Adam Cooper F1

Red Bull Racing surprised the F1 paddock by showing both good speed and reliability on the first day of practice in Australia.

Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo were fourth and sixth fastest, while the Aussie ran 64 laps – only one fewer than the maximum achieved by any driver.

“Today has been a very strong first day for us,” said team boss Christian Horner. “It’s been our first proper test day of the season. We’ve had a very difficult pre-season with numerous issues, which have been pretty well documented prior to us arriving in Melbourne. It was refreshing for the drivers to get plenty of laps in, and really get a first proper feel for the car. It’s been an encouraging start, but we still have an awful lot of work to do. We can still see that there is quite a gap to the Mercedes and to Ferrari, but we’re starting to realise what that gap is, and by the end of this weekend that should hopefully have a bit more clarity.”

Horner was quick to praise his team: “Morale is extremely high and we work very effectively as a team. It’s been a challenging winter to design, build and then obviously modify RB10, but the way the team has responded to the challenge has been fantastic. There is a real desire and inner strength within the team. We’ve achieved quite a bit over the past few years and that’s not by accident. As I’ve said there are always engineering solutions to engineering problems.”

Regarding prospects for the race, Horner said he was boosted by the number of laps both drivers achieved today.

“I think Sebastian today has covered a third of the mileage of his total winter, and obviously Daniel has done pretty much a race distance today, so that’s extremely encouraging for our guys and the guys back in Paris at Renault. So hopefully it bodes well for the weekend because the most important thing is to see the chequered flag on Sunday and that in itself is an enormous challenge.

“We’ve learned some valuable lessons today, an awful lot of information to look at and to be honest with you, it’s the first real opportunity that the drivers have had to drive the car properly without it being interrupted at any different part of the lap or the circuit. Really, for both drivers it’s been their first chance to really start to explore the car and for the engineers to start to look at set-up and so in many respects, this is where we would ideally like to have been at the first test but that wasn’t the case. We’ve got some ground to make up.”

Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo has used the unusual medium of an open letter to the tifosi to emphasise his scepticism about the new regulations.

He also made it clear that he fears that there is scope for teams to bend the rules, a comment that is unlikely to be well received up and down the pitlane.

“The first target is reliability, as we clearly saw in the test sessions,” he said. “Everyone has issues; we have lined ours up and we are in the process of resolving them. We’re also putting into practice an intense plan of development, which can count on the fact that the data from the wind tunnel have been confirmed by the track comparisons, something that has not happened in recent years. It will also be a difficult championship for the spectators to follow. The drivers will have to take care that they do not wear out the tyres and save fuel.

“I have already said that I hope they don’t turn into taxi drivers and I say that with the greatest respect to taxi drivers, but they obviously do a different job. I, like all of you, love an extreme Formula 1 where technology and drivers are always on the limit. Such an important set of changes to the regulations is bringing some grey areas, for example fuel, software, consumption… In these I am fully expecting the FIA to be vigilant – as I’m sure they will be – to avoid any trickery, which has also taken place in the recent past but must not happen any more for the good of this sport.”

Meanwhile he made it clear that Ferrari is targeting the championship.

“I have asked for the highest commitment from Domenicali and his team and I know that they are all doing their best. We have a strong team, the best driver pairing – who are experienced and very talented – and everyone knows what they have to do. We can count on an important factor that only we have: the immense affection from you, our tifosi, all over the world. I ask you for your usual great support: let’s not go overboard in the good moments and let’s not give up in harder ones. The championship is long and the objective is clear.”

Teams are planning to minimise their running in FP3 in Australia this weekend in order to ensure that their cars are fit to take part in qualifying.

It’s been obvious for some weeks that the length of time required to change components on 2014 cars means that anyone hitting a serious problem in the Saturday practice would not be able to ready their car for qualifying. As a result some teams will try to do all of their work on Friday and perhaps make only a token appearance for an installation lap on Saturday. A lack of action on track won’t be good news for fans.

The FIA’s Charlie Whiting confirmed that teams have already indicated that they will follow such a strategy, and one team manager told this blog that it was a logical option given the risk of missing qualifying.

“There’s a two-hour gap as we know between P3 and qualifying,” said Whiting. “And it would be very unfortunate if a team had a problem at the end of P3 that they couldn’t fix for qualifying. It’s not without precedent as we’ve seen it happen in the past – Fernando Alonso having a shunt in Monaco a few years ago, for example.

“Teams are worried that it’s going to be more common, and I’ve even heard teams saying that they will skip P3 to make sure that they’ve got the car ready for qualifying. But we’ll see. Everyone’s got their own way of going about things, some teams tell me it will take seven hours to change an engine, some say it will take three, some say it will take an hour and a half. We don’t know really whether such difficult situations like that will actually arise. I’m sure things will be different to what we’re used to for the first three or four races, but I have no real feeling for what will happen.”

Given the poor reliability suffered by teams in testing there has been a lot of speculation about how many cars might finish in Australia this weekend, with incidents potentially adding to the attrition rate.

When asked today FIA race director Charlie Whiting said that he will stop the race if there are no cars running.

“First of all I’d like to say that I think a lot of these Doomsday scenarios are quite unlikely, knowing F1 teams and how efficient they actually are,” he said. “But if it came to the situation where no cars were running we’d just simply stop the race, because there wouldn’t be much of one, would there? But being serious I think that would be the only option. If the race couldn’t be restarted, as the rules say, then the results would be declared at the lap prior to the one during which the race was stopped, and whoever was running at that time would be the winner.”

In theory races can last until the two-hour mark, but Whiting said the clock would not be allowed to run down until the flag was thrown on the off chance that someone might fix their car and re-emerge.

“I don’t think we would [wait]. If it became clear that there wasn’t a race any more, because there were no cars on the track, I think we would stop the race, because there wouldn’t be much else to do, really. It’s not something that’s foreseen by the rules, and obviously it’s something that we hope doesn’t happen.”

Whiting agreed that if attrition is high cars that might normally have retired could re-appear after repairs.

“I’m not sure we should really be talking about this, I stress I think it’s highly unlikely, knowing the professionalism of the teams! But once they started dropping like flies I think the ones that thought they’d stopped – because they don’t have to officially retire of course, they can come back out again – they might think hang on minute, I might get something here, let’s get this old girl going again and get back out there…”

They would of course have to complete 90% of the winner’s distance in order to be classified and score points.