Adam Cooper F1

Lotus F1 has formally confirmed that reserve driver Jerome D’Ambrosio will replace the banned Romain Grosjean at the Italian GP this weekend.

The race will give the 26-year-old Belgian a unique chance to showcase his talent in a car that has earned nine podiums this year, although clearly the circumstances are not ideal, especially given that cars are always hard to drive in low downforce Monza spec.

Although the team could have taken someone else – even a driver with sponsorship – there was never any real doubt about D’Ambrosio getting the job, given that he is part of the Genii Group family.

Last year his management underwrote his season with Marussia Virgin Racing so the chance to give him a ‘free’ run in a car capable of reaching the podium was too good to miss.

D’Ambrosio’s only previous experience of the E20 came when he drove 40 laps at the Mugello test on May 1.

Team boss Eric Boullier said: “When we signed Jérôme as our third driver we signed a man who is highly motivated, fresh, talented and who contested the full 2011 season. We hope that this will pay dividends when he drives the car this weekend in Monza. We know that Jérôme is well integrated into the team and that he did a good job when he drove the E20 at the Mugello test.

“Now he has the challenge of a Grand Prix at the challenging circuit of Monza, in a car which is capable of finishing on the podium. One thing is for sure, he’s half Italian and I think I know which driver the spectators will support apart from Fernando! It’s a tough task for Jérôme, but we will be supporting him in every way to achieve a good result.”

D’Ambrosio added: “My desire for 2012 has always been to get back into the seat of a Formula 1 car so I am grabbing this opportunity with both hands. Monza is a fantastic circuit and I can’t wait to take to the track on Friday. As third driver I have worked with the team at every Grand Prix, attending all the briefings and meetings that the race drivers do, so I am well prepared in this respect. Monza is a superb circuit, but it is also quite a technical one so I am not underestimating the task ahead of me.

“I want to reward the faith that the team has in me with a good haul of points from the race. I will hand the wheel back to Romain after Sunday’s race and I hope that this one showing in Italy will allow me to show my capabilities fully.”

Jenson Button admits he was disappointed by Lewis Hamilton’s now infamous Tweet of sensitive telemetry data just prior to the Belgian GP.

The team asked Hamilton to delete it, but not before the image had been widely circulated around the internet.

“We work so hard to improve the car and keep things like that secret and private,” Button told The Guardian. “I didn’t want to see it on Twitter. It was the whole telemetry from qualifying. It wasn’t just the rear wing. I was very surprised and disappointed.

“The bit about the time on the straights isn’t the bit that’s important to me. He should be gaining it back in the corners because he’s got more downforce on anyway. And I was eight tenths quicker in qualifying anyway.

“I think it’s done now. I don’t think it’s for me to be angry with Lewis. It’s not a personal thing.”

After Sunday’s race team boss Martin Whitmarsh confirmed that Lewis had been told to delete the Tweet but insisted that earlier deletions were the decision of the driver.

“I think the Tweets earlier in the weekend he took down of his own volition,” said Whitmarsh. “No one spoke to him about it. This morning I think he made an error of judgement and we asked him to take that one down, and he did. I think he realises that. I don’t think that’s had an impact on his weekend.”

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh says that Jenson Button is right to believe that he still has a shot at the 2012 title, despite still being some way behind the other contenders after his Spa win.

Whitmarsh says a highly motivated Button can only be good news for the team.

“Jenson rightly believes that he’s a title contender,” said Whitmarsh. “I’m glad that he believes that, I want him to believe that. And he will be trying to win in Monza and every race thereafter, and that’s what he’ll do. There’s lots of points at stake.

“It’s been an interesting and topsy-turvy season so far, and anything is possible at the moment. It was terrible sad for Fernando and he was another innocent victim, but in a bitter sweet way. Obviously for Lewis that was the only tiny glimmer of good news. Lots of things can happen, I think we’re going to have an exciting last eight races of the season.

“I think we’re in a reasonable situation. The fact is we’ve got a quick car, I think we’re doing a reasonable job as a team. And we’ve got two highly motivated quick racing drivers. Both of them will have triumphs and traumas in the rest of this season, just as I suspect all the top runners will. I think that’s why we come motor racing, isn’t it? That’s what makes it good.”

The first corner crash at Spa has inevitably put a renewed focus on the FIA’s research into cockpit protection, which has been quietly progressing for some time.

Although ‘fighter’ canopies have been considered the emphasis is now on a bar arrangement, to ensure that the cockpits remain open.

McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe has, via the FIA Technical Working Group, been part of the process.

“In the TWG we’re working on it,” said Lowe after Sunday’s race in Spa. “We’ve been looking at two avenues, either the full screen, fighter aircraft technology, or some type of set of bars that would exist in front of the driver that would deflect any incoming wheel or a whole car.

“That one is the one that’s actually more active as a project, so it’s not going to cause a closed cockpit, but it would provide some defence against cars sliding along or landing from above.

“We’ve made a test piece which has been tested structurally with various impacts firing wheels at it. And that was successful, so we’ve understood some of the parameters in terms of the angles that are needed and the strength of the pieces.”

One of the key issues is to ensure that the driver’s view is not compromised.

“The next bit of work that’s currently in progress is assessing the visibility. We’ve done some work in our simulator. Obviously a driver ideally wants nothing in the way, but in the same way you drive a road car with pillars, or the old VW bus with a centre pillar, you get used to it don’t you? It’s one of those things, your mind works a way round it.

“That’s what we found in our simulator, provided the pillars don’t get too big then it’s something they can get used to. So we now have some parameters around what is an acceptable pillar size. The next bit it to try and produce a more optimum device – with that pillar size and this strength requirement can we make something that’s practical and what will that then look like, the current test piece looks pretty ugly, but it’s really a very prototype to just assess forces.”

Lowe says that the rules could be in place by 2014, when the new turbo era begins and cars have to undergo major changes anyway.

“I think 2014 has been the intended timescale as we started the project a year ago. Personally I think something is inevitable, because it is the one big exposure we’ve got. You see it time and again, and how many times do you think that was lucky? And you know one day it won’t be lucky, and we’ll all be sitting here saying we should have done something about that.

“At the same time it is an open cockpit formula, and it’s preserving that, but technically it’s achievable one way or another.”

Romain Grosjean says he accepts the FIA decision to ban him from the Italian GP, after he was deemed to have caused the multi-car first corner crash at Spa.

Grosjean is the first driver to be banned since 1994, a year that saw both Eddie Irvine and Mika Hakkinen punished for triggering incidents, and Michael Schumacher for ignoring a black flag.

“When your life is all about racing, not being allowed to attend an event is probably one of the worst experiences you can go through,” said the Frenchman.

“That said, I do respect the verdict of the Stewards. I got a good start – despite being disturbed by Pastor’s early launch, which I think was the case for everybody at the front – and was heading into the first corner when the rear of my car made contact with the front of Lewis’s.

“I honestly thought I was ahead of him, and there was enough room for both cars. I didn’t deliberately try to squeeze him or anything like that. This first corner situation obviously isn’t what anyone would want to happen, and thankfully no-one was hurt in the incident. I wish to apologise to the drivers who were involved, and to their fans. I can only say that today is part of a process that will make me a better driver.”

“It’s been a tough day for the team but we fully respect the Stewards’ decision,” said team boss Eric Boullier. “Romain won’t be driving at Monza but he still has our full support. We’ll announce the name of his replacement a bit later in the week.”

Meanwhile regarding Raikkonen’s third place, he added: “Unfortunately we didn’t have the pace for Kimi to challenge Jenson or Sebastian. We had to look closely at the strategy during the race to see if we should switch to one stop, but in the end a podium finish still brings us some good points.

“Of course, everyone talks about ‘the win’, and this is something we all want. We were not fast enough for it today, so we all need to keep working hard for this goal.”

Pastor Maldonado will drop 10-places on the Monza grid after earning two separate penalties in Spa.

The first is for jumping the start, and has been applied because he retired later and thus could not be given a penalty that impacted his Spa race.

Having been delayed in the first corner crash – he was tipped into the spin at the exit of La Source, after the main accident – he was at the back for the restart.

He then ran into Timo Glock at the exit of La Source, punting the Marussia into a spin, and doing enough damage to the front of the car to ensure he retired later around the lap.

Again as he retired he was given a grid penalty for causing a collision.

Maldonado had already been given a three-place penalty in Spa after a blocking incident in qualifying.

Romain Grosjean won’t be taking part in the Italian GP for Lotus after receiving a one-race suspension for his role in the first corner crash in Spa.

He has also been fined 50,000 euros.

The FIA Stewards decided that he had committed an “extremely serious breach of the regulations which had the potential to cause injury to others. It eliminated leading championship contenders from the race. The stewards note the team conceded the action of the driver was an extremely serious mistake and an error of judgement. Neither the team nor the driver made any submission in mitigation of penalty.”

Lotus can of course run another driver in Italy.

Lewis Hamilton’s Spa qualifying session was badly compromised by a decision to go back to a standard rear wing rather than use the one that McLaren had introduced for Spa and Monza.

Both McLaren drivers were missing performance in the dry morning session. Having made the switch for qualifying Hamilton struggled with the higher downforce wing and could qualify only eighth, while Jenson Button stuck with the new version and having hit the sweet spot with his tyres took a surprise pole.

“This morning in P3 I had some instabilities with the new wing that we were trying,” said Lewis. “And at the time we had a relatively big gap between ourselves and the Red Bulls and the Ferraris. And so we felt on our side of the garage that we should try something to fix it, and for us that was to potentially go to the wing that we used in the last race.

“I was told or we believed that the gap between those two wings wasn’t so big. But we proved ourselves wrong. It was obviously the wrong way to go. We made the decision as a team.”

Asked if there were any benefits, Lewis said: “There weren’t any good points with that wing. We thought there would be benefits of having more downforce, but it didn’t feel that way.”

The fact that it was a team decision was underlined by Martin Whitmarsh, who said he was also party to the choice.

“We made a decision, and again I was very involved in the decision,” said the team principal. “Sat here this afternoon we feel we made a wrong decision. We didn’t have very much data, as you know, very limited running. We didn’t look sparkling competitive with either car this morning, and thought we’d make some changes.

“It’s easy to under react and then be kicking yourself, but perhaps we overreacted. We’ll see. A lot of things can happen. Tomorrow’s another day, it’s a long race, and it may let us do some different things in the race.”

Button explained why he didn’t change: “I spoke to my engineers and we decided to stay where we are because with the sun out hopefully the circuit would grip up. And we thought it was the best option, we just didn’t think running that much drag for today – and also more importantly for tomorrow – would be the right thing.

“It should be good for us, and we should be good in a straight line. We shouldn’t need to push as much in the corners. But you never know, and we don’t know who’s going to be quick either, and consistent also.”

Meanwhile some comments Hamilton made on Twitter about the wing situation were quickly deleted, presumably because he used the phrase ‘WTF’ and was advised by the team that it was not a wise choice.

Pastor Maldonado has been penalised three places by the FIA stewards for impeding Nico Hulkenberg during Q1.

The Venezuelan had done a great job to qualify third, so he now drops back to sixth, having gifted places to Kimi Raikkonen, Sergio Perez, and Fernando Alonso.

The stewards said: “The driver of car 18 was warned by his team not to ‘hold up’ car 12 which was behind him, and yet he clearly did impede car 12. However as car 12 continued into Q2 a more severe penalty was not considered appropriate.”

Before the penalty was announced the Williams man was optimistic about his prospects for Sunday.

“We were optimistic for this race,” he said. “Maybe this morning I was a little bit more worried because the car doesn’t look quite good. But during the qualifying I was adapting myself to the car and adapting myself to the different conditions and the track was changing and improving at the same time.

“After Q1 I saw the potential we had, a bit less in Q2, we were nearly out, P10. I was a bit worried about that because the lap wasn’t that good. In Q3 I pushed very much, at the maximum. I got a clean lap. We are not that fast, like Jenson, but I’m looking forward to tomorrow. In the past we’ve had very good pace in the races so looking forward.”

Sebastian Vettel failed to make it out of Q2 in Belgium despite reporting no particular problems with the car or his quick lap.

Vettel qualified 11th, but has been moved up a place by a gearbox penalty for team mate Mark Webber. However he does have a free choice of tyres for the start and has more new sets available after not running in the final session.

“I think nothing went wrong, as in I didn’t do a mistake and there was no real problem with the car,” said Vettel. “Obviously it hurts. We lost out by a little bit to get to Q3. If you have another run then maybe it’s another story. At the time I was pretty happy with the lap I had. The time didn’t come.

“Obviously tomorrow is a long race. At this track it’s definitely possible to overtake, so I think we were in a worse position on Saturday afternoon after the qualifying in Monaco, when I think we were ninth only. We’ll see what we can do tomorrow. The good news is there are no points today. We’ll try to have a good race. I think the pace in the race is fine, this morning seemed quite good.”

When asked by this writer how his preparations had been affected by the Friday washout, he didn’t use it as an excuse: “No problem. I think it was the same for everyone. This morning I was pretty happy to be honest, and this afternoon it was just… not coming towards us. The lap time was there I think, but it just didn’t come. As I said I was happy with my lap, and it’s not as if I had a big mistake or anything.

“I’m 11th, Pastor Maldonado was in 10th [in Q2], only one hundredth quicker, and then he went nine-tenths quicker in Q3. For me I don’t think it was possible to go nine-tenths quicker.”

Meanwhile Vettel was fined 10,000 euros by the FIA for doing a practice start in the pits. Drivers are not allowed to do ‘hot’ starts and head down the pit lane to the exit – if they do one, they have to stop after a few metres and be pulled back to the pit box by the mechanics, which is standard practice.

“It was my mistake. We obviously practised a pit stop and you’re not supposed to leave your box and I left the box. I was probably trying to practise the pit stop a bit too hard.”