Category Archives: F1 News

Fernando Alonso was one of the stars of the Hungarian GP, the Spaniard making a set of soft tyres last for the final 32 laps of the race and holding off Lewis Hamilton at the flag.

Along with leaders Rosberg, Bottas and Vettel he lost out by not making it into the pits when the first safety car came out, but he alone managed to recover to the podium.

“It means a lot,” said Alonso. “Obviously we had some tough races recently, and to see one Ferrari again on the podium is the best news. We took the opportunity after a difficult race, with a wet start and then some difficult decisions to make around the safety cars – if we pitted or not. Unfortunately at the first safety car we went a little bit out of position, because the safety car went out and we were in the last corners, so we missed the opportunity to stop.

“We stopped the lap afterwards and we lost a couple of places. We have to attack, we have to overtake a couple of people and just 10 laps to the end we were discussing if we stop and secure the fourth place that we really needed, those points, so just tried to defend the position as much as you can and maybe finish in fourth, so at the end it’s the same result but at least you have the chance to fight for the podium positions.

“So we were in that position 10 laps to the end and at the end we chose the right thing – stay out, defend the position as best we could and secure this second place that, for sure, it tastes like a victory for us at the moment.

“I don’t think that is one of the best in my career. It has been a good and a complex race, let’s say, to execute and perform – because there were some difficulties around the race that make the 70 laps not straight forward. You just need to make decisions during the race and all of them were, together with the team, and I think we did the best we could.”

Alonso admitted that circumstances had helped him.

“This circuit didn’t change much our performance, our position but today we had a little bit of a chaotic race and we took every opportunity we had in front of us. I think cars from behind also had some issues, with Rosberg, with Hamilton yesterday, with the issues in qualifying, we get this position for free. Vettel had a problem in the last corner today, the Force India [crashed]. We had some cars out of the way let’s say and we took benefit from this and we secured some very strong points for the team.”

Niki Lauda has made it clear that he supports Lewis Hamilton’s decision to ignore the instruction to move over for Nico Rosberg in Hungary.

Lauda admitted that the call had resulted from “panic” on the pit wall, but agreed that Rosberg was never really close enough to justify any help from Hamilton.

“Mercedes was used to being in the lead and race against each other,” said Lauda. “This race, out of the safety car in the beginning and the wet conditions, was a completely different race, so every minute you had to decide something different. In this stress the team told Lewis he should let Nico by, he’s on softer tyres, and has to come in anyway.

“But in Lewis’s position it was clear that if he had been in the DRS position, Nico one second behind, for sure he would have let him by. But Nico never got that close, so therefore I do understand that Lewis said, ‘Why? Why should I stop now in the middle of the circuit to let my team colleague by?’

“He’s fighting for the championship anyway. From my point of view, Lewis was right, and why the call came, this happened out of the panic, and we had to make up for what we were losing. Ricciardo was the best today, unbelievable drive, Red Bull, enormous car performance under these conditions. Alonso did a perfect job to go for the right strategy for second place, and the Mercedes team was fighting all that. So the call was unnecessary afterwards, but it was made. So what. And Lewis ignored it, and finished third. So looking backwards, nothing wrong, from my point of view.

“We want both to have the same material and they can race each other the way they want. I think is important that Lewis said, ‘No, I’m racing my team mate anyway.’ So he did the right thing.”

Lauda said he understood why both drivers were unhappy afterwards: “It’s completely normal from drivers that they want to be one in front of the other, so the reaction of the drivers for me is completely normal. For sure Nico was not happy with the passing at the end of the straight, where Lewis stayed on his line, which is normal.

“This happened in Bahrain 10 times one way or the other. I think when everything comes down, there was nothing wrong. It was good racing, this is for me the most important thing, between the Mercedes guys and the rest.”

Lewis Hamilton has made it clear that he was surprised that Mercedes asked him to move over for Nico Rosberg in Hungary.

The pair came together on track while running different strategies, with the German on soft tyres and planning on making one more stop and Hamilton committed to running to the end on mediums. The team decided that Rosberg would benefit by being let past, but Hamilton refused to comply. He ultimately beat Rosberg to the flag by a tiny margin.

After the race team chiefs Niki Lauda and Toto Wolff said they understood why he hadn’t followed the instruction, but the saga has inevitably created some tension in the camp, and for Hamilton it had clearly taking the edge off a superb drive from the pitlane to the podium.

“You know, I was in the same race as him,” said Hamilton. “Just because he had one more stop than me doesn’t mean I wasn’t in the same race as him. And naturally if I’d have let him past, he would have had the opportunity to pull away, and when he does pit, he’s going to come back and overtake me, so I was very, very shocked that the team would ask me to do that, to be able to better his position.

“But to be honest, he didn’t get close enough to overtake but I was never going to lift off and lost ground to Fernando or Daniel to enable him to have a better race. So that was a bit strange. But we’ve got a long way to go, moving forwards still and, as I said, thankfully I’m still in that battle, so, I hope we can come away stronger.”

Regarding his own race, he said: “I was just pushing as hard as I could to see if I could get as high as I could. Obviously this is damage limitation. On one hand I’m very grateful to have been able to get through with all the difficulties I’ve had this weekend, obviously yesterday and the first lap.

“I can’t believe how things have gone, but to be able to come back through – the safety cars obviously helped quite a lot, but naturally I look at the fact that I had the pace this weekend and I lost quite a lot of opportunistic points. Still, we’re there in the fight, fortunately I stayed ahead of my team mate, which means I’m still there or thereabouts.”

Despite the controversy, Hamilton said the result was still a big boost.

“I can’t express to you the pain that you feel when you have issues such as the issues that I’ve had in the last couple of races. It’s very, very difficult to swallow, and, to come back the next day and get the right balance between not attacking too much, and not making mistakes, all these different things. Obviously when you’re at the back you’re having to push way past the limit than perhaps you would off pole position or in the top five.

“So the fact that I’m managed to come back through obviously is a showing of just how great this car is and how great this team is – but ultimately we’ve worked, I’ve worked hard for it so it feels probably better than perhaps a win, gliding from the lead. It feels definitely much more satisfying when you come back through. And, as I said, to be ahead and to win the fight is really encouraging.”

Former Mercedes DTM technical director Gerhard Ungar has now officially joined Caterham, as first predicted here on July 8.

Ungar will work alongside Christijan Albers in a Newey-style ‘chief technical officer’ role, although his job title has yet to be determined. John Iley remains technical director. Ungar is in Hungary with Caterham, although he’s not wearing team gear.

Ungar is highly regarded within the sport. He first joined AMG at the end of 1987. After AMG morphed into HWA he became its chairman in 2009, and then CEO in 2012. He was also responsible for the F3 engine programme, which means that he is well known to several current F1 drivers, including Lewis Hamilton.

His departure was announced in May after Mercedes experienced a difficult start to the DTM season.

Lewis Hamilton and Kevin Magnussen will both be forced to start from the pitlane in Hungary after their respective teams were forced to build up their cars around the spare chassis overnight, which leads to an automatic penalty.

Hamilton’s Mercedes was obviously badly damaged by the fuel fire that took hold early in Q1, and Paddy Lowe confirmed to this writer that the change will be made. McLaren discovered that Magnussen’s car had suffered both gearbox and chassis damage in his impact with the tyre wall at the start of Q3.

Eric Boullier said: “The track conditions at that particular corner took everyone by surprise, and Kevin was powerless to avoid locking the wheels and hitting the wall. Of course, the good news is that he’s safe and well; the bad news is that his chassis and gearbox are quite significantly damaged, and both will need to be changed this evening.”

Bernie Ecclestone chaired a meeting of F1 team bosses today and discussed ways of improving the show, and one of the ideas mooted was success ballast – as used in the DTM and many other touring car and GT championships.

In the DTM all examples of the winning marque carry extra weight at the next race, but a more sophisticated driver specific version was discussed, with for example 20kgs for the winner, 18kgs for second, and so on.

Apparently the idea was well received by team bosses as a way of equalising the field – quite what race fans will make of it, coming after double points for the final round, remains to be seen…

Meanwhile Ecclestone also made it cleear that he is no fan of cost control measures, and suggested that testing be unrestricted in the future – something that could lead to massive budget increases.

Lewis Hamilton was left with no qualifying time in Hungary after a fuel leak caused a major fire early in Q1.

Although he officially qualified 21st Hamilton will probably start from the pitlane in a new car built up around the spare chassis.

“I baled out of that timed lap that I was doing,” said Hamilton. “And I was like I’ll try and do the second lap, and then something happened to the brakes, something on the brake system failed, so I had to engage some settings to try and correct it, and then the engine just died.

“I thought I’m right next to the pit entry, so I’ll roll back and at least get them to fix it. And then I looked in my mirrors and it was on fire. I was hoping to get it in neutral so I could push it back or something, and no luck. It was on fire, but I was still trying to get it to the garage, I was like hopefully I can roll to the garage, maybe they can do something, and then they said stop, stop, stop. I tried to stop and the brakes aren’t working, the cars kind of rolling forward, the engine’s kind of sometimes working or not working, so it’s all pretty bad…”

Regarding his prospects for Sunday, he said: “This is a track that you can’t really overtake on, I think I’ll struggle to get into the top 10 tomorrow, or at least the top five. I’ll probably leave here more than 20 points behind Nico, but there are still races to go.”

Flavio Briatore will apparently be invited by Bernie Ecclestone to be part of a group looking at ways of improving the F1 show.

Ecclestone invited team bosses to a meeting in Hungary today where the sport’s future – put into focus by the small crowd at Hockenheim – was the main subject on the agenda.

One of the team representatives present mentioned Briatore as man who knows about such things, and Ecclestone was keen on the idea, much to the surprise of some of the other team bosses.

Ecclestone is understood to have suggested forming a ‘working group’ which will consist of several teams, believed to include Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and Force India, plus himself and Briatore. It remains to be seen how this new body fits in with the existing Strategy Group.

Speaking to Sky F1 after the meeting Christian Horner said: “The teams get together and they talk about things. The drivers have got to be the heroes. Thereafter the cars should be secondary to that, whether its chassis or engine. As a package the cars should be secondary to the drivers.

“The drivers, we need to give more access to, and the fans have got to be able to engage with their heroes. When I was growing up, Nigel Mansell was my hero. I think it’s important in today’s world that there’s more and better access to the drivers, and a bit more behind the scenes.”

The FIA’s regular Friday team personnel press conference was enlivened when a clearly angry Christian Horner told the assembled media that questions about the rights and wrongs of F1 going to Russia and Azerbaijan should be directed to Jean Todt and Bernie Ecclestone.

Only Claire Williams, Monisha Kaltenborn and Vijya Mallya were prepared to comment about a question on Russia – all saying in essence that it was was up to the FIA – while Horner, Marco Mattiacci and Eric Boullier all preferred not to comment.

When a further question was asked about Azerbaijan, with a punchline of whether they would follow Bernie Ecclestone to North Korea, only Mallya was willing to reply.

“I think we’re racing people, more popularly known as petrolheads,” he said. “We come here to race and to win and to enjoy it. The governance is an international organisation called the FIA. It is up to the FIA to decide where the sport is conducted. I don’t think that the teams, individual participants in the sport, should be holding their individual positions to determine social political issues that you have raised. The FIA is perfectly competent to determine where Formula One should be staged and not be staged.

“You know, it’s a not question of following Bernie. I think the question has been wrongly framed. It’s the commercial rights holder, it’s the FIA. We race where they stage the events. It’s as simple as that.”
When the follow-up question cited issues in Azerbaijan, Horner snapped.

“This is becoming a very depressing press conference as we’re only focusing on the negativities. Look, there’s a calendar that comes out in October or November. We all have a choice whether we enter the World Championship or not. All the people sitting here are racers and they’re here because they’re passionate about the sport and they want to compete. When we sign up for that championship, we put our faith and trust in the promoter and the FIA and we will attend those races unless they deem it unnecessary for us to be there.

“All of you will be at those races, or the vast majority of you will be at those races and why, because you’re either passionate about the sport or because you earn a living out of covering the sport and I think it’s wrong to make Formula One a political statement or subject when we are a sport. We should be talking about the drivers in these conferences, we should be talking about the spectacular racing that happened between our drivers and his [Mattiacci’s] driver at the last Grand Prix.

“We should be talking about what a great race it was for Lewis Hamilton to come through the grid, yet all we do is focus on the negatives and it has to be said, it gets pretty boring for us to sit up here and field these questions. So how about asking some questions about what’s going to happen in the race on Sunday, what’s going to happen in qualifying tomorrow, because if you’ve got these questions, please point them at Mr Todt or Mr Ecclestone rather than the teams.”

While Horner does have a point clearly the Russian issue in particular will not go away, and it could become a matter for the teams and their sponsors as the October date draws closer.

This writer did indeed ask Bernie about Russia last week, and his views are here: https://adamcooperf1.com/2014/07/21/bernie-ecclestone-no-doubts-over-russian-gp/