Adam Cooper F1

Ross Brawn has insisted that sporting integrity is vital to Mercedes, and says that the full facts of the testing controversy will come out on the FIA’s International Tribunal.

Brawn was speaking to Eddie Jordan in a no-holds barred interview the former team boss conducted on Thursday – and after doing his homework EJ made sure that Brawn faced a tough grilling. The interview will be shown on the BBC on Saturday.

“Sporting integrity is vital to Mercedes,” said Brawn. “It would be easy for me to challenge that. When we get to the international tribunal and everything’s explained, people can make a judgement when they know the facts. I’m not going to pre-empt those facts. It’s unfortunate to be making judgements before the facts are known.”

Inevitably many of the questions focussed on the level of secrecy surrounding the test.

“It was a Pirelli test, on the Wednesday to Friday after the race. It couldn’t be held any closer to the weekend because people were packing up.

“On the Tuesday there were still motorhomes begin dissembled, garages being taken apart, and there we were in our full regalia with the trucks and the Pirelli trucks and everything. There was no secrecy involved; it was privacy.”

Brawn was adamant that the secrecy angle has been overplayed.

“The reason for the drivers’ helmets is it was a Pirelli test, they organised the security, they organised all the arrangements. We didn’t want to bring attention to the drivers, we didn’t want to have to put security there, we didn’t want to have to put minders.

“The easiest way for us was to not bring attention to what drivers were in the car, only for those reasons. We have always been very open about the drivers.

“The drivers are irrelevant – there’s nothing in the sporting regulations, nothing in the arrangements for these tests that controls which drivers are in the car. There was no issue there. It was purely privacy and nothing more.”
Brawn made it clear that it wasn’t the responsibility of Mercedes to tell the other teams that the test was going on, even though it’s standard practice for teams to tell each other about filming days and so on.

“It was a Pirelli test, we don’t believe we had an obligation to inform other teams, if Pirelli wanted to inform other teams that’s up to them. We’re comfortable it was a Pirelli test requested by Pirelli. It’s for Pirelli to decide what they want to do with it.”

Intriguingly Nico Rosberg admitted this weekend that the drivers did know what tyres they were running, but Brawn has played that down.

“They had some awareness of the tyres but that’s the awareness you have togive a driver if tyre testing. If you want to be effective in testing you have to give the driver some guidance of what you are looking for. It wasn’t: ‘This is the tyre we’re using at the next race.’

“Pirelli are building a jigsaw. We don’t know what is what. But it would be irresponsible to put a tyre on the car without giving the driver a bit of guidance of what it is, a new construction or whatever, and that’s what we want you to look for.”

Kimi Raikkonen made it clear today that he hasn’t forgotten his collision with Sergio Perez in Monaco, and hasn’t changed his position on what happened.

Raikkonen said after the race that someone should punch Perez, and while he hasn’t taken that opportunity, he is still unhappy about losing priceless points.

“There’s nothing else I could have done apart from just drive straight,” said Kimi. “Using my own line I could have easily made the corner, but obviously he comes too fast and can’t stop.

“My line was in the middle of the circuit anyhow, so there was definitely no way that he was going to get past me if I didn’t move over, and I don’t really feel I should move over if another guy comes too fast. I did that already five or six laps earlier or something, just purely because I saw that he comes too fast and he would have hit me.”

“That hurt in the points, but I don’t feel any different now. It doesn’t change the fact that he f##ked our race up. If you ask one year from now it’s still the same ending. Obviously we got one point back, but it doesn’t take away the fact that he wasn’t right.

“I knew that he was going to try, and that’s why I braked every lap in the same place, and just went over the middle of the circuit. For sure he knew where I was going to be, and which line I would take.”

Regarding the lack of action from the FIA, he said: “I spoke with the stewards, and they thought it was a racing thing. But I don’t really see it. They said that Idid nothing wrong, but obviously there has to be somebody who did wrong.

“But I don’t think it’s going to change anything. I know that Charlie [Whiting] spoke to Perez. I don’t know what they spoke about, but obviously I don’t think it’s going to change.”

Kimi admitted that he can trust some drivers and not others.

“I mean sometimes you have to be with some guys, because you cannot trust them. If I take the top maybe five guys, you trust them, and you know if you are there they are not going turn into you, or they are going to race fair.

“We can be hard but we can be fair. It’s OK to be aggressive, but you have to have some idea behind an overtaking manoeuvre, even if you are aggressive, and not just have a hope, ‘He’s going to move over.’ You know certain guys will race hard and fair, but some guys for sure you know what to expect.”

He also said he’s not too bothered about beating Michael Schumacher’s record of finishes in the points.

“I don’t care about that, I care more about the points. If it comes it comes, but it doesn’t change the fact that we only try and score points and do as well as we can, and we’ve been doing pretty well. Obviously sometimes we have harder races than others, that’s always going to happen during the year. But hopefully we’ll get back where we should be.”

Fernando Alonso says he has to start scoring big points again in order to keep his title challenge on track.

Alonso finished only seventh in Monaco, and with a couple of other bad races behind him, he is losing touch with leader Sebastian Vettel.

“We were hoping for some consistent results,” said Alonso in Canada today. “But in Monaco we did not pick up so many points, so now we need four or five races on the podium or at least very near the podium in order to recover some of the points we have lost.

“All the races are different and unique and this weekend will be a tricky one with the weather conditions. Anything can happen especially in the wet and we saw in qualifying in Monaco, that when the rain came, it was chaotic. It means that if you are not on track at the end if the track is drying, or if you have a problem with a yellow flag or you make a small mistake, then you are out.

“So it will be a case of maximum concentration to do well here and also in the coming races, at Silverstone, Germany and Hungary. So every Thursday it will be a case of saying the same thing, ‘we must score good points.’”

Alonso pointed out that he’s has his far share of bad luck already in 2013.

“We have had some unlucky situations this year, like when I had a slight touch in Malaysia which put me out of the race, while we have seen for example Hamilton and Vettel touching in Barcelona and they were both able to continue.

“However, in Monaco it was simply a case of not having the pace. At this stage of the season, we have two more points than last year, when we were leading the championship, so in a way we are doing a little bit better than last year. What is not so normal is the amount of points Sebastian  has scored in the last six races – a lot!

“We need to try and finish in front of him, because everyone has bad luck at some point and it will come to him as well. Kimi had his bad luck in Monaco with the accident, so that we are now only five points behind him.”

Meanwhile Alonso admitted that Montreal is not easy to get right.

“It’s true we’ve never had really great results here. Some of the inconsistency was down to strange circumstances, but it’s a circuit that’s a little bit tricky to understand, as it changes all through the weekend: not just the surface but also the wind can change a lot which affects your braking points, plus there is no room for mistakes, just like at a street circuit with the walls so close, but hopefully this year we can do a bit better.”

Mercedes issued a statement today saying it welcomes the FIA International Tribunal process – on the basis that it will give the team a chance to explain its side of the story.

The statement read: “Mercedes-Benz acknowledges the decision of the FIA to take the matter of the Pirelli Test before the International Tribunal.

“We welcome the opportunity to explain the full facts of the Pirelli Test in an open and transparent manner at the International Tribunal.

“Sporting integrity is of primary importance to Mercedes-Benz and we have the utmost confidence in the due process of the FIA.”

The FIA has confirmed that the Mercedes testing case will go before the International Tribunal.

However no further action will be taken with regard to Ferrari, as the FIA deemed that no regulations have been broken.

The governing body has been gathering evidence from the various parties, including other teams – who were asked if they had been invited tthe Barcelona test.

The full  statement read as follows:

The Monaco Grand Prix Stewards raised in their report to the FIA an issue concerning a tyre testing session carried out by Pirelli with the participation of Team Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 in Barcelona on 15-17 May 2013 (1).

The FIA requested clarifications from Pirelli and Team Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 in this respect.

The FIA also asked questions to Scuderia Ferrari Team, which took part in a tyre testing with Pirelli in Barcelona on 23-24 April 2013.

The FIA requested all the other F1 Teams to provide the FIA with information they may have regarding any tests carried out by Pirelli during the 2013 season.

In the light of all the replies received and in view of the information gathered during this inquiry, the President of the FIA, acting as the FIA prosecuting body, has decided:

• To close the case as regard to Scuderia Ferrari Team considering that its participation in a tyre testing organized by Pirelli in Barcelona on 23-24 April 2013 using for this purpose a 2011 car is not deemed to contravene the applicable FIA rules.

• To bring the case concerning the tyre testing session carried out by Pirelli and Team Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 in Barcelona on 15-17 May 2013 before the FIA International Tribunal because it results from the inquiry that the conditions of this testing may constitute a breach of the applicable FIA rules.

The FIA International Tribunal is called upon to make a decision in compliance with the FIA Judicial and Disciplinary Rules.

Button had a good weekend in Monaco. Photo: AC

McLaren sporting director Sam Michael says that the Monaco GP showed that the team is making progress with the difficult MP4-28.

Jenson Button finished sixth in the principality, beating Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari.

“At least the bits are starting to work, and it’s all in the right direction,” Michael told this writer. “That’s main thing, just to see progress, and we’ve definitely seen that. Montreal is obviously a very different track, and you can overtake a lot easier.”

Michael said that McLaren should have beaten Adrian Sutil to fifth place in Monaco.

“Jenson drove in a mature way again, but it’s all about expectation, isn’t it? We could have done better. We should have been fifth and sixth on the road. We weren’t as quick as Mercedes and Red Bull, but we were definitely the best of the rest, and we should have done that over the course of the weekend, At least the car is getting better, that’s the important thing.”

Meanwhile regarding Sergio Perez’s spectacular afternoon – which ended soon after a collision with Kimi Raikkonen, he said: “Sergio had a good race, up until that point. He obviously attacked really hard and made good moves on JB and Fernando. Then obviously been himself and Kimi, he pushed a bit hard. They already had an incident where he went straight on and later they came together.

“He stopped with a brake problem because brake temperatures went through the roof after that crash with Kimi. He lost the brake pedal, which is why you saw it twitching. He tried to make it into the pitlane, but it was so busy he baled, and just parked it out there. He was just in survival mode. If he’d done a pit stop he would have come out 16th. It was stay out there and hope you can do a few more laps, or DNF.”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali says that his team is ready to bounce back in Canada after a frustrating weekend in Monaco saw Fernando Alonso manage only seventh place.

The team has also built up a new chassis after Felipe Massa’s heavy race crash, which was his second of the Monaco weekend.

“The Monaco GP was not an easy weekend for the team,” Domenicali said on the Ferrari website. “Since then, we have been working hard, first of all studying all the data to see why we had not performed as expected. And from that point, we have been looking ahead, setting up the cars in the completely different configuration required of Montreal, as we go from the highest downforce track of the year to the one where we will use the least downforce of any track we have visited so far this season.

“Of course we also focussed on the problems we had with reliability, which absolutely had to be resolved. What is sure is that the team is completely motivated and we are determined to regard what happened in Monaco as an isolated incident.”

Summing up the season so far, Domenicali said: “Looking at the first six races overall, our car has proved to be strong with very good characteristics in the majority of cases, even if, at times, other teams have proved to be faster.

“I think the Montreal circuit should allow us to exploit those strong points such as braking, which is a key factor at this track, so let’s hope that works in our favour. However, on the other hand, we must ensure we keep working on the areas where our car is not yet where it should be.”

Heikki Kovalainen has parted company with his erstwhile management company, IMG. The Finn is currently looking after his own affairs as he starts his search for an F1 race seat for 2014.

While Kovalainen was ultimately forced out of Caterham this year for commercial reasons, team principal Tony Fernandes made it clear to the media that he’d found it difficult to deal with IMG, a company that – while involved in F1 on and off since the days of Jackie Stewart – seemingly lacked knowledge of the nuances of how the sport operates.

“I’m not with IMG anymore,” said Kovalainen when asked by this blog about his future plans. “I can confirm that, but I’ve agreed not to talk about it any further than that.

“I’m working on my own now, but right now there are no discussions with anybody else. I’m just focussing on working with Caterham and trying to help the team to move forward this year.”

Kovalainen has completed two FP1 sessions with Caterham this year, which has at least ensured that he has knowledge of 2013 tyres, and is thus in a position to to step in should any team need a driver at short notice.

A statement from the FIA tonight confirms that Scuderia Ferrari has now been brought into the investigation into the Mercedes Pirelli test.

As outlined here earlier this week, Ferrari took part in a test in April with a 2011 car – although when questioned in a teleconference today Paul Hembery declined to name the Italian team, saying that the matter was confidential.

The FIA confirmed that both teams have been invited to reply to a disciplinary enquiry.

The statement said: “The FIA  has asked Team Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 and Scuderia Ferrari Team which have taken part in tyre tests in the 2013 season to reply to a disciplinary inquiry in pursuance of the FIA Judicial and Disciplinary Rules.