Adam Cooper F1

A move from four-cylinder to V6 turbos and a postponement of the change from 2013 to 2014 was the compromise discussed by the FIA F1 Commission today, team sources have confirmed.

Even if agreed by the Commission, the changes will have to be formally approved by the World Motor Sport Council in a fax vote.

The V6 layout was used by the likes of Ferrari, Renault, Honda, TAG/Porsche and Ford/Cosworth in the original turbo era, and is more acceptable to the manufacturers – especially Ferrari – as there is arguably a closer affiliation with performance road cars than is provided by the planned four-cylinder.

Keeping the turbo format would be widely seen as a victory for Jean Todt, with the fact that he was willing to compromise on the date an indication that he is willing to listen to alternative views.

What Bernie Ecclestone might gain – other than a different engine note – is not exactly clear.

Renault technical director James Allison suggests that his team could lose out less than others in the Silverstone exhaust clampdown because the team’s side exit design means that the car’ aero balance will change less.

Allison is the first technical director to give a detailed explanation of what the Silverstone rule changes – a ban on using engine mapping for aerodynamic effect – will mean for the teams. He also confirms that from Valencia teams will not be able to change maps between qualifying and the race.

“The FIA’s note will cause all teams (whether or not they use a blown floor) to change their operation,” said Allison on the team website. “The headline changes for the Silverstone GP are as follows: when the driver lifts his foot fully off the throttle pedal, then the ECU maps must be set up so that the engine [to all intents and purposes] closes the throttle – previously it was possible to configure the engine maps to leave the throttle open and reduce the engine power by other means.

“Furthermore, when the driver lifts fully off the throttle, the ECU maps must be configured to cut off the fuel supply to the engine – this is intended to prevent so called “hot blowing” where the energy of the exhaust gas is increased by combustion.

“Finally, with immediate effect, it will no longer be possible to reprogramme the ECU configuration between qualifying and the race in the expectation that this will discourage extreme ECU setups for qualifying – previously electronic access to the ECU under parc fermé conditions had been explicitly permitted.”

Discussing the specific impact on Renault, Allison said: “It is not easy to judge the effect of this change on our competitiveness. The loss for each blown floor car will come from two separate effects – how much downforce will you lose and, in addition, how much will the loss of this downforce upset the balance of the car.

“All blown floor cars will lose downforce under braking as a result of these new restrictions. Some teams will lose more and some teams less; it is hard to know exactly what relative loss LRGP will suffer. However, it is possible that we will suffer less on the balance shift side of the equation because our forward exit exhausts produce their effect quite near the middle of the car.

“This means that as the exhaust blow waxes and wanes, it does not really disturb the aero balance of the car too much. With a rearward blower, the downforce from the exhaust is all generated at the rear axle. As the new rules reduce the blowing effect on corner entry much more than corner exit, it is possible that the rearward blowers will tend to suffer more nervousness under braking and more understeer on exit as a result of the new restrictions. We will find out at Silverstone!”

Jaime Alguersuari is doing a Red Bull street demo in Hong Kong today, and inevitably that has led to suggestions that the city could one day host a Grand Prix.

Although it seems highly unlikely that the authorities would be interested, a few years ago people would have laughed if you’d suggested Singapore as a possible F1 venue. At least one local official is keen on the idea.

“This is the first step in gaining the support of the people,” Hong Kong Automobile Association president Wesley Wan told the South China Morning Post.

“We want to raise the exposure of Formula One by staging this live show, and I hope it will lead to Hong Kong hosting a grand prix race one day.

“My dream is that Hong Kong, like Singapore, Malaysia and China, will be a stop on the grand prix circuit.”

“And as far as a street circuit is concerned, if Monte Carlo and Singapore can have it, why can’t Hong Kong?”

Wan said that Hong Kong had been approached about a race – presumably by Bernie Ecclestone – before the 1997 handover.

The ban will put an end to this unusual sight...

There’s no doubt that Renault – currently a solid fourth in the World Championship – will suffer more than most when the FIA bans its innovative side exhaust for 2012.

On Saturday the FIA’s Charlie Whiting wrote to the teams about blown diffusers, and while a clampdown on hot and cold blowing from Silverstone onwards caught most of the attention, the letter included a huge change to the exhaust rules for next year.

The plan is to have basic designs that exit behind the diffuser, and thus can have no impact on it. That will mean an end to the system run by Renault this year, although of course everyone else will have to start afresh too.

The details will be discussed at Thursday’s meeting of the Technical Working Group in London, but the FIA is believed to be intent on pushing through the main points. Technical rule changes for 2012 have to be fixed by June 30.

“I can feel what McLaren felt when they decided to ban the F-Duct!,” team boss Eric Boullier told this blog in Canada. “To be honest we’re not thinking too much about it. But when you want to go one route, if the FIA is changing the rules, we have to stick to the rules. We need to understand the exact reason, but if at the end the decision is to ban these systems, we’ll work on something else.”

The shorter term clampdown for the British GP affects engine mapping rather than hardware, and teams will still be able to get some benefit.

“It’s definitely a change, and if we can make it work differently on our car, we’ll do everything we can. We need to understand exactly what Charlie wants to ban.”

Following the promised fax vote of World Motor Sport Council members, the original 2011 F1 calendar has been reinstated.

That means that India is now back where it should be on October 30, and Bahrain has of course disappeared.

The only problem now is whether India can still make that date, with human nature suggesting that they might have slowed down a bit when offered an extra six weeks of preparation time.

The FIA will thus now host its annual shindig in Delhi in December – for which 800 hotel rooms are booked – without an F1 race as a supporting act…

All smiles at McLaren in Canada...

Martin Whitmarsh insists that the team spirit at McLaren helped to override any stress caused by the clash between Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton in Canada.

Tensions were eased when the drivers were able to talk during the break and they both accepted that it was a racing incident.

“People are going to talk about it,” said Whitmarsh when asked by this blog about Hamilton’s recent controversies. “But what a race. I’d hope that people want drivers to go out there and race. If there are absolutely reckless and silly things, you’ve got to be called up for it.

“But if you put yourself on the inside of someone, that’s how you normally overtake, and if they turn in on you, you’re probably going to have an accident. It takes two to tango, it takes two to make a decision about whether you’re going to come together or not. I think you can’t overtake without the risk of coming together, and that’s a fact.”

Regarding the aftermath, Whitmarsh added: “The great thing is the team spirit and the spirit between the two drivers is such that there was no recrimination. Both drivers recognise that it was one of those things, and there’s absolutely no issue.

“When team mates come together like that of course it’s disappointing for the team, but very easy for that to degenerate into something of a scene between the drivers. Of course it hasn’t done that.”

Mike Coughlan has commenced his new role as chief engineer of Williams, some four years after he was at the centre of the ‘Spygate’ row when he obtained information stolen from Ferrari while at McLaren.

Most recently he’s been involved in NASCAR with Michael Waltrip, but now he’s back. His appointment has caused some controversy, and to fend that off Williams has issued a Q&A in which he addresses the obvious questions.

“It was life‐changing because it made me reflect upon myself and my actions.,” he says of 2007. “Leaving a team and a sport that I love, and then seeing the consequences of my actions on the team and its fans was devastating. All I can do now is work hard and try to earn my place back in Formula One. This is what I am determined to do with Williams.”

Asked what he would say to those who feel what he did was unforgiveable, he added: “Well, I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to everyone who was affected by my conduct and in particular the people at McLaren and Ferrari and the fans of those teams. I sincerely regret my actions and I fully accepted the penalty given to me by the FIA. I can only hope that I can earn back everyone’s respect.”

Felipe Massa lost a shot at a podium finish in Canada after he had to pit for a new nose in the last segment of the race, which dropped him down to sixth at the flag.

The Ferrari driver was tripped up when he came out of the pits on slicks and came across a slow moving Narain Karthikeyan.

“I feel really disappointed, because it was a great race for me,” said the Brazilian. “Everything was going very well during the whole race in the difficult conditions, and suddenly when I put the dry tyres on the out lap there was a Hispania, Karthikeyan I guess.

“He was very slow in the dry, because he was not doing right the corners, he was very slow. I passed him on the right and then my car was just driving on the ice, because it was wet. Then I lost the car, and I lost my podium. I lost even maybe the possibility to fight for the victory.

“It was a shame because it was a race to fight really there in the front.”

Karthikeyan had also just come out of the pits, and his unusual explanation for his lack of pace was that he didn’t know he had been given slicks, and had thus deliberately driven on the wet line…

“For whatever reason I didn’t get a call saying we were going to go on slicks, so in my mind I thought I was still on intermediates,” said the Indian. “And when I came out of the pits I realised that they were slicks, but it was too late because I was on the wet line and the car was sliding a lot.”

Lewis Hamilton was in surprisingly relaxed mood after the Canadian GP, given his short – and fraught – afternoon on the track.

When we caught up with him he insisted that he had no problem with his incident with Jenson Button, and was just happy to see McLaren win the race.

“I don’t know why I don’t feel too frustrated today, but I feel quite relaxed,” said Hamilton when asked for his thoughts by the BBC’s David Croft. “I think tricky conditions probably made it a lot less possible for people to see me behind, perhaps even more difficult than perhaps it would be in the dry.

“There were incidents that were unintentional, times that we came together, but I’m happy with the team, everyone’s wearing the red [victory] shirts, and you don’t see that in other teams where people celebrate like we do, so I’m happy.”

The reference to ‘the team’ was intriguing, given suggestions that he is considering a move elsewhere.

Meanwhile he confirmed that he and Button had talked during the red flag.

“When they had the long break Jenson came up to the room and just said ‘Sorry about that I didn’t see you,’ and I said, ‘Yeah my fault entirely, I was in the wrong place really at the wrong time,’ and that’s it. We’re good team mates, I think.”

He said that luck would turn his way in the future: “You know what, I think you make your own luck. I feel very blessed to be here still in F1, fit, healthy and alive and still racing. There are many, many drivers that wish they could be in our position.

“Of course you could always hope for things to be better, but good times do come to those who wait. So I’ll just bide my time and hope that at some stage it will be mine.”

The FIA Stewards – who this week include Emerson Fittipaldi and Teddy Mayer’s son Tim – have given unusually detailed explanations as to why Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso all escaped punishment after the two dramatic incidents involving the race winner.

With regard to the Button/Hamilton collision – which put Lewis out of the race – they said:

The Stewards have reviewed the Incident involving Car 3 (L. Hamilton) and Car 4 (J. Button) on their 7^th lap of the race. The Stewards reviewed the lines of several cars, including the two cars involved, using multiple angles of video evidence over several laps, the speed traces of both drivers, the GPS tracking data from the cars and have heard the drivers and team representatives.

The Stewards concluded that:

Exiting Turn 13 there was a legitimate overtaking opportunity for Lewis Hamilton as his speed was greater than Jensen Button’s.

Both drivers took lines substantially similar to many of the other drivers, and did not move as far to the left as the preceding driver, Michael Schumacher. At the moment after Hamilton moved to the left to pass, Button looked into his mirror. It appears from the position of Hamilton at that moment [and is confirmed by the drivers] that Button was unlikely to have seen Hamilton.

At the point of contact Button had not yet moved as far to the left of the track as he had on the previous lap, or that Schumacher had on that lap. The Stewards have concluded that it was reasonable for Hamilton to believe that Button would have seen him and that he could have made the passing manoeuvre. Further, the Stewards have concluded that it is reasonable to believe that Button was not aware of Hamilton’s position to his left.

Therefore, the Stewards decide that this was a “racing incident” and have taken no further action.

One intriguing point here is that the ‘drivers’ (ie both) evidently explained that Lewis was in Jenson’s blind spot, which begs the question why Hamilton took the risk of putting his nose in there in the first place…

In the case of the Alonso incident, they reported as follows:

The Stewards have reviewed video evidence and heard from the drivers and team representatives regarding the incident on Lap 38 at Turn 3 between Car 5 (F. Alonso) and Car 4 (J. Button.)

Car 5 was on an out lap having pitted. Car 4 appeared to be firmly established on the inside line prior to the entry of the corner and drove onto the kerb to avoid Car 5 on the outside.

In view of the conditions and the statements by both drivers and their team representatives, the Stewards decide that this was a “racing incident” and have taken no further action.