Adam Cooper F1

After Mercedes clinched the World Championship in Sochi today team boss Toto Wolff paid tribute to Ross Brawn, who laid the foundations of the success after Mercedes took over Brawn GP at the end of 2009.

This was the first title for Mercedes, as there was no constructors’ championship during its previous period of domination in 1954-’55.

“It’s incredible, I have to pinch myself sometimes,” said Wolff. “We are part of the Mercedes-Benz history. We won for the first constructors’ title for Mercedes-Benz ever, and I just feel proud, and honoured, to be part of that team. Part of a team whose foundations were built by Ross, who played such an important role in the team – the steps which were done in 2012, the people who joined us in 2012.

“We constantly ramped our game up, we made the right decisions, we got the right resources. The big boys back in Stuttgart understood what it needed, and since then we were on an upwards slope, and today is the result of all that.”

Although Daniel Ricciardo is now almost out of the drivers’ championship, and the title is set to go to one of the Mercedes duo, Wolff says the team will not change its approach and allow them to race each other harder.

“Of course 92 points means [Ricciardo] would need to win all three remaining races, and Lewis not to score eight points. Even though I’m a pessimist that would be a black swan, black swan, black swan event! I don’t think we are going to change something in our approach, because we want them to race each other respectfully, and we saw that today.

“Probably that was Nico’s corner but he missed the braking on the dirty line. Lewis was very cold blooded and good. So it will not change the approach, we don’t want it to end in some kind of circumstance or event on the track.”

Wolff stressed that any celebrations were overshadowed by thoughts of Jules Bianchi: “Of course, a colleague and a very talented young driver who I have known since the very early days in F3 and Formula Renault is fighting for his life. We’re not monsters – you have to split it, on one side we have worked so hard for that day today, but on the other side it will never take away what happened last week.”

The consensus all weekend has been that the Russian GP will see drivers opting for a single stop, a result of the low tyre degradation see at Sochi. A cut in the pit lane speed limit for today made multiple stops even less attractive.

However today there were signs that as the pace has hotted up, tyres might be taking a little more punishment than had been anticipated, so we may yet see some drivers stopping twice. Meanwhile there are mixed views about how easy it might be to overtake, and there’s a special focus on the start. Here are the thoughts of some of the major players:

Lewis Hamilton (P1): “I think with these tyres from the long runs it looked like one-stop, quite easily. It looks like you could almost do the whole race on one set of tyres, but you have to do a stop at some point. But I heard it’s getting harder and harder for the tyres as we get faster, so it’s going to be a one-stop or two-stop tomorrow. Undoubtedly it will be a bit quicker on a one-stop, especially with the pitlane speed. Overtaking look quite hard, I watched the GP2 and it wasn’t easy to overtake, but it looked like it was a relatively good circuit for following, so I hope that will be the case tomorrow.”

Nico Rosberg (P2) : “The start is the best opportunity [to overtake] that’s for sure, but after that, because there’s no tyre degradation, it’s one stop, so overtaking is going to be difficult I think. Maybe because there’s no tyre degradation you can go long or something. If I’m quick I can play around with strategy a little bit, and bring that stop further and further away.”

Jenson Button (P4): “Looking at GP2, there was quite a lot of overtaking. If we’re all doing the same strategy it’s always more difficult. But I don’t think you’re going to see a one-stop race. Looking at the amount of laps people are putting on a set of tyres in qualifying, you’re going to be looking at more stops. It’s very easy to lock a tyre around here, especially into Turn 13, and that will change your strategy anyway. I think we’ll see overtaking. We’ll have the DRS into 13 which won’t really do a lot for us, but into Turn 1 it could be very useful. So think we’ll see some overtaking. It’s easier than somewhere like Barcelona.”

Daniel Ricciardo (P7): “If it turns into a two-stop race, it gives us more opportunities with strategy. I don’t think we have the outright speed to do a whole lot, so it would be nice. I think realistically it still one stop. There’s been a little bit of blistering with the tyres, so maybe something like that will make it a two-stop.”

Fernando Alonso (P8): “It will be a difficult race, because overtaking will be hard on this circuit. We know they are extremely hard tyres, and we can do a lot of laps on them with not big degradation, so that will probably push us to not many stops. The pit limiter changed today from 80 to 60kph, so that also will favour the minimum stops as possible. There are also some other possibilities in the race, we’ll see what we can do. The start will be crucial, because that could define more or less the race in a way. It’s the longest distance from the start to the first braking of the championship, so tomorrow the start is probably more important than ever.”

Sebastian Vettel (P10): “In terms of strategy it should be fairly straightforward. The tyres last very well, it should be a one-stop race, so it’s difficult to come up with a different strategy. Obviously we are outside of the top 10 so we have the opportunity to do something different, but then again as I said it’s limited. Overtaking I think is tricky, as the last two corners are fairly quick, it’s difficult to be close enough. We qualified around P10 because that’s as quick as we can go. It would be nice to finish on the podium tomorrow, but equally if nothing special happens, and we have consistent conditions, it will be very difficult to make a lot of progress.”

The FIA’s plans to slow cars under yellow flag situations have met with strong support from the drivers.

Ideas were discussed with Charlie Whiting at Friday’s regular drivers’ briefing – which was also attended by Jean Todt – and a trial run could be undertaken as early as practice in Austin.

The favoured option is the use of a delta time through the yellow flag section, as already happens for the whole lap when the safety car is first dispatched. Something akin to the pit speed limiter has also been mentioned, although it would be more complicated.

“I think last week shows that definitely we have to do something,” said Sebastian Vettel. “I think we have the technology to do a lot. We basically we have to find out what is the best. If we talk about a speed limit then what sort of speed limit. Obviously what you want to do is make it as fair as possible. I’m sure we have the opportunity with the current systems and technology that we have in the car, it shouldn’t be a big problem.

“I think it’s more about finding the right compromise so that everyone is happy. Hopefully by at the latest next year we’ll find something that we are all happy with. It doesn’t hurt to introduce something like that. Obviously our prime interest is safety, and right after that is the sport, so we want to make it as fair as we can.”

“I think it’s good,” said Lewis Hamilton. “I think what’s good is that they are reacting to it, they are trying to find what’s going to be the best solution. The problem with flags is that you want to be safe, but you want to lose as little time as possible, so you’re always on a knife-edge with it. Obviously when they put the limiter on through that sector, or whatever they do, then that really does take the pressure off us.”

“The important thing is that we’re all working together to come up with the best solution,” said Jenson Button. “I don’t know what’s right or wrong right now, but the important thing is that the teams, the FIA and also the drivers are all involved. We’re united in wanting to move forward.”

“I’m definitely for that,” said Daniel Ricciardo. “If it’s the same for everyone, and it just makes it safer, we are not going to complain, we are not going to argue about it. I’m happy obviously to see that there’s action being taken.”

The FIA has revealed details of Jules Bianchi’s accident, allowing us to piece together a clearer picture of how events unfolded at Suzuka.

Charlie Whiting began by showing CCTV camera footage of the Sutil and Bianchi accidents. Whiting said both involved the cars concerned straying slightly offline onto a wetter patch, but while the German spun the Marussia driver snapped sideways, over corrected, and then speared straight off the track.

Regarding the chain of events, Whiting insisted that it had not been necessary to put out a safety car for the Sutil crash.

“We put double waved yellows out because we felt the incident could be dealt with without using the safety car,” he explained. “The next stage up is a safety car of course, but because the car was well away from the track, against the tyre barrier, that’s the normal procedure for us to follow under those circumstances. We didn’t see any need for a safety car then.

“It’s routine procedure, we weren’t deviating from anything we’ve done in the past. So we didn’t really think it was necessary under those circumstances. The car was a long way off the track. If a car had been very close to the edge of the track, it would have been a completely different matter.”

Whiting confirmed that the tractor crane was used with the permission of race control, and it was at that stage that the yellow flags became double yellows: “The tractor was dispatched by race control. If a car’s off in the gravel it quite clearly needs to be picked up. It’s done immediately, the marshals would then be instructed to go onto the track, and pick the car up.”

One of the key questions is how much Bianchi slowed down when he saw the double yellows.

“We’ve seen the data from all the cars. A lot of cars came through the double waved yellow sector. Not everyone slowed down as much… There were some that didn’t slow down much, and there were some that slowed down a lot. I don’t think we need to go into the detail of exactly how much he slowed down relative to others, suffice to say that we do have that data. He did slow down, it’s a matter of degree, and that’s where we are with that.”

Whiting confirmed that race control did not at first realise that the Frenchman had gone off – in other words the video footage shown today was not witnessed live by Whiting or his colleagues. In addition the device on the car that transmits data about a high speed impact to the FIA’s chief medial officer in race control was damaged in the impact, so the warning signal was not sent.

“There was a small delay, simply because the car wasn’t visible. My first thoughts were this is taking a long time, it’s taking longer than I expected, because normally the marshals in Suzuka work very, very quickly. Then they said a car has hit the tractor – it was the Clerk of the Course, they got a message back from the post that a car has hit the tractor. I said what do you mean? I couldn’t see a car hitting the tractor. It took a little while to get another camera to focus, and then we could see that there was a car there. Again it wasn’t completely apparent, the condition of the driver – so it was, is the driver hurt, is anyone hurt?

“And when we found out we dispatched the safety and medical cars. Like I say you couldn’t actually see it, it wasn’t being shown in the live feed, and from the camera that we were looking at at the time – [track CCTV] camera 11 was facing the other way, camera 12 was focussed on the tractor, but you couldn’t see the red car, it was hidden. Once we moved the camera around we could establish that there was another car there. It did take a little while, probably no more than 20s, but nevertheless it was a little bit mystifying to know what had happened.”

Regarding the damage to the Marussia and what could be done in the future Whiting said: “Early indications are that the forces exerted on Jules’s roll structure were way in excess of test loads. We have to look very carefully at what the loads were, if we can estimate them, and then see if we can do anything about it. I have a strong suspicion that under those exact circumstances it might be very hard to find a solution.”

The medical helicopter was not used because it could not land at the hospital as the weather was deteriorating, but FIA rules allow for a race to go ahead if the hospital is within 25 minutes by road in normal circumstances. Bianchi was taken in a resuscitation ambulance, with a police escort, and the journey took 32 minutes.

FIA president Jean Todt says that Jules Bianchi’s accident should never be allowed to happen again, and the governing body will use race director Charlie Whiting’s report on Suzuka as a springboard for safety improvements.

One key element will be to address the perennial problem of drivers not slowing down sufficiently for waved yellow flags, which mean slow down and be prepared to stop.

“There are some things to learn,” said Whiting today. “And we want to engage with all the teams and drivers to make sure that we come up with good, sound and well thought through ideas. One of the most important things that we learned here is it’s probably better to take the decision to slow down away from the drivers.

“I think it’s better to try and put in place a system where it’s much clearer to everybody how much we think cars should slow down under similar circumstances, starting tomorrow morning with a meeting with all the teams to discuss exactly that – a way of trying to impose, for want of a better expression, a speed limit. It probably won’t be a speed limit as such, but there will be a way of controlling the speed with complete certainty and complete clarity.

“It would have the same effect as a safety car almost, because if you slowed everyone down to a certain pace, they would hold position relative to one another, so it would be almost the same as the first two laps whenever you deploy a safety car. And if it’s a short intervention you can probably do exactly the same thing, but without a safety car itself.

“I think what we really want drivers to do is to slow down to a given and well known speed in the relevant place. You need to give drivers warning of what’s going to come, and then they need time to make the necessary adjustments.”

One likely idea is to use the ‘delta’ time system which is already used when the safety car first goes out, but limit it to the sector where the incident is.

“What we could do is to effectively deploy the safety car, but not send the safety car out,. You’d do exactly what you’d do now. The drivers will all see the safety car delta display on their dashboard, and they will follow that. Normally what happens now is they have to follow that, keep positive to the safety car delta, and the Safety Car 1 line, which is before the pit entrance. As long as they are positive by that point, then they are legal.

“What we are thinking of doing is to extend that requirement so that the driver has to be positive all the way through the double yellow sector. Taking Suzuka as an example from Turn 6 you’d have to be positive all the way through those two yellow sectors. That’s one of a number of ways we are considering – there are a few ideas coming in from various sources at the moment. We want to try and make it clear to the drivers what sort of speed they need to drive through that sector.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says he’s not happy that Christian Horner chose to reveal details of this morning’s F1 Strategy Group meeting, in which three Mercedes teams opposed an engine unfreeze for 2015.

Horner made it clear that he was frustrated by Mercedes initially supporting an unfreeze and then changing its mind. In today’s meeting the works team, Williams and 2015 customer Lotus all voted against a change, but lost out on a majority vote (see earlier story). The plan will now go to the F1 Commission.

“First of all I’m very surprised to hear comments like this,” Wolff told this writer. “Because we had a strategy group this morning, and what we discuss in strategy group meetings is what it says, strategy, and not something that should go to the public.

“No decision has been made because it has to go to the F1 Commission and the World Motor Sport Council, so talking about unfinished business is not how I expect meetings to go.

“We are having discussions all over the year about regulations, and in that case there are some ideas out there, how to change the regulations for next year and the year after, and it’s normal discussion.

“As I said, I’m very surprised that we talk about these things in public. This is a Strategy Group, and what we need to avoid is to make a big wave before decisions are being made. If you understand the process, the Strategy Group makes recommendations to the F1 Commission, and the F1 Commission makes the vote. Nothing else has happened.”

Regarding the principle of an ‘unfreeze’ he said: “I think what we need is no knee-jerk reactions in F1, we need stability. This is not because of my own agenda, because we have the best engine and we want to immobilise or freeze the situation. We have rules, the rules have been written down, some clever people thought about the rules. If we want to change them, let’s discuss them, let’s follow them, let’s follow the governance, and let’s see if it make sense or not. And we are the first ones to follow intelligent ideas.”

The F1 Strategy Group has agreed to an engine ‘unfreeze’ for 2015 which would allow in-season development – but the plan now has to be voted through by the F1 Commission.

Christian Horner said today that the teams had agreed in Singapore, but Mercedes and its customers subsequently changed their minds.

The Strategy Group, which is compromised of six teams, Bernie Ecclestone and Jean Todt, requires only a majority vote for ideas to go forward. It’s understood that in today’s meeting that Ecclestone, Todt, Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull voted for the unfreeze, and Mercedes, Lotus and Williams opposed it. As Ecclestone and Todt have six votes each, the outcome was presumably 15-3 in favour.

Rule changes for 2015 have to receive the unanimous approval of the F1 Commission, on which all teams are represented by their bosses, along with other key stakeholders, namely Ecclestone (as its chairman), Todt as FIA president, eight race promoters, Pirelli, two sponsors (Rolex and Marlboro), and an engine supplier (Renault).

Thus in order for the unfreeze to proceed the three Mercedes teams – plus presumably Force India – will have to be convinced to support it in the Commission.

In effect they will have to agree that it will be good for the sport to give the other engine makers more of a chance to catch up.

“In Singapore, the teams unanimously agreed on a position,” said Horner. “And then, I think, subsequently from that meeting, Mercedes changed their position.

“We’ve subsequently had a strategy meeting and it’s been voted on a majority basis for that to go through to the Formula 1 Commission for in-season upgrades to be allowed.

“We’ll see what the outcome of the Formula 1 Commission vote is. The FIA are in support, FOM are in support, obviously the non-Mercedes teams are in support. So we’ll see what that holds in approximately a month’s time.

“Frozen engines: this is not Formula 1,” said Ferrari’s Marco Mattiacci. “I agree with Christian. Now we’ve had the majority of the vote to go ahead and unfreeze the engine, let’s see what’s going to happen with the F1 Commission.”

Lewis Hamilton was fastest in Sochi in FP2 on a day when team mate Nico Rosberg didn’t do a representative time on new option tyres.

“I think it’s been good,” he said. “I generally feel comfortable on new circuits, just learning them, growing up that’s a skill you have to learn quite quickly. The car has been feeling very good today.

“The track was getting gripper and grippier and rubbering in quite a lot. There’s a nice flow you can get on this track, I’m really enjoying it.”

Hamilton admitted he was surprised by the pace of McLaren today.

“The McLarens are very close, which is good for everyone really, to be having a race. They had a great race in the last race, there pace was really good, especially with Jenson. I don’t know whether they made a step this weekend, but they are looking good. We’ll see how it is tomorrow.”

Meanwhile Hamilton admitted it was difficult to put the events of Suzuka out of his mind: “I have to say it wasn’t easy getting in the car this morning and really getting back into it all. It wasn’t easy. But this afternoon, once you get into the flow of things and the circuit, it feels a little bit more comfortable.”

Marussia has confirmed that it will run only one car in Russia this weekend, despite reserve driver Alex Rossi being entered and on standby.

The team has now officially withdrawn the car, which remains in the garage carrying Bianchi’s number 17. It was clearly a difficult decision to make, given that racing both cars in Bianchi’s honour was one possible course of action.

Team boss John Booth meanwhile is still in Japan, with Bianchi’s family and his manager Nicolas Todt.

The full statement from the team reads: “The Marussia F1 Team will run a single car for the duration of the forthcoming grand prix weekend in Sochi, out of respect for their driver Jules Bianchi, who remains in hospital in Yokkaichi, Japan, in a critical but stable condition.

“The Team have written to the Stewards of the Meeting to inform them that they have withdrawn their second car. Notwithstanding the presence in Sochi of Alexander Rossi, the nominated Official Reserve Driver for the 2014 Russian Grand Prix, the Team feels strongly that fielding a single car, that of driver number 4, Max Chilton, is the appropriate course of action under the difficult circumstances of the weekend.

“Jules’ car crew have built a second car, which has been scrutineered and is ready to race, and this will remain on his side of the garage throughout the weekend. In support of Jules and his family, the Team and their cars will carry the familiar #JB17 graphic, to ensure that although Jules is not with them in Sochi this weekend, he is, nonetheless, racing on with the Marussia F1 Team.”

Max Chilton said: “I don’t know how to put into words how truly devastated I am by what has happened to Jules. The support from the F1 family has been incredible and all we can do is be there to support Jules’ family at this difficult time. It is going to be a very emotional weekend for the whole Team, but we will try to get through it and keep praying for Jules.”

Meanwhile it remains to be see whether Rossi gets the opportunity to compete at his home race in Austin.

Lotus has now formally confirmed that it will use Mercedes power from next season, after the team successfully completed the paperwork for its exit from Renault.

The deal, first revealed here on June 24, will last “until the end of the current Power Unit generation,” and as part of it Lotus will become a partner of Petronas. The Enstone team will continue to build its own gearbox.

“We intend to return to the front of the field with the goals of winning Grands Prix and being a strong championship contender once more,” said Lotus F1 CEO Matthew Carter. “And we see this new agreement as one step towards this aim. The Mercedes-Benz Power Unit has shown good performance on track and it is our goal to marry this motive force to Enstone’s chassis expertise. It is our desire that the E23 Hybrid, powered by Mercedes-Benz, heralds a new era of success for Enstone. At this juncture we would also like to thank Renault, who have been so closely associated with the team over its history and for the joint success we have achieved together.”

Andy Cowell, Managing Director of Mercedes AMG HPP said: “Lotus F1 Team is a strong technical group with excellent facilities and I am confident that together we will deliver a step forward in track performance next year. In 2014, the organisation at Brixworth has demonstrated that it can support three customer teams to the high standards expected of Mercedes-Benz, in addition to our focus on the works Silver Arrows. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to continuing doing so from 2015, as we seek to make further gains in both performance and reliability.”

Toto Wolff added: “It was strategically important for Mercedes-Benz to continue to supply three customers throughout this generation of Power Unit, in addition to the primary focus on our Silver Arrows works team, and it was therefore clear that we would be looking for a new customer from 2015. Lotus F1 Team is an impressive organisation that has delivered competitive on-track performances in recent seasons. We are pleased to welcome them to the Mercedes-Benz family and look forward to building a productive and performant working relationship in the years ahead.”

Here’s my story from June: https://adamcooperf1.com/2014/06/24/could-lotus-switch-to-mercedes-power-from-2015/