Category Archives: Grand Prix News

Lewis Hamilton says he’s looking forward to the radio restrictions that will be imposed from this weekend, but he stopped short of saying that he sees the change as a personal advantage for him.

“On one side over my F1 career it’s been a real battle making sure you say the right things on the radio,” said Hamilton. “And I’ve not always got it right, so on one side I think it’s a great thing. But the way F1 has gone, it’s really been an assistance. We still have to do the job out there, we just get help in terms of guidance. But it feels like I’m going back to karting days, which I like.”

In a reference to information being available between the two Mercedes drivers he said: “In terms of sharing the settings an individual has on their steering, or in their braking, or cornering and those kids of things, I’m quite happy that that disappears.”

However he admitted that information can be valuable.

“When you’re out there, if you don’t have any radio communication, you really feel that you’re on your own. You always want to improve, and you’re not sure… You’re trying to do all you can, and sometimes you’re not always improving, and sometimes you go slower. So you kind of go, where is that time? That’s where really the team helps, ‘You’re down in sector one and up in sector three.’

“Then you know, ‘Sector one, there’s four corners there, it’s going to be somewhere there,’ which helps a lot. But of course as F1 goes on, there’s more and more detail you can get into, diff map setting for Turn 8, or brake balance, there’s all these different things that you can start taking advantage of. It’s neat that kind of gets chucked out. It’s going to be hard, because there are going to be a lot of things such as brakes overhanging, using too much fuel those kind of things, that could come into play. Fortunately fuel-wise I’ve never had a problem, so it should be good.”

“I’m really excited to see whether we can tackle it. It’s almost like putting more balls in the air for us to catch, and we’re already catching quite a lot.”

Asked by this writer if he felt he could cope better with less information – and might thus have an advantage over other drivers – he said: “I don’t feel that… I have absolutely no idea whether it’s going to be better for me or worse for me. After the race I will know whether the other car did better than me, and I’ll just try to work on it and do better for next time. The hope is that you handle it the best, and you get the most out of it, and that’s going to be the challenge.”

The consensus among the drivers is that the new FIA restrictions on radio usage will not have a major impact.

While acknowledging that they would now be busier, in that they will take more responsibility for things like monitoring fuel usage, they don’t expect it to affect performance.

“I don’t expect it to have a huge impact on the race itself and the weekend preparations,” said Fernando Alonso. “In our case at Ferrari we never used the radio for any performance reasons, or something like that, just to control temperatures, to talk about traffic, decide strategy, so as I said it won’t have a big impact. The other teams, I don’t know exactly how they use the radio. Talking about the general rule itself, there’s a lot of media attention, like the FRIC ban, but then the final impact on the race results was not anything special, and I think here it will be similar.”

“Well, obviously we don’t speak a lot on the radio in my case usually, when there are no issues,” said Kimi Raikkonen. “But obviously it might get quite complicated if there are some problems with the car, and you have to change certain things to try to finish the race. I don’t know how the rule goes at those times. Obviously it makes it more complicated for us, but it’s part of the game so it’s OK.”

“I don’t think it’s ideal that they, suddenly from one race to another, they change it dramatically that you cannot get certain calls,” said Sergio Perez. “But it doesn’t influence it much. I don’t see it as a big deal, it’s something that we as drivers need to get more used to. We will have, definitely, more information and we’re going to be a bit more busy throughout the race to basically try to keep everything under control – fuel loads and engine modes, all that kind of stuff. I don’t see a problem to get used to, it’s just a dramatic change from the last race to this one.”
“I don’t mind it,” said Jean-Eric Vergne. “I think it will be more or less the same as before. I like to do things by my own and many times this year I changed the settings before my engineer told me, so yeah, I will be a bit more lonely on the radio – but it should be fine.”

Several drivers face an inevitable penalty

The Russian’s troubles are not over, as he will now face a five-place penalty as soon as he uses a sixth example of any other element, and he will get 10 places if uses a seventh ICE.

Meanwhile with six races to go (including Singapore) several other drivers are on the bubble, and face an inevitable penalty. Here’s the full list of those who have reached five, listed in race number order:

Sebastian Vettel: ICE

Fernando Alonso: ICE, CE

Kimi Raikkonen: ICE, MGU-H, CE

Romain Grosjean: TC

Pastor Maldonado: ICE, TC, MGU-K, MGU-H

Adrian Sutil: ICE, TC, MGU-H

Esteban Gutierrez: CE

Jean-Eric Vergne: MGU-K

Daniil Kvyat: ICE (6), MGU-K (5)

Jules Bianchi: ICE, TC, MGU-H, CE

Max Chilton: ICE, TC, MGU-H

The F1 teams are still coming to terms with the full meaning of the FIA clampdown on radio transmissions, after Charlie Whiting issued more details today (see previous story).

The subject will be discussed further at a meeting of the semi-formal sporting regulations committee – the 11 team managers and the FIA – in Singapore on Thursday. That has been scheduled in addition to the regular Thursday team managers’ meeting, where topical issues are usually discussed.

One area which has given teams particular cause for concern is that the ban covers complex pre-race procedures. The FIA has specifically targeted discussion of such areas as “start maps related to clutch position, for race start and pit stops,” “information on clutch maps or settings, eg bite point,”, and “burn-outs prior to race starts.” Usually there is a lot of radio traffic as the drivers head to the grid.

“The really big headache is the parade lap,” one insider told this writer. “Engine, tyres, brakes and clutch management during this lap require a lot of engineering input if the car is going to arrive on the grid in optimal condition.

“The driver workload during this time is huge. Driver intelligence doesn’t even come into play, as the settings are all ‘calculated’ live during the lap. At best we will end up with some seriously botched starts, and at worst a stall on the grid. It potentially mixes it up a bit if it’s the former. But the latter has the potential for things to go really seriously wrong.

“I think we are all happy to stop ‘coaching’ the driver but this is a much bigger step.”

Mercedes has handed the reserve driver role to Pascal Wehrlein

The 19-year-old German has already conducted 12,000kms of simulator running, and was given his first F1 test with an evaluation programme in a 2012 W03 at Portimao last week. He completed 109 laps, or over 500kms.

Wehrlein, who scored his first DTM win at Lausitzring yesterday, finished second to Daniel Juncadella in the 2012 F3 Euro Series.

Regarding his test he said: “It took me a few laps to get used to the incredible speed, the very hard brakes and the high cornering speeds – it’s in another league compared to the DTM. But I adapted quickly and was able to improve in each of my short and long runs. In total, I drove 500 km and didn’t want to head back into the pits! The test was simply the greatest experience I have had so far in motorsport. There weren’t any nerves, which surprised me, I just felt ready for it. The feedback from the team and from Toto was very encouraging and I think that I did a good job.

“For me, it’s a dream come true to have completed this test and now to take on my new role. All my life, I have worked hard to get the opportunity to drive an F1 car. And it was always my goal to do it with Mercedes-Benz.”

Toto Wolff said: “He has worked hard behind the scenes this year in our simulator, playing a very important role in our pre-race preparations. Aside from Nico and Lewis, he is the driver most familiar with all the procedures of our F1 W05 Hybrid and therefore the right choice for the role of reserve driver.

“He took an important step last week when he drove a Formula One car for the first time – and we were pleased to see him deliver a composed and impressive test, in line with our expectations. This was followed by a fantastic win yesterday at the Lausitzring in the DTM, making the most of conditions where pure driving talent was able to shine. Pascal has a bright future ahead of him and we are excited to have him on board for what will be an intense conclusion to the Formula One season.”