On tap this week:
- Bianchi report leaves unanswered questions
- Hamilton ready for a fight in 2015
- Williams offers engineering prize
- Quote of the Week: Ricciardo on superstition
- Alonso's move reflects poorly on Ferrari
The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) accident panel is blaming Marussia driver Jules Bianchi for a crash at the Japanese Grand Prix where he hit a front-end loader being used to recover another car. Bianchi has been in hospital since the October accident after suffering a serious brain injury.
Regrettably, the FIA only released a summary of the panel's findings and has not made the 396-page report presented to the World Motorsport Council public.
The panel's findings indicate the FIA is laying all the blame for the accident at the feet of Bianchi, after it found "he did not slow sufficiently to avoid losing control at the same point on the track" and he "over-controlled the oversteering car," which meant it left the track in a way that ended with it hitting the front-end loader and submarining under the back of it.
Neither the findings nor the recommendations of the report touched upon the use of heavy construction equipment to remove cars from inside the tire barriers, although it is possible that the full text of the report explores this avenue. Nevertheless, considering that the position on the front-end loader was clearly a contributing factor in Bianchi's accident, it would behoove the FIA to examine the continued use of these types of heavy vehicles in car recovery.
By the numbers
Lewis Hamilton picked up his second championship trophy last week during the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile prize ceremony in Qatar after clinching the title last month following a season long battle with teammate Nico Rosberg.
The championship battle going down to the last race in Abu Dhabi was reminiscent of Hamilton's first F1 crown, which came in the 2008 season finale in Brazil where he edged Ferrari's Felipe Massa by a single point.
Even after two titles that could have gone another way in the years last grand prix, Hamilton said he'd rather go at it tooth-and-nail all year than have a cakewalk to a championship.
"I don't think you ever want to have it easy, you always want to have a fight," the Mercedes driver said. "Throughout the whole year, you're just trying to keep your cool, stay focused and all those kinds of things."
Hamilton also laid down the gauntlet to his challengers in 2015, making it clear that he'll be even tougher to beat as he looks for title No. 3.
"I want to fight as hard as possible and try to work on and improve on the things that are not strong enough and could be better," he said.
Technically speaking
Aspiring Formula One engineers got a boost this week when the Williams team announced the Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future Award. It will be awarded annually to a promising engineering student from one of eight U.K universities with strong track records in engineering: Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, Loughborough, Bath, Southampton, Oxford Brookes and Queens University, Belfast.
For Canuck engineers thinking that it may be tough to win, it should be noted that one of the few Canadians working as an engineer in Formula One, Red Bull Racing's Gavin Ward of Toronto, studied at Oxford Brookes and worked for the team as a student intern in 2005 before landing a full-time job with the squad upon graduation.
The Autosport Williams Engineer of the Future Award will be given a two-year placement at Williams with mentoring by the team's senior engineers. They will also spend time in the team's race operations division and travel with the outfit to a grand prix.
"Williams is passionate about recruiting and nurturing the next generation of engineering talent and this new award will help ensure that bright minds look towards Formula One for their futures," said Williams deputy team principal Claire Williams.
"We will give the winners a full-time role with the team and mentoring from top engineers, such as our chief technical officer Pat Symonds."
Quote of the week
"I do not. For me it's just an excuse for something else to go wrong. You can blame it on 'Ah, I didn't do that'. It just fills your head full of crap to be honest. I don't like superstitions."
—Red Bull Racing driver Daniel Ricciardo on whether or not he has superstitions.
The last word
As the McLaren team continues to postpone the announcement of its 2015 driver line-up, the focus remains on whether the team will keep 2009 world champion Jenson Button or rookie Kevin Magnussen next year.
The controversy over the second seat seems to have many forgetting the sad commentary on the state of Ferrari's racing operations made by Fernando Alonso returning to the team after his acrimonious departure following the 2007 season. Although Alonso has not been announced either, his signing McLaren is Formula One's worst kept secret in the sport.
While Ferrari has signed four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and has cleaned its team's upper echelons, Alonso's decision of leaving the proverbial devil he knows to return to one he already left does not bode well for fans of the scarlet cars.
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Jeff Pappone