SACRE BLEU!

[dinizintheoven]

I've been reading Ibsey's book, recently. (And if you see this post, Ibsey, I've sent you an email via this forum which may have gone into your spam folder, even though it is definitely not spam. Look for it.)

Inspired by the sheer massive amount of time and effort that went into the production of that book, I am finally going to do what I first thought of doing eight years ago when "the old site" was still active, and had a massive hole in it that I always thought needed plugging.

I am going to write the AGS profile.

The target is to release it at (or just before) the French Grand Prix weekend. Since this race returned to the calendar it's been back at Paul Ricard - just a stone's throw from Gonfaron - and, in case anyone had forgotten, 2019 is the 20th anniversary of "the old site", where many of the driver and team profiles had been written in its first year. I thought now was as good a time as any.

Those of you who know me in any way will know I don't like to do anything by halves. Some will remember the five F1RMGP seasons that should still be lurking in the archive section of the Perry McCarthy forum. As the series went on, race reports (for something that nobody could actually watch!) grew longer and longer... until Formula E arrived and stole my thunder (though that did them lead to the "GPR Goes To Battersea" podcast, which I made sure was similarly thorough). If there is any nit-picking detail I can find, at all, I intend to include it. I don't think it will be as enormous as the profiles of Johnny Claes, Lucas di Grassi or Sébastien Buemi, but if there is an unofficial word limit then I intend to pay about as much attention to it as I would to a conference on fax machine sales.

Of course, if there's anyone else who wants to tell me any details I might otherwise have forgotten, or who would volunteer to proof-read the final version (and not marmalise it the way Ferrari did to the career of AGS' first driver), stick your hand up, hit the "private message" button and make sure it's in an email, because the PM inbox on this site gets bunged up very quickly.

Marchons! Marchons!

[dr-baker]

Holy blue indeed! I look forward to this! I know you do not do things by halves (that F1RMGP series was brilliant! Loved the spin-off series too. ). And knowing that Ibsey is inspiring you too pleases me. I have met him and he is a good guy. I too have a copy of his book, looking forward to having the time to sit down properly and read it.

Don't forget bigears' thread on the AGS team here: https://www.gprejects.com/forum/viewtop ... 96#p231696 Bigears's profiles are what inspired me in my MasterCard Lola thread (and subsequent article).

[dinizintheoven]

Don't forget bigears' thread on the AGS team here: https://www.gprejects.com/forum/viewtop ... 96#p231696 Bigears's profiles are what inspired me in my MasterCard Lola thread (and subsequent article).

I'd previously saved a thread from the old forum written in Portuguese about AGS, so I'll add this to the collection. I was looking through the "Editorial Direction" thread and bigears was mentioned a few times in there - I never forgot those huge posts and it's good to know I can still see the one I need, pictures and all.

Today, I have mostly been sifting through Motor Sport's archive of old F2/F3000 results to see how much information I could get out of those, and as they're so comprehensive I'll do the same for F3. That'll be an excellent grounding on where the team came from, though not so much where they went from there...

Mischa, who was going to write the AGS profile, didn't last long here... 8 posts, thank you and goodnight.

[CaptainGetz12]

I look forward to hearing this profile, and best of luck!

[dinizintheoven]

I look forward to hearing this profile

Good news! The audiobook version will be released soon afterwards.

Bad news! The narrator will be Nigel Mansell...

[dinizintheoven]

I have started writing. And I've been doing a bit of digging on the current set of profiles hosted on GP Rejects, and also some other articles.

I've amassed quite a few sources so far, including two threads here - the one by "bigears" that the Doctor mentioned, and the one by "deivison" written in Portuguese, helpfully translated by DanielPT. There's one I've found on Unraced F1 about the stillborn JH26, I've found two about the MGN W12 test that ties into the AGS story, and I'm looking for as many cited photos as I can to ascertain absolutely when the cars were changed, and when the liveries changed mid-season (which is the kind of in-depth digging that "F1 Livery Histories" does on his YouTube channel).

I've got two "gold standards" that I'm aiming for. One is the section on AGS from Pierre Ménard's Great Encyclopedia of Formula One, which covers 1950-2000 and contains the complete AGS story. I've scanned it, OCRed it and it totals 3,245 words. I've also saved an offline copy of the original F1 Rejects article on Coloni (or at least the text of it), back when the trouble at t' mill that blighted the original site hadn't hit yet; I'd assume this was one that Jamie and Enoch wrote in the early days of the site, as it contains little of Coloni's post-F1 activities and makes only a cursory reference to anything after 1999 (which is HWNSNBM driving for Coloni in F3000 in 2003, and is probably a minor update to the original). This is 3,884 words - and as aficionados of the old site will remember, there were quite a few profiles longer than this one. I might have figured, previously, that as Coloni's existence was round about the same length as that of AGS (actually, one season shorter...) then this would be an ideal template to work with.

In more recent times, those who have been enthusiastic to write profiles for GP Rejects have gone... rather further than this. The three-part Super Aguri profile - one of only two teams profiled on this site - is around 10,500 words for a team that competed in two seasons and four races; meanwhile, Lucas di Grassi's solitary F1 season scored him a profile of 10,113 words and Sébastien Buemi, who's had a lot of fingers in several pies since his three F1 seasons - was deemed eligible for a massive 27,610 words. To put that into perspective, my PhD thesis was 44,000 words, and some of that was the data entry section at the end that isn't really "words" as such.

I'm going to make sure the job is as thorough as I can manage - this site needs some more team profiles, after all. I can't say for definite how much I'll write, but if I was forced to cap it at 3,000 words then there is no way I would consider that a thorough job. I'm going to take 5,000 as a minimum, with no maximum - though it won't be thesis-length like the Buemi profile.

If there's anyone out there who wants to read it through before publication for a second opinion, now would be an excellent time to raise a hand.

And if anyone wants to be reminded what my writing style can be - in that I have a writing style at all, because I am not a literary man - you could do a lot worse than review the 2015 F1RMGP thread. I did exactly that over the weekend, and found some typos that I really should have eliminated, only all those race reports took so long to write that they slid through the net...


EDIT: Ooh crikey, as they say down Lawnmower Deth way. I've just dug up some articles, also in Portuguese, on the Bandeira Verde blog. And they're... long. And there are 18 of them. I'm going to run them all through Google Translate... and see how long the (presumably very badly translated) total is.
EDIT EDIT: 51,000 words. FIFTY-ONE THOUSAND. I don't think I'll be going into quite that much detail... but it should fill in any gaps I have.

[dr-baker]

And that post alone is nearly 700 words. You're setting yourself up here for an epic of epic proportions. May in not go up in flames like someone's blue car in the late 1990s...

[dinizintheoven]

The things I am learning by attempting this profile...

I was wondering why I couldn't find any times for the pre-qualifying sessions for the 1988 season, when there were 31 cars entered and five would have been expected to get up early on the Friday to slug it out for the right not to have an early bath. Turns out, there was no such thing. This is what I can deduce from the official Formula 1 website's archives: what would happen was, all 31 cars would be sent out for first practice, then the slowest of all those earmarked for pre-qualifiying would be eliminated, and 30 cars would take part in the rest of the race weekend. Initially, this was the new boys - Coloni (who'd had two early attempts towards the end of the 1987 season), Rial, Scuderia Italia and the two EuroBruns. But, what's this? Nicola Larini failed to pre-qualify the Osella FA1L twice in the second half of the season, which left me trying to piece together who had been saved from pre-qualifying to drop Osella in their place. Rial were fairly obvious - Andrea de Cesaris had somehow wrestled the blue Ferrari-meets-F3000 to fourth in Detroit, but were there any more? Even by tracking who finished behind the DNPQ cars for the second half of the season doesn't confirm who was definitely rescued and who wasn't; de Cesaris finished behind the DNPQ car twice which absolutely confirms that he didn't have to pre-qualify for the second half, but at no point did Alex Caffi ever do the same, so there's no clear indication if the powers that be still had their eye on him. According to Wikipedia's 1988 German Grand Prix article, it was just de Cesaris being rescued from pre-qualifying with Larini dropping in his place...

I had to work out all the points, and the 7th/8th/9th positions, from the first half of the 1988 season and the second half of the 1987 season to see how it all made sense - as Zakspeed finished stone dead last in 1988 and only by a 7th place at the end of 1987 did they escape pre-qualifying for the entire 1988 season. Only when I'd made the table of points and positions was it clear - Scuderia Italia were 15th, Coloni were 16th, Osella were 17th and EuroBrun were 18th, and with five cars between the four teams it was just a straight Rial/Osella swap.

Now I am going to have to do the same thing for the middle of the 1991 season when AGS, Brabham and Footwork all found themselves getting up early on the Friday morning again... and assess what it would have taken at the last gasp for AGS not to have dropped into that session (though the word "miracle" does spring immediately to mind by this point).

And then there's this article from Motor Sport at the end of 1988, which lays out some not-quite-finalised plans for the formal pre-qualifying session for 1989:
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/arch ... grand-prix
It's not quite as we know it, but they did have another three months to iron out the flaws.

[CaptainGetz12]

At this point we should make a "history of pre-qualifying in F1" as an addendum

Though the "list of exemptions will be reviewed on the basis of race results" clause makes me think of modern NASCAR rules *shudder*.

[dinizintheoven]

At this stage, I have written 2,733 words, most of which are bits and pieces about the 1988 and 1989 seasons, and there's a hell of a lot more to cover on those two years yet. A document with all my notes, URLs and season results adds another 12,000 to this (in which a URL counts as one word but a lot of abbreviations will make up for that). Already I am going to say the final article will have a five-figure word count, so likely as not I'll split it into three parts (with as even a division as possible), similar to the Super Aguri profile.

Will anyone volunteer to be a proof-reader when I've ground out version 1.0?

[CaptainGetz12]

At this stage, I have written 2,733 words, most of which are bits and pieces about the 1988 and 1989 seasons, and there's a hell of a lot more to cover on those two years yet. A document with all my notes, URLs and season results adds another 12,000 to this (in which a URL counts as one word but a lot of abbreviations will make up for that). Already I am going to say the final article will have a five-figure word count, so likely as not I'll split it into three parts (with as even a division as possible), similar to the Super Aguri profile.

Will anyone volunteer to be a proof-reader when I've ground out version 1.0?

I can proofread it if you want, PM me if you're interested!

[Rob Dylan]

Likewise, I've done a lot of proof-reading in my time, and can definitely do the grammar bits right at least if need be

[dinizintheoven]

SPG is the least of my troubles - I was properly educated in the 1980s, after all - but catching any typos that I've missed would be useful. I'm sure there will also be someone out there telling me to stop using so many words. This is how many I have so far, for the three seasons I've written:

1986: 1,466
1987: 3,140
1988: 2,825

Expect not quite as many for the following three seasons as AGS became more familiar with the letters D, N, P and Q - and how much I can write for the pre-F1 days, I could not possibly estimate. Either way, everyone who reads the finished article will be occupied for a lot more than five minutes.

I am going to bed now, because I'm not a writer by trade and my head is starting to spin. Though it may be from having to look at so many pictures of the gopping JH22... especially in Monaco spec. I'd rather look at the hacked-up chassis from the MGN test.

[ibsey]

[quote="dinizintheoven"]I've been reading Ibsey's book, recently. (And if you see this post, Ibsey, I've sent you an email via this forum which may have gone into your spam folder, even though it is definitely not spam. Look for it.)

Inspired by the sheer massive amount of time and effort that went into the production of that book, I am finally going to do what I first thought of doing eight years ago when "the old site" was still active, and had a massive hole in it that I always thought needed plugging.

I am going to write the AGS profile. [quote="dinizintheoven"]



Hi dinizintheoven I've just seen your message above and your kind email (it did go into my Spam). Massive apologies for the late reply - cannot tell you how busy I've been. Anyway great to hear & hope you enjoyed the rest of the book.

Also great to hear you have been inspired to take up writing, although trust me it is alot harder than you ever imagine. So you REALLY do need passion for the subject your writing about. Anyway if you need any advise on producing an audiobook do let me know...this is because I have just released a an audio book version of my recently released book: 1994: The Untold Story which is now available for purchase at https://www.audiobooks.co.uk/audiobook/ ... son/380646. where you can listen to it for free via their initial trial period. Likewise an additional audiobook can be found at: https://www.estories.com/audiobook/2856 ... -the-1990s Again it should be free to new customers & contains many stories on reject teams/drivers (Pacific GP & Roland Ratzenberger etc). IN case your wondering here are the reviews of the book: http://www.1994f1.com/sample-page/

Anyway must go, but I wish you all the best with your writing project and do let me know if I can help in any way

[dinizintheoven]

All went quiet on the southern French front, because after I'd done a chunky-monkey ton of writing for the AGS profile, I had to turn my attention to other matters. And then, when those distractions had passed, another bout of utter dejection with the state of F1 kicked in, round about the time of the Spanish Grand Prix - which should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody.

Anyway, despite the considerable further distraction of the Cricket World Cup, I will at least summon up some motivation (from somewhere) and renew my efforts to get this article - or, more likely, a short series of articles - ready for the French Grand Prix weekend. Originally I'd intended to make it three parts - one for the rise to the top, one for the 1987-88 seasons and one for the decline afterwards - but there's a minor fly on the brioche that is the MGN engine test. Numerous articles have already been written on that, and though I'd like to present my own take on it, I think the best approach might be to cut it completely from the AGS story and present it as a separate (and much shorter) article.

What I need to know at this stage is:

- Who should I submit the finished article to?
- Will it have to be pre-formatted for the website, complete with pictures and where these should go?
- Is there a deadline for doing so if I want it to be published on the French Grand Prix weekend?
- Is there any guarantee that who I submit it to won't forget about it?

Once I know all this I will be able to give a better estimate as to whether it'll be possible to get this done on the original schedule, or whether I should save it for the month-long bout of F1 Deprivation in August, a time where I will once again have other things on my mind.

[Bobby Doorknobs]

1. Who should I submit the finished article to?
2. Will it have to be pre-formatted for the website, complete with pictures and where these should go?
3. Is there a deadline for doing so if I want it to be published on the French Grand Prix weekend?
4. Is there any guarantee that who I submit it to won't forget about it?

1. East Londoner is the site editor, so he should be the one to handle this.
2. I wouldn't say it has to be, but it would help.
3. I suppose the Monday or Tuesday beforehand would give plenty of time to have it ready for publication by, say, the start of Friday practice.
4. There's the rub. The written content well has dried up in no small part because most of the people who volunteered to do it in the past are out of college and have now entered the workforce. Even so, the lack of any kind of response to an already completed interview with Ibsey about his new book is a little concerning (and I don't think I'm entirely blameless there either to be perfectly honest).

What I would recommend is submitting the article to Londoner and if for any reason he doesn't have the time I'd be happy to take it on myself; I believe I still have access to the GPR Wordpress!

[dr-baker]

Even so, the lack of any kind of response to an already completed interview with Ibsey about his new book is a little concerning (and I don't think I'm entirely blameless there either to be perfectly honest).

And that is why I posted the interview in a thread in this sub forum instead, although I am sure it would still be appreciated to be placed upon the main site with photos anyway.

[Londoner]

1. Who should I submit the finished article to?
2. Will it have to be pre-formatted for the website, complete with pictures and where these should go?
3. Is there a deadline for doing so if I want it to be published on the French Grand Prix weekend?
4. Is there any guarantee that who I submit it to won't forget about it?

1. East Londoner is the site editor, so he should be the one to handle this.
2. I wouldn't say it has to be, but it would help.
3. I suppose the Monday or Tuesday beforehand would give plenty of time to have it ready for publication by, say, the start of Friday practice.
4. There's the rub. The written content well has dried up in no small part because most of the people who volunteered to do it in the past are out of college and have now entered the workforce. Even so, the lack of any kind of response to an already completed interview with Ibsey about his new book is a little concerning (and I don't think I'm entirely blameless there either to be perfectly honest).

What I would recommend is submitting the article to Londoner and if for any reason he doesn't have the time I'd be happy to take it on myself; I believe I still have access to the GPR Wordpress!

I'd certainly be willing to look over the draft this weekend. We have a Google Drive (or at least we did, I need to check if it still exists ) where you can submit drafts for other GPR members to proofread. I'll PM over you a link to it tomorrow (or Simtek could, I'm not brilliant with linky stuff. )

As for the publication date, I'm hopeful we can proofread and get the parts published over the French GP weekend. It would be a useful way to kickstart Grand Prix Rejects again.

I feel like I've neglected GPR since going into full-time employment. A lethal combination of time, lack of inspiration and F1's current lethargic state hasn't helped. However, the upshot of this is that I finally have some new pieces taking shape which I hope to drip-feed over the summer. I can't guarantee it will be a regular stream of content like we had in 2017 and the early part of 2018, but it would be something.

dr-baker, I'd be willing to publish your interview with ibsey over the summer, maybe next month if possible.

[dinizintheoven]

In light of this, I will review the state of play. I think, to keep it somewhat simple, I'm going to keep the MGN section as I've written it already, and if anyone wants to read other accounts of that saga, the chances are I'll throw in some links at the end. Also, this may be a slightly upside-down way to do it, but as it stands the only unwritten section is that of AGS' time in the third and second divisions, covering the 1970-85 period. I have no idea how much I'll be able to write on that, but I'm certainly going to have a fair stab at it, with as many of the results as I can find of the period. Originally I'd intended to split the article into three parts - one for the lead-up to F1, one for 1987-88 and one for 1989-91, but it might not work that way in the end; at this stage it depends how much I write for the pre-F1 days. Anyway, here are the word counts for each year as it stands:

Prologue: 474
F3-level years: not yet complete (and no idea how much detail I'll get)
F2 & F3000: not yet complete (aiming to be thorough)
1986 season: 1,466
1987 season: 3,148
1988 season: 2,865
1989 season: 3,589
MGN test: 974
1990 season: 2,194
1991 season: 2,144
Epilogue: 1,542

So that's 18,396 words and counting. I told you I wasn't going to do this by halves, and having gone to all this effort I don't intend to make any major cuts. As F1RMGP readers in days of yore would also expect, there's a fair bit of extra comment and colour where I've thought it necessary.

And, if I haven't said this before, what I have found so very frustrating while writing this article is trying to fact-check. It's not just the results and the car specifications from the F3-level days of the 1970s that are shrouded by the mists of time, it's such details as... pretty much everything about Christian Vanderpleyn's life and early death that can be found outside his employment in F1. The history of a small F1 team that's insignificant to everyone except us and a handful of others has so many conflicting reports from so many different printed and internet sources that it's all become a huge mélange of hearsay, rumours and he-said-she-said, and I doubt I'll ever comb my way to the actual truth, without a lengthy refresher course in French and extensive use of Dr. Emmett Brown's time machine. Take everything I write with just a hint of scepticism, but enjoy the huge, huge wall of text anyway. If you can.

CaptainGetz12 offered to proof-read the article, so I'll send it on in the form it's in at the moment because all the text from the start of AGS' F1 adventure onwards is done, and the proof-reading of those 18,396 words can be happening while I write the rest. If anyone else wants to contribute, I'll send the link.

[dr-baker]

dr-baker, I'd be willing to publish your interview with ibsey over the summer, maybe next month if possible.

That would be grand, and I am sure ibsey would appreciate that too. I can send the Word document over next week of that helps? And ibs may be happy to send some photos to illustrate the article if you ask.

And Dr Jim, if over time, you want me to translate your French sources to verify meaning/interpretation, I would be happy to do so in my free time.

[dinizintheoven]

VICTOIRE!



It is done, or at least le premier draft est fini. There are un grand total de 23,929 mots, including the most thorough account of AGS' huit années in Formule Deux and Formule Trois Mille that you'll ever see, and now it's well past minuit, my tête is starting to spin and je suis thinking about demi of my words en français.

Come le matin I will check all les mots (though mostly les mots I've just écrit) and télécharge the lot to a Mega link that I can send to tout le monde, or at least some of tout the monde who are actually involved in making it into une proper nouvelle article or trois.

And Dr Jim, if over time, you want me to translate your French sources to verify meaning/interpretation, I would be happy to do so in my free time.

While that's a fine offer, the reason why I mentioned the time machine is because so many of the sources I've found - in whatever language - give conflicting information that I would only be able to verify absolutely by travelling back in time and actually being there at all the races in all the categories, and attending every other event I've mentioned.

What you're getting is, in effect, 24,000 words (or as near as makes no difference) of my interpretation of 23 seasons of racing results at three different levels based on what I can piece together from the evidence available in the time I have had to read through it. Take Henri Julien's birthdate, for example; many sources give it as a specific date in 1927, but Motorsport magazine, trusted and respected by just about everyone, state that he was born in 1930. When and where did Christian Vanderpleyn die? Some sources say just outside Gonfaron, but this was in 1992 and he was supposedly working in Italy, hence other sources say he died near Turin, which is more believable. Did he ever work as Luca Badoer's F3000 race engineer? Sources that give an actual date for his death quote it as 11th March 1992, and the F3000 season didn't start for another two months. And then there's a troubling mystery in the 1989 season which I've dedicated a fairly chunky amount of text to, which I will save for the publication of the article...

[dr-baker]

Ahh, je vois. The truth is out there!

[dinizintheoven]

Stop the press! That is, if the press has been started yet, which I don't think it has. Today's big snogs (not literally) go to CaptainGetz12, who has returned a copy of the AGS article to me full of tweaks, suggestions and corrections. So what I will do for the remainder of this evening is adapt my original writings to official "B" spec according to those notes, to the sound of the US Open playing itself out downstairs, and I will try not to be too distracted by the sound of an exuberant American golf fan shouting "GET IN THE HOLE!" as player after player hits a tee shot on the 14th - 580 yards, par 5, and with less chance of a hole in one than Williams have of qualifying on pole position this year... at Spa.

This is all being done for your eventual delectation and delight, and if everything goes to plan you have all only to wait for exactly one week! After a five-month layoff from new content, sure'y that's not too much to ask...

[Rob Dylan]

I threatened a few years back to write an article on Sergio Pérez's 2013 season, and my interest in doing so has been regenerated. Watch this space

[dinizintheoven]

Eastie hasn't visited this forum in a week and I'm waiting for a reply on three emails. With the text finished, I've kept my end of the bargain... and I could do the HTMLisation if only there was someone to send me the official template. Maybe, Eastie's been beavering away on it without telling me, but I have no way of knowing.

With five days to go until launch, any suggestions?

[Londoner]

Eastie hasn't visited this forum in a week and I'm waiting for a reply on three emails. With the text finished, I've kept my end of the bargain... and I could do the HTMLisation if only there was someone to send me the official template. Maybe, Eastie's been beavering away on it without telling me, but I have no way of knowing.

With five days to go until launch, any suggestions?

Mega apologies - I realise that I've not updated my email address on her since I joined the forum in 2010. No wonder I've missed your emails, I haven't used that account in years. No excuse other than my utter uselessness I'm afraid.

Fortunately I have remembered my login details, got into my old email account and have the final draft in front of me. I'm hoping to start putting it onto Wordpress later today. If you want to do the HTMLisation, I could set you up with a GPR Wordpress account with admin rights, if you like?

[dinizintheoven]

Mega apologies - I realise that I've not updated my email address on her since I joined the forum in 2010. No wonder I've missed your emails, I haven't used that account in years. No excuse other than my utter uselessness I'm afraid.

Fortunately I have remembered my login details, got into my old email account and have the final draft in front of me. I'm hoping to start putting it onto Wordpress later today. If you want to do the HTMLisation, I could set you up with a GPR Wordpress account with admin rights, if you like?

Go for it. That way I'll get it the way I'd want it, with all the right pictures in the right place - that is, provided that my basic but workable knowledge of HTML (that has remained fairly constant since about 2000) is sufficient to put the pictures around the text.

I'll be waiting for a PM while I watch India and Pakistan slug it out on the cricket field, which is the way these two countries should solve all their differences. With a bit of luck, Manchester won't be flattened by the losing side's fans afterwards...