Adam Cooper F1

The team behind the acclaimed F1 documentary 1: Life on the Limit are using Kickstarter to fund a new project about the life and career of Emerson Fittipaldi.

The idea for The Name is Fittipaldi emerged after the Brazilian proved to be such an interesting interviewee for the earlier film, which focussed on the development of safety in the sport over the past decades.

Announcing the new project the producers, Flat-Out Films and Diamond Docs, said it “tells the story of one of history’s most charismatic, influential and successful racing drivers. It’s a character study, a personal tale about the meteoric rise of a sporting legend, a story about family, fearlessness and brilliance, success and failure, and ultimately about life and death. It will be cinematic, charismatic, tense and inspiring.”

The team of director/editor Paul Crowder, writer Mark Monroe and producer Michael Shevloff have made several successful documentaries, including Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who. Monroe was also the writer of The Cove, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, while Crowder is currently working on an officially-sanctioned Beatles film with Rush director Ron Howard.

Shevloff said: “It’s being made with Emerson’s full cooperation and is going to be a very different film to ‘1’. It’s going to be a much more intimate character piece that really gets inside the mind of a champion. It’s a film that covers Emerson’s two careers, three wives and ‘nine lives’. We have already started the research and writing, and are now aiming to start our interview process this summer.”

Fittipaldi is providing home movies and other footage he has collected over the years, but the filmmakers are keen to hear from anyone who might have material.

More information on how to get involved can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/219637747/the-name-is-fittipaldi

The film also has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Name-is-Fittipaldi/408202839364426?fref=ts

Nico Rosberg finally turned the tables on Lewis Hamilton by winning from pole in Spain, albeit on a day when things didn’t go perfectly for the World Championship leader.

Rosberg said his only frustration was that Sebastian Vettel wasn’t able to hang on to second and take more points from Hamilton.

“Just a fantastic weekend,” he said. “Everything worked out on Saturday and Sunday. It all came together. I’m very happy and that’s it.

“At one point I thought maybe, who knows, maybe Sebastian can keep Lewis behind, which on the one side isn’t good for the team, but in terms of my points… It’s always a compromise, for my points that would have been better.

“But that’s the way it is. Seven points [gained on Hamilton] is better than nothing and a fantastic team result today to be first and second, especially after the two-and-a half-week break. Everybody brought upgrades here but still we’re dominating in such a way, and that’s fantastic to see and more than at the last race.”

Rosberg was adamant that he had put earlier disappointments behind him.

“Bahrain was a long time ago and I’m not really thinking about the past too much. Bahrain was an exciting race, which gave me a boost, and the only thing that was wrong as the result – and I wanted to change that for this weekend. Now the result came as well so I’m very happy with that today. We’re just going to enjoy this win as an individual race. It’s great to close up seven points to Lewis, great to go to Monaco next – I really like that track – that’s it. Early days.”

Gene Haas made his first visit to a 2015 Grand Prix in Barcelona as plans for his team to enter F1 next year continue to move on apace.

Haas’s prospects have clearly been boosted by the improvement in the form of the Ferrari power unit that his team will use, although he says he always confident that would happen.

“I’ve been in racing long enough to know that Ferrari is not going to be kept down!,” he told this writer. “We kind of knew that going into it that Ferrari was certainly going to pick up the pace.

“We are very grateful to Ferrari, we hope that we offer something to Ferrari too, because I think there’s no plan for how new teams start. Over the last five years four teams started and I don’t think too many of them survived. There’s obviously a need for some way of starting teams. This is just another variation on that.”

As its plans progress and the new team gains credibility more drivers are indicating an interest – and Haas agrees that bigger names are likely to join that list as time goes by.

“You can’t really sign up a driver until you get near the end of the season. Because you don’t really know who’s going to be available. We’re certainly not going to start off with a novice driver that has no experience in F1. The timing is what it is. It’s going to be sometime during the end of the summer, when people start moving around.

“As time goes on and people see the organisation building up that’s going to lead to them taking us seriously, and we obviously need serious drivers. I think there’s still a lot of scepticism as to whether we’ll even be there or not, but as we get closer and closer it’s up to us to defuse that and say, ‘Hey, we’re coming.’”

Carlos Sainz produced a superb performance in qualifying in Barcelona to secure fifth place on the grid – just ahead of STR team mate Max Verstappen.

Toro Rosso has been strong all weekend, but even Sainz himself was surprised to have ended Q3 in such a good position.

“It’s amazing, and at my home track,” he said. “It’s something very special, what I’m going through now, and I’m very happy with it. Now obviously all the focus on tomorrow, and if it’s not a good race tomorrow then everyone will forget about quali. So we need to keep the focus, keep the head down, because we have a good chance to score points tomorrow and we have to make it happen.

“I think it’s just the track characteristics are suiting much better our car. There are much more long corners, downforce corners, and we know we have the downforce, we have the package, and when you have these kinds of corners, the car just works. I’m very happy with what they are doing because the package from the first race has been amazing, and it’s working everywhere.”

Asked if he could challenge the cars immediately ahead he said: “Probably not, because it’s a Williams and a Ferrari, and we need to be honest with ourselves here. Our qualifying performance has always been a bit better than our race, except for Malaysia.

“But we’re going to push, we’re going to try our best, and then if a Ferrari flies past, a Ferrari flies past. You have to focus on your race performance and your tyre management, and let’s see where we finish at the end.”