Adam Cooper F1

Jenson Button admits that he’s surprised just how fast Red Bull was in qualifying in Spain relative to the opposition.

Mark Webber was 0.9s ahead of third qualifier Lewis Hamilton, and 1s in front of Button himself, who starts fifth. Nevertheless Jenson says he’s happy with the progress McLaren has made since the last race.

“We’ve done a very good job this weekend I think,” said the World Champion. “Yesterday we struggled a bit with the balance, but we’ve got the best out of the package we have today. There’s still more that we would like, and we’re still working very, very hard for improvements. There are still some areas where we are obviously losing. I think after this weekend when we head to Monaco it’s a very different race, and hopefully we can be closer to the Red Bulls and maybe challenge them.

“But I am a little bit surprised at how quick they are. It does mean that we have to go away and look at the areas and hopefully improve as quick as possible. Monaco’s next, and then we’ve got some other circuits where it’s very important to have good aero.”

Button admitted that it was a little confusing that McLaren was much closer to the Red Bull pace on the harder tyres used earlier in qualifying.

“I think when you have a car like Red Bull have, it’s very easy to get the best out of the tyres. I think our pace on the harder tyre, we were closer to them, but were they just sandbagging? They’ve got so much pace on us that maybe they were hanging back, maybe they didn’t have the revs turned up in Q1, I don’t know.

“But they are very quick on both tyres, I don’t think it matters whether it’s hard or soft, they’re quick. In high speed corners they’ve been strong, but they’re also very strong on corner exits, have very good traction. A lot of it is also because they can carry the speed through corners, they have a stable rear end. They’re in a very good position.”

Ferrari has been fined $20,000 by the FIA for an ‘unsafe release’ after Fernando Alonso pulled into the pitlane in front of Nico Rosberg during qualifying in Barcelona.

Rosberg was forced to take avoiding action and branded the incident as ‘dangerous.’

Before the penalty was announced Alonso himself played down the incident: “Hopefully they will take into consideration that there was no accident, no touch, no performance gain.”

Nico Rosberg has accused Fernando Alonso of making a dangerous move into the Barcelona pit lane during qualifying.

Alonso pulled out of his garage during the session without being aware that the Mercedes was coming, forcing the Rosberg to take avoiding action.

“That was dangerous, because with the people standing on the pit wall, if some parts start flying and things like that…,” said Rosberg. “It would have been an accident, I nearly had to drive into the wall, so they must be penalised for that.”

Alonso played down the incident: “Hopefully they will take into consideration that there was no accident, no touch, no performance gain.”

Meanwhile Rosberg was hugely disappointed to finish the session in eighth, two places behind team mate Michael Schumacher.

“I really struggled the whole weekend, really difficult to drive, especially with the understeer in the middle of the corner everywhere. I don’t like understeer, that’s for sure, and I think Michael can probably handle it better and so it’s just been difficult.

“In the end I’m one tenth off him, which is acceptable I guess, assuming that he’s done a pretty good job this weekend. But still it’s not where I wanted to be, I wanted to attack Red Bull this weekend, and I’m just nowhere.”

Michelin is said to have dropped its proposed price for a supply of F1 tyres for 2011 in a bid to convince the teams and the FIA that it is the most logical candidate.

Sources suggest that the original figure of €5m per team for a season has been dramatically reduced to just €1.5m. That is far more acceptable to the smaller teams, who this year – like everyone else – have been getting Bridgestones for free.

If as planned there are 13 teams next year, that figure would give Michelin a handy €19.5m with which to kick start its programme.

The battle for the tyre contract has become more complicated since Pirelli joined Cooper Avon and Michelin in the bid process. Michelin’s trump card is its relatively recent experience of F1, albeit with grooved tyres rather than slicks. McLaren and Mercedes are among those pushing for the French manufacturer.

Michelin had been asking for a move to 18ins rims, but the teams want the change delayed until 2013. Then it can be a part of a major new rules package, which will include a new turbo engine. Teams say it is already too late to add a change of tyre sizes to 2011 car designs.

“I think we understand that the tyre companies are very keen on a larger wheel because it brings a better efficiency of tyre,” said Ross Brawn. “We’re welcoming that, but it’s just a question of phasing it in, and I think that if there was an 18 inch rim, it’s very late at the moment and I think it would give a lot of the teams severe challenges and severe problems to get ready in time, because it’s not just having a bigger wheel, an 18 inch tyre behaves differently and you would need to develop the suspension systems and the other things you would need for it.”

One of the problems is that everything inside the wheel – brakes, uprights etc – would in theory have to be adapted to fill the much larger space. The only alternative would be for the FIA to force teams to stick to a ‘virtual’ 13ins area inside the larger rim, at least for a season or two.

Ferrari’s Also Costa explained: “If you have 18 inch wheels and you are allowed to use all the space inside the rim for your brake system, for your cooling, for your aerodynamic development of the corner, as Ross mentioned, it would be a very, very big programme. Starting in May or June is very, very late, also for all the companies that make brake components because they have to study new calipers, new discs and for the team with completely new suspensions it would be a big programme.

“Everyone in the FOTA group would like to have a more phased-in programme. Even if we had to start with the 18 inch rims, at least the inside of the rim in terms of mechanical parts and braking system should be kept similar to this year and then evolve over the next few years.”

One other key issue concerns how the early testing will be done, and there are suggestions that Toyota could provide a contemporary car for that purpose, so that no current team would be favoured.

To further complicate the transition to a new manufacturer, tyre warmers will be banned from next year.

FIA race director Charlie Whiting has told the drivers that he wasn’t happy with Sebastian Vettel’s move towards Lewis Hamilton in the Shanghai pitlane.

As the pair headed towards the pit exit Vettel veered towards the McLaren driver, who was on the inside, and Hamilton in return jinked towards the RBR in an attempt to hold his ground.

After the race both drivers received a reprimand from the FIA stewards, but sources say that Whiting made it clear in Friday night’s drivers briefing in Spain that he wasn’t happy with what Vettel had done, and indicated that a repeat would earn a more serious punishment than a reprimand.

The FIA has no problem with the principle of side-by-side drag race out of the pit lane, if the track layout allows it and the drivers give each other space.

Meanwhile in the same meeting Whiting confirmed that the FIA is not keen to mess with the qualifying format for Monaco, after drivers expressed fears that the six slower cars and a field of 24 would be lead to problems.  The big problem for the quicker cars is that once a driver is on his hot lap, he is not obliged to move over or let another car past.

Fernando Alonso isn’t getting too excited about finishing Friday in Spain in fourth place, as he believes that the Red Bulls will be impossible to beat in normal circumstances this weekend.

Alonso was 0.8s off Sebastian Vettel, but less than a 0.1s shy of third placed Michael Schumacher. He said he was happy with the update package on the Ferrari, but insists it will take some luck for the RBR qualifying steamroller to be stopped.

“It’s just a day to check everything’s working in the car,” said Alonso after the session. “At the end I’m happy with the evolution, I’m happy with the updates in the car. But tomorrow we’ll see how the developments work and how close we can be to the Red Bulls.

“Regarding what they showed today in the second practice, they were very, very quick. I think it will be very difficult for all of us to arrive to those times. But we see some times good some good Fridays for some people, and then on Saturday, they’re struggling a little bit more.

“So fingers crossed, we can find something on our cars to be close to them, and hopefully they can do a mistake somewhere in the set-up or whatever, and we can close the gap. But in normal conditions we know it’s going to be difficult to beat them this weekend.”

Alonso admitted that the team had put more focus on running lighter fuel loads than it would normally do on a Friday.

“We did change the approach for the Grand Prix. We saw in the first races maybe we didn’t maximise the potential of the car in qualifying, so we divided the programme this afternoon, in half of the session doing race simulation and preparing the car for the race, and the other half of the session trying to be close to the qualifying performance.

“Hopefully overall we can learn some things, and tonight prepare the car for the race and for qualifying, while maybe at some other races maybe we concentrated too much on the race.”

Michael Schumacher was in upbeat mood after outpacing team mate Nico Rosberg in both practice sessions in Spain on Friday.

Schumacher was much happier with the revised Mercedes, and says that the car is now doing what he wants. He made it clear that his assertion that China was a glitch has been confirmed.

“It’s certainly feeling a lot more a race car into my hands than at least in China. China we obviously haven’t fully understood exactly, but nevertheless I’m feeling comfortable in the car. That’s what I’m asking to do, if we can work very well with my engineers, my team. Obviously the improvement to the car certainly helps.

“It’s not about confidence, it’s simply that the car goes where I want it to go and I don’t have to wait too long to go to this point!”

Despite his upbeat mood Michael did not want to be drawn on whether his season would now turn around.

“I don’t think we want to get into any kind of detail analysis now. The clear trend is there. We have improved certainly, I have more ability to work the car to my needs, that’s what it is, that’s what I look for. The team has reacted very good, and now we look forward to make the best out of this.”

Curiously Michael went on to say that confidence was an issue.

“The matter of fact is with the car we have right now, we certainly have the ability to work it a lot more in directions that I’m looking for. That simple was not possible before. So I’m feeling a lot more confident in what the car is doing to me. Again it sort of confirmed that China, whatever glitch it was, but something didn’t work out for whatever reason, and that works back to a more normal situation.”

He added that he is working well with Rosberg: “Absolutely. I think we actually work very well together, because we have similar interests. Not driving style, but at least a similar development direction, and priorities that we set. In this respect it is very good working with Nico, I have to say. He’s very clear, he’s very how do you say, strong in his opinion. It helps all of us to work with a very good team mate.”

Ferrari has done an about turn on its ‘barcode’ livery and replaced it with a plain red rectangle from today.

Marlboro is the only cigarette brand with an ongoing involvement in F1 via a longstanding commercial arrangement between Philip Morris and the team, and while the full logo has not appeared for some time, the Italian cars have run with the barcode design in the place where the Marlboro name used to appear.

That led to some controversy in the media this week, to which Luca di Montezemolo responded by claiming that the design was nothing to do with the cigarette brand, despite the fact that various versions of it had been used in place of full branding by Ferrari and McLaren for over two decades.

The team announced today that the barcode has now gone, while still denying – to the bemusement of any sane observers – that it had any connection with Marlboro…

The statement read: “Together with Philip Morris International we have decided to modify the livery of our cars starting with the Barcelona Grand Prix.

“This decision was taken in order to remove all speculation concerning the so-called “bar code” which was never intended to be a reference to a tobacco brand.

“By this we want to put an end to this ridiculous story and concentrate on more important things than on such groundless allegations.”

Michael Schumacher says he was angry with himself after a below par performance in China, and insists that the race was just a blip after he’d made upward progress since the start of the season.

Mercedes is pinning its hopes on major revisions to the package for this weekend, and Schumacher is expecting to be more comfortable with the car.

When he met the media in Spain on Thursday afternoon the seven-times World Champion inevitably faced a lot of questions about his form.

“Naturally the joy is higher if you win races, no doubt,” said Schumacher. “And China – no worries – I was very disappointed, and I was angry at myself. But things will be different.

“There was a trend, and if you look at this, except China, things were going in the right direction. Without in the final moment, like in Malaysia, [being able] to actually position ourselves. But then there were circumstances being part of this. Nevertheless it’s only four races that we have done. So let’s see.

Asked whether he would have no excuses now that the car has been modified, Schumacher said: “I’m sure there are always excuses you can find if you want to. But the matter of fact is that some might see now I have the car and now I have to perform and now it should be and if not and blah, blah, blah.

“I’m less thinking this way, because it’s going to be the first time we worked with this car, and only after we’ll understand what is the positive and what is the negative about it. Again I just sort of feel very positive that I will follow the trend after Malaysia, and not what happened in China.”

Michael also acknowledged that while he has always had talented rivals, there are more competitive cars around today..

“It’s certainly a very high level of talent, but I don’t think it’s higher. There was Fernando at the time, and Mika Hakkinen and so on, I think they were all at this level. What you do now have is you have more cars on an even playing field, and you have the good drivers that are around in those cars. So you have a higher level of competition.”

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T Healy has put a stop to plans for a Grand Prix in Libery State Park, just a day after they became public.

The Jersey Journal reported today that Healey had in effect responded to pressure from interests who wanted to protect the park, which is regarded as an important natural asset.

Healey commented: “After a review of the draft proposal prepared by the City’s Tourism Office, I have come to the same conclusion that this type of event is not suited for Liberty State Park.

“While we work to attract national and international events to our city, we must ensure that they are appropriate and will have the least impact upon the quality of life of our residents and our community.”

Plans for the race had been pursued by Destination Jersey City, a non profit operated by the city’s Economic Development Corporation. The race was to be held from 2012.

Project opponent Sam Pesin, president of Friends of Liberty State Park, said: “Mayor Healy did reach out to me yesterday and we had a very constructive conversation. Instead of a negative wasteful controversy, we can all focus on working together on positive efforts to benefit Jersey City and Liberty State Park.”

It’s not yet clear how seriously Bernie Ecclestone took the Jersey City project, or whether he has other credible candidates in the US to pursue.