Adam Cooper F1

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing struggled to get the RB8 to his liking at Sepang today as once again it became clear that the World Champions do not enjoy the advantage that they had in 2011.

Vettel was second in the FP1 but in the slower FP2 session in the afternoon he was only ninth. At one stage, when using the medium tyres, he was heard to say “it’s all over the place” on the team radio.

Vettel admitted that it had not been an easy day.

“I’m not entirely happy,” said the German. “Obviously this afternoon I would have loved to have been a bit higher up, but it’s one lap you are looking at. I think all-in-all we had decent running today. We still have a lot to do. I’m not entirely happy yet, but it’s not as if we expected that all of our problems are solved within three hours today.

“Here it seems difficult for everyone, the tyres seem to drop off pretty quickly, so everyone starts to slide around fairly soon. So do we. But I think generally we are sliding a bit too much, and I would love the car to be a bit more predictable and stable from the beginning.”

Regarding his radio comment he said: “Obviously in the heat of the moment… The run was not perfect, otherwise we would have been higher up, but before then and after that it was quite OK. I think it was a one-off, so we didn’t use the tyre as much as we should have. As I said on the radio I’m not entirely happy yet.”

Vettel said he doesn’t know yet whether RBR can fight for pole.

“It’s hard to say I think. McLaren looked very strong today, no doubt, morning and afternoon. Haven’t seen the long runs, but I think we are again closer by the looks of it in long run pace, so we’ll see what we can do.

“What do we need now? A good analysis of what we did today so that we can improve the car for tomorrow.”

Felipe Massa hopes that he can overcome the problems he suffered in Australia after Ferrari built up its spare chassis for his use in an attempt to resolve the balance problems that afflicted him.

The Brazilian qualified a disastrous 16^th in Melbourne, and retired after clumsy contact with Bruno Senna’s Williams.

“We need to turn the page after Australia and start again from zero,” said the Brazilian in Malaysia today. “And that is what we are planning for this race, which I hope will get off to a good start.

“This is not the first time that I have had a difficult race, there have been many. But one always has to look to the next one and this weekend will be only the second of the championship, so there is still time. As for Melbourne, it’s true I have never had a weekend where the car has felt so bad right from the first day. The car was not working the way it should and after just a few laps, the tyres were gone, but this was not a problem with the tyres, it was caused by the car’s lack of balance.

“We are changing the chassis for this race and I think it is the right thing to do. Every time I drove this car during winter testing I never had any of the problems I had from the first day in Australia. The day after Fernando drove the same car in Barcelona for example, there was never anything strange or different in terms of lap times, race pace or tyre degradation.

“Then you arrive in Australia and see that everything is different, so changing the chassis is definitely the right thing to do. But it’s not just the chassis that is changed for here, as we are replacing many of the components.

“Even if we are changing the chassis and other parts, the car is still the same car in development terms that we had in Melbourne. We have to try this to get the most out of it, even if we are not where we ought to be in terms of performance compared to others. I hope this track will suit the car better.”

Massa said he was unconcerned about media criticism: “To be honest, I really don’t care. I never drove depending on what others think or say about me. I just do my job thinking about trying to do the best I can in the car. When I arrived here in 2008, people were saying I was out of Ferrari, because I did not finish in Australia and then I did not finish here and it went on to become my best season. Things can change very quickly from one day to the next. The only thing I care about is to have the car I know from winter testing.”

Meanwhile Massa’s former team mate Michael Schumacher was keen to offer some moral support today.

“If I look at all the winter testing I think it was very clear that the two drivers were very close together,” said Schumacher. “If you look at the optimum lap time achieved in the Barcelona tests, it’s again very close. So to see the big difference that we saw in Melbourne, I can only assume there must have been something not right for him.

“He’s been around for so long. He’s been fighting for the championship in 2008, he’s always been up front so I don’t see any reason why he should not be capable of doing so in the future. I trust he will do so, and that the team will do their utmost to give him the support that he needs.”

Jenson Button arrived in Malaysia in a chilled mood on Wednesday morning after an overnight flight from Melbourne, enjoying the fact that as in 2009 he left the first race as World Championship leader.

Button has had a relaxing few days and says that he’s a looking forward to the second race.

“I think we’re pretty focused on this weekend,” he said today. “It was pretty important to relax after the race because it was a great victory for us. I had a nice evening with friends and family as we all know that’s the best way to celebrate a great event.

“And then Monday/Tuesday I spent a couple of days in Melbourne just relaxing and then arrived here yesterday. It’s actually been quite a nice few days. Got here yesterday and thought it was quite important to get used to the humidity, because it’s quite different to Melbourne.

“Yeah, it’s been nice, it always is after winning a grand prix and you’re always very excited about the next grand prix and obviously your aim is to do exactly the same again.”

Button stressed that the two circuits are very different so it’s not easy to make any predictions about what all the drivers regard as a challenging venue.

“It’s so different to last weekend, it’s very fast and flowing, very smooth compared to a street circuit and the tyres. It’s always more difficult for the tyres around here. But obviously we have the hard and the medium compound and they’re both pretty hard compounds, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

“I think it’s just the temperature and the humidity that will be the biggest issue for them. And it’s one of those places where you really don’t know what the weather’s going to do. When I previously won here it was cut short, the race, because of a red flag. That’s the thing here, normally it doesn’t just rain, it chucks it down. So, if it does rain this weekend we hope we can continue racing because it’s a great circuit.”

Button showed a good understanding of the 2012 tyres in Melbourne, particular in his ability to get them up to working temperature, although he played down any advantage.

“I think we all try to do the best job we can with the tyres but personally I don’t feel the tyres were a big issue for anyone in Melbourne. They seemed to be very consistent and we didn’t have degradation like we do at other circuits, like here, so I feel that I had a good balance with the car, I had a lot of confidence in the car and yeah, I think the consistency was pretty good throughout the race.

“Obviously we had the scare with the safety car for us – it’s always tough when you’re leading by ten or eleven seconds, to suddenly find a car right up behind you again. But I think we made good use of the safety car in the end and were able to come home and get a very important victory for the whole team.”

Michael Schumacher conceded today that Mercedes is still lacking in race pace after the team’s Sunday performance in Melbourne failed to live up to qualifying.

Schumacher held on to third before his early gearbox problem put him out of the race, but he couldn’t match the McLarens ahead and was under a lot of pressure from those behind, especially Sebastian Vettel. More important was the fact that Nico Rosberg, who did the full race distance, struggled for speed.

“We certainly understood in Melbourne that we have to do a better job in terms of race pace,” said Schumacher. “I don’t think we would have been able to achieve a podium in Melbourne, despite going all the way through. Probably a fifth place would have been the max that we could have had. Nevertheless, we have good ideas how to improve on what we learned from Melbourne.

“Whether that means we’re going to be on the podium or not, that’s another story because you obviously have at least four cars which are very strong, with two McLarens, two Red Bulls and then you have quite a big group of cars which are very close to each other. So it’s going to be a challenge for all of us.

“The basic positive is that we definitely have a much-improved car compared to last year. Still we have to learn it and understand it in all circumstances to take the benefit and the full performance from it, as we have seen in the race with Nico, so there is still something to learn, but we’re positive that we can improve quite a bit, in race pace in particular.”

He said he was not concerned about a repeat of the gearbox failure that stopped him in Australia: “Well, it is a one-off. We did quite a few thousand kilometres in winter testing and never had this issue. We understood it though, and fixed it.”

He also played down the potential advantage of the team’s controversial F-Duct, which many people see as being a huge boost to Mercedes in qualifying on Sepang’s long straights.

“There is no doubt that we have an innovation that gives us some performance, but I don’t think that it is a huge performance, and that we only live from this. We’ll find out. I can’t really quantify this.”

Fernando Alonso said at Sepang today that while he was hoping for improved form for Ferrari in Malaysia, there was no logical reason why the car would be better, given that it will essentially be unchanged.

The Spaniard also made it clear that his hard-won fifth place in Australia was helped by problems for the likes of Michael Schumacher and Romain Grosjean.

“Hopefully yes but I don’t think so, to be honest,” said Alonso. “We have been testing at different circuits – Jerez, Barcelona and then in Australia with more or less the same car, with the same problems on it. The cars are nearly identical for everybody compared with Australia, I guess, so I don’t think there will be big surprises here.

“Let’s wait and see, and try to adapt the car to the circuit, the conditions, the heat. Then, yes, the qualifying. We saw the true performance, we are not as competitive as we want, probably, but then in the race anything can happen. In Australia with a good start and the stops and the strategy you can put yourself in a decent place. We will try to do a similar race here and try to defend as many points as possible.”

He conceded that the team had been playing catch up in all three seasons since he joined.

“We need to work hard every day and night to normally catch up people in these three years. But anyway, you know, the experience has been fantastic. As you all know, fighting for the World Championship in the first year, and then last year with one win and 10 podiums. Obviously, the target is always to win the world championship, but it was not possible the last two years.

“This year we are convinced that we will fight for it. We need to stay focused and work more than the others, knowing that we are a little bit behind now. But the championship is long. We stay calm, we stay focused, because we see a lot of determination in the team. We see the team with a very good atmosphere, [we] trust each other in the team, we are very united, so the time will come to us very soon.

“Obviously, knowing we need to work, we need to catch up the guys in front. We are not in the situation we wanted to start the 2012 championship but after 11 years in Formula One I think you understand how long the championship is, what you need when you have the best and what you need when you don’t have the best car – which is sometimes more points or less points.

“But as for as our targets and our goals, we need to score as many points as possible in these couple of races and in a very short period of time try to be on the podium and win races. If we manage to do that we have plenty of races to recover the gap. If we don’t manage to do that it’s because someone else did a better job than us. We just need to wait and see, but I have 100 per cent trust in the team.”

Alonso was making no predictions about the speed of Ferrari’s recovery.

“I don’t think it will be one race in which we change the car. I think at every race we will try to make improvements as we did over the last few years, and it won’t be just for us; I think everyone will make updates at every race. We just need to make ours work a little bit more.

“Obviously we have a little advantage from that, because our car needs more speed, and maybe it’s easier for us to find than for some others whose cars are maybe more developed than ours. New parts will slowly come at every race and hopefully they work, but there’s not one magic race or one magic moment when we think things can change. I think we will work day and night and as I said before, the team is very focused on that, and I see great reaction from everybody, so I expect a strong Ferrari soon.”

Nico Rosberg endured a frustrating Australian GP as the Mercedes W03 failed to fulfil the expectations that the car’s one-lap pace had generated.

The German struggled for pace in race conditions, but after plugging away he was still set for sixth place when he had contact with Sergio Perez on the last lap. The subsequent puncture dropped him to 12^th place.

“It was a bit difficult and a bit unexpected,” said Rosberg. “We were just struggling a bit more than we thought, and we need to analyse why. The car didn’t feel good in the long runs, we were not fast and we were struggling. But yes of course we had some good straightline speed.

“It was a good fight and everything was looking very good actually, we would have been sixth which would have been OK, given the circumstances. And then it’s just a very unnecessary thing that we touched on the straight, so Sergio touched my rear wheel and I got a puncture.”

“Unfortunately for us it was not such a good day so a bit of a setback from all the positives from yesterday when we were very quick.”

Rosberg was surprised when told that Perez had blamed him.

“He complained about me? So maybe it’s nobody’s fault, because I also thought he was crazy! Maybe it’s just a racing incident, and we have to see on the video. It’s a very unfortunate incident.”

Rosberg is confident that things will get better: “I’m confident that we can learn from here and definitely move forward and improve for the next race. For sure it should be much better.”

Kimi Raikkonen had something of a mixed weekend on his return to F1 with Lotus, but in the end he earned some useful points with seventh place, having gained three places on the last lap.

Kimi qualified 18^th after just failing to beat the flag and start his last lap, and then a good start was spoiled by the accident ahead.

“It was much harder than it should be, but I think we did pretty well to get back to seventh,” said the Finn. “It was far from the ideal race or weekend, but at least we got something out of it.

“I had a good start off the line and got quite a few places, but then the first corner I had to almost stop because there was an accident and I had to go on the grass to avoid them, so I lost a few places and it put us in a bit of a bad position with the traffic.

“We had the speed to get past the people very quickly, but without that we could have done even better. But I guess it could have been much worse.”

Summing up his comeback event, he said: “It was OK. Overall the weekend wasn’t what I was looking for, we did mistakes, and we had the situation in qualifying where we ended up not really getting a lap. It put us in a difficult position, but I think we did OK out of it. We got seventh place, not the ideal start, but it was better than nothing.”

After Jenson Button’s win in Australia McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh says that the team is well placed for a title challenge, given its recent history of developing its car over the course of the season.

The difference is that this time McLaren has started off with the best package on the grid as a useful base from which to improve.

“We’re starting from the right place,” said Whitmarsh. “We know that we’ve got to improve the car on a race by race basis, that’s the nature of this sport. We’ve got some formidable competitors, Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Lotus look strong as well.

“It’s pretty tight. It’s as it should be, it’s F1, it should be difficult to win, and it is. I think we’re looking forward to next weekend, we do fancy our chances there, but who knows?

“This feels pretty good. We’ve got two fantastic drivers, a strong team, and now it’s up to us. We can win this if we improve the car at a quick enough rate. So that’s what we’re going to set out to do.

“Assuming the trend in Barcelona remains we ought to feel comfortable that we can go to the next high speed track in Sepang and be very competitive. That’s the aim anyway, we’ll see how it goes.”

Whitmarsh was full of praise for Button, who did a near faultless job all weekend.

“I think he’s just got stronger and stronger. He’s got such a mature, laid back easy manner it just belies the underlying hunger to win that he has. I think he must now believe that he’s in with a good chance of a proper title run this year, and I think providing that we can continue to improve the car, and not make mistakes and be reliable, there’s no reason that he can’t.”

He also had an interesting take on Lewis Hamilton, who made his displeasure at the result all too clear in post-race activities: “Lewis wasn’t happy today, but when Lewis starts getting happy with being third or being beaten by his team mate, he won’t be the Lewis that we all love and admire…”

Felipe Massa was in dire need of a good start to the 2012 season, given his poor recent form and the obvious question marks hanging over his future.

Alas his year got off to a terrible start after he beached his car in the gravel in Friday practice, qualified 16^th, and crashed out of the race.

In fact the Brazilian looked like he might turn things around on Sunday when he jumped up to 10^th at the start. However, almost immediately he began suffering with tyre issues, to the extent that he had to make three pit stops – although the last was at least under the safety car.

“The start was great, I passed many cars,” said Massa. “I don’t know to be honest how many, but I passed many cars. It was very positive for the race, but then after five laps I was suffering completely on the rear tyres, just sliding around every corner, and none of the other tyres were using tyres, just me.

“I was struggling completely with the balance of the car, not just talking about the race but every day, the whole weekend. We need to understand why. Everybody was doing many laps with the soft, with the medium, I couldn’t do many laps. I was driving even very smoothly, not to use [the tyres], because I knew it was not very easy to do two stops. And it was not possible.”

Massa’s race came to an end when he collided with Bruno Senna, who had climbed up from last after a first lap clash. The stewards subsequently agreed that it was a racing incident.

“One car from Toro Rosso tried to brake on the left side at corner three, and I did the corner in front. Bruno had a chance to have a good turn-in because I was fighting with the other car, and then he was able to have a good line to put the car on my side, but on the outside. And then we both did the corner to the left, he was to the outside and I was completely to the inside.

“I turned, he went a little bit early and he turned a little bit too much, we touched each other. For me it was something that can happen in a race. From my side there was nothing wrong because I was on the inside. At the end of the race, trying to fight for the position, you cannot say it was completely wrong.”

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali sees Fernando Alonso’s charge to fifth place in Australia as a positive step, although he admits that the team still has a lot to do in order to improve the disappointing F2012.

Alonso set a surprisingly competitive race pace from his 12^th starting position, although he struggled to get up to speed in the final stint in the cooler conditions after the safety car.

“I think we learned for sure a couple of things,” said Domenicali. “First of all the performance of today was not what we saw yesterday. Above all, the performance of the first two stints of the race was not too bad, considering really the situation. Then after the safety car something happened so we need to understand what was the real problem, because we saw a different race pace if you compare the first two and the last one. So this is the analysis that we have to do.

“I think on that respect today the race of Fernando was very, very good. Considering as I said the level of performance, to be fifth is something important. Considering the situation of the championship that I am expecting to see this year that it is vital that when we have so many problems to score these points.

“I would say that is a step forward, but we don’t have to hide behind that, because we are not happy about the performance of the car. What I’m asking to my engineers is to really as much as possible to try to fix the things that in their view are now much clearer.”

Domenicali insisted that the team knows what it has to put right, but denied that anything as serious as modification to the chassis was required.

“We have understood the problems of the car. This is clear. What I really need to say that after the understanding we need to make sure that we fix it, and not only fix it, but to fix it as soon as possible.

“In terms of the chassis there’s nothing going ahead. In terms of developments, yes, there are a lot of things that have to be improved, because I think there are two fundamental issues, one is the speed and the other thing is really the traction. Those are the two fundamental things that we really need to solve, and we really need hard to fix as soon as possible these major issues.”

He also conceded that the team would have to work hard to solve Felipe Massa’s problems. The Brazilian struggled to keep his tyres alive in the race and eventually crashed into Bruno Senna.

“The point was starting from yesterday Felipe didn’t feel he had a great balance on the car, and so it has affected the performance of the qualifying and also the race.

“So now what it important is to really analyse everything in order make sure that there is nothing strange, because that is the fundamental thing that we need to do, in order to help Felipe, to make sure he is performing without any extra pressure that I know that he has. He needs to be focussed really on his driving and we need to help him on that.”