(NOTE: this post has taken about three hours to write - no, really, you heard me - in which time there have been more and more "revelations"... I'll get to those later. But for now...)
eurobrun wrote:Just out of curiosity, how come Kostas22 was allowed to buy a team?
kostas22 wrote:I really don't know. I never intended for this to happen really, but it appears to be where he wants the series to go. I had assumed I'd be there for Bathurst and then vanish again, but it seems I'm being encoraged to get Il Barone Rampante into F1RMGP
This post will be all about sorting out this "mystery", in what will look like a weird hybrid of Marktin Brundell's Newsround blended with a real-life interlude. Read it and not only will everything become rather clearer than it may have been before, but it may provide an insight into the machinations of F1RMGP since... probably the end of the 2011 season, when I realised the series was actually popular rather than just me posting some random results of fiddling around with Microprose Grand Prix for a laugh.
I should also warn you that I have a long-standing reputation for taking a thousand words to say what could be said in ten. Bear with me on this one. I know of no way round it.
Onwards...
Behind The Series and Inside The Oven:
An explanation of the sequence of events that brought Il Barone Rampante into F1RMGPFirst of all: what is F1RMGP, anyway?F1RWRS is a competition. It is, as I understand it, a direct involvement of multiple forum members creating a racing team, the history behind it, and that of the team's drivers. But I've never
totally understood how it works, even now, and with the addition of F2/3RWRS and the "arbitration thread" (seriously, that worried me - have things got so out of hand that there needs to be a thread where forum users are given court decisions, fines and the like,
in a fictional universe?) it's become so complicated I don't think I will ever have time to unravel it.
F1RMGP is a lot simpler. It started with me experimenting after I'd rediscovered Microprose Grand Prix; I replaced the "competitive" (i.e. non-reject) teams with those who this website constantly cheers for, and generated a championship in which reject drivers and reject teams competed against each other (Ferrari being a "special case"), there was an in-house F1 Rejects team with the cream of the reject crop, and in the end we had a Drivers' and Constructors' champion splattered with anecdotes about a hologrammatic James Hunt getting apocalyptically drunk and HWNSNBM having trouble translating Hungarian into English. I ran it entirely by myself, as I still do. So, does it constitute a competition? I've said so in the Series' wiki page, but actually, I copied that across from the F1RWRS page (most likely an older version of it), because I couldn't think of a way to start it off myself. It could be argued that it
isn't a competition – it's more like a soap opera with a racing series tacked on, with the drivers and teams all assigned, and the races run, by one forum member – i.e. me – with no need for any outside input. So, I could be a complete dictator like Jean-Marie Balestre - "ze best deeceesion... eez MY deeceesion!" and ignore absolutely everything anyone else says, whether it's in news reports or Wild Mass Guessing. That would hardly be popular, and seeing as the series has increased in popularity since that first (rather raw) season, that would be counter-productive. What I saw as a desire for more outside participation led to the creation of the Women's European Cup, and the Bathurst Enduro, and – there cannot be an argument on this one – those
are competitions, which will become a very important point later, in particular the WEC.
The "soap opera" aspect of F1RMGP seems to be just as popular as the racing. And, like a real soap opera, it's "scripted" in a way – in that, for instance, in the Silly Season I will make notes on a clipboard of what I intend to happen. Nothing on the clipboard is absolutely set in stone, though, until it's posted here, and there may be a huge amount of changes over the many weeks between one season finishing and the next starting. Before any of you get alarmed, though, the races are
not scripted. Microprose Grand Prix 2 is king (even if I'm trying to find ever more elaborate ways to circumvent its dodgy random number generator). Jan Magnussen really did lose the title at the last race two seasons running. Marko Asmer and Natacha Gachnang really did come out on top in those crazy races last season. Gillet ENB really did pass Leyton Dome in the last few minutes of the 24 Hour Enduro. There was no script for that.
Why Lancia?So, how this story starts: to say that I have a special admiration for Lancia is a bit of an understatement.
I'd hinted at it many times. Even before the thread in the Wild Mass Guessing wiki, I have outright mentioned that I've had two Lancias parked on my drive at previous points in my life (and if anyone points out they were Autobianchis in Italy I will kick them somewhere painful). I have also mentioned my uncle has had
three Lancias in his motoring life - a Beta HPE, an Integrale and a top-spec Thema that isn't the 8.32 but then, very few people had one. Probably the biggest hint of what I was intending was dropped in the "We recreate reality: alternative 1950" thread - remember who it was who built Tazio Nuvolari's final shot at glory? That's right, Lancia.
And, for those of you who were watching when Top Gear did their recent(ish) feature where they revealed "the greatest car company ever by number of truly legendary models in their history" – I thought it'd be Ford, due to sheer weight of numbers, but the cheer I gave when they said it was Lancia could have been heard three streets away. It had been rather painful watching Jezza's Beta coupe drop to pieces in the Botswana desert, though.
The extent of others' influence on F1RMGPSo. I run F1RMGP solo, create the whole lot myself and could be a Balestre if I wanted, but I'm not because that'd be boring, and there's been more "outside influence" than you might first think.
Cast your minds back to the 2013 Silly Season, and
all that talk of the Suzuki engine. It was perpetuated by one forum member, i.e. SuperAguri. Witness his undying efforts to get the Suzuki hillclimb engine into one of the 2014 F1RMGP cars, witness all the reports about the engine being tested in an old Life chassis with Bruno Giacomelli at the wheel, witness the will-they-won't-they saga of F1RM taking the Suzuki engine after ditching the old Life unit. We all know how that turned out, don't we? Suzuki in the field powering the new Leyton House team, Jacko driving one of the cars... and just in time for SuperAguri to disappear into the shadows rather than cheer on what he'd brought to the table! Truth be told, I'd had the idea in the back of my mind to enter Leyton House in the 2014 season since about the middle of the 2013 season (which is round about the time I'd start scribbling on the famous clipboard) – though it was more because I was getting concerned that all the cars were looking too similar, and that turquoise paint-job would really stand out. Plus, in Akira Akagi, there's a genuine reject team boss if ever there was once, which even the performance in the 1990 French Grand Prix could never erase. What I'd
also had in the back of my mind was the entry of the much-derided PURE engine, which could be described as "a reject from the second it appeared on the drawing board", or so the attitude seems to be, and even if PURE does eventually enter F1, and blitzes the field, that attitude will probably still remain. The intention was always for F1RM and PURE to team up and see if they would be successful, as the (as should be perceived) considerably
worse F1RM/Life combination... that won this series the first three times. So, that's an example of something that was going to stay as it had been first written on the clipboard (round about the time it became obvious that Life wouldn't be sticking around) and nothing was going to change it - SuperAguri's attempts to match F1RM with Suzuki were always going to be, as FMecha would say, "jossed". In the end, though, his persistence with that Suzuki engine
did bring it to the series, when I realised that a Japanese engine with a Japanese constructor would be a perfect combination. All that was "jossed" about that engine was the idea that it would be allowed to run at 1000 bhp, or even the 1200 bhp that he eventually tried to claim! That's an example of where outside influence has to be stopped in its tracks; a 1000 bhp engine would have utterly ruined the 2014 season beyond repair. It'd be like F1 in 1988 all over again, only without the fairytale Ferrari victory at Monza, with the Leyton Houses lapping the entire field every time. And that, I reckon, would kill the series. Even so, I will reveal that the Leyton House / Suzuki combination
was the most powerful in the 2014 field - rated at 820 bhp in the race and 830 bhp in qualifying. It was very powerful, but never
so powerful it would be allowed to steamroller everything in its path.
SuperAguri didn't
have to do anything in the course of the season, even though it could have been said, as eurobrun just has in this instance, that he'd "bought" the team, or maybe "bought" Life's place from the 2013 season. That wasn't actually the case, it was more of a combination of ideas that were ultimately derived from a series of SuperAguri's "Autosport reports", plus an idea I'd had for a while. In fact, while we're on the subject of SuperAguri's wildest of Wild Mass Guesses, it certainly wasn't me who first thought of bringing Dome to the 2014 season, either -
it was him, back in the 2012 season thread!. While he was wrong on Dome entering for 2013, because I'd already planned at that stage who would be making their debut, he did accurately predict that one of the newbies would be DAMS... which I'd already dropped in place behind the scenes. The constant news reports of Dome and their amusing antics off the grid with "Meat-pie-gate" and Julian Richer was more than enough to see them on the grid for 2014, but as with the emergence of Leyton House, SuperAguri had retreated before the season had really got started, so I never got to hear of his (or "Autosport's") views on their performance, but I assume he'd call for Emanuele Naspetti to be sacked after about three races...
Hopefully, at this point it should be obvious that - although I will make the final decision as to what happens, where and when in the Silly Season - Wild Mass Guessing from Autosport, Some Publication, The Generic Times, J.O.U.R.N.A.L. and all the others
can have an influence on what I will ultimately decide - either that, or I've already decided it, and the "predictions" eventually are revealed to be true. Incredibly, "AJ 37" (who seems to have retreated into the shadows just as quickly as he surfaced on this thread) managed to make more correct predictions than I'd ever thought possible - most of which I've covered in the "State Of The Teams Address" a few posts back. Could have been just fluke, could have been that we're well and truly on the same wavelength, maybe I'll never know now. Ultimately, prepare for, say, 80-90% of the predictive stories to be "jossed" sooner or later, but keep the champagne on ice for those 10-20% that either turn out to have been right all along, or are such a brilliant idea as to alter the previously "scripted" course of the Silly Season.
The lead-up to AlitaliagateNext, we must consider a bit of a moan that dr-baker had
at the beginning of this season. It was a bit of a logical failure in that - though
all the WEC was posted here first, as a "dry run" for the use of Grand Prix 2 in generating the results of the series, the WEC was happening in real-time in the F1 Rejects universe at the same time as this season was, so no, there was no chance that Milka Duno would have been selected for the Montverdi drive this season. It was dr-baker's comment in the 2013 season that Milka Duno could drive a car with Milka sponsorship that led to the creation of the WEC, and it was one of the youngsters' comments (tommykl? eurobrun? The errant Jeroen?) that "no, you can't compete in this series" that meant the WEC
was opened to other forum users. This time round, the WEC will be run at the same time as the Main Series, not just due to dr-baker's slight misunderstanding, but also so that his assertion that female drivers
should be allowed to compete in the Main Series may also come to fruition. The obvious crossing of the divide would be if the 2014 WEC champion, Vanina Ickx, "graduated" to a seat at Minardi in the Main Series for 2015... but as I may have mentioned (and probably did) on the Bathurst Enduro thread, what would be the point in doing so if the 2015 Minardi was as relentlessly hopeless as the 2014 model was? From winning the first five races of the 2014 WEC to a string of DNPQs the next year, that'd be her championship credibility, and possibly that of the WEC as well, right down the swanee. There was an obvious solution, and this brings us
properly to Alitaliagate.
What you see in this post is what I did and was intended to do, rehashed into an F1 Rejects Universe News Report - but now, this is what actually happened as it was in
this universe.
To give Vanina a shot at decent results in the Main Series, the Minardi team needed a new engine. And so, at this point, what crossed my mind as the right engine to send Minardi back towards the sharp end of the grid? That's right, my old favourites – it was time for Lancia to enter F1RMGP. So, on the clipboard for 2015 that went. And then... it may have been on the same day that I was idly browsing the wiki and found the Scuderia Alitalia page, and most specifically, this:
Scuderia Alitalia's Wiki page wrote:(
http://f1alternate.wikkii.com/wiki/Scuderia_Alitalia)
Scuderia Lancia Alitalia (known as Scuderia Alitalia for sponsorship reasons) is a motor racing team founded by Alasdair Lindsay owned and operated by racing conglomerate Il Barone Rampante that compete in various racing series across F1 Rejects. The team was born from the defunct Virgin Inter Corse outfit, after they went into administration and Alitalia bought the majority of their assets. Soon after, the team announced a tie-up with Italian manufacturer Lancia to be their official works team in all F1 Rejects competitions.
The discussion at the beginning of this post as to whether F1RMGP is a "competition" or not was highly relevant at this point. But, irrespective of the status of the Main Series, it is already established that the WEC
is a competition, and – as it uses year-old F1RMGP chassis, a Lancia-powered car from the 2015 F1RMGP series could find its way, eventually, into the 2016 WEC. Of course, I could be Balestre again and exclude those cars from the 2016 WEC... to the (potential) sound of loud boos and hisses and a mass exodus of interest. Which, of course, I don't want to happen.
Therefore, I conclude that I had to honour the agreement with Scuderia Alitalia regards the Lancia engines. This is not just the right way to proceed; due to the way the WEC is run, it is the
only way to proceed.
Alitaliagate itselfHaving established that kostas22 and "Alasdair Lindsay, The Team Principal Of Scuderia Alitalia (and Il Barone Rampante, etc)" are one and the same person, I dropped him a PM, which on this forum ends up as an email. And the text, I included in the Alitaliagate thread.
G'day, Bruce, Paul Stoddart here.
About this "Scuderia Alitalia is Lancia's official works team in all F1 Rejects competitions"... see, I'm trying to get myself a fair dinkum engine for F1RMGP 2015, this Motori Moderni unit's more crook than a dingo with rabies. Look what it's done to our results! And, you know, this was once an Italian team, so I thought a Lancia engine might be what we need to get us back to the bonza end of the grid.
How about a tie-up? I'll even shove an Alitalia logo on next year's Minardi.
Had kostas said "aye, laddie" – then, by now, we'd most likely have been discussing the potential fortunes of Vanina Ickx driving for Scuderia Alitalia Minardi with Lancia engines, for the last month or so. But I didn't get a reply. So I thought I'd wait until after the Bathurst Enduro, because that was going to take up a lot of my organisational time, and then I'd have another go, possibly with an on-forum message that said "Oi! Kostas! Did you get my email?"
Once I'd started the Bathurst Enduro, though, the tale took the most interesting twist possible.
This is the absolute, genuine truth, and may I be struck down with every disease it's possible for a thirtysomething man to suffer from if this is not the case, and as you all know, that's a lot of diseases. Had kostas replied before the enduro and said "nae chance", leaving Minardi in the lurch, I had a second plan. And that was to repeat the PM, this time coming from a certain Andrea Sassetti, along these lines...
[quote]Ciao, Signor. You do not want to work with the Australian? I 'ave a better plan. So, 'ow you say we team up Scuderia Andrea Coloni with your squadra and we 'ave the great Lancia engine for Pedro and... the other one, I forget 'is name, si?"
I never had the chance to send such a message, because I was waiting for the reply to "Paul Stoddart". Still, I set up the Enduro, opened the entries, and...
strike me down with a feather from the world's tiniest bird, kostas had entered the SAC/Alitalia team-up that I'd been intending to ask him about all along! I hadn't intended to change the drivers as part of the "original plan" - but that plan changed when Gabriele Tarquini and Enrico Bertaggia were announced for the SAAC Enduro squad.
The Status Quo...no, not
that lot.
So this is where we stand at the moment. Ultimately, I don't think this should be seen as "kostas22 being allowed to 'buy' one of the teams" any more than SuperAguri "bought" his way into the previous season (and then did his vanishing act). It is more that I have noticed his wishes regarding the Lancia engine in "all F1 Rejects competitions", and however F1RMGP is perceived, it's actually the WEC that's swung the decision this way; that, and I'm always determined to do "the right thing" especially if not doing so might compromise the popularity of the series and its surrounding soap opera. It's led to confusion that I never thought would surface, but with a bit of luck this has cleared it all up.
Despite this
extremely lengthy post (even by my standards), everything remains pretty much as it ever was. kostas22 - you don't
have to do
anything from this point on if you don't want to (SuperAguri certainly didn't), but do expect a PM sooner rather than later (which will, of course, turn up in your email box) - that'll explain how many of the pieces of the 2015 F1RMGP jigsaw you're holding. As for the rest of you... keep posting those news stories. Yes, a lot of it will be "jossed", due to the nature of how the series is run - but some of it won't, and ultimately the main reason for these news reports to keep coming in is that it tells me the series is still worth sticking with. It takes considerably more time and effort to generate than you'd think - and at a time when half the posts here seem to have been centered around how nobody has a life outside the forums, I remind you that I most certainly
do - this evening in particular! As long as there is demand for the series, though - there will be supply. And I think the IBR / Lancia deal will add some extra spice to the next season, which should keep the demand up.
Carry on!
