Adam Cooper F1

Robert Kubica expects Bridgestone’s tyre choice and the threat of rain to make the German GP weekend unpredictable.

Friday’s practice is almost certain to be wet, and there’s a chance of rain on Saturday, which means that teams could struggling to get much knowledge of the supersoft and hard tyres.

“I think it will be tricky, and definitely the weather can have a big influence,” said Kubica on Thursday in Hockenheim. “Even if it’s dry, it depends on the temperature, on the track conditions, which will have a big influence especially on the soft tyre, but also on the hard tyre. So it looks like a tricky weekend from the tyre point of view.

“For racing it might be something different, it might be difficult. To be honest it’s difficult to say what will happen and how big an influence it will have on the show.”

Kubica says a lack of dry running could help or hinder particular drivers.

“It can work in both ways, it can work in a good direction for you, a benefit, or a disadvantage, depending on overall car performance and how you set-up your car. There were some races where we started Friday very strong, there were some weekends where we started Friday and we were struggling, with not an ideal set-up or balance of the car.

“Of course this will make quite a big [influence] if for example the first time we put dry tyres will be Sunday at the start of the race. This will make for sure quite difficult life, and it will be difficult to predict what you need from the car and stuff like this. So it looks like a pretty interesting weekend from a tyre point of view and weather points of view.”

Kubica says it’s very hard to judge how the form book will look this weekend, not least because teams are now honing their recent developments.

“It’s very difficult to predict. In Silverstone our gap was quite big compared to the top cars, and we struggled much more in qualifying. We’ll have to see. A lot of people are having F-Ducts and blown floors, so it’s getting quite a difficult task for us.

“A lot of teams are getting on top of the F-Duct, so now the F-Duct is working properly, so again it will be I think quite a difficult weekend from the performance point of view. As I said before it’s difficult to judge and get a proper idea.”

Jacques Villeneuve has made his first proper comment on his plans to set up an F1 team.

On Monday he refused to elaborate to this writer, but yesterday night he put out a short statement on his website, apparently in response to suggestions that Libyan Saadi Gaddafi was involved in the project.

The statement read: “There are a number of rumours circulating at the moment and I wanted to clarify a few things before this gets out of hand.

“The team will be a joint venture with Durango, and based out of Italy. To be clear, right now all the money comes from corporate sponsorship, and not personal investors.”

Intriguingly sometime soccer player Gaddafi has some connections with Tamoil, which is part owned by the Libyan Investment Authority. The company used to back Juventus and has been involved with motor sport in the past.

Villeneuve has his hands full this week as he is competing in the Brickyard 400.

The proposed Villeneuve Racing F1 project is actually a partnership with former GP2 team Durango.

The Italian outfit announced its intention to enter some months ago, amid scepticism reflecting the fact that having failed to find enough money to stay afloat in GP2, it seemed an unlikely candidate for an F1 entry.

However the addition to the mix of Villeneuve and his manager Rick Gorne – one of the founders of BAR – has clearly made it a more interesting proposition.

“Jacques is an energetic and willing guy,” Durango team boss Ivone Pinton told website 422race. “I really hope together we will find a place. For Durango, to work with him is an honour and a privilege: we are talking about the son of a myth and a former World Champion. Even if I know him since he was 16. And I always said that, whenever he’s OK, he’s a great driver, who won in every series.”

Pinto did not reveal anything about potential technical partners, although it’s worth noting that having ended its deal with HRT, Dallara could be available. Durango is also known to have talked to Toyota.

 “We still don’t know where the car would be built, but the home of the team will be ours, in Italy.”

Regarding Villeneuve’s role, Pinton said: “Together with being driver, I’m sure he will actively contribute to the company. I think he’s preparing himself the job to do after he quits driving.”

Bruno Senna will be back in the HRT at German GP, but Sakon Yamamoto will be in the other car as Karun Chandhok has been asked to step down.

While Senna’s absence at Silverstone is believed to be the result of a form of disciplinary action by team boss Colin Kolles, Chandhok’s absence can only be explained by financial necessity. It’s thought that his deal is contingent on sponsorship, whereas Senna’s is not.

Yamamoto finished right behind Chandhok at Silverstone, although the Indian driver had suffered bodywork damage early on.

An HRT statement said: “After Sakon Yamamoto gave a very positive performance in Silverstone, the team has decided to give the Japanese driver another opportunity to drive the car alongside Bruno Senna. Karun Chandhok is still part of the Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team family and is likely to be in the car at some later races this season.”

There was no further comment from Kolles on the driver situation.

Yamamoto said: “I have a lot of good memories of the circuit in Hockenheim. I like the track layout with the passing point at the end of the long straight and also the Stadium sector, which is very challenging. There is always a nice atmosphere with the spectators at the grandstands and I am always looking forward to come back to Hockenheim.

“Compared to Silverstone, I think we are more competitive and we can achieve a good result again. The last race weekend was very exciting for me. Now, the team has given me another chance to race on Sunday and I will do my best to prove that it was the right decision.”

Chandhok will be spectating at the Brands Hatch F2 event this weekend.

Combs and Hellmund (far right) were part of the Austin delegation

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs – in effect the state’s chief financial officer – has headed off potential criticism of the US GP in Austin by insisting that the deal is already done.

Combs has committed the state to a $25m a year payment from the Texas Special Events Fund. That is designed to cover expenses related to major events, and is believed to in essence represent the annual fee paid to host the race. The state is not involved in the actual development of the circuit, but local media has suggested that not all taxpayers will be supportive.

“The legislation is already passed, it’s a done deal,” Combs told this blog. “I think they’re going to be very excited.”

Combs was at Silverstone last weekend with a group from Texas that included promoter Tavo Hellmund and other key figures in the project. It was her first visit to a Grand Prix, and from a base at Bernie Ecclestone’s motorhome the Austin delegation met a number of key F1 figures.

“It’s very, very exciting,” she said of the event. “It has lots of technology, which I found particularly interesting, and it’s a real crowd pleaser, a real show. We’re now more excited. With the incredible impact that this has on England, we hope to have a similar impact on the United States.”

She has no doubts about what a race can achieve: “It’s going to put Texas on the international and global map, it’s going to put Austin on the international and global map, and it will brand Texas as the home of cars.”

The race was also Hellmund’s first visit to a race since he became a promoter.

“I think there’s a lot of excitement,” he told me. “People are looking forward to coming to Austin, and it’s been great. I was going to try to go to Montreal, but had a scheduling conflict. I needed to bring some of my partners over and it just coincided that the Comptroller was going to make a visit to a Grand Prix as well just to see the size and the scope and everything, so the timing was perfect.

“There’s about 12 people here. Two or three of them are partners of mine. We’ve got some of our legal team, and a couple of our communications people. I needed for them to get to know the FOM system, see how things run are run at a Grand Prix.”

Hellmund insists that his plans are moving ahead: “We’re almost done with the design stuff. We’ve changed a few things based on the site, and the biggest thing is trying to finish the proper plan for the FIA Circuit Commission. I believe that’s in September. The Tilke people have been in Austin pretty much non stop and have met with our architects and our contractors. We’re hammer down.”

Jose Maria Lopez says that US F1 management didn’t tell him the truth and admits that his short involvement with the failed team was ’embarrassing.’

The Argentine driver was announced by the team in January after co-founder Peter Windsor met the country’s president. Days later it became apparent that the project was in serious trouble.

Lopez went to the British GP with his manager Victor Rosso in attempt to find an opportunity for nxet season.

“At the time I felt terrible,” Lopez told this blog. “I was lucky to have the opportunity, but the way that everything went put me and the people working with me in an embarrassing situation. They met the president, they promised us everything. All the time we were asking if they will make it, all the time they would say no problem we’re going to make it.

“They said we were going to be in the first race, and they didn’t make it all. It was disappointed because while I didn’t spend too much time with the team, I built a little bit of a relationship with everybody there.”

Lopez said it wasn’t year clear if he will see the money that was already paid.

“I don’t know, there are people working on that. I think at the end of the day they could have told us the truth before. They knew that they were not going to make it, but they kept saying to us they could do it, and we trusted them. They didn’t tell us the truth.”

Lopez, who used to be a Renault F1 test driver, hopes to find an F1 seat for next year.

“We still have some support, there are still a lot of people who want me to race in F1. Today we don’t have too many things. We keep trying because it helped us last year, even if we didn’t make it we managed to have a lot of contact with people, with a lot of teams.

“Some teams know we are around, and we have people who want to do F1. So we’ll see. There’s nothing today that we can say it’s 50 or 80 or 90%.”

Lotus Racing boss Tony Fernandes is in the process of acquiring the rights for the traditional Team Lotus name – opening up the possibility for a formal renaming of the outfit for next season.

Team Lotus was bought by former F3000 driver David Hunt at the end of 1994, but plans to move it on quickly as a going concern failed to come to fruition and the operation folded. The name was briefly allied to Pacific GP in 1995, and Hunt and two partners have held on to it ever since.

When Fernandes started his F1 project this time last year he had to use the Lotus Racing name, but he has been in contact with Hunt recently, and a deal is finally in the pipeline.

The return of the Team Lotus name will in effect mean that there are no loose ends and provide a formal link not just with the past but also with Classic Team Lotus, the historic car operation run by Colin Chapman’s son Clive.

Ferrari boss Stefano Domenicali remains optimistic despite a nightmare weekend at Silverstone as Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa finished 14^th and 15^th.

Both men suffered punctures from collisions and Alonso received a drive through penalty for gaining an advantage when he passed Robert Kubica, but it was magnified when he was forced to wait to take it until after a safety car period had bunched up the field.

“The situation was Fernando was attacking Robert, because he had potentially much more speed in the car,” said Domenicali. “He tried to be aggressive and overtake, and we complain that the drivers are not aggressive and complain about the lack of overtaking. We spoke to race control on the radio to check the position.

“As soon as we received the information that let’s say, in the opinion of the stewards Fernando should hand back the position to Robert, he was already very far behind, and Robert was really slowing down, because he had a problem.”

While getting a penalty when the car overtaken had retired may seem a little strange, the stewards clearly also considered the time Alonso gained relative to other cars he was racing, although Ferrari is not convinced by that argument: “It’s a matter of gaining an advantage or not, and compared to whom, because that’s the point of discussion.”

The bottom line is that the penalty proved to be a lot more damaging than even the FIA had suspected.

“For sure we feel that it’s very harsh. It’s strange that these things appear when everything is going in the wrong direction. At this moment we have to stay cool, we have to react with the facts and it is positive to see that the cars have done a good step in performance.

“I’m sure that after these bad moments the luck will come back, and maybe we’ll move toward the others. We just need to believe in ourselves, we believe in the people that work in Maranello, we believe in our drivers. As I said, better times will come.

“We are really on the right side because we are going up with the performance of the car, so this is the best sign that we can take from this weekend, because really it was very bad for us today. The sun of a very good result is there in the middle of the clouds, this period of a difficult situation and also very unlucky scenarios will pass, I’m sure. We just need to stay strong and try not to be too emotional.”

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says that championship order was the determing factor that led to Sebastian Vettel getting the only new RB6 wing today.

The move has caused a huge amount of controversy as it has been widely perceived as reflecting support for Vettel, but Horner denies that charge.

“It’s very simple,” he told this blog. “If you have two components and you lose one, one into two doesn’t go. We faced a situation today where we’ve had one component, there’s been a request from both sides of the garage for it, and a decision has to be made. You have to apply a logic to it, and that logic was we look at the championship, we look at P3, and that was what the decision was based on.

“Also, performance is unquantified. Adrian was particularly keen to run that wing this weekend to learn about it, and from a team perspective, it is right to run that wing. So therefore it has to go on one driver’s car. And whichever car it went on, you’re going to have one aggrieved driver. So to do it fairly, or to look at it objectively and rationally, the most logical thing is to say, OK championship order.

“If Sebastian had crashed the car, and damaged the front wing, it would have been a completely different scenario, because it would have been his mistake.”

Perhaps next time the choice should be made by an octopus…

For the full interview see: http://formula-one.speedtv.com/article/cooper-great-day-for-red-bull-tarnished/

Jenson Button admits he’s disappointed to have endured a disastrous qualifying session in front of his home fans at Silverstone.

The World Champion will start 14^th, 10 places behind team mate Lewis Hamilton, having found the car “undriveable” during qualifying.

“I am very disappointed,” said Button. “I wanted to have a good day here in front of the home crowd, and I love driving round here, so it’s frustrating to be so far back. This morning we obviously had a lot of work on, because everything changed from Friday to Saturday with the car.

“But I thought we went through the programme very well with both cars, and I was very happy with the balance. We didn’t actually change anything going into qualifying, because I was happy with the balance.

“As soon as I got into qualifying I just had very low rear grip. I had to dial out a lot of front end, which means taking a lot of front wing out of the car, locking up the diff. And I don’t know where the rear grip went.

“To me it felt I was taking front end out of the car to balance the car, but in truth it felt like I had less downforce than I had this morning. I don’t know why that is, maybe the conditions changed that much. It’s very sad, because I felt confident this morning, and happy with the car.”

Button said he had no regrets about the team’s decision to go back to the old spec, despite the obvious disruption that it caused.

“No, I think it’s the right decision. We had an update package, and in some ways it was positive, and in other ways it needs more work. We ran with the new wing and some other parts which are definitely a benefit. I think the blown diffuser needs a little bit of work, as we’ve found. We understand how it’s working, we have to spend a bit more time with that before we put it on the car for a race.”