Wednesday 29 July 2009

Now, in Motorsport this week...

...F1: BMW-Sauber call it quits & Schmacher's back. That's right Michael, not Ralf.

So, Massa's doing better. the images of his face and crash helmet damage are doing the rounds on YouTube. The operation's a success, he'll be up and chasing wins in no time, say Ferrari. In the meantime however, they have the best super-sub in the business, 7-times Formula One World Champion; Michael Schmacher. You can see Jensen et al dropping their heads and closing their eyes, resigning to the fact that a hard season has just got harder.

2009 hasn't been easy to predict at any point. At the start, everyone wrote off Brawn GP, labelled as the season's SuperAguri. Six months in; Mclaren and Lewis Hamilton were never going to win again. F1 is starting to rise above the cloud of politics it seems to constantly lerk in. I've always followed the formula, watching the dull, dull races. It was a chance for SL to catch a nap on a sunny Sunday afternoon without the worry of missing anything important. Racing was incedental. It was always more about the going's on between the weekends; the egos, the conflicting interests, the ridiculous amounts of money...

So why didn't BMW do well?

BMW is a proud company, like VW and Porsche, it's founding family still has a large stake in the brand. So I can imagine that the ego of BMW is an extension of the ego of the Quant family. More so than that of CEOs or chairmans in normal modern, corporate business. As a result, I can also imagine that such a brand wouldn't be best pleased with how their BMW-Sauber arm has failed to make an impact on the F1 scene despite the large amounts of money they had put in. BMW however isn't immune to making costly and very high profile errors. Last time it was the Rover, mistake is too small a word; debacle, disaster, catastrophe etc. That cost the company more than pride. At one point, it's share price was so low and it's outlook so bleak, that VW under Ferdiand Piech control laughed about a possible takeover. The Quant family and the Piech/Porsche family power sharing BMW wouldn't go well. Two bitter arch rivals would fight to a point where the cars do not matter, Montague-Capulet bitterness. The Sauber buy out and the near fruitless 3 years of racing hasn't been so expensive but it has done the brand any favours. the past decade in Munich hasn't been all bad though; RollsRoyce and Mini have been a monumental success. Still, it reads 2-2, doesn't it?

No comments:

Post a Comment