_very_ exciting qualifying session, IMHO. The
fast start by the Stewarts was particularly
impressive. And despite some rough moments, it looks like
Ferrari WILL be most competitive in 1999.<br><br>Glenn

gt;Schumi is not a sportsman, he's money maker
only.<br><br>You know, in sports dynasties are always hated until
they're over. Many U.S. baseball fans hated the N.Y.
Yankees because they were so good. I tbink some of that
is Schumi's problem. I suffered the same problem
with Senna, whom I detested for years ... but it turns
out he was a genuinely nice man -- just a fierce
competitor. I think Schumacher is in the same category, and
do not begrudge him his aggressive driving. Let's
enjoy it while it's still here!

illing all the best for M.H. He have to win again! Schumi is not a sportsman,
he's money maker only.

or the Americans out there, F1A&G has posted a
special report on developments for the forthcoming U.S.
Grand Prix at Indianapolis, which will debut in 2000.
For more details, including ticketing information,
try our USGP Indy 2000 page --
<a href=http://www.f1-grandprix.com/usgp.html.
target=new>http://www.f1-grandprix.com/usgp.html.</a><br><br>See you in Indy
next year!

ell, we have finally completed off-season
testing, and are ready to launch the 1999 "Formula One Art
& Genius" web site in its new livery. Additions
include an expanded F1 History section, covering the
period through 1998, as well as new profiles of Juan
Manuel Fangio and Gilles Villeneuve. Please check it out
and let me know what you think.

i friends! I've been working dilligently on
getting the Formula One Art & Genius Web site updated for
the new F1 season, and hope to launch it next
weekend. Stay tuned! Please e-mail me with any
suggestions.<br><br>Thanks,<br><br>Glenn

ooks like, after much fanfare and a positive Jacques Villeneuve testing session
late last season, the new 1999 Chinese GPO has already been dropped!

gain. Not content to let the IRL idiots run around the
Brickyard, he's brought the USGP home and will have them go
_backwards_ at Indy. How F1 can stand to be associated with
the man who allowed Eddie Cheever -- Cheever of all
drivers! -- to wins his first and only race at the Indy
500 is beyond me."<br><br>As the French say, the
enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Bernie and Max will
swallow hard and get into bed with Tony as long as doing
so allows them to poke a sharp stick into CART's
eye. That's what this is, from all POVs. Tony wants to
signal something to CART as well--that he'll do a lot of
stupid things before he admits defeat and makes peace
with the big boys who laughed at him when he nominated
himself the savior of open-wheel racing in this
country.<br><br>"But, as an old-time USGP fan (Watkins Glen, Long
Beach, Las Vegas, etc.),"<br><br>Don't forget my native
town, Detroit.<br><br>"it will sure be nice to have the
race "home again" for the Holidays! What to you
think?"<br><br>I think we need to apply a delicate balancing test.
On the one hand, Tony's USGP will provide more
racing. And More Racing is by definition a Good Thing. On
the other hand, I'm afraid that this could turn out
to be a big enough debacle to wreck F1's position
(such as it is) in the US for years, if not decades. I
don't think Tony's really prepared for the level of
control Bernie expects to wield over this race. Tony is
used to monopolizing the action and steering lucrative
concessions deals to his buddies. That won't happen with FIA.
I really wish I could be a fly on the wall when
Tony's marketing stooges demand that Schumacher et al.
spend a few hours signing autographs for any and all
comers every day in Gasoline Alley.<br><br>The silver
lining in all of this is that Tony could hemmorage money
on this sow's ear of a deal so badly that it might
offset the cash cow he's got with the Brickyard 400.
That might make him think twice about continuing with
his IRLevant series, and restore the 500 to its
former glory.

ith Allessandro (nee Alex) Zanardi returning to
F1 for his first stint since Lotus in '92, will we
see another storming debut by a former IndyCar
champion? With back-to-back PPG Cup titles, Zanardi looks
strong, but will he be able to make a swift transition to
the normally aspirated F1 engines, and will Williams
rebound before linking with BMW for the 2000 season? Lots
of questions remain to be answered during the
off-season.

i,Egeny!<br>May be You're right, but my opinion
is that "the best" as You say also can lose with
elegance. But he ( Shumi ) is fighting only for money. It
seems so. <br>Regards,<br><br>CL3473(@yahoo.com)

ell, Tony Gorge has done it again. Not content
to let the IRL idiots run around the Brickyard, he's
brought the USGP home and will have them go _backwards_
at Indy. How F1 can stand to be associated with the
man who allowed Eddie Cheever -- Cheever of all
drivers! -- to wins his first and only race at the Indy
500 is beyond me. But, as an old-time USGP fan
(Watkins Glen, Long Beach, Las Vegas, etc.), it will sure
be nice to have the race "home again" for the
Holidays! What to you think?

ello<br>seems to me, schumi is real showmen - i
eto pravil'no - formula 1 - show<br>nado priznat' -
bez ego derzkih vyhodok bylo by skuchno
;-&gt;&gt;<br>on kak driver - vne vsiakih somneniy - luchshyi
(best!!!)<br>budem sporit'?<br>s uvazheniem<br>egeny<br>(5 let ne
baba za rulem na ochen' raznih mashinah)<br>:-)

he newest F1 simulation out there is Grand Prix
Legends, which has a teriffic advertising slogan --
something about how in 1968 the Formula One rules were
changed to make the sport safer, so "Welcome to 1967!"
You need a VERY fast Pentium II processor, since my
133 Mhz machine is way too slow to run the game
properly. Of course, the all-time favorite -- now slightly
dated -- is Grand Prix II. Thst is by far the most
difficul racing sim I have ever experienced. Good luck!

ey, it is the off-season, what else can one do
other than stick old videotapes into the slot? I'm
looking at updating my entire computer system at or just
after the holidays (taking advantage of clearances) and
I wanted to ask for opinions: assuming I get a
pretty fast and powerful processor, what is the best F1
simulation I should get? I'm interested in a lot of
different variables: speed of animation of course, but also
the ability to do modem and network play, historical
range, realistic set-up options (that won't necessarily
have me waste a weekend just making incremental camber
changes, for example), and sheer fun of play.

new feature of Formula One Art & Genius is the
"F1A&G Poll." Here you can vote for your personal
favorites for 1998 "driver of the year," predict which F1
team will dominate the 1999 season, and suggest which
drivers should next be profiled in the "F1A&G Driver
Profiles" section. Go to
<a href=http://www.f1-grandprix.com/poll.html
target=new>http://www.f1-grandprix.com/poll.html</a> -- or link from the Formula
One Art & Genius home
page -- to check out the F1A&G Poll!

t appears from egeny and other commenters that
Michael Schumacher is very popoular in Russia and the
Baltic states (Latvia, etc.). Is that because of the red
color. :-) Seriously, one would think that
Mercedes-Benz, and hence McLaren/Hakkinen, would be at least as
popular in cultures where exposure to top-flight western
automobile engineering is finally widely available. So, what
gives?

errari ok, davno zasluzili Kubok, no davaitje
bez Sumi! Povedenije ego pozorno i nesportjivno. Uzh
izvinitje menja za otkrovennostj!<br><br>S
uvazenijem.<br><br>Girt ( cl3473 prosto nomer moego BMW )

'm very upset now<br>but hope is always
will<br>i believe - schumaher will be champion on the next
year<br>waiting for pirelli come aganst brigestone intead
goodyear<br>nice to meet you, guys!<br>egeny

1A&G will be expanding our line-up of in-depth
profiles of the greatest Formula One drivers in history.
All Forum members -- and others -- are encouraged to
vote for their favorite (or hated) drivers for
inclusion. Who should be selected for our next generation of
F1A&G profiles? Please let us know.

was wrong in my prediction, and as for Ferrari,
I will once again have to "wait till next year".
But hats off to Mika. My father told me that he
_knew_ Hakkinen had won even before Schumacher's
six-inch mistake. How? By watching that footage of Mika
walking over to Schuey on the track and shaking his
hand.<br><br>That gesture betrayed something--Complete Confidence
on Hakkinen's part. He simply knew he had the
winning machine and that he had the presence of mind and
spirit to be the one to bring that car over the finish
line FIRST. He also knew that Schumacher would prove
to be rash and uneven under pressure.<br><br>If so,
Schumacher proved him right in spades. What was the point of
whipping around that second parade lap like a bat out of
hell? He was the POLE-SITTER, for crying out loud, and
had the perogative of doing it calm and right on his
own terms. And though one must marvel at Michael's
pure driving skills, such as moving up 10 places on
the first lap, you had to notice him OD'ing on his
own adrenalin more than once. All through the race,
he got sidewise, locked up his brakes, cut corners
in the chicanes, bit off more than he could chew in
outside pass attempts, and all in all looked like a
desperate man. Which he was.<br><br>Attitude is
all-important, even when you are dealing with fallible machines
and fallible men. <br>In my life I may never get to
blast out of Stavelot at Spa at 190 mph; I may never
get to make an inside pass at Tabac in Monte Carlo.
But I can gain an insight from these men about
attitudes and will that can serve me in other areas. I like
to think that's why in the end we watch F1: if
you're not careful you may end up learning something
about life. And about winning, and doing it with
style.<br><br>In the end, we learned a lot from Mika Hakkinen.
Congratulations from this Ferrari fan.

fter 8 years in Formula One and 5 at McLaren, Mika Hakkinen wins the driver's
world championship in the final race of the 1998 season.  Well done, Mika!

ndianpolis <br>&gt;500 count in the world driving
championship point <br>&gt;standings? <br><br>Easy. 1950-59,
although no one ever raced in both the Indy 500 and F1
races in the same season until Brabham in '61 and then
Clark in '62-66!

know the last USGP was in Phoenix, I just meant
I got to go see the last one they held _in
Detroit_. (Downtown, mind you--there is no more miserable,
boring track than that turkey they built on Belle Isle
for CART).<br><br>I beg to differ on IMS as a venue,
though. First, the reports had the story as claiming that
only the front straight of the oval would be used, as
well as part of turns 1 and 4. The rest would be an
infield road course specially constructed for the event.
Second, even if they did keep it on the original track,
I'm not convinced that that ovals shouldn't at least
be a small part of the world driving championship.
IIRC Forbes magazine had an article back in the
mid-90s when they went digging around the business side
of FIA. At that time TV ratings and attendance were
starting to dip, and it seems that as much as Max Moseley
et al. were sniffing at the speedway concept in
public, Forbes found private internal documents that
showed FIA was (and maybe still is) contemplating
building an oval or two.<br><br>I'm not saying that the
vast majority of F1 tracks shouldn't be road courses.
But I am saying that this is the World Driving
Championship--and that title should reflect the best driver in a
full range of venue types. Keep the road courses like
the Nuerburgring and Silverstone. Keep the temporary
street circuits like Monte Carlo. But consider adding
perhaps just one of the mile-ovals into the mix. Maybe
even a superspeedway as well, as long as you let'em
bolt a turbocharger on for that one race (well, maybe
not...). If not in the US, then perhaps as one of the
proposed Chinese or Malaysian venues (once the Asian flu
subsides).<br><br>Anyway, if the USGP _had_ to be a road course, my vote's
for Laguna Seca. That corkscrew will really separate
the men from the boys......<br><br>Quick F1 Quiz:
What years _did_ the Indianpolis 500 count in the
world driving championship point standings?

h Colin, how soon you forget!<br><br>&gt;I
attended the last USGP in Detroit way back when,
<br>&gt;and always thought that somehow IMS should be the
<br>&gt;site for the FIA event in this country. <br><br>The
last USGP was Phoenix in '91 (Alesi's debut with
Tyrrell in a nice wheel-to-wheel challenge to Senna) --
the "Iceberg Grand Prix" named after the corporate
sponsor.<br><br>As to Indy, I personally believe we should leave
that as a shrine to oval speedway racing, and put the
GP on a _real_ road course, like Road America or
Mid-Ohio.<br><br>Glenn

f Schumacher lands one for the prancing horse of Maranello after all this time,
F1 will truly have a new legend!

ack in September we heard a bit about an alleged
oral agreement to revive the United States Grand Prix
at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway starting in Sept.
2000, but since then nothing.<br><br>Speaking as one
whose disgust at what Tony George has done to open
wheel racing in this country is matched only by his
desire to bring F1 back to the world's last superpower,
I really want to learn whether this is going to
happen, and moreover, what people think of this. I
attended the last USGP in Detroit way back when, and
always thought that somehow IMS should be the site for
the FIA event in this country. <br><br>Another
question: how many years will it be before we see a US
driver on the F1 circuit again?

otta go with the German. Schuey knows that he
has to run a clean race this time--a repeat of the
incidents of '94 and '97 could lead Ferrari to dump
him--and the hopes and hearts of tifosi world-wide are
going to be on edge like nothing else. 19 years is a
long time--"World Champion Ferrari" is becoming a dim
memory. The deciding factor will not pit performance, but
Mika's not being able to best Michael on handling
Suzuka's famous left "130R" turn.

hat an exciting finish to the 1998 Formula One
season is in store for this weekend. As this forum is a
new feature of Formula One Art & Genius, we don't
have much activity -- yet -- but one can hope that
message traffic will pick up as race weekend gets closer.
Who likes Mika, and who's for Schummi? Come on folks,
speak up!

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