The FIA is always sticking its nose around, sniffing around for some trouble. So, when the motorsport governing body opened a new investigation into the Renault F1 team, frankly we weren't all that surprised or interested. The probe centered around claims that the team instructed its since-departed driver Nelson Piquet, Jr. to crash on purpose at the Singapore Grand Prix last year in order to help his wing-man Fernando Alonso win the race.
Now, however, the probe appears to be deepening as the FIA claims to have discovered "other issues above and beyond Singapore" during their investigation into Renault's alleged wrongdoing. In a recurrence of the "Stepney-gate" investigations held during his brief but highly controversial tenure at McLaren, Alonso was reportedly questioned at length by the FIA's lawyers, along with technical chief Pat Symonds and team principal Flavio Briatore, to name just a few of the most prominent team figures implicated.
The team is naturally denying any wrongdoing, and tellingly, several individuals who've since left the team, including former engine chief Denis Chevrier and former test driver Franck Montagny, have expressed serious doubt that Renault was up to any underhanded business. For our part, we have a feeling this isn't the last we've heard over what we'll tentatively refer to as "Renault-gate."
In this week's episode of Autoline After Hours, John McElroy, Peter "The Autoextremist" DeLorenzo, and David Welch of BusinessWeek are joined by the dean of automotive journalism, David E. Davis, Jr., for an unusually candid discussion about the issues and events affecting today's auto industry.
You can join in by submitting questions to the panel at viewermail -at- autolinedetroit.tv (put "AAH QUESTION" in the subject line) to be answered on-air tonight during the show's Rapid Fire segment. Follow the jump to watch it live beginning at 7 PM EST.
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Ford Motor Company is a publicly traded company with a catch: the Ford family permanently holds 40% of the company's voting shares. That means the Ford family has an awful lot of pull, and if someone carrying the family name wants a job, there's a 100% chance they're going to get one.
The latest Ford family member to take a place at the company built by his great grandfather is Henry Ford III. The 29-year-old son of Edsel Ford is fresh off a summer internship at Galpin Ford, where he told AutoWeek that he sold five Fords and a Volvo. He is also getting his MBA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a.k.a. MIT, and he's getting ready to join the Ford team back in Dearborn. Henry III has been working at the company with his name on the door for some time, having already participated in the all-important labor contract negotiations in 2006 and 2007. He also worked as a junior high school math and English teacher, so his background is rather diverse.
While it's tough to argue that the Ford name hasn't helped Henry III tremendously (he did, after all, reportedly meet with then-CEO Bill Ford and other Ford execs in 2006 to discuss which job he'd receive), the newest Henry does appear to have his head on straight. Does he have a family right to one day run the company? We hope any promotions will come with actual accomplishments, but it may ultimately be too hard to ignore someone named Henry Ford.
The Chevrolet Volt's 230 mpg number continues to be questioned. The latest to criticize is Bill Ford, who takes issue not only with the General Motors-approved 230 figure, but also Nissan's claim that its Leaf EV will get 367 mpg. The real culprit here, Ford said, is the EPA's methodology, which he argues is meaningless. "This question devolves into madness," Ford reportedly told Green Car Advisor:
"The government will have to come up with a meaningful number for customers - a user-friendly label. And I think they will. I can't dispute that number, but I'm not sure it's relevant to the customer either."
Ford also said that since his company doesn't "have any particular expertise in batteries," they'll probably buy the batteries from established manufacturers for their own electrified cars.
Typically, most of the drivers who start a Fomula One season are the ones who carry it through to the end. But this has turned out to be anything but a normal season, with erstwhile backmarkers winning races and a big game of musical chairs ensuing. Toro Rosso has already switched out Sebastien Bourdais for Jaime Alguersuari, Ferrari was set to bring Michael Schumacher back from retirement but ended up having to deputize test driver Luca Badoer instead, and now Renault has followed suit by axing Nelson Piquet, Jr. and replacing him with its test driver, Romain Grosjean.
The move started last week when Renault announced Piquet's departure. The son of three-time world champion Nelson Piquet, Sr., Nelsinho (as he's known) moved up to F1 after two seasons in the GP2 feeder series also run by Renault team principal Flavio Briatore. Aside from a solitary, though impressive, second-place finish in Germany, the young Brazilian failed to finish nine races last year, and had yet to score a single point this season. Piquet's termination prompted him to launch a series of tirades against Briatore, whom he characterized as an ignorant executioner.
Piquet's replacement, Romain Grosjean, won both the Formula Three Euroseries and the GP2 Asia championships before moving up to the main GP2 series, where he placed fourth last year and is currently runner-up in the standings, in addition to his role as Renault's official test driver. Renault is waiting to see if he and teammate Fernando Alonso will start the upcoming European Grand Prix, pending their appeal of a penalty given at the last race in Hungary for an improperly secured wheel. Confirmation of Grosjean's promotion pends a successful appeal.
As the saying goes, records are meant to be broken. For Vaughn Gittin Jr., that record was the world's longest drift. This past December, Gittin and 0-60 Magazine took a road trip across the United States in a 2010 Ford Mustang GT that also included a stop at Las Vegas Motor Speedway to break the record. The previous milestone was 4,137 feet, but Gittin believed he could surpass that and went about seeing how long his set of Falken Azenis ST-155 tires could withstand constant opposite lock. As it turns out, they lasted a little over two minutes before completely running out of tread, resulting in a run of 6,285 feet, or 1.19 miles. While the results are still pending with Guinness, we'll go ahead and crown Gittin as the record holder. Hit the jump to watch the video.
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The day after Ford and the UAW reached a tentative retiree health care deal (General Motors and Chrysler are still negotiating), the leaders of the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker have announced that they will be taking a 30 percent reduction in salaries over the next two years. A memo, signed by Ford Executive Chairman William Ford Jr. and Chief Executive Alan Mulally, addresses the pay cuts and adds that Ford's board of directors will also drop their compensation for the same period of time. In addition, performance bonuses for salaried workers and senior executives will also disappear. As reiterated in the memo, Ford and Mulally are not wavering from their plan to go without government assistance and these recent announcements support that strategy. "We know these are challenging times and we all are affected by the tough actions we are taking... However, these are necessary actions to help us emerge as an even stronger, profitably growing Ford Motor Company for the benefit of us all.
Most of our time at Barrett-Jackson is spent inside the auction tent, but there are plenty of interesting activities going on outside, as well. In recent years, Ford Racing and Falken have brought out their drift Mustang that competes in the Formula Drift series, with Vaughn Gittin Jr. wowing auction spectators with his precise car control and tire-shredding power slides. This year, Falken brought out the 2010 version of the car (now in full Falken livery) that made its debut in Santa Monica alongside the production car back in November. Anyone at the auction could register for a chance to get a ride in the car, and Gittin Jr. gave quite a few white-knuckle rides while we were watching. Most people thoroughly enjoyed it and stepped out of the car with a huge grin, although the expressions on many of the passengers as the car swung sideways within inches of a concrete barrier was nothing short of hilarious.
According to a grand jury indictment, a New Mexico prostitution ring mastermind was trying to extort two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser, Jr. for $750,000 over a videotape. Bobby McMullin, the ringleader, allegedly had an unflattering video of Unser that he promised to release to the public if Little Al didn't pay him. The racer signed a letter agreeing to pay an unspecified amount for the tape, and indeed some payments were made, but authorities don't know how much money changed hands.
Authorities also don't know – or haven't said – what is on the tape. The former racer said he made the payments because of a "morals clause" in one of his endorsement contracts that could have been at odds with whatever was allegedly on the tape. The attempted extortion happened during the 2004 season while he was with Patrick Racing, his last season behind the wheel. Although it's unclear why Unser is connected with the defendant, Abuquerque prosecutor Mark Drebing has gone on record that it appears Little Al hasn't done anything wrong, and that Unser is listed as a victim in the indictment.
We assume our own invitation to speak in front of the House Financial Services Committee today got lost in the mail, or perhaps we didn't respond quickly enough to Barney Frank's e-vite (we thought it was for another one of his crazy house parties). Regardless, our absence in DC today doesn't mean that Congress thinks the opinion of the automotive press is useless. We've just learned that Winding Road's grand poo-bah, David E. Davis Jr., is scheduled to testify at the bailout hearings today. WR tells us to expect DED sometime around 12:30PM EST after the second panel takes the stage. We've got our TiVo boxes set to record and we hope the former editor of Car and Driver, founder of Automobile and current head honcho of Winding Road represents our people well.
UPDATE: Doh! DED got pulled off the hearing schedule at the last minute. Guess Congress doesn't care about the perspective of auto journalists.
