Monthly Archives: March 2010

Bruno Senna says that the Australian GP was a good weekend for the HRT team, despite his own early retirement. The Brazilian insists that the fact that Karun Chandhok made it to the finish is a boost that the team hadn’t expected from the early races of the year. In addition the cars were also pretty close to the Virgins on qualifying pace, something that hadn’t been anticipated after Bahrain. 

“We had some really silly hydraulic failure again, some small component that failed,” Senna told this blog. “But it’s very encouraging for us that Karun finished the race, because we shouldn’t expect to finish any of these first few races where we are just testing. My car has only done around 200kms, so not even a Grand Prix distance on the engine.”

Having started from the pitlane in Bahrain, Bruno did at least have his first experience of being on an F1 grid in Australia.

“I had a pretty decent start, and the competitive side always makes a difference. It’s always nice to be on the grid, even if it’s not the position you want to be in.

“I was quite careful into the first corner because everything was happening, I could see how things were transpiring so I decided to be a bit more careful, and I lost one of the positions I made on the start. There was no point, we are competing against ourselves, competing against our problems and other things, so it was better to try and finish the race.

“It’s a very tricky circuit in the wet, and grip levels were very low, and you could see everybody was struggling a little bit. Even though it was difficult I would have loved to have been a bit longer in the race and tried to put some pressure on somebody in front of me.”

Despite the disappointments, Bruno can see signs of progress.

“We’re getting there. It’s just a question of getting the car to work, because we haven’t had time to put the car on the rig and make a base set-up. The front and the rear are not connected! It becomes very inconsistent, it’s just a car that’s not been set-up yet, and only with time can we achieve that. For Europe, that’s when we can be looking at it.”

World Championships are won by picking up points on days when things don’t quite go right, and Fernando Alonso’s fourth place in Australia may prove to be very valuable as the season progresses.

The man himself noted that you can win a race and gain only seven points on a rival, whereas this time he gained 12 on Sebastian Vettel. For Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali, the result was certainly a relief.

“We need to go home very happy with the result of today, considering the situation that after the start we had one car on the gravel bed,” he said after the flag. “Felipe also had a little bit of a difficult weekend to have the right temperatures on the tyres to give the grip that we wanted.

“Having third and fourth places, and considering that the car that had two pole positions had two problems, we take on board all the points and I think that we can be really happy.

“To be honest with you at the first corner I thought, ‘One less’, and then let’s see what is going to happen. Considering the race of today, every corner we were there touching wood, as you say in English. It was really an incredible race, with the doubts of the strategy, with the doubts of the weather, with the doubts of the consistency of the tyres, and the fact that we knew we took a risk with doing just one stop. So a lot of things, and that’s the reason we are very happy.”

Domenicali said the decision not to stop for a second set of dry tyres was not an easy one. “We did some consideration on that to be honest, but considering the way the times were progressing we thought maybe we can take the risk of not doing a stop, and then after two or three laps then it was too late to change and defend the position, because otherwise we would have lost many more positions.”

Asked by this blog whether he enjoyed seeing the two Ferraris racing each other – as they did for much of the Australian race and rather forcibly at Turn One in Bahrain – Stefano said: “It’s like Hamilton and Button, I saw them side-by-side. Everyone has two cars – unless some teams want to drive with one car – and you have two good drivers, I think that has to be the nature of F1.”

Intriguingly Domenicali also admitted that the drivers were not allowed to race in the ‘final stint.’

“Not in the final stint, during the final stint we have let’s say an internal code of practice that unless there is an obvious situation, the [order] has to be respected. Otherwise you can attack, absolutely.”

It’s not clear when that call came into effect, given that strategies now call for a fewer stops. Indeed they both ran 49 laps from their single tyre stop to the flag…

As this blog had predicted on Friday, traffic proved to be a major factor in qualifying in Australia. And it was none other than Michael Schumacher who had the most public problem,  the German subsequently having words with Fernando Alonso he found the Ferrari driver in his way on his last timed lap.

Schumacher later played down the significance of the conversation, saying only that he’d asked Alonso whether he’d been told by the team that a quicker car was coming.

Nevertheless the incident has added a little extra edge to the relationship between the two men, as Alonso continues to try to step out of the shadow of his illustrious predecessor. Earlier this week the gossip in the paddock was that Fernando was unimpressed to find a visiting Michael enjoying the Ferrari catering. Both men are smart enough to forget any petty issues once on track, but nevertheless it was an intriguing incident.

“Basically on my last try I was slowed down by him,” said Schumacher. “I asked him whether the team told him, and he said no. In a way it’s difficult because he’d been on his in-lap and worrying for other things than maybe to watch the mirrors.

“But saying that we had this chat yesterday in the driver’s briefing, that this should be taken care about. And actually he was one of the main guys about it. So I just wanted to know whether the team had told him or not.

“I had a similar issue with Lewis. He was preparing his lap and blocking me in a way, which is not very nice. If you sit behind and you try your best – and that’s what I’m doing at this moment – and then you have somebody slowing down, it’s not very comfortable.”

Schumacher says he talked to FIA race director Charlie Whiting after the session to ascertain what is and what isn’t acceptable these days.

“I had a conversation with Charlie about this, because I need to now as well what is reference, what is the guidelines here, because the rules have changed a little bit to what they used to be, so I need to know what is it, what you’d be OK and what not.”

Mercedes boss Ross Brawn was sympathetic to his driver’s problem: “There’s a lot of traffic out there. I don’t think anyone was maliciously trying to stop anyone doing another lap, but trying to make a judgement call on how quick you need to go with a guy behind is not easy, I think there needs to be a certain tolerance, but people will also need reminding if they’ve spoiled someone’s lap. It was certainly a reasonable lap.”

Although Australia is particularly tight traffic will continue to be an issue this year. The real flash point could be the end of Q2. As Lewis Hamilton has discovered, with seven of 17 cars eliminated, that session can be fraught even for those with ostensibly quicker cars.

Lewis Hamilton had his loaned Mercedes impounded by Melbourne police after apparently doing burnouts as he left the Albert Park circuit on Friday night.

McLaren later issued a statement under Hamilton’s name – but without any reference to team or sponsors – in which he apologised for the incident.

Hamilton said: “This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police. What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”

The incident is sure to be a focus of media attention and put Hamilton under the media spotlight for the rest of the weekend.

Local police may have been a little jumpy because this morning a famous Melbourne restaurant owner was killed in a motorcycle accident just yards away from where Lewis was stopped.

Jenson Button says that traffic is a big issue in Melbourne after narrowly avoiding contact with Pedro de la Rosa in the second Friday session.

Button was on a quick lap when he came across the Sauber driver, and he had to change direction when the Spaniard tried to move out of the way. With 24 cars running and drivers often slowing at the end of the lap to create some space for their flying laps there were a few other near misses, and there could be further problems come qualifying. Indeed it’s very possible that a top driver could find themselves stuck, especially towards the end of Q2.

“It’s so busy on the track when all the cars are running,” said Button after the session. “And it’s difficult to get a gap, especially with the different speeds. Our car is working well round here, and it’s a positive in that way. The problem is that you catch a lot of cars. I had a lot of traffic, and in the last seven laps, I never got a clear lap once.

“Pedro at the end was in the way coming out of the quick left/right, which is obviously a very dangerous place. I’ve spoken to Pedro, we’ve talked about it, and it’s fine. I don’t think it’s so much down to the guys, a lot of it is down to the team letting us know who’s around, because it’s very difficult to see in these cars behind.”

Button finished the session in second place, 0.2s off team mate Lewis Hamilton. But it was clear that McLaren were pursuing a low fuel qualifying set-up, others were not.

“It’s only practice and I’m sure we’re lighter than some of the quick cars out there, the cars that were quick in Bahrain. But tomorrow we’ll see where we actually stand. It’s important for us to be doing what we are, to get a good balance with the car, and a good feeling with the car.

“I’ve been happy since lap one we’ve driven here. We’ve just been trying to tweak the balance of the car, but it’s been very difficult because of the tough conditions and also the traffic on the circuit. Both tyres are working well, so it’s positive.”

Bahrain was a hectic weekend for all three new teams, but unlike Lotus Virgin did not have the consolation of seeing its cars run the distance. That was a huge disappointment for founder and team principal John Booth, who is hoping that this weekend’s Australian GP will see an improvement.

“It was a fantastic feeling to be on the grid, but we were absolutely gutted to lose two cars inside 16 laps,” Booth told this blog. “I know other people broke down, but it’s no consolation, it really isn’t. We’re almost there, it’s so tantalising!”

Inevitably the team was on a steep learning curve all weekend: “The biggest problem was only having a five-day turnaround after the Barcelona test before the car went out, so we had boxes and suitcases arriving up until the Thursday night. We had two all-nighters getting the cars ready, so we didn’t really have time to take it all in. Once we got to qualifying we were sorted. Qualifying went like clockwork, and we were really pleased with the way we were getting organised.

“We don’t have any resources at home, the whole team is at the track. We’ve got someone answering the phone and one stores guy, that’s all we’ve got back at base, so that adds extra strain! I’ve got some great people here with a lot of F1 experience, including Nick [Wirth] of course, so that’s side of it has been made easier. We’ve got four complete sets of car bits for Melbourne, so we’re starting on the front foot. It should be much easier.”

Last year Richard Branson made a big splash in Oz when he arrived on the scene with Brawn, and Jenson Button won the race. This time his ambitions will have to be a little more modest. However a finish in what is usually a hectic race of high attrition might be the team’s best chance all year of getting any points…

Karun Chandhok says that the Australian GP will be the real start of his F1 career, following his frustrating debut for Hispania in Bahrain.

The Indian spent most of the Sakhir weekend hanging around waiting for his car to be readied, and when it finally was he ran its installation laps in qualifying. He then missed the buzz of being on the grid for the first time when he started the race from the pitlane, only to crash out.

“For me my first weekend is Melbourne,” Chandhok told this blog. “In Bahrain there’s been plenty of activity in the garage, but not much on the track! Over the weekend we did just four laps in qualy. We had fuel on board, we had the safety map for the engine because it was an installation run, and I wasn’t really in qualy mode.”

Both HRTs started from the pitlane, ostensibly because they had dropped out of parc ferme and thus been able to change parts and set-up. It also meant they didn’t have to make a proper start, something that has been saved for Melbourne.

“We changed a lot of stuff because we hadn’t run the car at all. In qualy I did installation laps and after installation laps you have to take the car and check it out. So we started from the pits because we’d changed some stuff on the car. For my car it was a no brainer. We staggered the cars, so Bruno went out before me. We didn’t even wait at the end of the pitlane, we went out just to get going.”

Alas Chandhok did only one flying lap before crashing out: “I just caught a bump. Obviously we’d done no set-up work, we hadn’t done anything, just a rollout. So the car was not set-up for the bumps. I found a bump that I didn’t know existed because I’d not driven the new part of the circuit more than four timed laps in qualy. It just hit a bump, the car bounced more than I expected, got on the exit kerb. I had no steering, I was on the plank, and I just spun. It just kissed the barrier.

“I wasn’t pushing, I just caught a bump at the wrong angle and it spat me off, just a legacy of not running the laps. It was just not doing enough mileage. We were not racing during the weekend, we were participating and we were testing.”

Chandhok knew the ‘old’ section of the Bahrain track, but he’ll have to learn Albert Park as well as trying to put some miles on the car. He did at least win a lot of fans over the Bahrain weekend, and his underdog status means that he will probably have a few people cheering this time…

Zoran Stefanovic’s ongoing attempts to get Stefan GP onto the F1 grid have been made rather harder by the end of his deal with Toyota Motorsport GmbH, which means that the Serbian outfit no longer has access to a completed car.

Stefan’s deal was pending gaining an entry for 2010, and having failed to do so, the original memorandum of understanding has lapsed. Stefanovic had been loaned a small office in TMG’s Cologne factory from which to work, and that has now been closed.

It’s believed that TMG has little faith in Stefanovic’s ability to put a viable commercial package together, and sources say that any kind of extension of the arrangement looks highly unlikely.

Suggestions that Stefan might yet get onto the 2010 entry list – by virtue of a deal with US F1 – would thus seem to be somewhat optimistic, although Bernie Ecclestone mischievously told this blog in Bahrain that such a scenario was not impossible.

“I think they’ve come together now with some ideas,” Ecclestone told me. “We have to find a way. They won’t be there for sure for the first two or three races, whether they’ll be there after that, we’ll have to see.”

Pressed on whether a late Stefan entry had any basis in reality Bernie implied that it might depend on the failure of another team: “I don’t know, I doubt it because it’s not fair to the others… But imagine one of these other people was in a little bit of a trouble?

“I’m happy to have America, and I’d be happy if we had Serbia in, it’s another country,” he told me. “The more countries, the better it is.”

However it’s already been made very clear by the FIA that whatever Ecclestone’s position on the matter, Stefan is not going to get in.

When asked by this blog about Stefan GP last weekend, Todt said: “Stefan GP was part of the tender process. They did not get an entry, and I understand during the course of the last month they changed the way of thinking, of getting into F1. They got involved with Toyota.

“But we have to follow a proper process, and if you want to be involved when you have a free position in the F1 championships, we need to make a tender. So that is what we are going to do in the coming days.”

Bernie’s support was one of the few assets Stefanovic seemed to have, but the FOM boss has backtracked a little on what he really said after meeting the Serbian Prime Minister and discussing potential government finance for the F1 team.   

“What they said then was they would support the team, which they would do. Whether they would pour money in… I don’t think so.”

Logic suggests that Stefan GP would be in a relatively strong position when the FIA conducted its 2011 entry process if it still had the Toyota TF110 chassis as a starting point. It’s not clear how the team would now create a car. However technical boss Mike Coughlan and his men have presumably gleaned a lot of knowledge from their access to the Toyota project.

With no ongoing commitment to Stefan, TMG is now open to offers from third parties. Last week the company formally announced that it was available to undertake design and development work for road and racing projects, and thus a new alliance with a prospective 2011 F1 entrant is not out of the question.

In a statement, TMG said that it has “restructured to provide specialist solutions ranging from complete car development to individual component testing or production, aimed at the automotive or engineering sectors and beyond. Around 200 experts provide a flexible portfolio of specialised services which for the first time is available to external clients, in addition to the worldwide Toyota family.”

Meanwhile Toyota would appear to face the small problem of retrieving two container loads of its pit and garage equipment which were sent on one-way sea freight trips on behalf of Stefan GP. One is currently in Bahrain, and the other in Kuala Lumpur…

The FIA has kicked off the selection process for the 13th (and any other) empty entry slots on the 2011 F1 grid with what it has named a ‘call for expressions of interest.’

Anyone who would like to enter is invited in the first instance to send €1000 to an FIA bank account, which will make them eligible for the next step.

The FIA has been wounded by the US F1 fiasco – and criticised heavily by the likes of Ferrari – and clearly wants to ensure that next time around, no mistakes are made.

Bizarrely though its schedule calls for a decision to be made by July, which is very late. Last year the three original candidates were notified on June 12 and still faced huge challenges in getting their cars ready, notwithstanding any financial hurdles. While it’s true that Lotus got the nod officially in September and still made the grid, it had begun the goundwork a lot earlier, and had been in close contact with the FIA since June.

As was announced when the 2010 entry list was issued, the FIA will also select at least one reserve. Logic suggests however that it would be almost impossible to get a project off the ground, and that any team would need six months or so notice that it is being upgraded to full entry status – unless like Stefan GP last month, it had access to someone else’s unused car.

The full statement reads as follows: “The FIA has decided to open a new selection process to identify a candidate team to fill any vacancy that may exist in the FIA Formula One World Championship at the start of the 2011 season.  The FIA may also identify one or more possible ‘reserve’ entrants to fill such vacancies.

“This selection process will be open to all candidates capable of participating in the Championship for 2011 and 2012. The overall long-term interests of the Championship will determine which candidates are selected. 

“The precise terms of this selection process, together with the applicable selection criteria, deadlines, legal requirements and other conditions, will be communicated to candidates who have registered a formal expression of interest with the FIA’s Secretariat before 5pm CET Thursday 15th April 2010, together with an administration fee of €1,000. 

“The application process will commence at that time with those who have registered an expression of interest before this deadline (late applicants will be admitted only at the FIA’s discretion).  This fee is non-refundable, although it will be offset against the application fee, which the FIA will require from those submitting full applications. 

“All applicants will be expected to undergo thorough due diligence.  By way of indication only, the applicable selection criteria will include:

(a) the technical ability and resources of the team;

(b) the ability of the team to raise and maintain sufficient funding to allow participation;

(c) the team’s experience and human resources;

(d) the FIA’s assessment of the value that the candidate may bring to the Championship as a whole. 

“The timing of this process will depend on the candidates’ responses.  However, by way of indication only, the FIA anticipates that full applications will need to be submitted by the end of June, followed by due diligence leading to a decision in July 2010.

“Note: The FIA hereby invites interested parties to send a formal expression of interest and administration fee to the FIA Secretariat (legal@fia.com / Bank: Crédit du Nord, 50 rue d’Anjou, 75008 Paris, IBAN CODE: FR76 3007 6020 2025 3680 0020 034, SWIFT CODE: NORDFRPP Account holder: FIA), together with full contact details and a letter introducing their candidacy.”

Michael Schumacher made a point of telling us after qualifying in Bahrain that by starting seventh he was matching his performance in his first Grand Prix at Spa in 1991.

After he said that this blog told him that we hoped the race would last longer, since Schumacher’s debut with Jordan was famously over after just one corner.

In the event he did get to the flag, albeit in sixth. That low-key showing was enough to cause some consternation amongst the media and public. But the fact is the guy is human, and a comeback win was always something of a long shot.

Three years is a long time, and it will take time for him to get fully back in the groove. Crucially, it’s clear that he finds the Mercedes lacking in front grip at the moment.

Outpaced by team mate Nico Rosberg in qualifying, Michael finished 3.9s behind his countryman, having set a marginally faster lap. It wasn’t too bad, and he had a smile on his face afterwards, and his overall analysis of the race was pretty astute.

“It was certainly better than my first race in ’91,” said Schumacher after the flag. “Lewis had a little [mistake] so Nico was able to pass him. He got back past at the pit stop, and that’s about it, that’s the action we’re going to have unfortunately with this kind of environment of race strategy. Anyway it was good fun, especially the beginning. And now we are going to work forward to catch up whoever’s in front of us.

“There are those new rules with the tyres that everybody has to cope with. I struggle a little bit with those, I have to say. But after three years not being there I guess it’s natural that you have to find your way into new bits and pieces. The team and myself have got to work on that.”

Michael said he had a close shave with his own team mate at the start: “I came off the line very good, I made up a position. It was a little bit tight with Nico and myself, I think we even had a little kiss! If it just stays among team mates, it’s OK, nothing serious. And then it was just straightforward.

“The only surprise was the tyres held up better than I expected, I expected a much worse scenario, the tyres giving up and sliding and all this.”

Intriguingly, Schumacher even found some positive words to say about his former team. “I think Ferrari and the Red Bull as we all expected have done a great job. I feel happy for Ferrari in particular after a tough year last year to be back on the road…”

Will he be so happy if the red cars continue to win? Time will tell.