Adam Cooper F1

In Spain Nico Rosberg earned his second pole of the year and the third in a row for Mercedes, but the inevitable question is for how long the German and his team mate Lewis Hamilton can run at the front.

At the last two GPs Mercedes has earned pole and then gone backwards come the race.

“Things just worked really well the whole weekend, we just optimised everything,” said Rosberg of today. “Of course, after Bahrain we were thinking about the race a lot, also, so surprised that we could be that quick today. But it all went perfectly in qualifying and I had a really good lap in the end. I’m really, really happy with that.

“It’s always a good motivation boost and everything, especially for the team – front row, fantastic. But of course I have to be a bit cautious because of what happened in Bahrain, so for sure, nice, but to be enjoyed with caution.

“Everyone has been working really, really hard back in the factory to understand even better our problems. You know it’s really an ongoing process, understanding how to get the most out of these tyres. It’s really, really complex, for us drivers, for the engineers, for everybody and we’re just a bit behind at the moment. I’m sure we’ve caught up now.

“But then you come here and there’s different issues again because here it’s more the graining of the tyres that’s the main issue. And so then again here we were trying to catch up and make the most of that situation. I think we’ve improved things. This morning things were looking at little bit better, so I’m a little bit more confident for tomorrow but still the race is going to a whole different thing, with the tyres it’s a big challenge.”

Despite the doubts about race form he would rather be starting at the front than anywhere else: “For sure it’s a benefit to start first. Clean air – hopefully – after the start, starting on the better side of the grid, so that’s all great but the race is very long. To win it’s not good enough to start from pole, you need to have the fastest race car.

“As we’ve seen, there’s so many differences in speeds through the race and strategy and everything. And if you don’t have a very, very quick car there’s no chance. So, we just really need to wait and see.”

After losing pole to team mate Nico Rosberg Lewis Hamilton says he wasn’t entirely comfortable with his car in qualifying in Barcelona.

Hamilton was fastest in both Q1 and Q2, but missed out by a quarter of a second in the session that mattered.

“Generally this weekend I haven’t had the best of weekends up until now,” said Hamilton. “Obviously this is still great for us today, to be one and two on the grid but I’ve just been struggling all weekend generally. Even my long runs have been pretty poor but on one lap pace, the car doesn’t seem to be too bad but I’ve just been a little bit lost generally, not really knowing what things to change and which direction to go, so I kind of didn’t really make many changes into P3 and into qualifying, I just left the car the same.

“I didn’t really make any changes to it, I wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable, but I knew that it was good enough to do what we did today. As for the win, we’ve got improve our race pace but obviously we have very good qualifying pace. I hope in the near future we will get our win, but we’ll work for it tomorrow.”

Hamilton also expressed concerns about starting from the dirty side of the grid: “My side of the grid isn’t really the place to be. These two [Rosberg and Vettel] have a good position on the cleaner side but we’ll do the best job we can from the start but I think more the concern is tyre degradation. Looking after those tyres is going to be an interesting one. I really hope that we can try and get into turn one first, in a 1-2, that’d be really good for the team.”

Felipe Massa and Esteban Gutierrez have both been giving three-place grid penalties for impeding incidents in qualifying in Barcelona.

Massa was judged to have blocked Mark Webber in Q2, while Gutierrez held up Kimi Raikkonen in Q1.

Massa thus goes from sixth to ninth, handing places to Grosjean, Webber and Perez, while Gutierrez drops from 16th to 19th, gifting spots to Bottas, Maldonado, and Van der Garde.

Felipe Massa will start the Spanish GP from sixth place having been edged out by Ferrari team mate Fernando Alonso by just 0.001s.

Massa had looked strong all weekend, and topped the times in FP3. However Ferrari lost performance when it mattered.

“For sure I expected a little bit more,” said Massa. “I definitely expected to be fighting for the top three, looking that I was first this morning, the car was good this morning. But the others improved a lot, so I’m sure they were a little bit too conservative this morning, and they were preparing everything for the qualifying.

“I knew Mercedes would have been strong here, because they were very strong in the winter. It’s a track they can be very strong in the qualifying, but in the race, I don’t know – maybe a bit less.”

Fernando Alonso insists that he isn’t disappointed to have qualified only fifth in Barcelona, despite the Ferrari having looked like the fastest car for much of the weekend.

Alonso expects to show a stronger performance relative to the opposition on Sunday.

“I think this is the maximum of what we have at the moment in our hands,” he said. “We cannot compete today with Mercedes again for qualifying, it’s their third consecutive pole position. We know that the race pace is maybe a little bit better for us, so we need to wait for our opportunities tomorrow.

“We need to have a clean start, a good first lap, and then a good strategy, because tyre degradation will again be very high, and so important, so we need to be on top of that problem.

“I feel confident. The car felt good yesterday, I felt competitive. Historically Sunday has been our best day of the weekend, so no reasons not to be on the podium tomorrow. But we want to be something more than just on the podium, so we’ll see what we can do.”

Alonso admitted that he gets a special buzz in front of his home crowd.

“Yeah of course, there is always extra motivation when you race in front of everybody. But at the end of the day the car is as fast as it is always, here or in another circuit. We’ll try to do well tomorrow and give some happiness to everyone.”

A little addition to Red Bull’s regular Friday post-practice press release was a list of the five tracks Sebastian Vettel would most like to race on.

Perhaps not surprisingly Le Mans and the traditional versions of Spa and Nurburgring all feature, but American fans will be delighted to know that on top is none other than Watkins Glen, which last hosted the US GP in 1980. The triple World Champion also ranked Laguna Seca – which he has sampled in a road car – in third place.

Here’s what he had to say in full:

1.  Watkins Glen: “Because I’ve heard lots of good things about it, as in it’s a proper circuit, with lots of ups and down and loads of history. F1 used to go there but not anymore, so I’d like to try that.”

2. Le Mans: “I’ve been around there in Formula 3 but only a smaller track. I think it would be quite special to go around there in a real Le Mans prototype.”

3. Laguna Seca: “I’ve been there, but not in a race car – just a road car. It was still quite impressive though, so that might be a challenge.”

4.  The original Spa-Francorchamps: “That would have been something. I think that was a proper man’s track, with lots of high-speed corners. I can’t imagine going through the Masta Kink in a modern Formula One car.”

5.  Nordschleife (Nurburgring): “It just has to be there. I have done a couple of laps but I don’t remember most of the corners. It’s long and probably too tough for a modern Formula One car, because they’re too low. But even in a road car it’s special. I think you need big balls for the Fuchsröhre, the part where it goes downhill. You just stay flat and accelerate. You’re way above 200km/h and then you have this massive compression at the bottom and then you go uphill again and it’s just…. wow! Imagine doing that in a proper car in a 24-hour race, flat out through there at night. Amazing.”

Pirelli boss Paul Hembery says it’s too early to draw too many conclusions after a spectacular tyre failure for Paul Di Resta in FP2 in Barcelona.

Di Resta’s left rear lost its tread as he went through the corner onto the pit straight. Warned by a vibration, the Force India driver was able to back off, bringing the car to a safe halt at the end of the pit lane.

There have been similar issue already this season with the medium compound, and Hembery made it clear that the sight of a tyre without its tread represented bad PR for Pirelli.

“It doesn’t look pretty obviously when you get the tread coming away like that,” he said. “And if anything last year if we had failures it tended to collapse the tyre onto the rim, so it still didn’t look good. This year we’re seeing the tread coming away. So visually it looks rubbish, and we obviously don’t like that, and we’re looking at that and seeing if there are things we can do to eliminate it.”

Asked about the cause he said: “It’s always very difficult because you get a bag of bits back. It’s certainly causing by overheating the tread.

“The structure didn’t give way, it’s the tread – that’s what we’ve seen a few other cases, the tread is overheating and coming away. From some points of view it would be better if the structure gave way and then it collapsed and it wouldn’t look quite so spectacular. In any case it’s not something that we like and we’re looking at what we can do.”

Red Bull enjoyed a good first day in Barcelona, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber securing first and third spots respectively after their runs on the medium tyre in FP2.

Webber, who always goes well at the Spanish track, was pleased with progress.

“It looks reasonably tight,” said the Aussie. “We had a good time on fresh tyres and enjoyed it and then we go out and drive around and save tyres, the less enjoyable part of the job! But anyway that’s what we’ve got to do. We couldn’t have got much more out of it today in terms of info considering the first session was a bit scrappy for everybody because of the weather. But overall, a pretty good day for us. We’ll find out on Sunday.”

Regarding the problems caused by the mostly wet first session he said: “I think that we had a few things to test from an aerodynamic perspective, we would have liked two 90 minute sessions, so we had to smash it into one, so that was a little bit tight for both cars.

“But in the end we got through most of it, I think. Some of the items might have dropped off, we’ll go through it tonight and have a look at what will stay on and what won’t, and then go through the normal tyre stuff.”

The New Jersey F1 race has added Long Beach founder Chris Pook to its management team.

Pook has been named as “Special Assistant to the Chairman”, Leo Hindery. The organisation says that Pook will “provide consultation with respect to all aspects of construction, planning and execution of the Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial race.”

It quotes his long time pal Bernie Ecclestone as saying: “I am happy to be working with Chris again after some 20 years. Chris has a history of great success in Formula One, which I’m confident he’ll bring to the Grand Prix of America race. We look forward to working with him to bring F1 racing to New Jersey and New York.”

Hindery said: “The F1 Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial just gainedanother invaluable team member who will ensure the race will be like nothing the region has ever witnessed. Chris is a leader with decades of experience in American motorsports. We are delighted to add someone with his accomplishments and level of expertise to the Grand Prix of America at Port Imperial team.”

Kimi Raikkonen has downplayed the impact of the departure of Lotus technical director James Allison.

Raikkonen is known to rate Allison highly but in public at least today he was keen to avoid any negative talk.

“Not really,” he said when asked if he was worried. “We don’t know if it’s going to change anything, or what it’s going to change. Obviously there are people who will replace him already. We’ll see if it has any effect on what the future brings. I don’t really have any idea.”

Meanwhile Kimi refused to be drawn on what his plans for 2014 might be.

“My decision will be purely on what I think is the best overall for me, and we’ll see what happens in the future. I have no idea what will happen and right now I don’t put much thought into it because we only have done four races. There’s a long season to go and there’s a long time until next year. So now we put effort for this race and this season.”

Asked if he had a time frame he said: “I have to know before next year… You keep asking me the same question, I have nothing to tell, I don’t know. I purely put my effort for this race and this year, and when things happen, people will know. There’s nothing to tell and I don’t really put much thought about it. Everyone always talks about it, but I’m not in a hurry.”

He also refused to be drawn on whether the change to Pirelli’s hard tyre might affect Lotus.

“We’ll see on Sunday, I cannot predict anything. There’s no point to try to guess what will happen. We’ll get some idea tomorrow and we’ll see if it’s good or not good.”