Adam Cooper F1

Former Jaguar and Aston Martin executive Mike O’Driscoll has been announced as the new Group CEO of Williams Grand Prix Holdings.

The team says that “the newly created role will see the Williams F1 Team and Williams Advanced Engineering united under one management structure and will enable Mike to provide support to Sir Frank Williams, founder and Team Principal and to work in partnership with Claire Williams, Deputy Team Principal.

“Mike will lead the Executive Committee who will report to him and in turn he will report to Sir Frank Williams and the Williams Grand Prix Holdings board.”

Meanwhile former CEO Alex Burns has left the company.

Sir Frank Williams said: “Mike has been a valued member of our Board since 2011 as a Non-Executive Director, and I am delighted that his day to day involvement in the company is to significantly increase. This new role strengthens the company and will help us achieve our goals both on the race track and in diversification. Mike brings with him significant skills and a wealth of experience. Working with Claire, I am in no doubt that the future of Williams is in safe hands.”

Claire Williams added: “Mike brings with him a unique mix of skills and capabilities and he is a passionate motorsport enthusiast with significant automotive industry experience. I have every confidence that he can drive the business forward to deliver an improved performance for both the Williams F1 Team and Williams Advanced Engineering.”

“I am honoured that the Board has entrusted me with the position of Group CEO,” said O’Driscoll. “I have been proud to serve as a Non-Executive Director since 2011 and in my new role, I am very much looking forward to helping Sir Frank and Claire achieve the ambitious goals we have set ourselves.”

This pic, courtesy of AMG Mercedes, shows a swapped rear tyre at Monaco

Further to yesterday’s story about teams swapping left and right rear tyres, here is an official photo from the AMG Mercedes website, clearly showing a right rear tyre fitted on the left of a W04 at Monaco. Note the directional arrow, and the code ‘R22’.

Did Mercedes try this technique, already used by other teams, at the Barcelona test? It would be fascinating to find out. I’ve put the question to Pirelli and am awaiting an answer – a Mercedes spokesman was unable to comment on what the team did with tyres in Spain. [Update: After reading this story Mercedes F1 contacted me to say that they have been trying tyre swapping since as early as Melbourne.]

You can read yesterday’s story here: https://adamcooperf1.com/2013/05/28/analysis-how-pirelli-montreal-change-will-handicap-tyre-swapping-teams/

Lotus F1 team principal Eric Boullier was in the unusual position on Sunday in Monaco of criticising a rival for causing a collision while defending his own driver for doing the same after two separate incidents.

Boullier joined the growing chorus of critics of Sergio Perez after the Mexican hit the back of Kimi Raikkonen at the entry to the chicane, giving the Finn a puncture that ruined his race.

“I think he tried once,” said Boullier of Perez. “And obviously if you look at the video he was attempting a very, very late braking, obviously misunderstanding the braking line of Kimi, so that was I think a little bit too much. He nearly crashed into his team mate in Bahrain, and it looks like we see he’s trying too often to be too aggressive, and to attempt something which is most of the time impossible to do.”

Meanwhile Romain Grosjean was given a 10-place grid penalty for Montreal after hitting Daniel Ricciardo under braking for the chicane. Grosjean carried on for a couple of laps before retiring, but had he continued a little longer he would have got a drive through penalty, and his Canadian race would not have been affected.

Grosjean was quick in Monaco but he had a huge crash at Ste Devote on Thursday followed by a near repeat on Saturday morning. After getting out late in Q1 he lost out in Q2 when he was caught behind Ricciardo

“It’s always the same story, especially in Monaco,” said Boullier. “He had the pace, we could see it, and it’s even more frustrating because of that. Thursday’s accident didn’t help, but it happens.

“Obviously the rest of the story went worse on Saturday morning, building up his frustration. Ricciardo didn’t allow him to complete the Q2 like he should have done, and he ended up 13^th on the grid.

“I think we just need to cool him down and have a proper discussion when we are back in the factory. It’s not a worry, he did a great job over the winter and fixed all the problems he had last year, so I think there’s some frustration sometime when he knows he can be fast and he just needs to build himself.

“He is fast and he can deliver some big results. He did it in Bahrain and he was on his way to do it in Barcelona so it’s just using the momentum and making sure he’s back on track with the real expectations.”

An interesting twist to the Pirelli testing saga has emerged, and it throws a little more light on what Mercedes might or might not have done at Barcelona.

This blog can reveal that since the start of the season some teams have routinely being swapping the left and right rear tyres, having discovered – in some cases as early as winter testing – that they found an overall performance advantage by doing so.

The 2013 steel belt tyres are ‘handed,’ meaning that they are marked left and right and are intended by Pirelli to be used on that side of the car.

However there is nothing in the rules to stop teams from using them on the ‘wrong’ side, if they find it works better. However it’s not something that can be done without a considerable amount of attention to set-up and so on, in order to make the change work effectively.

Indeed in the case of some teams it even goes back to the design stage as they worked with data during the winter, having run prototype tyres in Brazil, and decided – in effect – that Pirelli had got its sums wrong in defining the left and right side tyres.

Intriguingly sources have told this blog that in Monaco Mercedes used the swapping technique for the first time – or at least it was the first time that it was spotted by keen-eyed observers.

It would thus be very easy to speculate that Mercedes took the opportunity of the Barcelona test to try swapping the rears around.

However while it may have helped Mercedes in Monaco, it might not do so in Montreal – assuming that Pirelli follows up on its promise to switch from steel belts back to Kevlar, as used last year.

As is well known, the move has been touted on safety grounds, as a result of several cases of delaminating treads, which have caused embarrassment to the Italian company – even though many observers consider that a delamination is potentially safer than a complete tyre disintegration, as it allows the driver to carry on back to the pits.

Pirelli has insisted that the change won’t have a major impact on the competition.

However, Kevlar belted tyres are not ‘handed’ meaning they are identical on both sides – in other words there is no point in swapping them around.

And that means the teams that have been routinely swapping will lose the advantage they currently have, and that in turn explains why they a) they are now fighting with Pirelli and the FIA over the planned change and b) why those teams who have not been able to make tyre swapping work, or have general tyre issues, are only too happy for it to go through…

It’s also clear that the change of belts represents a change of specification, which usually has to be cleared by all the teams.

If the change does happen it will provide further ammunition for Red Bull and Ferrari given that it is widely accepted that Mercedes tried the revised tyres in Barcelona, and thus have the huge advantage of being the only team to have already run 2013 Kevlar-belted tyres.

Inevitably the speculation is that Mercedes didn’t just try tyres in Barcelona, but also its own components. It’s even been suggested that the team ran a gearbox with revised suspension geometry in attempt to get to the bottom of its tyre problems. However a Mercedes spokesman says that no new parts were tried, and it was only about tyres.

This story is far from over yet…

After the massive disappointments in Bahrain and Spain everything finally came together for Nico Rosberg in Monaco. Here’s his take on the biggest day of his career to date.

One of the great mysteries of the ongoing Mercedes testing saga is how and why both the team and Pirelli kept it a secret when it was inevitably going to come to light at some stage.

Paul Hembery had a chat with a group of journalists in Monaco in Thursday, when the subject of testing came up. At no point in that session or the lengthy FIA press conference that preceded it did Hembery offer any hint that a test had taken place, despite extensive discussion.

However when asked what would be the ideal solution to the lack of opportunities for Pirelli to test, he offered what in retrospect is an interesting insight into why the Barcelona session was so useful for Pirelli – and one has to assume Mercedes as well.

“Obviously when you’ve got a benchmark from a race, it’s ideal to go testing, because you’ll have fresh data,” he said. “If you could stay on with a couple of teams, and you could rotate them – that’s not really the issue – then you’re in a better situation, because you’ve got representative data, hopefully you’ve got the drivers that have just driven the race, and you can actually do some valuable testing. That would be the dream, but I’m not sure if that’s ever going to happen.”

As we know now just such a test had taken place the previous week…

Alonso made the finish on Sunday but he had a tough afternoon. Photo: AC

Fernando Alonso made clear his displeasure with Sergio Perez after the Mexican forced the Ferrari driver to partially cut the Monaco chicane.

Alonso also had an incident with Perez in Bahrain, who caused even the Iceman Kimi Raikkonen to lose his cool after they made contact at the chicane on Sunday.

“I think really I don’t want to take too much attention on this, because the most important thing of the race is that Felipe is good,” said Alonso when asked about the incident. “The second most important thing is that Rosberg won the race, and then with Perez that he has the car parked at Rascasse. I think that is only comment I can say.

“He was lucky this year with two or three incidents, in Bahrain he nearly had contact with Jenson, with me I was off the track to avoid the contact, here I cut the chicane to avoid the contact again. Kimi was not lucky because he didn’t avoid the contact, and at the end he retired. Only McLaren has to be happy with him, all the others we just need to do our work.”

Over the course of the race Alonso was overtaken several times, notably at the hairpin. He argued that it’s much harder for a title contender to take risks in wheel-to-wheel combat.

“Obviously I was disappointed that they passed. Here there is not room to overtake, so if someone starts the manoeuvre if you do the normal corner you will crash, there will be a contact. If you are lucky or not, it’s a different thing. So for sure when you fight for these positions with people that have two or three points in the championship they risk.

“I did the same in 2008, 2009, nothing to do, I was risking at the start, I was doing overtakings in strange positions, etc. And sometimes it worked, and if you have a front wing broken, nothing happened, you pit and you don’t lose anything. You’re fighting for the championship, so if we look in the mirror, someone tries to overtake us in Loews or the chicane, if we turn we crash, we don’t know if we are lucky or not.

“So that was not good. Why we found ourselves in that position? Because we didn’t have the pace today, and we didn’t have the pace in qualifying especially. You start at the front, you fight with the top guys, if you start seventh or eighth, there is the risk of these battles with people who have nothing to lose.”

Stefano Domenicali says that Ferrari submitted a protest about the Mercedes Pirelli test in order to gain clarity on what is allowed.

Like most other teams in the paddock Ferrari is adamant that any test with a current car is illegal – but if it isn’t then the Italian team is only too happy to participate.

“We just want to know if this is possible,” said Domenicali. “If this is possible we’d be the first to raise our hands to make sure that we can do the same, because as you know Ferrari has been very pushy to try and do in-season testing on the track, and this is the reason why we wanted to understand this situation, no more than that.

“And if the decision can be opposite on what we believe, it’s the right interpretation of course on our side, then we will need to react immediately and ask for this to happen I would say as soon as technically we can do something.

“Since two years I think it’s clear that Pirelli, in order to do some testing, was asking for all the teams to do some running. But for us it’s very clear that we cannot do that with the actual car, and that’s why basically even if they didn’t formally ask us, we believe that it’s not possible to do it. Because otherwise, as I said, we’d be the first to be there in pole position.”

Asked if Rosberg’s Monaco win had been tainted by the saga, Domenicali was circumspect.

“That’s difficult to say to be honest. For sure three days have helped them, because otherwise you don’t do a test. But to say that this was an immediate effect I would say something that I don’t know, because I don’t know what they did, I don’t know who was there, I don’t know anything more than what is on air I would say. I would be too superficial and I don’t want to be.”

This note was given to media by the FIA tonight

In a note issued to the media tonight the FIA has in effect hinted that Mercedes could face serious sanctions as a result of the controversial secret Pirelli test.

It makes it clear that Pirelli and Mercedes did not follow procedures and that they tested without the FIA’s permission.

Jean Todt is believed to be furious about what happened and met with Stefano Domenicali at the Ferrari motorhome today.

The note reads as follows: “At the beginning of May, the FIA was asked by Pirelli if it was possible to carry out some tyre development testing with a team, using a current car. Within the contract Pirelli has with the FIA as single-supplier, there is provision for them to carry out up to 1000kms of testing with any team – provided every team is offered the opportunity to do so.

“Pirelli and Mercedes-AMG were advised by the FIA that such a development test could be possible if carried out by Pirelli, as opposed to the team that would provide the car and driver, and that such tests would be conditional upon every team being given the same opportunity to test in order to ensure full sporting equity.

“Following this communication, the FIA received no further information about a possible test from Pirelli or Mercedes-AMG. Furthermore the FIA received no confirmation that all teams had been given an opportunity to test.”

It goes on to clarify the legal procedures that will now follow in the coming days. Watch this space…

Ferrari says that a mechanical problem was the cause of Felipe Massa’s huge accident in the Monaco GP – despite the driver accepting blame for a near identical crash in FP3 yesterday.

In both cases Massa hit the barrier on the left approaching Ste Devote before continuing into the barrier on the exit of the corner.

The first accident happened after Massa locked his front wheels while braking a little too late on a bump, but this time there was a problem with the car.

“First and foremost, I’m pleased that Felipe is okay,” said technical director Pat Fry. “Today’s accident looked very similar to what happened in the third free practice session, but in fact the two incidents are very different. Unlike yesterday, it seems that today’s incident can be attributed to a problem on the left front corner of the car. It’s too early to say precisely what happened and in the next few days, we will try and ascertain the exact cause back in Maranello.

Meanwhile Massa said: “I’m alright, I’ve just got a slight pain in my neck, but nothing serious. Now I will look to get in shape and be back 100% for the Montreal race. All I want to do is put this bad weekend behind me and think about doing well in the rest of the season.”