Wednesday, June 29, 2005

More USGP fallout stuff The Times of London reports that FIA is going to bring the hammer down on Michelin's teams if the tire company do not do more to make amends for not bringing adequete tires to Indy.  On top of the offer that Michelin has made to rebate the cost of tickets for fans who attended the race this year, FIA wants Michelin to pay for their tickets next year as well.  The article suggests that if Michelin does not pay up, then the teams they equip will be hammered with millions of dollars in fines to cover the cost of compensating fans. Teams to put the squeeze on Michelin (Times of London) Their is one error in the article.  It states: A statement last night on behalf of the seven teams claimed that they were supported by 19 of Formula One’s 20 drivers — the exception being Michael Schumacher, who won the US Grand Prix in a race of only six cars. The statement referred to is here: Six Michelin Teams Respond to Findings The Teams explained to the World Motor Sport Council that, in the light of the clear and written advice from Michelin that it was unsafe to race at Indianapolis on the tyres supplied by that company, the Teams had no choice but to decline to race. Any other decision would have been irresponsible. Nineteen of the current Formula One drivers have expressed their agreement with the decision of the Teams. Nowhere does it name who did or didn't agree with their position.  To find that we have to go to another document: Statement of nineteen F1 drivers .  The drivers who signed the statement were Christijan Albers Fernando Alonso Jenson Button David Coulthard Pedro de la Rosa Giancarlo Fisichella Patrick Friesacher Nick Heidfeld Christian Klien Felipe Massa Juan Pablo Montoya Kimi Raikkonen Takuma Sato Ralf Schumacher Jarno Trulli Jacques Villeneuve Mark Webber Alexander Wurz Ricardo Zonta Two of those drivers (Ralf Schumacher) weren't in the USGP.  Ralf Schumacher was injured in the turn 13 crash in practice that was part of Michelin realizing they had a major problem.  Pedro de la Rosa is a test driver.  So, there were actually two other drivers besides Schumacher who did not sign the statment.  One of them, understandably, was his Ferrari teamate Rubens Barichello.  The other was Narai Karthikeyan, another driver who benefitted from the lack of competition. Anyone who has been reading my comments on this know that I'm sympathetic to the teams and not happy with how FIA handled this (as NASCAR or IRL would have found some compromise to keep the disaster from happening).    Therfore, I agree strongly with the comments in this BBC column: F1 puts war on ice.  The key part: What this judgment does not do, however, is address the deeper-lying issues that allowed the situation at Indianapolis to get so out of control There appears, for example, to have been no consideration of Mosley's role in the US Grand Prix fiasco. He blocked a plan which would have allowed the race to take place following the insertion of a chicane but with only the cars on Bridgestone tyres scoring points. It might not have been a proposal that fell strictly within the rules, but at least it would have given the thousands of fans at Indy and the millions of TV viewers around the world something to watch. Mosley's suggestions for a solution were even less realistic - and would arguably have made the "race" more of a farce than it turned out to be. And there is no doubt that the poor relations between the FIA president and most of the F1 teams exacerbated the problem at Indianapolis. The teams have lost their faith in Mosley's ability to govern F1 satisfactorily, a feeling that is at the heart of the threat by seven teams and five car manufacturers to set up a rival series in 2008. Rightly or wrongly, the teams feel Mosley governs in a haphazard manner, interferes where he is not needed and that his impartiality cannot be guaranteed. His intervention in the rows at Indianapolis did nothing to diminish those feelings. Nor did his admission in a newspaper interview this week that he felt the teams were overstating the seriousness of the problems with the Michelin tyres at Indy. So while the potential consequences of this particular battle may have been defused, the wider war rages on. Jackpotzrebie comment []10:05:30 PM   trackback []

Bret lives... ...for a bit longer than expected.  At 4 PM CDT, the center of Tropical Depression Bret was 55 miles southwest of Tampico, Mexico and moving to the northwest at 12 mph. Winds are down to 30 mph and pressure is up to 1007 mb.  Bret will bring heavy rain and may cause landslides as he travels through Mexico Tropical Depression Bret Advisory Number 5 Bret still has a respectable appearance on satellite, which indicates how well organized the storm was.  It would have easily made hurricane had it been given just a bit more time and space. 2005 Hurricane Season, Weather comment []5:31:16 PM   trackback []

Nvu 1.0 released Early this morning, Daniel Glazman, the author of the Nvu (pronnounced N-view) web authoring system announced that Nvu 1.0 is now available. Glazman was the key programmer for Mozilla's web page editor editor on the payroll of AOL before they sacked most of the Netscape/Mozilla programmers in July of 2003.  In October of that year he formed a company called Disruptive Innovations and announced that the first project would be a stand-alone web page editor.  Shortly thereafter the company got a contract with Lindows (now Linspire) that funded the project.  A 0.1 release came out in February 2004 and it has since been through the long process of improvement and refinement to make it worthy of the 1.0 designation. Nvu is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and, of course, Linspire. If you do any kind of web page authoring, it is worth checking out.  Download it today! Jackpotzrebie comment []12:38:13 PM   trackback []

Outcome of Formula One hearing on US Grand Prix This morning the governing body of Formula One, FIA, held a hearing in which the teams that boycotted the race faced the following charges: 1.  The teams failed to ensure that they had a supply of suitable tires for the race. 2.  The teams wrongfully refused to allow their cars to start the race. 3.  They wrongfully refused to allow their cars to race, subject to a speed restriction in one corner which was safe for such tires as they had available. 4.  They combined with other teams to make a demonstration damaging to the image of Formula One by pulling into the pits immediately before the start of the race. 5.  They failed to notify the stewards of their intention not to race, in breach of Article 131 of the FIA F1 sporting regulations. The teams were found guilty on the first two charges and not guilty on the other three.  For the purpose of public relations, punishment will not be dealt out until September.  F-1 Racing Live offers some quotes from Max Mosley, the head of FIA: - "It would not be appropriate to deduct points or ban people from a race. We do have ability to impose a fine and can do what we want with the money," said Mosley. "We could impose fines and use that money to compensate. We said if you sort it out we will take a lenient view, if you don't sort it out we will not take a lenient view." - "As you will recall, there were five charges against the teams. The first of these were to be sure they were in possession of suitable tyres, and they were found guilty of that, but with strongly mitigating circumstances,"  "They were accused of wrongfully refusing to start the race, found guilty of that. They were found not guilty of refusing to race subject to a speed limit, because there was no plan in place. "They have also been found not guilty of conspiring to make a demonstration because they satisfied the World Council. They were found not guilty of failing to tell the stewards." - "The World Motor Sport Council has decided to adjourn discussion of penalty to an extraordinary meeting, when it will be seen what steps have been taken to compensate the fans,"  "And also what steps have been taken by the Michelin teams to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. The final decision will then be made after that." -"The difficulty is the FIA has no relationship with the Michelin tyre company, so we are in no position to impose a penalty in Michelin. "They are not the scapegoats, they are responsible because they got the wrong tyres and their teams could not race. They have clear terms in their contract, requiring the company to bring a tyre that is safe in all circumstances, even if it is not quick. "We can't impose a penalty on Michelin. We have no power over them. On the other hand we are able to indirectly put pressure on them through their teams and we are doing that at the moment." Michelin is doing their part to mitigate the PR disaster: Michelin seeks calm with refund offer (Times of London) MICHELIN has offered refunds totalling more than £9 million to the 120,000 fans who attended the US Grand Prix, which ended in farce, but whether the tyre manufacturer can head off a plethora of lawsuits being prepared in the United States, which could cost tens of millions of pounds, and prevent a split in the sport’s ranks, remains to be seen. Not only are they offering full refunds to everyone who attended the race, but they are also offering to buy 20,000 of them tickets to next year's race (assuming, of course, that there is one). Jackpotzrebie comment []11:39:17 AM   trackback []

Some Florida politics on Red State and the new Quinnipiac poll A Qunnipiac poll released today forms the basis for Eric C's article Harris should drop out. Also worth of mention is Peer Review's diary The Case for Jeb! in 2008 Part I. This Quinnipiac poll is the first from them to offer a Nelson v Harris matchup.  In it, Harris loses 50-38.  The poll also offers Speaker Allan Bense as a possible opponent against Harris and Nelson.  It has Harris beating him 54-10 and Nelson beathing him 55-26.  I mostly agree with the reasoning in the Red State article that this is because of a lack of name recognition on Bense's part.  If the Bush fundraising and campaign machine were to fall behind him, he would rise up as Mel Martinez did (at least through the primary).  I won't say anymore about the Senate race here as most everything else would be a rehash of my A Challenge for Katherine Harris? story. In the Governor's race, the poll doesn't offer any head-head numbers, but is interesting because it is the first poll since the  financial woes of the Florida Democratic Party came out (although the story is still rolling, putting yet more head on gubenatorial candidate Scott Maddox, the previous head of the FDP).  Among Republicans, it has Charlie Crist leading Tom Gallagher 43-31.  Among Democrats, it has Jim Davis leading Scott Maddox 24-16 (the poll in April had Davis over Maddox 26-22).  Interestingly, the number of undecided Democrats has risen from 35% to 48%.  Politics comment []11:04:50 AM   trackback []

Tropical Storm Bret goes ashore Mysteriously lost my internet connection last night and did not recover it until a short while ago, so I missed Bret's final hours at sea. At 7 AM CDT, Bret was near 20.8N 97.4W, near Tampico, Mexico.  Winds and pressure remain 40 miles per hour and 1005 millibars, respectively.  Movement is to the west-northwest at 10 mph, which brings Bret ashore. Tropical Storm Bret Advisory 3A Fortunately for the forecasters, Bret stayed on course more or less and didn't get any funny ideas about stalling and turning to sea. 2005 Hurricane Season, Weather comment []9:42:32 AM   trackback []