Former McLaren Race Team Manager, Phil Kerr visits SimDeck

This week I was privileged to have none other than best selling author and former Joint Managing Director and Formula One Team Director at McLaren Racing, and F1 Constructor Association negotiator, Phil Kerr visit here at SimDeck HQ.

In Formula One there are typically two influential groups of people, the drivers and those who manage the companies that employ the drivers and build the cars. Phil is from the later group who in his extensive career with Formula One, along with Max Mosely and Bernie Ecclestone created the Formula Motorsports series the world knows today.

His early work along with his best friend Bruce McLaren, created the McLaren Race team, that in later years went onto be the team that saw Lewis Hamilton win the 2008 Formula One Championship.

So as you can see, this was not just any visitor, but a fellow countryman who is probably the most influential Kiwi in the history of Formula One Management.

If you are looking for a book to read this summer, you simply must get a copy of Phil’s autobiography. It is a fascinating story of enduring friendships, trust, managing adversity, wheeling and dealing at an international level, business development ….. oh and I should say, managing petty officials!

Click on the book cover for further information.

Perfect Christmas reading for business owners, those wanting inspiration to find and follow their dreams and a fascinating story in motorsports history.

For three weeks it was the highest selling book on Amazon in the UK!!!

Once upon a time……. The departure of Phil’s best friend, Bruce McLaren on a flight to London in March 1958 from an airfield, 10 minutes from SimDeck HQ, was the beginning of a career, that neither Phil nor Bruce could imagine in their wildest dreams, or the influence they would both have in the annuals of Formula One and motorsports history.

It was Bruce McLaren’s tragic death on this Goodwood circuit in 1970 that would inhindsight be the turning point that would eventually lead to Phil’s departure from Formula One, McLaren Race Team and the UK in Dec 1975.

An era that started in the early 50’s here in Auckland drew to a close as he boarded the plane at Heathrow and reflected on an incredible successful journey and headed for the land of the long white cloud.

Phil Kerr will be guest speaker at the Auckland ICT Cluster December function, where I will have the distinquished pleasure of interviewing Phil on some poignant career moments, plus we will have the SimDeck Formula Simulators.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
Massey University, e-centre, Gate 5, Oaklands Road, Albany, Auckland.

SimDeck has the solution to replace Montreal loosing the F1 GP

Reported in the Montreal Gazette was the depressing news for the city’s motorsports fraternity that the F1 GP will not be returning….

F1’s Ecclestone ‘ unreasonable,’ mayor decides

Montreal has lost its “trendy, worldly, sexy” image along with the Grand Prix of Canada, but the race is already on to replace the international event and the millions of tourist dollars it brought to the city.

“We made a reasonable proposal, it was rejected, and now we turn the page and try to do something else,” said Tourism Montreal president Charles Lapointe, whose organization had offered to spend $5 million per year over the next five years to keep the race in Montreal.

Arguing that Formula One CEO Bernie Ecclestone’s business plan was “unreasonable,” Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay said yesterday that negotiations he undertook last month to save the race failed.

Montreal, the provincial and federal governments and Tourism Montreal had offered Ecclestone $20 million for 2009, increasing to $24 million in 2013 – a total of $110.5 million over five years.

The city would also pay 75 per cent of the first $10 million in race profits and 25 per cent of profits above that to Ecclestone, but he turned them down, the local negotiators said.

So here is a brigft spark of an idea why don’t we set up the world’s largest virtual grand prix based on full life size actual F1 race car simulators. That sort of money will buy a massive number of our full size replica F1 race cars. The software backend has already been developed.

Every adult in the city would be able to race in our full blown car system complete with motion platform . Remember that computer gaming is the world’s largest entertainment industry and combine this with the world’s largest spectator sport and you have SimDeck Virtual Grand Prix. Imagine the uniqueness of such an event, the flood of people if would draw, and not just for a few days, …oh and the noise of 100 full size race sim cars (or more) racing at high speed not just in Montreal but on TV and and every gamers computer station around the globe.
The world’s most environmentally friendly motorsports in the world could just have been established. You might ask on a serious note…is this technically feasible… a short YES YES YES.

The advertisers would love it with all the virtual bill board advertising along with car branding.
Backers, venture capitalists, and JV partners please right to sales[at]simdeck.com