Adam Cooper F1

Lotus F1 confirmed today that Kimi Raikkonen will stay on for a second season in 2013.

The team made the announcement via Twitter and a simple YouTube video.

The Finn’s deal always had an option related to next season but until now neither side was able to confirm that it would be taken up.

After his strong comeback season he attracted interest from elsewhere – notably Ferrari – but in recent weeks any doors at frontrunning teams were closed. He had in any case made it clear all along that he was happy where he was.

Speaking to this blog recently about other offers he said: “There’s always a lot of talk, there was talk about McLaren, now there’s talks about Ferrari, always talks about everything. I’m happy here with what we’re doing now.”

Regarding staying at Lotus he said:  “It’s not been confirmed, like we’ve seen in F1 it doesn’t count much when you’ve got a contract!”

Christian Horner says Red Bull can take nothing for granted despite its recent run of success – and the team boss has praised rival Fernando Alonso for his strong challenge this season.

Alonso finished second in India, having beaten the KERS-troubled Mark Webber. Meanwhile Sebastian Vettel has a 13 point lead over the Ferrari driver with 75 still up for grabs in the three remaining races.

“We certainly can’t afford to be complacent, because Fernando Alonso keeps turning up,” said Horner. “He did a strong race today. It’s a shame we couldn’t keep Mark ahead of him, he had a KERS issue from about lap 20 today.

“We’ve got a great lead in the constructors’ but it’s only 13 points in the drivers’, so we’ve managed to eke out a gap. Considering where we came from four races ago it’s impressive, but we’ve just got to keep that momentum going. It’s the first time Sebastian’s won four races in succession. An incredible performance this weekend, he’s been quickest in every session of the Grand Prix and led every lap – I don’t think anybody else has led a lap in India, which is impressive in itself.

“Talk is cheap at the end of the day. It’s down to what you do on the track. Our focus is now on Abu Dhabi, to extract the most out of the car, the drivers, the strategy, the reliability that we can, and it’s going to be a question of having three perfect weekends.”

Regarding Vettel’s main rival, he said: “Fernando is a quality driver, Ferrari are a quality team. They are doing a strong job. He’s remarkably consistent, and we’re going to have to perform at our very, very best if we are going to maintain our lead ahead of him. We’ve worked hard to get into this position and there’s a real determination within the team to carry this momentum into the remaining three races.”

Lewis Hamilton was in optimistic mood after the Indian GP – despite losing a place relative to his grid position and all but the slenderest mathematical chance of winning the championship.

Hamilton enjoyed pushing Mark Webber in the closing stages, although he could not quite relieve the Red Bull driver of fourth. He remains in the title battle only because if he wins the last three races, and Vettel fails to score, he would be champion on a tie-break of race victories.

“It was a wicked race for me, I loved it,” said Hamilton. “I pushed right to the finish line, I pushed as hard as I could. I can’t even remember the last time I had to be so much over the limit to catch someone, literally to the point where I was about to come off.

“I’ve not been able to do that too much during the year, because we’ve had to save tyres and that stuff. The tyres lasted so long and we had really good pace at the end. It was just really unfortunate that we lost ground at the beginning.

“I just feel great, I pushed so hard. I feel proud of myself and proud of the guys. It’s a shame we didn’t have the ultimate pace at the beginning to really challenge the guys at the front. But it was a great race.”

He said he thought until the last lap that he could catch Webber: “Every second I thought I could catch him, you have to believe and you push and push and push. You could easily give up when you know there’s only one lap left. I started to get closer, Mark started to bail out and stop pushing towards the last three corners, and I thought I’m going to get him now. I just wasn’t close enough.”

One of the most unusual aspects of his race was a steering wheel change at the pit stop, something that Lewis enjoyed getting done successfully.
“It was wicked in the car, so cool! I’d never done it before. I practised it in Barcelona in testing, but never in the race. I yanked it off, threw it to the right… I didn’t hand it, I think I threw it to the right. The other one was on, boom, straight back into gear.

“Normally you come in, you’re in first gear, and as you’re lifted up, you’re ready to go. When I came in there I had to go to neutral, chuck the steering wheel off, and then as he was putting it on get the clutch in, first gear in, so it was really cool.”

Fernando Alonso was in upbeat mood after the Indian GP, despite winner Sebastian Vettel extending his lead to 13 points.

Alonso did a great job of damage limitation by working his way into second place after starting fifth.

“I think it’s good news for us, seeing that we could fight Red Bull in the race,” said Alonso. “More or less we knew this. In qualifying we are not close enough to fight for pole position but in the race normally things improve for us.

“Today was another example but it was perfect for the strategy from the team – very good start, very good top speed and tyre management. Everything set up for the race, everything was fine and I push 120 per cent every lap, so the combination was this second place.”

Nevertheless he says the car still has to be improved by the next race.

“I think we need to bring some new parts to Abu Dhabi, hopefully improve a little bit more then competitiveness of the car, try to be a little bit closer to Red Bulls on Saturday and hopefully on Sunday as well.

“Obviously three races remaining – the championship is the main target so we need to recover some points and will be nice to finish in front of Sebastian in Abu Dhabi, whatever the position it is. And if we can win the race it will be even better – but for that we need to make a step forward. At the moment we are not able to win.”

Alonso remains positive about his championship chances: “We know that there were still 100 points [available] yesterday, and now 75 points. We are 13 behind. We know that we need to improve. We are not fast enough, especially on Saturdays, as I said, but hopefully we can improve the situation in Abu Dhabi or in USA.

“The races are long, and as we saw today with Mark, a KERS problem can happen to anyone, it can happen to Seb, it can happen to me and it can happen to all of us. Still many points on the table and I’m still very optimistic.”

Lewis Hamilton was in a bullish mood after qualifying third in India, and the McLaren man believes he has a real chance of challenging the two Red Bull drivers ahead.

Hamilton is hoping to bounce back from his run of three disastrous races, all of which were impacted by reliability issues.

“Third is a great position to start from, I’m so excited for tomorrow’s race,” said Hamilton. “Especially as our long-run pace seemed to be relatively good, compared to the others. I think Ferrari potentially have slightly faster pace overall, but we don’t know what fuel they’re on.

“Otherwise we’re all very, very similar. Hopefully, if we can get a good start and have a good right with these guys in front, hopefully it’ll be a better race than the last one we did.”

“I’m just looking forward to a race where we don’t have any issues, and can just fight for position and try and get some good points.”

Meanwhile Hamilton was full of praise for the Buddh circuit: “I think this track is incredibly challenging for all of us. The more and more we drive it, the more and more we realise that, and that’s what makes it a great circuit. Not everyone’s able to get the first lap [right]. It takes a lot of focus and it takes a lot to get a whole perfect lap together.”

Fernando Alonso says his target for the Indian GP is to beat the McLarens put pressure on Red Bull.

He also made it clear that it will be an uphill struggle against a car that is now clearly the class of the field.

Alonso will start the race from fifth, a position with which he is very familiar this season.

“At the moment I think we cannot do anything more than this,” he said. “When we had a similar car to everyone I think we were leading the championship, now that we are fighting against Newey’s car, let’s say, because they are first and second in all the races, it’s not only Sebastian. At this point there’s very little to do on Saturday. Normally on Sunday we improve things, we are likely to be more competitive.

“The target for tomorrow is to arrive in front of Sebastian, how we do it is not easy, but we need to do a good start, overtake the McLarens, and put pressure all the race to the Red Bulls. I think if they have an easy race it will be the worst conditions for us, so I think we need to put pressure on them.”

In recent races Alonso has made it clear that he’s been disappointed with the lack of progress with the F2012, but he now says that the situation has improved.

“We’re working hard, we brought some new parts here and they work quite fine. We are relatively happy with our progress, but in the two weeks I think the others did also progress, or even more than us, so it’s time for us to work and bring in Abu Dhabi, USA and Brazil something more clever.

“I think we are doing our maximum all the championship, and it’s no different now. Today fifth is like a normal position behind the two Red Bulls and two McLarens, but then when qualifying arrives you have to do it, it’s not so easy. The Force India, Kimi, they were quite fast all weekend, so a little mistake you can end up eighth or ninth, and the race is more difficult. So fifth looks disappointing, but I think it’s a very good starting position.”

Jenson Button says he’s satisfied with fourth on the grid in India, despite just losing out to team mate Lewis Hamilton.

Like other drivers Button had to work hard to get his tyres into their operating window, and he lost a bit of form when it mattered in Q3.

“Not too bad,” he said. “We really struggled to get the tyres working on lap one. So I went for a different strategy to most I think, I did a three timed lap run, which really worked for me in Q2. But in Q3 I didn’t have quite as good a balance as I had in Q2, a bit more understeer in the car. I guess the circuit gripped up.

“We didn’t expect it to grip up that much, and when it does, you pick up understeer. Not quite the perfect lap, but pretty happy to be fourth, the second row. Our start’s pretty good so we’ll see what we can from there.”

Regarding the Pirellis, he noted: “You’ve got to work them very hard. Our out laps are full speed, it’s like a qualification lap to try to get them up to temperature. It’s quite unusual, I mean you’re working the tyre quite hard round here, there’s a lot of high speed. And you’d think that it would be warm enough as well, wouldn’t you?”

Button said that he was happier with the car than he had been on Friday.

“We’ve changed quite a bit on the car and understood the tyres a bit more and how to work with them. We should be happy with what we’ve done today as a team. We’re not far off the Red Bulls and we’re in front of the Ferraris. It couldn’t have got much better. I’m pretty happy with what we’ve done, we’ve just got to see what the car’s like tomorrow.”

Ferrari has run into a huge controversy in India after displaying the flag of the Italian navy on the nose of its cars.

The flag relates to an incident earlier this year when two Indian fishermen were killed by the navy – who were protecting a cargo ship – after apparently being mistaken for pirates. Two Italian sailors have subsequently faced criminal action in India, and there has been some tension between the countries over the matter.

Ferrari said on its website that it was displaying the flag in relation to the two sailors, and a storm of protest has resulted, with the matter figuring strongly in TV news bulletins.

Meanwhile New Delhi’s foreign affairs spokesman Syed Akbaruddin said “using sports events to promote entirely unrelated causes is contrary to the spirit of sports.”

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali attempted to play down the matter when quizzed in an FIA press conference: “There was a press release that was done two days ago, so if you want any clarification of that, our press office is absolutely very pleased to answer to your question. But if you look behind in the past we’ve done a lot of initiatives, but there’s nothing that I want to get into very specifically, because it’s not really the place where I should do it.”

However later a statement from company president Luca di Montezemolo reported by news agency ANSA said: “We only want to make a small contribution, with great respect for the Indian authorities, so that a solution might be found through dialogue.”

Mark Webber was in upbeat mood after finishing second to team mate Sebastian Vettel in FP2 in India, although the Aussie cautioned that today might not have provided a clear picture of how the weekend will unfold.

Webber was 0.1s behind Vettel in the afternoon and almost half a second clear of nearest pursuer, Fernando Alonso.

“It went pretty well today, but pole position is one thing, obviously Sunday is another,” said Webber.

“We need to perform well on both days, and I think we have a very good chance of doing that. The car is working well, the guys are doing a great job, and we have a huge amount of stuff to go through tonight with the car. The team is obviously incredibly motivated and the drivers are as well, so we’re going OK.

“It was a pretty good day for us. P3 is going to be pretty important in the morning. The track temperature doesn’t change a huge amount here. So it’s important that we get a good clean run in P3 as well, then blow it up for qualifying and see how the car performs in that very important session.

“And then obviously the work we did this afternoon we can learn when to put that in place for Sunday’s Grand Prix. But ultimately I think as a team we had a pretty good day but there’s always areas we can improve.”

Sebastian Vettel has played down the significance of Red Bull’s advantage after the German and team mate Mark Webber dominated practice in India.

Vettel topped both sessions today, while Webber backed him up in second in FP2.

“The track improved enormously, at least that’s we found,” said Vettel. “The circuit kept improving, there was quite a lot of grip at the end. I was surprised with the long runs.

“I think we can be quite happy, we didn’t have any major issues. We tested a few things. Now we need to say whether we made progress, and hopefully we can make progress for tomorrow.”

Asked whether he thought it would be a battle between the Red Bull drivers for pole, he said: “I know it’s not between me and him, it’s not between Mark and myself, it’s between all of us. I think Friday is always difficult. It depends on a day like this, on a circuit like that, largely when you were out doing your new tyre run.

“I think the track improvement was quite big, we saw that until the end. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow looked a little bit different. We’ve had worse Fridays, so I’m quite happy.

“I think the benchmark is quite high from last year, so if we can do the same again this year here, that will be a good start. Today is Friday, we’ve got another practice before going into qualifying, I think we’ll focus on that before anything else.”