Archive for November, 2010

A legend passes…

The Formula 1 world has lost one of its more colourful lunch partners. Christopher Hilton, the prolific book writer and former Fleet Street journalist, passed away unexpectedly at the weekend.

Chris was an established sports writer, albeit specialising in tennis, for the Daily Express when he was pitched into F1 at the beginning of the eventful 1982 season. He later turned those experiences into a book, one of many on F1 and other sporting subjects.

As a book writer his work rate put the rest of us to shame. He put this down to a regular routine in which he would rise early, write until lunchtime or thereabouts in his dressing gown, and then go out (properly dressed by now) for the papers, which he would digest over a pint in his local. Following this convivial repast he would return home to carry on writing until early evening, whereupon he would call time on the day’s work and take a long, hot bath.

Occasionally he would interrupt this routine to visit the LAT Archive for picture research, and this would usually involve lunch, during which he would provide delightful company. Thankfully he would give at least 48hrs notice of his impending arrival so that you could make alternative transport arrangements and mollify loved ones. Lunches with Chris almost inevitably occupied rather longer than the statutory hour, and would often involve you stumbling from the establishment rather later than expected and somewhat the worse for wear.

Most F1 fans will have at least one of his books. His prodigious output led to the inevitable accusations of hackery, and certainly many of his biographies relied heavily on secondary sources, but he always took the matter of accuracy and fairness very seriously, and he would never abuse the legal tenet that the dead can’t sue for libel. The majority of the previous sentence contains nothing that can be said about the author of a recent high-profile biography of a major F1 figure…

Santander still banking on Alonso

Ferrari’s little strategic error last weekend may have cost Fernando Alonso his shot at the drivers’ title, but the team’s sponsors are still laughing all the way to the bank – so to speak.

Banco Santander, the multinational financial group which sponsors both Ferrari and McLaren (although in the latter team its branding appears only on the drivers’ overalls), has released figures from the Media Sports Marketing and Havas Sport consultants estimating the bank’s return on investment (ROI) from its F1 sponsorships at €270million in 2010, up from a previous estimate of €250million.

The bank also takes title sponsorship of the British, German and Italian Grands Prix.

Meanwhile, back in Abu Dhabi, Mubadala – an investment company run by one of the members of the royal family – is selling its five per cent stake in Ferrari back to the FIAT group. Mubadala reportedly paid €114million in 2005 for the stake, originally held by the Italian bank Mediobanca. The figure mooted for the current sale is €122million, which is a tidy sum given the travails of the automotive industry in recent years. The sale has come about because FIAT exercised an option to buy back the shares – an option it has deferred several times.

Mubadala is part of Abu Dhabi’s strategy to diversify away from fossil fuels and into tourism and technology by making key investments. We can expect to see the name return before long – indeed, the rumour mill is already linking it to a possible acquisition of the Formula One Group from CVC Capital Partners. That may be a little far-fetched, though…

Sad news about a great snapper

It saddens me to report that the supremely talented portrait photographer Hugo Dixon passed away last week at the age of 46, after a short battle with cancer.

Hugo was not a full time Formula 1 photographer – his usual subjects were rock stars, of whom he could recount many a scurrilous tale. But he loved motor racing and would happily discount his usual fee so as to fit into the budget of our publishing niche.

Photographers can be a precious and temperamental breed. Hugo was very easy going, perhaps because he had been inconvenienced by people far more famous than those we were asking him to photograph. After all, when you’ve had to delay a shoot for 24 hours while Kurt Cobain has his blood changed after an overdose, having Jarno Trulli flounce off mid-shoot because it’s “a bit cold” pales in comparison.

He was an ebullient soul – always great company – and an adventurous one, too: he and a similarly intrepid journo once slept in a communal dorm in Sao Paulo while completing a fan story about the Brazilian GP. No armed raiders arrived to part them with his photographic equipment…

Hugo and his marvellous work will be greatly missed.

The Daily Fail strikes again

Are we in the middle of a news vacuum, or something? I ask because that paragon of journalistic virtue, the Daily Mail, has taken a brief detour from its usual obsessions – you know, burning all immigrants, dole scroungers and single mums at the stake and whatnot – to commit to print what is possibly the stupidest story of the year.

Under the headline The Italian’s job: Abu Dhabi steward’s link to Ferrari… and Fernando Alonso it engages in a thoroughly muddleheaded attempt at a syllogism. I’ll save you reading the Daily Mail’s guff by summing up the proposition here:

- Emmanuele Pirro, the third steward at this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, is Italian

- Italians all love Ferraris and are therefore, as well as being institutionally corrupt, all instinctively biased towards the cause of the Ferrari F1 team

- The FIA appointed Pirro even though they’re not supposed to have driver stewards who are linked by nationality to the cause of a championship contender

- Pirro is therefore biased in favour of Fernando Alonso and the FIA smell of elderberries

- Is he a dole scrounger and a single mum as well? Probably – pass the matches, Tristan…

You don’t even have to know much about F1, or motorsport in general, to see this for the codswallop it is. Emmanuele Pirro was a test driver for McLaren and a multiple Le Mans winner (and touring car winner) for Audi. I know him well from my days in sportscar racing and can testify that not only is he a true gent, he doesn’t take orders from anybody.

During his time at Benetton in Formula 1 he was royally shafted by Flavio Briatore. About nine years ago, when Benetton became Renault, I was helping to write an ensemble feature for a magazine in which we contacted all the team’s ex-drivers and invited them to sum up their memories of their time there. When I rang Emmanuele he simply wasn’t interested in doing an on-the-record denouncement of someone who had harmed his career. “It’s a long time ago now,” he said. “In many ways it was a good opportunity for me. I have only good memories.”

Unfortunately the next person I phoned was Roberto Moreno, who spent the next 75 minutes heating my ear up with a full and frank expression of his feelings on the subject. Shame I only had space for 50 words…

Anyway, needless to say, the Daily Mail’s story has been taken up and promulgated by another F1 ‘news’ source with little connection to the real world: GMM. What a surprise!