Adam Cooper F1

Ross Brawn says that Mercedes is in the hunt for the 2013 World Championship, despite Sebastian Vettel and others having enjoyed something of a head start as the silver cars struggled with tyres in the early races.

“I don’t see why not,” Brawn told this writer of his team’s title chances. “Red Bull last year had a great middle of the season. We’ve got two drivers on top form, the team is really gelling now, and why not? We’re certainly going to try.”

Brawn says that the Silverstone win came as a huge boost after the testing saga.

“Getting back to racing was just great, and getting back to racing with the result we had is obviously very special. It was partly frustrating because Lewis had a great weekend, just one event took it away from him, but that can happen. We’re greatly encouraged for the rest of the season.”

Ross acknowledged that we’ll never know what would have happened had Hamilton and Vettel enjoyed clean races.

“We were keeping in touch, Nico managed to keep in touch the whole time. Lewis had got the gap we’d asked him to get, and he was holding that. It would have been close. I think we were competitive.”

He also cautioned that it remains to be seen how Mercedes fares on the softer Pirelli compounds.

“I think we’ve got to look at the information. They were fairly conservative compounds, so how we’ll fare on some more delicate compounds is still to be proven. But there were some encouraging signs.”

Meanwhile Brawn said that Mercedes would accept any changes planned by Pirelli in the wake of Silverstone.

“I think the key thing is that we all put to one side any competitive considerations we’ve got. We’ve demonstrated that in these circumstances we can be competitive, and if the solution is to make some changes to the tyres, then we’ll accept it.

“I think the reversion to 2012 spec that Pirelli wanted to do earlier in the year that was blocked by some teams, I’m not saying that is the solution, but whatever the solution is F1 has got to come together and accept that we’ve got to do what’s right for the sport. We don’t want a repeat of Silverstone.”

As suggested here yesterday the FIA has moved quickly to allow race drivers to participate in what was originally scheduled to be the Young Driver test at Silverstone – but only “provided it is clear that the purpose of them doing this is to test tyres for Pirelli.”

The test, schedule for July 17-19, may also be extended by a day. Despite the change of circumstances, Mercedes will not participate, as a result of its penalty.

The FIA World Motor Sport Council will change the sporting regulations to make the test legal and also change the rule which says tyre specifications can only be changed with unanimous agreement.

The complication is that all the teams have development programmes lined-up for the rookies to conduct – and it remains to be seen whether race drivers will be allowed to try new parts while ostensibly tyre testing, and whether or not the teams share the same views on how to conduct the test. It may prove very hard to police.

This is also a rare instance of Jean Todt being seen to get directly involved in a major issue and actually comment on it.

Todt said in a statement: “Our priority is to ensure safety for all in Formula One and we believe the incidents at Silverstone represent a genuine safety concern for the drivers. We have thus taken the decision to alter the Young Driver Test to allow teams to use drivers they deem fit to carry out tyre development work in a bid to solve the problems we saw at the British Grand Prix. I believe it is fitting to carry out this work at the circuit upon which the issues were manifested.”

Explaining the changes, the FIA said: “The test, scheduled for July 17-19 at Silverstone, will now allow teams to field drivers who have competed in more than two F1 World Championship events The test may also be extended by one day.

“To provide for this, the FIA today informed Formula One’s teams that the approval of the World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) will be immediately sought for a change to article 22.4h (i)* of the 2013 Formula One Sporting Regulations.

“Approval will also be sought for a change to the wording of article 12.6.3 of the 2013 Formula One Technical Regulations** to allow for a modification of the specification of the tyres during the Championship season without the unanimous agreement of all competing teams.

“This will allow the FIA to take all necessary actions to ensure safety.

“Notwithstanding the revised conditions as set out above, in the interests of the sport the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team has accepted to not participate in this test, as per the recent decision of the International Tribunal.

“In the meantime, the FIA has asked Pirelli for an assurance that there will be no repetition of the tyre problems at this weekend’s German Grand Prix or at subsequent grand prix.”

Fernando Alonso may have clawed back some of Sebastian Vettel’s advantage by finishing third at Silverstone, but Ferrari is under no illusions about the lack of performance its car is currently producing.

Stefano Domenicali says that the team has to use the short break before Nurburgring to find a bit more speed.

“For me this weekend in terms of performance was not really good,” said Domenicali. “We need to understand in these two or three days at home why, because there is something I would say bigger than little details that caused us not to be as we normally are here in Silverstone, better in terms of pace, and better at qualifying, everything.

“So this is the most important thing that we have to do at home, understand and recover the performance, because we don’t have to underestimate that today it was very good in terms of driver classification, because we recovered in one second 15 points, and this is the objective that we have to have before the summer break, to close the gap as much as possible.

“But we have seen that not only Red Bull now is strong, Mercedes is very strong, they have solved their issue in terms of degradation. So now if you want to in the championship, and this is the objective we have, we need to improve the car, and that’s the only thing that we have to do.”

Domenicali praised Felipe Massa for his recovery drive: “I’m pleased for the race of Felipe, because it was something that was needed for him, for his head, for the team, for the pressure that he is under, and I think that he drove very, very well today. Without the problem at the beginning with the tyres he would have been on the podium for sure.”

Domenicali confirmed that the team changed its strategy in an attempt to conserve the tyres, opting for more stops.

“We tried to act, as a team, to protect our situation. We put more pressure in the tyres to try to avoid punctures, and kept the stints short, that’s why we moved to a different strategy, in order to prevent any possible damages to our tyres. Also because we had the one at the beginning with Felipe. So that’s what we decided.”

Nico Rosberg logged his second win of 2013 after a superb performance for Mercedes at Silverstone.

However, it was only confirmed after he escaped with a reprimand from the FIA stewards for not making a “significant reduction in speed” under double waved yellow flags.

Frustrated rivals pointed out that the German had logged a purple sector – the fastest of the race to date – when the flags were shown.

Nevertheless it was a canny drive by Rosberg, who ran third early on and benefited from Lewis Hamilton’s tyre failure and Sebastian Vettel’s gearbox breakage – but also had to be there to take advantage.

Jenson Button has emphasised how frustrated the drivers are about the Pirelli tyre failures at Silverstone – and especially the fact that the problem was not addressed after issues in earlier races.

“If it happens in a low-speed corner it’s bad enough, but it’s happening at 300km\h on the back straight,” said the former World Champion. “It’s very scary. It’s not just scary for the person that is driving the car, it’s very scary for the people driving behind, because the whole tread is coming off the tyre. If that hits you in the head, I don’t know what will happen.

“Something has to be done, and something was supposed to be done two races ago. That was the reason for the change of tyre construction, safety, nothing else.”

Asked what he could do in his GPDA role Button said that it wasn’t up to the drivers to act.

“I shouldn’t need to do anything. It is obvious, the situation, it has been for a few races. We were lucky at the last race, we didn’t have any. We’ve had five here in total, including Checo’s yesterday. There are tyres there, I don’t know how reliable they are, but they’ve been tested, we all know that. So hopefully it will be changed for the next race. But it’s only next weekend.”

Meanwhile Button endured another tough afternoon at his home race, eventually finishing out of the points in 13^th.

“It wasn’t too bad, up until the last safety car we were sixth or seventh or something. I think we’d lucked in a little bit, because cars had pitted. But in that last stint because the tyres were old there wasn’t a lot of tread on them, so getting them up to temperature was impossible, especially for us, we struggle with that anyway.

“I was a sitting duck, really. All the cars were on new tyres, fighting past, and the problem is as soon as you’re off line, that’s it, your tyres are dirty, and it’s even more difficult to get temperature.”

Christian Horner and Stefano Domenicali have both suggested – completely independently – that at least part of the Young Driver Test at Silverstone later this month should be devoted to working with Pirelli and current race drivers.

The test is enshrined in Sporting Regulations as being for rookies, but given the FIA’s desire to resolve the issue, that could be addressed.

Such a test would not of course involve Mercedes, given that the team has been banned from taking part.

“There happens to be a test here in three weeks,” said Horner. “At the moment it’s scheduled to be with young drivers – maybe it should be open to current drivers or test drivers that can give some decent feedback. And Pirelli should use it to test the rubber on a track where they’ve had some issues.”

“It’s something that we have to work together as the F1 world to solve this issue,” said Domenicali. “I had an idea – that of course we need to discuss in the next days – that we have a test here in Silverstone, supposedly with the young drivers.

“And Silverstone is a track that is very demanding for the tyres, in terms of stress, and we can really be ready to do something during these days to solve this issue, and I would say also with the racing drivers, because this is something for them that is also very important.

“So I can guarantee to you that from a team point of view we are totally open to trying to find a solution, because we all benefit from a solution to this issue.”

RBR boss Christian Horner says it’s up to Pirelli to act quickly to address the failure issue that struck several cars in the British GP.

Although Red Bull was not among the teams affected by a catastrophic failure the crew discovered that Sebastian Vettel was on the verge of a problem when they examined his tyres after his first pit stop, and found signs of delamination.

“Obviously with the failures that were happening it was quite a concern,” said Horner. “We had some issues, certainly on a set of Sebastian’s tyres at the first stop, that probably weren’t too far from a similar thing happening.

“I think the first thing you’re thinking about is the safety of your drivers, so the first thing is to try and understand what was causing it – was it a kerb, was it debris, was it something else?

“So we instructed both drivers to steer clear of the kerbs, to drive relatively conservatively, and obviously followed the advice of Pirelli with pressures and other bits and pieces. They seemed pretty random because obviously it happened on different compounds.

“Pirelli more than anybody will be very keen to try and understand and have to rectify it.”

Asked if the tyres were dangerous, he said: “Arguably today yes they are. But it’s something that Pirelli… It’s their product, it’s their technology, they need to understand it, and address it quickly.

“The most logical thing would be to go back to the tyres that have worked for them well previously. The tyres last year didn’t have these failures. Whatever’s changed has change, and you would have thought the most logical thing would be to go back to the tyres that have previously served them well.

“The problem with that is that teams are always perceived to be chasing competitive advantage, but I think from our perspective we were leading the race on these tyres today, we’ve won races on these tyres… I would urge to change purely on the ground of safety, because what happened today, obviously I’m sure Pirelli won’t be very happy about.”

Pirelli has declined to speculate too much on the causes of today’s failures at Silverstone – but the company insists that the change in its bonding process was not responsible.

The change, introduced at Silverstone, was designed to stop the delaminations seen earlier in the year. In those cases drivers were able to continue as the tyres remained inflated, but at Silverstone there was a series of catastrophic failures affecting Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Jean-Eric Vergne and Sergio Perez.

Several drivers also made pit stops with tyres that had issues or were on the verge of failing, including Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg and Fernando Alonso.

Pirelli has been asked to join the FIA and team managers at the previously scheduled Sporting Committee meeting, to be held at the Nurburgring on Wednesday afternoon.

“There have obviously been some issues with rear-left tyre failures which we have not seen before,” said Paul Hembery. “We are taking the situation very seriously and we are currently investigating all tyres to determine the cause as soon as possible, ahead of the next Grand Prix in Germany. At the moment, we can’t really say much more until we have fully investigated and analysed all of these incidents, which is our top priority.

“However, we can exclude that the new bonding process, which we introduced at this race, is at cause for the tyre failures we have seen today. There might be some aspect to this circuit that impacts specifically on the latest version of our 2013 specification tyres but at this point we do not want to speculate but will now put together all the evidence to find out what happened and then take appropriate next steps should these be required.”

Paul Di Resta has been excluded from qualifying for the British GP and will now start the race from the back of the grid after his car was found to be underweight.

It will be the third race in a row that the Scot has started from an unrepresentative position.

The Force India driver had qualified an excellent fifth, so that position now goes to Daniel Ricciardo, with Adrian Sutil, Romain Grosjean, Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button filling spots six to 10.

The FIA was alerted to a possible issue when the weight of the car and driver was found to be 0.5kgs below the 642.0kgs limit. Had there been a little bit fuel in the car – making it safely over the limit – there might not have been an issue.

However, the fact that the car  was already under the limit led to further investigation and to the car being drained of fuel. The final figure was 1.5kgs below the limit.

It’s believed that the discrepancy related to Paul’s weight when he stepped on the scales at the end of qualifying, and the number recorded proved to be lower than the usual figure. Teams keep a regular check on driver weights over the course of a weekend in order to avoid such issues, and Force India doesn’t understand why the problem occurred.

Sporting director Andy Stevenson and team CEO Otmar Szafnauer met with the stewards to discuss the matter, but to no avail.

The team did brielfy consider an appeal, on the grounds that the FIA scales were suspect, but decided to accept the decision.