Adam Cooper F1

Michael Schumacher has defended Ferrari’s use of team orders in Hockenheim – while admitting that the team might sometimes have got it wrong in his era.

Schumacher said he totally understands Ferrari’s quest to win the title with Alonso, but in effect conceded that Austria 2002 – the pass that led to the ban – was over the top, because the team was so dominant at the time.

“Watching TV occasionally [on the big screens] I saw Felipe be in first position,” said Schumacher. “I felt obviously happy because he’s a friend of mine. Then hearing Alonso has won the race I was wondering what kind of strategy was that?

“I have been criticised in the past, for exactly that. I have to say I understand 100% and I would do exactly the same if I would be in their situation. Because at the end of the day what are we here for? It’s fighting for a championship. There’s only one that can win the championship. By the end of the year if you think you have lost the championship for exactly that point you will ask yourself, not only yourself but all the fans, all the TV, all the journalists and so on, why didn’t you do so?

“And I think if you go back to other years in other teams in other situations, in the last race for example, there were clear team orders. And everybody accepts those. That’s normal, that’s the last race, and so on. So whether it’s the last race or second last race or even earlier, what’s the point [of criticising]?

“I can see like in the years where in the years when we did it, we were leading so much and people thought it was unnecessary. I can agree on that one in a way. But in principle I fully accept and agree [with] what’s going on.

“You have to do it in a way that’s maybe nice and not too obvious, make it a nice fight, but there’s only one target. And that’s winning the championship.”

Co-incidentally his former team mate Eddie Irvine echoed that last statement exactly tonight…

After speaking to Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa the FIA race stewards in Hockenheim have found Ferrari guilty of breaching Article 151C, which refers to bringing the sport into disrepute, in addition to breaking Article 39.1, the team orders rule. It says, ‘Team orders which interfere with a race are prohbited.’

The result stands as of today, but the matter will be referred to the World Motor Sport Council and the team has been fined $100,000.

It’s a fascinating scenario because Jean Todt will inevitably be at the heart of whatever happens next. on the one hand he is well versed in the intricacies of team orders, and on the other, he is of course like a second father to Massa. As FIA President he takes a step back from the actual process but he will clearly be a major player in the coming days.

Ron Dennis is paying his first ever visit to a NASCAR race this weekend at the Brickyard 400, where his old pal Juan Pablo Montoya starts from pole on Sunday.

Dennis had a dinner with Jeff Gordon and told my colleagues at AutoWeek that the former champ was “Massively impressive. If other drivers here have his approach then you have an amazing group of drivers. I didn’t expect someone to be so grounded and so knowledgeable about what it takes to be successful.”

He also took a blast at US F1: “They were given opportunity after opportunity, and they didn’t tell the truth. They never had the depth, they never had the understanding, they never had the resources.”

More intriguingly when asked about the US GP he indicated that Austin might not get there first, saying there were “Two or three separate projects. That’s not for me to share.”

McLaren Electronics already does business in NASCAR, and the main reason for Ron’s trip was to increase that.

Michael Schumacher failed to make the top 10 in qualifying for his home race in Hockenheim, but the narrow margin meant he was in a far from unhappy mood after the session.

Michael was 11^th in Q2 but was only 0.080s behind team mate Nico Rosberg. However, that meant the difference between going through or not.

“A hundredth between my team mate and myself, that just kicked me out of Q3!,” said Schumacher. “A bit disappointed because we were naturally expecting to be fifth or sixth instead of 1oth/11th. It’s not a very optimistic view for tomorrow, I have to say. Naturally we’re a bit stronger in race pace than we are in qualifying pace.

“It’s under expectations, especially for our fans. You want the world for all of those guys here, it’s such a nice atmosphere. Then you are handcuffed with certain things you are given. We are trying hard, everybody has tried hard. We have new upgrades here, but unfortunately others have done even better or (ours) just haven’t affected enough to our expectation.”

Michael said he had no real answer as to where Mercedes was losing out: “If there are specific reasons for this we’ll check it out. I had specific issues on my brakes, but I don’t think that’s a real factor for not being fifth or sixth, it might be a factor for being 10^th or 11^th. It’s not really important at this stage.”

Schumacher does of course now have a free choice of tyres, but he has another reason for preferring to be on the odd-numbered side of the grid.

“I’d prefer to be 11^th than 10^th, I have to say. The difference right to left is apparently significant. That’s the good thing about it. I’m just behind my team mate, I can take a slipstream from him and see what we can do…”

Mark Webber admits that a mistake on his final qualifying lap not only cost him a shot at pole in Hockenheim, but also dumped him to fourth behind Felipe Massa.

Webber went off at the start of his last lap, and thus had to settle for the time he’d set earlier on his first run.

“Today I lost my last run, so that was a mistake from my side,” said Webber. “It was a pretty tight qualy until then. I would like to of course had my last attempt, because that’s when you need to do it. But I got Turn One wrong, and I paid the price obviously to have a chance of maybe going for the front row, but it definitely lost third place. First time I’ve been off the front row for a long time, but looking forward to the race tomorrow.

“I was just looking to get the nice clean line in, but I must have got a little bit on the kerb on the outside. I didn’t even get into the apex. So, totally my fault.”

Webber says that from fourth place it won’t be impossible to make progress: “Yeah, you can pass. I haven’t seen the top speeds yet, but it’s not Barcelona. It should be pretty interesting to see how the race unfolds in that sense.”

He insists that he’s not been surprised by Ferrari’s pace this weekend.

“Not really. They were very, very quick in Silverstone to be honest, but they had a poor first lap with Fernando. I went to my pub during the week, and the guy said any tips on who I should put my money on, because all the odds are very short. I said put some money on Alonso to win Budapest. So maybe I’m wrong, maybe he wins tomorrow!”

Jenson Button says he’s happy with the update package on the McLaren after outqualifying his team mate for the first time since China.

Button will start fifth behind the Red Bulls and Ferraris, and optimistic that the car will have a better race pace than it showed in qualifying.

“It’s been a tough weekend for everyone,” said Button. “The weather’s been pretty bad, and for us Lewis had a crash on Friday. So that limited what we could do in testing on the Friday, because obviously I had to do a lot of the long run work.

“Today the balance to me felt pretty good in qualifying, we eventually got there in the end in Q3 and I felt like it was a good lap. I’m happy that I’m near the front, and I felt like I did a good job in qualifying, but we’re seven-tenths behind the Red Bulls, which is too much.

“We’ve definitely made a step forward, the car feels good around here. Its not enough in qualy spec, and it shows. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll see some more performance in the car.”

Button says he’s not worried about rain on Sunday.

“I’m pretty happy. I wasn’t on Friday morning, the car was very pointy, but we know why that was, and we’ve changed the car to help it now. This morning it was good in the wet conditions, and in the dry, the car feels good.

“We just don’t have the pace of the Red Bull, which is quite worrying really. Hopefully tomorrow we can have a good race. From fifth on the grid, anything can happen.

“The first lap is great round here. It’s a fun circuit to drive on and on the first lap, all hell breaks loose, so hopefully we’ll be in a good place for that tomorrow.”

Mark Webber says he expects strong competition from Ferrari in Germany after Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa finished the dry Friday afternoon session in Hockenheim in first and third places.

 The Red Bulls were second and fourth fastest, and on a bad day for McLaren it appeared that the red cars will be RBR’s most likely challengers for the rest of the weekend.

“It wasn’t the easiest day for everybody,” said Webber. “The track conditions were pretty tricky. Also, selecting the right tyres at the right time wasn’t straightforward. But we got some information at the end there. Obviously the track was pretty dry. It was as good as you would hope in those sorts of conditions.

“The car felt pretty good. There’s some work to do tonight, but Ferrari look strong. So yeah, we’ve got some competition this weekend, and I’m looking forward to the race.”

Webber says he’s not worried if the weekend remains wet after experiencing no dramas in the morning session.

“We learned that both wets work OK, the full wet and the intermediate. Obviously the track is drying in different sections, so that makes it a bit more challenging. The tyres behaved themselves in the wet conditions.

“It’s easy to lock your brakes in the braking area, at the big stops – Turn 2, Turn 6, Turn 8, there’s quite a few places where it’s easy to get out of the line, and when you get out of the line you’re going to get out of the track. All of us looked like we took the long route at some stage today.

“I think everyone would like to have a bit more stable conditions, because it gives everyone grey hairs, including engineers, drivers, everyone. Except the fans, they love it! Apart from that, I’m looking forward to it.”

Lewis Hamilton was in an upbeat mood after practice at Hockenheim, despite a heavy crash in the wet morning session.

The damage meant that Hamilton did not get out until the last 10 minutes of the dry afternoon session, but still managed to get seventh place and gain at least some knowledge about the prime tyres and the track.

“It’s been quite an interesting day for me!,” said Hamilton. “The guys have done an incredible job because I damaged the car quite heavily this morning. I was a little bit upset with myself, because when you see the guys work so hard during the week putting the car together then you get there and do only a few laps and you total the car.

“It was very, very slippery. What was actually a relief was when I came back and everyone explained to me how it occurred. I hit the limiter and upshifted and I spun the wheels. Obviously a moment which I tried to correct and didn’t correct it well enough or whatever, and it put me off onto the grass. And I was just a passenger.

“It took all four corners pretty much off. It was a huge, huge amount of work for the guys, and they are just phenomenal. They did such an awesome job. I got back out and I only 10 laps to do. Seven tenths off, and I only ran the prime tyre.

“Generally it felt good to get back in, and it’s good to get back out and overcome the difficulty you had in the morning. We missed the rain which was good, at least I’ve got something to go and work on now. I have a good feel for where the car is and hopefully can make some good set-up changes overnight.”

Hamilton said he’s not worried about not having any experience of the supersoft option tyre.

“It’s not really a setback. I had the choice of going out on the options but I because I hadn’t done any laps this weekend I thought it was only sensible for me to go out on the prime.”

He says that the team is likely to stick with the blown diffuser floor, which was tried by both drivers today.

“I’m very, very fortunate. I damaged the floor they worked so hard to get here this weekend, but we have a spare one. We’re going to continue to use it, and hopefully get some good information on it. Today we got some good information. From that we’ll just continue to work with it and try to improve it.

“It’s definitely not perfect, it’s not something you just put on and drive with the original balance of the car you had before, you have to change the balance a little bit. And also you driving has to change a little bit, because when you get on the power you should have a lot more downforce. It’s how you use it, I guess. We’ve got to work on that.

“For me it feels very similar to what it did at Silverstone. The corner entries maybe seem to be a little better, but it’s a completely different track, much slower speed. But it’s not bad. Hopefully if we keep working in it will be even better later.

Jenson Button admits he has to do better in qualifying is he is to maintain a challenge for the title this year.

Jenson has been scoring points regularly, but has not started ahead of McLaren team mate Lewis Hamilton since the fourth race in China.

“Compared to my team mate I need to qualify better,” said Button. “In Valencia I made a mistake, completely my fault. In the last race, I struggled with the set-up, because the car was oversteery. I took a lot of front wing out of the car and I just lost downforce for qualifying, that was the basic issue.

“I’m not putting too much pressure on myself. I’m pretty confident that if I start far back I can have a good race, but I want to start at the front and make my life a bit easier. It’s nothing to get too worked up about, it’s about fine tuning the set-up on Friday and Saturday and making sure the car is to my liking when we go into qualifying.

“Compared to the Red Bulls you would say that we do need a bit more performance in qualifying. That is a team effort, but I also have to work on myself, with the engineers, in making sure I get a set-up that I’m happy with going into qualifying. There are two parts to it, really. But this blown diffuser, if it works this weekend, will be competitive, and we can really challenge the Red Bulls.”

Button acknowledges that McLaren cannot rely on bad luck for RBR proving a helping hand: “We have to be challenging for victories every race we go to now. We can’t just be hoping that we do a better job on the race weekend.”

Lewis Hamilton admits he wanted to keep McLaren’s new diffuser on the car after practice at Silverstone, but says he’s happy that the team decided to take the conservative route and take it off.

After running the update kit on the Friday McLaren went back to a standard spec, but the team will run the new parts again in Germany tomorrow before taking a final decision on the rest of the weekend.

After a change of mind this week both cars will run the new floor and will be in identical spec, although Hamilton’s car will run with extra sensors at the start of practice. He’s confident that it will represent a useful improvement.

“For me when I put it on I felt something pretty cool,” said Hamilton on Thursday. “I’m just excited every time you get a new component and you feel the benefit. I felt some of the improvements there, but I was losing in other places, and it actually balanced itself out, and would probably be a little bit slower.

“So it was a good move by the team. At the height of the moment you want to take a risk, ‘Let’s keep it,’ and then you think about the championship, and [it’s] ‘You know what, it’s a good point, we should take a step back.’

“I think we’re confident that we’ve made another step forward in understanding it and trying to improve it and trying to make it work better than it was then. But we still plan on running sensors and that kind of thing to fully understand it. I’m sure it’s still not optimised. So we’ll keep on working with it, and I’m sure the other teams have to do the same thing. We don’t expect this weekend for it to be bang on, perfect. If it is then fantastic, but it’s unlikely.”

Hamilton said he hopes that the weather allows the team some dry running.

“For us of course it’s important in terms of our development if we want to get the most out and understand the most from the tests. It would be great if it were dry, because you can’t really test things in the wet.

“That’s why if you have a wet test day in Jerez you don’t really do anything, it’s difficult to get good readings because the grip is so low. So we have to wait and see. If it stays wet all weekend, you never know, we might end up having to do our testing at the next race.”