Monthly Archives: September 2011

McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh has defended Lewis Hamilton in the aftermath of his collision with Felipe Massa in Singapore.

Pressed on Hamilton’s run of incidents this year Whitmarsh insisted that Lewis had done a great job to put the collision and subsquent penalty behind him, and recover to fifth place.

“When things don’t go well in the team it’s natural that it’s frustrating for all of us,” he said. “I think it would have been easy, half way or a third of the way into that race to say this is very frustrating, give up or whatever, and it’s clear that Lewis didn’t do that. He did some of the best overtakings, some fantastic driving, to get back into the points. I think he should be given credit for that.

“Various things have happened, the team can take some blame, and Lewis can take some blame. I think sometimes in motor racing things just don’t go your way, and you have those runs. It’s been a tough season. We’re still going to go out there and try and win five races, and Lewis will be doing that I’m sure.

“I think the way he dealt with the frustration that he would have felt, when you’re told that you’re back in 18^th/19^th place on a circuit like that, it’s deeply, deeply frustrating. So to be able to deal with and perform as well as he did is extraordinary, and he’s got to have some credit for that.

“None of us is perfect. The team’s made some mistakes, we’ll make more mistakes. We don’t want to, but that’s life. We’re pretty open and honest about things, we don’t conceal them, and that allows people to take a view on it and amplify it.

“As a team we’ve got to try and get better, Lewis has got to try and get better as a race driver, but I think he drove from very difficult circumstances, five times through the pitlane, to score valuable points and a strong fifth place like that was a great drive.”

Asked whether it was time for him to sit down and have a chat with Hamilton, Whitmarsh said: “Believe or not I sit down with Lewis quite frequently, and we talk about lots of things. I think now’s the time to reflect on what happened here. I think Lewis is incredibly self-critical. He’s done a fantastic job to recover the situation, but it was a very tough race for him.

“Lewis is a great driver. There are five races, I’m sure we’ll see some absolute classic Lewis drives in the remaining five races of the year.”

Macca captured in action by this blog a couple of years ago

Paul McCartney is to be the headline act at the Abu Dhabi GP, and will play on the Sunday night after the race.

It will be the former Beatle’s first ever appearance in the UAE.

It’s a massive coup for the organisers and without a doubt the biggest musical draw yet added to an F1 weekend, trumping the likes of Metallica’s upcoming appearance in India and The Who in Australia in 2009.

Others appearing will be Britney Spears (the 11th) and Incubus and The Cult (on the 12th).

Felipe Massa was furious after the Singapore GP after once again his race was compromised by a clash with Lewis Hamilton.

Massa picked up a puncture in the incident, but was able to recover to ninth place.

The two had already had a territorial dispute on the track during qualifying. After the race he had a brief confrontation with the British driver, who was conducting a TV interview at the time.

“My thoughts are again, as I told you yesterday, he cannot use his mind, even in qualifying, so you can imagine in the race – again,” said Massa of the collision. “What he did, he could have caused a big accident. And he’s paying for that. That’s the problem, he doesn’t understand, even paying for a problem, you know. Anyway, the problem is that I was in the middle and I had a puncture in my tyre, so I paid a lot.”

Massa added that his strategy had not worked out for him.

“I was not even lucky with the safety car, because I stopped and put the supersoft at that moment to gain lap time, but then after five laps, six laps, the safety came and I had the wrong tyres to finish the race.

“So I was not very lucky as well with the strategy, and also again something happened with a guy who did it how many times with me this year, so many times. As I said it’s important that the FIA is looking and penalising him all the time he is going in the car because he cannot be thinking about it.”

Team Lotus has extended its engine deal to 2013, the last year of the V8 engine formula.

In addition the team will have KERS for the first time next year on top of its existing deal with Red Bull Technology for the supply of gearboxes.

Like the other new teams Team Lotus has given up lap time this year due to lack of KERS, although not enough to have moved the green cars up the grid.

Team boss Tony Fernandes said: “Having established an incredibly good working partnership since the first days of our agreement we are absolutely delighted that Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology will be playing such an integral role in the ongoing development of our team until at least 2013, and then we are aiming to keep working together when the new rules are introduced.

“They are both passionate, dedicated teams of people with whom we have a growing relationship that is creating a number of exciting opportunities for us for the future. They share our vision for where we want to take our team, and we are very proud to have their power pushing us forward.

“Not only will we be able to build on everything we have learnt through working with Renault and Red Bull Technology in 2011, but we will now have the added benefit of KERS for next year, which really is a major step forward for our team. We have done the very best job we can this year but without that extra power we are always competing on a different level to the teams ahead, so to give our drivers that boost is a key element of helping us catch the cars ahead, and compete with them when we do so.”

Christian Horner added: “We’re very happy to extend the relationship between Red Bull Technology and Team Lotus, which already utilises our gearboxes, to include KERS for 2012 onwards. This endorses the joint venture between Renault Sport F1 and Red Bull Technology, which will continue to develop in the coming months. Hopefully this will enable Team Lotus to build on the significant progress they have already made this season.”

Fernando Alonso says he’s not disappointed to be only fifth on the grid in Singapore, and the Ferrari ace remains convinced that he has a good chance of making progress in the race.

Alonso believes that the fact that his car is kinder on its tyres than some of its rivals will pay dividends.

“I think I’m happy because it’s the place we deserve, it’s the maximum we can achieve so we have to be happy to exploit the potential of the car,” said the Spaniard. “But I think when you see the final times and you see that with one tenths we were third, that can change your race if you are third or fifth. Unfortunately we are the fifth one today, and tomorrow we will try to recover.

“The start will be important, the high degradation of the tyres will play a big role tomorrow, and also there is the possibility of safety cars, some people will come in, some people will stay out, if we make the right calls tomorrow in the right moments, the podium possibility is still there.”

Alonso said he hadn’t ruled out the possibility of winning in Singapore once again: “Winning the race is not out of the question, but we need some help from the others.

“We’ll see. It’s possible, yes. As I said I think there will be many different strategies in different parts of the race, there are the two compounds o the tyres and it’s not clear which one is better to use in the race. I’m sure that there will some mix of strategies. If you make the right one you recover places very quickly. As we saw this year with the KERS, DRS etc, it’s easy to overtake. I’m still confident.”

Lewis Hamilton has been left with a difficult task tomorrow after a puncture and a mistake in the McLaren garage spoiled his qualifying session.

Hamilton had a right rear puncture when he went out on supersofts late in Q2 in order to ensure that he made Q3. In fact he did not need to improve his time and the set was lost when he picked up the puncture.

In Q3 he was second after the first runs, but when he returned to the pits to take on fuel for his second run, the fuel did not go into the car. By the time the team realised, it was too late. By not going out, he was bumped down to fourth.

The only positive is that by not going out he saved a set of new supersofts, but the only other set of options he has are the tyres he qualified on and will thus have to start with. His strategy choices are rather limited – two stops with perhaps a bit of help from the safety car is the logical route.

“Quite an eventful one, but nonetheless it was still quite good, we were competitive,” said Hamilton. “We came in, tried to refuel the car, and they had a refuelling problem. We were running out of time, but by bit, and we just couldn’t get enough fuel in the car. We were too late to get going and unfortunately we weren’t able to get our second run.

“But these kinds of things happen. The team did the best job they could, but we’re not in a bad position. I think we probably could have been on the front row, I think we had a bit more time in the bag, which was good, so that’s positive for tomorrow.”

Hamilton thought the puncture was caused by a loose kerb bolt rather than debris from Kamui Kobayashi’s earlier crash.

“I’m not sure, I went over a kerb and then they said they lost pressure immediately, so it might have been on a kerb. There are lots of bolts hanging out of kerbs, that’s what they’ve been having problems with over the weekend, so maybe that’s it.”

In Q3 Hamilton also got involved in a dispute over track position with Felipe Massa: “The guys always try to back you up, and I was ready to get going, so I was trying to get past and he was blocking, and blocking and blocking. Eventually i got past. My lap was pretty good, but I was held up by Fernando, I was about a second behind Fernando at the end. I lost a little bit in my second sector. The pace is good, I feel good for tomorrow.

“From fourth I think we can only go forwards – I hope so. I think it’s really about looking after the tyres throughout the race.”

Hamilton said he was not upset about the fuelling glitch: “Well, this is racing, and there’s been lots of mistakes from me, lots of mistakes from… We’re a team and this kind of thing happens.”

Fernando Alonso was in an upbeat mood after finishing FP2 in Singapore in second place, just 0.2s shy of pacesetter Sebastian Vettel.

Ferrari had expected to be competitive at a track where the Spaniard has also done well in the past.

“I think we were more or less happy with the car all through the two sessions,” said Alonso. “But here it’s very difficult to exploit the potential of the car. There are only one or two laps when the tyres give you the maximum performance, plus there is always the traffic. On this occasion there were the red flags and the yellow flags.

“So it was a mix of many things happening during the laps, and I think the tyres can be a little bit mixed. I’m sure there are some quick guys that today they didn’t perform, because of all these factors, and there are some other guys that maybe they are up in the front and tomorrow they will struggle a little bit more. As I said, happy with the car, and the long run pace was OK.”

Tyres are a major talking point already and given that Ferraris relatively easy on its rubber, Alonso thinks the team could have an advantage.

“Normally here we should face high degradation of the tyres, which for us historically is a good thing, because our car seemed to take care about the tyres a little bit better than some other cars in the past races. So if there is high degradation in this track, maybe we can have an opportunity.”

Button's McLaren spent most of FP2 parked at Turn 14

Jenson Button has a lot of catching up to do after losing most of the second practice session in Singapore.

Button locked up and ran wide at Turn 14 early in the session. Although he didn’t hit anything, a gearbox glitch meant that he was not able to reverse out of trouble and get going again, so he had to abandon the car. He ran only 10 laps in that session, compared with the 33 of Sebastian Vettel, and admits he now has a lot of work to do in order to improve the car.

“I locked up into – I don’t know what corner it is, I don’t want to know any more – and just kept out of the barriers,” said Button. “I selected reverse and started to go back slowly and then I didn’t have any drive in reverse. I tried to turn the car around, but there wasn’t enough room.

“Then I tried to go backwards again, and there was no reverse. I’m guessing that something’s not working correctly. I didn’t do much running today, I only ran the prime tyre, and didn’t have a great set-up, so I was really disappointed not to do any more running, because I couldn’t improve it. We have some ideas for tomorrow for what we can do to the car. It’s only an hour, but we’ll make some good progress.”

Button said he learned a lot by studying what everyone else was doing, and he made some interesting observations about tyres.

“I was with my engineers watching everyone running round, and obviously we have the data from Lewis’s car. Sebastian and Red Bull are very fast, and Ferrari are fast over a long run as well.

“I think looking at the TV and looking at the times I think everyone is going to struggle with tyres in the race. It seems that people are overheating tyres even in three laps. You could say the tyres are maybe a little bit too soft for round here, but then again you don’t have the grip either on lap one. It’s going to be a tough race for everyone around here. We’re all in the same boat, we just have to make the best of what we have.”

Jean Alesi is convinced that his return to top flight racing with Lotus at the 2012 Indy 500 is the right decision.

The Frenchman, whose last GP was in Japan in 2001, joked that he wanted to do well because otherwise his family would “give me a lot of shit.”

Alesi says that testing in the T125 customer ‘track day’ car made him realise that he still wanted to drive single seaters. He has already experienced the Indy track in the Dallara simulator.

“It can be a surprise for a lot of my friends, because for a long time I’m not racing at this level,” said Alesi today. “Of course when I stopped F1 I did the DTM, and then I played around let’s say with Speedcar and last year the GT. But I had a lot of will inside of me to be back in a good and competitive car. But it was difficult to find something and to find the friends to talk about that.

“You cannot go around and say, ‘I would dream to be back in a single-seater,’ and then you don’t know what to do. After F1 there is not really something left for someone like me, because now I have age, I cannot go back to an F3 or other kind of single-seater.

“When I went back into what we call the T125, which is an F1 for customers, it made me really crazy about being back in a top racing car. Of course with Lotus behind me they said, ‘OK, if you want to do something good, we have Indianapolis.’

“Why not? And I said let me check how it is, and I checked carefully. It’s not something I do because I want absolutely to race, but I want really to be able to be competitive, I don’t want to look ridiculous because I have not only my fans, I have family, I have kids, and they will give me a lot of shit if I am  not doing well.

“I started already to go on the simulator, I started to do more mileage with the T125, and here we are.”

Alesi said he wasn’t put off by problems other ex-F1 drivers faced when trying Indycars.

“In my case it never crossed my thoughts. I went immediately to DTM and I had a fantastic time with Mercedes. To be honest when you have not a group behind you to go and to find the team and to look for a new world like that is difficult. The reason why it’s easier for me to think about Indianapolis is the company I belong to now is Lotus. Next year we are building an engine, so I’m really much more into the technical side than going there and saying in which team is there room?

“It’s going to be much more interesting because we’re going to have this V6 turbo soon. We’re going to test in December, and I will do it.”

Alesi insists that he will only do Indy and says he is working on his fitness – not because the cars are hard to drive, but to aid recovery from potential injury…