Category Archives: Grand Prix News

June 19, 2015 · 5:30 am

Sebastian Vettel: “We need to have a flawless weekend”

Sebastian Vettel is in optimistic mood heading into the Austrian GP weekend, although the Ferrari star concedes that he’ll only get a shot at victory if Mercedes under performs in some way.

“I think ideally we always try to fight for the win,” he said on Thursday. “I know that we have a strong package this year, a strong car, so if everything goes normal then we should be a little bit further up again, especially on Saturday this weekend.

“But we also have to be realistic [in] challenging the Mercedes. We know that first of all we need to have a flawless weekend, a perfect weekend and maybe hoping for them to have a little bit of a struggle. But in normal circumstances it is quite difficult to beat them as they are still the favourites going in, and there is still quite a big gap.”
Meanwhile Vettel conceded that he enjoyed his charge through the field in Canada.

“For sure it was more entertaining than the races before. It’s normal when you come from the back. Obviously first of all you go through cars that are slower than you. In general, obviously it was busier and at the end once I had my position I think I could extract a little bit more the pace of the car.

“But overall it was quite exciting and it was a good recovery, valuable points. We avoided all the risk in the opening lap which is always a bit messy if you are in the back of the field, but fortunately it all worked out and as I said we could get good points.”

Regarding prospects for the rest of the year he added: “First of all I think you have to see that it is natural that from track to track it might vary a bit but I think we’ve already done an incredible job. If you look at winter testing and where we are now, I think we consider ourselves to be quite a bit closer. Yeah, obviously it’s not that easy to make the gap smaller and smaller because Mercedes is a strong team, and obviously they are improving as well.

“They introduced a new spec of engine in Canada so they’re also making progress but our target for sure, is to make bigger progress to finally close the gap, so for sure, we are hoping that in the second part of the season, we are starting to get closer – closer than we are now.”

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June 18, 2015 · 4:24 pm

Lewis Hamilton: “I think people are looking to blame something…”

Lewis Hamilton says driving a current F1 car is not as easy as it looks after the “lift and coast” radio messages in Canada made many observers question how hard drivers have to push these days.

Hamilton insists that current drivers have their hands full as they manage fuel, tyres and other parameters, and they need information from the pit wall.

“It’s different definitely from the years where you had fuel pit stop and you had tyres which you could perhaps push further,” he said today. “But it’s the new way of F1, apparently. It’s not easy to be accurate with the different driving techniques we have to use nowadays.

“Naturally when you’re behind people you want to be pushing to get past, but you’ve also got to watch your fuel, and watch your tyres, because otherwise you won’t make your stop. There’s so many things which you have to have in the back of your mind when you make those decisions.”

Lewis insisted that drivers need to have information from their engineers.

“For us drivers with the way these tyres are, [for] the optimum way to get to the end of the race, we don’t have all the information in front of us. You can’t feel how much fuel you are using. You are driving as fast as you can the majority of the time, so you need some guidance with that.

“What do you think’s going to happen if they don’t tell me about tyres? I’m still going to drive the same. And if they don’t tell me about fuel, then maybe more cars won’t finish. If that’s more exciting, we can do that!”

Elaborating on the lift and coast issue he said: “You have no guidance to know how much fuel you’re using. There is an indicator that you can have, but it’s not very accurate. You’re just driving your race, and you know you have 100kgs to use. It’s not like you have a figure that shows you how much money you are using in your bank account and you can see it going down as you make your payments.

“A lap is payment and you don’t know how much fuel you used than any other lap. You could just use one lower gear and you lose than than the one before, or you can be a little bit more aggressive on power and you use a little bit more fuel than on the previous lap, but you can’t see that. So that’s where you get the guidance.

“A couple of years ago there was more information, so I’m not really sure, I think people are looking to blame something because they’re unhappy about something.”

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June 10, 2015 · 10:09 am

Ecclestone keeping door open for New Jersey F1 race

Bernie Ecclestone has indicated that the New Jersey F1 race could still have a future, despite the event appearing to be dead in the water.

Billed as the Grand Prix of America, the street race at Port Imperial appeared on the provisional calendar in both 2013 and 2014, only to be dropped on both occasions.

The main problem was that promoter Leo Hindery could not find the outside investment he had been seeking, and indeed at one stage Ecclestone organised a loan that provided some funding to get the project moving – a clear indication of just how keen he was to make the race happen.

However, that still wasn’t enough to save the event, and given its absence from the 2015 schedule it’s been widely assume that the plans had been abandoned.

However cable TV mogul Hindery met with Ecclestone on Friday morning in Montreal to discuss a possible way forward, and despite the already cramped calendar Bernie has indicated that the event could still have a future.

Ecclestone told this writer: “He’d like to see that race happen. We’ll have a look and see what we can do for him.”

Asked about the past financial arrangements with Hindery Bernie added: “He doesn’t owe us anything.”

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June 6, 2015 · 2:59 pm

Verstappen stuck with 15-place grid penalty

Max Verstappen has become the first driver to take an engine penalty in 2015 – in only the seventh race of the season.

The Toro Rosso driver has taken his fifth Renault V6 for FP3 in Canada, and that triggers a 10-place penalty. This will be added to the five places he already had after his collision with Romain Grosjean in Monaco.

Depending on where he qualifies, he could face an extra penalty in the race. Last year if a driver could not take a complete grid penalty – due to qualifying well down the grid – the remaining places carried over for one race.

However, this season any penalty places not taken translate into penalties in the current race. If one to five places are not taken, the driver will have a 5s time penalty at his first pit stop, and if it’s six to ten places, that becomes a 10s time penalty. Anything between eleven and twenty places not taken leads to a drive through penalty early in the race.

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June 3, 2015 · 6:12 pm

Manor reserve role for Leimer

Former GP2 champion Fabio Leimer has joined Manor as reserve driver, and the Swiss will be given some FP1 sessions over the course of this season.

The 26-year-old won the GP2 title in 2013, but despite testing for Sauber never really had the momentum with which to move into F1.

Team boss John Booth said: “Fabio will be joining us at selected races for the rest of the season, contributing to engineering meetings and on hand to substitute for either race driver should they be unable to compete at any stage. Familiarity with the car is therefore important, so we plan to run Fabio in a number of opening free practice sessions this season, allowing us to further evaluate his potential.”

“In particular I’m very excited to have the chance to drive the car in selected FP1s,” said Leimer. “But I am also looking forward to spending a lot of time trackside with the team, contributing my observations and experience in engineering situations and also learning about the team and a Formula 1 operation. It’s a huge step for me and I can’t wait to get started and hopefully reward the team’s confidence in me.”

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June 1, 2015 · 10:02 am

Bell joins Manor as technical consultant

Former Mercedes technical director and Renault team principal Bob Bell is assisting Manor F1 in the role of technical consultant, the team has announced.

The team says that the vastly experienced Bell “will act as a technical consultant, applying his considerable industry experience supporting and advising Manor’s senior management as they rebuild the team and formulate an ambitious long term plan.”

Bell’s former Renault colleague Pat Symonds previously undertook a similar role with the then Marussia team before using it as a springboard to return to a frontrunning team in Williams. Like new Manor owner Stephen Fitzpatrick Bell hails from Northern Ireland.

Meanwhile former Toro Rosso chief designer Luca Furbatto has joined as Head of Design, while ex-Caterham and Toyota man Gianluca Pisanello has been confirmed in the role of Chief Engineer.

“It’s been a dramatic but rewarding start to our 2015 season,” said team boss John Booth. “And we’re only now able to settle into more of a rhythm, allowing us to look to the future. Our focus this season is to re-build the foundations of the team and develop our internal capabilities. As ever in Formula One, we rely on the experience, tenacity and drive of our colleagues, so we’re delighted to welcome our new teammates.

“Each of them brings a huge amount of experience from within the sport, adding further dimensions to our existing technical and engineering capability. Whilst we seek to optimise our performance during the remainder of the 2015 season, we can also turn our attention to the next exciting chapter in our story – 2016 and beyond.”

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May 28, 2015 · 7:55 pm

FIA opens up new F1 entry process for 2016-’17

The FIA has opened up an F1 entry process inviting new teams to participate in the World Championship as early as 2016.

The move comes on the heels of the recent F1 Strategy Group meeting after which the governing body referred to the sustainability of the sport, which meant trying to ensure that there are enough teams around in the future.

Usually a “call for expression of interest” comes in response to the existence of a genuine candidate who has already been in contact, as was the case with Haas, when a process was opened on December 13th 2013. That also attracted the Romanian FRR/Forza Rossa project, which subsequently stalled.

This time the deadline for expressions of interest is June 30th, with full applications due by September 1st and a result by September 30th. That schedule is some seven months later than last time around.

It’s obvious that in normal circumstances such a timetable would make it absolutely impossible to compete in 2016 – assuming that teams are building their own cars from scratch. Thus it remains to be seen what the FIA’s intentions are in this case, and whether this is actually a first move towards customer cars. If so then the schedule could probably just about be achieved, especially if it involved an existing team from another area of motor sport.

An alternative is that someone is planning to “do a Haas” and get as close as possible to a customer car under the current rules, which means buying everything from another team but making their own chassis and bodywork. If that is the case the planning must already be well under way.

It’s worth noting that Ron Dennis was behind the push for customer cars in the Strategy Group meeting, and that McLaren recently asked ART’s GP2 team to switch to a livery that matched the F1 cars. ART is currently running McLaren junior Stoffel Vandoorne, and Honda protege Nobuhara Matsushita.

After the customer car plan emerged co-owner Nicolas Todt recently told this writer: “I don’t have any particular comment to make regarding what has been announced. Entering F1 is however something that ART could consider, but only if it makes real sense to us, and therefore if all the pieces of the jigsaw are there.”

The FIA statement said: Having due regard for the sustainability and future success of the Formula One World Championship, the FIA has opened a new selection process to identify a candidate team to participate in the Championship from the start of the 2016 or the 2017 season.

The overall long-term interests of the Championship will determine which candidate is selected.

The precise terms of this selection process, together with the applicable selection criteria, deadlines, legal requirements and other conditions, will be communicated to candidates who have registered a formal expression of interest with the FIA’s Secretariat before 5pm CET 30 June 2015.

The application process will commence with those who have registered an expression of interest before the aforementioned deadline (late applicants will be admitted only at the FIA’s discretion).

All applicants will be expected to undergo thorough due diligence. By way of indication only, the applicable selection criteria will include:

a) the technical ability and resources of the team
b) the ability of the team to raise and maintain sufficient funding to allow participation in the Championship at a competitive level
c) the team’s experience and human resources
d) the FIA’s assessment of the value that the candidate may bring to the Championship as a whole.

By way of indication only, the FIA anticipates that full applications will need to be submitted by 1st September 2015, leading to a decision on 30 September 2015.

In the event that no applicant is considered suitable by both the FIA and the commercial rights holder, no additional team will be selected.

The last F1 entry tender was in 2013: https://adamcooperf1.com/2013/12/11/fia-opens-procedure-for-new-f1-teams-to-join-in-2015/

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May 27, 2015 · 3:14 pm

Lotus: Verstappen was “silly” in clash with Grosjean

Lotus trackside operations director Alan Permane is adamant that Romain Grosjean did nothing wrong prior to being hit by Max Verstappen at Monaco’s Ste Devote corner.

The stewards decided that the Dutchman was at fault, handing him a five-place grid penalty, but he has since claimed on Twitter that he was “brake tested” by Grosjean.

“It was fairly clear,” Permane told this writer. “Verstappen did a bit of a brainless move. It was very obvious from the video. Romain doesn’t move, or he moves a little bit, and you are allowed to move a little bit, but it’s not like he’s wavering all over the track. He’s not braked early or anything like that. It’s very clear that Verstappen’s just been silly.”

Permane has that Grosjean braked 5m later than on the previous lap, and that the stewards acknowledged that evidence when penalising Verstappen.

Although Grosjean was able to continue his subsequent pace was compromised by the incident: “It damaged the floor a little bit, but he was hit fairly square-on on the wheel, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. He was also on very worn soft tyres that had cooled down after the safety car.”

Another disappointment for the team was the early retirement of Pastor Maldonado, who had made Q3. The Venezuelan was in brake trouble even before Verstappen’s successful pass at Ste Devote.

“Pastor had a hydraulic leak, which manifested itself straight away as braking problems, and we retired him because we were worried about the safety of the braking system. He was having to brake very early and had a very long pedal.”

Meanwhile Permane believes that both Canada and Austria will play to the strengths of the E23.

“We should have had both cars in the top 10, we thought we would struggle a little bit more than that. We should have come away with a point and a bit of damage limitation, but we’re pretty confident that the next races will be pretty strong.

“Canada is about straightline speed, which we have in abundance, and it looks like we have good slow speed. The engine performance will help us in Canada and Austria. I think we can be reasonably competitive everywhere.”

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May 26, 2015 · 8:48 pm

Max Verstappen: “Next time we will get those points we deserved…”

Max Verstappen says he will come back stronger after the frustration of his Monaco accident and the subsequent five-place grid penalty for the Canadian GP.

The Dutchman took to his Instagram account tonight to tell his side of the story.

“Was an eventful race last week,” he wrote. “Showed good pace during the race with some overtaking in Monaco! After an unlucky pitstop I was charging through the field before I got brake tested and had a hard crash into turn1!

“Anyway those things happen and will make me stronger! Next time we will get those points we deserved… Even though we have a penalty. I know what to do for the upcoming races…”

He then added: “Just came back from the physio. Everything back in place and ready to go again. Canada will be great for some overtaking again.”

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May 26, 2015 · 1:56 pm

Eric Boullier: “It’s good to get points on merit…”

Jenson Button’s eighth place in Monaco was a small but significant landmark for McLaren Honda as it represented the first points for the team after its difficult start to the 2015 season.

Team principal Eric Boullier said it was a boost for the staff but conceded that there is a long way to go.

“It’s just a reward for the hard work for the people of McLaren Honda,” Boullier told this writer. “It’s good to get points on merit. Obviously Monaco was a track that suited us, so there’s nothing to get excited about, but it’s showing some progress.

“Obviously I would have loved to have had both cars in the points, which was possible, and that would be even better, so there’s an investigation to understand what happened to Fernando. There are some positives out of the weekend, even if we are not where we want to be, it’s always the same story. But one milestone done, which was to get the points.”

Boullier admitted that reliability remains a concern: “We are pushing hard, so that’s why.”

The Frenchman believes that after Montreal – where straightline speed is paramount – the latest updates will start to pay off.

“We keep pushing, we keep improving every race. There is now more visibility about the performance coming for the next races, so it’s just encouraging. I think Canada will be a difficult one, but from Austria is should be better.”

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