Category Archives: Uncategorized

Red Bull enjoyed a good first day in Barcelona, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber securing first and third spots respectively after their runs on the medium tyre in FP2.

Webber, who always goes well at the Spanish track, was pleased with progress.

“It looks reasonably tight,” said the Aussie. “We had a good time on fresh tyres and enjoyed it and then we go out and drive around and save tyres, the less enjoyable part of the job! But anyway that’s what we’ve got to do. We couldn’t have got much more out of it today in terms of info considering the first session was a bit scrappy for everybody because of the weather. But overall, a pretty good day for us. We’ll find out on Sunday.”

Regarding the problems caused by the mostly wet first session he said: “I think that we had a few things to test from an aerodynamic perspective, we would have liked two 90 minute sessions, so we had to smash it into one, so that was a little bit tight for both cars.

“But in the end we got through most of it, I think. Some of the items might have dropped off, we’ll go through it tonight and have a look at what will stay on and what won’t, and then go through the normal tyre stuff.”

The New Jersey F1 race has added Long Beach founder Chris Pook to its management team.

Pook has been named as “Special Assistant to the Chairman”, Leo Hindery. The organisation says that Pook will “provide consultation with respect to all aspects of construction, planning and execution of the Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial race.”

It quotes his long time pal Bernie Ecclestone as saying: “I am happy to be working with Chris again after some 20 years. Chris has a history of great success in Formula One, which I’m confident he’ll bring to the Grand Prix of America race. We look forward to working with him to bring F1 racing to New Jersey and New York.”

Hindery said: “The F1 Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial just gainedanother invaluable team member who will ensure the race will be like nothing the region has ever witnessed. Chris is a leader with decades of experience in American motorsports. We are delighted to add someone with his accomplishments and level of expertise to the Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial team.”

Kimi Raikkonen has downplayed the impact of the departure of Lotus technical director James Allison.

Raikkonen is known to rate Allison highly but in public at least today he was keen to avoid any negative talk.

“Not really,” he said when asked if he was worried. “We don’t know if it’s going to change anything, or what it’s going to change. Obviously there are people who will replace him already. We’ll see if it has any effect on what the future brings. I don’t really have any idea.”

Meanwhile Kimi refused to be drawn on what his plans for 2014 might be.

“My decision will be purely on what I think is the best overall for me, and we’ll see what happens in the future. I have no idea what will happen and right now I don’t put much thought into it because we only have done four races. There’s a long season to go and there’s a long time until next year. So now we put effort for this race and this season.”

Asked if he had a time frame he said: “I have to know before next year… You keep asking me the same question, I have nothing to tell, I don’t know. I purely put my effort for this race and this year, and when things happen, people will know. There’s nothing to tell and I don’t really put much thought about it. Everyone always talks about it, but I’m not in a hurry.”

He also refused to be drawn on whether the change to Pirelli’s hard tyre might affect Lotus.

“We’ll see on Sunday, I cannot predict anything. There’s no point to try to guess what will happen. We’ll get some idea tomorrow and we’ll see if it’s good or not good.”

Lotus has confirmed earlier speculation that James Allison is leaving the team. He will be replaced by erstwhile engineering director Nick Chester.

There is no indication yet as to where Allison, who worked under Ross Brawn at Ferrari, might be heading (see earlier story).

“Nick is well known to everyone at Enstone having been with the team for over twelve years,” said team principal Eric Boullier. “He is already directly involved with this and next year’s cars, ensuring a smooth transition which has been underway for some time. It’s an illustration of the strength and breadth of talent at Enstone that we can draw on personnel of the calibre of Nick and it’s something of an Enstone tradition for new Technical Directors to be promoted from within.

“He assumes his new position at a tremendously exciting time for the sport.  The 2014 technical regulation changes present many challenges, while our current position of second place in both the Constructors’ and Drivers’ World Championships mean we cannot lose sight of this year’s development battle. Nick really has his work cut out, but we know he is more than capable of handling the tasks ahead.”

He added: “As a team and individually, we would all like to thank James Allison for his efforts during his three stints at Enstone and wish him all the best in his future endeavours.”

Meanwhile Chester said: “I have worked at Enstone for over twelve years and am delighted to take on the role of Technical Director. I am grateful to the management at Enstone for the faith they have in promoting me to this position. I am very aware of our need to keep pushing development of this year’s E21 whilst developing next year’s car to a set of very different regulations. There are some exciting times ahead for Enstone and I’m honoured to be part of it.”

McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale has played down the team’s hopes of seeing a major step forward with the MP4-28 in Barcelona this weekend.

Neale was keen to point out that while McLaren has a lot of new parts to try other teams will also use Spain as a major development stepping stone, and thus the goalposts will move.

“We’ve been working very hard on the car and our rate of understanding and effort has been very high,” said Neale in a phone conference today. “Of course the first European race will be an area where everybody else is bringing upgrades as well, and our progress will be measured against our competitors. So I think what we’ll do is we’ll be cautious and say that a measure of our progress will be revealed on Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

“I’m pleased with the way the team is working, I think we’ve done a lot of very diligent work, we’ve had a straight line test as well to be able to validate some of the information that we have. But we’ll be cautious at this stage until we see where we’re at.

“Some things will work, some things won’t, and we’ve got a lot more work to do on Fridays as well, so I don’t see us being able just run the car without a huge degree of upgrades at most Fridays between now and the summer. We’ll continue to work very hard at this.”

Neale declined to give details on the changes.

“It’s a significant volume of parts that go into this, but bear in mind we are essentially trying to sort out a correlation issue, which colleagues in other teams will know a lot about, but I’d rather not give away exactly which bits will be changing until we’ve decided on Friday night which parts are staying on the car for Saturday. We’ve got a lot of other things to test on Friday.”

Neale also said it would be wrong to assume that the change to Pirelli’s hard compound would hurt or help McLaren.

“I think if you go back and look at the last two or three races then outright pace in the car has been no guarantee of race pace. We’ve seen people put it on pole and end up in seventh, we’ve seen others come through from the back and have some extraordinary stints.

“There’s an awful lot still to play for in car set-up, tyre exploitation and driving style I think as well. I’m not so sure that it would be reasonable to take a measure of that being better or worse for our car performance.

“Certainly outright pace on a Saturday is important to get your driver into the right part of the grid to be able to fight for points, but there’s an awful lot of work to do once you’re rolling, and I think teams are still learning. Pirelli are working very diligently with us, and it’s exciting. I don’t think it will be either beneficial or detrimental to our particularly ends.”

Lotus is expected to confirm today that technical director James Allison is leaving the team.

He will be replaced by erstwhile engineering director Nick Chester.

The change appears to have happened very quickly given that Allison was quoted in the team’s Spanish GP preview on Friday.

It’s not yet clear where Allison is headed, but he was linked with McLaren several months ago and would be a major catch for any team in the pit lane given the recent competitiveness of Lotus. The major team most in need of someone of his stature is Williams.

Allison started his career at Benetton in 1991, returning after a brief spell with Larrousse. He worked under Ross Brawn at Ferrari from 2000 to 2005 before returning once more to Enstone and the renamed Renault team. He was made technical director in 2009.

His departure could harm Lotus’s chances of hanging into Kimi Raikkonen in 2014 as the Finn has suggested in the past that Allison is one of the major reasons why he has remained loyal to the Enstone organisation.

Mercedes believes that it has got to the bottom of its poor race performances thus far in 2013 – although that knowledge might not fully translate to the track for a while.

The team has earned two poles in the last two GPs only for the silver cars to quickly slip back come the race.

“We have focused our efforts in two key areas; finalising our upgrade package for Spain and understanding our comparative lack of race pace in Bahrain,” said team principal Ross Brawn.

“We have made progress in the latter area and will evaluate some developments over the upcoming race weekends to help improve the situation. We’re not there yet, but we are making progress and of course, performing in the race is what really counts.”

Meanwhile Toto Wolff added: “We have built a good picture of our varying levels of race performance and why we under-performed overall in Bahrain. In Barcelona, we will test some solutions aimed at improving our tyre management in addition to our planned upgrade package.

“Our target is to improve our Sunday afternoon performance to match what we have delivered on Saturday in the past two races. It will certainly be interesting to see what gains everybody has made since the last time we were at the circuit and how the planned upgrade packages work from car to car.”

Williams Grand Prix Holdings has announced a loss of £5m for the year ended December 31 2012 – despite a substantial increase in turnover for its core business, the F1 team.

The company puts the loss down to the “impact of a technical accounting treatment of one of the Group’s key receipts during the year.”

Williams notes that revenue of £9.4m from Formula One was not included.

The detailed figures allocate only £600,000 of the loss to the team, and the rest to Williams Hybrid Power and the Qatar operation.

The key figures are turnover increased by 22% to £127m (2011: £104.5m), and a loss before taxation of £5.0m (2011: profit £7.4m). In relation to the core business of F1, turnover increased by 21.5% to £124.3m (2011: £102.3m) while there was a loss before taxation of £0.6m (2011: profit £9.7m).

“Williams has embarked on a long term strategy that combines visible success on the track with an ambitious diversification programme,” said CEO Alex Burns. “The Williams brand and the intellectual property built up over many years of performing at the cutting edge of technological developments gives the Group a unique position in the global marketplace.

“Strong turnover in the year of £127.0 million reflects our revenue from Formula One and our ability to earn commercial returns from diversification. During the year the Group made an overall loss before taxation of £5.0 million. Revenue of £9.4 million, received under the Bilateral Agreement with Formula One World Championship Limited, the sport’s commercial rights holder, has not been included in these results because of the technical interpretation of today’s accounting standards.

“Highlights for Williams Hybrid Power included its flywheel technology being used in the winning Audi Le Mans entry, an agreement with Go-Ahead Group to develop flywheel technology for buses and a similar agreement with Alstom to develop a system for trams. Another milestone was the Group’s fulfilment of its agreement with Jaguar Cars Limited to provide the motorsport expertise behind the development of the C-X75 hybrid supercar prototype.

“To accommodate the Group’s plans to exploit the commercial applications of its technologies, 2012 also saw the start of construction of a new Williams Advanced Engineering facility at the Oxfordshire site.

“The growth of these new investment businesses at a time of global financial instability, evidenced by a rapid increase in revenue under the Williams Advanced Engineering brand from £16m (2011) to £38m (2012), puts us on a sound footing to deliver to our long term strategy.”

After an analysis of the first four races Pirelli has announced that it will introduce a revised hard compound from the Spanish GP onwards.

Crucially however the medium, soft and supersoft will remain unchanged.

Announcing the change, Pirelli motor sport boss Paul Hembery said: “After evaluating tyre performance over the balance of the first four races, we took the decision – in consultation with all of the teams – to change the hard compound from Spain onwards, as we did in Barcelona two years ago when we also introduced a new hard tyre for the rest of the season.

“This latest version of the hard compound is much closer to the 2012 tyre, with the aim of giving the teams more opportunity to run a wider range of strategies in combination with the other compounds, which remain unchanged.”

The hard and medium will be used in Barcelona, while as usual the soft and supersoft will be employed in Monaco, and the medium and supersoft – both of which are tuned to low temperatures – have been nominated for Montreal.

Michael Schumacher is to drive a 2011 Mercedes W02 around the Nurburgring Nordschleife on May 19.

Mercedes is keen to stress that it will the first time that a contemporary Silver Arrow has been around the full track since the 1954 German GP.

Schumacher won’t be the first driver to try it in a modern F1 car however, as Nick Heidfeld has been around in a BMW Sauber.

“I have a lot of fond memories of the Nurburgring,” said Schumacher. “And I am really looking forward to giving fans and friends from my home town of Kerpen, which is quite close to the Nurburgring, something to remember as they see me drive by. But it will be a fantastic experience for me too, driving along the Nordschleife in a state-of-the-art Formula 1 Silver Arrow, particularly in view of the fact that the Silver Arrow’s legend began here.

“Posting a lap in a modern Silver Arrow on the most beautiful and most testing circuit in the world, what a brilliant mix – it’s every motor racing driver’s dream!”