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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.
Lopez: F1 costs higher than expected
September 2nd, 2010
Renault chairman Gerard Lopez has admitted that Formula 1 is proving more expensive than he had anticipated, amid speculation that he could sell back some of the team to its parent company.
The Luxembourg-based businessman, whose Genii Capital company brought a majority shareholding in Renault before the start of this season, says that his involvement in F1 has hit all its targets so far – apart from the amount of investment he has had to make.
His comments come after suggestions at the Belgian Grand Prix that the Renault car company is evaluating buying back some or all of its stake in the team that it sold to Lopez, on the back of its better-than-expected form in 2010.
Reflecting on his first year in charge of the team, Lopez confessed that the one area where he had not hit targets was in keeping a lid on the finances needed to fund a front-running F1 team.
“On the commercial side we are doing okay,” Lopez told AUTOSPORT. “But we have committed to a higher investment plan than the one that was initially foreseen.
“It is probably not far off what the biggest teams do, because we kept 500 people, and hired people.
“So commercially speaking we are probably within what we wanted to do. But, in terms of spend, we are probably above. But that was our choice. I would say green lights everywhere except we didn’t plan on increasing the spend.”
Lopez’s comments come on the back of the cash flow issue that the outfit encountered earlier this season – when it wanted a television rights money advance off Bernie Ecclestone to help fund development of its 2011 car before it could get its hands on new sponsorship money.
The money advance did not receive the support it needed from rival outfits, and prompted speculation about Renault’s financial situation – as well as fuelling rumours that Lopez could be looking for a way out of his F1 involvement.
The team denied any talk that it was facing financial struggles, however, and managed to overcome the problem internally.
Since then, Renault has announced sponsorship deals with banking groups EFG International and SNORAS for the remainder of the 2010 campaign.
Despite his issues with spending, Lopez says his outfit has hit its ambitions in terms of performance on track – following another podium finish for Robert Kubica in last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix.
“As far as we are concerned, we are essentially where we wanted to be,” said Lopez. “We know the car was born slow, and we committed in terms of investment to a different plan to the one that was foreseen initially.
“We committed to having a development for pretty much every race, with big developments like the blown floor and the F-duct.
“Actually, I think we are the only team that developed two F-ducts – we developed one we didn’t use and scrapped that one and we developed this one. I think that is what we wanted to do.
“Now that we have done a couple of podiums hoping to have a victory would be good but a little bit aggressive for this season. We are within what we expected.”
Lopez said he was also excited about the plans for the 2011 car.
“I think we are quite excited about next year’s car, it is always difficult on paper and computer – but as a benchmark of the current car given new regulations it seems a well born car,” he said.