So, who’s ‘donated’ and what is your reward?

From Joe Sewards great website

Pretty sorry state of affairs 🙁

“I am a former (as of yesterday) employee with Caterham F1.

“It is dismaying to see the amount of publicity surrounding the success of the crowdfunding on the same day that there entire workforce was made redundant while owed seven weeks salary. The cynic in me would suggest that the two are not unrelated and the good news has served as a convenient opportunity to bury the bad news. If this is the case then it seems to have worked as there hasn’t been a peep anywhere (unlike Marussia the week before who owed their employees “only” one week of salary).

“The employees have been made redundant from 1MRT (a company still owned by Mr Fernandes). This should be more widely known and Mr Fernandes should be encouraged to do the honourable thing and fund the owed salaries instead of hiding behind 1MRT’s orchestrated lack of funds.

“The present situation is the inevitable (and foreseeable) consequence of the manner in which Mr Fernandes sold Caterham F1. It isn’t good enough to claim that there were no other buyers. In that event the proper thing to do would have been to wind up the company gracefully while ensuring that employees and suppliers were fairly dealt with. Undeniably this would have been the more expensive course of action for Mr Fernandes.

“It is not right that Mr Fernandes should be allowed to profit from evading his responsibilities and suffer no adverse publicity.”

How can they make everyone redundant if they are going to AD?

Using contractors to run the team – they’ll be ex-staff offered a bit more to manage the race car

It’s a bit bloody rough using the money from the crowd sourcing to run 2 cars at the back of the grid rather than paying everyone nearly 2 months wages

I’d be pretty screwed if i didn’t get paid for 2 months….

leaked letters,
threats

seems the back of the grid are making noises,

fact is , the person who makes the money and spreads it out, doesnt care about them anyway,

Wow and Caterham are allowed back? Just to meet the min. Car grid?

I just think the administrators are gambling on the last race. If by some fluke they scrape a 9th place then double point means they would get ahead of Marussia and Sauber, meaning more funds for the administrator.

If I were a Caterham employee (ex or otherwise) I wouldn’t get on a plane until my wages were cleared in my bank.

>>Marussia
unless there is some concorde agreement clause that they wont get the cash and it goes to the team below them, if the company is not solvent when the payout is to be made?

There’s various things about making the last race. For a start, Bernie has stated that they’ll forfeit their F1 place if they don’t show up (since they’ll be in breach of contract). Second as has been said, they could always win a point (well, 2) which could potentially earn them a load of money from F1.

Also, a team that’s a going concern (eg it actually raced and is on the grid for 2015) is a much better product to offer for sale than a site with some cars and parts.

As I understand it, Marussia are out of it – they’ve not got their stuff to AD so can’t race.

Crap behaviour by Fernandes but then it’s all about the money isn’t it? I suppose that if the team was sold, they’d know there’s a good chance they’d rehire most of the ex-staff.

F1 will be all the poorer for the loss of the smaller lower end teams, the old saying seems to be true in Burnies case, he knows “the cost of everything and the value of nothing”.
If he can’t see the value in having them, then he doesn’t deserve to continue as the head of it.

cant believe mclaren will delay driver line up until december .. looks like they are looking for changes in the grid before making their mind up.. there arent many movers and shakers so expect them to field a young line up with bunsen as a backup. If I was JB I’d tell ronny to f* off and sign up with mercedes / red bull or ferrari when they field the 3rd car.

I also saw they have a vacancy for a test / reserver driver. I wonder if that is for k mag?

It’s because Gary Paffett has gone, presumably so he can continue racing for Mercedes in DTM.

McLaren are going to alienate a lot of fans taking this long about it, even more so if they get rid of Button.

JB and KMag retained for 15 with KB as test driver and JB committed to retire at end of 15? That way they keep KM who they believe has potential and get the best in that they have JB for 15 when an experienced driver is likely to be a big benefit for them with the new engine and integrating systems.

Or maybe not…

wheres alfonso going? I think kmag for test reserve driver with jb and alonso.. Both santander friendly 🙂

Er I meant ‘KMag as test driver’. So Alonso and JB as race drivers.

Santander friendly but probably more importantly regarding sponsors, JB is massively popular in Japan.

if it was that simple though guys, mclaren would have made the decision already cos Kmag would just nod his head and accept it being thankful hes in a top team even as a reserve driver.

i think the biggest reason for the delay is alonso AND the 3 car team threat

all options go out the window if the bigger teams get their way and are allowed 3 cars – EVEN IF the grid has enough to fulfill legal requirements, the crack in the door is open and the big 4 teams (ferr/mcl/merc/rbr) can push it through and we may end up with 24, 26 grids and 2015 could be the last time we’ll see people like sauber and force india, as the big teams just will not want to supply them engines anymore

forget all this nonsense about 3rd car not scoring points, the big 4 will just push through the rule change, along with bernie , and hey presto, more advertisement for them and more money in car sales, marketing, sponsorship space, etc etc –
bernie and the big 4 also thing “ooo viewers would love to see more of our cars at the front, rather than these little teams” and think that the viewing figures will improve and F1 becomes more sellable.

Bianchi is out of his artificial coma.

Some good news @Klunk, fingers crossed for him.

if the bigger teams get their way and are allowed 3 cars

Is that what they want? Red Bull certainly don’t sound very keen on 3 cars.

That is, indeed, excellent news!

Bianchi’s out of the artificial coma but he’s still unconscious. From what I’ve read and understand of the severity of the accident and injury, I’m concerned that he’s never going to recover.

Regarding McL I do agree – the most likely scenario is that Alonso is playing hardball and is trying to delay signing until after Merc have sorted out whether LH is staying and then whether there will be three car teams.

well the merry go round has started with the worse kept secret now out. Alonso out vettel in!

Vettel really did force everyones hand and seemingly a large payday without having to wait for the 3 car grid confirmation.

http://www1.skysports.com/f1/news/12474/9570867/its-official-fernando-alonso-leaving-ferrari-to-be-replaced-by-sebastian-vettel-in-2015

Atleast ferrari did the right thing and allowed the fans to cheer on alonso for the final time in the prancing horse. Less said about Mclaren the better .. shame on them!

I suspect it’s Alonso causing the problems for McL not the team itself.

Or if not then it’s the team trying to rustle up the cash from sponsors to keep Button and place KM elsewhere for a year.

So who is this Will Stevens bloke then?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/30131456

someone who will drive for free by the sounds of it .. hes familiar with the team and the car.. i guess lotterer could have done it. At first I thought Erricson was doing a good turn by ripping up his contract and letting caterham get a pay driver for the last race. This may still be the case but I suspect he didnt want to drive for free ( not that I blame him seeing he has a seat for next year already). The cars are pretty complex nowadays so I reckon only a few could get up to speed over a race distance in 3 practice sessions. Look how Heikki faired in the lotus. The tech moves on so quickly the procedures are as important as the race craft.

[video]http:// 2014 Abu Dhabi GP – Fernando Alonso Press Confere…: http://youtu.be/UfIgmTr8CYQ%5B/video%5D
Alonso asked if he would like jb as his team mate. While jb sat next to him!

Turns out Will Stevens has paid £500,000 to drive this weekend. That’s a lot of money to trundle round at the back of the pack.

😈

That press conference clip is a classic – thanks shuhockey! It might just be them putting on a show in public, but they would have to be incredible actors for there not to be a lot of respect if not friendship between the two of them – but then as I’ve commented recently on here, they are probably the two classiest drivers on the track.

I wonder who put up the 500k? Lewis Hamilton? 😛

On a serious note:

Atleast ferrari did the right thing and allowed the fans to cheer on alonso for the final time in the prancing horse. Less said about Mclaren the better .. shame on them!

I imagine Alonso is the one keeping Mclaren waiting. He’d be a fool not to see who wins at Mercedes.

He’d be a fool not to see who wins at Mercedes.

Is it guaranteed that either driver will be leaving?

Depends – could happen say LH ran NR off the road in the style of his hero Senna 🙂

Mercedes made it clear they though Hamilton was overpaid. Had Hamilton been with another team Rosberg would be world champion by now. Hamilton’s good but the car has been better. So I think it’s not clear who will be at Mercedes in 2015 and beyond.

Turns out Will Stevens has paid £500,000 to drive this weekend. That’s a lot of money to trundle round at the back of the pack.

Meh, more people have been into space than actually raced an F1 car since 1960*, seems comparatively cheap.

*I checked.

Are both Merc drivers not in contract though?

Or has LH not signed yet?

Had Hamilton been with another team Rosberg would be world champion by now.

By that logic Hamilton is a better driver and deserves more money!

Mercedes can’t complain he’s overpaid – they were the ones who lured him away from McLaren with their generous spendies.

Hes unsigned.

Which means there will be a big announcement next week just intime for winter testing starts.

…Rosberg would be world champion by now

Not necessarily. It depends who his team mate ‘might’ have been if it wasn’t Lewis.

LH has a contract with Merc for 2015. The discussion is about extending beyond that but obviously if something happened between LH/NR/Merc this weekend it could be to a point of meaning that a mutual end to the contract of one driver would be the outcome. I can’t see it happening though. Both will want to be at Merc next year given that it’s likely to still be the class of the field and regardless of who wins, each will want to beat the other in 2016 which will probably only happen if they’re in a Merc.

Rosberg would be world champion by now

In his previous 4yrs at Merc he has finished, 7th, 7th, 9th and 6th in the Championship. It’ll be his 9th F1 year in 2015. If he does win he wont be regarded as a great or talked about for his style or tussles will he.

The car is good- anyone else would have given him a run for his money. Sorry I aint a fan of Nico.

Very interesting, but any current negotiations are for 2016 and beyond and if LH wins the championship in 2016 in a tight race against somebody from a different team in a car which isn’t vastly superior in the same way (it seems extremely unlikely that it will be) I don’t suppose they’ll consider him overpaid then. All very well to realise in retrospect that they could have just hired Kobayashi to win the championship this year.

Maybe – I don’t think there’s any guarantee that Merc will have such an advantage next year let alone the year after. Such dominations tend to follow a significant rule change – with little changing for next year other teams can easily play catch up.