This reminds me of a story Harvey Penick told in his "Little Red Book" of golf. He had a pupil who was going to face an opponent in a match play tournament. This pupil told to Penick he was sure of his win, because he saw in the driving range that his opponent had a bad swing and a bad grip. Of course, Penick's pupil lost.ISLAMATRON wrote:I second that, assholes like Flav are 120 for a dollar, Symonds will truly be hard to replace. Especially with all these new teams drawing alot from the talent pool.
vyselegend wrote:Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!
Some good points here by Mr. Saward, who is pretty close to French racings circles by merit of living in France.Am I missing something?
September 22, 2009 by joesaward
There are all these stories knocking about that Alain Prost will lead the Renault F1 team, in place of Flavio Briatore.
How does that work? Prost was a great racing driver but when it came to running a team, he failed in spectacular fashion.
It all ended up in a right royal mess in November 2002 with the company going into receivership with debts of $30.5m. This left 193 people out of work. There was no buyer for the team, although a company called Phoenix Finance paid $2.5m to acquire the F1 entry which they hoped to transfer to a different entity, with the intention of collecting $14m of F1 TV money.
The official liquidator Cosme Rogeau thus ended up organising a series of auctions during which the assets of the team were sold off. This included 12 cars, spares, racing suits, wind tunnel models, racing equipment, trucks, tools, machinery. Even the office furniture.
It took many more months before Rogeau was able to organise a deal for the team’s wind tunnel at Magny-Cours to be handed over to two of the aerodynamicists Alexis Lapouille and Xavier Gergaud, who started a business called Aero Concept Engineering.
Thanks for the correction. I guess Symonds' exact title was "executive director" or "trackside operations chief" or something like that.kilcoo316 wrote:vyselegend wrote:Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!
Symonds hasn't been technical director for ages.
Renault won two world championships with Bob Bell as the technical director.
Car design and build at the factory is ok. Racetrack based decision may be more questionable.
They might win another 2kilcoo316 wrote:vyselegend wrote:Also, sorry for veering a bit off topic, but the hardest one to replace isn't the team manager, but the technical director! Who the hell is going to fit in Symonds boots?!
Symonds hasn't been technical director for ages.
Renault won two world championships with Bob Bell as the technical director.
Car design and build at the factory is ok. Racetrack based decision may be more questionable.
Renault F1 Team Statement 23.09.09
Following the unfortunate recent events, the Renault F1 Team has reacted swiftly by implementing a new temporary management team structure, which will be in place from today until the end of the 2009 season.
The reorganisation is as follows:
Bob Bell, currently Technical Director, takes on the duty of Team Principal and Chief Technical Officer.
Jean-François Caubet, currently Director of Marketing and Communications, takes the role of Managing Director.
They will both report to Bernard Rey, President of the Renault F1 Team.
Bob Bell will attend all the remaining races of the season and will be the team’s spokesperson on all sporting and technical matters.
The Renault F1 Team is now ready to concentrate on the future and wishes to stress that no further comments or statements will be issued relating to the events of Singapore 2008.