Former racing driver and team owner Tom Walkinshaw has died following a long battle with cancer.
Walkinshaw was team principal at the Benetton, Ligier and Arrows Formula One teams, and had a very successful stint running Jaguar's sportscars and touring car efforts.
Links
Tom Walkinshaw 1946-2010 (Adam Cooper)
"Former Benetton, Ligier and Arrows team boss Tom Wakinshaw died this morning at the age of 64. The Scot, who had endured a long battle with cancer, made his last visit to an F1 paddock at Silverstone in July."
Di Resta and Hulkenberg fight for Force India seat (BBC F1)
"As the winter nights have shortened so too have the prospects of finding a Formula 1 drive for two of the sport's brightest prospects. Nico Hulkenberg – rated as the best rookie of 2010 – and Paul di Resta – Britain's third driver in Formula 1 alongside Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button – find themselves fighting for a drive."
Special Santas at Ferrari (Ferrari)
"Lots of children were at Ferrari today to celebrate Christmas. Special guests were President Luca di Montezemolo and the Ferrari family of drivers – from Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa to test drivers, Giancarlo Fisichella, Jules Bianchi, Marc Gené and Luca Badoer, all of them dressed up as Father Christmas."
Fauzy released by Lotus (Autosport)
"Fairuz Fauzy has parted company with the Lotus Formula 1 team and intends to return to full-time racing in 2011."
Jenson Button competing in sprint triathlon (@The_Real_JB via Twitter)
"On my way to the airport to jump on a plane to Australia for a sprint Triathlon with @jessybondgirl (girlfriend Jessica Michibata). Very excited about getting some tan lines!"
Team Lotus to build road cars? (Joe Saward)
"Now that Group Lotus's announcement that it is buying the Renault F1 team has passed and things are beginning to settle down, Team Lotus is beginning to make quiet noises about its strategic plans for the future."
'Don't let them tell you you're too young,' says Formula 1 boss Christian Horner (The Daily Mail)
"The new Formula 1 champion Sebastian Vettel may be a German, but it's a Brit who's largely responsible for his success. Christian Horner, 37, has been team principal of Red Bull Racing since 2004, when Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz bought the former Jaguar F1 team."
Comment of the day
Prisoner Monkeys disagrees with the FIA's decision to lift the ban on team orders:
The FIA obviously intend for teams to be dissuaded from using team orders by the negative reception they will receive, but we all know that Ferrari – and to a lesser extent, McLaren and maybe Red Bull/Mercedes – don't care about that. The benefits to be had by having a selected driver win the race far outweigh the negative publicity.
The teams claim that they want to "improve the show", but here's the FIA giving them a licence to do something that will only detract from it. Because when you really think about it, Fernando Alonso was never faster than Felipe Massa in Germany. He claimed to be, but the lap times were pretty consistent, and Alonso never got past him.
Who decided that rather than let driver skill decide the outcome of the race, it would be better for them to change everything to suit themselves, not realising the damage they were doing to the sport? And then they expected us to accept it as a perfectly reasonable thing to do when we all know they'd be all over any other team that tried it?
And that's why team orders need to be banned.
Prisoner Monkeys
From the forum
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