Adam Cooper F1

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.”

Christian Horner says that Red Bull’s new short nose is an ‘engineering masterpiece’ – and is adamant that his team deserves praise for getting it through the FIA crash test.

Teams have been moving towards shorter noses this year in search of aerodynamic benefits. It’s believed that the new nose required four attempts before it pass the test, which created some negative PR. However, Horner says that was just normal practice as the team explored the limits.

“I think that’s fairly usual for something as different as that,” he told this writer. “I think you can see by the aggressively short nature of it that it’s been quite a technical challenge. It’s a great credit to the guys that actually did it to get it through. It’s not a negative at all, it’s an engineering masterpiece that they’ve managed to achieve.”

The nose was run by Daniil Kvyat today, but problems for Daniel Ricciardo – who was running in standard spec – meant that it was hard for the team to make a fair comparison between the two iterations and judge the aerodynamic benefits.

“We haven’t really done a laps so we’ve got a bit more comparison work to do, but the initial signs are encouraging. But let’s see what the results look like, because it has quite a big effect on the rest of the car.”

Jenson Button admits he found the experience of watching the Bahrain GP a useful one, despite his obvious frustration at not taking part himself.

Button watched in the McLaren hospitality building, where he had access to Sky F1’s commentary and the official timing screens. He also entertained fans by Tweeting his thoughts during the race.

“They [the cars] are quite quiet aren’t they?,” he said when asked by this writer what he’d learned. “I had to listen to the commentators all the time – it didn’t drown it out! It was good to see the sparks, that made it for me.

“The thing that amazes me when you watch a race like that is how much you [TV commentators and the media] miss of what is going on. Obviously you’re fully in it and you’re looking at the leaders, but there is a lot going on that doesn’t get picked up. It’s very difficult to pick up on everything, but when I’ve got the timing screens I can see what’s going on. You could see Kimi was possibly going to win the race from where he was, and he went one lap long in the pit stop, and if he hadn’t he probably would have challenged for the win.

“There are so many things to pick up on. You can really see how certain drivers are doing certain things, which is actually really useful for me in the future, because you see what those certain drivers are going to be doing in the future as well – we do the same thing every race. So it was actually a pretty useful day out for me, probably more useful than driving the car that day! Hopefully I’ve learned a lot for this race.”

Jenson made some interesting observations about the show.

“I think one of the reasons F1 is so big compared to say endurance racing is because it’s normally easy to watch. You’re sat on your sofa, maybe you had a big night out the night before, or someone’s cooked a roast dinner, and you say ‘Stick F1 on’. It has been in the past reasonably easy to understand, the racing is the racing, but when you start complicating it with other things it can get a little bit too much for people.

“So yeah I think it’s important to keep the sport simple. I’m not saying the public need the sport to be simple, but I think it’s just easier for people to watch the sport when it’s more simple, when you see the excitement of fighting and all of that. Conserving fuel, conserving tyres, it just takes away a little bit I personally feel.”

Asked how things might be improved he said: “I don’t know, that’s not my job, I’m the driver. I do the bit in the car!”

Valtteri Bottas has laughed off suggestions that he has already signed some sort of pre-contract with Ferrari.

Asked about the rumours in Barcelona today the Finn was adamant that no deal has been done with the Italian team.

“I heard plenty of stories,” he said. “And sometimes it’s quite funny to hear those, because in the end you know what’s the case and what’s not. There’s a lot of people making up stuff. The fact is at the moment I’m just focussing on this season and getting the maximum for us as a team. The rest, I don’t know yet.

“There’s been always many kind of rumours, so I’m not really thinking about those. That’s for my management to think [about]. Like I said before I’m only personally focussing on this moment and this season, because I think that’s the best thing for me to do for the future as well.”

He confirmed that he will be a free agent at the end of 2015: “I don’t have anything for next year.”

However he wouldn’t comment on whether discussions on an Williams contract extension are ongoing.

“My management is doing all that, and maybe there can be some things they don’t tell me, so you should ask them!

“If they have something solid for sure there will speak with me, but at the moment we haven’t spoken about the future. We’re not at that point.

“Of course we want to win here at Williams, we have big plans for the future, and the team has invested a lot. It has great people and made a massive jump from ’13 to ’14. It’s been a bit of a difficult start, but if we can keep the development going we can be again strong at the end of the season.”

McLaren has released the first pictures of the livery that the MP4-30 will run with from this weekend’s Spanish GP.

As previously reported the chrome/silver look that the car started the season with has now been replaced by darker hue, while there is also now more red.

Yesterday a team spokesman told this blog: “We have revised our car’s livery, improving its visual impact, optimising it for not only bright sunshine but also for the floodlights increasingly used in twilight and night races.

“The result is a dynamic, predatory, graphite-grey colouration, complemented by McLaren-dayglo ‘Speedmarks’ and keylines, reducing the reflection issues caused by our latest chrome-silver treatment.”