Category Archives: F1

The 2016 F1 season is set to start two weeks later than usual as Bernie Ecclestone attempts to condense the calendar.

The F1 website has confirmed that the season will kick off in Melbourne on April 3. It will be the first time that the season has not started in March since 1988, when the Brazilian GP also took place on April 3. Melbourne was also held in April in 2006, but it was the third race of the year.

The F1 website noted: “The revised 2016 date will see the event follow Easter and take place after daylight savings, the absence of which will see the race start earlier in the day. A final start time will be announced closer to the 2016 event.”

“It’s fantastic that Melbourne will again play host to the opening round of the FIA Formula One World Championship,” said Australian Grand Prix Corporation CEO, Andrew Westacott. “Over the past 20 years Melbourne has become synonymous with the start of a new Formula One season, and we look forward to again welcoming all the teams and drivers to our great city in 2016. The new date will see an earlier start time, and fans can expect the same great on-track action and off-track entertainment across the four days.”

While the news of the April start has attracted a lot of attention, it isn’t really such a big deal. The last time the season started relatively late was in 2009, when the Australian race was held on March 29. However Ecclestone only had to fit in 17 events that year, rather than the 20 expected next season.

This year could easily have started on March 29 had Melbourne/Sepang been back to back, and had there only been one free weekend between Bahrain and Spain. A little shuffling later in the season could have saved another week.

Toto Wolff admits that the changes Mercedes made to the W06’s set-up on Friday night in Bahrain contributed to the brake issues suffered by both drivers in the race.

Mercedes reacted to the Friday long run pace of Ferrari by trying to find speed and improve tyre usage for Saturday, and the race indicated that the team got its sums right. However some of the changes also made brake cooling marginal, and Nico Rosberg paid the price when he ran wide and lost second place to Kimi Raikkonen.

Lewis also had a problem on the last lap, but his lead was big enough to allow him to cruise home safely ahead of the Finn, although had it happened earlier he might have been in trouble.

“It was a good race and the changes we put on the car after a hard Friday into qualifying proved to be the right ones,” said Wolff. “The car was the quickest car today on both tyres. We certainly have to be happy with one and three, no doubt about it, but losing second place with Nico – everybody who ever doubted in Nico saw him at his best, fighting hard, overtaking, and losing that position because of a brake failure was a bit of a pity.

“We saw very hot brakes on Nico’s car in traffic, following Kimi and Sebastian first, and then lots of fighting and hard braking. So we monitored that. Then at the end with the backmarkers and lapping cars those brake temperatures went through the roof, and we had a brake by wire failure on both cars, in the same corner. It was on the hard braking on the straight, the temperatures went sky high, and when that happens the brake by wire switches into the conventional system, and then you are without weapons to defend with.

“You can’t do anything if the brake-by-wire collapses or fails and it goes to coventional, the pedal becomes long and the car doesn’t stop any more. This what happens to Nico.

“It’s set-up issues. We knew the changes we made on the car were compromising a little bit brake temperatures, so we knew what we were doing. But then it was a hard race, we had lots of overtaking, especially on Nico’s side. And then both cars struggled to make it through some of the backmarkers at the end of the race. You follow another car or you follow a couple of cars the air stream collapses, and this is why he made the brakes hot.

“On Nico’s car the brake failure didn’t come as a surprise, we saw high temperatures. On Lewis’s car it was a bit of a surprise, and it must have been linked to the fact that he gave it a gentle push seeing Kimi, and making his way through backmarker traffic.

Wolff admitted that Mercedes might now have to think again: “It is never one single solution so you try to tackle a problem, which we had on Friday, with a couple of adjustments. And one of them was linked to the capability of brake cooling. So in hindsight, knowing that this caused us the problem and nearly lost us the race, and it lost as P2, we will probably look at things again and do it differently in the future.”

Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene says both his drivers would have finished on the podium in Bahrain had Sebastian Vettel’s race not been compromised by mistakes.

He also confirmed that Kimi Raikkonen’s strategy of using medium tyres in the middle stint was decided before the race.

“We had a clear strategy for the two drivers,” said Arrivabene. “Seb made two little mistakes, the big one was at the beginning so we were obliged to change the strategy for Seb. We told Kimi to follow our strategy, at a certain point he was not really convinced, and we said no, we stay as we are. He was brave enough and disciplined enough to follow, and it was a good result.

“With Seb we changed the strategy and we went to Plan B, but with Kimi we were following exactly what we preferred.”

Arrivabene said the team choose Kimi’s strategy after conditions turned out to be cooler for the race than in Friday practice, which led to the decision to use mediums in the middle of the race.

“Today we put together an aggressive strategy, and this is exactly what we discussed. Today we recognised the gap that we have with Mercedes, so the only way is to be aggressive, because at this stage you can make a mistake if you are aggressive. If you are not it’s not the right time. If one day, I don’t know when, we are able to catch them, of course the strategy must be put together in a way that is a bit different.

“You saw on Friday that our pace was quite good, but the temperature was different versus today. This is the reason why were changing the strategy that we had in mind before to the new one, due to the conditions of the track, which were changing. If everything was going well I’m sure we were going to have two drivers up to the podium. I don’t tell you which positions, but two drivers for sure. I don’t tell you the position because I don’t know! But one was very, very interesting.

“Regarding Seb I have to say he two little mistakes, but we don’t have to forget what he has done until now, he won one race, two podiums. Sometimes it happens, we are human beings, thanks God, and this is the beauty of the sport. I’m happy for Kimi because now I can officially, not that I signed a contract, that Kimi’s back. We have two strong drivers.”