Adam Cooper F1

Fernando Alonso believes that Ferrari has made progress with the revisions to its F2012, although he says it will impossible to judge where the car stands relative to the opposition until qualifying.

Alonso was fastest in FP1 but didn’t get a clean lap on new option tyres in FP2, which explains why he was down in 14^th. Other drivers found a significant improvement on their first lap on the soft compound.

“We didn’t improve as much as other cars,” said the Spaniard. “Some others improved by between 1-1.5s with the soft. I was not able, but I had traffic on the first lap, then I slowed for the second, and then when I pushed on the third I had traffic as well.

“I think I can improve a little bit for tomorrow with a clean lap and be a little bit closer to this advantage gain that everybody seems to find with the soft. In a way we felt a little bit more comfortable with the hard tyres today.”

Alonso is confident that the car is better: “Yesterday we said that we are trying to recover some of the gap, and the first step is here in Barcelona. I’m confident that we did the job. The car or the updates that we introduced today, the first numbers are positive. We need to look more in detail, but everything looks as expected. But for sure it’s not as some of the expectations that we read last week.”

However he insisted that only on Saturday will the true picture become apparent.

“We have to wait for tomorrow, especially for qualifying – how much we struggle tomorrow. Our task is to go into Q3, and it has been quite tough for us in China, Bahrain and Malaysia, so tomorrow hopefully we can see some positive signs with this. Going into Q3 a little bit more relaxed will be a good sign. If we go to Q3 with a lot of problems or we don’t go into Q3 at all it will be more or less the same situation as before.

“Tomorrow will be a good answer on that. Today it’s too early to say, because we don’t know what the others are doing. On Fridays it’s impossible to analyse.”

Mark Webber says he’s happy with the latest updates at Red Bull after the first day of running in Barcelona.

Webber was only seventh in FP2, some 0.666s off pacesetter Jenson Button, but he said the overall times meant little. He also had a brief run through a gravel trap.

“I’m pretty happy actually,” said Webber. “We got a lot of mileage in, apart from the driver running off the track and getting a bit of gravel rash! You get one timed lap on the option, basically. Everyone gets one timed lap, so that’s the lap times that everyone sees on the time sheet at the end of the day.

“There’s a huge amount of work that goes on around that. That’s what we’ve got to pull together tonight and work on tomorrow. There’s some fast cars out there. McLaren are quick, Ferrari are quick, we’re quick, Mercedes aren’t hanging around, and Renault as well.”

Webber has been on pole in Barcelona in the past, and says there’s no substitute for starting on the front.

“It’s nice to finish the first lap in a good position. Obviously I capitalised on pole in 2010, I didn’t capitalise on it last year. I think the winner has generally come from the top three for the last thousand years. You need to be at the front at the end of the first lap for sure, and then just go from there, and people will just be covering each other off at pit stops, to be honest.

“I’m not sure how many stops the race will be, but the tyres this morning weren’t particularly impressive. I think that qualifying could be compromised to look at how many sets of tyres you have for the race.”

Christian Horner is hopeful that Red Bull can maintain its Bahrain winning form in Barcelona this weekend – and adds that it will be impossible to judge the situation until qualifying, especially with tyres being such a key factor this season.

“I think that after the first four flyaways we’ve learned a lot,” said Horner. “It’s certainly different this year, I think particularly understanding the perfect operating window for these tyres is important as all teams I’m sure recognise.

“Bahrain was a very strong race for us, and we’re hoping to build on that momentum this weekend. We’re expecting very strong challenges from all the teams that have shown performance so far this year.

“Until we get into qualifying I have no idea, because the form book has been turned upside down this year in terms of what perhaps your expectations are versus reality. I think Barcelona is always a good test venue from a chassis point of view, and that’s why we come here during the winter. I think it will be fairly interesting to see in the conditions and so on who’s made a step forward and who’s managing the tyres best at the end of the day.”

Horner says he has no concerns about tyre management playing such a major role this year.

“I think the tyres are the key performance factor and extracting the maximum out of the tyre at the moment is crucial. I don’t think it’s taken for granted that this will be a circuit that suits our car.”

“They are an overriding element at the moment, but it’s the same for everybody. It’s ultimately healthy for F1 to have a single tyre supplier. In years gone by when there were two tyre suppliers in some instances teams wouldn’t even have access to the tyres that were maybe the preferred ones. It’s the same for everybody at the end of the day. And it’s an added challenge, it’s certainly from the fans point of view produced some really exciting races this year.”

Sebastian Vettel says that the 2012 spec tyres have contributed to a better show for fans this year, as drivers have to focus more on looking after them.

The World Champion was asked what he thought of Michael Schumacher’s recent criticism of Pirelli.

“I think we get a completely different impression inside the car than you might get outside the car,” said Vettel. “So, you’re always talking of two different worlds. I think for us quality of racing, if you compare racing today, you have to, I think, look after your tyres a lot more than probably you had to three, four, five years ago.

“For us, if you take, for instance, 2009 where we were allowed to refuel, we had new tyres and the tyres lasted longer, in that they didn’t see that much degradation. It’s a different quality inside the car because you can push nearly every lap similar to qualifying, whereas now I think the racing is different – we fuel the cars up, they are much heavier, and if you have a heavier car there’s more stress for the tyres, so it puts the whole thing in a different window.

“If you put a new set of tyres on with 20 laps to go, or 15 laps to go, which is, let’s say, the stint length, earlier, a couple of years ago, it’s a different world for the tyres. The tyres do see more degradation and then we start to slide and then one guy slides more than the other because he puts his tyres on two laps earlier.

“It creates a different type of racing, more overtaking, which I imagine is seen as better quality from the outside, simply because things happen. I think it depends what you really want. We have more overtaking.”

Meanwhile Vettel said that Barcelona could provide some pointers for the rest of the season.

“I think it’s the fact that we know a lot about this track, we have a lot of data to compare against, to see if we did a step forward compared to the winter and how big the step was. Surely then you have to consider different temperatures – it’s a different time of year so it’s also difficult to compare black and white – but yeah as a rule of thumb probably this circuit does give you an idea because simply you have all the corners you find somewhere else, you have tight chicanes like in the last sector, hard braking for the hairpin, fast corners like in the first sector. You have a bit of everything.”

He admitted that the different weather conditions confused the issue: “You race here in May, it’s quite different if you look at the temperatures compared to February or March, so yeah, it does have a big change on the setup, so whatever you might have found out over the winter in testing, it might not work in the same way or the same style it did during testing. Also, you need to consider that the cars you launch are quite different to the cars you race at the first race, and then, you know, you race around May or June later in the season.”

Fernando Alonso has bemoaned the lack of on-track respect between drivers of the current era after being part of the Gilles Villeneuve 30^th anniversary event at Fiorano yesterday.

Alonso said that fights like the one that Villeneuve enjoyed with Rene Arnoux at Dijon in 1979 would not be possible these days. Alonso made the comments in his official blog after watching Jacques Villeneuve drive his father’s Ferrari 312T4.

“What I know of the father came only through films and obviously, the one I remember best is the duel he had with Arnoux at Dijon, when he was driving the very same car that was on track yesterday,” said Alonso. “Unfortunately, these days, we no longer see this sort of fight because there are more difficulties to deal with – the cars are now dominated by aerodynamics and those sorts of passing moves are no longer possible.

“On top of that, there was definitely more respect then than there is now between us drivers, partly because they knew that, in those cars, they were risking their lives. I don’t want to say that today things are done incorrectly, but I believe there is not that mutual respect, at least not from everyone, that there was back then. It’s a problem that goes back a long way, to the junior categories and I think the time has come to try and get it back.”

Meanwhile Alonso said he is hopeful of progress in Spain this weekend.

“In Montmelo, we will be counting on making a step forward, but we won’t know until Saturday if we have and if so, how big a step it is. We have updates on the F2012, some of which we tested in Mugello last week and others which we will try out on Friday in free practice. Clearly, having limited the damage in the first four races this year, we must turn things around.”

Regarding the rest of the 2012 season, Alonso said: “The important thing is to make progress, reducing the gap as much as possible, first this weekend, then again in Monaco and after that, in Montreal, Valencia, Silverstone…The season is very long, with sixteen races to go, the same number that constituted the entire calendar back in 2003.

“We must continue to work day and night, just as did Gilles’ mechanics, whom I met at the track yesterday and just as our guys do today. I will be flying with them to Barcelona this afternoon. With the same spirit of wanting to win and being prepared to fight with all one’s strength to achieve that, which is the spirit that has driven me ever since I was a kid racing karts.”

Fernando Alonso was in positive mood at the end of the Mugello test, despite his day being interrupted by a crash.

Alonso damaged the front of the car in a low speed impact with the barrier, and lost some two and a half hours in the garage.

He remains optimistic about the team’s prospects for the next race in Spain and beyond as the latest updates come on stream.

“The feeling I have after the test is a positive one,” said Alonso. “We have introduced a few small, and I stress that word, aerodynamic updates, that have produced the response we were expecting. And that is the most positive news, which means I am confident for the future, in the short and the long term.

“It means that what we see in the factory in Maranello has now also been confirmed on track. Furthermore, we have worked on other areas, especially the tyres, doing short and long runs, on set-up and also on starts, given we were also trying out a new clutch.

“I cannot say if today at Mugello we can claim to have made up some ground, but in Barcelona, we will have more important updates and we hope that there, we can begin to close down the gap that separates us from the teams currently at the top.”

Alonso said the biggest updates will not be seen until the Spanish GP.

“We have decided to favour development time in the wind tunnel rather than bringing forward all the new components to this test. Sure, it would be nice to be able to test all the updates on track first, but it is also nice that we can count on all the possible development potential for every single part. Barcelona will be a key moment in the season, but not a decisive one.

“It’s not a case that we will suddenly find ourselves back on pole position, because there is no magic button. We must start by no longer struggling to get through to Q3 and get closer to the top six, then continue with development in the following races, making a step forward in Monaco, Canada and Valencia also.

“That is the only way in which we can contemplate finding these seven or nine tenths – it’s hard to assess exactly how far off we are on the basis of the first races – which separate us from the leaders. Certainly, I am not denying that next weekend’s event is a significant one. We cannot allow ourselves to struggle to get into Q3 if we want to fight for the title.”

The Spaniard played down the significance of Ferrari’s latest exhaust spec: “There’s no difference in terms of driving compared to the one I tried on Tuesday. The exhausts are not the critical area this year, which can be seen from the fact that so far, cars with different configurations have won and, in Bahrain for example, the Red Bull won with the downward facing exhausts, but the quickest car on track was the Lotus, which has straight ones.”

Finally he said that he liked the idea of the in-season test.

“I prefer this calendar to last year’s because after the first races, one understands a lot more about the car and so one can make modifications that have a sense to them.

“Indeed, for me I would do more tests during the season. Then, I must say it was a pleasure to be driving at this circuit again. One lap here is worth a hundred at other places, without considering that one day here is worth a year’s work on the simulator, at least as far as I’m concerned.”

Sauber has now formally confirmed its new marketing partnership with Chelsea FC, which had been rumoured for some time after the car carried ‘blue’ teaser messages at the last two Grands Prix.

The relationship is the first in F1 to link football and motor sport in the  manner pioneered – ultimately unsuccessfully – by the Superleague series. While Tony Fernandes ownership connects Caterham to QPR, the link has not been commercially exploited.

It remains to be seen whether the deal ultimately involves any investment in Sauber from Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, who regularly attends the Monaco GP.

Explaining what the arrangement means, Sauber said: “At team level the new partnership is focused on synergies and ways to enhance performance in business and sporting matters. In concrete terms, this includes the sale of merchandising articles and exchange of knowledge in the area of sport science. Both partners will support each other by featuring the other partner’s logo and thus benefit from a significant market presence outside their original sport.

“Chelsea FC will present the Sauber F1 Team logo at home matches on advertising boards at the stadium and on interview walls. Conversely, the football club benefits from Formula One’s television reach which, compared with the Premier League, is much higher and more international. Particularly in Asia Formula One enjoys enormous TV presence and, not least thanks to Sergio Pérez, is currently captivating more and more fans in Latin America as well. Accordingly, the combination of both platforms at the sponsoring level is highly attractive especially for international brands. In addition, existing sponsors of both partners profit from joint events.”

Sauber CEO Monisha Kaltenborn added: “A partnership like this between Formula One and Football has never existed before in this form, yet there are numerous commonalities and possible synergies. In either case we are talking about team sport at the highest – and international – level.

“The Sauber F1 Team and Chelsea FC are dealing with many of the same sporting and commercial topics and we want to strengthen each other in these areas. We are looking forward to exploiting these opportunities, and we congratulate Chelsea on making it to the final of the Champions League.”

He might not have generated many headlines this year, but Mark Webber has quietly kept himself in the title hunt with an unusually consistent run of results.

The Red Bull driver has finished fourth in each of the four races so far, and it says a lot about the rollercoaster form book that after Bahrain he has actually moved up a place in the championship to third, and is now only five points behind new leader Vettel.

On Sunday Webber was without KERS in the early stages and also struggled more on the softer tyre than his team mate. He was passed on track by both Lotus drivers.

“Not too bad start,” said the Aussie of his Bahrain race. “I didn’t have KERS for the first few laps, which made a little bit difficult to put some pressure on Lewis. I got KERS back a little bit after that.

“And then first two stints I couldn’t stay with those two guys, no way, they were pulling away, the two Renaults [Lotuses] and Seb. I couldn’t stay with them, so I had to consolidate from there. I got some good points. The boys have done a good job, but time to get back to Europe.”

Webber says he wasn’t surprised to see Lotus running so strongly.

“Yeah, they’ve got a tidy car, and when you get everything put together then off you go, as we saw with Nico last week. McLaren looked like they didn’t have their day today, and it shows you how sensitive it can be.”

Regarding his own team’s form, he said: “We always have stuff coming, we need to. The competition is strong, we’ve always been there or thereabouts with different people – one week it’s Mercedes, one week it’s McLaren, today it was Renault.”

Fernando Alonso may have finished only seventh in Bahrain on Sunday, but the Spaniard was pleased to have bagged some useful points – and ended the run of the first four flyaway races just 10 points off the World Championship lead, despite the obvious limitations of the Ferrari F2012.

He now lies fifth in the championship, on the same number of points as Jenson Button.

Alonso came close to passing Paul Di Resta right at the end of the race, but helped by KERS, the Scot just managed to stay ahead.

“We missed maybe 500m of the finish line to overtake Paul, but you know it was what we could do today,” said Alonso after the race. “In the end we have to be happy, we beat both McLarens, something that was completely out of our reach if someone told us yesterday, so in the end we limited the damage again.

“We were eight points from the leader [Hamilton] at the start of Bahrain, we are 10 points now from the leader of the championship [Vettel] after Bahrain. So in the first four races I think we did quite good damage limitation.”

Alonso was involved in two controversial incidents during the race, narrowly avoiding contact with a swerving Nico Rosberg and facing an investigation himself for an unsafe release after being waved out of the pits into the path of Sergio Perez. Neither incident led to a penalty, although Alonso clearly wasn’t too happy with Rosberg.

“With Nico, if that was a wall… Probably this should not be allowed, pushing someone completely out of the track, knowing that someone is there. With Perez the pitlane here is quite wide, so I don’t think that he had to brake or something like that.”

Regarding the controversy surrounding the weekend, Alonso said: “I think we did what we were supposed to do. We trusted the FIA, we came here, we did the best show possible for everybody, because the sport is here to have the people united, not to have any trouble. So hopefully people enjoyed it, and we have to be happy.”

After Sunday’s Bahrain GP Martin Whitmarsh defended the McLaren mechanic who was most closely involved in the two botched pit stops on Lewis Hamilton’s car, and another with Jenson Button in the previous race in China.

Whitmarsh stressed that it was a high pressure job, and that problems can occur at any time.

“The first one was what we call pegging,” he explained, “where the drive pegs don’t align with the drive holes, which is not something you should blame the operator for. You’ve got to make the system as tolerant to not pegging as possible. The second one was a cross thread, which is what we had at the last race.”

Whitmarsh was keen to defend his left rear gun man: “Firstly you’ve got to say that any guy who volunteers to be a gun man in the team like that is a brave guy. I know how hard he’s being on himself at the moment.

“All on the same axle, on the same side, you can imagine the pressure. These are mechanics, they don’t get paid extra for doing it. They put themselves in the firing line, they put themselves under pressure.

“So naturally I’m very protective of them, because they deserve my protection. They’re brave, they volunteer for it, they try hard, they know the pressure they’re under.”

The man involved was stood down for the team’s final stop on Sunday because he was so upset by events.

“We changed him for the last stop of the race, because he took it very badly. I stress again these guys they don’t get paid [extra] for it, they volunteer to put themselves in that stressful situation. I respect that they are brave enough to do that.

“I’ve spoken to him and I was frankly giving him reassurance and support of this team. I think the drivers know, and all of us from the team principal down make mistakes from time to time. It’s pretty bloody annoying when we do it, we’re more annoyed with ourselves typically than when others make it, we’re often more understanding of other people than we are of our own mistakes.

“It happens, and that’s motor racing. There’s a lot of pressure nowadays with three second stops, as everyone knows that the last gun off is the one that dictates the speed of the change, and if it hasn’t been going well for you, it’s an enormously stressful position you’re in.”

He said that the team would once again review its pit stop operations: “We’ll look at the equipment, we’ll look at the process, we’ll look at the approach. So, disappointing. We weren’t quick enough, we made mistakes, and we had a failure on Jenson’s car. A pretty bad day at the office.”