MOTORSPORT: Fake rain GPs pie in sky

This correspondent has mentioned here previously that it's a pity that all grands prix aren't run in rain because it makes the racing so much more exciting.

And while there are already sprinklers at Abu Dhabi's billion-dollar Yas Marina circuit, and Ferrari's Fiorano test track has had them since the 1970s, it is hardly believable that GPs are going to have the taps turned on as a matter of course.

Australia's F1 driver Mark Webber has bagged the idea, although the sport's new monopoly tyre supplier, Pirelli, likes it -- and may even have been behind Ecclestone's teasing comments.

Firstly, here's what Ecclestone said, in an interview with what is effectively his propaganda mouthpiece, the website formula1.com:

"Overtaking (in F1) is almost impossible because in the dry there is only one line good for maximum speed because of the rubber on the track.

"You have a completely different picture when it is wet.

"We always had the most exciting races in the wet, so let's think of making rain...

"There are race tracks that you can make artificially wet and it would be easy to have such systems at a number of tracks.

"Why not let it "rain' in the middle of a race? For 20 minutes or the last 10 laps? Maybe with a two-minute warning ahead of it.

"Suspense would be guaranteed and it would be the same for all."

Later Ecclestone varied the idea a little when talking to the BBC: "I'm happy to make it happen.

"My idea is that we should make a programme that nobody knows exactly which programme is going to be used and it would start at some time during the race. It would be raining effectively.

"It would maybe stop and maybe rain again later. Or maybe not. So nobody would know."

Webber though was quick to, as Reuters so quaintly put it, "pour cold water" on the idea.

"No and no," Webber said. "It can be more exciting when we have some different weather conditions -- that does happen.

"But you just try and think of Jimmy Clark, and Jackie Stewart and (Ayrton) Senna and those guys, masters in the wet.

"Jackie's still here (living, although he had a health scare this week, suffering chest pains on a flight) but the other two would be turning in their graves if they thought we'd have sprinklers and hoses lined up around the track.

"It wouldn't be the most sophisticated way to make the show more entertaining."

However, Pirelli -- already under fire from F1 drivers (especially Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso) fearing its tyres for this season degrade too quickly and will mean extra pitstops -- says "fake rain" would be "great for F1".

"The technology is such that you can wet a circuit with a sprinkler system, so the idea is not as daft as it sounds," Pirelli's motorsport director Paul Hembery told Autosport.

"Having seen what it was like in Abu Dhabi (where Pirelli has already used sprinklers in an F1 test), certainly with a wet element it would look spectacular -- and visibility shouldn't be a problem because there would be no clouds.

"From a tyre makers' point of view, there is no difficulty in making suitable tyres.

"We have seen great races in the past when you have had an extra variable like the weather, so why not?"

"At the end of the day you want people to watch what you are offering.

"F1 ultimately competes for entertainment space with other sports -- so people need to see something that is interesting.

"From that point of view, an artificial wet race would add to the show -- and you want something people will watch.

"I would agree that something fake -- like throwing in safety cars frequently to close the field up if they got too spread out -- would be going too far, but in terms of throwing something of a new challenge, like an artificial wet race, at drivers, tacticians and engineers, it would be great."

Ecclestone has certainly created a talking point -- very handy for F1 after the cancellation of the Bahrain GP amid the turmoil in the Middle East – but we would have to think it is pie in the sky.

Then again, so too was the idea of F1 night racing until Singapore started it.

But Ecclestone's now 80 and we'd have to doubt GPs in "fake rain" are going to happen in his lifetime -- or at least time at the helm of F1.

Incidentally, his interview with formula1.com is here (click on this link) and is worth a look for some of his other comments -- like his stance on Robert Kubica driving in the rally in which he injured himself so badly he will miss this season, on him seeing Sebastian Vettel as "very clearly" this year's title favourite over Webber, and on how he can foresee women running F1.

Another interesting read is Sir Jackie Stewart's comments on the modern F1 circuits designed by German Hermann Tilke on planet-f1, see here (click on this link).

Stewart says Tilke "has not done much for the spectators" and that "they (his circuits) are largely carbon copies of each other and they tend not to penalise mistakes".

Stewart rationalises his criticism against the background of his safety crusading in the 1960s and '70s that made circuits so much safter.

"It is nearly 17 years since a life was lost in an F1 car. I can't think of an industry, a sport or a business where that standard of risk management has been achieved," he said.

"But we have now gone too far the other way. Circuits should not permit liberties to be abused without a penalty that can be instantly recognised by spectators or TV viewers. Safety is one thing; abuse of privilege is another."

And yet more colourful quotes this week -- from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, who says the latest F1 rules have made steering wheels "martian" with extra buttons now to trigger the revived Kinetic Energy Recover Systems (KERS) and moveable rear wings.

"These regulations have nothing to do with F1," Montezemolo said at the Geneva Motor Show.

He also continued to criticise the ban on testing during the season and described Ferrari's failure to win last year's drivers' title -- when Fernando Alonso got stuck behind Renault's Vitaly Petrov in the Abu Dhabi GP -- as like "missing a penalty kick with no goalkeeper".

Australian engineer Chris Dyer copped the blame for the team's strategy in Abu Dhabi and lost his position, with no word yet on any new role for him at Ferrari.

Swiss newspaper Blick has christened the STR6 a "Wunder Auto" after three pre-season tests, with another to go in Barcelona next week before the cars are loaded for transport to Melbourne for the Australian GP on the last weekend of March.

McLaren's Lewis Hamilton has said the Toro Rosso "looks ridiculously fast" -- a description he also used for Red Bull's new RB7.

"They (Toro Rosso) could be the most interesting one to watch," Hamilton said.

His teammate Jenson Button also has been impressed by the STR6, while Fernando Alonso has said Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso has made "significant progress" from last year.

"I made more mistakes, early in that race, than I made for ages," Webber has told The Times in London. "I hadn't spun or lost control of the car for nearly a year and a half but I had a "moment' in that corner [turn 12] in practice and I got on the white line in the race and crashed.

"It's one of Seb's strengths, early in a race when it's wet, that he drives the needle to make sure the guys behind can't see.

"Afterwards you think, "Why didn't I settle for something different? Why didn't I take it to another day like I had been doing?'

"But you feel, "Sebastian is one of your rivals and you need to beat him'. "And it was probably wrong for the championship, but hey...

"Did Vettel crack Webber that day (in Korea, even though the German was to retire from the lead when his engine blew)? You could say he might have."

Webber has told F1 Racing he sees himself finishing his career with Red Bull.

However, he did not dismiss the prospect of a switch to Ferrari -- which was mooted at times last year.

"Driving those red cars has always held that romantic attraction," he said.

Daimler now owns 60 per cent of the team and Aabar 40 per cent, while Brawn said he remains "fully committed" to it. Aabar also owns 9 per cent of Daimler.

Daimler chief executive Dieter Zetsche said: "Our company's founders invented the automobile 125 years ago and the very first Mercedes was a racing car.

"These are the reasons why we see our F1 programme as an important element of our brand history.

"The acquisition of a majority stakeholding in our Silver Arrows team sends a clear signal that we intend to achieve technical and sporting success on world motorsport's biggest and most important stage -- and to do so in cost-effective conditions."

The float this week of almost 30 per cent of the Williams team on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, which valued the team at more than $340 million, was less than grand -- with the shares trading at up to 5 per cent below the price at which they were issued.

However, Dutch investment fund Cyrte -- founded by Dutch media mogul John De Mol, of Endemol and Big Brother fame, and which previously owned stakes in sports car maker Spyker and Manchester United soccer team -- has quickly emerged with 5 per cent of Williams.

McLaren has said it has no plans to follow the Williams lead and float, Ferrari is not interested in doing so, for now at least, while Sauber principal Peter Sauber said he did not understand the reasons for Williams listing on the stock market.

Having bought back former shareholder Mercedes' 40 per cent stake, McLaren is 50 per cent owned by the Bahrain state-controlled Mumtalakat company, with Ron Dennis and Mansour Ojjeh holding the other shares.

McLaren chief financial officer Andy Myers told The Guardian newspaper that its strategy is "to remain as a private company in the ownership of a small number of focused shareholders, since we believe that best suits our business model".

Pye will race this year for the Double R team in which 2007 F1 world champion Kimi Raikkonen has had an interest with his manager Steve Robertson.

Pye is backed by Roland Dane's Triple Eight Race Engineering and is managed by Perry McCarthy, once an Andrea Moda F1 driver and the original Top Gear "Stig".

McCarthy has described Pye as "a Formula One driver just waiting to happen".

Meanwile, Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has tested Craig Lowndes' Triple Eight/Team Vodafone Holden Commodore V8 Supercar.

And it's confirmed now that Jenson Button will drive the Supercar at Bathurst between Adelaide's Clipsal 500 and the Australian GP, with Lowndes driving a McLaren-Mercedes around Mt Panorama.

McLaren is doing another swap too, with Lewis Hamilton to drive a NASCAR at Watkins Glen in the US and Sprint Cup star Tony Stewart to drive a McLaren there.

The Busch brothers, Kyle and Kurt, already head the Cup standings and will be hot favourites in their home town, Vegas.

The WRC round will be on dirt and tarmac -- and in baking temperatures and power-sapping high altitude around Guanajuato.

It is also the opening round of the Super 2000 WRC season.

Citroen's French superstar Sebastien Loeb has won in Mexico the past four times, but Ford's Mikko Hirvonen starts with a seven-point title lead after his victory in Sweden in the new Ford Fiesta RS.

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