It’s a pity they didn’t sort the banks out. They have a lot of influence everywhere.”

Some might say he has just been trying to wind up everyone - particularly the media - but that is besides the point when the head of one of the biggest sports in the world is actively making it a more hostile environment for one group of people or another.

Meanwhile, Ecclestone settled a bribery case in Germany with a payment of £60million in 2014, and a £1billion tax avoidance case in the UK with a payment of £10million in 2008. All lovely and legal, of course - but an unseemly look and an unpleasant association for the sport.

Verdict: GUILTY

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2017/01/24/bernie-ecclestone-mock-trial-f1s-greatest-advocate-scourge-sport/

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