Category Archives: Uncategorized

Lewis Hamilton had his loaned Mercedes impounded by Melbourne police after apparently doing burnouts as he left the Albert Park circuit on Friday night.

McLaren later issued a statement under Hamilton’s name – but without any reference to team or sponsors – in which he apologised for the incident.

Hamilton said: “This evening, I was driving in an over-exuberant manner and, as a result, was stopped by the police. What I did was silly, and I want to apologise for it.”

The incident is sure to be a focus of media attention and put Hamilton under the media spotlight for the rest of the weekend.

Local police may have been a little jumpy because this morning a famous Melbourne restaurant owner was killed in a motorcycle accident just yards away from where Lewis was stopped.

Jenson Button says that traffic is a big issue in Melbourne after narrowly avoiding contact with Pedro de la Rosa in the second Friday session.

Button was on a quick lap when he came across the Sauber driver, and he had to change direction when the Spaniard tried to move out of the way. With 24 cars running and drivers often slowing at the end of the lap to create some space for their flying laps there were a few other near misses, and there could be further problems come qualifying. Indeed it’s very possible that a top driver could find themselves stuck, especially towards the end of Q2.

“It’s so busy on the track when all the cars are running,” said Button after the session. “And it’s difficult to get a gap, especially with the different speeds. Our car is working well round here, and it’s a positive in that way. The problem is that you catch a lot of cars. I had a lot of traffic, and in the last seven laps, I never got a clear lap once.

“Pedro at the end was in the way coming out of the quick left/right, which is obviously a very dangerous place. I’ve spoken to Pedro, we’ve talked about it, and it’s fine. I don’t think it’s so much down to the guys, a lot of it is down to the team letting us know who’s around, because it’s very difficult to see in these cars behind.”

Button finished the session in second place, 0.2s off team mate Lewis Hamilton. But it was clear that McLaren were pursuing a low fuel qualifying set-up, others were not.

“It’s only practice and I’m sure we’re lighter than some of the quick cars out there, the cars that were quick in Bahrain. But tomorrow we’ll see where we actually stand. It’s important for us to be doing what we are, to get a good balance with the car, and a good feeling with the car.

“I’ve been happy since lap one we’ve driven here. We’ve just been trying to tweak the balance of the car, but it’s been very difficult because of the tough conditions and also the traffic on the circuit. Both tyres are working well, so it’s positive.”

Bahrain was a hectic weekend for all three new teams, but unlike Lotus Virgin did not have the consolation of seeing its cars run the distance. That was a huge disappointment for founder and team principal John Booth, who is hoping that this weekend’s Australian GP will see an improvement.

“It was a fantastic feeling to be on the grid, but we were absolutely gutted to lose two cars inside 16 laps,” Booth told this blog. “I know other people broke down, but it’s no consolation, it really isn’t. We’re almost there, it’s so tantalising!”

Inevitably the team was on a steep learning curve all weekend: “The biggest problem was only having a five-day turnaround after the Barcelona test before the car went out, so we had boxes and suitcases arriving up until the Thursday night. We had two all-nighters getting the cars ready, so we didn’t really have time to take it all in. Once we got to qualifying we were sorted. Qualifying went like clockwork, and we were really pleased with the way we were getting organised.

“We don’t have any resources at home, the whole team is at the track. We’ve got someone answering the phone and one stores guy, that’s all we’ve got back at base, so that adds extra strain! I’ve got some great people here with a lot of F1 experience, including Nick [Wirth] of course, so that’s side of it has been made easier. We’ve got four complete sets of car bits for Melbourne, so we’re starting on the front foot. It should be much easier.”

Last year Richard Branson made a big splash in Oz when he arrived on the scene with Brawn, and Jenson Button won the race. This time his ambitions will have to be a little more modest. However a finish in what is usually a hectic race of high attrition might be the team’s best chance all year of getting any points…

Karun Chandhok says that the Australian GP will be the real start of his F1 career, following his frustrating debut for Hispania in Bahrain.

The Indian spent most of the Sakhir weekend hanging around waiting for his car to be readied, and when it finally was he ran its installation laps in qualifying. He then missed the buzz of being on the grid for the first time when he started the race from the pitlane, only to crash out.

“For me my first weekend is Melbourne,” Chandhok told this blog. “In Bahrain there’s been plenty of activity in the garage, but not much on the track! Over the weekend we did just four laps in qualy. We had fuel on board, we had the safety map for the engine because it was an installation run, and I wasn’t really in qualy mode.”

Both HRTs started from the pitlane, ostensibly because they had dropped out of parc ferme and thus been able to change parts and set-up. It also meant they didn’t have to make a proper start, something that has been saved for Melbourne.

“We changed a lot of stuff because we hadn’t run the car at all. In qualy I did installation laps and after installation laps you have to take the car and check it out. So we started from the pits because we’d changed some stuff on the car. For my car it was a no brainer. We staggered the cars, so Bruno went out before me. We didn’t even wait at the end of the pitlane, we went out just to get going.”

Alas Chandhok did only one flying lap before crashing out: “I just caught a bump. Obviously we’d done no set-up work, we hadn’t done anything, just a rollout. So the car was not set-up for the bumps. I found a bump that I didn’t know existed because I’d not driven the new part of the circuit more than four timed laps in qualy. It just hit a bump, the car bounced more than I expected, got on the exit kerb. I had no steering, I was on the plank, and I just spun. It just kissed the barrier.

“I wasn’t pushing, I just caught a bump at the wrong angle and it spat me off, just a legacy of not running the laps. It was just not doing enough mileage. We were not racing during the weekend, we were participating and we were testing.”

Chandhok knew the ‘old’ section of the Bahrain track, but he’ll have to learn Albert Park as well as trying to put some miles on the car. He did at least win a lot of fans over the Bahrain weekend, and his underdog status means that he will probably have a few people cheering this time…

Zoran Stefanovic’s ongoing attempts to get Stefan GP onto the F1 grid have been made rather harder by the end of his deal with Toyota Motorsport GmbH, which means that the Serbian outfit no longer has access to a completed car.

Stefan’s deal was pending gaining an entry for 2010, and having failed to do so, the original memorandum of understanding has lapsed. Stefanovic had been loaned a small office in TMG’s Cologne factory from which to work, and that has now been closed.

It’s believed that TMG has little faith in Stefanovic’s ability to put a viable commercial package together, and sources say that any kind of extension of the arrangement looks highly unlikely.

Suggestions that Stefan might yet get onto the 2010 entry list – by virtue of a deal with US F1 – would thus seem to be somewhat optimistic, although Bernie Ecclestone mischievously told this blog in Bahrain that such a scenario was not impossible.

“I think they’ve come together now with some ideas,” Ecclestone told me. “We have to find a way. They won’t be there for sure for the first two or three races, whether they’ll be there after that, we’ll have to see.”

Pressed on whether a late Stefan entry had any basis in reality Bernie implied that it might depend on the failure of another team: “I don’t know, I doubt it because it’s not fair to the others… But imagine one of these other people was in a little bit of a trouble?

“I’m happy to have America, and I’d be happy if we had Serbia in, it’s another country,” he told me. “The more countries, the better it is.”

However it’s already been made very clear by the FIA that whatever Ecclestone’s position on the matter, Stefan is not going to get in.

When asked by this blog about Stefan GP last weekend, Todt said: “Stefan GP was part of the tender process. They did not get an entry, and I understand during the course of the last month they changed the way of thinking, of getting into F1. They got involved with Toyota.

“But we have to follow a proper process, and if you want to be involved when you have a free position in the F1 championships, we need to make a tender. So that is what we are going to do in the coming days.”

Bernie’s support was one of the few assets Stefanovic seemed to have, but the FOM boss has backtracked a little on what he really said after meeting the Serbian Prime Minister and discussing potential government finance for the F1 team.   

“What they said then was they would support the team, which they would do. Whether they would pour money in… I don’t think so.”

Logic suggests that Stefan GP would be in a relatively strong position when the FIA conducted its 2011 entry process if it still had the Toyota TF110 chassis as a starting point. It’s not clear how the team would now create a car. However technical boss Mike Coughlan and his men have presumably gleaned a lot of knowledge from their access to the Toyota project.

With no ongoing commitment to Stefan, TMG is now open to offers from third parties. Last week the company formally announced that it was available to undertake design and development work for road and racing projects, and thus a new alliance with a prospective 2011 F1 entrant is not out of the question.

In a statement, TMG said that it has “restructured to provide specialist solutions ranging from complete car development to individual component testing or production, aimed at the automotive or engineering sectors and beyond. Around 200 experts provide a flexible portfolio of specialised services which for the first time is available to external clients, in addition to the worldwide Toyota family.”

Meanwhile Toyota would appear to face the small problem of retrieving two container loads of its pit and garage equipment which were sent on one-way sea freight trips on behalf of Stefan GP. One is currently in Bahrain, and the other in Kuala Lumpur…

The FIA has kicked off the selection process for the 13th (and any other) empty entry slots on the 2011 F1 grid with what it has named a ‘call for expressions of interest.’

Anyone who would like to enter is invited in the first instance to send €1000 to an FIA bank account, which will make them eligible for the next step.

The FIA has been wounded by the US F1 fiasco – and criticised heavily by the likes of Ferrari – and clearly wants to ensure that next time around, no mistakes are made.

Bizarrely though its schedule calls for a decision to be made by July, which is very late. Last year the three original candidates were notified on June 12 and still faced huge challenges in getting their cars ready, notwithstanding any financial hurdles. While it’s true that Lotus got the nod officially in September and still made the grid, it had begun the goundwork a lot earlier, and had been in close contact with the FIA since June.

As was announced when the 2010 entry list was issued, the FIA will also select at least one reserve. Logic suggests however that it would be almost impossible to get a project off the ground, and that any team would need six months or so notice that it is being upgraded to full entry status – unless like Stefan GP last month, it had access to someone else’s unused car.

The full statement reads as follows: “The FIA has decided to open a new selection process to identify a candidate team to fill any vacancy that may exist in the FIA Formula One World Championship at the start of the 2011 season.  The FIA may also identify one or more possible ‘reserve’ entrants to fill such vacancies.

“This selection process will be open to all candidates capable of participating in the Championship for 2011 and 2012. The overall long-term interests of the Championship will determine which candidates are selected. 

“The precise terms of this selection process, together with the applicable selection criteria, deadlines, legal requirements and other conditions, will be communicated to candidates who have registered a formal expression of interest with the FIA’s Secretariat before 5pm CET Thursday 15th April 2010, together with an administration fee of €1,000. 

“The application process will commence at that time with those who have registered an expression of interest before this deadline (late applicants will be admitted only at the FIA’s discretion).  This fee is non-refundable, although it will be offset against the application fee, which the FIA will require from those submitting full applications. 

“All applicants will be expected to undergo thorough due diligence.  By way of indication only, the applicable selection criteria will include:

(a) the technical ability and resources of the team;

(b) the ability of the team to raise and maintain sufficient funding to allow participation;

(c) the team’s experience and human resources;

(d) the FIA’s assessment of the value that the candidate may bring to the Championship as a whole. 

“The timing of this process will depend on the candidates’ responses.  However, by way of indication only, the FIA anticipates that full applications will need to be submitted by the end of June, followed by due diligence leading to a decision in July 2010.

“Note: The FIA hereby invites interested parties to send a formal expression of interest and administration fee to the FIA Secretariat (legal@fia.com / Bank: Crédit du Nord, 50 rue d’Anjou, 75008 Paris, IBAN CODE: FR76 3007 6020 2025 3680 0020 034, SWIFT CODE: NORDFRPP Account holder: FIA), together with full contact details and a letter introducing their candidacy.”

Michael Schumacher made a point of telling us after qualifying in Bahrain that by starting seventh he was matching his performance in his first Grand Prix at Spa in 1991.

After he said that this blog told him that we hoped the race would last longer, since Schumacher’s debut with Jordan was famously over after just one corner.

In the event he did get to the flag, albeit in sixth. That low-key showing was enough to cause some consternation amongst the media and public. But the fact is the guy is human, and a comeback win was always something of a long shot.

Three years is a long time, and it will take time for him to get fully back in the groove. Crucially, it’s clear that he finds the Mercedes lacking in front grip at the moment.

Outpaced by team mate Nico Rosberg in qualifying, Michael finished 3.9s behind his countryman, having set a marginally faster lap. It wasn’t too bad, and he had a smile on his face afterwards, and his overall analysis of the race was pretty astute.

“It was certainly better than my first race in ’91,” said Schumacher after the flag. “Lewis had a little [mistake] so Nico was able to pass him. He got back past at the pit stop, and that’s about it, that’s the action we’re going to have unfortunately with this kind of environment of race strategy. Anyway it was good fun, especially the beginning. And now we are going to work forward to catch up whoever’s in front of us.

“There are those new rules with the tyres that everybody has to cope with. I struggle a little bit with those, I have to say. But after three years not being there I guess it’s natural that you have to find your way into new bits and pieces. The team and myself have got to work on that.”

Michael said he had a close shave with his own team mate at the start: “I came off the line very good, I made up a position. It was a little bit tight with Nico and myself, I think we even had a little kiss! If it just stays among team mates, it’s OK, nothing serious. And then it was just straightforward.

“The only surprise was the tyres held up better than I expected, I expected a much worse scenario, the tyres giving up and sliding and all this.”

Intriguingly, Schumacher even found some positive words to say about his former team. “I think Ferrari and the Red Bull as we all expected have done a great job. I feel happy for Ferrari in particular after a tough year last year to be back on the road…”

Will he be so happy if the red cars continue to win? Time will tell.

Mike Gascoyne and Lotus owner Tony Fernandes have embraced Twitter

The Bahrain GP was arguably the first race of the Twitter era, for while the service was on the fringes of F1 last year, it really came of age during the February testing sessions.

I was at the first day of the Valencia test when the world of F1 reporting was turned on its head by the huge level of interest on Tweets from journalists and team members at the track.

Even my snap at the top of this page – showing Michael Schumacher leaving the garage for the first time – got over 5000 views.

Most team PR departments have now embraced Twitter, but no one has done it with more enthusiasm than Lotus. Tony Fernandes has kept us entertained with his random thoughts and news scoops, while Heikki Kovalainen has provided insights after stepping straight from the cockpit.

Twitter rookie Mike Gascoyne got into it at the very first Lotus test day, telling us what was going on in the garage. Indeed at first I thought it was a wind-up or fake, and it was only after checking his early followers – who included a junior Gascoyne who was Tweeting in colourful language about her homework – that I was sure that this was the real Mike G.

Astonishingly, Mike continued to communicate from the pit wall during the Bahrain GP. I was busy watching the TV and timing screens in the Sakhir media centre, while listening to the BBC Five Live commentary. Thus I have to admit I only became aware of Gascoyne’s special service when the Beeb’s David Croft passed on an extraordinary message to the effect that Jarno Trulli would be pitting on the next lap.

Think about that for a minute. OK, Jarno wasn’t exactly battling for a podium, but here’s a team technical director imparting his driver’s strategy direct from the pit wall to the world. Before it happens…

FYI, here’s a record of Mike’s Tweets on Sunday:

2.04pm: “Strategy and Driver briefings over, getting ready to send the cars to the grid”

2.22pm: “On the pit wall, 10 mins to cars leaving the pit lane”

2.24pm: “Just finished fueling [sic] the cars and drivers about to get in”

3:06pm “We’re off, Lotus back in GP racing, great start from Heikki”

3.17pm: “No problems with either car but Jarno has lots of understeer”

3: 19pm: “Jarno thinks he may have damaged the front wing on first lap”

3: 39pm: “Heikki fighting hard, great job”

3.44pm: “Only new team still running. Lost telemetry but no problems on the car”

3:49pm: “Looking to stop Jarno a bit earlier and switch to options”

3.53pm: “Calling Jarno in next lap”

3.55pm: “Jarno in”

4.11pm: “Jarno quick on options and leapfrogged Heikki”

4.27pm: “Hydraulic problem for Jarno, trying to get to flag”

4:31pm: “Jarno doing a great job to get to the flag”

5.23pm: “Great result for the whole team. Fantastic job by both drivers”

Pretty amazing stuff! While some team PR folk also relayed useful info, this was coming from the very heart of the team.

“Tony said he wanted to be a little bit different, and we thought that was something we could do,” Mike told me after the race. “I mean, I have a chief engineer, and we’ve got Dieter [Gass] as a sort of sporting director. I’ve got two very experienced guys on the job. We hope that the public can get into it, and it’s would be nice to think that people are watching the race with live timing on f1.com, and then we’re telling them what’s going on.”

Will anyone closer to the sharp end have the courage to follow suit? I wouldn’t hold your breath, even though most top teams have senior folk whose only role during a race appears to be to watch TV. Meanwhile Lotus can continue to earn some extra respect from fans…

PS: If you haven’t found him yet, he’s @MikeGascoyne

Tonight sees the debut of a new F1 parc ferme system implemented by the FIA, one which sees the governing body ‘spying’ on any illicit activity in each of the team garages with a network of 24 cameras.

In past years on Saturday evening all the cars were kept together in a single FIA garage. However with 26 cars originally expected for this year – and up to three new teams requiring garages of their own – the FIA decided to look for a new system to make better use of the space.

The car are now kept under parc ferme conditions in the garages of the individual teams, and to ensure that there is no tampering they are zipped up in a car cover – a bit like a giant sleeping bag – which is then sealed by the FIA when parc ferme begins at 6.30pm on Saturday night.

In the past the teams would collect the cars at 8.30am (or 9.30am with Bahrain’s late race start) from the parc ferme garage, but now they can just unzip the covers. 

The FIA has also mounted a camera on the pit gantry above every car to monitor any movement around the cars overnight. A Bahrain track official has the exciting job of watching an FIA laptop with 24 camera views on it. 

Fortunately if he falls asleep anything untoward will still be recorded…

Michael Schumacher is not noted for his interest in statistics or history, but he was the first to point out that in qualifying seventh for his comeback race, he repeated his feat of his debut at Spa with Jordan in 1991.

He had a very short Sunday, coasting to a halt after exiting the first corner, but the qualifying performance was enough to propel him into Benetton – and subsequent superstardom.

“It’s actually a funny situation,” he mused after qualifying. I mentioned at my first test I kind of feel as I’ve just started F1. In Valencia doing the first lap [see above picture!] I was a bit shocked, and doing the next laps I was straight back into it, and felt very comfortable. And it was exactly like it was in ’91, in a way. As well in ’91 in my first qualifying I finished seventh, so here we are!”

Asked if he felt any emotions on the eve of his comeback race, he wasn’t giving anything away: “I’m still sort of my frame of mind, and that’s very focussed, without having much of emotion. Just paying attention to details. It might be different in the night, when I’m sleeping. We’ll find out!”

Michael has appeared visibly frustrated at times this weekend, and certainly his car looked a little uncomfortably on the track. He’s been outpaced throughout by Nico Rosberg, and it’s clear that he’s still getting up to speed.

“Today [there were] several reasons for it, but one is pretty certainly just myself, I just have to get into it. I mean, we have had winter testing, first time here being in the heat, certain things do behave slightly different. I just need to get into the rhythm. Obviously slowly and progressively it has improved – but it’s challenging, and that’s a good thing.”

Asked whether that was a psychological thing – getting into the zone – Michael said: “It’s just having the rhythm, and having this fine tuning, and getting the car to you, and just making perfect use of what you have available.”

Intriguingly Michael suggested that the team has to adapt the car to his style. In the past he gave the world the impression that he could drive anything, although inevitably of course he led Ferrari’s development in a direction that suited him. The big question is how long it will take.

“That depends on how quickly they can change the car. Quite honesty there are certain principles that we are working on that we have understood, but obviously there is certain development, to create [parts] and build them there is a lead time. We have to find out.

“There’s a lots of potential to improve the car, and that’s what the main focus is at the moment, to just steadily get up there. It’s going to take a couple of races before we sort out all our issues that we are facing, and maximise the potential.”

So what of tomorrow? Like everyone else, Michael is intrigued to see how strategy will play out, but he doesn’t expect to see too much overtaking.

“I think it’s very difficult. There are two cars sticking out, two McLarens, they are very strong on straightline speed. Probably they have the best chance to overtake, if at all. For the rest, you lose too much at the last corner that you would not be able to recover down the straight, so you have to do it through the strategy, and at the start. That’s the two biggest options to move up.”

One element of the race he particularly singled out: “I think it’s going to be an interesting first corner, because with these heavy cars, and not much experience, and a new kind of routine, it’s going to be interesting. I look forward to that.”

After he’d talked to the media I went to say hello, and said that I hoped he didn’t have a race like he had in 1991. He just smiled…