Monthly Archives: June 2012

Michael Schumacher secured the first podium of his comeback with a hard won third place in Valencia.

He survived a scare after the race when he was investigated for using DRS in a yellow flag zone. However the stewards decreed that he had slowed enough, and after some deliberation it was confirmed that there was no penalty.

Schumacher started only 12th and had a difficult first stint on the prime tyres. The key to his good result was a late change to fresh tyres, 16 laps from the end.

Shadowed by Mark Webber, who made a similar call, he caught and passed several drivers who were struggling on old rubber, gaining also from a collision between Lewis Hamilton and Pastor Maldonado.

He admitted he didn’t realise how much progress he had made in the closing laps.

“Certainly I wasn’t aware I was going in the direction of a podium,” he said. “Even crossing the line I wasn’t aware at that stage. But, being pretty heavily involved for most of the race in some kind of battling and then having Webber all the time on my tail and needing to fight forward but needing to pay attention to the back, that was very exciting. But that’s what I’m here for – to be excited and those guys got me excited, no doubt. And hearing finally the message P3 – yeah, that’s a sweet finish.

“It is a beautiful feeling, not only being on the podium but the way it has happened. It was not at all expected. All weekend, I predicted this to be a difficult one for us and it started to be difficult yesterday in qualifying, mainly because of my own mistakes and to recover from where we are, getting to third position is just awesome.

“The team and myself have been criticised here and there, particularly lately, and this is the best way to answer criticism, to go back and deliver as we did today, and therefore I’m proud, thankful and very excited.”

Schumacher said strategy had ultimately worked in his favour.

“We obviously had a late decision converting from a one-stop to a two-stop strategy, which meant we had good tyres towards the end of the race, when other people either did a one or an early two-stop strategy, and therefore struggled by the end because they had no tyres left.”

Pastor Maldonado has been given a 20s penalty by the FIA stewards after his collision with Lewis Hamilton.

He was deemed to have ‘failed to rejoin the track in a safe manner.’

No action has been taken against Hamilton, who was deemed to be the innocent party in the encounter.

Maldonado now drops from 10th to 12th place, with Bruno Senna moving up to take the position.

Some might regard it as escaping lightly, but the 20s is regarded as the post race equivalent of a drive through.

Senna had a drive through in the race while two drivers who did not finish have been given costly grid penalties for Silverstone, with Jean-Eric Vergne picking up 10 for his clash with Heikki Kovalainen, and Kamui Kobayashi getting five for his bump with Felipe Massa.

Marussia confirmed this morning that Timo Glock is still not well enough to race this afternoon, which means that the European GP will have only 23 starters.

Although the team does not have a qualified official reserve driver it does have ‘arrangements’ with other teams to borrow someone if necessary – McLaren’s Gary Paffett is an obvious candidate – but because Glock appeared to be OK prior to FP3 it became too late to substitute another driver.

A team statement said: “Further to the medical problem which prevented Timo Glock from participating in yesterday’s qualifying session for the European Grand Prix in Valencia, the Marussia F1 Team can confirm that Timo is unable to compete in today’s race.

“Timo received medical guidance yesterday afternoon and his symptoms suggest that he is suffering from an intestinal infection. He has been advised that it would be unwise for him to race given the severity of the complaint and that he should focus instead on recuperating.

“Timo spent the evening resting at his hotel in Valencia and is in good spirits. He will return home later today.”

The Marussia team will have to wait until Sunday morning to see if Timo Glock is fit enough to start the European GP.

The German was suffering with a stomach bug all weekend, and having run in FP3, he did not feel well enough to take part in qualifying.

Despite not participating in that session he can still start, having been deemed to have met the 107% rule in practice by the stewards. However he has to be passed fit by the FIA’s Dr Gary Hartstein.

Marussia explained: “Timo has been fighting a stomach bug since Thursday. He felt well enough to take part in yesterday’s Free Practice sessions and had seemed to be improving. This morning, after Free Practice 3, he started to feel unwell again. It is clear that at this time, he is not sufficiently well to take part in a demanding Qualifying session and needs to recuperate further.

“Timo and the Team will now seek further medical guidance this afternoon. Until such time as this guidance has been received, no decisions will be reached regarding tomorrow’s race. A further statement will be issued on Sunday morning.”

It’s unusual for drivers to race having not taken part in qualifying, but for example it happened with Fernando Alonso at the 2010 Monaco GP, when chassis damage from his morning accident meant that he could not take part in the afternoon session.

Lewis Hamilton was clearly relieved to have qualified as high as second in Valencia having struggled badly with his set-up on Friday.

He was also fortunate to escape a penalty after being blamed by Mercedes for holding up Nico Rosberg and being called to the stewards.

Hamilton was only 14th in FP2 as he suffered more than most with front brake locking as he tried to hone the car. However everything came together on Saturday afternoon whe he claimed second.

“I’ve really struggled all weekend with setup,” said Hamilton. “During the year I’ve not really struggled too much to get the right balance but particularly today, and yesterday was a real struggle. But you have those weekends sometimes. You can’t always get it perfect.

“We made some changes going into qualifying that I was just praying would work. And they seemed to have worked, so I was quite happy with the balance that I had. And I was able to get out the lap when you need it, just like Sebastian did. But obviously not as quick as his.

“But to be able to go out and do those single laps and make sure you maximise the potential of what you have – that really does satisfy me, so I’m happy with where we are.”

Hamilton expects Lotus to provide tough competition on Sunday.

“Generally, I think, you look at the grid, because it’s so hot, the Lotus cars look massively competitive. I think they’re going to be the ones to watch out for tomorrow. I’m sure the Ferraris will be very quick on their long runs as well. Who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, we just have to look after our tyres in these tricky conditions.

“It’s very interesting to see so many of the teams improving and continuing to bring updates and to see the pack close up. I think it’s great to see all the teams so competitive. It makes it even more challenging for us as individuals and also for the teams to up their game. And also for us drivers to make sure we’re on top of our game when we’re out there.”

Romain Grosjean is the driver best placed to make it eight winners from eight races on Sunday in Valencia, although he has three cars ahead to deal with first.

Nevertheless he says he’s satisfied to be starting fourth, despite failing to follow up on his form in Q2, when he was fastest.

Grosjean starts immediately ahead of Lotus team mate Kimi Raikkonen, the black and gold cars having looked good over race runs during the weekend.

“It’s not too bad, it was a good lap, both drivers got the best of the car in qualy,” said Grosjean. “We have got some problems that we never had in the season during the qualy lap, but never mind, we are on the two first rows. It’s very important for us and it means that we can achieve a podium or better.

“You never know until the race starts, but basically our set-up is good for the race, we know that. The car is normally pretty good when it’s hot. But nothing is written before.”

Regarding his chances of winning from fourth, Grosjean said: “I think we can have a podium, it’s our true objective. To win we need to get everything perfect, but why not?”

Jenson Button was at a loss to explain his disappointing performance in Valencia qualifying after he found himself with no front grip on his crucial final run in Q3.

Button ended up in ninth, while team mate Lewis Hamilton jumped up to second on his last lap.

“For Q3 I put a new set of tyres on,” said Jenson. “And as soon as I exited the pits I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t know what’s going on here, I’ve got no front grip at all.’ I don’t understand. It’s frustrating, because I was really happy with the car all day.

“The first run in Q3 I was second quickest on an old set of tyres. You expect to go quicker on a new set, but I didn’t, I just had no front grip, locking up the fronts everywhere, and that’s something we really worked on overnight from yesterday to today and we improved the car a lot, which is really good.

“But you get to Q3, and I’ve suddenly got no front grip at all. It’s difficult to understand where that’s gone. I don’t think it’s a circuit issue, I don’t think it changed that much so it’s difficult to work out why suddenly I didn’t have any front end.”

Button is not very hopeful about being able to make up ground on Sunday.

“It’s going to be difficult, it’s not a place that’s famous for its fantastic overtaking manoeuvres! There’s only one DRS zone as well this year. I think we’re pretty much stuck with what we’ve got at the moment.”

Lewis Hamilton came to Valencia on a high after his victory in Canada, but Friday proved to be a frustrating day for the McLaren man as he struggled to find a good set-up.

Hamilton was eighth in FP1 and then 14th in FP2, albeit only 0.8s off pacesetter Sebastian Vettel even with his troubles.

Although he had a tough time Lewis was in a surprisingly cheerful mood after the session, and indication of his generally relaxed state of mind in recent weeks.

“I didn’t have a very good day today, just a bit of a struggle really,” said Hamilton. “I tried a couple of different things with my tyres and it didn’t work. But I feel quite confident that I can make some changes again to get me back into a good position for tomorrow. I don’t know why there’s such a big gap on Jenson’s side, I don’t know what problems he was having, but on my side we were having a lot of problems.

“I haven’t been happy at all with the car today, but you can’t always get it right. I think this year we’ve been pretty good at getting the balance right throughout practice on Friday and having nice, smooth days, but today has not been one of those days. I think I know what the problem is. I’ve just now made all the changes and I’m quite confident that overnight we’ll hopefully rectify the issues we had today.”

From the outside it was clear that Hamilton was having a few problems under braking, although he was far from the only driver with such issues.

“A lot of locking, a lot of flat spots. I flat spotted almost every single tyre I had today, apart from the rears. Hopefully tomorrow it will be better, as I said.

“If it doesn’t work with our set-up changes tomorrow, then I don’t know why it locks up. But I think I have an understanding of why at the moment.”

Sebastian Vettel topped the times in FP2 in Valencia on Friday, but the German played down the significance on a day when many of the usual front runners were well down the order.

Always fast at the Spanish street track, Vettel has won the last two races here from pole position.

“We have some new bits but I think lap times are not allowing us to have a fair conclusion yet,” said the RBR driver. “For us it was important to have a clean practice, a clean day today with no troubles or problems. I’m quite happy with what we did. I think conditions might change quite a bit until Sunday again. It was surprisingly cool today.

“It’s still warm but I think Sunday could be quite a bit hotter, so it could make a difference. But for now I think we’ve collected some quiet good data, we’ll see now whether we made a step or not.”

Asked whether qualifying or race preparation was more important, he said: “I think on Saturday everyone is targeting to put the car as high up as possible and ideally put it on pole. And on Sunday obviously you want to win the race.
“So it’s pretty straightforward. It’s very close these days, as we’ve seen a lot of things can happen, with different strategies etc. I think it’s not entirely clear yet what is the ideal strategy for Sunday. We’ll hopefully make another step tomorrow and see where we are in terms of pace and how competitive we are.

“The most important thing on Friday is to get a straight day, a good day of testing. It’s pretty tricky here. The track gets used once a year, and this morning it was very dusty and very slippery, a lot of wind, this afternoon it was a lot more consistent. I don’t know what other people did, but for us it was important to stick to the programme, which we succeeded at.”

The McLaren guys have been working hard to improve the stops

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael insists that the team potentially now has the fastest pit stops in the field after overcoming some problems earlier in the season.

However that improved performance wasn’t obvious in Montreal where Lewis Hamilton in particular was slow getting away from the pits due to a clutch issue.

“Pit stops are definitely better,” said Michael. “What we’ve done is work a lot on equipment, and also the people. We brought a lot of things like retained wheel nuts, quick release jacks, a traffic light system, so really for McLaren for the whole lot we’ve been on an upward curve on equipment to get it right. We’ve changed a lot of people around as well. We’ve been fixed now for the last three races.

“We’re now averaging 2.5s pit stops through practice. We think we can average here sub 3s, which is better than any other team in the pit lane. The pace that we showed in Montreal in the pit stops supports that. We had a few issues with the clutch release, getting away, but even with all the issues we had our fastest pit lane times were only 0.2s off the quickest.

“If everything had gone right in Montreal we would have averaged 0.7s quicker than everybody. There’s no doubt that the guys have improved significantly, and their confidence is building.”