Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lewis Hamilton’s Spa qualifying session was badly compromised by a decision to go back to a standard rear wing rather than use the one that McLaren had introduced for Spa and Monza.

Both McLaren drivers were missing performance in the dry morning session. Having made the switch for qualifying Hamilton struggled with the higher downforce wing and could qualify only eighth, while Jenson Button stuck with the new version and having hit the sweet spot with his tyres took a surprise pole.

“This morning in P3 I had some instabilities with the new wing that we were trying,” said Lewis. “And at the time we had a relatively big gap between ourselves and the Red Bulls and the Ferraris. And so we felt on our side of the garage that we should try something to fix it, and for us that was to potentially go to the wing that we used in the last race.

“I was told or we believed that the gap between those two wings wasn’t so big. But we proved ourselves wrong. It was obviously the wrong way to go. We made the decision as a team.”

Asked if there were any benefits, Lewis said: “There weren’t any good points with that wing. We thought there would be benefits of having more downforce, but it didn’t feel that way.”

The fact that it was a team decision was underlined by Martin Whitmarsh, who said he was also party to the choice.

“We made a decision, and again I was very involved in the decision,” said the team principal. “Sat here this afternoon we feel we made a wrong decision. We didn’t have very much data, as you know, very limited running. We didn’t look sparkling competitive with either car this morning, and thought we’d make some changes.

“It’s easy to under react and then be kicking yourself, but perhaps we overreacted. We’ll see. A lot of things can happen. Tomorrow’s another day, it’s a long race, and it may let us do some different things in the race.”

Button explained why he didn’t change: “I spoke to my engineers and we decided to stay where we are because with the sun out hopefully the circuit would grip up. And we thought it was the best option, we just didn’t think running that much drag for today – and also more importantly for tomorrow – would be the right thing.

“It should be good for us, and we should be good in a straight line. We shouldn’t need to push as much in the corners. But you never know, and we don’t know who’s going to be quick either, and consistent also.”

Meanwhile some comments Hamilton made on Twitter about the wing situation were quickly deleted, presumably because he used the phrase ‘WTF’ and was advised by the team that it was not a wise choice.

Pastor Maldonado has been penalised three places by the FIA stewards for impeding Nico Hulkenberg during Q1.

The Venezuelan had done a great job to qualify third, so he now drops back to sixth, having gifted places to Kimi Raikkonen, Sergio Perez, and Fernando Alonso.

The stewards said: “The driver of car 18 was warned by his team not to ‘hold up’ car 12 which was behind him, and yet he clearly did impede car 12. However as car 12 continued into Q2 a more severe penalty was not considered appropriate.”

Before the penalty was announced the Williams man was optimistic about his prospects for Sunday.

“We were optimistic for this race,” he said. “Maybe this morning I was a little bit more worried because the car doesn’t look quite good. But during the qualifying I was adapting myself to the car and adapting myself to the different conditions and the track was changing and improving at the same time.

“After Q1 I saw the potential we had, a bit less in Q2, we were nearly out, P10. I was a bit worried about that because the lap wasn’t that good. In Q3 I pushed very much, at the maximum. I got a clean lap. We are not that fast, like Jenson, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow. In the past we’ve had very good pace in the races so looking forward.”

Sebastian Vettel failed to make it out of Q2 in Belgium despite reporting no particular problems with the car or his quick lap.

Vettel qualified 11th, but has been moved up a place by a gearbox penalty for team mate Mark Webber. However he does have a free choice of tyres for the start and has more new sets available after not running in the final session.

“I think nothing went wrong, as in I didn’t do a mistake and there was no real problem with the car,” said Vettel. “Obviously it hurts. We lost out by a little bit to get to Q3. If you have another run then maybe it’s another story. At the time I was pretty happy with the lap I had. The time didn’t come.

“Obviously tomorrow is a long race. At this track it’s definitely possible to overtake, so I think we were in a worse position on Saturday afternoon after the qualifying in Monaco, when I think we were ninth only. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow. The good news is there are no points today. We’ll try to have a good race. I think the pace in the race is fine, this morning seemed quite good.”

When asked by this writer how his preparations had been affected by the Friday washout, he didn’t use it as an excuse: “No problem. I think it was the same for everyone. This morning I was pretty happy to be honest, and this afternoon it was just… not coming towards us. The lap time was there I think, but it just didn’t come. As I said I was happy with my lap, and it’s not as if I had a big mistake or anything.

“I’m 11th, Pastor Maldonado was in 10th [in Q2], only one hundredth quicker, and then he went nine-tenths quicker in Q3. For me I don’t think it was possible to go nine-tenths quicker.”

Meanwhile Vettel was fined 10,000 euros by the FIA for doing a practice start in the pits. Drivers are not allowed to do ‘hot’ starts and head down the pit lane to the exit – if they do one, they have to stop after a few metres and be pulled back to the pit box by the mechanics, which is standard practice.

“It was my mistake. We obviously practised a pit stop and you’re not supposed to leave your box and I left the box. I was probably trying to practise the pit stop a bit too hard.”

Fernando Alonso says he’s happy to be sixth on the grid in Belgium, given that most of his key title rivals are behind, apart from Kimi Raikkonen.

The Spaniard pointed out that sixth has been his usual place over the course of the season.

“I’m happy,” he said. “I think sixth is more or less our position in the whole championship, I think 6.3 or something like that average. So no surprises again. The only good thing for us today is it’s not Vettel on pole or it’s not Hamilton on pole, so the title contenders they are behind us, only Kimi in fourth position.

“So it has been a good Saturday, but we need to finish this job. Obviously for us from a championship point of view if we finish like this, it will be great.”

Alonso said he didn’t underestimate his main title rivals, but added that a Button win would be good for him.

“They will be strong in the race, but it seems Jenson is doing great in this race, and if we cannot win obviously it’s better if someone that’s a little bit more far behind wins, and Jenson is quite a strong candidate tomorrow.”

Lewis Hamilton has put in some spectacular drives in the wet over the years, but today in Spa he was pretty subdued as he used the day to gain a little more knowledge about McLaren’s latest updates.

Hamilton ran only a handful of laps in the morning, when he was only 15th, and didn’t do a flying lap in FP2. However, he said it was a useful day.

“It’s been incredibly wet today, lots of aquaplaning, lots of rivers on the track,” said Hamilton. “You just had to be very wary of all the aquaplaning that was possible. There was no real benefit bombing around today except for trying to find out whether the updates were working, so we just did a couple of installation laps to check that, and also to check how if the tyres would switch on, how difficult they are to switch on in the wet.

“We know that with our rear wing that is especially for here and for Monza we would have some problems at the beginning, as everyone will do. As you see some people do flow-viz with the yellow paint they put on the rear wing. So we just had to do some modifications just to make sure that it was working perfectly, and it is. We won’t see until tomorrow just how good whatever upgrades we have are.

“I think there’s always things to learn, so it wasn’t a waste of time, the laps we did. There wasn’t much point in bolting around lap after lap after lap. We believe it’s going to be dry tomorrow, and on Sunday, and so we just went out to do installation laps to run down the car, basically.”

Hamilton says he’s not too worried about having only a dry FP3 session on Saturday morning to prepare for both qualifying and the race.

“It’s a challenge, everyone’s in the same boat. It’s going to be very interesting with the green track in the morning, trying to find the best set-up with only the couple of runs that we’ll have in the short space of time tomorrow morning. But hopefully our simulator has helped us, so we’re best prepared.”

Lotus has decided to postpone the debut of its Double DRS – also jokingly known as ‘the Device’ – until the next race at Monza.

Although it was tried again in FP1 today, after being used by Kimi Raikkonen on Friday in Hungary and Germany, it was decided that the team did not gain enough experience with it. In other words there was too much risk in committing to use it on Saturday. Neither Lotus driver ran at all in FP2 today.

“The forecast for the next two days is for dry and warmer weather,” said technical director James Allison. “So running today was not very useful in terms of preparing for qualifying or the race. Today’s rain also prevented us from seeing how the ‘Device’ would perform in the expected race conditions.

“With discretion being the better part of valour we will conduct P3 tomorrow with a conventional aero package rather than attempting to squeeze Friday’s intended evaluation into the precious final practice session. On the plus side we learned today that the cars are working fine and we’re happy to end the day with no damage from running in these difficult conditions.”

Sebastian Vettel expressed sympathy for spectators who saw hardly any running on the first day of practice for the Belgian GP today.

Vettel was one of many drivers who did a minimal amount of laps on a day that saw rain falling constantly.

“There’s nobody to blame,” said the German. “It’s not the best weather for us, because there’s too much water. Obviously we’d love to go out, but we can’t. It’s a shame, especially for the people around the track.

“I think they’ve been very brave today, it’s quite windy and maybe not so nice to spend your day in the grandstands. Hopefully they’ll come back tomorrow with dry clothes and we’ll have some sunshine. That’s the forecast.

“I think in the end we can’t race in these conditions. If you’re by yourself then obviously you can ease off on the straights. You can’t really stay full throttle, there’s too much water, the tyres cannot get rid of the water, the drainage is not made for these conditions.

“If you imagine you race, if you are behind someone, on top of all that you can’t see. It’s pretty bad for us, our cars are not made for that much rain. The forecast looks good though, so hopefully all the people will come back tomorrow and have a nice weekend.”

Vettel said he wasn’t frustrated to not be able to enjoy a proper day in the car after such a long break since the last race: “It’s just one more night, it doesn’t really matter! I like rain, and it’s good to see that after a long time and a long summer that there’s also some rain, but maybe it’s not the best day for that.”

Sebastian Vettel says he’s not too concerned about currently being 42 points off championship leader Fernando Alonso.

He stressed that anything could happen in the coming weeks, especially given the compressed calendar of nine races in 13 weekends.

“If I would be 43 points behind it would worse, if I would be 41 points behind it would be better,” he joked. “I was thinking three weeks to come up with this sentence!

“I mean, I think we still have a lot of races to go. Obviously it’s a new kind of calendar, because if you look, a lot of decisions will be made pretty quickly, as in we have this race, and then next week Monza back-to-back. Singapore is the only remaining race which is not back-to-back.

“We have to be aware of the schedule, and obviously try to score more points than everyone else. Ideally, at least 42 more than Fernando.”

Vettel made an interesting comparison with his first title season on 2010, when he won the title at the final race.

“The most important race to lead the championship is the last one. We made that experience in 2010. If you compare this year to any year at least for myself then probably 2010 is close. But equally we did a lot more mistakes in 2010 in the first half of the season, myself and the team I think we lost a lot more points than this year so far.

“I think this year there’s probably two races standing out where we should have scored more points. One is Valencia, which is pretty obvious, and the other man is probably Malaysia. But that’s a racing incident, and I’m not regretting what happened. These things do happen and they happen to other people as well.

“Sometimes you have a year when they don’t happen, and for sure for some of the guys the next nine races this kind of thing will happen. In the end we have to look after ourselves and be on top of our game. I think that’s the lesson we learned in 2010.”

Nevertheless, Vettel agreed that Alonso has to be considered favourite.

“Yeah, he’s leading. He’s not leading just because someone wrote a cheque and gave him the amount of points. I think he deserved to lead. If you look at the beginning of the season, starting in winter testing, Ferrari got a lot of criticism, and then I think they got their act together and built a very competitive car and they’ve been competitive in all kinds of circumstances and conditions.

“I think they deserve to be in that position. If you look at the last couple of races they were always quick enough to finish on the podium, and win races sometimes. If you look at everyone else, that’s what matters, to have that consistency and consistently strong results.”

Michael Schumacher kicked off his 300^th Grand Prix weekend at Spa today, at the track where he made his first F1 start 21 years ago.

However his tally of starts still stands at 297, given that he failed to get off the grid in France in 1996 and did not take the restart after his leg breaking crash at Silverstone in 1999.

Nevertheless no one is complaining that the former champ is celebrating the landmark at a venue that has played such a big part in his career. Only Rubens Barrichello has previously made the 300 mark.

“It’s certainly an interesting, beautiful, nice number to be around,” he said. “A number that I didn’t think about, that I would do that, at the time that I retired at the end of 2006. And now here we are and I’m counting the 300 – because at one point it was the talk about whether there would be somebody able to beat Riccardo Patrese’s record of 250-whatever.

“I said ‘forget that, it isn’t interesting for me’, and here we are. And suddenly… it isn’t anything that I’m challenging or looking for to have just a number on my board but being the 300, yeah it’s a beautiful side-effect.

Schumacher conceded that he didn’t expect to make 400, as suggested by a fan’s banner at Spa – perhaps no surprise given that he’d have to race on for another five years to make that total!

“I guess I can say not. It’s obviously nice that the fans are still with me and encourage me to go on. This morning I had a beautiful welcome, becoming the honorary citizen of Spa, that is something very special to me. And that’s why the 300 becomes special – because it’s in Spa.

“It all happened to me here in Spa. First race, first victory, some beautiful victories and interesting races and 2004 the seventh title, last year the 20th anniversary and now number 300 and being honoured. So it’s a full package. Spa has always meant a lot to me. I always called it my living room – now I can officially call it my living room. It’s good.”

Michael insisted that after 300 races, he’s as motivated as ever.

“I have the same passion for what I am doing, yes, absolutely. Formula One is the ultimate racing and if you’re involved, you’re only involved because you want to do the best that you can do. Obviously we all depend on our machines, but nevertheless, within your machine you have a certain frame with which you can prove yourself and that’s the challenge and that challenge you like to outbrake that frame and you like to do anything on top of that.

“That’s the particular moment that you can have and the great thing in sport is that you have immediate feedback: whether you do achieve or you don’t achieve. There’s been plenty of satisfaction that I’ve had over more than 20 years now and I still enjoy it.”

Regarding his future plans, Michael said: “I think we made a very clear statement some time ago that by October we will be able to give an indication and nothing has changed since then, so no news I’m afraid.”

A for what makes Spa special, Michael was more forthcoming.

“There are many reasons, particularly for me because I started in the days when corners like Eau Rouge and Blanchimont were extremely challenging corners, because the cars were built in a certain way and the circuit made them absolutely on the edge. It’s one of the old character tracks with lots of history.

“It is going through the natural countryside that we are in, the up and down like a rollercoaster so there are so many variants that make it so particular and so special. We all, as race drivers, prefer high speed and if you have a challenging high speed corner it’s special, and if you go through Eau Rouge… even nowadays it’s probably a little bit too easy flat out except maybe in the race sometimes, but the sensation, the forces that go through you in a cornering sense and in a vertical sense, that is a combination that you don’t find everywhere.”

Lewis Hamilton insists that there is no news on his plans for 2013, despite it becoming increasingly likely that he will eventually ink a new deal with McLaren.

It’s no secret that the two sides have conflicting ideas about what might represent a fair salary for the 2008 World Champion.

“I’m pretty much in a similar position to what I was going into the season,” said Hamilton. “There’s work being done in the background now, and I’m not really focussing on that now. The guys that I pay to do that job are discussing that and working on getting that resolved.

“It’s important that the team know that I’m massively committed to them in the championship. That’s the important thing.”

Asked if McLaren was where he really wanted to be, he said: “Yeah, but this is a business. I always wear my heart on my sleeve, but of course you have to be business minded as well.”

Meanwhile Hamilton said he was excited about being back at Spa.

“I’m looking forward to the weekend. This is one of the Grands Prix I enjoy, it’s one of the races I enjoy. It’s one of the races where it’s not so busy for us as drivers, so we can focus on the racing. Every year we come here we seem to get more and more support from the fans, more and more people turn up. It’s one of my favourite tracks. I’m excited about it and looking forward to seeing how the car behaves here.

Hamilton was amused at ongoing suggestions from Fernando Alonso that the Ferrari is not the quickest car.

“He would say that wouldn’t he? He was just positioning himself in a nice way. I can say the same thing, my car is definitely the slowest out of the top four teams. We’ll see what we can do with it.”

On a more serious note, he said that McLaren does have to improve its race pace.

“We’ve got to continue to improve the car. We’re currently not the quickest… I think we’re quite quick over a qualifying lap, for several reasons, but in the race we’re still not the quickest. We are very, very similar to the others. I think Lotus perhaps has just taken a step ahead, they’ve been the quickest in the race. I think now it’s trying to improve our race pace.

“If we can improve our race pace and match our qualifying pace, I think we’ll be very, very strong. But I think it’s still a race of development throughout the year, and on the drivers’ front, it’s consistency, as I’ve been saying from the beginning.

Asked by this writer whether the 2012 title battle felt any different from previous ones – given that outwardly he appears more relaxed – he said it wasn’t.

“That’s because we’ve still got nine races to go! Every point is crucial, and we’ve lost quite a lot of points this year. Moving forward it gets more and more intense because every point becomes more or more valuable than it was in the past. It doesn’t feel any different to any other year, it’s just there’s even more competition.”

Lewis said that he was not expecting Jenson Button to support his title challenge any time soon.

“No, Jenson races for the team and he races for points for himself as well. He’s getting stronger as the season goes on, so I anticipate that’s going to be the case throughout the rest of the season. We need him and I need him scoring points as well. I want him to do well.”

He insisted that he didn’t want to be helped by any team orders: “I don’t see racing like that. You watch back in the years when drivers let drivers past to win the World Championship… It doesn’t feel right to me. I won’t be asking for that.

“If I’m not quick enough, I’m not quick enough. I want to win because I’m quickest, not because I’ve been given points by someone being held up or whatever.”