F1Weekly podcast # 538

                                       

Photo. Hannes van Asseldonk

High Hopes Hannes. The 58th Macau Grand Prix is now history. The photo shows young Dutch driver Hannes van Asseldonk who claimed an impressive fifth place finish in his first visit to the end of season street festival.

The 19-year old from Boekel made his single seater debut in last year’s Formula BMW Europe championship. Hannes finished 7th with the help of two podium finishes and also recorded one fastest lap.

Later in the season he took part in the Italian Formula Abarth series and won three of the six races entered.

This season he stepped up to ATS German Formula 3 with van Amersfoort Racing, also from the Netherlands. He started twice from pole position and five podium finishes and one fastest lap saw him take a very respectable fifth place in the championship.

Daniel Juncadella became the first Spanish Macau winner, taking advantage of a late race full course caution to pass Felipe Nasr of Brazil, who finished second, and early race leader Marco Wittmann. The German started from pole after winning Saturday’s qualification race and after a spirited charge in closing laps came in third.

The race day crowd was over 24,000 plus an additional 1,000 journalists from over 25 countries according to the Macau Grand Prix website.

                                                                                                                Photo. Hacinn Kim    

Korean conundrum. The South Korean F1 Grand Prix promoters also had high hopes for their Tilke-designed track in Yeongam, miles and high speed train away from Seoul. Heavy rain and delayed construction dampened their enthusiasm in the inaugural running of the race last year. This year empty seats and high cost of staging the event, which includes a $30m plus 10% annual increase sanctioning fee to FOM, Formula One Management, has raised serious doubts on the future of the Korean Grand Prix.

The Big E has many a deep-pocket nations lined up to showcase the world how ‘advanced’ they are, and what F1 pedigree they have in store in the years ahead in countries like Bahrain and Bulgaria.

Bernie will not shed a tear nor go Seoul searching if Korean GP goes kaput.

Kazakhstan is rich in oil. And Astana already has a race team!

                                                                                                                      Photo. Hacinn Kim 

Hulkenberg may have left his heart in Yeongam.

— Nasir Hameed

   Greetings and gobble, gobble regards.

[audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/mp3.f1weekly.com/podcasts/11-24-11f1weekly538.mp3]