After a long summer break, Formula One cars are back in action at Spanish Valencia street circuit and journalists are abuzz at what was happening during the summer break. But besides the spectacular stories, perhaps the weirdest one was made by Intel-backed BMW Sauber F1 team.
The bigwigs at BMW corporate headquarters at Munich decided that the corporation will not stay in F1, and announced the news to the world. The people they forgot to inform was team's number one driver, tied to BMW Sauber F1 team with a multi-million euro contract.
According to F1-Live website, Polish F1 star Robert Kubica learned of his sacking by Internet media, who proved to be faster even than corporate e-mail systems: "I woke up in the morning, did some running, opened the internet and then saw it, then I received an email with the decision."
If this wasn't an epic tech fail by a major corporation, we don't know what is. But then again, BMW is just a car manufacturer from Germany, nothing special.
The second driver, Nick Heidfeld had more luck than Robert, learning of the decision from team's PR manager.
All in all, the ultimate truth about corporate businesses turned true -play it safe and lose. Last year, BMW Sauber was heavily backed by Dell and Intel and fought for the title, but the corporate bigwigs decided to quit the title challenge by mid-year [after scoring their firstvictory], claiming that 2009 will be "their year". Even by year's end, Robert Kubica had the chance to pip Lewis Hamilton and win the worldtitle, but executive decision stand and BMW perhaps lost their onlyshot at winning the title.
With radical rule changes for 2009, even the installation of Albert2, a Xeon-based super-computer in team's center in Hinwill, Switzerland didn't exactly help, since BMW's 2009 is more looking to be a year from hell, scoring only eight points in the competition.
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