Stefano Domenicali

He was with Coulthard and Weber today at quali. I have not seen where he has left Lamborghini. I can’t image in Vw Group would let him do that unless they are up to something. Ideas?


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Maybe he is just having a holiday. He wants to grow Lamborghini sales from 5750 last year to 8000 which is comparable to Ferrari sales numbers. He may introduce a 4 door sedan but they don't have the financial resources or the stability in the company to do that yet...

 

I don't see Lamborghini or any other VW brand in F1 in the foreseeable future. They're too busy selling SUVs and paying fines.

 

But Audi does.


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There were some rumblings that VW or Lamborghini may be in running to enter Indycar as the 3rd engine supplier.
With the 'real' Formula 3 fading away (being replaced by a basically re-badged GP3) VW may have some racing resources freed up

 

From last week.

 

Maybe the last paragraph explains why Domenicali is there. Doing some due diligence for a potential involvement. We’ll see


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I worked it out while following the feeds today, he is a guest for Channel 4.

https://www.channel4.com/press/news/former-ferrari-boss-joins-c4-f1-team-australian-formula-1-gp

https://www.gpfans.com/en/articles/36877/channel-4-signs-ex-ferrari-boss-to-2019-coverage/

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Glad he’s there but vw giving him permission has to have some motive behind it.


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Wonder if he’s having any sectret meetings with Claire?

 

If domenicali is involved in an f1 team, at least we can safely assume they will be totally disorganised, the pit wall strategists will be incompetent, and the team will suffer from a perennial fear of winning anything, so they won’t be a challenge to anyone

 

Sounds like a perfect fit for most teams then! Jokes apart he could be paventing the way for a team buyout or PU partnership with VW.

Now Red Bull is sorted can see Williams, Mclaren or Force India do well with a big partner.

 

VW have attended various F1 FIA meetings and there has been power unit talk in the past. After the diesel scandal broke, I was surprised that VW is still involved in far more than what I thought (it was estimated the scandal would cost $25billion, and that was all the cash they had on hand at the time). Could be they go with a Porsche, Audi, Bugatti or Lamborghini engine. And I don't think a couple of hundred million sterling, euros or dollars would affect VW all that much. Team buyout will be a bit more expensive.

I guess its wait and see.

 

I can understand why the VW Group gets cold feet about entering F1 at this stage.
It's rather late in the day for this formula, and nothing has been set in concrete about the next one yet. IMO, they are wasting precious time.

Soon after the withdrawal of AUDI from the WEC where they competed with an hybrid car, Dr Ullrich was questioned about participating in F1.
The team boss estimated then than it would cost at least £1billion and take 3 years to develop an engine capable to compete against Mercedes.
He intimated that it wasn't on the cards.

We have seen that even a major manufacturer like Honda has struggled for years to be where it is now.

 

Over 20 years ago, I was in the Modena area visiting a small hydraulic company for a US friend. This guy worked for Ferrari back in the 1970s, and was pretty well connected. We visited a very sophisicated machining company near the Modena train station. The old fellow who owned it wanted to be in F1, and hired a number of top dog ex-Ferrari engine people and developed an engine for one of the major manufacture teams (who are no longer in F1). The development of this program took 5 years, but I doubt they didn't spend anywhere near £1B. But that was before electrification and hybridization.

 

Exactly !!

It's a completely new ball game now ...

 

Motori Moderni(Subaru)?

 

I never had the guy's name, but Forghieri was involved.

 

I think the fine was just too huge. Hefty jail terms for the individuals would have made more sense. I mean the CEO just took off with his pension and living life now. All this happened during his leadership. Somehow, he would have known i think.

 

Not sure exactly what you mean with this?

 

No, that engine was designed by Carlo Chiti, who indeed was ex-Ferrari, but earlier, that is until the "Big walkout" of 1962. Then Carlo Chiti was with Alfa-Romeo, for which he designed the Flat-12 of the 33TT12, then brought to Brabham in Formula One (starting in end 1975 for the 1976 season), then a V12 for Brabham also in 1979. That V12 was the basis of the Alfa-Romeo effort in F1, until they switched to Turbo engines.

It is a lesser known fact that after the 3,5 litre engine for Motori Moderni / Subaru, Carlo Chiti designed another 12 cylinder, but of 4 litre capacity; that one was not built, but the blueprints, tools, etc...were bought by Koenigsegg in 1998. As far as I know, nothing came out of this, i.e, that 12 cylinder never materialised (?)

Rgds

 

I mean the CEO, Martin Winterkorn (I think) , took his paycheck and retired after the scandal was revealed, and 2-3 employees were jailed?

Forgive me but that is overall what happened correct? oh yes and the huge amount of fine.

 

Forgot my own cardinal rule to always substanciate and quote a source, so here it is for those interested:

https://jalopnik.com/how-koenigsegg-nearly-built-subarus-flat-12-f1-engine-1790634539

Rgds

 

Great article, thanks for posting. I once saw the flat twelve on an engine stand and could not believe its size--it was massive for a F1 engine.

 

I remember having read "somewhere" (??) a quote by Gordon Murray about the fitting of the Alfa flat-12 engine into the Brabham chassis, at the end of 1975: he was saying that each and every engine from Alfa-Romeo was different from the next one, i.e no standardisation on dimension whatsoever, that Brabham needed a lot of adapters, excentrics, etc...to bolt one engine to a chassis; and that almost each engine was tailor-made to its own specs. To sum it up, it was a powerful, but bulky and thirsty engine. When Bernie decided that Brabham had to go back to the Cosworth V-8 at the end of 1979 Murray felt that "he was almost on holidays": i.e, everything was fitting exactly how it should be...

Rgds