Red Bull’s Mark Webber has poured cold water on Bernie Ecclestone’s suggestion that grands prix could be livened up by using sprinklers to make “fake rain.”
“No and no,” the Australian told the BBC on Thursday when asked whether the sport needed such measures proposed by the commercial supremo and whether he would like them.
“It can be more exciting when we have some different weather conditions, that does happen, but you just try and think of Jimmy Clark and Jackie Stewart and [Ayrton] Senna and those guys, masters in the wet,” Webber said.
“Jackie’s still here, but the other two would be turning in their graves if they thought we’d have sprinklers and hoses lined up around the track ... it wouldn’t be the most sophisticated way to make the show more entertaining,” he added.
Mercedes GP chief executive Nick Fry was also unconvinced.
“I think Bernie’s putting forward some entertaining ideas but ... Formula One is about contending with the conditions that prevail at the time,” he said.
“The beauty of Formula One is that there is now huge variety ... we have races in the evening and during the day and halfway between the two and I don’t think anyone could say that last year was boring. It was tremendous and I’m sure that this year will be better still,” he added.
Ecclestone raised the “fake rain” idea earlier last week, although cynics suspected his words may have had more to do with a desire to keep Formula One in the news after the March 13 season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix was called off.
He suggested making tracks artificially wet during a race.
“I’m happy to make it happen,” he told the BBC again on Thursday. “My idea is that we should make a program that nobody knows exactly which program is going to be used and it would start at some time during the race. It would be raining effectively. It would maybe stop and maybe rain again later. Or maybe not. So nobody would know.”
Ecclestone did find some support from Paul Hembery, motorsport director of Formula One’s new tire supplier Pirelli.
“I thought Bernie Ecclestone’s comments were quite interesting,” he told autosport.com. “Straight after our recent successful [wet-weather] Abu Dhabi test I saw him and said, ‘Why don’t we do an artificial wet race?’ The technology is such that you can wet a circuit with a sprinkler system, so the idea is not as daft as it sounds.”
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Taiwanese badminton superstar Lee Yang broke down in tears after publicly retiring from the sport on Sunday. The two-time Olympic gold medalist held a retirement ceremony at the Taipei Arena after the final matches of the Taipei Open. Accompanied by friends, family and former badminton partners, Lee burst into tears while watching a video celebrating key moments in his professional sporting career that also featured messages from international players such as Malaysia’s Teo Ee Yi, Hong Kong’s Tang Chun-man, and Indonesia’s Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. “I hope that in the future when the world thinks about me, they will
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS