Formula One: On and off track
Last week FIA Safety and Technical delegate Charlie Whiting visited the Silverstone circuit to inspect the new Arena complex. The 760 meter long new Arena layout got the official FIA stamp of approval, and last Saturday British F3 driver James Calado, driving for the British Carlin Motorsport team, wrote history when he won the inaugural race on the new Grand Prix circuit layout. The new section starts just before the Abbey chicane, drivers now turn right into Farm Curve, and to the right into Village Corner before entering The Loop, a tight left handed hairpin. Then they turn left into Aintree Corner which leads to the Wellington Straight, and at the end of the straight the Arena complex joins the old circuit again at the existing tight left-handed Brooklands corner. F1 was the one who advertised Marlboro cigarettes.
David Coulthard was the first to drive a Formula One car on the new circuit, and he loved it. He also believes it creates new overtaking opportunities at the Village and Aintree corners, but not all drivers are happy with the new layout. Former F1 driver Romain Grosjean: “We have lost Bridge and the complex which was very nice and we didn’t gain much with the new part. In F1 it is going to be very fast, I don’t think it gives any overtaking opportunities, I’m not 100 per cent convinced.”
FIA GT driver Jamie Campbell-Walter said that the designers had done nothing more than add a “stop-start chicane”, while his team mate Warren Hughes said: “For me they have taken away two really challenging corners at Bridge and Priory and replaced them with some good kinks, but also a slow- speed section which is very frustrating.” The new Arena section is part of the plans for a ?30 million revamp of the famous British circuit. The pit and paddock complex will be renewed as well, and it is expected the work will be completed before the race in 2011. If you want to see the changes at the circuit, watch the British Moto GP on June 20, the first big worldwide event for the renewed Silverstone circuit.
Ferrari is the only F1 team who still gets sponsor monies from the tobacco industry, the team signed a contract with Philip Morris in 2005 which extends to the end of 2011, and is said to be worth $1 billion dollar. Ferrari has now been accused of ‘subliminal tobacco advertising“. Subliminal advertising is a technique whereby consumers are reminded of a product without actually seeing it, and the bar code on the Ferrari looks like the bottom half of a packet of Marlboro cigarettes. There is solid scientific evidence that subliminal images do work, but in the world of advertising it is a highly controversial technique because it attracts the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. It is so controversial that subliminal advertising has been banned in the UK, but in the US it is still legal. Ferrari pretends to be deaf and blind at the same time and claims the barcode is part of the car design, and not an advertising message.
Tobacco sponsoring in F1 started at the end of the sixties when Lotus boss Colin Chapman painted his cars in the red and gold livery of their Gold Leaf sponsor. In the seventies and eighties, Lotus was sponsored by the John Player Special tobacco company. The black and gold livery was so effective that even to this day every F1 fan still can visualize the beautiful, sleek looking JPS sponsored Lotus cars of that era. Philip Morris started sponsoring the BRM and Iso Marlboro-Ford teams in the early seventies. In 1974 Philip Morris switched to the McLaren team, and during their heydays with Emerson Fittipaldi, James Hunt, Alain Prost, Niki Lauda and Ayrton Senna, the red and white McLaren’s were a familiar sight on circuits all over the world.