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Sebastian Vettel was unperturbed after being only third fastest on Friday afternoon in Valencia, behind Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

In the morning Vettel experimented with a car in ‘Silverstone legal’ spec, and he was only16th.

Although the consensus is that the new engine mapping rules – starting with the qualifying clampdown in Valencia – will hurt RBR more than most, Vettel downplays the changes.

“To be honest I can understand that this is news to everyone, and everyone wants to get some information,” said the German. “I can only say that it will affect everyone, when the rules change, but I don’t see us suffering more than other people, to be honest. Maybe we will be surprised, maybe not. What I can judge now I think we have nothing to be afraid of.”

Regarding his morning experiment, Vettel said: “Sometimes you try different things. If you’re not in the top five or the top 10, clearly you’re running a different programme from the others, so that was this morning. In the afternoon we were more or less on the same pages as the rest. As you’ve seen, it’s very tight. I had a good feeling, to be honest, it was much better than in the morning.

“It is a Friday, and it’s always difficult to see what other people do. The important thing is we are there or thereabouts. It is tight here. Last year obviously we had a very good race, but there were a couple of people, Lewis and Fernando in particular, who were very close to us. The race unfolded a bit differently so we had a nice time at the front.

“It changes circuit by circuit. You can’t really say that’s team A, team B, team C. Sometimes the gaps are bigger, sometimes they are much closer. I give you the perfect example – we go to Australia, we are quite a bit quicker than the rest, we come to Malaysia, and we really had to push hard to qualify on pole. That’s two weeks, nothing was changed on the cars, it was just a different track. That’s how it goes. That’s why here as we expected it will be very tight.”

Plans for a movie about the 1976 F1 season and the rivalry between Niki Lauda and James Hunt appear to have taken a step forward with the news that two of the biggest names in the field of true life drama are collaborating on the project.

Veteran director Ron Howard, whose long list of credits includes Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon and A Beautiful Mind, is said to be ready to take on the film, which is tentatively called Rush.

Meanwhile scriptwriting chores are in the hands of his Frost/Nixon partner Peter Morgan, who was also responsible for The Queen and The Damned United, and whose latest film is about the life of Freddie Mercury.

Financing is from Cross Creek Pictures, a relatively new production company that was responsible for Oscar-winning ballet movie Black Swan. Its latest projects include The Ides of March, with George Clooney, and The Woman in Black, with Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe.

Paul Greengrass, who directed two of the Bourne movies, had originally been slated to direct.

A lawsuit filed by three Austin citizens could disrupt preparations for the US GP.

The suit claims that it seeks to prevent “the unlawful plunder of public funds for promoters of a Formula One race at a time when the State of Texas claims it cannot afford to adequately fund essential services, such as its public education system.”

One of the plaintiffs is a teacher who lost her job in a recent round of spending cutbacks.

A key element of the financial plans for the race is that the sanctioning fee due to Bernie Ecclestone is to be taken care of by a $25m grant of public money from the Texas state’s Major Event Trust Fund.

This was guaranteed to Bernie Ecclestone by Texas State Comptroller Susan Combs in a letter of May 10 last year, in which she assured him that the $25m fee for the 2012 race would be paid to Formula One World Championship Limited by July 31 2011, and that a similar amount would be paid for the remaining nine years of the contract, always before the end of July of the previous year.

The legal suit has been filed against Combs, in essence on the basis that the processes related to the Major Event Trust Fund were not correctly followed, and that she was not authorised to guarantee the payment to Ecclestone.

Among the key points cited by the plaintiffs are that there was no “highly competitive selection process” for the event.

They say that “offering public funds after the site selection has been made is an illegal gift for private purpose.”

It’s also claimed that the incremental increase in state and local tax income derived from the F1 event – and which justifies the use of the METF funding – has not been properly calculated.

A move from four-cylinder to V6 turbos and a postponement of the change from 2013 to 2014 was the compromise discussed by the FIA F1 Commission today, team sources have confirmed.

Even if agreed by the Commission, the changes will have to be formally approved by the World Motor Sport Council in a fax vote.

The V6 layout was used by the likes of Ferrari, Renault, Honda, TAG/Porsche and Ford/Cosworth in the original turbo era, and is more acceptable to the manufacturers – especially Ferrari – as there is arguably a closer affiliation with performance road cars than is provided by the planned four-cylinder.

Keeping the turbo format would be widely seen as a victory for Jean Todt, with the fact that he was willing to compromise on the date an indication that he is willing to listen to alternative views.

What Bernie Ecclestone might gain – other than a different engine note – is not exactly clear.

Renault technical director James Allison suggests that his team could lose out less than others in the Silverstone exhaust clampdown because the team’s side exit design means that the car’ aero balance will change less.

Allison is the first technical director to give a detailed explanation of what the Silverstone rule changes – a ban on using engine mapping for aerodynamic effect – will mean for the teams. He also confirms that from Valencia teams will not be able to change maps between qualifying and the race.

“The FIA’s note will cause all teams (whether or not they use a blown floor) to change their operation,” said Allison on the team website. “The headline changes for the Silverstone GP are as follows: when the driver lifts his foot fully off the throttle pedal, then the ECU maps must be set up so that the engine [to all intents and purposes] closes the throttle – previously it was possible to configure the engine maps to leave the throttle open and reduce the engine power by other means.

“Furthermore, when the driver lifts fully off the throttle, the ECU maps must be configured to cut off the fuel supply to the engine – this is intended to prevent so called “hot blowing” where the energy of the exhaust gas is increased by combustion.

“Finally, with immediate effect, it will no longer be possible to reprogramme the ECU configuration between qualifying and the race in the expectation that this will discourage extreme ECU setups for qualifying – previously electronic access to the ECU under parc fermé conditions had been explicitly permitted.”

Discussing the specific impact on Renault, Allison said: “It is not easy to judge the effect of this change on our competitiveness. The loss for each blown floor car will come from two separate effects – how much downforce will you lose and, in addition, how much will the loss of this downforce upset the balance of the car.

“All blown floor cars will lose downforce under braking as a result of these new restrictions. Some teams will lose more and some teams less; it is hard to know exactly what relative loss LRGP will suffer. However, it is possible that we will suffer less on the balance shift side of the equation because our forward exit exhausts produce their effect quite near the middle of the car.

“This means that as the exhaust blow waxes and wanes, it does not really disturb the aero balance of the car too much. With a rearward blower, the downforce from the exhaust is all generated at the rear axle. As the new rules reduce the blowing effect on corner entry much more than corner exit, it is possible that the rearward blowers will tend to suffer more nervousness under braking and more understeer on exit as a result of the new restrictions. We will find out at Silverstone!”

Jaime Alguersuari is doing a Red Bull street demo in Hong Kong today, and inevitably that has led to suggestions that the city could one day host a Grand Prix.

Although it seems highly unlikely that the authorities would be interested, a few years ago people would have laughed if you’d suggested Singapore as a possible F1 venue. At least one local official is keen on the idea.

“This is the first step in gaining the support of the people,” Hong Kong Automobile Association president Wesley Wan told the South China Morning Post.

“We want to raise the exposure of Formula One by staging this live show, and I hope it will lead to Hong Kong hosting a grand prix race one day.

“My dream is that Hong Kong, like Singapore, Malaysia and China, will be a stop on the grand prix circuit.”

“And as far as a street circuit is concerned, if Monte Carlo and Singapore can have it, why can’t Hong Kong?”

Wan said that Hong Kong had been approached about a race – presumably by Bernie Ecclestone – before the 1997 handover.

The ban will put an end to this unusual sight...

There’s no doubt that Renault – currently a solid fourth in the World Championship – will suffer more than most when the FIA bans its innovative side exhaust for 2012.

On Saturday the FIA’s Charlie Whiting wrote to the teams about blown diffusers, and while a clampdown on hot and cold blowing from Silverstone onwards caught most of the attention, the letter included a huge change to the exhaust rules for next year.

The plan is to have basic designs that exit behind the diffuser, and thus can have no impact on it. That will mean an end to the system run by Renault this year, although of course everyone else will have to start afresh too.

The details will be discussed at Thursday’s meeting of the Technical Working Group in London, but the FIA is believed to be intent on pushing through the main points. Technical rule changes for 2012 have to be fixed by June 30.

“I can feel what McLaren felt when they decided to ban the F-Duct!,” team boss Eric Boullier told this blog in Canada. “To be honest we’re not thinking too much about it. But when you want to go one route, if the FIA is changing the rules, we have to stick to the rules. We need to understand the exact reason, but if at the end the decision is to ban these systems, we’ll work on something else.”

The shorter term clampdown for the British GP affects engine mapping rather than hardware, and teams will still be able to get some benefit.

“It’s definitely a change, and if we can make it work differently on our car, we’ll do everything we can. We need to understand exactly what Charlie wants to ban.”

Following the promised fax vote of World Motor Sport Council members, the original 2011 F1 calendar has been reinstated.

That means that India is now back where it should be on October 30, and Bahrain has of course disappeared.

The only problem now is whether India can still make that date, with human nature suggesting that they might have slowed down a bit when offered an extra six weeks of preparation time.

The FIA will thus now host its annual shindig in Delhi in December – for which 800 hotel rooms are booked – without an F1 race as a supporting act…

All smiles at McLaren in Canada...

Martin Whitmarsh insists that the team spirit at McLaren helped to override any stress caused by the clash between Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton in Canada.

Tensions were eased when the drivers were able to talk during the break and they both accepted that it was a racing incident.

“People are going to talk about it,” said Whitmarsh when asked by this blog about Hamilton’s recent controversies. “But what a race. I’d hope that people want drivers to go out there and race. If there are absolutely reckless and silly things, you’ve got to be called up for it.

“But if you put yourself on the inside of someone, that’s how you normally overtake, and if they turn in on you, you’re probably going to have an accident. It takes two to tango, it takes two to make a decision about whether you’re going to come together or not. I think you can’t overtake without the risk of coming together, and that’s a fact.”

Regarding the aftermath, Whitmarsh added: “The great thing is the team spirit and the spirit between the two drivers is such that there was no recrimination. Both drivers recognise that it was one of those things, and there’s absolutely no issue.

“When team mates come together like that of course it’s disappointing for the team, but very easy for that to degenerate into something of a scene between the drivers. Of course it hasn’t done that.”

Mike Coughlan has commenced his new role as chief engineer of Williams, some four years after he was at the centre of the ‘Spygate’ row when he obtained information stolen from Ferrari while at McLaren.

Most recently he’s been involved in NASCAR with Michael Waltrip, but now he’s back. His appointment has caused some controversy, and to fend that off Williams has issued a Q&A in which he addresses the obvious questions.

“It was life‐changing because it made me reflect upon myself and my actions.,” he says of 2007. “Leaving a team and a sport that I love, and then seeing the consequences of my actions on the team and its fans was devastating. All I can do now is work hard and try to earn my place back in Formula One. This is what I am determined to do with Williams.”

Asked what he would say to those who feel what he did was unforgiveable, he added: “Well, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to everyone who was affected by my conduct and in particular the people at McLaren and Ferrari and the fans of those teams. I sincerely regret my actions and I fully accepted the penalty given to me by the FIA. I can only hope that I can earn back everyone’s respect.”