Adam Cooper F1

Spanish musician and producer Carlos Jean, also known as Mr Miracle, was given access to Ferrari’s factory and the Fiorano test track to record the sounds of the Italian F1 team in action. He’s now managed to incorporate what he heard into a dance track – with Rob Smedley (who else!) starring on vocals.

Here’s a taster of it…

Pirelli has finally admitted defeat in its attempts to change to Kevlar-belted rear tyres from the British GP, due to ongoing opposition from some teams.

The intention was to use the switch to last year’s construction in an attempt to address the delamination issue, but instead Pirelli has changed its production process – in other words the method of bonding.

The revised tyres were tested on Friday in Canada, although wet conditions for much of the day limited mileage.

They were also tested by Mercedes at its infamous Barcelona session, although Pirelli says that 2013 race compounds were not used on that occasion.

Pirelli had been suggesting that its planned change would go ahead, but it was always relying on full support from the teams, as outlined here in previous stories.

A Pirelli statement said: “The tyre construction will remain unchanged, contrary to Pirelli’s initial plans. This decision is due to the fact that the new tyres, which were brought to the Friday free practice sessions in Canada, could not be tested sufficiently due to rain – and that the teams failed to agree unanimously about introducing the changes. Instead a change in the tyre production process should now ensure that the delamination issue has been addressed.”

Meanwhile tyre choices for upcoming races are hard/medium for Silverstone, medium/soft for Nurburgring, and hard/medium for Hungary.

Bernie Ecclestone has made it clear that he believes that Mercedes rather than Pirelli is to blame for the testing controversy.

Although initially reluctant to express an opinion, Bernie emphasised that Mercedes could have turned down the chance to risk breaking the FIA’s Sporting Regulations.

Ecclestone is known to have an uneasy relationship with Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn after a commercial disagreement during the Brawn GP days, and some have suggested that he wouldn’t mind seeing the former Benetton and Ferrari man carry the can for what happened.

“Wait until the tribunal, they’ve got all the facts,” Ecclestone told this writer. “If you offer me stolen goods, it’s up to me to decide whether I want to accept them or not. It’s not up to anyone to tell me what I should do. I should know what I should do.

“Pirelli were doing the right thing, obviously. They couldn’t get out of a tyre problem, if there had been proper testing, which there should be, they wouldn’t be in this problem. It’s only because there’s no proper testing that they’re in this problem. As people have been complaining, the obvious thing to do was to get out of it by testing. And they asked.”

Asked if he felt Pirelli had done anything wrong, he added: “Not at all.”

Ecclestone and the F1 organisation have a significant commercial deal with Pirelli for signage and so on, but he denies that has impacted his opinion.

“I don’t care. It makes no difference to me. What is right, is right, you know. The one thing an unmarried girl has got is the right to say ‘no.’ You would have to reckon that Mercedes were in that position…”

Meanwhile Ecclestone played down suggestions that Michelin – a company known to be friendly with Jean Todt – is waiting in the wings to replace Pirelli.

“No idea. I haven’t got a clue. I haven’t spoken to anyone. We have a long-term contract with Pirelli, as the FIA do. And I think most of the teams have – I think they’ve done a deal with all the teams they want to do a deal with.”

Jean-Eric Vergne followed up his eighth place in Monaco with a strong sixth in Montreal, which represented Toro Rosso’s best finish since the Sebastian Vettel days in 2008.

Vergne has thus begun to stake his claim for a possible graduation to Red Bull Racing – should favourite Kimi Raikkonen ultimately not land a seat alongside Sebastian Vettel as replacement for Mark Webber.

Vergne started seventh in Canada and a strong opening stint took him away from the midfield pack.

“It was a good race, my best race in F1,” said the Frenchman. “I had a good start, better than everybody in front, but I got blocked by various cars. I didn’t lose any positions, and then I passed Bottas quite quickly in the race, and I made a gap. I just pushed 100% until the end of the race. Sixth is great, a great result for the team, it builds our confidence. We need to keep pushing and bring a better car in Silverstone again, and bring some more good results like this.”

After a difficult rookie season last year Vergne believes that he can continue to gain momentum.

“I think the team first of all is getting better, my confidence is building up as well, and I just feel good now. It’s just a question of putting everything together, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Mark Webber did an impressive job to overcome front wing damage in Canada to not only finish fourth but also set fastest lap.

After the race the Aussie made it very clear that he was not impressed with Giedo van der Garde, who received a drive through penalty after the pair collided.

Webber felt that with an undamaged car he might have had a better chance of fighting for a podium.

“I got a sensational start,” he said. “I really didn’t have too many places to go. I went to the middle and obviously Bottas and Nico were in there, so I had to go to the other side, and I lost a little bit of momentum. It was a bit like Monaco. We’re getting our starts sorted, but these last two races we haven’t had opportunities to show how good they’ve been.

“But anyway, I settled in behind Nico, and it became quite evident that he was managing the pace a little bit more, and trying to clear him wasn’t that easy. We had the car very critical on temperatures, so I had to sit out of the slipstream and manage the car temperature, which was also a little bit of a curveball.

“Mercedes covered us well at the stop, and then the battle was on again. I was happy to see Mercedes did the option for Nico, because I thought that was going to bite him in the arse, and it turned out it did, which was good. I finally got past him, the car was happy then obviously, and we could get into a rhythm – until we caught a pay driver with no mirrors, and then I lost the front wing…

“The car was very damaged from that. It was very difficult from there. I was very keen to get on the podium, I think we had everything teed up very well to do that, but you can’t have a bleeding car with Fernando around you. He’s going to capitalise on that.”

Regarding problems with backmarkers Webber said: “They’re doing their own race as well obviously, I’ve been there in a Minardi, I’ve been there in a shitbox, but you need to look in your mirrors. When the guys fighting for the podium are coming along, there’s four corners with blue flags… We can’t disappear into a hole either. That was that.”

Meanwhile Christian Horner agreed that the collision was not Webber’s fault.

“Van Der Garde left the door open,” said Horner. “It’s under blue flags, it’s his responsibility to make way for the race leaders coming through, and then he just turned back. It was just a silly move. He obviously got a penalty for it, but he just wasn’t aware of what was going on.

Horner said the team considered changing the nose but opted not to: “We looked at it but the performance loss was outweighed by the time loss to change the nose box in the pitlane. So we decided to leave it.

“I’m sure without that [damaged] front wing he could have held Fernando off, or maybe closed down Lewis.”

Red Bull Racing issued a statement today confirming that Sebastian Vettel will stay with the team for another two seasons.

Although it was clear that Vettel already had a long term arrangement with RBR the news erases any doubts about him possibly jumping ship in 2015.

The statement read simply: “Infiniti Red Bull Racing is happy to confirm that World Champion Sebastian Vettel has extended his multi-year contract with the team until the end of 2015.”

Nico Rosberg says Mercedes has a lot of work to do after he finished only fifth in Canada, two places behind team mate Lewis Hamilton.

The race underlined that Monaco was a blip, and the team is still struggling to get its tyres to work on race days.

“Not great, I just didn’t have the speed really to do better than fifth place,” said Rosberg. “So from that point of view it’s just damage limitation and good points. Our reference point today as a team is where Lewis was, which was third, and that shows that we definitely need to make further progress, not just in how we manage the tyres and everything.

“On one lap we had the fastest car, but we’re still struggling a little bit in the race, not able to do better than third place.”

Regarding the next race at Silverstone he said: “Some work to do for us, because with those high speed corners it could be quite heavy on the tyres. But I think we’ll be OK.”

The marshal who died in Montreal on Sunday has been named in the Canadian media as 38-year-old Mark Robinson.

Robinson, who was single and worked in logistics for UPS, was crushed by the wheels of a recovery crane carrying the Sauber of Esteban Gutierrez.

Robinson is described by friends as a racing fanatic for whom the chance to work at the Canadian GP was a highlight of his year. He would have turned 39 tomorrow [Wednesday].

Friend and former roommate Marty Dewey told the Canadian Press: “F1 for him was kind of like getting a chance to be a roadie for the Rolling Stones once a year. He thought about it, talked about it. For a quiet guy, if you started talking F1 with this guy, you wouldn’t be able to quiet him down.”

Known as ‘Coach’ by his friends, he had a wide range of other sporting interests, and was a regular softball player.

This writer, who watched the first half of the Canadian GP standing with the marshals stationed at Turn 2, sends his condolences to Mark’s family, friends and fellow officials.

Jenson Button blamed his one-stop strategy for a disappointing run to 12^th place in Montreal, where both McLaren drivers missed the points.

Meanwhile Button is adamant that his team can take a step forward at the next race on home ground at Silverstone.

“I’m still looking forward to it,” he said. “It’s the home Grand Prix and it’s always exciting racing in front of the home crowd. Also I love Silverstone, it’s a great circuit. Are we going to be quick there, or quicker? Yes, we had some parts on the car here that didn’t work for this type of circuit, but we know they’ll work for Silverstone.

“So yes I’m looking forward to it, and I think we can start picking up bigger points, like the last few races, really. I don’t think we’re going to be on the podium, but getting into the points has got to be our aim.”

Button struggled in the race with tyre issues in his first stint and then an overly conservative pace in the second.

“We went for a one-stop strategy which worked for some people, doing prime and option. I went option-prime, and the problem was on the first stint I had so much graining. I was getting overtaken by the people that had stopped, which cost me a lot of time.

“It is what it is, and then we tried to settle into a pace on the prime tyre in the second stint which was way too slow. We’ve got to look into why we thought that was quick enough, that lap time. As soon as I started pushing the pace was quite a bit better. In the end we had very old tyres and we were quicker than the cars in front. Still, outside the points, and a lot of work to do.”

Asked if he would have preferred rain, Jenson said: “I don’t really know what we hoped for this weekend! It rained yesterday and we didn’t really take much out of that either. We’ve just got to get our act together and improve.”