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David Phillips
Editor and ChiefDavid Phillips is a long-time contributor to print and electronic publications in the U.S. and abroad, including Racer, Autosport, AutoWeek, Motor Sport and SPEEDtv.com, oversees the daily updating of news stories and assigns, edits and contributes feature material for inRacingNews.com.
Chris Hall
iRacing.com Series WriterChris Hall has been writing since the nineties and moved into motorsports reporting in 2005, covering series such as ALMS, British GT, FIA GT, Le Mans and 2CV racing for Full Throttle magazine, Motorsport.com, The-Paddock.net, GTGateway.com, L' Endurance and, of course, inRacingNews. During 2008 and 2009, he worked with the RSS Performance Porsche Carrera Cup Team (and former British GT(C) champions) as a data engineer for a variety of drivers and models of 997s.
Jameson Spies
Contributing Writer19 years old, Jameson Spies lives in Quartz Hill, California. He grew-up surrounded by racing. His mother raced late models throughout Southern California while his father built and setup the car. Not surprisingly, Jameson began racing go-karts at the age of 13, and is now racing Spec Trucks at Toyota Speedway at Irwindale. He has a passion about all forms of racing and hopes to make a career out of it.
Jason Lofing
iRacing.com Series WriterJason is 21 years old and was born and raised in Elk Grove. California. A big time NASCAR fan, he hasn’t missed a race on Sunday in years. Lofing is also a huge San Fransisco Giants fan and tries to take in at least a couple games a year. Other than sim racing, his biggest (and far more expensive!) hobby is photography. Although he is rather new to sim racing, Lofing has already accomplished some pretty impressive results, qualifying for the 2011 iRacing Oval Pro Series in Season 1, 2011, winning the inaugural Landon Cassill Qualifying Challenge and finishing runner-up in the second one.
Ray Bryden
Technical contributorRay grew up in Nova Scotia, which means he’s a hockey nut, but in Nova Scotia’s two non-winter months he had to find other diversions, which meant watching F1 racing on weekends with his dad and brothers. Without the resources to get started in racing, he gravitated to computer versions of racing – first Atari games like Pole Position, followed by PC racing games like Indianapolis 500: The Simulation. Dozens of others came and went, until Grand Prix Legends came along and he decided sim-racing was his official hobby. Years were spent enjoying this both offline and online until a few years of fatherhood took priority. When free-time reappeared he heard about iRacing and signed up in 2008 and became so involved in the service that he wrote one of the first books on the subject of sim-racing, iRacing Paddock. When not writing for inRacingNews.com, his main occupation is as a research associate with Saint-Gobain working on advanced ceramic materials.
Patrick Atherton
Contributing WriterPatrick Atherton, originally from Adelaide in the state of South Australia, currently resides just outside of Melbourne, Victoria with wife of 17 years and 3 kids. A business manager by profession, but also dabbles with blogging, cartooning and fine art, having been published both as a writer in a short-lived South Australian motorsport yearbook and later as a cartoonist in a niche trade magazine. At the age of 19 he competed in club circuit events in an Austin Healey Sprite, later indulging in sprint karts between 1994 and 2000. Following the move to the State of Victoria he raced Road Race Karts (“Superkarts” as they are known in Australia) in the popular Rotax class, competing at Phillip Island, Oran Park, Mallala, Wakefield Park, Eastern Creek, Calder Park, Sandown and Winton. It was during this time he met former Australian F2 champion and inventor of Australia’s first, and most prolific race simulator rig, Jon Crooke. This culminated in an introduction to Papyrus’ legendary NR2003 simulation, and the subsequent sim racing addiction which brought him to iRacing.
Tim Terry
Contributing WriterTim Terry, aka the voice of Maritime stock car racing, fell in love with sim racing in 2004 after he joined the Sim Racing Network crew as a pit reporter. From October 2004 to SRNtv’s closure in June 2007, he’s covered prestigious races and leagues such as the Online 500, FLM Fall 400, Real Racing Online and the DMP Racing League – each as the lead broadcaster for the company. At the same time the wheels started to turn in another direction as he began announcing stock car racing locally. Terry became the assistant announcer at Scotia Speedworld in May 2007 and took over full duties in May 2009 when long-time voice Mike Kaplan retired from the track. Terry also became the series voice of the Parts For Trucks Pro Stock Tour in ’09 and continues to hold down both posts in 2011. He has also announced races for the Pro All Stars Series, Atlantic Open Wheel and Maritime League of Legends tours and has called races at six different Atlantic Canadian tracks. Terry can be heard online at WebRacingNetwork.com, RLMtv.com and OLRtv.com covering sim races. He also makes occasional appearances on PSRtv.com. In addition to inRacingNews, his articles and columns can be read on ScotiaSpeedworld.ca, MaritimeProStockTour.com and his own website at timterryonline.com.
David Allen
Contributing WriterNorth Carolina born and raised with over 15 years of computer/IT experience, I combine two of my biggest hobbies -- racing and technology -- here at inRacingNews. In my spare time I run a Nascar fan site and cure my own need for speed riding atvs. If it involves technology or racing I'll be there, but combine the two and I'll be looking a front row seat. Stop by and say hello anytime!
Allen Krier
Contributing WriterAllen was born in West Palm Beach, Florida but grew up in Atlanta and attended Georgia College and State University where he received a BS in Information Systems. Currently a resident of Albany, GA, he started sim racing in 2008 while in college when iRacing was first released to the public. Since then, Krier has been a two time iRacing Pro Series driver (2009 and 2010), picking up one Pro Series win at Daytona in ‘09. Besides sim racing, Allen’s other hobbies include RC Car racing as well as “attending and watching any sporting event that I can including going to the local dirt track.
Lola reckons new teams could struggle
November 18th, 2009
Lola owner Martin Birrane, whose company was passed over as one of the new teams to join Formula 1 in 2010, believes that the technical capabilities of the aspirants did not play a big enough part in the evaluation process.
Birrane fears that the applicants that were chosen could struggle because they lack the technical infrastructure of Lola.
Campos Meta, Manor Grand Prix and US F1 were granted the three new grid slots in June, with Lotus F1 Racing also being granted an entry after BMW Sauber could not commit to signing the Concorde Agreement.
The FIA conducted a thorough assessment process to decide which of the aspiring teams should receive an F1 slot, but Birrane reckons the squads’ technical attributes should have been given greater priority.
“I do not think that technical capabilities were given sufficient consideration in the process,” said Birrane. “From commercial, accounting and sporting matters, everything seemed very thorough indeed.
“However, messages that we got from the FIA were that everything at Lola was in line with their standards and that of an organisation intent on being competitive in Formula 1. It remains to be seen whether the three new teams that were selected then can achieve more than just ‘also ran’ status.”
Birrane set up the Lola Grand Prix team as a separate company from Lola Cars, and intended to underwrite the start-up for the project personally with the intention of bringing investors on board if the grid slot was granted.
“The first phase of the project was underwritten by myself under the proviso that the original £30-£40 million would be ratified,” said Birrane. “It was to be a totally separate company from Lola Cars and that was confirmed in my mind very early on.
“I would be the only shareholder and the only one funding it initially. We were also in serious discussion with two separate investors.”
Birrane is still hoping that there will be an opportunity for Lola to come into F1 in the future, perhaps as early as 2011, and is happy with his operation’s relationship with the FIA.
“We were in regular touch with Max [Mosley] and Bernie [Ecclestone], as well as Tony Purnell, who appeared to be in charge of the whole process,” said Birrane.
“The relationship with both FOM and the FIA was good throughout. Of course there was disappointment when it was announced that we were to be essentially reserves along with AMR/Prodrive, but Lola continues to have a constructive relationship and regular dialogue with these organisations.”
Birrane confirmed that running a Cosworth engine was the only option available to the team following talks with several manufacturers, and that he was happy to sign a contract with the company.
“Like all the other serious teams, Lola investigated a supply from the FOTA engine manufacturers,” said Birrane. “The fact was that there were none available.
“Cosworth engines were available and we were pleased to commit to a contract and pay a deposit. I would say that we also had some external encouragement to do this but there was no real pressure exerted on us.”
Should one of the current teams fall by the wayside, Birrane is confident that the Lola F1 project could be relaunched immediately. The Lola factory upgrades are currently being used for its sportscar activities, but could still be switched to F1 in the future with the work done on the team’s grand prix car already well advanced.
“It would be fair to say that we did a significant amount of F1 project assessment ahead of the announcement,” said Birrane. “The reasons we did this were that we wanted to compete at a high level and not just make up the numbers.
“The lead time in getting a completely new Formula 1 project off the ground is nine to 12 months if you want to be competitive with the established teams.
“In June we had already undertaken an initial windtunnel programme and the infrastructure for the programme was in place. We had started to upgrade our assembly facilities – these were completed in September – and the framework of the Lola Formula 1 team was in place. We would most certainly have had a car testing in December 2009.
“At present our LMP programme is benefiting from these upgrades in all departments and the 2010 spec LMP1 and LMP2s are going to be very special as a result of this.”