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Pirelli has confirmed that it will bring its soft and hard compounds to Silverstone.

There had been some question of a medium/hard combination being used, but Pirelli has decided to take a punt on the soft, while knowing that it is going to be a bit marginal around Silverstone, where the teams will also take a step into the unknown as they run under the new engine mapping rules.

The presence of the soft is good news for Ferrari, for whom medium/hard would be a nightmare combination. Equally the use of hards – as opposed to medium/softs – will favour Red Bull over the prime stint.

“It’s one of the hardest circuits we face during the year,” said Pirelli’s Paul Hembery.  “Together with Istanbul, Malaysia and going forward somewhere like Spa and Monza for the high speed, and then Suzuka. So it’s one of the big challenges.

“And also being England it’s very variable in terms of weather. This week they were having 30C, today I believe it’s down to about 15C. So again from a tyre maker’s point of view making a compound work in that wide variety of conditions is a big challenge. Hence the reason that also offering the soft compound would allow us to operate well in cooler conditions.

“There have been some comments that maybe working with the hard compound favours teams that have a lot of downforce, that may or may not be true. What I can say is that as a tyre company we also have to look after our interests, and that means in a severe condition such as Silverstone the hard compound gives us a back-up so that we don’t end up in difficulties with the product.”

Germany will see a medium/soft pairing, while Hungary will see the soft/supersoft combination back.

Williams has announced two more key technical appointments as the team attempts to improve its fortunes in the build-up to 2012 and the departure of Sam Michael.

Jason Somerville will take up the role of Head of Aerodynamics on August 15, while Mark Gillan will Chief Operations Engineer from October 1, and will attend the last few races of the season.

Somerville has been at Williams before. He worked on the BMW Le Mans car and then moved into the F1 team in 1999, becoming joint head of aero. He then joined Toyota and subsequently Renault, as Project Leader Aerodynamics.

Gillan started at McLaren as a vehicle dynamicist in 1998,  becoming Principal Operational Aerodynamicist in 2001. He then joined Jaguar as Head of Vehicle Performance and Chief Race and Test Engineer.

He then took up a Professorship at the University of Surrey before moving to Toyota F1 Team as Head of Aerodynamics. He later returned to Surrey as Professor of Vehicle Engineering, but has kept in touch with F1 as an aero consultant.

Frank Williams said: “Williams F1 is looking forward to welcoming Jason and Mark to the team. They bring with them talent, experience and good team skills. We now feel that, together with Mike Coughlan, Jason and Mark can form the right technical leadership to take the team forward as we work our way back to the front of the grid.”

Christian Horner has played down the impact of the blown diffuser regulation change at Silverstone, but admits that no one knows what might happen.

The first stage – the banning of an engine map change between qualifying and the race – had very little impact on the formbook in Valencia last weekend, but the complete ban on using maps from Silverstone onwards is a much bigger change.

“It’s the same regulation clarification for everybody,” said Horner. “But the effect it will have on the others, that’s impossible for us to predict.”

Asked by this blog whether RBR’s role as a pioneer of diffuser blowing might make it harder to take a step back, Horner said: “I don’t think we’ve gone as extreme as others either with the type of air that they’re blowing, or the positioning…  One team [Renault] obviously have built their entire car around it.

“One would have thought it would have a bigger impact for them than some of the others. I think what you’ll see is that the net loss is probably going to be fairly consistent across the front running teams.”

The key is that it’s not just about the overall loss of downforce but balancing the car to make good use of the gases still legally available under acceleration.

“As with all things it’s a matter of balancing the car, so it’s a matter of making sure that we can achieve the kind of balance that we’ve had in the races to date. And hopefully – touch wood – we will be able to do that. We only get to see that in Silverstone.”

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali says that he doesn’t know how the rule clarification for Silverstone will impact the status quo between the top teams.

In Valencia Fernando Alonso finished second, having kept Red Bull on its toes all day.

“Congratulations to Sebastian because he has won the race, he has won six out of eight or something like that,” said Domenicali. “But I think without looking at the classification, we need to make sure that race by race we improve our performance, and if we are able to put him under pressure, we will see.

“I don’t know what is going to happen at Silverstone in terms of what is the effect on the performance of our car and what is the effect on the performance of Red Bull and all the others. We will see, that will be very interesting. Of course Silverstone is a race where normally Red Bull is very strong, it’s a high speed corner track. So we need to wait and see.”

Regarding the Valencia result, he said: “I think that Fernando’s race was really good. It was a great race, pushing lap by lap, a lot of backmarkers in the middle, so that was not really an easy job for anyone, unfortunately also for him too.

“I’m very pleased, because we saw that on race pace we were there. We beat one of the two Red Bulls on the track. The strategy applied was the right one to jump Mark on the track. So really, a positive outcome of the day.”

Ferrari has been competitive at the last three tracks, and when asked if the circuits or car development had given the team a boost, Domenicali said: “I think it’s both. For sure the track suits better our car, but we improved the car everywhere, I would say.

“For sure now we need to see the package that we are preparing to arrive in the high downforce tracks, and in the tracks where the high speed corners are very relevant, and we will see where we will be. I think that Silverstone will be important because that will be a line to see where the performance will be considering the changes there will be.”

The problem for Ferrari is that Pirelli has not confirmed its tyre selection for the British GP, and the team clearly prefers the softest products in the range.

Lewis Hamilton was able to put on a brave face after the European GP, but it was clear that he wasn’t very happy with the outcome of the weekend.

He eventually finished fourth and a massive 46 seconds off winner Sebastian Vettel. Most tellingly he conceded that his title hopes are slim.

“It’s finished really, in the sense of the championship,” he said. “It’s almost over, really.”

Hamilton said the problem was a simple lack of pace. “It wasn’t a frustrating race, we just weren’t quick enough, it’s as simple as that. The Ferraris were massively quicker than ourselves. We were really struggling to keep up with the Red Bulls and Ferraris ahead of me, I think we were quite lucky to stay ahead of Massa, really. The guys did a fantastic job in the pit stops, the best pit stops we’ve had all year. Unfortunately, just struggling with pace.

“The guys were asking me to stay out longer, I said guys I’m trying to look after the tyres as best I can, so this is all I can do. So I was pushing all the way, but with the tyres I was really, really struggling with oversteer for a long time. Seems like we’ve taken a step backwards perhaps this weekend in terms of performance, or maybe others have taken a step forward.

“I said I would be happy if I was able to keep my [grid] position, so I can’t say I’m happy.”

Hamilton made it clear where the problem lies: “I think we’re quite a bit down on downforce. We’ve not made an upgrade for several weeks now. I mean we’ve had upgrades, the front wing for example, but I mean rear downforce, we’ve really been struggling with that. In the next race we will really, really struggle. Once we lose the engine map we may see some differences there. “I think we might be affected more than the two teams ahead of us. It could be even worse for us.”

Asked whether he was looking forward to his home race, he said: “No! I’m really looking forward to seeing the fans, because they always put a spark in the weekend and make it that much brighter. I hope the weather’s great for us. Of course I’ll be coming there as best prepared as I can, as fast as I can be there.”

Fernando Alonso was in upbeat mood after qualifying in Valencia, despite being unable to match the front row spot he earned last time out in Canada.

The local hero insists that he’s happy to start fourth, behind the Red Bulls and Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren.

“It’s the best qualifying of the year apart from Canada, where we were on the first row of the grid,” said Alonso. “Of course we know it’s our maximum position at the moment. Red Bull is out of reach, they’ve had the last 13 pole positions, regarding the last races of last year. This is F1, no magic tricks from one race to the other.

“The real goal was to beat the McLarens. We have one McLaren in front and one behind, so more or less it’s achieved, the goal. Felipe and me we start in between them, so hopefully tomorrow we can fight for a podium, which is the main goal for this weekend.”

Alonso, who has never finished in the top three at this track, says he hopes to take advantage of any trouble ahead.

“A podium is the realistic target for us. We’ve been saying this from Thursday. It’s true that in free practice we were quick, but now in qualifying we see the real potential of all cars, and we see the Red Bull clearly favourite for pole position and for the race win.

“We just need to overtake one car. I’m sure Lewis will be aggressive on the first corner. We need to overtake the Red Bulls quickly, if I can take any benefit from some accidents, I will be ready…”

Ferrari technical director Pat Fry says that the Italian team has to come up with bigger innovations in the winter rather than rely on ongoing development in its quest to improve performance.

“If you look at the rate at which all the teams develop through the year, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, their actual development rate though the season is very, very similar,” said Fry.

“Obviously you bring different packages to different races, but if you average it out, we all sort of develop at the same sort of performance rate. So you have to be creative, and make the bigger steps in the winter period. Red Bull have done a very good job, we need to do a better one. We need to create the environment where we can make a bigger step.”

Although there has already been talking about when teams might give up on a title challenge and start to focus R&D efforts on their 2012 cars, Fry says that Ferrari intends to carry on with the current model.

“In reality as there’s not a big rule change [for 2012] we can carry on developing this car all the way through. We’re learning different techniques. The only thing that won’t carry over is anything we learn from the exhaust system and blowing the floor. We will develop things on this car all the way through to the end of the year, because it’s improving our understanding for next year.”

Christian Horner says that team harmony at Red Bull would take priority over creating an enviable Sebastian Vettel/Lewis Hamilton line up.

Hamilton has been linked with a possible future at RBR after he met with Horner in Montreal.

Asked by the BBC whether he could envisage Hamilton and Vettel working together, Horner said: “Sometimes as a team you have to look beyond what on paper perhaps looks the most attractive. It’s all about harmony and team at the end of the day, it’s not about individuals. That’s the most important thing to us.”

Asked whether he thought Hamilton really wanted to leave McLaren, he added: “I think that’s only really a question that Lewis could answer. He’s been there since he was almost just out of nappies. It’s one that I can’t answer. Of course every driver at the moment would like to be driving a Red Bull car, that’s only normal when we’ve had the kind of performance we’ve enjoyed over the last few years.”

FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting has defended the decision to clamp down on the use of engine mapping in conjunction with blown diffusers, insisting that what the teams have been doing is illegal.

Regarding the inevitable suggestions that the changes have been brought in to specfically handicap Red Bull, Whiting was adamant that it was not the case.

“If that’s what people want to say, then they’re perfectly at liberty to do it, of course,” said Whiting in Valencia. “All we’re doing is making sure that everyone is running how we think a car should be run legally. It’s not for us to say whether or not a certain team will be penalised more than others. It just depends on extreme they go. I’ve certainly seen evidence of maps from a number of teams that are extremely extreme. It’s not confined to one team, I can assure you.”

Asked why the FIA didn’t address the issue earlier, given that blown diffusers were in use last year, Whiting stressed that things had moved on.

“We know they all had blown diffusers, but it was how they were being used. It’s quite simply really. We know that exhaust gases have an influence on the aerodynamic performance of the car. We accept that, but the point is the design should minimise the effect that the exhaust has on the car, they shouldn’t attempt to use the exhaust for a completely different reason. That’s our view.

“It’s a bit like the mass damper for example, when it’s use, when first introduced by one team, it’s use was fairly benign when it came to aerodynamics. But the more it got developed, the more extreme the designs were. There were four or five or six mass dampers on the car, and they were clearly being used for aerodynamic reasons. These things escalate, as we all know, to the point where something has to be done. It’s exactly the same type of approach that we’re taking.”

However he drew a distinction between the current situation and examples such as the F-Duct and double diffuser, which were outlawed between seasons.

“The double diffuser and the F-Duct were legal, but during the course of the season the teams got together with us and decided that they weren’t good for F1, or weren’t needed in F1, so we wrote rules which would outlaw them. They actually complied with the rules, that’s why they were allowed to stay until the end of the season. But the new rules which came in the next year outlawed them.”

Whiting said the current changes were not prompted by any formal challenge from a team.

“The FIA Technical Department can only give an opinion. The stewards are the ones that decide whether or not the opinion of the technical department is correct. No one has yet challenged our opinion on this one. They are all happy to remove the extreme maps from their ECUs, but it’s just a matter of timing, and exactly what they do without affecting any perfectly legitimate routines and systems.”

Whiting admitted that one team had come close to filing a protest in Monaco: “I gave the team the assurance that we were going to follow this through, we weren’t going to give it up. That’s what they were concerned about. They were concerned about us changing our minds completely, letting things go for the rest of the season. On that basis we haven’t had any protests yet. I’ve always emphasised to the teams that that option is open to them. But I think everyone is doing to some degree the same thing. We just need to be sensible about it and approach it in a sort of pragmatic way in order to get the situation under control.

“Some are doing it more extremely than others, and you could even say some are doing it better than others. But everyone is doing it to some degree.”

Fernando Alonso has never had much luck in Valencia, and despite being fastest in practice today, the Ferrari driver was not getting too excited. However, he was willing to concede that he was “optimistic” for qualifying.

The local hero was 0.2 ahead of nearest challenger Lewis Hamilton, and a further tenth clear of Sebastian Vettel.

“It was OK, a normal Friday for us,” said Alonso. “We’re trying to understand the medium tyres. Everything seems OK, according to our information. We completed a lot of laps in the programme with both cars. We had a smooth Friday, but how competitive we are, I don’t think we can have an idea.

“We’ve been first position on Friday some races already, and then on Saturday we are fourth or fifth, with Red Bull always very dominant, and McLaren on average in front of us. I don’t expect tomorrow a big miracle. It will be very tough for us, if we want to be in front. Obviously we are optimistic, we are confident that we can do a good qualifying, and we will give 100%.”

Alonso downplayed the rule changes that are expected to rein in Red Bull in qualifying.

“I think the change of the regulation means nothing [here]. We have exactly the same car as we had in Canada. In Silverstone it can be more change, but here is exactly the same. If we are competitive here, it’s because of the track characteristics. The car is more or less identical to Canada, it’s just the circuit and the tyres are working well. We’ll see tomorrow.”

Although overtaking has been much easier at other venues this year, Alonso thinks it will still be tough in Valencia.

“It will be difficult. I had a couple of laps behind the Sauber in the last run, and I noticed it was very difficult to overtake, even using the DRS. Obviously it’s not as extreme as Monaco, where it is impossible to overtake, but I think here in Valencia it is very, very difficult.

“A good starting position is important tomorrow, so we need to find a good set-up for the race, but we cannot forget qualifying, because as I said it will be difficult in the race to see as many overtaking as some other places.”