Adam Cooper F1

Martin Whitmarsh admits that Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Austin is huge boost to the McLaren team after a recent run of misfortune.

It was also achieved in one of the highest profile races of the year, in front of a lot of corporate VIPs.

“That was a fantastic result, and great for the team,” said Whitmarsh. “It’s our 12th victory in the States, we won here last time, that’s a good feeling and it’s important to us.

“It’s near the home of Exxon Mobil, and great to come here and do that for them. One race to go, and we like to go there and win that as well. That would be some compensation for some of the disappointments and some of the failures we’ve had this year.

“We’ve got to get better, we’ve got to get stronger, we’ve got to make less mistakes. We’ve had a lot of potential this year and we haven’t really got what we should have got from the potential that we’ve got in the team. We’ll learn from that and come out stronger next year, but at the moment we’re focussed on a few days time in Brazil. A great circuit, and again great history for us.”

Asked about the inevitable emotions involved as Hamilton’s departure draws near, he added: “I said to Lewis weeks ago we’ll have the emotion after Brazil, let’s really focus on doing the best job we can. We should have won two weeks ago and I felt sorry for him and sorry for the team, and obviously Singapore as well.

“His second ever win was in the States obviously and I remember that very well, and we had a great time after that. We’ve had some amazing highs together. I don’t want to make it easy for him to leave this team, but at the moment let’s focus and see if we can get the win in Brazil.”

Sebastian Vettel might not have secured the drivers’ championship in Austin, but Red Bull still had plenty to celebrate as the team won its third straight constructors’ title.

Vettel finished second after losing the lead to Lewis Hamilton on the 42^nd lap, and no has a 13-point lead over Fernando Alonso.

“We’re half way there,” said team principal Christian Horner. “We’ve closed out one championship. To have won a third consecutive constructors’ is something we could only ever have dreamed about a few years ago. To have achieved what we have in 2010, 2011 and 2012 against the opponents that we have in only our eighth year in the sport is something that’s quite remarkable.

“I think that it’s testimony to the long hours, the determination, the dedication that there is in the team that we’ve managed to achieve this. It’s something that every member of the team is fiercely proud of.”

Regarding the showdown in Interlagos next week, he said: “To finish second, to have extended our lead by three points, is still a fantastic result. We now head to Brazil with a 13-point lead, and still everything to play for. I’ve said all season I think this championship will go to Brazil. Unfortunately I’ve been proved right today!

“We’ve just got to approach the next race as we have the previous 19. We’ve got to go there, attack the weekend, get the best out of ourselves, the car, the strategy, the drivers, reliability. Anything can happen as we’ve seen this season. It’s good to be going there with a lead, and we’ll just be going there determined to try and close the job off.”

Horner acknowledged that it was a close fight for the win in Austin, but said that backmarker Narain Karthikeyan had helped Hamilton get into Vettel’s DRS tow.

“It was nip and tuck between the two of them throughout the race, and obviously in the dirty air it’s tricky to get too close. Sebastian was doing a fantastic job in managing the gap to Lewis.

“Lewis was a little stronger than us in the first sector, but sectors two and three, we were able to eke out a bit of a gap. It was about not making any mistakes. Sebastian was driving immaculately well, and I’m quite convinced that without the backmarker, he could have hung on, but that’s motor racing.

“He’s a racer, and he didn’t want to give up on fighting Lewis. They were 35 seconds ahead of Fernando at that stage. He just wanted to keep the pressure on over the closing laps. Throughout the race there was rarely less than a second or so between the two of them.”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domencali says that he had no doubts about the decision to help Fernando Alonso by dropping Felipe Massa down the grid in Austin.

The team broke the seal on the Brazilian’s gearbox, which generated an automatic five-place penalty. That in turn moved Alonso up from eighth to seventh, and onto the clean side of the track. It paid off spectacularly as he jumped up to fourth at the start.

Ferrari had made it clear to the stewards what its intentions were before breaking the seal, and Domenicali denied that there was the decision was unsporting, despite some criticism in the paddock.

“I prefer to be totally transparent, because honestly something like that you can easily simulate something, if you want,” he said. “But I felt it was more correct to say the truth, this is our style, my style. You can agree or not with that decision, but honestly at the end of the day it is something that is on our responsibility to do it.

“We knew before the start of the race that the difference in grip level of the two side of the grid was very high, and we knew that it was very important to be with the first cars in the first couple of laps, otherwise the race would have been almost finished.”

Domenicali said that Massa, who eventually finished fourth from 11^th on the grid, had accepted the decision.

“At the end of the day retrospectively from a strategic point of view it was the right thing to do. As I said when you work for the Ferrari team you know that the team is the centre of the decision, and you know that the drivers and the team respect it.

“I have to thank Felipe for that. He drove extremely well during the whole weekend and this is something that is positive looking ahead for Brazil, because also we need both our drivers doing a great race if we want to challenge Vettel to win the drivers title.

“I take the opportunity to congratulate Red Bull because they won the constructors’ title, and now we try to make sure that they will be tense up to the last moment after the chequered flag.”

He added: “I have to say if another team principal is saying we didn’t do the right choice, he’s lying to you.”

Lewis Hamilton was a hugely popular winner of the inaugural US GP in Austin, having previously won the final race in Indianapolis back in 2007.

Hamilton dropped to third at the start, but passed first Mark Webber and later Sebastian Vettel to win by less than a second.

“It’s been a great weekend, to be able to beat Red Bull and Sebastian is definitely a tough challenge but we managed to do it today,” said Hamilton. “I don’t know, we weren’t so bad in the first stint, but it was very difficult to follow and to get past. We pitted maybe two laps before Sebastian, so then he came out quite far ahead but traffic really worked out quite well for once.

“Traffic usually catches me out, so I was glad that it worked slightly in my favour at some points. But what a great feeling to win the first Grand Prix here, back in the States, I won the last one here as well, so I’m massively proud.”

Hamilton admitted it was hard to keep up with the Red Bull given the RB8’s speed.

“They’re pretty strong everywhere. The first sector is very difficult to follow through Four, Five, Six, Seven, such high speed it’s quite difficult to follow through there. The place where he really extended his gap was the exit of Nine.

“That was really where, in the most important part, where he made over a second gap, so I was struggling to remain close. As I said with traffic it all worked out really well. I knew that lap would be the lap that I would have a chance, so I turned the engine up and got close.”

Felipe Massa is set to get a five-place grid penalty in Austin after Ferrari broke the seal on his gearbox.

It means that Fernando Alonso moves up from eighth to seventh on the grid, which not only gains him a place but puts him onto the clean side of the grid.

The team has just broken the seal, and not changed the gearbox. Article 28.6s says a penalty “will be imposed” in such circumstances.

A Ferrari spokesman tols this blog: “It’s a decision taken to maxmise the potential for Fernando at the start.”

The top 10 are now:

Vettel

Hamilton

Webber

Raikkonen

Schumacher

Hulkenberg

Alonso

Grosjean

Maldonado

Senna

Fernando Alonso remains upbeat about chances of beating Sebastian Vettel, despite fortune not favouring Ferrari in qualifying in Austin.

Alonso failed to match team mate Felipe Massa as he struggled for grip, and finished Q3 in ninth place.

He has at least picked up a spot from Romain Grosjean’s penalty, although it puts him onto the dirty side of the track.

“It’s the same as the last race, we were position seven in Abu Dhabi and here we are position eight so it’s more or less the same,” said Alonso. “We will try to recover good places on Sunday, that is normally our strong point.

“I still believe that tomorrow we can score more points than Sebastian. The race is long, anything can happen, and we need to keep confidence and be optimistic because the race pace normally improves a lot.

“If everything goes smooth for Red Bull they should win this and Brazil. Sometimes it doesn’t go smooth for everybody, so we will try to do our race and take benefit of other’s mistakes.”

Drivers who have qualified for the even numbered slots on the grid in Austin are anticipating a difficult time at the start on Sunday.

The left hand side of the track is particularly dirty at the new venue, and practice starts at the end of FP3 this morning confirmed the drivers’ fears.

Those starting on that side are led by Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Felipe Massa, Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button.

“It was really poor,” said Hamilton when questioned by this writer. “I barely went anywhere when I let the clutch out. That’s why I’ve been saying they need to clean the inside because it’s just as slippery as when we started driving yesterday.

“While the rest of the track is bedding in and getting much, much better, that part of the track is untouched. It’s going to be very much the same as the pit lane for example, it’s got no grip at all. So I don’t know what they’ve got to do – at least clean it is one way of doing it.”

“One thing which won’t be easy is the start,” said Massa. “I start on the left hand side. I’m seventh but Grosjean is changing the gearbox, and I go to the left. This morning on the left it was slower than in the wet, so you can imagine how it’s going to be to start on the left.”

Michael Schumacher could enjoy one of the best races of his season after qualifying fifth for his penultimate F1 start in Austin.

Schumacher took sixth place on merit and then gained a further spot from Romain Grosjean’s gearbox penalty. Crucially he is on the clean side of the track.

“We were anticipating just to get into the top 10,” he said when asked  about qualifying by this blog. “That’s what we were thinking could be good for maybe seventh or eighth as a max. For it to be six and then five for the known reason is welcome, particularly being on the right side of the grid.”

Schumacher says that he got the tyres to work in qualifying, when drivers had to run several laps to get them into the operating window.

“The point is that the tyres are very crucial, we’ve known this all year long. Here they are maybe a little bit more peaky, because of their behaviour because of the track conditions and the circumstances.

“It was clearly going out for that lap, because I tried already the lap before, or two laps before that, to set a time, and it wasn’t yet ready. Just everything was switched on and was there. The balance then fitted as well in that circumstance.”

Pole man Sebastian Vettel will start the US GP seven slots ahead of title rival Fernando Alonso – giving the German a real chance of securing his third World Championship on Sunday.

However Vettel beat main qualifying challenger Lewis Hamilton by only a tenth of a second at COTA.

“We started off on the right foot I think yesterday,” said Vettel. “The first practice was very good for us. It was extremely slippery to be honest to start with. Obviously the circuit is brand new, the asphalt is brand new and it takes a while for the track to come in but it’s also quite a lot fun to slide around a couple of corners and it just got better throughout. I think you can see the lap times just got quicker.

“Through qualifying I think we were very happy. In the last section I would have loved to go a little bit quicker. I think I lost a little bit in the first and the last sector. It was a little bit closer than I wanted with Lewis. But overall, fantastic.”

Vettel said he wasn’t focussing on what title rival Alonso – who will start eighth – is doing.

“Obviously we have to look after ourselves, and as I said I’m very happy. We had a smooth session, no issues. Yesterday afternoon was not ideal, we lost a little bit of time. These things can happen, and they might happen again. So you never know and therefore it’s the best strategy to keep your down and try to get the best, which I think was the target in qualifying.

“As I said I’m very happy with the result but so far nobody has scored any points. I think we have seen at the last race how quickly things can change and even starting at the back does give you opportunities, so we need to wait and see. But for us we focus on our race and tomorrow we have the chance to seal the Constructors’ Championship for the team, so that’s what Mark and I will probably be looking out for.”

F1 team bosses were unanimous in their praise for COTA today as the sport attempts to create some momentum in the USA.

Although the slippery track and hard Pirelli choice made life difficult for the drivers, the facilities have received positive reviews.

“I think we have to congratulate everyone, Bernie and the organisers, for putting together not only a great circuit with great facilities,” said McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh.

“And also it’s great to see how many people were here on a Friday. So we’ve got to make sure that as Formula One as a whole, we put on a show this weekend; that we reach out over the coming year and we build this into a fantastic event.

“The topography is great and there’s something about hills and dips and blind corners that make it very challenging for drivers but also make it look great and spectacular to drive on.”

“It’s incredible to see what’s been done in the last 18 months,” said Red Bull’s Christian Horner. “We came here 18 months ago when it really was just a construction site and we ran a car with David Coulthard on just dirt and rubble that existed here.

“And to see what’s happened and how the track’s been built and the undulations and the corners, the way it’s been incorporated – just hats off to the Circuit of the Americas and to Bernie for convincing them to take up this race and so on. It’s a great challenge and a great spectacle and hopefully we can put on a good show for the American fans and public and it will be a race to remember.”

“To get this event on the calendar is fantastic,” said Mercedes boss Norbert Haug. “The US is so important for Formula One. A race here belongs to a world championship, a true world championship. We have been here before and after a five-year break we are back again. The circuit is very, very demanding, very challenging.

“The track is developing currently, getting better and better, more rubber on the asphalt. But I think it has huge, huge potential. I think it will be televised worldwide of course, like usual, and make a big impact. So, this is a race with enormous potential and kind of a milestone in Formula One’s history I would say.”