Monthly Archives: August 2013

The FIA Foundation’s director general David Ward has resigned his post in order to challenge Jean Todt for the FIA Presidency.

In a statement Ward said: “After much careful thought I have decided to stand as a candidate in the 2013 FIA Presidential election. The election period begins in September and it will be necessary for me to approach FIA members to secure nominations. In these circumstances I think that the correct course of action is to resign.

“Election processes inevitably involve robust and lively debate, and whilst the Foundation is independent and there is no legal requirement for me to resign, I believe that it is in the best interests of the charity that I stand down now.”

Formerly an advisor to the Labour party, Ward has been involved with the FIA since 1996, in a variety of roles. An associate of former president Max Mosley, he is very well connected.

The FIA Foundation’s website reveals just how many hats he has been wearing of late: “He is the Executive Secretary of the independent Commission for Global Road Safety, a member of the Executive Board of the World Bank’s  Global Road Safety Facility, and represents the  FIA Foundation in the United Nations Road Safety  Collaboration and is the Co-Chair of its Vehicle Safety Project Group.

“He is also a Trustee of the International Road Assessment Programme. David is also involved in environmental issues. He is co-chairman of the Global Fuel Economy  Initiative and represents the FIA Foundation in the Partnership for Clean Fuels and Vehicles  managed by the UN Environment Programme.”

One close associate of Mosley told this blog earlier this year that he would love to see Max return and challenge Todt. Ward will now pick up that support and possibly a bit more as well…

Adrian Sutil has blamed Pastor Maldonado for the “stupid” move that saw the pair make contact at the Spa chicane.

Sutil was able to continue unharmed, but the Williams driver then slammed hard into Paul Di Resta, knocking the Force India driver out of the race. Maldonado later received a stop and go penalty from the stewards.

“You know with certain drivers you have to be a bit more cautious and careful,” Sutil told this writer. “Maldonado hit my left rear tyre, and I wasn’t sure if it was still OK. I think what he was trying to do was absolutely stupid. I don’t know, what can you say?

“If you are absolutely on the outside and there are three cars on the inside and you want to go inside to the pits, well you can’t. You have to sometimes think a little bit earlier. He almost took me out of the race, he took Paul out of the race, and Gutierrez was also close to getting out of the race.”

Meanwhile Di Resta said: “I don’t see myself at fault in any way, shape or form on that one. He wasn’t going to make the cone in the pits so I don’t know what he was trying to do, I don’t know where he was going.”

Lewis Hamilton was in something of a low key mood after the race at Spa having dropped from pole to third place – and  lost crucial points to both Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso in the title fight.

On the plus side he has moved ahead of Kimi Raikkonen. Nevertheless Hamilton clearly wasn’t happy about being overtaken first by Vettel and then Alonso. He didn’t have the speed with which to hold on to either of his rivals, just a few weeks after his impressive performance in Hungary.

“It’s difficult when people pull away from you, there’s nothing you can do about it,” said Hamilton. “I feel happy that we’ve extended our lead ahead of Ferrari, collectively me and Nico, and also I’m up to third. I’ve come and done what I planned to do, but it’s difficult when he pulls away at the rate he sometimes pulls away.”

Hamilton said that he’d struggled for straight line speed with the Spa aero package, and fears more of the same at Monza.

“It’s difficult to understand what we’ve missed out, but I think the guys will work over the next few days to try and understand where we were slower. But Eau Rouge was particularly slow for us, and down the straights. Maybe we’ll be able to unlock something before the next race, but if not then I’m hoping that Singapore onwards we’ll be much stronger.

“They’re more windy circuits, more high downforce circuits. When you come to these two circuits, this one and the next one, you get a downforce package and you’re kind of stuck with it. It either has or hasn’t worked. We may improve in the next race, or we may be in the same position.

“We won’t be any worse, that’s for sure. From then onwards we’ll have the higher downforce package that we had in the previous races, but it should be hopefully improved again. So I’m hoping that we’ll be more competitive from then on.”

Meanwhile regarding Vettel’s lead in the championship he said: “It’s a big, big gap, it’s a huge gap, it’s going to be tough to close that. I’m going to keep pushing.

“It’s going to be very, very tough, undoubtedly. He’s had a phenomenal car for a long, long time, and it still is phenomenally quick and does the job, so it’s a perfect package.

“We’ve had some really strong races but we’ve been there or thereabouts and competing with them, and we have finished ahead of them in the past, so it doesn’t meant that we can’t do that in the next races. But it’s getting closer and closer to the point where we really need to be finishing ahead every single time to close that gap.”

Worryingly for rivals Christian Horner says that Red Bull hadn’t expected Sebastian Vettel’s victory at Spa on Sunday to be so straightforward.

Despite that he insists that it’s still way too early to get too complacent about the German’s championship hopes.

“It’s still a long, long way to go,” said the team boss. “It’s great to start the second half of the season with a victory. But as we can see the form moves around from race to race and circuit to circuit, and there’s still an awfully long way to go. It was a really dominant win this afternoon, which was unexpected really.

“This race and the next one we were expecting to be our Achilles heel, as these tracks haven’t been historically very strong circuits for us, but to have the performance that we did today was very satisfying with Sebastian.”

Horner cautions that fortune could still conspire against Vettel.

“I think his confidence is obviously high, he’s driving extremely well. He’s put in a faultless performance this afternoon. But things can change very quickly, and we saw that last year. He managed to turn it around on Fernando. There’s still a long way to go, a lot of racing still to be done, and our approach is just to take it a step at a time and get the best out of each weekend that we possibly can.

“Nothing’s impossible. Twenty five points for a victory, a couple of DNFs and somebody puts a run together, you can be on the back foot again. We’ve put ourselves into a strong position. Our focus is very much on we’ll move from Spa now to Monza, and from there on to the international races. We’ll just take it one step at a time.”

Meanwhile Horner said that Vettel had got it just right when he made his crucial first lap pass on Lewis Hamilton in Belgium.

“I think Sebastian had worked it out in his own mind. He didn’t have a great start, but he went to the left hand side and focussed very much on getting a clean exit out of La Source, and a good run through Eau Rouge.

“I think with the gearing that we ran if he hadn’t made the pass at that point it would have been very difficult for him to overtake Lewis, so he used his KERS where he needed to, and timed it right, and grabbed his one opportunity. As soon as he’d made his pass around the outside he then just got his head down and got on with it.

“He had tremendous pace in the early laps, and of course what we don’t know with the modern way of racing in F1 is how high or severe the degradation is going to be. You can burn up your tyres quite quickly and then see heavy degradation in later laps.

“It was a matter then of making sure that we eked out a gap, but also made sure that we had the range with the tyres as well. So it’s that fine balance between how hard you push or how much do you protect your tyres to get the range. I think we just about managed to get the balance right with that.”

Ferrari’s Stefano Domenicali says that he hopes to confirm Sauber’s 2014 customer powertrain deal in the near future.

While there has never been any question of Sauber going anywhere else the deal has not been confirmed due to obvious commercial reasons, given the massive financial commitment the Swiss team will have to make when it signs a multi-year deal.

It’s a similar situation with Lotus, whose expected Renault deal has yet to be inked.

“The thing is progressing very well,” said Domenicali. “We want to keep working with Sauber, as you know, hopefully very soon we will clarify formally the situation with them. That’s the intention.” Asked if it would be by Monza, he added: “I hope so.”

Meanwhile Domenicali made light of the fact that Mercedes and Renault have undertaken some PR by revealing details of their 2014 powertrains, while Ferrari has not.

“On the engine side we believe that what has been put out from our competitor [Renault] is an interesting marketing exercise, but I can guarantee to you that the pictures I have seen are not the engine that will be in the cars next year. If you want we can bet! I’m joking, but you understand what I want to say.

“So we are going ahead with our programme. It’s tight for everyone. From the engineering point of view it’s a really great challenge, and so that is the approach that Maranello, our people, are having in front of this project.”

Stefano Domenicali says that Ferrari has to keep pushing to improve the F138 in order to maintain its championship challenge.

Asked if it was important to appease Fernando Alonso with an upturn in form in Belgium, Domenicali said it was a boost for the whole team.

“I think it was important not only for Fernando, who deserved a quick car, but also for the team, because they are working very hard to make sure that we are able to fight up to the end for the championship,” he said. “We had a very bad July for many reasons, but I’m very pleased to see we are back on track, but it’s not enough.

“We need another step with regard to the performance of the car, and this is what I’m expecting from my people, and this is what honestly at home everyone is trying to do as best as they can. This is really the target that we have.

“For us it’s important to keep back again on this trace, let’s say, of improving the car. We saw Red Bull has for sure improved, and we need to stay there, because we can beat them by improving the car better than them, and being there if an opportunity can come, because they may have a problem. Don’t forget last year.”

Domencali said the improvement in form was not just down to upgrades introduced for low downforce Spa: “Some of them will carry through for the next races, some others were obviously focussed with the package for this race, but at least I’m pleased to see that the car was back to a normal improvement, in terms of performance, that was the most important thing for us.”

Meanwhile Domenicali confirmed that the gap between Alonso and leader Vettel opened up in the final stint because the Spaniard backed off to save the car.

“At a certain point, because the gap was always there around 10-11 seconds, and in our view there was nothing to gain and there was nothing to protect from behind we just considered not to destroy the rhythm and preserve car in order to avoid any possible damages. We saw that Vettel was still pushing, and it was a little bit strange from our perspective, but we were let’s say just managing the position.”