Adam Cooper F1

Jenson Button expects McLaren to have a better weekend in Malaysia than in Australia, thanks to the smoother nature of the circuit.

The team’s big weakness was its inability to run the car as low as desired, due to the bumpiness of the Albert Park track. That in turn compromised the aerodynamics.

“I think we’re a little bit lucky in terms of the way this circuit is in bumpiness,” said Button today. “It’s a lot smoother than the last race, which should help us quite a bit. As you probably noticed the car was bouncing around quite a bit at the last race, which doesn’t help the set-up, you have to do certain things to make sure it’s not hitting the ground so hard.

“So it wasn’t an optimum set-up. Hopefully here, where it is a lot less bumpy, especially in low speed corners, it should really help us to put the car where the car should work. We won’t be fighting at the front, but at least we can get the best out of the car that we have.

“Things will be different here with the different track temperatures, and type of circuit, and the bumpiness. We have a couple of little things here as well in terms of aero which should help us, not just downforce but in terms of changing the way the car works, hopefully. I can’t say much more than that.”

Longer term, Button remains confident that the team can turn things around.

“I think if I was in a smaller team in our position, I’d be worried, but because it’s McLaren and I know that we can develop the car and find a car that really works for us. We’re not in a great position, but I know that we can improve it, and that’s the great thing.”

Meanwhile Button conceded that he would like wet weather this weekend, a wish which is more than likely to be fulfilled.

“I would rather it was wet. Inters were very good for us at the last race, P4 in Q2. In a way it hurt us in the race because we got excited about Q3 and went for a better position than P10, which we shouldn’t have done. But when things are going a bit better, you think you can achieve more, and that wasn’t the case. P10 was where we were.

“I would rather it was mixed conditions, I think we’d have more of a chance to score points. When you have a quick car you want it to be dry every day, no wind, calm, but when you don’t have such a quick car you want everything thrown at the field, so you have an opportunity.”

Kimi Raikkonen has downplayed suggestions that Lotus is favourite for a repeat success in Malaysia in the slipstream of his impressive win in Australia last weekend.

Raikkonen, who scored his first GP victory at Sepang with McLaren in 2003, says that it’s impossible to make any predictions.

“We don’t know yet,” he said of his chances. “Last year we were pretty good when it was hot and actually it was better for us, but obviously we haven’t run in this kind of conditions and the winter has been very cold, so I have no idea. But if it’s anything like it was last year we should be pretty OK, but we have to wait and see how it goes.

“I wouldn’t say that the [Melbourne] qualifying was a very normal situation with all the weather – it got delayed and all that stuff. But if it was normal dry conditions I’m pretty sure we are more close. We will wait and see when we get a normal qualifying. Then, I’m sure we are not a second behind, or 1.4 seconds or whatever it was.

“There’s no target. We don’t do anything different this weekend than we did in the previous race or last year. If people think that we are leaders, it makes no difference to our work, what we did or what we’re going to do this weekend or any other weekend. Like I said, we try to do best and hopefully we can score some good points.”

Kimi said that the track doesn’t have any special significance for him, despite the anniversary of his maiden win.

“It’s not really any special place. I mean, of course it was nice to win the first race but we really should have won the year before, so it’s nice to come back here – I don’t enjoy the heat and the humidity of the place, but the circuit is nice so, we know how it’s going to be more or less here. It usually gives a good race and that’s the main thing. Hopefully we can have another good weekend and score good points.”

Lewis Hamilton says he was hugely encouraged by his debut for Mercedes last weekend, despite some tyre issues in the race.

Hamilton said he had a balance problem in the opening stint – when he ran a surprisingly long 13 laps on the supersoft tyres – and in trying to compensate for it with a set-up change the team overdid it, which made his life difficult on the mediums later in the race. Nevertheless overall the weekend turned out better than he had anticipated.

“To be honest it was not the easiest of weekends, with the weather coming in and out,” said in Malaysia today. “Obviously it was a new experience for me with the new team, with the new engineers. It was new for them working with me as well. It was all up in the air and we were just trying to catch the balls as much as we could.

“We were strong in a lot of good places, and I really don’t feel that we extracted the most from the car. So coming here I feel really positive and optimistic about the weekend.”

Hamilton’s good mood was encouraged by the fact that he started third and finished fifth despite things not really coming together properly.

“That’s why I was so positive after the race. I thought I feel really positive about the car, I feel really positive about the team, now they are moving very, very fast in terms of developing the car, in terms of learning how I like to work, and I think I’m learning quite quickly how they like to work.

“Of course we could have done things better, but it was our first race together, and it doesn’t matter how much you prepare for it, you can’t prepare perfectly for a race, it’s not until you do a race that you really get an experience to know how you all work together.

“I came away from there with 10 points, and I feel really happy with 10 points, because when I made the switch I didn’t know where we would be, and I definitely didn’t think I’d come away from the first race with 10 points. And also with the feeling that that’s not just going to be a lucky shot in the first race, it’s something we can try to continue for the rest of the year.

“You see the other top teams, they’re really good at developing the car and moving forward very fast, I think that’s something the team is learning to do, and I’m seeing it coming through.”

Mercedes enjoyed mixed fortunes in Australia, for while both cars ran at the front early on, helped by an unusually long first stint, ultimately an unplanned third stop left Lewis Hamilton fifth, while Nico Rosberg retired with an electrical problem.

However the company’s motor sport boss Toto Wolff says it was a good start to the season for his team

“I think the car is a solid car, and the base seems to be there,” Wolff told this writer. “The tyre is even more difficult to understand than last year. You had one Lotus winning the race, and the other one finishing 10^th. We were looking good on the option tyre at the beginning, we extended the window and suddenly on the prime, the tyre went over the cliff.

“Fifth place is solid. There are lots of lessons to be learned in terms of strategy and tyre management. We ran very well on the soft tyre in the first few laps, and it looked like a two-stop strategy was the way forward, but the hard wouldn’t work.

“The work we’ve done over the winter was good. Now it’s just about keeping the head down, and continuing to work. It looks like we are among the top five teams, and this was my personal target.”

Wolff said it was too early to draw too many conclusions about the relative one lap and race pace of various cars.

“The interesting thing is the winner started seventh, and the pole position car finished third, and struggled a lot with the tyres. Can you say that every car has a certain pattern, or a certain DNA? Maybe. Lessons to be learned could include compromising the Saturday result even more for the Sunday result, in terms of set-up. This is what we’re going to see in the next few races from all the teams, I guess.

“Malaysia is the next lesson to be learned, in very hot conditions, and see what is going on. I think it’s just about continuing to develop and perform and staying calm and focussed, and then it’s about the end of the year. We want to progress in comparison to last year. Lots of teams are having a headache at the moment with the tyres.”

Wolff said he was delighted with the way both the drivers performed.

“Lewis seems to enjoy himself with the team, and is having a good time. Nico was very good the whole weekend. Obviously qualifying wasn’t the way he expected, but there’s no reason to be depressed about that. They both did a fantastic job, and every reason to be proud of this.”

Lotus team boss Eric Boullier concedes that the team didn’t expect to be in a position to win in Australia last weekend.

The car had looked good in testing, but a compromised qualifying session appeared to have cost the Finn any shot at victory in the season opener.

“We weren’t expecting a win,” Boullier told this blog. “We were pretty confident that we could fight for the podium, but to win is great. At least it’s done now, not like last year – when do you win, when do you win? Now we can concentrate on the championship.

“We knew the car was good on tyres, which was the purpose of the design of the car, but from that point we didn’t know what to expect.”

Boullier says that while Kimi’s rise from seventh was impressive, his grid position was not representative, and it would be wrong to draw any conclusions about the car’s merits over one lap.

“We were not in the right position on the grid. We could have qualified higher on the grid definitely, but we did small mistakes in the qualy, not enough track time let’s say to exploit the tyres, but it doesn’t matter because in the end we could recover in the race.

“Last year we could see that we compromised one lap pace, so actually we worked very hard this year to make sure the car is delivering more pace on one lap, while keeping the same strengths.”

He says the team had no worries about being able to complete the long middle stint that in effect won Raikkonen the race.

“No doubts even if we were in the same position last year in China and we had some issues. Now we were quite confident that we could do it, but the second stint of Kimi was the key, and the first one as well, to be able to last long enough on the supersoft. It was long enough and it was fast enough.”

Having been the sole supplier via its FIA contract since 2008 McLaren Electronic Systems introduced a new unit this season, which will also be used when the turbo era kicks off in 2014.

After a number of teething issues in testing McLaren claims that the actual units ran reliably in Melbourne. However Mark Webber suffered a suffered software issue for which RBR blamed the supplier.

Webber lost telemetry on the warm-up lap and, unable to prepare properly for the start, got away badly. He was also without KERS for the first 20 laps of the race.
Afterwards team boss Christian Horner was quick to blame McLaren for the problem.

“We lost all telemetry on the formation lap,” he said. “And then you can’t do the preparation that you need to for the start, so then he’s  in the blind for the start, and that ECU issue [sic] shut the KERS down as well, so by the time we’d reset the whole system obviously he’d lost the start and lost early ground. It’s something that they need to get on top of, because there’s been a lot of issues during testing.”

Meanwhile McLaren sent an apology and stressed that the actual ECU wasn’t the problem with the following statement: “An ECU comprises several thousand parts, tens of thousands of solder connections and hundreds of thousands of lines of software. It is a very complex piece of equipment that controls the powertrain and DRS, and acts as a car’s primary data system.

“The electronic units themselves ran without incident in Melbourne, but there was a software-related issue that meant that Mark Webber’s Red Bull Racing car’s garage data system had to be re-started during the formation lap. That disrupted his preparations for the start of the race, for which Mark and the team has our apology. We are working together with them to prevent any recurrence.”

Imagine how happy they would look if they had a slow car…

Christian Horner insists that the Australian GP was a good weekend for Red Bull, despite the team managing only third place after Sebastian Vettel started from pole.

Horner says that while tyres were an issue on Sunday over the course of the weekend the car proved that it was fast.

“The really positive things are we’ve come here, we’ve got a quick car, we’ve qualified on the pole,” said Horner. “We’ve been out of the window in the race, which is ironic because 12 months ago it was the opposite, we struggled to qualify but had a car that was very soft on the tyre in the race.

“RB9 is a competitive car, and I think we’re only going to get a real, true picture of form after about four or five races, when we’ve gone to different venues, different tracks, different asphalt surfaces, then we’ll get a true picture of form. But it’s been a very positive weekend for us.”

Horner was surprised by the ability of rivals to keep their tyres alive.

“I think probably the conditions were a significant factor and we were just out of the window. All things considered third place is actually a very good result. Kimi is the only driver/car combination that could make a two-stop really work, and it was quite obvious from about half distance that was what they were doing.

“Just to emphasise that point he did fastest lap on a tyre that was older than we could have dreamed going anywhere near. I think we’ve learned an awful lot today, and hopefully it won’t be quite as chilly next weekend…

“I think the Force India looked good on its tyre, and Kimi. If you looked at Grosjean, it looked like he adopted a similar strategy, but it didn’t work for him. But Kimi really made it work, his car set-up was very light on the tyre, and in these conditions he really was able to make it work. Could we have done a two-stop? No chance. We never had the range on the tyre, it was never an option.

“Sutil started to pull away on tyres that were significantly older than Sebastan’s so at that stage we knew that we were out of the window with the tyre degradation.”

Horner is convinced that Vettel’s problems were related to his set-up, which was different from that of his team mate. Webber suffered less dramatic tyre degradation, which is not the usual pattern at Red Bull.

“We know that we’ve got a good car, certainly through practice. Our least competitive moments were during the race. Mark was very competitive in the race and had better tyre durability than Sebastian in the race so we have to look again at where the differences in set-up were between the two drivers. I think it’s more set-up dependent than inherent in the car, as I said we had two different versions going on.”

Martin Whitmarsh says he’s confident that McLaren can recover from its current troubles with the MP4-28, but accepts that there will be a limited chance to make any improvements before Malaysia.

“We’ve got to be realistic,” said Whitmarsh after his cars finished 9^th and 11^th in Melbourne. “I hope we can make some progress and we’re going to be working incredibly hard in the next few days to do that. We’ve really got to learn about this car, we’ve got to work these problems out, and we’ve got to solve it. It isn’t good enough at the moment, and that’s not a good feeling. I’m sure we’ll get it right. We might not get it right as quickly as I would like, but we’ll see.

“We struggled to have a proper understanding in testing, I think a lot of people did. Winter testing was very strange this year. We knew we weren’t coming here with masses of confidence. I think it frankly was a little bit worse than expected.

“We knew to an extent that this circuit would play to our weaknesses, and I think it certainly managed to do that. We didn’t have enough of an understanding to fix it, I think we’re gaining that. I think you’ve got to know what you’re trying to do, you’ve got to understand what the problems are, and then you’ve got to work hard to fix it. Sadly there’s no magic, we’ve just got to work hard now and get it right.”

Whitmarsh admitted that the extent of McLaren’s struggles in Australia came as shock.

“To a degree. I hope that we won’t be quite so far off the frontrunners in Malaysia, but I’m not promising that we will be with them either. I think we’ve got to be realistic about what can be done in the few days before we get there. It’s a very different circuit of course, but we’ll see.”

Asked if reverting to the MP4-27 would be a serious option, he said: “It’s not a serious option for Malaysia! I think at the moment we’ve got to work hard on this car. We know it’s got some areas of high potential, and we know that it’s potentially got more downforce than last year’s car. I think there are other issues we’ve got to understand, and make sure it’s accessible.

“We’ve all had cars in the past, or many of us have unfortunately, that are difficult to get the performance out of, extract it, even though some of the figures are quite impressive. This car seems to be difficult in that regard, so we need to work on that, understand it, and fix it.”

Stefano Domenicali’s target for Australia was to begin the 2013 season with a podium finish, and the Ferrari boss is happy with the way the first race unfolded.

The Italian team has endured a poor start to its campaign over the past two years, and Domenicali believes that – as in 2012 – the battle will go to the end of the season.

“For sure the global picture of what I’ve seen during these two days, three days, very intense, was more or less what I was expecting if you look back at the testing, and what I’ve said officially,” said Domenicali.

“We had a group of cars that is quite competitive, we had a qualifying that – even if it’s difficult to understand from the pure performance point of view because of the conditions – we saw Red Bull very strong, Mercedes very strong as expected.

“And we saw a different picture during the race. As was clear during the test we saw a very consistent Lotus, with a good race pace. On that respect there was not really a big surprise. Don’t be surprised if you see McLaren recovering the situation very soon, because they are a great team, so they will do it very soon.

“The championship is for sure very long, from our side it is for sure encouraging to have a good start, no doubt. I said at the beginning our target was the podium, and we did that.

“It doesn’t count a lot, I would say nothing, but we are leading the constructors’ championship, and this is a good sign for the people at home who are working quite hard, at least to see that our drivers have performed quite well.”

Domenicali said that Ferrari still has to keep its eye on the ball.

“We need to be prudent because it’s only the first race. There are so many things that will change in the next couple of races in terms of understanding race preparation, in terms of tyre management. For sure the strategy is always important. I put in front of everything reliability, because if you don’t finish, you don’t score points.

“I’m pleased to see our group of mechanics were doing a great job also today, and this is something very important, because we need to be solid in the points where we are strong, and improve where we need to improve. For sure the championship this year will be very intense this year up to the last race, no doubt.”

Jenson Button says he’s surprised to have made the top 10 on the Australian GP grid, but is frustrated about potential tyre problems in the race.

Last of those committed to starting on tyres used in qualifying, Button says his supersofts are not going to last long.

“I didn’t think I’d be 10^th,” said Button. “I mean the balance of the car is not too bad, we just didn’t have any pace. To be 10^th and one second off ninth is a surprise. I’ve also damaged my tyres a lot, so it’s going to be a tough afternoon.

“I don’t know how many laps I’m going to be able to do on my option tyre, it feels like it’s ready to go in the bin already. Everyone’s got graining in front, I just think mine’s worse, I’ve done more laps.”

Button admitted that McLaren should have kept him in the garage and accepted 10^th place – and a free choice of tyres.

“We should have done something else, we shouldn’t have maybe run, we’ve damaged the tyres quite a bit. But we’re racers and we want to go and see what we can do.”