Adam Cooper F1

Bernie Ecclestone today repeated his opposition to the current F1 rules, and hinted that the 100kgs fuel allowance could be increased.

One theory is that more fuel means that teams could run higher revs – they are running nowhere near the 15,000rpm limit – which would improve the sound, but there is clearly a bigger picture with regard to the relative fuel efficiency of the three engines. It’s no surprise that those who have been negative recently do not have Mercedes power.

Talk of rule changes in the course of this season is academic anyway.

“What is wrong?,” he said on a visit to the Bahrain media centre. “What is wrong is these fantastic engines. The engines, without any doubt, are incredible, the amount of power they produce for the small amount of fuel. I don’t think that’s F1 business. They should be in touring cars or something, not F1.

“I think what’s important is that the teams know the problem, the engine manufacturers know the problem, and they’re trying to sort things out.

“I think everybody’s complaining, really. Even Mercedes I think. I don’t like people not being happy.”

Asked about the race promoters he said: “They’re all worried that if they lose spectators, they are going to be in trouble, obviously.”

Regarding what could be done, he said: “I think they can do something about the noise. They need another 10kgs of fuel, or something.”

The latter is an unrealistic target given that the teams designed their cars around a fuel tank tailored to the 100kgs limit, with a little margin for the laps to the grid and for the trip to parc ferme. The alternative would be to shorten the races, which Bernie said would not happen.

Ecclestone seemed bemused when told that some teams didn’t even need the full 100kgs to finish the Malaysian GP, saying, “You’ve got some information I haven’t got…”

He insisted that he wasn’t out to handicap Mercedes.

“Mercedes without a doubt have done a better job. They shouldn’t be punished for doing a better job. We shouldn’t change the regulations to punish them.”

He also offered a less negative view of the situation: “There’s another way of looking at it. Will people get used to the way it is today. If that’s the case, good…”

Bernie Ecclestone says that two future F1 entries have been accepted – although he didn’t specify when they would join the World Championship.

The two teams in the frame in recent weeks are from the USA and Romania. The Gene Haas project will in essence be a Ferrari customer team using as much Maranello technology as the rules allow. Next year the rules on sharing technology have been relaxed, so that in effect a team needs to have only its own IP in terms of chassis and bodywork.

TheRomanian-backed team, which is expected to use a Renault engine, will use the Bavarian facilities of Dr Colin Kolles. There was also an approach from Stefan GP which is believed to has less weight behind it.

It’s not clear yet whether Haas could be ready to go for 2015, but sources say that the Romanian project is aiming for next season, given that Kolles already has a well-equipped facility in Germany.

Asked about Haas, Bernie said: “They will be accepted. We’ve also accepted another team as well. Whether they make it or not is another story. We’re happy to have another couple of teams. I’ve spoken to Jean Todt about it. We agreed yesterday, if two teams want to come in, we’ll let them in.”

Asked if 13 teams was acceptable, he said: “Yeah, sure.”

Haas is building a facility close to his NASCAR base and the Windshear Wind Tunnel, and is also expected to have a facility in Italy.

The driving force behind the Romanian project is Ion Bazac, a qualified doctor and former Romanian health minister. The 45-year-old has a number of business interests and is the country’s Ferrari importer, under the name Forza Rossa – an ironic twist given that the rival Haas project is Ferrari-backed. He’s also a past chairman of loan company Global Finance & Leasing.

He is the president a consortium of private and state funded investors whose motive is to promote the interests of Romania, and who have the support of the government.

Adrian Sutil will drop to the back of the Bahrain GP grid after receiving a five-place penalty for an incident involving Romain Grosjean in Q1.

Sutil, who also gets two penalty points on his superlicence, had only qualified 18th after a troubled session for the Sauber driver.

The stewards reported that “car 99 forced car 8 off the track between turns 13 and 14 in an unsafe manner.”

Those who move up a place are Kamui Kobayashi, Jules Bianchi, Marcus Ericsson and Max Chilton.

Adrian Newey has made clear his dissatisfaction with the 2014 rules – and questioned the green credentials of the new technology.

The Red Bull technical director was initially asked how he compared the current cars to those of the past.

“That’s a very complicated question is the truthful answer to that,” he said. “I guess the other obvious answer to that is probably whether you have a Mercedes engine, a Ferrari engine or a Renault engine will cloud your answer to it, in truth. Such is the nature of Formula One.

“When you get into things like batteries then an electric car is only green if it gets its power from a green source. If it gets its power from a coal-fired power station, then clearly it’s not green at all. A hybrid car, which is effectively what the Formula One regulations are, then a lot of energy goes into manufacturing those batteries and into the cars, which is why they’re so expensive. And whether that then gives you a negative or a positive carbon footprint or not depends on the duty cycle of the car – how many miles does it do, is it cruising along the motorway at constant speed or stop-starting in a city.

“So this concept that a hybrid car is automatically green is a gross simplification. On top of that there are other ways, if you’re going to put that cost into a car, to make it fuel efficient. You can make it lighter, you can make it more aerodynamic, both of which are things that Formula One is good at. For instance the cars are 10 per cent heavier this year, a result, directly, of the hybrid content.

“So I think technically, to be perfectly honest, it’s slightly questionable. From a sporting point of view, to me, efficiency, strategy etc, economy of driving, is very well placed for sportscars, which is a slightly different way of going racing. Formula One should be about excitement. It should be about man and machine performing at its maximum every single lap.”

Newey said it wasn’t easy to judge why public reaction to the new rules has been negative.

“It’s a big subject and I guess ultimately the spectators and the television viewers are going to vote with their feet. The old classic [was] Coke completely turning Coke around compared to Pepsi in the States, so you can always skin these things various ways.

“I think obviously all the talk is about the engines. It’s not just about creating a formula which looks at how many litres of fuel you use per kilometre with everything else fixed, because everything else isn’t fixed in reality. If you go into the real world, cost isn’t fixed, the cost has gone up hugely to create this. As I said before, if you put that cost into weight saving, you might be better off in many cases so to automatically say that this is some huge benefit for mankind I think is taking a bit of a big leap myself.”

Newey also had some interesting comments about the relative performance of 2014 power units: “I think when we talk about the power unit we talk about it by manufacturer. We should also include the fuel company of course. I think you’ll find within an engine, depending on what fuel it uses there can be very significant differences. That can also create differences.

“We certainly can see that in our own GPS analysis between our rivals that some appear to have significantly more power than others, even though they have the same engine. At the moment I think it is an engine formula that has tended to reshape the grid more than anything else, compared to last year. How that develops as we move forward is unclear.”

Lewis Hamilton continued where he left off in Malaysia by dominating the first day of practice in Bahrain.

Hamilton headed team mate Nico Rosberg in both sessions, by margins of 0.231s and 0.365s respectively.

“Generally the car has been feeling good this weekend,” said Hamilton. “We’ve just been trying to get a feeling for the tyres, the soft tyre is quite a lot better than the tyres we’ve been using, so quite a big difference. There’s lots to learn.

“The car feels better than when we went testing here, balance-wise, it was feeling really good. There’s still some tweaks we need to make to make it feel perfect. We have a better understanding of the car, we know what kind of ways to set the car up a little bit better than we did in the testing. When you’re testing you’re testing so many different things, you can’t really set the car up. Here we’re working on the car set-up for the race weekend, and it feels good.”

Hamilton said keeping the soft tyres alive will be key: “That’s the trick! We did a session just now, we struggled a little bit on the tyres, as everyone does.”

Meanwhile he said he enjoyed driving the track at night.

“It was great, [but] you don’t really notice a lot of difference. It was quite nice being cooler for the tyres and for the long runs. I think they’ve done a great job with the circuit, I think the circuit looks even better at night.”

Michael Schumacher’s agent Sabine Kehm has said that the former World Champion has experienced “moments of consciousness and awakening” in the most positive message yet to emerge since the December accident.

The statement reads: “Michael is making progress on his way. He shows moments of consciousness and awakening. We are on his side during his long and difficult fight, together with the team of the hospital in Grenoble, and we keep remaining confident.

“We would like to thank you all for the continuous sympathies. At the same time we again ask for understanding that we do not intend to disclose details. This is necessary to protect the privacy of Michael and his family, and to enable the medical team to work in full calmness.”

Fernando Alonso still thinks that Ferrari can be in the fight for the World Championship all the way to the finale in Abu Dhabi, despite the gap to Mercedes that was apparent in the first two races.

“It could be extremely said if I say no,” he said when asked by this writer if he really believed it was possible. “It’s the third race in the championship, Thursday afternoon. So definitely, yes. I’m still thinking that we can do a good job. It’s a very young car, very early days on the development of the car.

“All the things that we find, either on the wind tunnel or in the power area, they are not the steps that we are used to seeing in the last years, when you saw half a tenth, half a tenth. Now you see a couple of tenths in any steps, so I think there is very good room to improve in all areas, to become more competitive.

“And at the same time it’s the same for everybody, so we just need to be a little bit more clever than the other teams and find this extra. Unfortunately it seems that we started with a deficit, so we need to close that gap. But the potential is there and there is no question that we think that in Abu Dhabi we will be in the fight, that’s for sure.”

Asked about whether Hamilton or Rosberg was the favourite, he joked: “In fact Hamilton is one point behind me, so theoretically I’m more favourite than him right now! We’ll see Sunday afternoon, but right now…”

Alonso says it’s impossible to judge how much of the deficiency to Mercedes was down to the power unit to the chassis.

“It’s difficult to split the difference of the areas that they are stronger. We all know that the power unit of very efficient and quite strong, because we see all the cars they are very competitive with the Mercedes engine. If we see the McLaren car for example, finishing 84 seconds I think behind Hamilton, the Mercedes car has something also good. It’s not only the engine because they are performing well.

“We just need to improve the package, we just need to improve in all areas, and so better. We have the Red Bull example also. After a tough winter and some difficulties they managed to change the situation and become competitive very quickly. We will try to do better. It’s only the second race, a long way to go, and we are ready to fight.”