Category Archives: Formula 1

Some Favorite Moments in Pictures Years Past

Looking back at 12 years of blog posts, photographs and tech articles, today I’m pulling up some of my favorite photos from years past.

Photo descriptions include a link to the story where it originally appeared.


May 2009 – Turn 2 crash at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona
McLaren Test Drive Day during Car Week in Monterey CA. 570 Series cars (mine is on the right).
Alan DeMartini preparing for his First Solo – October 2018 in San Marcos Texas
Fleet Week 2016 in San Francisco CA. – NAVY Blue Angels demonstrate opposing pass low over the spectator boats.
Rare Porsche 917 Le Mans cars at Rensport Reunion 2016 in Monterey, CA.
F22 Raptor at the California Air Show in Salinas.
Rafting the American River’s South Fork (class 2-4+).
Lamborghini and Ducati in my garage. What an amazing day taking in the roads of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
An evening at Los Gatos Lamborghini with Lambo’s Chief Test Driver, Valentino Balboni.
First winter in Santa Cruz CA. Attended the O’Neil Classic pro surf competition in 80 degree weather; amazing!

Kubica Rally Crash – very seriously injured, but lived

This past weekend, rising Formula 1 star very seriously injured in Italy.

From CNN:

Kubica undergoes emergency surgery after rally crash in Italy

(CNN) — Formula One driver Robert Kubica has undergone a seven-hour operation in an Italian hospital after crashing while competing in a rally.

The 26-year-old Pole lost control of his Skoda Fabia car at the beginning of the Ronde de Andorra rally near the town of Testico, causing the vehicle to leave the road at high speed.

Kubica, who drives for the Lotus Renault team, was airlifted to the Santa Corona hospital in nearby Pietra Ligure where he underwent emergency surgery.
[…]

I just recieved this photo of the crash. Guard rail protruding from the vehicle. It’s amazing he survied that at all.

A British website had a video from an Italian team racing on the same section, that came across the crash scene. The video was hair-raising. The route very narrow and clearly requiring amazing skill to complete without serious consequences.

Unfortunatly the video appears to have been taken down, and I have not yet found an alternative location for it.

From:

Rally footage shows aftermath of Kubica crash

Footage of the aftermath of Robert Kubica’s career-threatening rally crash on Sunday has been posted on YouTube, and it shows just how perilous the course on which the F1 driver came to grief really was.

The pictures come from a camera on board on the car of Italians Mauro Moreno and Corrado Bonato, which was just behind Kubica’s. It shows them hurtling along the narrow and twisting route through the villages and countryside of northern Italy.

After speeding along roads barely wide enough for a single car, often with crash barriers mounted on either side to prevent vehicles from careering down the steep hills or into houses, the car tears through a small town. After more than three minutes […]

Good luck Robert. I hope for a speedy recovery and eventual return to Formula 1.

Scheuy returns to F1!!!

Wow.. I really did not see this one coming. Sure.. Schuey has been in the Ferrari pits just about every race since his retirement.. but I did not see the team putting him back in the car, after Masa’s horrendous injury. But… I guess, if you want to ‘keep the car’ for Masa, and you have the talent still in house, there is a certain logic to this!

I know many totally detest Micheal Schumacher, but.. I think this will make for a VERY interesting rest of the season!

Formula 1 – LEGO style

I purchased these LEGO Formula 1 cars (2009 team) for my son’s birthday this year. We enjoyed building them. He continues to play with them months later. He’s also the most careful I’ve ever seen him with a constructed LEGO vehicle (he has many!) and to date has not accidentally, or on purpose, broken part off.

To me, they are pretty cool, so I took a couple of pictures of them this morning, while he was busy building another LEGO vehicle.

F1_team-1

F1_team-2

F1_team-3

F1_team-4

Sorry about the image quality, I was pretty close to them and decided to cheat and use the flash. I’ll take some better quality pics at a later date. I was just inspired to post about the cars this morning, since he took them down from the shelf where he keeps then and had lined them up with some of his other cool LEGO vehicles.

Congratulations to Mark Webber – First F1 win!

Mark Webber - Red Bull Racing
Mark Webber - Red Bull Racing

Congratulation to Australian Mark Webber, for winning today’s German Grand Prix.   He took his Renault powered Red Bull formula car from Pole to Podium!   His first F1 win ever.

It was also a great 1 – 2 finish for the Red Bull team, the 3rd time this year.   They are quickly devouring the lead Braun GP had established early in the season.

It’s great to see new faces on the podium!

Spanish Grand Prix – Circuit de Catalonya

WOW!  Great F1 racing today.   We ended up with some phenominal seats.   And I ended up with a phenominal sunburn!

We finished off the afternoon with a walk across the city.   I glorious place to see.

I lost about 3 liters of fluid on the track, need to shower, need to eat.   Need to download the 900 photos I took today.    More from me later…  but now it’s shower and another night of great Catalonian food!!!

Excitment is building!

The day is finally here!   In a few short hours I’ll be winging north over Canada, Greenland and finally into the Netherlands, arriving around 8:00AM there local time.     Last night was a big push to get things finally setup for the trip.

Camera Gear:

I’m taking only one of my Canon 20D bodies, my Canon SI110 compact, and two lenses.  My 100-400 sports lens and a 17-135  IS  ‘snapshot’ lens, and one monopod.  This is pretty light kit for me.

Clothing:

I’m always over-packed.  $200 at the store last night brought some of my wardrobe up to date (i.e. fits my fat-a**  better).  New shorts and some new tropical prints.  Plan to further extend once I get into Spain.

Electronics:

It seems 1/2 of what I have is electronics.   I have my MacBook Pro 17  (using to write this),  my iPhone 3G, and a new iPod Namo (16G) that I’ve stuffed 1/2 my music library onto for the trip.  Also going to try out a new set of noise-cancelling SONY headphones (just picked those up last night).   Taking my expense Sure 3EC entomonic’s as well..   they are small and it’s sometimes a good idea to have a continguency. 🙂

Well.. time to hit the road.   Most postings and hopefuly photos as time allows.
Hasta la vista, baby!!!

Getting ready for Spain

My how fast this trip came upon me! Time to get serious about packing my gear, selecting camera equipment to take and getting some new clothes.

On Thursday, May 7th I’m off to Barcelona (via Amsterdam — maybe I’ll get lost and miss my flight.. hahah) for 8 days. I love to travel, but all of it has been North America (Vancouver, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Maui), Central America (Mexico City, Cancun), or the Caribbean (Negril, Key West, Montego Bay, St. Maarten). This time I’m really going across the pond to the old country. Nervous and excited all at the same time.

The first leg is Seattle, WA -> Amsterdam Holland arriving at 8:00AM local time. From there I’ll be on a European version of SouthWest Airlines to Barcelona.

Once on the ground I’ll be receiving tickets to the FORMULA 1 GRAN PREMIO DE ESPANA TELEFONICA 2009. This will be one hell of a way to kick off the APWG conference I’ll be attending.

Then it’s back across the water via JFK in New York, arriving around 2:00PM or so. I’m really looking forward to putting my own eyes on the Big Apple, even if it’s only for a short time from the plane. 3 hours later I’ll be on the last leg of my journey home to Seattle. Hopefully wiser, a little more tan, and packing some gifts for the people that work for me.

Formula 1 Season Opener – Australia

2009 brings in a lot of rules changes to Formula 1

  • no more grooved tires

    Tyres
    After 10 seasons on grooved tyres, Formula One racing returns to slicks in 2009, as part of moves to increase the emphasis on mechanical rather than aerodynamic grip. With no grooves, grip will increase by around 20 percent, bringing a significant performance gain. However, that gain will be offset by the vastly reduced downforce levels of the revised aerodynamic regulations (see below). The overall effect should be reduced performance through high-speed corners.

  • massive aero overhaul to improve passing

    Aerodynamics
    Along with slick tyres, this is the biggest area of change for 2009. Downforce will be dramatically reduced and the cars’ bodywork will appear much cleaner, thanks to new dimensional regulations that effectively outlaw extraneous items such as barge boards, winglets, turning vanes and chimneys on most areas of the car.

    As well as reducing overall aero performance, the revisions are also designed to increase overtaking by making the car less susceptible to turbulence when closely following another driver. The most obvious changes are to the front and rear wings.

  • New electric (slightly related to a hybrid) electric boos system

    Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS)
    From 2009 teams have the option of employing a KERS to boost their car’s performance. As its name implies, a KERS recovers the (normally wasted) kinetic energy generated by the car’s braking process. This energy is stored using a mechanical flywheel or an electrical battery and then made available to the driver, in set amounts per lap, via a ‘boost button’ on the steering wheel. Under the current regulations the power gain equates to around 80 horsepower, available for just under seven seconds per lap. This could be worth several tenths of a second in terms of lap time, but the weight and packaging of the system – and its impact on the car’s weight distribution – also have to be taken into account.

  • more interesting technical here

Bottom line is that the new cars are pretty darn ugly, with huge front aero wings but tiny rear wings.  It’s looks way out of proportion.  This is one of the changes they made to cleanup air behind the cars to encourage passing.  In this first race of the season it seems to have done just that.

Round 1 of the season presented a bunch of things that seemed like ‘upsets’ to me.  One of the more surprising things was the utter dominance of the new BrawnGP team.

Another was the amount of passing.  That really made for an interesting race, much more interesting than the Micheal Schumacher Show of seasons past.

It also seemed that the new front wings were quite fragile, many were damanged in the first lap of the race.  It was obvious that the teams forsaw this issue and spent plenty of time training in the pits to handle swapping out the noses.

You can get the rules changes highlights on the Official Formula 1 Website, as well as detailed updates last night’s (well, this mornings) race.

I wish BrawnGP luck in it’s first year, basically running last year’s 2008 Honda team but with Mercedes Power.