Adam Cooper F1

Mercedes motor sport boss Toto Wolff continues to insist that the much touted arrival of Paddy Lowe in 2014 is still not a done deal.

McLaren has already confirmed that Lowe is leaving at the end of the year – even officially wishing him well in his new challenge in a press release – but there has been no confirmation from Mercedes.

Ross Brawn confirmed at the Jerez test that Lowe would come on board if he left, indicating that the latter would fill the team principal role. However, given that the arrival of Lewis Hamilton and the challenge of the turbo era are massive motivational factors for Brawn, it’s hard to imagine that he would want to leave any time soon.

However sources have suggested that there could now be scope for Lowe to work with Brawn, alongside fellow ‘star names’ Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis.

“Well obviously that situation is not perfect,” Wolff said of the ongoing saga. “We’ve discussed it and said Ross is the team principal, he’s running the racing team, and this is how it’s going to stay. We haven’t even started the 2013 season. We feel right working together, we have a good spirit internally, and Paddy Lowe coming or not is just so far ahead it makes no sense to talk about it now.

“It’s too early to say that he’s coming. This is a complex process, it’s not just that you hire somebody and that’s it, off you go – discussions are ongoing. Paddy is a good guy. It’s about fitting someone in the organisation, so it’s not yet done.”

Lowe is still employed by McLaren, but is apparently only rarely seen at the factory. Team sources say that he could yet be asked to spend some time working in the road car division while his contract runs out.

McLaren’s impressive pace on the first day of testing in Jerez in February was generated by a mistake when the car was being put together in the factory, Martin Whitmarsh has confirmed to this blog.

A suspension component was fitted incorrectly to the new car – apparently it was simply the wrong way round – and the unexpectedly low ride height that resulted happened to work well at the Spanish track. Button set the pace that day, suggesting that the MP4-28 could be the car to beat.

However once the mistake was discovered that night, it was rectified, as the car could not be run in that state long term at other venue, especially with heavy fuel loads.

Since then the team has struggled to get close to that initial performance, leading rivals and other observers to wonder just why the McLaren had been so impressive out of the box.

On Friday in Australia Jenson Button pinpointed the issue by saying: “We had a set-up we didn’t think we had. It wasn’t one we could work with.”

A little investigation has revealed that it wasn’t simply a question of a miscalculation of settings, but a part being fitted wrongly.

“It was a part fitted incorrectly which caused us to run the car unrealistically low, that happened to play to the strengths of the car,” Whitmarsh confirmed when asked by this blog. “It wouldn’t work on a bumpy circuit like this. That’s why the car at the moment is too peaky in its performance, and that’s something we’ve got to resolve. It was a set-up which on many tracks was not realistic.”

Whitmarsh also noted that McLaren’s extreme problems on Friday in Australia were related to trying to run the in a low configuration once again.

Christian Horner says the FIA’s decision to postpone qualifying in Australia was inevitable after conditions failed to improve.

Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel finished the Q1 session in fourth and seventh places.

“It was 100% the right decision,” Horner told this blog. “The conditions were constantly changing, there was an awful lot of water on the track, and the biggest problem was that the light was disappearing rapidly.

“Charlie Whiting has plenty of experience, he kept us updated with what he was thinking. He obviously has to go through the motions as well to a degree, but at once stage it looked pretty inevitable that it would be postponed.

“Mark had a little excursion. They were navigating their way round, and those sessions are all about survival, not necessarily purple sectors. Our objective was quite clear, which was just to survive that session.”

Jenson Button says that it would have been impossible to complete qualifying in today’s rain – and says that Sunday morning should provide a better show.

He also gave an illuminating explanation of what it’s like to drive a modern F1 car in heavy rain.

“When it gets too wet for these tyres it doesn’t matter what speed you drive around, you will aquaplane,” said Button. “The tyre cannot take a certain amount of water. Especially when there’s a river running across the circuit, you don’t know where it is when you arrive.

“When it is this wet out there there’s no difference between the rivers and the circuit, it’s just one big lake. When you hit a river, you are completely out of control. You might as well close your eyes and take your hands off the steering wheel, because it does what it wants.

“And that’s not what F1 racing is about. It’s about a guy trying to tame a 750bhp F1 car, but in conditions where he can possibly tame it, because in this you can’t. We’re not in control of the situation. You can say 30 years ago we probably would have raced in these conditions, but safety’s come a long way since then in terms of the circuits and the way that we view safety.

“I’m very happy that I’m racing at this moment in time, because this is correct, to not run today. Many times we’ve questioned the FIA’s decisions when it comes to safety, sometimes we say that they don’t call a red flag early enough in a race or in qualifying, but lately they’ve been great, they’ve really called it well. They understand what an F1 car can do what the drivers can do in these conditions. The fans will get a much better show tomorrow than if we tried to run in these conditions, because we’d all be piled up at Turn One.”

Button made the point that many other sports do not run in wet weather.

“Not even talking about the safety side of the sport, there are so many sports that don’t play if it’s raining. Motor sports, and other sports, ball sports. So we are not alone in not playing and not racing in these conditions. We have a car and tyres that are good enough in certain conditions, but this is just impossible. It’s not about the show when it’s like this, this is way too dangerous.

“It is sad, because for us there is so much energy and adrenaline running through us when we get into qualifying, and we have to go through that again and again and again, and suddenly it’s all over.

“But that is minimal compared obviously to the fans sitting in the grandstand and getting wet all day, and we don’t put on a proper show. But it is the sport, hopefully the fans understand that, and we will make sure that we will do a great job in the morning.

“It’s not easy for any team to be working in this situation of having qualifying in the morning and the race in the afternoon, but I think we’ve got the best teams in the world racing in F1, and we’ll be able to get it done.

“I’d rather it was wet, but it is what it is. If it’s not wet then we can see where we stand compared to our competitors at this moment in time, and if it’s not where we want to be we know we’ve got work to do, and we know what we need to do to improve the car.”

Lewis Hamilton admitted that he hasn’t performed as well as he would have liked to in Australia after a spin in Q1 nearly finished his qualifying session.

Hamilton, who clipped the wall but was able to continue, said the FIA made the right decision in delaying Q2 and Q3.

“They made the right call,” said Hamilton. “It’s been a tricky weekend so far, but I’m still enjoying it. It’s a shame for all the fans who got drenched today, I hope they still turn up tomorrow and I hope we have much better weather tomorrow.

“I see that as a blessing that we have it tomorrow and hopefully it will be a bit drier and give us bit more of an opportunity to get higher up.”

Lewis said he went off on a white line: “The slippery paint lines on the track make it so much harder, and it’s already as hard as it possibly could be when it’s raining. I think everyone was struggling with that today.

“I slipped on one of those lines and just lost the back end. Those kinds of things happen. It’s not been a great weekend so far on my side, but tomorrow we have another chance to turn it round.”

Regarding his own form, he said: “It takes a little bit of time to get used to a new car, for sure. I generally feel OK in it, but every time I get in the car I’m learning a little bit more and feeling more and more comfortable in it. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’m working on it.”

Ferrari chief designer Nicholas Tombazis says the team is pleased with the way the F138 performed in Melbourne on Friday, but insists that it’s still too early to judge how good the car really is.

Fernando Alonso was sixth fastest in the FP2 session.

“I think Red Bull showed obviously to be very competitive,” said Tombazis. “To be honest we never had any doubt about the fact that they were going to be competitive. We know that they are a very strong team and had a good performance also in testing. We don’t know exactly where the relative pecking order is between the top four teams, I would say.

“We concentrated primarily on the tyre evaluation. On the race simulation stuff we were looking reasonable, on the pure qualifying performance it was difficult to judge because of track fuel loads and exact times when people went out. I expect we’ll only know where we are in qualifying only in Malaysia because it’s probably going to be wet, so we won’t know where we are until next weekend.

“I think in terms of performance we are approximately where we are expecting, compared to Barcelona. But as I say as in Barcelona, and it also applies here in Friday practice, we’re still unable to comment on our relative pecking order compared to our competitors.”

Jenson Button had to try hard to hide his frustration after a disastrous day for McLaren in Melbourne.

The MP4-28 proved to have some fundamental problems, notably with ride quality, which left the former champion some 2.3s off the pace in 11th place in FP2. Team mate Sergio Perez was over 0.2s slower in 13th.

“It’s going to be a long night, we’ve got to find a way the car working,” said Button.

“I think a racing driver will always say they want more grip, they want more downforce, it’s always the way. There are a few other issues that we need to solve before we start worrying about that, and one of them is definitely ride.

“It’s something we’ve been struggling with today, the front and rear of the car. We’ve been working with a lot today to try and improve it, we haven’t found something that’s helped yet.

“The ride is so important with an F1 car, if the car is moving around a lot, the downforce is not necessarily working in the correct manner. We’ve got to get the ride sorted.

“I don’t think [my expectations] were massively high coming here. After testing the car in Barcelona I felt we had a reasonable set-up, but there was a big gap to the front guys in terms of lap time. I think we can see that gap today, it’s probably a little bit better than what we expected, but I don’t think we’ve done the best job yet.”

Button admitted that getting a reasonable helping of points would be a bonus.

“The way things have gone today, I think points will be very positive. When things aren’t going your way it’s important to get the best out of what you have. At the moment that’s what it feels like, but we have just got out of the car. There’s a lot of work to do tonight.

“It’s always tough for a racing driver, you’re always emotional when you step out of the racing car. But tomorrow morning I’ll be a lot more sprightly after going through the data and hopefully finding something.

“We’ve got to go through the data and make sure the car is doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and make sure the set-up is where we think the set-up is.”

He also made an intriguing admission about the car’s pace on Day One of testing in Jerez: “We had a set-up we didn’t think we had. It wasn’t one we could work with.”

Sebastian Vettel was keen to keep a lid on expectations despite topping the times on the first day of the season in Melbourne.

Vettel was fastest in both FP1 and FP2, and in the latter he was some 0.4s ahead of RBR’s nearest rival, the Mercedes of Nico Rosberg. He also hit traffic on his run on supersofts and thus could have been even faster.

“It was a very good day considering it was the first day of the season,” said Vettel. “We didn’t have any problems, no major dramas. We know a little bit more than yesterday, that’s for sure, but I think we have to be aware of the fact that conditions can change, a couple of degrees make a massive difference with these tyres.

“For today I think we were very happy, but tomorrow could be another day. I think there’s room for improvement, but we need to keep our eyes open, and then we see what happens.”

Lewis Hamilton ended his FP2 session in the gravel trap in Melbourne today after damage to the floor of his car cost him downforce and sent him off the road.

The team was aware of a possible problem after it was spotted in the pits, but worryingly perhaps the message did not get through before Hamilton went straight at Turn 6, just reaching the tyre wall before he came to  halt.

“I had separation of the front splitter,” he explained. “The splitter was pushed right up underneath, touching the top of the chassis, underneath the chassis. I lost a lot of front end. I went into Turn 6, turned in, and nothing really happened, I just went straight on.

“The guys said they saw something in the pit stop and they were about to call me in, but it was too late, I’d already gone off. Those things happen.”

Having made a mistake on his quick run earlier in the afternoon Hamilton finished the day in seventh place, but he was encouraged by the pace of Nico Rosberg, who was 0.4s faster and third overall.

“It was a really good day, a surprisingly good day, and really positive. Nico did a great job, I didn’t get a good time on my lap because I locked up and went wide, but generally it’s been really positive.

“We’re not massively off the Red Bulls, which is incredible, really incredible, and just shows what a great job all the guys back at the factory have done. Obviously there’s been a couple of issues, which we’ll work hard to fix, but I don’t think it’s anything the team can’t fix.

“The Red Bull is massively quick, as it always is, they’ve obviously been sandbagging the whole time in winter as expected, and all of a sudden they’ve pulled out a lot of time. But I don’t feel we’re miles away. They’ve gone from being really far away to being not far away from Red Bull, and that’s really impressive.”

Christian Horner insists that he has no idea what the form book looks like, despite widespread speculation that RBR is in better shape than headline times in testing might have suggested.

Horner also says that tyres will be the key factor in determining how this season plays out.

“I think it’s impossible to tell what the playing order is at the moment, who’s where,” said Horner. “And maybe we won’t even see on Saturday, if there’s going to be rain around as well. There’s probably going to be two or three races until we see a pattern emerge, but for sure you can see that the usual suspects are going to be competitive, Fernando in the Ferrari, the Mercedes has looked good over the winter, McLaren, the Lotus has been competitive as well.

“I think the biggest difference this year is that the tyres are working slightly differently, and how the car works its tyres over a single lap and over the race are going to be critical factors.

“It’s the same for everybody. I think there’s nobody here that can tell you whether they think it’s going to be a one, two, three, four or five stop race on Sunday.”

Horner is happy with the way winter testing unfolded, especially as the team made a relatively late call to guarantee that the RB9 was at the first session in Jerez.

“Testing wise we had a very productive three tests, we got through the vast majority of what we wanted to achieve. You’re always left wanting more, but everybody’s only got 12 days. What was particularly impressive for us was to be at that first test after what was absolutely the shortest design and production time of any of our cars to date. The amount of hours and effort that went in behind the scenes in Milton Keynes was awesome.

“For sure we were later with the car, but it’s an evolutionary car, so of course you take what you’ve learned out of RB8 into RB9. When you’re fighting for a championship up to the last race it puts an additional pressure on the system.

“Hats off to the guys, they worked round the clock. We decided to be at that first test very late on. There were no spare parts there, but we had a car there.

“We made good progress, and where we actually finished up gave us a good understanding of where we are with the car coming here. How that compares to the competitors, who knows. Both drivers, with what they finished the test with, or what they will be starting here with, were certainly quite happy.”