Alexander Rossi to test for Lotus in Abu Dhabi
Keith Collantine find all their articles Author Keith Collantine www.facebook.com
In the round-up: Alexander Rossi will drive for Lotus in the young drivers' test in Abu Dhabi.
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RaceFans
In the round-up: Alexander Rossi will drive for Lotus in the young drivers’ test in Abu Dhabi.

Pick your favourite F1 drivers and teams

On Saturday I’ll be taking a look at who are the most popular drivers and teams on F1 Fanatic.

To pick yours, log in and go to My Account > Profile > Edit > F1 teams and drivers. You can also select the year you started watching F1.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Rossi to test for Team Lotus in Abu Dhabi (Lotus)

“Alexander Rossi will have a busy end to the 2011 season, competing for Caterham Team AirAsia in the forthcoming GP2 finale in Abu Dhabi and then taking part in the F1 young driver test for the GP2 team’s senior counterparts Team Lotus.”

Former Renault boss Briatore backs Button at last (Daily Mirror)

“Disgraced former Renault boss Flavio Briatore admitted yesterday ‘I didn’t realise [Jenson Button]was so good.'”

Renault appoints new team manager (Autosport)

“Renault has appointed stalwart Paul Seaby as its new team manager, following the recent departure of John Wickham.”

Mark Webber column (BBC)

“F1 is getting into a bit of a road-car culture with penalties. The attitude seems to be that someone must be to blame when there is an incident.”

McLaren celebrates 25 years of Neil Oatley (McLaren)

“He had proved himself with the design of the 1989 McLaren-Honda MP4/5, which had the unenviable task of living up to the success of the MP4/4. It honoured that legacy despite significantly hotter competition, as Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost won 12 of the 16 races. Prost regained his world championship crown from Senna, as McLaren retained its Constructors’ title.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Mark’s view on penalties in F1 and other sports:

In every sport some decisions by ‘referees’ will go ‘the wrong way’ but I think in F1 the standard and consistency of decisions is generally far better than in many sports – football for instance has far more cases of botched decisions.

Over the course of a season or a career you would expect these to even out. So I think Hamilton has little to complain about. The vast majority of the decisions against him have been fair and he deserved what he’s got.

If he keeps picking up penalties for incidents while other drivers don’t – and it ends up with his results being harmed – then really the onus is on him to examine what he is doing and what he can do to avoid the incidents.

Or he can decide to ignore it and carry on, in which case he should expect that he will continue to pick up penalties and those penalties are likely to escalate. And consequently he can probably look forward to never being world champion again (how many drivers win the world championship while picking up significant numbers of penalties?).

Mark

From the forum

jodrell isn’t impressed with planned kerb changes at Buddh International Circuit

Tomas Mac donncha’s video he filmed at the Singapore Grand Prix

Penske keep same three-car team for 2012 in IndyCar

Interesting V8 Supercar crash test video from the FIA Institute

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today. If you want a birthday shout-out tell us when yours is by emailling me, using Twitter or adding to the list here.

On this day in F1

Toyota announced they were abandoning F1 two years ago today. They already had a car for the 2010 season under construction, but it never raced.

The team recently announced a return to endurance racing in the World Endurance Championship next year: