FGP 2014

[rjbetty]

FORD FOCUS F1 TEAM STATEMENT

Team boss rjbetty finds some time to issue a press release, having lost interest now his team is clearly well down the pack after a good start.

MONACO GP
We were happy to claim a best ever 4th place finish on the Monaco streets last fortnight, though this is because we used our bonus GP. We felt before the season that Monaco would actually not be the best choice and we should have gone for Australia, but it felt slightly clichéd to do so and we wanted to try something different. Had we done so, we would have won comfortably, so our bonus round was somewhat wasted.

But we are holding celebrations for Jules Bianchi's brilliant 9th place, scoring points for Marussia. Come have some cake!



CANADA
Well I'll go to the foot of our stairs - 2 almost old-school races in a row! Both of our drivers scored today but we were still only 20th. The culprit for this is rjbetty's decision to change his mind on signing Ricciardo for just $9million, instead buying into the McLaren and Magnussen pre-season hype only to find that McLaren have somehow come up with an absurdly poor vehicle, so amazingly off the pace it beggars belief! *sob!*

WE BLAME MCLAREN FOR BEING CR@P - WE CAN'T BELIEVE THEY'VE DONE THIS TO US AGAIN AFTER GIVING THEM ANOTHER CHANCE THIS SEASON!

However, we were delighted to see our team-mates Jens and Steve score a fantastic 1-2 finish, on the scene of Steve's win 2 years ago! Well done guys! (Any chance of loaning Ricciardo to us for a few races?)


ON OUR 2014 SEASON
Though we kinda suck somewhat after a false dawn in Australia, we have now had 3 top 10 results this season which is a great improvement on our miserable 2013. We have improved from being awful all the way up to mediocre. We are still hoping we can reach so-so levels later this year, though McLaren already are making "shift focus to 2015 sounds" - well that's just great guys - good going! Meanwhile, Williams probably won't improve so that looks like that.

We are looking forward with great anticipation to the next round, one of rjbetty's favourite circuits, as F1 makes a hugely welcome (for me) return to the A1-Ring in Austria! YAAAAAAAY!


Results this season:
Aus: 5th
Mal: 10th
Bah: 24th
Chi: 22nd
Spa: 19th
Mon: 4th
Can: 20th

Overall: 16th (333pts)

[Tazio]

Another top 10 for Slash LLC. busting into the overall top 10 with all my dawgs scoring points. It would have been a much better result if Perez hadn't tried to commit a murder suicide.
I'm really hoping I have a good bonus race. Thanks for your expeditious work Mr Jones. Unfortunately the pickems is a farce due to lack of results being posted. Sorry Mark, I know you tried.

[N. Jones]

I didn't even know pickems was running. I have been also doing pickems over at newsonf1 for years. I still stink at it, but I am playing the game somewhere...

Just like here. Sigh. My team (and Junior's!) both stink. We are both ready for next season. (I'll have to tell him - even though red is your favorite color, stay away from the red cars!).

[jens]

yahoo. Damn you Jens.

Third in the championship, wow!

Happy Bubble Racing Team is delighted to have got a good points haul in the bonus race, but admits they were pretty lucky.

I remember watching the race and when in mid-race it was announced both Mercedes have problems and they were slowing down, it looked pretty grim right. Usually you get an automatic 25 points as Mercedes always wins, but with double DNF you get nothing at all and especially in your bonus race this is a pure horror!

At one point also my driver Bottas seemed to have severe tyre graining and looked like he was going to DNF.

I am amazed it all worked out so well, because at one point it looked like my bonus race will go straight out of the window and I barely get any points. But in the end - 1st Ricciardo, 2nd Mercedes, 3rd McLaren-Mercedes (Button did rise to 4th from nowhere) and even Bottas dragged his car home in 7th. It worked out amazingly well considering all the drama!

[N. Jones]

POSF1 is delighted to say 'Wait til next year!'

[N. Jones]

Results delayed due to the World Cup (F'N Ronaldo):

https://sites.google.com/site/2009fgp/results/austria

Austrian Grand Prix Results:
1 Bobby's Bits 76
2 NSA Team Mt. Damavand F1 Racing 65
2 3-2-1 Ray Sing 65
4 Team Marlboro Koz Racing 61

[N. Jones]

Overall Standings:

https://sites.google.com/site/2009fg.../-00-standings

1 NSA Team Mt. Damavand F1 Racing* 501
2 3-2-1 Ray Sing* 497
3 Happy Bubble Racing Team* 471
4 Bobby's Bits* 467
5 Force Finland* 457
5 Force Yorkshire* 457
7 GP Stood Guard* 454
8 HennersF1 Racing* 450
9 Team Marlboro Koz Racing* 438
10 AMG FGP Racing* 436

[rjbetty]

2014 AUSTRIAN GP

Well it was a better weekend for us this time, as we didn´t get whupped by as much as usual. In fact, we were able to bag 6th, with Bottas on the podium and Magnussen getting his best result since his.

We continue to believe that at just $6m, Bottas is the 2nd best bargain of the season, and we are surprised a few more teams didn't take him on. However, we turned our back on the chance to sign the best bargain of all, Daniel Ricciardo, having chosen to gamble on McLaren's delusions of grandeur for the second season in a row!

We are paying extremely heavily for this, and as such are still mired down in 16th place overall, exactly half-way down the leaderboard.

Still, this is so much better than our shocking 2013. At least we are scoring some top 10 finishes some of the time.



We are pleased to see Jens is in a brilliant 3rd overall, which just shows how good it was to sign Ricciardo.

We are learning from our mistakes and resolve to put them into practice for 2015, namely STAY AWAY FROM MCLAREN!


That is all.


Results this season:
Aus: 5th
Mal: 10th
Bah: 24th
Chi: 22nd
Spa: 19th
Mon: 4th
Can: 20th
Aut: 6th

Overall: 16th (389pts)

[jens]

Happy Bubble Racing Team press release after a long time Post Austria

HBRT is happy to be third in the championship. After Australian GP we already felt this could be a great season and though Ricciardo was disqualified there, situation looked promising. Both Ricciardo and Bottas have by far outweighed our expectations. It is incredible, how many points they have collected already and we still have more than half a year to go!

Despite being third in the championship, HBRT is not optimistic about challenging for the championship. The leading two teams have both Mercedes chassis and engine and they get an almost guaranteed 50 points every weekend. Though Bottas and Ricciardo do an excellent job, their effort is still not quite enough to overcome the deficit of not having both Mercedes chassis and power plant. Out only hope is if Mercedes starts half-regularly losing race wins from now on, but that seems like a long shot.

So the main realistic goal for HBRT is to hold onto third place, which can be quite a challenge. There are quite a few teams nearby plus a few teams with a bonus race still left. For our surprise Bobby's Bits has become a serious contender since they have both Rosberg and Williams and they are doing very well recently. However, we are half-optimistic in fending them off, since both are bound to have bad days too, which would play to our strengths.

We think HBRT should comfortably finish in top 10 at least, I think top 6 is a serious possibility too. The main problem is still that the McLaren-Mercedes is not competitive enough and there are no signs they can overcome Force India and Williams, which would be absolutely necessarily if we want to comfortably secure our spot in 3rd position behind the first two teams.

[Robinho]

Ooh, thought I may have smashed it this weekend, didn't realise I'd take out the win, even without it being a bonus. Hope this wasn't a freak weekend for Williams