Category Archives: Uncategorized

He might not have generated many headlines this year, but Mark Webber has quietly kept himself in the title hunt with an unusually consistent run of results.

The Red Bull driver has finished fourth in each of the four races so far, and it says a lot about the rollercoaster form book that after Bahrain he has actually moved up a place in the championship to third, and is now only five points behind new leader Vettel.

On Sunday Webber was without KERS in the early stages and also struggled more on the softer tyre than his team mate. He was passed on track by both Lotus drivers.

“Not too bad start,” said the Aussie of his Bahrain race. “I didn’t have KERS for the first few laps, which made a little bit difficult to put some pressure on Lewis. I got KERS back a little bit after that.

“And then first two stints I couldn’t stay with those two guys, no way, they were pulling away, the two Renaults [Lotuses] and Seb. I couldn’t stay with them, so I had to consolidate from there. I got some good points. The boys have done a good job, but time to get back to Europe.”

Webber says he wasn’t surprised to see Lotus running so strongly.

“Yeah, they’ve got a tidy car, and when you get everything put together then off you go, as we saw with Nico last week. McLaren looked like they didn’t have their day today, and it shows you how sensitive it can be.”

Regarding his own team’s form, he said: “We always have stuff coming, we need to. The competition is strong, we’ve always been there or thereabouts with different people – one week it’s Mercedes, one week it’s McLaren, today it was Renault.”

Fernando Alonso may have finished only seventh in Bahrain on Sunday, but the Spaniard was pleased to have bagged some useful points – and ended the run of the first four flyaway races just 10 points off the World Championship lead, despite the obvious limitations of the Ferrari F2012.

He now lies fifth in the championship, on the same number of points as Jenson Button.

Alonso came close to passing Paul Di Resta right at the end of the race, but helped by KERS, the Scot just managed to stay ahead.

“We missed maybe 500m of the finish line to overtake Paul, but you know it was what we could do today,” said Alonso after the race. “In the end we have to be happy, we beat both McLarens, something that was completely out of our reach if someone told us yesterday, so in the end we limited the damage again.

“We were eight points from the leader [Hamilton] at the start of Bahrain, we are 10 points now from the leader of the championship [Vettel] after Bahrain. So in the first four races I think we did quite good damage limitation.”

Alonso was involved in two controversial incidents during the race, narrowly avoiding contact with a swerving Nico Rosberg and facing an investigation himself for an unsafe release after being waved out of the pits into the path of Sergio Perez. Neither incident led to a penalty, although Alonso clearly wasn’t too happy with Rosberg.

“With Nico, if that was a wall… Probably this should not be allowed, pushing someone completely out of the track, knowing that someone is there. With Perez the pitlane here is quite wide, so I don’t think that he had to brake or something like that.”

Regarding the controversy surrounding the weekend, Alonso said: “I think we did what we were supposed to do. We trusted the FIA, we came here, we did the best show possible for everybody, because the sport is here to have the people united, not to have any trouble. So hopefully people enjoyed it, and we have to be happy.”

After Sunday’s Bahrain GP Martin Whitmarsh defended the McLaren mechanic who was most closely involved in the two botched pit stops on Lewis Hamilton’s car, and another with Jenson Button in the previous race in China.

Whitmarsh stressed that it was a high pressure job, and that problems can occur at any time.

“The first one was what we call pegging,” he explained, “where the drive pegs don’t align with the drive holes, which is not something you should blame the operator for. You’ve got to make the system as tolerant to not pegging as possible. The second one was a cross thread, which is what we had at the last race.”

Whitmarsh was keen to defend his left rear gun man: “Firstly you’ve got to say that any guy who volunteers to be a gun man in the team like that is a brave guy. I know how hard he’s being on himself at the moment.

“All on the same axle, on the same side, you can imagine the pressure. These are mechanics, they don’t get paid extra for doing it. They put themselves in the firing line, they put themselves under pressure.

“So naturally I’m very protective of them, because they deserve my protection. They’re brave, they volunteer for it, they try hard, they know the pressure they’re under.”

The man involved was stood down for the team’s final stop on Sunday because he was so upset by events.

“We changed him for the last stop of the race, because he took it very badly. I stress again these guys they don’t get paid [extra] for it, they volunteer to put themselves in that stressful situation. I respect that they are brave enough to do that.

“I’ve spoken to him and I was frankly giving him reassurance and support of this team. I think the drivers know, and all of us from the team principal down make mistakes from time to time. It’s pretty bloody annoying when we do it, we’re more annoyed with ourselves typically than when others make it, we’re often more understanding of other people than we are of our own mistakes.

“It happens, and that’s motor racing. There’s a lot of pressure nowadays with three second stops, as everyone knows that the last gun off is the one that dictates the speed of the change, and if it hasn’t been going well for you, it’s an enormously stressful position you’re in.”

He said that the team would once again review its pit stop operations: “We’ll look at the equipment, we’ll look at the process, we’ll look at the approach. So, disappointing. We weren’t quick enough, we made mistakes, and we had a failure on Jenson’s car. A pretty bad day at the office.”

Christian Horner says that his Red Bull team focussed on the sport in Bahrain over the weekend despite the obvious distractions that surrounded the event.

“We’ve focussed on motor racing this weekend,” said Horner, who had a chat with the FIA’s Jean Todt after the flag. “We’ve tried to come here to focus on the fourth Grand Prix of the year and that’s exactly what we’ve done. All the races carry the same points. It’s a great team performance for us and we now head back to Europe leading the championship, but it’s obviously been a difficult weekend for the sport. We focussed on what we were here to do.”

Asked about the criticism that the sport has faced in the media around the world, Horner said: “I think ultimately F1 has received an awful lot of attention this week, and it’s very easy to have opinions.

“It’s a sporting championship at the end of the day, there’s 20 races, we’ve come here, we’ve done our best and we’ve won the race that we so nearly won two years ago had it not been for a spark plug. We now need to move on and focus on the next race.”

He did not want to be drawn into a discussion on whether Bahrain should be on the calendar.

“We are competitors at the end of the day and we enter the championship, and we trust in the governing body to make the right decisions. It’s not for the teams to dictate what the calendar is, it never has been. That is not the role of the teams. We enter a championship to do all the races and we trust the judgements of the commercial rights holder and the ultimately the FIA who are responsible for the safety not just of the drivers but the spectators, the participants and everybody at a Grand Prix.

“I think it’s difficult because you see an awful lot of enthusiasm for F1 in areas of the country, and it’s not right for F1 to be dragged into a political debate. It’s deemed to be political if you race, it’s deemed to be political if you don’t. Our focus has been very much in coming here to do a job which we’ve done, and which I’m delighted to see that we have.”

Over the course of his long career Michael Schumacher has rarely strayed into controversy with off-track comments, always preferring to keep his thoughts to himself.

However after the Bahrain GP his frustrations came to the surface after what he called a “reasonably inactive race, just following cars.”

Schumacher started 22^nd after his gearbox grid penalty, and despite having lots of new tyres for Sunday could progress only as high as 10^th.

Afterwards he made it clear that he didn’t enjoy having to drive within the limits of the tyres in order to prolong their active life.

“I think we made the maximum out of it,” he said. “The main thing that I feel a little bit unpleased [about] is I think everybody had to drive well below drivers’ and particular car limit to maintain the tyres, and I just question whether tyres should play such a big importance or whether they should allow us a little bit longer so that you can drive more at racing car speed and not cruising around like we had the safety car.”

Asked if he would talk to Pirelli, he said: “I’m not happy about the situation. Let’s see what happens in the future. If it was a one-off car issue we could say it’s upon us to deal with it, but basically everybody, maybe with one or two exceptions… If it’s 80% of the field have this problem then maybe the tyre supplier should think about that.”

Sebastian Vettel’s Bahrain victory didn’t come as easy as some of his past successes as the German had to overcome a strong challenge from the Lotus Kimi Raikkonen.

In the end the final tyre changes proved crucial, as RBR pulled off a quick stop and Vettel put in some quick early laps on his last set. Both drivers had new prime tires for that stint, so the Finn no longer had the advantage he enjoyed earlier in the race, when he fresher tyres.

The win was an impressive demonstration of the strength of RBR after the team bounced back from a disappointing early start to the year.

“I think we had to work extremely hard in the first couple of races,” said Vettel of his win. “We were not where we wanted to be so therefore I’m extremely happy that we had a much better weekend here. Friday morning, the first time I went out, I felt much happier with the car balance, so I think we found a reasonable package that seemed to work on this circuit pretty well so all in all, I’m very pleased.

“I think I owe this one to the team, to the boys. As I touched on, they’ve been working so hard, giving them an extremely hard time here at the circuit, back in the factory, we all try to find the best configuration. I don’t want you to look in the back of our garage, it’s pretty busy and pretty messy: a lot of work, a lot of parts. So we try to get the best package together.”

Vettel said his weekend had gone pretty much gone to plan.

“As I said, very good yesterday in qualifying and today in the race obviously crucial to get a good start. Then I was able to pull away by three or four seconds immediately which turned out to be crucial. By the time Romain got past Lewis I think he had more or less had the same pace. At the end of the stints I think we were a little bit superior and then yeah, second stint pretty much the same.

“Kimi always had new tyres so we knew he would be a danger until the last lap. Again, obviously in the beginning trying not to lose too much. I think especially that second-last stint where we were on option tyres, Kimi was on a new prime tyre, so it was difficult. I thought he would make his way past pretty easily.

“I tried to defend, one time it was really close and after that it seemed that he was running into the same kind of problems with the tyres and we were able to… not pull away but we could open a bit of a gap. So yeah, a very, very tight and difficult race.

“Obviously not too busy in terms of overtaking and wheel to wheel racing for me, but I knew that every single corner would be crucial with no mistakes allowed. I kept the car on the track at all the time which was a help and yeah, great result and very, very happy.”

Vettel said the season is very hard to predict: “I think it’s obviously very good to watch. I think those four races have been extremely tight. We had one race where it was pretty chaotic, in Malaysia, with rain etc so up and down. Small things can make a big difference over the weekend – how much tyres you might have left, lap one, gear ratios you might pick, whether DRS is effective or not and you can come back.

“I think it was a different race here compared to the last race where we had people running in a chain and not being able to pass or not being able to pass too easily. All these things make a big difference and temperature-wise, all four races were very different. Track layouts were different so I’m not surprised that we have a different result every weekend.”

Kimi Raikkonen silenced the sceptics with a superb drive to second place in Bahrain, and at one stage looked like he might actually win.

The Lotus driver started 11^th and had the benefit of having two new sets of options and two new sets of primes. That helped him to charge up to second place in the first two stints. He then chased down leader Sebastian Vettel, just coming up short when his best chance came at the end of the second stints.

“I think we gave ourselves a chance at least,” said Raikkonen. “It’s a bit disappointing that I didn’t manage to do it. But I made a small mistake at the beginning and lost one place to Ferrari. I had to re-overtake him and it took a little time. I got past the people quite easily but if you look in the end I think we still took too long and we couldn’t win the race.

“But at least we got the podium with both cars. After the last race we tried hard and failed, and probably people thought we were a bit stupid. Even after yesterday what we did. But it turned out to be the right decision, and I think the team deserves what we have achieved now. We have been working hard. We’ve not been 100 per cent happy with how the weekends have run so far but finally we’ve got some proper results for the team, so it’s an important step.”

Raikkonen admitted that had he got past Romain Grosjean earlier, he might have had a better shot at passing Sebastian Vettel.

“Yeah, but there are no team orders and we know the rules,” said Kimi. “I try to get past as quickly as I can but it’s not easy with two similar cars. It’s always easy to say afterwards ‘if we had done that’ but in the end we were not fast enough to win and we have to take the second.

“I got one chance on Sebastian but I chose the wrong side under braking, so that was it really. In the end I didn’t have any other chances to try. It’s disappointing to finish second but after the last race we have to take it and be pretty happy.”

He said he did have one good go at passing Vettel: “I think like you saw on TV I got close enough once to have a chance to try but I chose the wrong side, so that’s about it. After that my tyres dropped off a bit and I couldn’t get close enough. Yep, next time we try, hopefully we can put ourselves in a similar position later on this season in the next coming races. It’s not going to be easy but we will try. And that would be nice.”

McLaren is to get a seat on the board of the F1 holding company, according to a report today.

If true it helps to explain why the team joined Ferrari and Red Bull in agreeing early to the terms of the 2013 Concorde Agreement, and why Bernie Ecclestone named the three teams together in his short press announcement a few weeks ago.

The ThisisMoney.co.uk website adds that plans for a float on the Singapore stock exchange have yet to be agreed by the board, and an initial date of June planned by CVC has been put back to October if it is practical and market conditions make sense.

Fernando Alonso starts the Bahrain GP from ninth place on the grid, but with a free choice of soft or medium tyres for the grid after he didn’t do a flying lap in Q3.

The Spaniard had used up all his option tyres just to make it into the top 10 and saw no point in trying a proper run in the final session.

“We used three sets on Q1 and Q2,” he explained, “so we arrived with our hands empty in Q3, so we decided not to run, because you cannot put too many laps on the tyres for tomorrow’s race. And also now we have to think if we want to start with the medium or we want to start with the soft in tomorrow’s race. Let’s see, because I think the strategy will be the big factor tomorrow.”

Alonso says he just wants to get a solid finish and some useful points.

“I think tomorrow it’s going to be very difficult. We need some strange conditions, and here I don’t expect rain for tomorrow or things like that. We need to score points.

“We have to do a good race, we’re starting ninth, so I think the top six is possible. We just need to overtake two or three cars, that can be possible if we do a good strategy and a good race pace. Let’s focus on that, top six, top seven tomorrow, and score good points.”

Sebastian Vettel put his season back on track by taking his first pole after a strong performance in Bahrain saw him trounce Lewis Hamilton.

Vettel has however used two sets of prime tyres when others have used one, and that may be something of a compromise come the race, when every lap on fresher rubber will count.

“I felt much happier with the car all weekend,” said Vettel. “I went out and I think we’ve always had the ability to go reasonably quick. Surely it depends a little bit when and where you are, which tyres etc., but I had a good feeling all throughout the weekend, and I’m very happy.

“I knew in qualifying we should be able to put the car higher up this time in qualifying. Q1 and Q2 wasn’t perfect, the laps I got in were not 100 per cent without mistakes and I knew in the third qualifying that getting everything together we should be in a better place.

“First run I obviously ran the set I scrubbed in Q2, wasn’t ideal, so I knew that with a new tyre there was a little bit again to gain and it did happen, so I’m very happy, very pleased and extremely happy for the team because the guys have done incredible lately.

“Four races so far but the last two weekends in particular, here and China, I don’t know how they managed, how they do it. They get hardly any sleep, probably an hour or two or three on average every night and still they’re full of energy and willing to work even harder – and I think we owe the result to those guys it the garage today.”

Vettel said the that Chinese experiment – where he ran the old spec exhaust and Webber had the new one – was very useful. This weekend they both have the newer exhaust, although there are still some small difference in the two packages. In essence the new exhaust gives more of a benefit on corner exits, and Vettel has accepted that it is the faster route to take.

“I think given the balance we had – or I had in particular – the first two races where I wasn’t happy, we decided in China to go back and see where we are. Equally, Mark carried on, which I think was good to get a straight comparison. And we found that the new car, or new package, has its advantages and the old package has its advantages and I think it was good to get an answer on that.

“So, we ended up with two cars, either one probably strong in a certain area so I think it helped us also going into this weekend trying to set up the car, working with the tyres, which seem to be tricky this year. We felt a little bit happier all around, also given the high temperatures here, which is not making life easier.”

Vettel admitted that the first pole of the season had come as a relief. 

“We’ve got a very good result today and I’m very happy. Of course I’m happy to be on pole for tomorrow’s race. For sure it feels good but zero points scored so far as the race is tomorrow. I think we are only a couple of races into the season, as I’ve mentioned many times now because I’ve had the same questions.

“We didn’t have the start that maybe we expected and people probably expected of us, but since day one, where we realised that maybe we weren’t as strong as we wanted to be, we’ve worked very, very hard and this is step one towards the right direction so we keep fighting and keep working hard to make sure that the results similar to today come more often again.”