Category Archives: F1 News

Michael Schumacher’s management says that his family “strongly believes” in prospects for his recovery, while stressing that there is nothing new to report about his progress as the wake-up process continues.

In the absence of any official word of late there has been ongoing speculation in the media about his situation.

“Michael’s family would like to again express their sincere thanks for the continuous sympathy coming from all over the world,” read a statement. “The good wishes they receive help the family and, we are convinced they also help Michael, who still is in a waking up process.

“As often in such situations no day is like the next. The family is thankful for one’s understanding that they would not wish to disclose medical details in order to protect Michael’s privacy. As assured from the beginning we will continue to communicate any decisive new information on Michael’s health state. We are aware that the wake up phase can take a long time.

“The family continues to strongly believe in Michael’s recovery and place all their trust in the doctors’, nurses’ and nursing auxiliaries’ team. The important thing is not the speed of the recovery but that Michael’s heal process progresses in a continuous and controlled way.”

Renault took advantage of “promotional event” running by Lotus in Jerez to put some miles on the latest updates introduced since the manufacturer hit problems in the earlier official test at the same venue.

Lotus, who skipped that session, had two 100kms days available under the FIA sporting regulations. The first, on Friday, was wasted when the E22 did only one lap. However, the maximum distance was achieved on Saturday.

Renault Sport F1 confirmed: “The basic objectives were to support the Lotus program with a power unit configuration and operation to allow systems’ checks and basic car operation. The latest PU configuration was deployed without any reliability problems, allowing Lotus to complete the maximum amount of km permitted on a filming day.

“Updates developed in the dyno at Viry during and post-Jerez test were run. Updates included minor hardware changes, software bug fixes and calibration improvements. Preparations at the factory are ongoing for the two Bahrain tests.”

The manufacturer also noted: “We should point out that no development was pursued during the filming day as stipulated in the sporting regs, rather upgrades trialled in the dyno in Viry were validated. As usual, everyone is committed to providing performance and reliability required for normal PU operation and a fully competitive 2014 season.”

Meanwhile a Lotus spokesman said: “We finished our running before 4pm on Saturday (due to the mileage restrictions imposed on a Promotional Event). Both the chassis and the new Renault power unit ran without any major problems. Pastor settled in very quickly and is already fitting into the team nicely. The car went together well and the design and build quality is another step up on the successful E21 of 2013, we are looking forward to a full testing programme in Bahrain next week where we will start to see the potential of the new package.”

Christian Horner has downplayed the problems suffered by Red Bull at the recent Jerez test as the team tries to make up for lost time.

The new RB10 completed just 21 laps, due to a combination of Renault and car issues, leaving Adrian Newey and his men with a lot of catching up to do.

“There’s a few things we needed to tighten up on our side but nothing major,” he told Sky Sports. “And obviously Renault have some issues that they are tidying up as well. But these cars are so complicated that even small problems can cause big failures.”

Horner conceded that the Bahrain test will be critical.

“Obviously, there’s quite a bit to do but there’s still a fair bit of time before the first race. The Bahrain test next week is an important test, and we are working very hard at both Renault and Milton Keynes.

“We don’t want another test like Jerez, but that’s what testing is for, you sort your problems out so as not to have them at the races.”

Nico Rosberg has done more mileage than any other driver in a 2014 car thus far, the German having topped the laps completed charts at Jerez last week.

He already enjoyed a head start after he shook down the Mercedes during a promotional day at Silverstone the previous Friday.

“Definitely I think it’s a surprise to do so many laps,” said Rosberg. “It’s such a mission with this new technology and everything, and really to get this reliability so early on is really a positive. But we’ve got no idea where we are in terms of pace and all that. So it’s really early days.

“We expected it to be a couple of tough days here in Jerez, and it did start quite tough for us, but the team did a good job to turn it around, and now we’ve really got the kilometres going, and lots of laps, and I’m very pleased with that. That was the most important thing for this test here, just to do a lot of laps, because it’s laps that will show you where are the problems with the car, what are the weaknesses we need to focus on, and by doing all these laps we really learned a lot of things now, and that’s a good thing.

“Driving wise it’s all pretty similar. It’s a bit of a pity because the cars are slower, obviously we always prefer to go faster, so that’s not quite as nice. Other than that the big difference is the engine, the low rpm, the sound, and the gears that you use and all that. From then it’s just how much you need to use your brain to understand all the technology, the fuel saving, the ERS, how to use that. That’s going to be quite complicated.”

Rosberg would have run even more laps had he not handed the W05 to Lewis Hamilton for the last part of Friday’s running, although he says he didn’t mind sharing.

“I always want to drive all day every day, that’s clear, but it’s always been like that in the team, that we need to try and level things out in testing, that each driver gets a the same opportunity to do a similar amount of laps, and things like that. I know that because I had the same issue with Michael, where my car was breaking down all the time, and he managed to do loads of laps. And he jumped out and let me have a few laps too. That’s normal for us as a team.”

Ross Brawn said today that he’s retiring from F1 – and insisted that he was not joking.

Brawn was speaking at a fishing event in Scotland, where he was invited to mark the traditional February 1st opening of the River Dee by making the first cast.

His comments would seem to put an end to speculation that he could return to the sport with McLaren or Honda.

“What they didn’t realise when I was invited here was they had a scoop because the world’s press was trying to find out if I was retiring or not,” Brawn was reported as saying by The Daily Telegraph. “This is the busiest time of the year for Formula One and I said I would come along and open the River Dee. If they had put two and two together they would have realised I was definitely retiring.

“I’m retiring. It’s not tongue in cheek I’m going to take a year to enjoy the fishing and then see what life brings. I’m looking forward to it but I’ve got no other plans.

“It’s a fantastic honour to do the ceremonial opening of the River Dee. It’s a river I’ve never had a chance to fish before because it is predominantly known as a spring river and in the spring I’m normally trying to sort out a Formula One car in Spain. So February, March and April are never good months for me to go fishing – but this year is different having stopped.”

It can’t have been easy for Daniel Ricciardo to maintain his trademark smile over the past week in Jerez, given the problems with the Red Bull RB10.

Nevertheless despite realising that the upcoming season might not be the one he had hoped for the Aussie remains upbeat about the prospects of his team turning things around.

“Obviously now it’s good to have a bit of a break before Bahrain, take it all back to the factory and figure it out, and look forward to doing a few more laps there,” he said. “We obviously tried running everything how it should be run. Everything needs to correlate properly, it’s a complex machine this year. As we expected it’s going to take a bit of time, so we’ll go back and hopefully figure it out before Melbourne.

“If anyone can pull it off it’s these guys, but there’s nothing to pull off yet, it’s still early. But I’m sure they’ll make a quick turnaround, because they’re the best in the world.”

Ricciardo said the reliable form of Mercedes was not a concern for his team.

“I don’t think it adds pressure. For all we know they could be a second off the pace, who knows? So we’re not going to read into it. Obviously we would have loved to have done more laps, I came here to drive, but we’re not going to get down about it.

“We came here to drive, but we also came to understand, and I think they’ve definitely understood some things. Let’s see what happens in a few weeks.”

Regarding the specifics of what was wrong, he said: “The issues we’ve had the last few days, it’s complex I guess, it’s a combination of more or less everything. It’s such a complex system this year that it’s not going to take 24 hours to solve. It’s best now that we get some time away from the track, and figure out what needs to be done. That’s not my job, but obviously I’ll keep in touch with the team in the next few weeks, and see how it’s all going.”

Given the mechanical carnage in Jerez this week tyres have not received a lot of coverage, but nevertheless it was an important test for Pirelli as the company had its first chance to run with the new cars, and in both wet and dry conditions.

Pirelli also gave the teams a helping hand by providing a ‘winter compound’ designed to allow them to log miles in the cool of a European January. The fastest time of the week, Kevin Magnussen’s 1m23.276s on Thursday, was set on new mediums.

Pirelli F1 boss Paul Hembery has made it clear that the company is flexible in terms of what it has to provide this year, and will wait to see what happens at the Bahrain tests.

“The emphasis was not on tyres during this test,” said Hembery. “Instead the teams were simply trying to get an understanding of this radical new set of regulations and put the first kilometres onto their cars. With so much to understand about the new power units and aerodynamic rules, the teams aimed simply to increase their knowledge about the cars.

“The upcoming tests in Bahrain should allow them to focus on tyres a little more, having had two weeks to develop their cars and remedy any issues that have been identified at Jerez. We too are completely open, flexible and ready to adapt our tyres should the tests in Bahrain, where more meaningful running will take place, identify any need to do so.”

For the record, Pirelli says the longest runs achieved by each tyre were as follows:

10 laps on the supersoft compound
9 laps of the soft compound
17 laps on the medium compound
24 laps on the hard compound
23 laps on the ‘winter’ compound
26 laps on the intermediate compound
13 laps on the wet compound