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The Grand Prix Drivers Association is set to formally announce details of its Global Fan Survey in Monaco on Thursday afternoon.

As revealed here over the Spanish GP weekend, the organisation wants to interact with fans, and find out what they want from F1.

“I think the fans are very important, their opinions,” said GPDA director Jenson Button today. “And that’s exactly why the GPDA has a global fan survey which will be announced tomorrow. I think it’s massively important because we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the fans. This is a sport that needs fans, we have millions of fans around the world and it’s always interesting to have their opinion.

“To see where they think the sport it, where they think the sport can go. Obviously we all have our own ideas, which is great, and I think the sport is in a good place right now – but there’s always room for improvement – as there is in any sport, especially a sport that’s always changing like Formula One in terms of technology and what have you. So, I think it’s really important, it’s going to be interesting to see how it goes.”

Asked if he thought the results would have any impact he added: “I think our aim is just to put them in place and to see how it goes. I think that it’s very interesting to see which direction the supporters of this sport and the fans of this sport feel that the sport should go in.

“It doesn’t mean that it’s going to change anything, it’s just interesting for us as drivers but I think for us collectively in Formula One, to get a better understanding. And I don’t think it’s been done for a while, so I just think it’s necessary to do and hopefully we’ll get some positive results.”

My earlier story on the GPDA’s plans can be found here:

GPDA promises F1 drivers will work to connect with fans

Lewis Hamilton has finally committed to Mercedes and signed a three-year contract extension that commits him to the team until 2018.

The two parties have been negotiating for months, and despite suggestions of a flirtation with Ferrari the reigning champion was always going to end up signing a deal – it was a matter of finalising the details.

“Mercedes is my home and I couldn’t be happier to be staying here for another three years,” he said. “This is a company filled with real passionate racers, from the board room to the factory floor, and an incredible hunger to win. Even after the success of last year, that hunger is greater than ever – and it’s the same for me, too.

“The Mercedes car I am driving right now is the best I have ever had in my career; it’s just so much fun to be out there every weekend, on the limit and fighting to win at every track. Mercedes-Benz began supporting me in 1998 so I am very proud that this contract means I will mark 20 years with Mercedes in 2018.”

Toto Wolff commented: “Continuity is one of the key factors for delivering success in Formula One and we now have that in place. Lewis enjoyed an historic World Championship season with Mercedes-Benz last year and it was a priority for this season to renew his contract for the next term. We have taken the right amount of time with the process and not rushed ourselves.

“The result is a strong agreement that will enhance Lewis’ association with the Mercedes-Benz brand, and that recognises and respects the market value of Lewis and of Mercedes in Formula One. Lewis’ sporting track record speaks for itself and he is a great personality for the company. Personally, I am looking forward to continuing to race with the strongest driver pairing in Formula One and to more historic achievements together.”

Keiji Matsumoto, one of the biggest names on the Japanese racing scene from the seventies to the early nineties, has died at the age of 65. He had been battling illness for some time.

Although not as well known internationally as contemporaries Satoru Nakajima, Kazuyoshi Hoshino and Masahiro Hasemi, he was highly regarded not just by his compatriots but also by the many overseas drivers who raced against him in Japan.

Born on December 26th 1949, he started racing in 1969, and first really made his mark by winning the 1979 Japanese F2 Championship. He went on to finish runner-up in both 1982 and 1985 before the category was replaced by F3000. He was an F3000 race winner as late as 1990, when he took two victories and finished fourth in the championship.

He was also successful in Grand Champion, for ‘CanAm’ bodied single seaters, and was a big player on the Japanese sportscar scene. Although usually associated with Nissan he also drove Vern Schuppan’s Porsche 962 on occasion.

In 1985 he was credited with winning the FIA World Sportscar Championship Fuji 1000kms, but the race was stopped early due to heavy rain, and only team mate Hoshino actually drove their March Nissan in the race.

He rarely ventured outside Japan, but he did contest one European F2 race at Donington Park in 1981. He also competed in a works Nissan Group C car at Le Mans in both 1987 and ’88, failing to make the flag on both occasions.

Remarkably when well into his forties he was still competitive in F3000 against the likes of Eddie Irvine, Heinz-Harald Frentzen and Mika Salo, latterly while driving for the Dome team.

He retired from racing at the end of the 1992 F3000 season. At his last race I was asked by a TV company to interview all the overseas drivers about him for a farewell video, and all had nothing but good things to say about a tall and quietly spoken man who always seemed to have a smile on his face.

Force India has expressed its frustration over the push for third cars and ultimately customer cars at yesterday’s F1 Strategy Group meeting.

Although not specifically outlined in today’s FIA statement – there was only a reference to “a comprehensive proposal to ensure the sustainability of the sport” – plans for a proper study of how customer cars would work were supported, despite opposition from the Force India’s representative, deputy team principal Bob Fernley.

The Silverstone outfit has a presence in the Strategy Group after finishing as the ‘best of the rest’ in the 2014 World Championship, and as such is in effect the only team representing the interests of its fellow struggling independents, namely Sauber, Lotus and Manor.

All want to continue as constructors in their own right, and regard any move towards an alternative future as a threat – especially after the meeting failed to properly address the financial squeeze that the midfield teams are facing.

“There was no interest at all from the manufacturer teams in discussing anything to do with cost controls or more equitable income distribution,” Fernley told this writer. “It was completely abandoned in favour of the customer cars.

“In some ways it makes things abundantly clear where F1 is going. We’ve suspected that customer cars were wanted for quite some time, but this is the first time that it’s really moving through as the only alternative as far as the manufacturer teams are concerned.

“It’s not finalised as to what the package is, but there’s a clear process that’s going to happen now. If any teams fail, the manufacturer teams will run a third car, and in the mean time they will get on with putting together a proposal and a format for customer cars.

“Their intention would be to give the independent teams first refusal on those to see if they want to switch from being a constructor to a customer car team.

“However there will be significant downsides to that, as you can imagine. But the devil will be in the detail. In the mean time we’ve got to determine the direction that we want to go on in and look at how we protect our position.”

Fernley doesn’t believe that supplying customer cars would work for the big teams: “The question will be whether it’s even viable to have a customer car programme? That’s the bit that they’ve got to prove. They are adamant that it is, but I’m not convinced on that, and that would be the best way of putting it, I think. The independent teams are not involved in any of the solutions.”

The ongoing debate over teams being allowed to use a fifth engine in 2015 without a grid penalty will be one of the highest profile elements of Thursday’s F1 Strategy group meeting.

Last year the rules allowed teams to use five engines without penalty, but the figure went down to four this year as it was deemed that the manufacturers would be on top of reliability. However Renault has had a worse time than last season, while Honda is of course now in its own debut year.

The fifth engine originally emerged in the context of ensuring that teams do not start to sit in the garage on Fridays as the season goes on in order to save mileage, which is why Bernie Ecclestone gave his support.

However Renault and Honda’s ongoing problems have meant that extra engines and grid penalties are now inevitable for RBR, STR and McLaren, and there’s been a push for the fifth engine to simply be added to the pool, rather than reserved for Friday use.

The consensus is that its supporters will struggle to get the idea voted through. Mercedes will only support the fifth engine if it’s strictly related to Fridays. Meanwhile engine customers – such as Force India – are adamant that they don’t want to pay for the extra engine.

“We’re not against it,” Force India’s Bob Fearnley told this writer. “But we are absolutely against paying extra money for it, so on that principle the answer would be we wouldn’t vote for it.

“We’ve lost an engine with Nico [Hulkenberg], and we lost it very early in its life, so effectively we’re running a three-engine programme for one of our drivers. So the question is can we somehow or other eke it out, assuming we don’t lose another engine? If we’re going to do that obviously we’re doing it to try save money. We’d vote against the principle of it costing us more, that’s for sure.

“The thing is we don’t know what we’re voting on, because the original concept for this fifth engine was based around Fridays, so until we know how it’s addressing the Friday issue it’s very difficult to make a decision. For me it’s what are they trying to achieve with it? The original conversations were about making sure Fridays are still fully supported.”

McLaren and Honda are obviously keen for the change to go ahead, although team principal Eric Boullier admitted that he’s not hopeful.

“As far as McLaren is concerned obviously we would be happy to have a fifth engine,” said the Frenchman. “I think having [us as] a new engine manufacturer in F1 it would be fair to have the same conditions that the other ones had when they were running last year. So yes, we are in favour of a fifth engine. But I’m not sure it will be that easy.”

Meanwhile Ecclestone has admitted to this writer that the cost issue was the major problem: “We agreed, or all the teams agreed, to have five engines during the year. We’ve got four in the regulations, and now people are saying maybe it should stay four. People who supply the engines don’t want to supply more unless they get more money, and the teams can’t afford it.”

The team behind the acclaimed F1 documentary 1: Life on the Limit are using Kickstarter to fund a new project about the life and career of Emerson Fittipaldi.

The idea for The Name is Fittipaldi emerged after the Brazilian proved to be such an interesting interviewee for the earlier film, which focussed on the development of safety in the sport over the past decades.

Announcing the new project the producers, Flat-Out Films and Diamond Docs, said it “tells the story of one of history’s most charismatic, influential and successful racing drivers. It’s a character study, a personal tale about the meteoric rise of a sporting legend, a story about family, fearlessness and brilliance, success and failure, and ultimately about life and death. It will be cinematic, charismatic, tense and inspiring.”

The team of director/editor Paul Crowder, writer Mark Monroe and producer Michael Shevloff have made several successful documentaries, including Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who. Monroe was also the writer of The Cove, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, while Crowder is currently working on an officially-sanctioned Beatles film with Rush director Ron Howard.

Shevloff said: “It’s being made with Emerson’s full cooperation and is going to be a very different film to ‘1’. It’s going to be a much more intimate character piece that really gets inside the mind of a champion. It’s a film that covers Emerson’s two careers, three wives and ‘nine lives’. We have already started the research and writing, and are now aiming to start our interview process this summer.”

Fittipaldi is providing home movies and other footage he has collected over the years, but the filmmakers are keen to hear from anyone who might have material.

More information on how to get involved can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/219637747/the-name-is-fittipaldi

The film also has a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Name-is-Fittipaldi/408202839364426?fref=ts

Nico Rosberg finally turned the tables on Lewis Hamilton by winning from pole in Spain, albeit on a day when things didn’t go perfectly for the World Championship leader.

Rosberg said his only frustration was that Sebastian Vettel wasn’t able to hang on to second and take more points from Hamilton.

“Just a fantastic weekend,” he said. “Everything worked out on Saturday and Sunday. It all came together. I’m very happy and that’s it.

“At one point I thought maybe, who knows, maybe Sebastian can keep Lewis behind, which on the one side isn’t good for the team, but in terms of my points… It’s always a compromise, for my points that would have been better.

“But that’s the way it is. Seven points [gained on Hamilton] is better than nothing and a fantastic team result today to be first and second, especially after the two-and-a half-week break. Everybody brought upgrades here but still we’re dominating in such a way, and that’s fantastic to see and more than at the last race.”

Rosberg was adamant that he had put earlier disappointments behind him.

“Bahrain was a long time ago and I’m not really thinking about the past too much. Bahrain was an exciting race, which gave me a boost, and the only thing that was wrong as the result – and I wanted to change that for this weekend. Now the result came as well so I’m very happy with that today. We’re just going to enjoy this win as an individual race. It’s great to close up seven points to Lewis, great to go to Monaco next – I really like that track – that’s it. Early days.”

Gene Haas made his first visit to a 2015 Grand Prix in Barcelona as plans for his team to enter F1 next year continue to move on apace.

Haas’s prospects have clearly been boosted by the improvement in the form of the Ferrari power unit that his team will use, although he says he always confident that would happen.

“I’ve been in racing long enough to know that Ferrari is not going to be kept down!,” he told this writer. “We kind of knew that going into it that Ferrari was certainly going to pick up the pace.

“We are very grateful to Ferrari, we hope that we offer something to Ferrari too, because I think there’s no plan for how new teams start. Over the last five years four teams started and I don’t think too many of them survived. There’s obviously a need for some way of starting teams. This is just another variation on that.”

As its plans progress and the new team gains credibility more drivers are indicating an interest – and Haas agrees that bigger names are likely to join that list as time goes by.

“You can’t really sign up a driver until you get near the end of the season. Because you don’t really know who’s going to be available. We’re certainly not going to start off with a novice driver that has no experience in F1. The timing is what it is. It’s going to be sometime during the end of the summer, when people start moving around.

“As time goes on and people see the organisation building up that’s going to lead to them taking us seriously, and we obviously need serious drivers. I think there’s still a lot of scepticism as to whether we’ll even be there or not, but as we get closer and closer it’s up to us to defuse that and say, ‘Hey, we’re coming.’”

Carlos Sainz produced a superb performance in qualifying in Barcelona to secure fifth place on the grid – just ahead of STR team mate Max Verstappen.

Toro Rosso has been strong all weekend, but even Sainz himself was surprised to have ended Q3 in such a good position.

“It’s amazing, and at my home track,” he said. “It’s something very special, what I’m going through now, and I’m very happy with it. Now obviously all the focus on tomorrow, and if it’s not a good race tomorrow then everyone will forget about quali. So we need to keep the focus, keep the head down, because we have a good chance to score points tomorrow and we have to make it happen.

“I think it’s just the track characteristics are suiting much better our car. There are much more long corners, downforce corners, and we know we have the downforce, we have the package, and when you have these kinds of corners, the car just works. I’m very happy with what they are doing because the package from the first race has been amazing, and it’s working everywhere.”

Asked if he could challenge the cars immediately ahead he said: “Probably not, because it’s a Williams and a Ferrari, and we need to be honest with ourselves here. Our qualifying performance has always been a bit better than our race, except for Malaysia.

“But we’re going to push, we’re going to try our best, and then if a Ferrari flies past, a Ferrari flies past. You have to focus on your race performance and your tyre management, and let’s see where we finish at the end.”

Christian Horner insists that plans to allow teams a fifth engine in 2015 are not dead in the water, despite suggestions that the F1 Strategy Group will vote against the initiative next week.

Horner insists that it’s too early to make a definitive call on how discussions and the vote might go.

The Strategy Group is compromised of six votes for the FIA, six votes for Bernie Ecclestone, and a vote apiece for Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Williams and Force India. In theory the issue does not need to be agreed on unanimously at the Strategy Group – but it does at the next stage, the F1 Commission, where all the teams are represented, as it is a change for the current season.

Meanwhile Force India’s Bob Fernley says that his team can’t make a definitive call until the details of what the teams are voting on, and the financial implications, are made clear. There is still a discussion over whether the fifth engine would be restricted to Friday use in order to encourage drivers to run and not save mileage.

“I spoke to Niki Lauda this morning and he said he was in favour of it,” Horner told this writer. “So I can’t see who would be against it. Force India broke a crank, so Hulkenberg will need a fifth engine anyway. I think it’s too early to say.

“Who knows what they’ll vote for on the day? People stick their hands up and vote unanimously in one meeting, and change their minds in the next. So nothing is guaranteed.”

Horner says Ecclestone remains in favour because he wants to keep the track busy on Fridays: “You could see the lack of mileage going on this morning.”

However the RBR boss says that the fifth engine should be freed up for use at any time, and not just on Fridays.

“How do you police that? Rather than try to police it like that is to change the number four for five. We’re probably going to use seven engines anyway, so for us it doesn’t really matter. Just got back to what we had last year is the easiest way of dealing with it.”

Meanwhile Horner admitted that RBR had considered taking a fifth engine penalty in Spain in order to try to guarantee getting through Monaco without a hugely expensive grid penalty in the principality.

“I don’t think we have sufficient engines to do that. We looked at it but we’re hoping to get through here and Monaco.”