Adam Cooper's F1 Blog

Williams has issued a statement about today’s garage fire in Spain, confirming that four team members were hurt.

The team also thanked other paddock personnel for their help in fighting the fire, which started when a fuel rig appeared to explode.

The statement reads: After today’s Spanish Grand Prix a fire occurred in the team’s garage whichriginated from the fuel area.

Four team personnel were injured in the incident and subsequently taken to the medical centre. Three are now receiving treatment at local hospitals for their injuries, while the fourth has been released. The team will monitor their condition and ensure they receive the best possible care.

The team, the fire services and the police are working together to determine the root cause of the fire and an update statement will be released in due course.

The Williams F1 Team would like to thank all of the teams and the FIA for their support in today’s incident.

Lewis Hamilton says he won’t give up despite being forced to start the Spanish GP from the back of the grid.

Hamilton was quoted in a team statement issued late this evening.

“This is such a disappointment,” said Hamilton. “Today’s qualifying session was one of the best I’ve ever driven – the whole car was just rolling so smoothly – it felt fantastic. The team had done a fantastic job to bring the updates here this weekend – so I want to say a huge thank-you to all the men and women at the MTC for working day and night to get all the new components here this weekend.

“But, on my slowing-down lap, my engineers told me to stop on the track, and I didn’t know why. Later, to hear that I’d been excluded from qualifying, was of course extremely disappointing.

“But, now, looking ahead to tomorrow, I think it’s clear that it’s going to be an incredibly tough race for us. Even so, as always, I’ll never give up and I’ll give it everything I’ve got. It would mean so much to me to get a good result here in Spain – it’s such a pleasure to come here and the support I get is amazing.

“As I always say, and as I always do, whatever grid position I start a Grand Prix from, I’ll always race my heart out.”

Meanwhile Martin Whitmarsh said: “[Lewis] was unable to finish his slow-down lap – and, since we accept that the stewards didn’t agree with our interpretation of force majeure, we didn’t contest their decision to penalise him.

“Our aim is therefore now to maximise the points we can score tomorrow, and you may rest assured that both Jenson and Lewis will approach the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix with their customary combative ambition.”

Mark Webber was caught out in qualifying in Spain when his Red Bull team decided that his first lap in Q2 was going to be good enough to keep him in the top 10.

However when others did second runs and went faster, the Aussie found himself bumped down to 12^th as he sat in the pits. He has subsequently gained a place from the Lewis Hamilton penalty, but he was convinced that he had the pace to qualify second – which ultimately of course became pole.

After qualifying his sense of humour remained intact.

“We had a pretty straightforward session,” he said. “Everything went to plan until everyone went too quick, basically! Also the track got massively quick. In Q2 how much the track was improving was something that caught us out. Ultimately my first lap in Q2 was very competitive, P2 to Lewis. That one tenth of a second was enough to cost us a front row.

“As soon as I arrived back they said, ‘Mark, fantastic lap, that’s it, get ready for Q3. Then with about 60 seconds to go I started to shit myself, and that was it.

“We got exposed because of the track conditions. If you look how the track changed in China, Melbourne and Malaysia in Q2, it hasn’t been so severe. Here it was massive and that’s what bit us in the arse.”

Webber was also handicapped by the fact that on his sole Q2 lap he carried enough fuel for a second lap, in case he hit traffic and needed to carry on round. He didn’t need it, and without that extra weight, he would have been safe.

“I nailed the first lap and ultimately I had too much fuel to do that lap,” he told this writer.

He is still hopeful of a good race on Sunday.

“Obviously the grid position is not very nice, around here especially.  It’s like Bahrain in terms of overtaking, but we can still do well from there. The guys have done such a bloody good job all weekend, the car’s been good. OK, we still didn’t have the perfect balance in qualifying. We had to still keep improving the car throughout qualifying, and we were looking to do that into Q3, but we never got there.”

Lewis Hamilton has been excluded from qualifying in Spain and put to the back of the grid.

Pastor Maldonado and Fernando Alonso thus start on the front row.

Drivers are obliged to get back to the pits after the end of qualifying, but Hamilton had stopped after Turn 8.

The team argued that it was force majeure after it a mechanic had not put enough fuel in the car in the pits prior to the last run, which is why they were forced to ask Lewis to stop to save fuel.

He had 1.3 litres of fuel in the car which rivals insist was not enough to get back to the pits and provide a sample.

Martin Whitmarsh explained earlier: “It was a technical problem that happened in the garage that didn’t impede the performance of the car in any way. We stopped the car when it had 1.3 litres of fuel left in the car.”

The stewards rejected the force majeure excuse, saying that the amount of fuel in the car was under the complete control of the competitor.

The team was deemed to have breached article 6.6.2 of the technical regulations.

Lewis Hamilton’s Barcelona pole is under threat after he stopped on his slowing down lap at the end of Q3.

Hamilton did the same after getting pole in Montreal in 2010 because the team was concerned that would not have enough fuel left to provide a sample if he had driven back to parc ferme.

After that the FIA told the teams that they couldn’t stop unless they could provide evidence of a valid reason, such as a car problem. And obviously the team would also have to demonstrate that there was enough fuel on board to have got back in normal circumstances.

The idea was to stop teams routinely cutting it fine on fuel loads and stopping on track at the end of qualifying.

Martin Whitmarsh says that Hamilton was told to stop today because of a technical issue. He says that Lewis still had 1.3 litres in the car, and asked by this writer he insisted that it was enough to have got back and provide a sample. Teams are expected to have a litre left for testing although there is a little leeway on that.

Other paddock sources insist that 1.3 clearly would not have been enough to have got back and provided the sample.

“There was enough fuel to take a fuel sample,” said Whitmarsh. “We stopped the car and we’re now talking to the stewards about there. There was I think 1.3 litres of fuel taken out of the car.

“I think the regulations are that you have to do that lap unless there’s a force majeure, and I think that’s the discussion that will probably happen.”

Asked if he could explain why Hamilton had stopped, he said: “Not in detail, but there was a technical problem. It’s not for me to decide but I would obviously believe that to be a force majeure, but it’s obviously for the stewards to decide.”

The suggestion is that the force majeure simply relates to a mistake being made in terms of how much fuel went into the car. Whitmarsh said: “It was a technical problem that happened in the garage that didn’t impede the performance of the car in any way. We stopped the car when it had 1.3 litres of fuel left in the car.”

Sebastian Vettel will have a choice of starting from eighth place in Barcelona on either hard or soft tyres after failing to record a flying lap time in Q3.

The German soon realised that he didn’t have the pace to qualify at the front, and had to use up an extra set of soft tyres in Q2 to make it into Q3.

“I think qualifying was very different, to be honest,” said Vettel. “I think we did the best we could. In Q2 the first run wasn’t very strong so then I had to go again and I had no more new soft tyres for the last run in Q3.

“We decided to save some of the tyres, which we think is important for tomorrow, but we didn’t have the pace. I think the lap for pole position and to be honest all of the top five are pretty impressive from our point of view, so we didn’t have that speed in the car.

“We did go out and try to get a place against Nico, but he had a very strong lap on a used set so we decided to abort. Now we have a free choice of tyres tomorrow. Let’s see what we can come up with, and we’ll go from there.”

Vettel admitted that the car wasn’t as good as it had been in the morning.

“We were a bit surprised by how much of a step the others could do. I think in the end we were more or less where we expected to be, but surely it did feel a bit better in practice, so we were not able to make that step which everyone else seemed to be able to make.

“There’s something to gain there. But surely you have to respect the fact that they were simply quicker. If it’s within a tenth or two you can always argue a little bit here, a little bit there, but there was a bit more missing than that. Nevertheless I’m quite confident for the race. We have a couple of new sets which did prove successful for some people previously this year, so hopefully it’s our turn tomorrow.

“I hope for a good start. It’s a long way to Turn One, and it’s obviously good when you are a little bit further back. If you are in the front, you are a bit more exposed. Let’s see what we can do. It’s a long race, a lot of pit stops i imagine, so let’s see what happens.”

Regarding the role of tyre management on Sunday, he said: “It’s always important, especially round here. Look at last year, quite a lot of stops, so I’m not expecting anything else for tomorrow. That’s why I think tyres will be important, we’ve got a couple of new sets.”

Jenson Button may have been fastest on the soft tyre in Barcelona on Friday but the McLaren driver was more concerned about his struggles to get the hard tyre to work.

He couldn’t get temperature into the fronts when running on primes, although his team mate Lewis Hamilton seemed to have less of an issue.

Button obviously has to use primes to get out of Q1 without resorting to options, and also for a stint in the race.

“It was a tough afternoon,” said Button. “I’m still trying to understand the tyres. The car still seems to be working well on the softer of the two tyres. But on the hard tyre I just can’t get it working, I just can’t get the temperature into the tyre. I don’t know why that is, but it’s something that we need to sort out for Sunday.

“Lewis seemed quicker on the prime than he was on the option. It’s frustrating. It’s normally the other way around, because I don’t like movement so much, so the prime would normally be a good tyre for me.

“When it works, it works well, and when it doesn’t, it’s obviously dreadful, so we’ve got to try and get it in the right area.

“My new tyre run on the soft tyre, the car felt pretty good. There are still some improvements that I feel can help us. I did a good lap time on that tyre, and if we can sort out our problems on the prime, I think we can be quite competitive this weekend.”

Button said he was very happy with the new nose and other aero updates

“The car is working well, and I think the updates do work. I think aerodynamically we have a strong car. We’ve just got to make sure the four things touching the road are working correctly, and if they are, we can show how good our car is.”

The F1 teams remain split on whether the annual Young Driver test should take place at the end of the season in Abu Dhabi or at Silverstone in the summer, with the field likely to be split between the two choices.

The traditional November date has fallen out of favour with some teams because of the log jam of races at the end of the season, with Singapore followed by three double headers in Japan/Korea, India/Abu Dhabi, and Austin/Brazil.

However others insist that the point of the test is to run guys who have finished their seasons, while also pointing out that they have to factor engine use into the equation, and that running at the end of the year – albeit with the last two races still to come – is a better solution.

Red Bull’s Adrian Newey is adamant that Abu Dhabi is the best option: “If you go back to the essence of what the test is meant to be for, which is to develop young drivers, it’s down to are you best off evaluating prospective new young drivers in the middle of the season or at the end of the season.

“Personally, I would have thought at the end of the season, because they’ve finished their championship, you can see how they’ve gone, they’ve got a bit more experience. To drop them into a Formula One car in the middle of the season and then hoof them out again and tell them to wait until another eight months before you drive it again – I’m not sure of the value of that.”

“Our plan at McLaren at the moment is to test in Abu Dhabi,” said McLaren’s Sam Michael. “We’re not testing at Silverstone for all those reasons. Engines are a significant factor. If you want to test at the end of the year, you have so many part-mileage engines with the race team that all have a little bit of mileage on them so you can effectively do it for free, in terms of your race engines. If you try and do that in the middle of the year, you can’t use your race engines so you have to prepare a special test engine.”

Intriguingly Pirelli boss Paul Hembery says that the Silverstone date remains provisional:  “To be honest, officially, we’ve only had indications from the teams testing in Abu Dhabi. Formally, we haven’t had any indication about Silverstone yet, although verbally we did have a conversation, so we would be keen to know if Silverstone is going to happen or not.”

Fernando Alonso believes that Ferrari has made progress with the revisions to its F2012, although he says it will impossible to judge where the car stands relative to the opposition until qualifying.

Alonso was fastest in FP1 but didn’t get a clean lap on new option tyres in FP2, which explains why he was down in 14^th. Other drivers found a significant improvement on their first lap on the soft compound.

“We didn’t improve as much as other cars,” said the Spaniard. “Some others improved by between 1-1.5s with the soft. I was not able, but I had traffic on the first lap, then I slowed for the second, and then when I pushed on the third I had traffic as well.

“I think I can improve a little bit for tomorrow with a clean lap and be a little bit closer to this advantage gain that everybody seems to find with the soft. In a way we felt a little bit more comfortable with the hard tyres today.”

Alonso is confident that the car is better: “Yesterday we said that we are trying to recover some of the gap, and the first step is here in Barcelona. I’m confident that we did the job. The car or the updates that we introduced today, the first numbers are positive. We need to look more in detail, but everything looks as expected. But for sure it’s not as some of the expectations that we read last week.”

However he insisted that only on Saturday will the true picture become apparent.

“We have to wait for tomorrow, especially for qualifying – how much we struggle tomorrow. Our task is to go into Q3, and it has been quite tough for us in China, Bahrain and Malaysia, so tomorrow hopefully we can see some positive signs with this. Going into Q3 a little bit more relaxed will be a good sign. If we go to Q3 with a lot of problems or we don’t go into Q3 at all it will be more or less the same situation as before.

“Tomorrow will be a good answer on that. Today it’s too early to say, because we don’t know what the others are doing. On Fridays it’s impossible to analyse.”

Mark Webber says he’s happy with the latest updates at Red Bull after the first day of running in Barcelona.

Webber was only seventh in FP2, some 0.666s off pacesetter Jenson Button, but he said the overall times meant little. He also had a brief run through a gravel trap.

“I’m pretty happy actually,” said Webber. “We got a lot of mileage in, apart from the driver running off the track and getting a bit of gravel rash! You get one timed lap on the option, basically. Everyone gets one timed lap, so that’s the lap times that everyone sees on the time sheet at the end of the day.

“There’s a huge amount of work that goes on around that. That’s what we’ve got to pull together tonight and work on tomorrow. There’s some fast cars out there. McLaren are quick, Ferrari are quick, we’re quick, Mercedes aren’t hanging around, and Renault as well.”

Webber has been on pole in Barcelona in the past, and says there’s no substitute for starting on the front.

“It’s nice to finish the first lap in a good position. Obviously I capitalised on pole in 2010, I didn’t capitalise on it last year. I think the winner has generally come from the top three for the last thousand years. You need to be at the front at the end of the first lap for sure, and then just go from there, and people will just be covering each other off at pit stops, to be honest.

“I’m not sure how many stops the race will be, but the tyres this morning weren’t particularly impressive. I think that qualifying could be compromised to look at how many sets of tyres you have for the race.”