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wood

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by wood

  1. Also rumor of Alonso to RBR. Wouldn't surprise me though if he went back to Ferrari, IF the AM sale rumor is true. If the sale were to Andretti though, I think he'd stay.
  2. I'd love to have Luhnow back, but he owns two soccer teams now in Mexico and Spain, and runs a SPAC with a friend of mine.
  3. Bottas probably picked up that shirt here in Austin ...
  4. Such a Rockstar. I bet his speakers go up to 11, too.
  5. Yep. They still don't care either way. My buddy shamed Lyttle yesterday on the twitter. Didn't we used to call him Kirk Bohls Jr, or something like that?
  6. So ... COTA chairman: If there are parts to the F1 track that need to be fixed, we'll do it ... https://www.statesman.com/story/sports/motorsports/2023/10/25/cota-track-austin-f1-max-verstappen-circuit-of-the-americas-bobby-epstein/71318358007/ First off, I love how he says "IF" the track needs fixing, as if there's some doubt. He's said he'd fix it many times before. You've all seen the results of those 'fixes'. Then there's this: The author says there that ... Eh, no. Not true. COTA received about $38 Million from the State of Texas for the 2022 USGP. They've asked for about $38 Million more for this year's race. I've looked all the way back to 2012, and the least COTA has received from the State is about $23 Million in 2015 ($19.6M state share). So they did receive under $20M one time, eight years ago, but that's not what they receive every year. It's only gone up since then, dramatically. COTA has received more than $350 Million so far since 2012. About $300 Million for F1 races, and about $50 Million for MotoGP. And they've received more for smaller races over the years as well. The last 3 annual subsidy payments to COTA for F1 alone have averaged about $33 Million. There's also been no recent cut by the Governor. He cut it for 2015, and since then it has skyrocketed. Do reporters ever do their homework any more? Well, no. Not many at least. And this is how Epstein continues to spread his misinformation. He drops nuggets like this, but doesn't allow them to quote him saying it. He does it over and over and over, because the typical 'journalist' these days is lazy as fuck, probably not all that sharp to begin with, and loves the intoxicating access.
  7. Cool. Makes sense. I ain't married to the guy. Just want whatever is best for the team going forward.
  8. Yeah maybe he'll actually get to play CF more now. I was thinking more in the current vein. Cool. They should go get that guy! ; )
  9. Wouldn't go wrong with either of them imho, but I love the idea of Espada taking over.
  10. Yeah, so, any top CFs available out there? Serious question. Also, maybe an unpopular opinion, but it seems to me like we could do a lot worse than keeping Maldy around as a backup/mentor assuming he'd be up for it. Yainer's the man, but he can't catch every day.
  11. Yeah remember back when we were still getting approvals from the City Council and Will Buxton started interviewing people at bars and restaurants in Montreal about the Austin race? That was my idea. I texted him and his crazy-eyes sister about it beforehand. They didn't reply, so I figured they missed the texts or just didn't wanna do it or whatever. Next thing I see is them on TV with Buxton extolling the virtues of F1 etc. They played it up on the website they were running at the time as if it was all their idea. Never even said thanks.
  12. Yeah I remember there was a big article about all the piers they installed. I think it mentioned how deep they went. I'll see if I can find it again. They may have even been floating piers, which seems like a bad idea out there. I just found this basic article, but I think there's another one out there with more detail. Here they say they don't know if they went to bedrock or used spread footings. I know the guy that wrote this. He's a dipshit. https://www.theaustingrandprix.com/news/2011/12/22/december-construction-analysis-of-circuit-of-the-americas.html
  13. Yeah and after spending just a few hours there Friday with very little track action, I was ready to go. Left early to avoid the rush, which I never do. And y'all know I'm a big fan. It just wasn't much fun out there. I'll go back when there aren't so many people. SVRA is fantastic, and WEC will be awesome except that it'll be hotter than the sun.
  14. Krack says the COTA bumps basically beat Fernando's floor into submission ... https://www.motorsportweek.com/2023/10/23/aston-martin-confirm-cause-of-painful-alonso-us-gp-retirement/
  15. That sounds scary. Did they send Rocko to 'have a chat' with you?
  16. I hear ya, and I don't even mind going CR (not red v blue CR) about it here in this thread (I might be the only one tho), because nobody in the CR is interested in the $350+ Million fraud that's been/being perpetrated on the taxpayers of the State of Texas. But I don't blame the contractors. The original contractors and engineers did an amazing job. I knew a lot of them at the team. Where it all turned south is when Bobby cancelled the drainage system maintenance. Then he hired local guys to resurace it for cheap, and they delivered what he paid for. Cheap resurfacing, without fixing the underlying problems. And yeah, of course there are people who are enabling it all from the highest level. Preach to the choir (me)!
  17. There's more to it than the weather and the soil conditions. There's a human element involved, too. A COTA human. I'm sure you can guess who. Check it out in the COTA sucks thread if you don't know what I mean. Basically, that's what Epstein is doing. He's never going to pay for proper repairs, so what he's doing instead is patchwork low-bid repairs whenever MotoGP or F1 complains loudly enough. Then he waits until they do it again and does the absolute minimum to keep them coming back another year or two. I never could find it on my DVR at all. Heard it was on ESPN+ and that ESPN had their own prerace show or some shit instead. The Sky broadcast? That's wild. I also posted about it on the Autosport board, and I'm about 100% sure that Crofty and maybe a couple of other Sky people hang out there too under assumed handles. Other seeing it on a message board, I think the only way to have heard that was on the live stream.
  18. That was Mike Krack's response to my question during the Aston Martin zoom call tiktok live stream they let me take part in last Thursday. IIRC I posted about it here. Did you really hear it on the race broadcast? I missed.
  19. With F1? Not sure. But we passed that point a long time ago with MotoGP.
  20. So, there's a thread about this in the Austin reddit, where COTA threads typically fizzle and die. This one is booming, and there's a guy in there who helped build that drainage system and more. He just confirmed (again) what I've already been told by a few people - that the ACO drain maintenance was indeed cancelled by COTA (Bobby), against the advice of the engineers and even COTA employees at the time (one of whom I know personally), and that led to these problems.
  21. Yeah I have no idea. It's crazy. Here's a photo a local racing photog chick took on pit lane years ago. They were laready measuring the spread back then. No idea what it's like now. (analisa photography or something like that on insta iirc) So wait ... you're in road building? You should be telling us all what's up re: COTA! : )
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