deonherdt's posterous

Johan Pro Stock Maverick Tinkers toy?

I hope its ok to ask but does anyone have the directions or a scan of them even I have the kit  Started and close to finished. With a kit like this one I'd like to use all the parts that came with it or at least know if i have all the parts except for the directions (i know they are here somewhere along with the stock decal's but i cant find either. Thanks for any help.

Source: http://cs.scaleautomag.com/SCACS/forums/thread/964411.aspx

Henri Pescarolo Alessandro PesentiRossi Josef Peters

F1 in a spin over Bahrain

Three days after motorsport's governing body, the FIA, reinstated the Bahrain Grand Prix on to this year's Formula 1 calendar, the likelihood of the race actually taking place remains as uncertain as ever.

As FIA president Jean Todt was telling the BBC on Monday that the situation in Bahrain was now back to normal following the civil unrest that led to the race being postponed in February, the F1 teams were discussing what to do next.

I understand that the teams all feel that going to Bahrain this season is not a good idea, and that their objections are based on two main points:

Logistical - as Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn has pointed out, the F1 team members have been working flat out since January, and shoe-horning an extra race into an already crowded season's end, and extending the championship until mid-December, is a step too far.

Ethical and moral - trying to bring such issues into sports scheduling raises all sorts of difficult questions, such as exactly where you draw the line. After all, Bahrain is not the only country on the F1 schedule about which human rights groups have concerns. Which is why sports' bodies generally try to stay out of politics. But the teams feel that if holding a grand prix in a strife-torn area is likely to exacerbate the situation, then that is on the wrong side of the line.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


No team has made these views public yet, with the only official statement so far emerging from their umbrella group Fota, stating that the issue would be discussed internally and that a joint position may be defined. It may be that this will happen over the course of the Canadian Grand Prix this weekend.

In the meantime, F1 is in a state of limbo that reflects badly on it on several different levels.

How, many outside the sport will ask, can it have taken so long to come to this decision? And how, having done so, can there still be uncertainty about whether the Bahrain Grand Prix will be held this year?

There are different versions of exactly what happened on Friday in the meeting of the FIA World Council that resulted in Bahrain's reinstatement.

FIA insiders have said that while the governing body may be aware of the teams' reported unease, it has received so far only a letter from Brawn and one from the Grand Prix Drivers' Association, outlining their concerns about safety.

So if the teams felt uneasy about the race, why did not any of their representatives raise an official objection?

Equally, though, with the world's media and Amnesty International reporting continuing human rights abuses in Bahrain, was the FIA right to conclude in its own report that the situation is now "very stable and very quiet", as Todt put it?

Even as he justified the world council's decision, though, Todt may have been laying the ground for calling off the race - he gave himself some 'wriggle room'.

After a lengthy exposition on how all major parties in Bahrain backed the reinstatement of the race, and how United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon was talking about "restoring a good situation in this part of the world", Todt added: "But we are talking about 30 October, so it will be monitored and things will be taken into consideration. The decision to go ahead was taken regarding how things are now."

Could that be the signal that another U-turn is on the cards?

I'm told that over the next few days the teams are likely to quietly begin to lobby the FIA to reconsider, pointing out that far from helping heal the wounds caused by the violent suppression of February's pro-democracy protests, the decision to hold a race already looked to be doing the opposite.

Only on Monday, the Bahrain Centre of Human Rights indicated that it would be calling for a "day of rage" on 30 October, the date of the rescheduled race, while the UK sports minister warned that holding the race would lead to a "disaster".

While all the teams are uneasy (even McLaren, whose biggest shareholder is a financial group owned by the Bahrain government), I'm told that the greatest concerns are held by three organisations - Renault, Mercedes and tyre supplier Pirelli, none of whom were available for comment.

As the three biggest corporate entities in F1, this would not be a surprise. They have well developed corporate social responsibility programmes, and they have the most to lose from a PR point of view from the inevitable negative fall-out that holding a race this year would create.

Todt acknowledged that it was "their choice" if they wanted to boycott the race - and there is precedent for that in F1.

In 1985, Renault and their fellow French team Ligier refused to take part in the South African Grand Prix, in a country still nine years away from the end of apartheid, following pressure from their country's government. And a number of sponsors of the teams that did take part removed their logos from the cars.

I understand that a boycott is not, for now, on the agenda. Even so, having just announced that the race will go ahead, the FIA finds itself in a difficult situation. But there is a way out.

Suppose, quietly, behind the scenes, the teams make it clear that they are unhappy about the Bahrain Grand Prix going ahead. As part of this pressure, it is made clear to the Bahraini authorities that if they insist on holding the race, some teams and sponsors will not attend. There is even the chance that the sport's tyre supplier would refuse to participate - meaning a race could not happen in any event.

In those circumstances, Bahrain would be faced with a choice.

They could go ahead with the race in the wake of a stream of statements from major global corporate stakeholders that they felt the event was untenable - not exactly a desirable situation for a significant international banking hub.

Or they could quietly announce that, given the circumstances, the risk of further protest, of putting pressure on a sensitive situation, in hindsight they believed that the best action would be to call off the race after all.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/three_days_after_motorsports_g.html

Jody Scheckter Harry Schell Tim Schenken

Looking forward to Britain?s biggest motoring event

No, it’s not the British Grand Prix, but rather the Goodwood Festival of Speed which begins tomorrow at the Goodwood estate, near Chichester. This has become the world’s biggest celebration of the history of motorsport and car culture and an example of how things could be at every Grand Prix if there were fewer restrictions [...]

Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/looking-forward-to-britains-biggest-motoring-event/

Renzo Zorzi Ricardo Zunino Carlo Abate

Sebastian Vettel dashes hopes of reining in Red Bull

Perhaps the most telling image of the European Grand Prix weekend did not even happen on race day.

After qualifying third and fourth behind the Red Bulls, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso briefly stood side by side as they took in the fact that, for all the pre-event talk, they were just as far behind as before.

The two finest racing drivers in the world didn't speak, nor even exchange a glance. But their drained, haunted faces told you all you needed to know about what Sebastian Vettel's rivals are up against for the remaining 11 races of this season.

Twenty-four hours later, both men effectively admitted that the fight for the world championship is already over.

Valencia was something of a reality check for anyone who retained even the slightest hope that Vettel and Red Bull's relentless march towards a second consecutive world title might be halted.

There were a number of reasons behind the optimism. But in the end they all evaporated as the German drove another controlled, measured race, perfectly judging his car and tyres and keeping just far enough out of reach of his pursuers on his way to a sixth win in eight races.

It looked relatively close for a while, but the suspicion remains that Vettel is going only as fast as he needs to a lot of the time, with one eye on the deliberately high wear of the Pirelli tyres.

In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.


Afterwards, Vettel pretty much admitted this was what was going on. "There's no big secret," he said. "It's a just a question of going fast without giving the tyres too hard a time."

The telling part of the race was leading up to the final pit stops. Until then, Vettel's lead - whether over team-mate Mark Webber or Alonso's Ferrari - had been around two or three seconds, but suddenly he turned on the speed.

A succession of fastest laps followed until his stop on lap 47, after which his advantage was more than eight seconds. If it had not been game over already, it certainly was then.

In a situation such as he faced in Valencia, Vettel is nigh-on unbeatable. If he is going to show a vulnerability, it is when he is under pressure, needs to make up or defend a place - as Jenson Button proved in the Canadian Grand Prix. And on Sunday he knew he had enough of a performance cushion that he didn't really feel any.

Vettel will surely be beaten again from time to time in 2011, but more and more this season is beginning to feel like 1992, when Nigel Mansell swept all before him in the Williams-Renault FW14B.

Vettel's 77-point advantage over his closest pursuers - Webber and Button - is more than three clear wins after just eight races. And his position is further strengthened by the fact that the men who are most likely to be able to pose a consistent threat over the rest of the season - Hamilton and Alonso - are even further behind.

"They're dominant in this championship," Alonso said this weekend, summing up the problem for Ferrari and McLaren. "Probably the most dominant in years."

The Williams FW14B has gone down in history as one of the great F1 cars, and there is no doubt that this year's Red Bull, the RB7, will do the same.

Adrian Newey - also responsible for the FW14B among other defining cars - and his team have done a fantastic job creating a machine that is simply a level above anything else on the grid.

There is no one secret to the Red Bull's pace. As Newey so often says, it is "down to the overall package". Every part of the car designed to perfection, each giving a small gain, all of them adding up to a big advantage in lap time. Removing the reliability niggles that led to a stuttering start last year has been the final piece of the jigsaw.

That's why hopes that Red Bull would be slowed by a new ruling ahead of Valencia restricting changes to engine maps between qualifying and race were always likely to be misguided.

And it emerged over the weekend that a second ruling to come into force at the next race, the British Grand Prix, may well also not have the effect Red Bull's rivals initially hoped.

That is the banning of off-throttle blowing of diffusers - a practice whereby teams blow exhaust gases over the back of the car's floor even when the driver is not pressing the accelerator, significantly increasing downforce and therefore grip.

Initially, the belief among some of Red Bull's rivals was that because the world champions had been the first in exploiting this technology, they must be more advanced with it, and therefore would be hardest hit by any ban.

But Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said over the course of the weekend in Spain that they had tried 'hot blowing' and abandoned it because it was burning the bodywork - so had stuck with the less influential 'cold-blowing', where the throttles are kept open but fuel is not burnt. This produces significantly less energy and so is less effective than hot blowing.

That means that far from the Silverstone ruling hurting Red Bull, it could actually help them - as their closest rivals, Ferrari and McLaren, are both using hot-blowing.

It was already difficult to imagine Red Bull being beaten at Silverstone - a track that abounds with the sort of long-duration corners of varying speeds that bring out the car's strengths. With these latest revelations, their advantage in Northamptonshire could be even bigger.

The Red Bull's superiority was summed up by Webber in typically succinct fashion after the race in Valencia on Sunday.

"This is probably our weakest track of the year," the Australian said after finishing third. "We have a different regulation for Silverstone but we're expecting to still be pretty competitive again. So if we can keep Valencia as one of our top three weakest tracks then we didn't do too badly today."

Good as the car is, so far only Vettel is able to exploit its full strengths, and there is no doubt he is having a superb season that will inevitably end with him becoming, at 24, the youngest double world champion.

Webber is far less at home with the car on this year's Pirelli tyres, as was proved again in Valencia, where he fought a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful battle to keep an inspired Alonso - at his relentless best - behind him.

Alonso, who believes he is driving better this season than ever before, was all smiles after the race and well he might have been. For this result - splitting the Red Bulls - will have felt like a victory, so untouchable does Vettel appear barring the sort of wild-card circumstances that led to his only defeats so far this season.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2011/06/sebasitan_vettel_dashes_hopes.html

Michael Schumacher Ralf Schumacher Vern Schuppan