Adam Cooper F1

Karthikeyan eventually got out, but it was all in vain

The FIA Stewards have declined to give HRT dispensation to allow Tonio Liuzzi and Narain Karthikeyan to start in Australia after they failed to meet the 107% requirement, in accordance with Article 36.3.

After barely appearing on track at all in practice the cars actually ran without too many problems in Q1, and Liuzzi was only 2.1s off Jerome d’Ambrosio’s Virgin.

The FIA Stewards do have the option to waive the rule in ‘exceptional circumstances,’ but that wasn’t the case here.

Asked by this blog to clarify the new rule, the FIA’s Charlie Whiting said: “The 107% is a maximum, there’s no tolerance around that 107%. If you’re out you’re out. However there is provision in the rule for the stewards to allow a car in under exceptional circumstances, which could include setting a good time in a previous session, or if there were changeable weather conditions that clearly disadvantaged some cars that couldn’t get out at the beginning when it was dry.

“Those sorts of things, or generally speaking if a car’s done a good time in P3 for example, and has a mechanical problem and can’t do a clear lap. We’ve seen it all before. Then the stewards are probably likely to allow the car to start. I personally don’t believe it’s the case with HRT, but it’s a matter for the stewards.”

Jenson Button was disappointed with his Q3 session in Melbourne but delighted that McLaren has made so much progress with its update package.

Button qualified fourth, but Lewis Hamilton’s second place showed that the car has even more potential.

“I think we should be very happy with it,” said Button. “My Q3 was a right mess. I got stuck behind Rosberg, and Massa had a spin. It was all quite messy out there. My lap in Q2, the one I didn’t actually complete, would actually have been quicker, by quite a bit.

“Disappointing that I didn’t get the best out of it, but I think we should all be very happy with the package that we have here. It’s a massive step forward from what we had in testing, so we should be very pleased with what we’ve done this weekend.

“And there’s so much to build on still. It’s still in a very early stage this car, because we haven’t done much testing, so for it to be reliable, and relatively quick I’m very happy and very proud of the guys back at the factory for putting in all the hard work brining this package here.”

Button admitted that one of the issues in the last session was getting heat into the tyres.

“In Q3 it was, because I had cars all over the place. I think we need to get heat more than others. I was trying to get past to get some heat in the tyres, but they were blocking. It was a bit of a mess out there. It’s tricky in these conditions to get heat in the tyres, but the race will be completely different, we’re fine.

“I’m really looking forward to the race. We can have a good race from fourth – we had a good race from fourth last year – and we’ll see. Sebastian put in a very good lap, but we don’t know what their race pace is going to be like.”

McLaren had a disastrous testing season but after ‘going back to basics’ by hurriedly producing a less exotic exhaust and floor combination the team may well have turned its season around.

Jenson Button was fastest today – although he admitted that it might not mean much – and was delighted that the new parts worked so well and backed up what simulations had suggested.

“It’s definitely brought performance to the car, how much I don’t know. The feeling is much better, the car feels a lot more complete. When you have downforce at the rear, you can obviously add downforce at the front, then you get temperature into the tyres, you can have braking performance, there’s so much that comes with downforce.

“I’m very happy with how hard the guys have worked and what they’ve brought to this race, because in testing it was looking pretty tough for us. They’ve worked so hard, they’ve brought something here that’s good. I don’t know how good, but I’m pretty happy with the step we’ve made.”

The impressive thing today was that after such an unreliable time in testing the team had no problems with parts that had not be run before.

“We’ve got reliability. That’s something we haven’t had all winter, so finally to have a car which can run for as many laps as we want it to, it’s great. You’re able to do set up work then and improve the car. A positive day.

“I still don’t think there’s any use looking at the times. People are doing different things, and there are so many variables now with KERS and rear wings, we’re not going to get too carried away. It’s a positive day because we’ve been able to do so much running and get a feeling for the car in many different fuel loads. Lots of information to go through tonight and hopefully we’ll improve a bit further.

“We haven’t done a lot of reliability work because we haven’t had reliability, so it’s been a tough winter. Here we have the reliability, and we’ve picked up performance. The car feels nice to drive, still a few niggly things that we’ve got to sort out, but the basic balance is much improved from what we had in testing.”

Michael Schumacher expects to be much stronger this season after the tyre frustrations that hampered him last year have gone.

Michael struggled to come to terms with the 2010 Bridgestones, but the re-set provided by the arrival of Pirelli has given him new impetus.

“The only thing you can probably say is the characteristic of last year’s tyres was very unusual to my experience,” he said when asked by this blog. “The tyres we have now, they are a lot more normal. In this respect I’m happy to have this kind of character. Obviously the car, on top, is a lot more normal race car. Performance orientated, as a mixture, it gives more feedback, and I just feel more comfortable.”

Inevitably last year many people were sceptical when Schumacher cited the tyres as his problem, but when I quizzed him on that he said it’s not about proving people wrong.

“The most important thing is what I want to prove to myself. Even now I’m not absolutely 100% clear on the one lap factor what I had to do to make that tyre work. I didn’t really understand whether it was only the tyre, whether it was me for three years out, now knowing the team and not knowing all the switches and positions, and what I had to do to make the whole package working together. I don’t know, I just know now I do feel it, and I’m back on it.”

Michael says he has no concerns about this year’s new technology.

“In the time that I’ve been racing I’ve gone through many different development phases. There have been the very standard days of manual shifting, as I started, there have been the days of active suspension, traction control, ABS and so on, and there have been all the electronics that you adjusted on the steering wheel. We had last year f-ducts, we have this year rear wings, we have KERS. I can only say anything that makes me going quicker, that I can adapt and adjust in the car, that’s what I like.

“There are lots of predictions. I just think we should get on with it this weekend, we’ll see what is the reality. Testing is one thing, racing is another thing, then afterwards we can go into the details and analyse and see whether it was for the good or not for the good or whatever. And what did really happen. I think it’s too much talk at the moment.”

The FIA has given the teams a headache by adjusting the moveable wing rules on the eve of the first race.

The section of track on which the wing can be operated was set at 600m for race day, on the basis that the figure could be changed if experience in the early races proved that to be necessary.

However for the opening race in Australia it has already been changed to over 860m. The zone now starts on the approach to the final corner, but obviously drivers won’t activate their wings until the exit, at around the 750m mark.

The difficulty for the teams is that they have done all their homework on the basis of the 600m figure.

“I only found out today,”  Christian Horner told this blog. “It’s a pain because it screws up our simulations and affects gear ratios.”

The FIA’s intention has always been that the length of the zone stays the same at all tracks so passing is not easier at somewhere like Monza compared with other venues with shorter straights.

Update: Spoke to Charlie Whiting who clarified that now the FIA’s concept is that there is 600m at full throttle. The actual 867m zone here includes the braking area, which here is about 110m, and the ‘acceleration’ area, for want of a better word. So the maximum theoretical wing activation usage here is about 750m, although that depends on how early in the final corner drivers activate it...

Sebastian Vettel says that he wants to win the Australian GP because the trophy has a kangaroo on it. And he’s not joking!

While he said it with a smile on his face he insists that he’s motivated by simple things.

The World Champion also made it clear that he loves the friendly atmosphere in Australia.

“I like to come here, especially as a German,” he said. “In our country it takes a long time before someone calls you a friend or a mate. Here I find the whole country is calling me mate! It’s nice to come here. Usually the weather is nice, not like today, but usually it’s quite good.

“I really like the track, and if you finish on the podium they have a nice trophy on Sunday afternoon. It used to have and I hope it still has a kangaroo on the trophy. It’s something that you can get only here.

“I love racing, I love driving the car, but I love racing also for these little things. It might be funny in a way, but little things like picking up a trophy that is special or is different to all the trophies you get everywhere else!”

He’s got one target this weekend: “I don’t have to lie to you, the target is to win, easy as that. If you come here as champions of the last year, you want to keep on winning, that’s what it’s all about, and that’s why we have been working hard in the winter. I’m looking forward to a good weekend and hopefully picking up that trophy with that bloody kangaroo on it…”

The chances of Team Lotus retaining the rights to use the name after the legal battle that starts today have taken a serious knock.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Tony Fernandes is now in dispute with David Hunt, the man who acquired the Team Lotus name at the end of 1994 and agreed to sell it to Malaysia1, the parent company of  the then Lotus Racing, last September.

However, Hunt claims that the deal has not been completed as agreed. Without his support in court the team’s case is massively compromised.

Hunt told the Telegraph: “When we had to make the Team Lotus staff redundant in 1995 I made a promise to them and the fans to return it to F1 in the hands of a worthy custodian, and initially I had high hopes that Tony, Din and Nasa (Fernandes’ partners in Team Lotus) were going to tick the boxes.

“What angers me is that I have, in good faith, worked extremely hard on the build-up to the hearing because I believed Tony would honour our January agreement.

“He’s apparently ‘changed his mind’ at the 11th hour, by his own admission, now that I’ve done so much work on his company’s behalf, and he’s trying to renegotiate by offering new terms which are, frankly, ludicrous.

“All I’m looking for is for Tony to stick to his word and honour our agreement. If he doesn’t, then regrettably I don’t see why I should continue to provide assistance and this trial won’t be the last battle he’s facing, even if he wins.”

Update: After the story broke a team spokesman told the Telegraph: “Team Lotus has an agreement with David Hunt which was signed by both parties. David Hunt has tried to renegotiate that agreement, which Team Lotus is not prepared to do.”

It's a bit like choosing your favourite M&Ms...

Pirelli has revealed the identification method for its 2011 tyres, with each type of tyre represented by a different coloured logo.

The company says that “the colours reflect the unique personality of each tyre,” but didn’t say whether a psychologist helped out with the selection…

The colours are as follows:

Wet – orange
Intermediate – light blue
Supersoft – red
Soft – yellow
Medium – white
Hard – silver

Pirelli’s Motorsport Director Paul Hembery said: “We’re very excited by the
prospect of returning to Formula One for the first time in 20 years, and we’re
aiming to be a proactive and colourful partner in Formula One. So what better  way to symbolise this than a brightly coloured selection of Pirelli logos to run on the sidewalls?

“These will enable both live and television audiences to tell at a  glance who is on what compounds, which will be vital knowledge as tyres are set to form a key part of race strategy this year.”

McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh admits that the team pushed ‘over the limits’ in testing with the new MP4-26, and the resulting loss of mileage after failures proved expensive.

However he insists that the team learned a lot from the experience and that the car will be better in Australia that it has looked thus far.

“Over the winter, we set ourselves some extremely ambitious performance targets for MP4-26,” said Whitmarsh. “Vodafone McLaren Mercedes are an uncompromising team and, as with every car we build, we tend to push development to the limit. In some cases, we’ve pushed over those limits, and the resulting lack of mileage has invariably eaten into our pre-season preparation.

“However, it’s called testing for a reason – and testing MP4-26 beyond its limit has, in some ways, been highly instructive. In actual fact, we’ve gathered a huge amount of useful data about the car, its handling characteristics and its management of the tyres. So while we’ve further fine-tuned the package for Melbourne, we’ve once again set ourselves some extremely tough targets for this opening race weekend.”

Whitmarsh expects the car to be faster than expected: “So, do I think our testing pace is representative of the pace we’ll show in Australia? No. Do I think we head into the weekend as race favourites? Unfortunately, no. But do I feel that we have the capacity to surprise a few people and be competitive? Very much so.

“As with everything we do at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes, we never give up: we’re fighters – that’s the spirit that has won us 20 world championships in the past and which makes us a team you can never under-estimate.”

Jenson Button admits that events in Japan have had a big impact on him over the past week, but says he hopes he can use the Australian GP as a way of paying tribute to the country.

Button has spent a lot of time in Tokyo in recent years since he hooked up with girlfriend Jessica Michibata in 2007.

“In the past, I’d always travelled to Melbourne full of positive energy and enthusiasm,” he said. “But, at the moment, my heart is with the people of Japan as they struggle to come to terms with the scope of the terrible devastation and loss of life wreaked by last week’s earthquake and tsunami.

“While the prospect of a Formula 1 race seems to pale in the face of such a disaster, there have been occasions before when the healing power of sport can actually be beneficial; an escape for people. So I go to Melbourne this weekend resolving to not only try my best, but also to salute the brave people, and my many friends, throughout Japan.

“Albert Park has been good to me: I’ve won there for the past two seasons; it’s a great circuit for racing, it always seems to create unpredictable races and, perhaps because it’s habitually at the start of the season when a precise pecking order has yet to be established, we often see fast cars running out of sequence – and the excitement that that brings. With the added issue of multiple tyre stops, it could be a very exciting and unpredictable race weekend.

“I’m regularly being asked if I can make it three wins in a row this year. On paper that might not look likely, but, seriously, who knows? I most definitely wouldn’t rule it out.”

Lewis Hamilton meanwhile says he remains optimistic, despite a tough time in winter testing.

“It’s felt like a very long winter. I started the new season feeling fitter and more positive than ever and I’ve maintained that enthusiasm and momentum despite a somewhat difficult few weeks of winter tests. We can’t hide the fact that testing has been tougher than we expected: our test mileage hasn’t been as high as that of our rivals, nor have we had the outright pace of the fastest cars. Still, I have a good feeling with MP4-26: I like driving our car, I think it will look after its tyres quite well and I understand that we’ll be making further performance steps ahead of this opening race.

“Nevertheless, we know we go to Melbourne ready for battle: some teams are extremely well prepared – both from a pace and reliability point of view – but that can sometimes count for little in the unpredictable and somewhat chaotic opening races where it’s equally vital just to take points home.

“I strongly believe that, while our preparations haven’t gone as smoothly as we’d have liked, I get the impression that we’ll be arriving in Melbourne with everything finally meshing together – and that makes me really excited.”