Spurgeon’s work was published in the Times over the race weekend but if you’re in the mood for a lot of direct quotes from the man who has made F1 what it currently is, Spurgeon has uploaded a transcript of his chat. Here’s a choice bit or two:

On people he admired or considered role models:

I’m a big, big, and have always been a big, big supporter of Mr. Ferrari, when he was alive, he was a special person. But in those days, I mean, they were entrepreneurs. So you know, he had the same sort of background as I had. He was a good used car dealer. And like Colin [Chapman, founder of Lotus]. All those people when we started Formula One bringing it to what it is.

On racing in the first F1 race at Silverstone:

Yeah, I was in the race. In a Formula 3 car. With Stirling Moss and Harry Schell and Peter Collins. But I used to race motorcycles. So I’ve always raced something.

Read the rest at About.com, including his thoughts on leaders versus dictators.

Photo Credit: Ryan Pierse/Getty Images

Nelson Piquet drives the Brabham BT52

Fire will be a recurring pattern of this gallery. The flames pictured here belch forth from the Brabham BT52, a Gordon Murray-designed, Nelson Piquet-driven car which took the 1983 world championship. It was powered by the BMW M10 engine, a lovely exercice in engineering insanity.

BMW M10 Engine

Probably no other engine had a 26-year career during which it progressed from 75 HP in the BMW 1500 Neue Klasse of 1961 to 1500 HP in the Brabham BT52 Formula One race car. The basis of this twentyfold increase in power was an incredible little 1.5-liter Baron Alex von Falkenhausen design, turbocharged to the ionosphere for F1.

Legend has it that BMW’s motorsports engineers chose for their F1 units engine blocks which had already accumulated 60,000+ miles on them—and that they urinated on them in the factory.

Photo Credit: BMW Historisches Archiv

Nelson Piquet and Gordon Murray

Piquet was the man who drove the BMW-powered Brabham racers. Gordon Murray? He designed them. After Formula One, he would go on to create the sublime BMW-powered McLaren F1, which was the last road car to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans—in 1995.

Photo Credit: joosten

Andrea de Cesaris

More fire! This is the Brabham BMW of 1987 at Silverstone, driven by unlucky Andrea de Cesaris, who started in 208 Formula One grands prix without a single win. The fire you see was the result of a broken fuel line, which ended de Cesaris’s race.

Photo Credit: Chris Cole/Allsport

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Before we ban Beavis from Jalopnik’s editorial systems, one more photo of a flame-happy Brabham. Most likely driven by Nelson Piquet.

The Brabham BT52 from above

The arrow shape of Nelson Piquet’s 1983 championship winner was dictated by the sudden banning of ground effects at the end of the 1982 season.

Because regulations for 1983 specified flat underbodies, the wide sidepods of ground effects cars suddenly became wings and had to be sheared off.

Gordon Murray was the most efficient shearer of them all: he designed the arrow-shaped BT52 over a scarce three months.

Suitcase signed by Piquet and Murray

For 1984, Gordon Murray developed the BT52 into the BT53. It was no worse a design, but BMW’s mad turbocharged M10’s couldn’t reliably finish races. Piquet won only two races in the season and had to retire from an incredible 9 of 16 total.

Photo Credit: joosten

Nelson Piquet leads Ayrton Senna in the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix

Here’s the Brabham BT53 in action in Dallas. Both Piquet and Senna would retire from the race, which was won by Keke Rosberg.

Photo Credit: twm1340/Flickr

Jacques Villeneuve at the 2006 French Grand Prix

BMW was out of Formula One for many years, only to acquire the Sauber team of Switzerland and return as a factory outfit. Over their four years in F1, they have experimented with a number of weird and wonderful aerodynamics elements, including the Twin Towers seen here, which were designed to flick air to the car’s rear.

Nick Heidfeld and Jacques Villeneuve drove the cars to 8th and 11th place, respectively. The towers were banned after the race as officials had postulated it would interfere with the drivers’ vision.

Photo Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Robert Kubica’s crash at the 2007 Canadian Grand Prix

In their second year in F1, BMW would be involved in perhaps the most dramatic crash in modern times. On lap 26, Robert Kubica’s car clipped Jarno Trulli’s Toyota and became airborne at 150 MPH. Most of the car disintegrated to a fine powder of carbon fiber as it tumbled down the track, subjecting the Pole to 75 g’s of deceleration but saving his life.

BMW’s other driver Nick Heidfeld finished second in the race which marked Lewis Hamilton’s first F1 win.

Photo Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Another view of Robert Kubica’s 2007 crash

This is how Kubica’s BMW came to rest after his big crash. You can see that he is still in the car, with his feet poking out. In a testament to the gigantic strength of the carbon fiber monocoque, he suffered nothing worse than a sprained ankle.

Photo Credit: DAVID BOILY/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Kubica wins the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix

What a way to return to the scene of his 150 MPH crash a year later: this is BMW team principal Mario Theissen hugging Robert Kubica after he took his and BMW’s first grand prix win at the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

BMW team principal Mario Theissen

Theissen is seen here celebrating BMW’s only grand prix win at the 2008 Canadian Grand Prix. Perhaps the photo’s slightly pornographic allusions also go to show how right the late and great LJK Setright was when he called the spraying of champagne the “vulgarian display of disrespect for this princely drink” in his 2002 book Drive On!

Photo Credit: Paul Gilham/Getty Images

Nick Heidfeld at St. Moritz, Switzerland

BMW Sauber has shown a curious taste for Formula One stunts in 2007. They were all performed by Nick Heidfeld, seen here on the frozen surface of Lake St. Moritz, Switzerland, on February 4, 2007.

Photo Credit: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Nick Heidfeld drives his BMW F1 car on the Nürburgring Nordschleife

No Formula One car had set foot on the old Nordschleife since Niki Lauda’s infernal 1976 crash at Bergwerk corner. After 31 years, Heidfeld returned to the scene of countless grands prix in his 2007 racing car to run three laps. In a raised car on the bumpy track, not going flat out, he managed a time of 8:34.

More fire! More fire!

This has become the defining image of BMW in what has turned out to be their last season in Formula One. The man in the car is Robert Kubica and the picture was taken during qualifying at this year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, which Jenson Button won.

Photo Credit: BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/Getty Images

Since their upgrade prior to the British Grand Prix three weeks ago and contrary to the utter Brawn domination until then, Red Bull had the upper hand now. After 129 races incresingly dotted by podium finishes, it was Australia’s Mark Webber who took victory—his first ever since debuting in Formula One at his home race in 2002.

The Brawns have shown their Achilles heel yet again: the white-and-fluoro-green battleship is simply too aerodymanic to properly warm its tires on a wet and damp track like the Nürburgring or Silverstone. Adrian Newey’s lithe Red Bulls blazed to victory, with their third all-podium finish in the past three races, two of them 1–2’s.

Last year’s champion Lewis Hamilton had a dismal Sunday after a fine qualifying at 5th: he ran wide at the very first corner, punctured a tire and limped home last.

Webber was obviously overjoyed—but Brawn’s Rubens Barrichello provided a counterpoint. The 37-year-old Brazilian, second in the championship before the race, has fallen back to fourth place after finishing sixth, leapfrogged by both Red Bull drivers. His response was less than diplomatic:

I guess the strategy in the pit lane… it was a good show from the team on how to lose a race today. I’m terribly upset with the way things have gone. I did all I had to do. I went first on the first corner and that’s all I did and then they made me lose the race. If it is really what’s going on, we’re going to end up losing both championships. I feel sorry for myself, the team. To be very honest, I wish I could get on the plane and go home. I don’t want to talk to anyone in the team. It will be all ‘bla bla bla’ and I don’t want to hear that.

His boss with the giant extraterrestrial brain responded with the brutal facts:

Rubens had the 11th fastest time in the race today. You cannot win a race, whatever strategy you have, if your best lap time is the 11th quickest.

And while Ross Brawn may have dismissed his driver’s outburst as the words of a frustrated racing driver in the heat of the moment, Barrichello may well remember this interview with Brawn back in 2001.

Formula One is coming to Hungary in two weeks to race at the slow and dusty cauldron of the Hungaroring. With the Budapest midsummer approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it should be Brawn territory—and it is the scene of Jenson Button’s only win outside this season, at a wet and wacky 2006 race.

After nine races, Jenson Button still leads the championship with 68 points, followed by Sebastian Vettel with 47 and Mark Webber with 45.5. Rubens Barrichello is fourth with 44. These same men have buoyed the points of their constructors: Brawn's 112 and Red Bull's 92.5 are clear ahead of Toyota at third place with 34.5.

Kimi Räikkönen

Ferrari’s world champion Finn is pretty damn far from a good season this year, not even finishing the German Grand Prix, but have you seen a photo this close and visceral since Juan Manuel Fangio in his Mercedes-Benz W196?

Photo Credit: TORSTEN SILZ/AFP/Getty Images

Sebastian Vettel

It will probably be possible to take utterly boyish portraits of Red Bull’s ultra-fast young German well into the next decade.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Christian Horner (Red Bull’s team principal) and Mark Webber. Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Men would kill for Webber’s jawline. Women, too.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

The start of the race

And they’re off! Lewis Hamilton on the right in his silver McLaren is milliseconds from fucking it all up after a fine qualifying at fifth.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Ari Vatanen

If you’re a Finnish voter, you may know this man as a retired member of the European Parliament, having served from 1999 to 2009. If you’re a petrolhead, you’ll know his as a rally god and the star of Climb Dance, that ten-minute epic about the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. He may follow in Max Mosley’s footsteps this fall as the embattled president of FIA prepares to step down.

Photo Credit: SASCHA SCHUERMANN/AFP/Getty Images

Kimi Räikkönen

Yes, he is dozing through the season but he drives a red car. Isn’t it just splendid to look at?

Photo Credit: GUILLAUME BAPTISTE/AFP/Getty Images

Webber, Räikkönen and Adrian Sutil

Later in the race, ice-cream-man Räikkönen would bump into Force India’s Sutil, seen here emitting a cloud of smoke, and take him out of the race. What a shame.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Mark Webber

Two weeks after hanging out with motorcyclists, Mark Webber is driving his flat-nosed Red Bull home to his first grand prix victory. Fancy job, mate.

Photo Credit: Clive Mason/Getty Images

Mark Webber after the race

Overcome with the magnificence of it all, Webber stands after his win in front of thick Eifel Mountains rainclouds after becoming only the 102nd man on Earth to win a Formula One grand prix. The first one was Nino Farina at the 1950 British Grand Prix.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Mark Webber

This week, the obligatory misuse of architectural imaging equipment sees our Aussie hero of the week taking a corner.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Lewis Hamilton

Slow car, pretty picture.

Photo Credit: FRED DUFOUR/AFP/Getty Images

Bernie Ecclestone

“Hey, Slavica, are you there?”

“What do you want, Bernie? We’re divorced.”

“I know, love, but I need your advice on how to look very evil.”

“Easy peasy, just skip on the hairspray on your right side.”

“That all?”

“Yes, Bernie. Then find a spot of wind and wink into it.”

“Fabulous. Honey, fancy a meet next week on my powerboa—”

BEEP…BEEP…BEEP

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

We know Formula One has had some trouble lately, but we're not sure if these unconventional views are recent or part of the reason Ecclestone gets such a weird rap. Among things he told The Times:

"If you have a look at a democracy it hasn't done a lot of good for many countries - including this one. I like people who make up their minds.

Some examples?

We did a terrible thing when we supported the idea of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, he was the only one who could control that country. It was the same [with the Taleban]. We move into countries and we have no idea of the culture. The Americans probably thought Bosnia was a town in Miami. There are people starving in Africa and we sit back and do nothing, but we get involved in things we should leave alone."

This isn't so bad and, all things considered, we sort of see where he's going with it. And then this happens:

"In a lot of ways, terrible to say this I suppose, but apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people able to get things done.

And what about the Holocaust?

"In the end he got lost so he wasn't a very good dictator. Either he knew what was going on and insisted, or he just went along with it - either way he wasn't a dictator."

You can see the rest of the profile and see nothing was taken out of context. Clearly, the interviewer knew what questions to ask. There is a lot more in there beyond the headline generating stuff about Hitler. Almost more offensive to us, when asked to choose between Lamborghini or Lexus he answered "Lexus."

[The Times]

SHAUN CURRY/AFP/Getty Images

You just know something’s amiss when you are greeted with FIA president Max Mosley’s very British grimace on Jalopnik as you boot up in the morning. Turns out “Formula 1 is finished,” as two-time world champion Fernando Alonso has described the current situation to the BBC.

The current situation is only slightly simpler than the internal politics of Afghanistan, with power-hungry old white men scheming behind closed doors. The only difference seems to be their lack of flowing beards and Stinger missiles—but then Max Mosley would make a great Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

What is the current situation, exactly? Most of the major teams have refused to accept Mosley’s scheme to turn Formula One into a two-tiered, budget regulated series, with teams who agree to run on an arbitrary budget set by Mosley getting access to slacker regulations: higher revving engines, more aggressive aerodynamics, the works. The teams have correctly argued that this runs against the very essence of Formula One: namely, that cars built to the same set of regulations–or formulae–race each other. Bunny rabbits may occasionally race against the cars, as seen at last year’s British Grand Prix, but they do not figure in the official results.

Mosley’s fear seems to be that current expenditures will drive major manufacturers out of the sport as car companies will not be willing to pay half a billion dollars a year for a vanity product in these financially bleak times. So far, the only manufacturer which has actually quit was Honda—but not before handing former team principal Ross Brawn the current season’s most dominant car, the BGP-001, campaigned with an 86% win rate thus far by Jenson Button.

Just to put Mosley’s budget cap in perspective: his suggested $65 million a year is exactly half as much as the amount paid a week ago by a Spanish football team for a single player. Great footballers have their price, even obnoxious bastards like Real Madrid’s latest pick Cristiano Ronaldo, but they certainly don’t require expensive, one-off machines made of carbon fiber and titanium to do their thing.

It’s all very sad, really, but is perhaps an inevitable conclusion to the bullying and thuggery Max Mosley and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone have subjected Formula One to over the past decades. While many involved in F1 have become very rich in the meantime, the biggest money was made not by the people who actually go out there and race cars, but the very few who have brokered deals.

It may be unavoidable or it may be a historical artifact dating back to the late 70s when the very same duo made Formula One into the global media juggernaut it currently is. But it has certainly not helped the sport’s long-term survival. Formula One at the moment is subject to rapid, arbitrary rule changes and it is increasingly raced on tracks worlds away from the sport’s historic and financial heartlands—Europe and North America.

The series began in 1950 at Silverstone, a converted airfield in postwar England which will host its last race this Sunday. The teams have until today evening to reach a last minute compromise. Otherwise, the cars on the grid on Sunday afternoon may take part in not just the last grand prix at Silverstone—but in the last grand prix of a Formula One with a future.

Photo Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images, DIMITRI KOCHKO/AFP/Getty Images, MAX NASH/AFP/Getty Images, SHAUN CURRY/AFP/Getty Images

The threat came in response to a threat from Renault and McLaren, who vowed not to send their cars to the Australian Grand Prix if Bernie didn't cough up some money the two teams said they were owed. In response, Ecclestone pulled out the big gun and called up the freight companies to cancel the shipments.

Said Ecclestone: "So I said what I'd better do is cancel the aircraft obviously. It costs a fortune to charter those things and almost as much to cancel them."

The cars were shipped and it appears the teams blinked first as few believe Ecclestone coughed up the funds. This is just more proof that what happens behind the scenes in F1 is going to continue to generate more press than what actually happens on the track so long as Herr Mosley and Bernie remain in charge.

Photo Credit: The F1 Blog

[The Times via AutoSport]

The story everyone talked about in F1 was Max Mosley's reported nazi-style sex scandal, so Bernie decided a holiday card highlighting the horror would be the best route. Laughter is the best medicine, right?

Bernie's not one to avoid controversy with his personal holiday cards. Last year, the F1 CEO poked fun at the McLaren-Ferrari spy scandal, depicting a nervous Ron Dennis being handed a gift-wrapped present by former chief designer Mike Coughlan. But this year's cartoon takes things to an entirely different level.

The card cartoon allegedly shows Mosley whipping the member of an F1 team next to a monitor wearing fishnets and high heels. Other F1 members are depicted with "sore bottoms" so, you know, the usual Christmas message. We haven't actually seen the card so this is all "reported" — but if you've got one in your inbox or seen one in a forum please send it this way. Zank you! (Hat tip to Autophiles!)

[Source: F1 Live]

Dean Attew, who The Times describes as a "London-based business intelligence consultant", uncovered the plot. Attew formerly assisted Ecclestone with "a wide variety of issues concerning...business and family affairs," and still feels some loyalty to the Formula One owner. Now employed by Titon International, the company that was employing ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko when he was poisoned and in whose office traces of Polonium-210 were found, Attew was approached to assist in the plot to bring down Mosley by unnamed parties. Fearing that the plot could harm his former boss as well, he then brought that information to Ecclestone.

"Dean, you are not going to find anything because there's nothing there - he's Mr Boring in that sense," Ecclestone told Attew upon learning of the plot. Since the release of the Max Mosley sex video, Mosley has done nothing to address suggestions that Ecclestone was involved with the attempt to publicly discredit him, leaving Attew to feel under-appreciated for his efforts. [via The Times]

The audio stream has Mosley talking like ze Germans he seemingly fantasizes about — except since his understanding of the German language is at about the ninth-grade high school level, he ends up talking mitt ze accent zan mitt ze German vords. That's right, he says some lines which we're sure will now become classic, like:

"Ze need more of ze punishment I think."

"You are doing good job. Zank you."

First, the ADAC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club) called for the embattled president to "reconsider his role." And this isn't like the Springfield Spitfire Enthusiasts asking, the ADAC is the largest automotive club in Europe with 15 million members and is a significant part of the FIA. Second, KNAF, the Dutch motorsport organization, was even more direct telling a reporter that they plan to go to the FIA meeting about Mosley's position and vote for his resignation.

WIth the meeting coming up to decide Mosley's fate, the question is how many of the 222 organizations that make up the FIA can reasonably vote in his favor? [SkySports, WorldCarFans, BBC Sport]

Ecclestone went on to say that he doubted Nazi overtones were included in the video. "Knowing Max it might all be a bit of a joke rather than anything against Jewish people." That must be that famous British humor, eh? Like Ecclestone's own sexist remarks to Danica Patrick? But it's all about the racing. Right?

[Story: Telegraph, Photo: The F1 Blog]

When we think of Malta, a number of things spring to mind: our friend Dave's tale of finally getting off the Coast Guard boat and holing up in a Maltese hotel with a fifth of Jack; the awesome East Bay hardcore band Time in Malta, crosses and Sam Spade. When Bernie Ecclestone thinks of Malta, he sees a viewership mass larger than that of the United States. Oddly enough, Malta's only got a population of 400,214, while the US apparently has 10.66 million individual Formula One viewers. Bernie, you're a self-made man; a real rags-to-riches tale writ large. We should admire you. Why do you make it so easy for us to hate you? [Thanks to Eric for the tip.]

Bernie gets his numbers slightly wrong [Pitpass]

Related:
Bernie Makes the Dumb List! [Internal]

What we wouldn't give to be a wealthy gearhead. Anthony Maclean is just such a character, and y'know, sometimes, when these guys get bugs up their asses, they do phenomenal things. And Anthony has done a phenomenal thing. With the help of talented Italian craftsmen, Fiat and Bernie Ecclestone, of all people, he spearheaded an effort to recreate the gorgeous Lancia D50 Grand Prix car of the 1950s. We so need one of these you know, to go along with our Stratos rally car.

Recreation of the Lancia D50 Grand Prix Car [Classic Driver]

Related:
Rindt's Lotus 49 to Race Again [Internal]

Whoo! We're just chock full o' Bernie Ecclestone today! CNN/Money's posted Business 2.0's list of 2005's "101 Dumbest Moments in Business," and Little B's infamous quote on Danica Patrick's fourth-place at Indy made the list!

Quoth his infinitely self-righteous self: "Women should be all dressed in white, like all other domestic appliances."

Other auto-tangenital moments? The city of Detroit being mocked by our lowly hometown of Sacto via jumbotron at a Kings/Pistons game, the Mercedes cruise-control cockup and pro-automaker lobbyists running afoul of concerned scientists. [Thanks to Chris for the tip.]

101 Dumbest Moments in Business [CNN/Money]

Related:
Tribute to Bernie! [Internal]

When the USGP rolls into Indy this year, we wanna see everyone in the crowd wearing one of these...

[via GrandPrix.com]

Related:
Old News, But Still Funny: Ecclestone Loses Wheels [Internal]