Tag Archives: F1

September 18, 2015 · 11:31 am

Pirelli and FIA agree to new tyre pressure checking procedures

Pirelli and the FIA have agreed to new procedures for tyre pressure checks in order to avoid the confusion that followed the Italian GP.

In Monza the FIA undertook last minute checks on the four top cars only for it to emerge that there was a lack of clarity over exactly when Pirelli measured starting pressure. The Monza stewards called for new procedures to be agreed, and that led to a meeting between Charlie Whiting and Pirelli’s Mario Isola in Singapore.

In essence they have agreed that during practice and qualifying the starting pressure will be that measured when tyres are first fitted to the car.

For the tyres used at the start of the race the pressure can be measured at any time after the five minute signal on the grid – which means that teams will have to allow for a possible pressure drop after they remove the blankets on the grid.

Crucially teams will be allowed to adjust the pressures if an anomaly is found.

The FIA has now sent the teams a Technical Directive which notes: “We have been informed by Pirelli that their tyres may only be operated safely if the prescriptions set out in their Preview document at each Event are strictly followed.”

In explaining the new procedures, the FIA noted: “During all practice sessions, qualifying and race, excluding the set used to start the race, it will be the pressure measured immediately after the set of tyres in question is fitted to the car.

“The race start set will be measured at any time after the five minutes signal.”

The FIA adds that in all cases: “When measured, the pressure must be equal to or higher than the minimum set out in the Preview. If the pressure is below the minimum requirement teams will be given the opportunity to adjust it.

“Measurements may be taken from any corner of the car.

“Measurements must be made with a gauge calibrated at or by Pirelli, and subsequently sealed by the FIA.

“After the checks have been carried out, and any necessary adjustment made in the presence of a scrutineers, no further adjustments may be made.”

With regard to blanket temperatures the FIA has confirmed that checks will be made on the tread and the sidewall, and that “the temperature must be equal to or lower than the maximum set out in the Preview.”

There is no change to checking camber limits.

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September 17, 2015 · 10:22 am

Manor race drive came as a surprise, says Rossi

Alexander Rossi admits that his race drive with Manor F1 came as a surprise – and says that the deal was put together so quickly that he only booked his flight to Singapore two days ago.

Rossi, who was a Manor reserve driver last year, will contest five races that don’t clash with GP2 commitments.

“I was on a plane Tuesday evening, and I booked the flight Tuesday morning,” he said today. “It was quite a last minute thing. The discussions started taking place shortly after Monza. Obviously I’ve had quite a bit of history with this team, in ’14, so we’ve always had good communication over the beginning of this year. But I wasn’t expecting 2015 to be a year where I was racing an F1 car.

“My GP2 season is going very well and I feel very committed to Racing Engineering in that programme, and I’m very pleased that they kind of opened their doors and allowed me to do this programme, and at the same time a big thank you to Manor. Obviously it’s difficult for them to have me in and then not in for a couple of races. It took work on both sides, and I’m very pleased and thankful that we were able to do it.”

Inevitably his appointment at Manor has led to speculation that he will be in a stronger position with regard to a future drive with Haas, even if it may already be too late for 2016.

“I think the big thing that I’ve been missing for the past three years in my F1 career is actually racing. We’ve been close quite a few times. It’s very surreal now that it’s about to happen. This is a major step in kind of really firmly putting myself on the F1 map and the radar, and I’m just focussing on doing a really good job in these five races, and showing that I am capable of being in F1 and doing a good job.

“My goal is to race full-time in F1, in whatever situation that is, in whatever situation that may present itself I’m going to jump at that with open arms. What this may lead to, I don’t know. I’m hopeful that doing a good job in these five races will prove that belong here, and that I’m capable of doing it just as much as anyone else.”

Regarding his target for the weekend he said: “I think it’s going to be a moving target. I haven’t been in the car since Spa, of ’14, so I’ll just kind of being reacclimatising. But it’s not that much different to GP2, so I’m hoping to be on the pace quite quickly.

“It’s be a learning experience, I think. You have to appreciate that you’re here to do a job, but at the end of the day you’re kind of only racing one other car, and you have to respect the others on track, so that will be something that I’ll need to be very aware of. Through Friday and Saturday I’ll get quite used to that, so I don’t see it really being an issue.”

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September 14, 2015 · 5:54 pm

Mercedes customer teams waiting for upgrade news

The three Mercedes customer F1 teams are still waiting to see when they will be offered the upgraded engine used by Lewis Hamilton to win the Italian GP.

Mercedes utilised all seven of its 2015 development tokens on the engine, which is actually a 2016 project that it opted to bring forward into this season.

The logistical complication is that it’s Mercedes policy to treat all teams equally, so Brixworth would in theory have to make six units available on the same race weekend for the customers, as well as having enough to service the needs of Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

In addition the teams would have to have access to an upgraded fuel spec in order to take full advantage of the changes.

The other issue is that the three teams would have to fit the new engine into their planned usage schedules, without it becoming an extra change.

“We haven’t been promised anything at this point,” Force India’s Bob Fernley told this writer. “It’s a Mercedes decision really. The original decision was this wouldn’t come out until 2016, the fact that it’s come out now, they may want to extend it to the customer teams.

“It depends what the directive is from Mercedes. I think the answer is to find out from Mercedes what they want to do, and then we’ll adjust our programme. It just depends where are are in the schedules. We lost an engine with Nico [Hulkenberg], so he’s a bit out of synch, but then Nico missed the race in Spa. So we need to look at the whole picture of where we are with engines.”

Meanwhile Claire Williams said that the Monza performance gave her confidence that her team would eventually get a boost in its fight with Ferrari.

“It does, towards the end of the year,” she told this writer. There’s a development plan in place, so we’re having that conversation.”

Rob Smedley added: “It certainly looked as though it has a bit of pace on it, so we’d love that in our car as soon as we can get it.”

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September 13, 2015 · 4:12 pm

Rob Smedley: Monza had to be clean weekend for Williams

Rob Smedley says that it was important for the Williams F1 team to enjoy a troublefree weekend in Italy, where Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas finished third and fourth.

Smedley adds that the key was to bring home the maximum available points given the pace of the car, and not make any mistakes by being too ambitious.

The Grove outfit has had a lot of frustration in recent months, most notably in Spa, where Bottas was fitted with set of mismatched tyres.

“The message to the team at the start of the weekend was that we had to have a clean weekend,” Smedley told this writer. “And if the car was the third quickest car, then we had to finish fifth and sixth. Other people dropped off for different reasons, reliability or starts, which is the two cars we got ahead of.

“But we didn’t drop the ball, and we just went through trying to have the most calm and easy weekend that we could, and getting the most out of the car rather than reaching for the moon and falling way behind. We’re reasonably pleased with it.”

At Monza Nico Rosberg got ahead of both Williams drivers by pitting early, and Smedley admits that Massa did not have a perfect pit stop.

“We reacted immediately with Felipe, and the pit stop was slow. We took a long time to gun the wheels off. Without that there’s a fair chance that we could have come out in front, we lost more than a second in the pit stop compared with what we do in practice.

“Whether that was enough to hold Nico off for the rest of the race I’m not sure, barring what happened with his engine, obviously. With Valtteri it was then a case that we’d sit it out for a little bit and make sure that he was rock solid at the end. That’s where we went with that one.”

Smedley says that there were no team orders in the closing laps, when the cars ran close together: “They were absolutely free to race. The only message that they got from the pit wall, and Pat [Symonds] and I discussed it up on the pit wall, was you need to give a little bit more room as it’s your team mate. But apart from that, get on and race.”

Deputy team principal Claire Williams agreed that the weekend could not have turned out any better.

“I’m really pleased with that,” she told this writer. “They made really good starts to get around Raikkonen’s car at the beginning, and just drove a really solid race. The pit stop guys did what they needed to do. We obviously benefited from Rosberg, it was unfortunate for him to retire so late, but Felipe got a lovely podium.

“That’s what we wanted, just a straightforward, easy race with with no issues, and we got that, and we got some great points, which we needed to do. It was about points for us, to try and close the gap to Ferrari, but more importantly extend the gap to Red Bull.”

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September 11, 2015 · 2:43 pm

Title is not won yet, says Mercedes boss Zetsche

Daimler and Mercedes boss Dr Dieter Zetsche has cautioned that it’s too early to consider Lewis Hamilton as a shoe-in for the World Championship, despite the Briton’s healthy lead.

After Monza Hamilton heads team mate Nico Rosberg by 53 points, or more than two race wins, while Sebastian Vettel is now 74 points adrift of the leader.

“We saw with Nico [in Italy] how fast you can lose a significant amount of points which you already calculated in,” Dr Zetsche this writer. “So let’s wait until the mathematics tell us where we are.”

Meanwhile Zetsche said that his satisfaction at Mercedes winning on Ferrari’s home ground in Italy was tempered by Rosberg’s engine failure.

“Of course, it was a very exciting race. At the same time we are very unhappy for Nico who had bad luck throughout the weekend. But that’s racing. It was the sixth race for his engine, and normally nobody’s running six races on an engine.

“Our engines are very, very reliable. He had to push to recover, and all the data showed that the engine was perfect until two laps before the end.”

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September 11, 2015 · 2:11 pm

Force India expects to confirm Perez soon

Force India expects to announce that Sergio Perez is staying for 2016 in the coming days, despite the Mexican and his sponsorship being linked to the Renault/Lotus deal.

The team has already confirmed Nico Hulkenberg for next season, but deputy team principal Bob Fernley says that the delay on Perez is simply because the deal he has to conclude with team boss Vijay Mallya is more complicated than that involving Hulkenberg.

“Vijay is finishing off the discussions with him, and I think by Singapore we should be clear to announce everything,” Fernley told this writer. “One deal is more complex, there are commercial issues involved, whereas the other is a driver contract.”

Fernley insists that driver continuity is good for the team, and says that Hulkenberg’s decision to stay was an indication of his faith in the Silverstone outfit.

“We have two drivers that get on well within the team, they’re pushing each other all the time. Both of them are excellent racers. I’m not sure that we could do better, that’s the key.

“I think that they are both very happy at Force India. Obviously Nico had a choice, and he’s made that choice, and I think it’s the same thing probably with Checo. Nico was out of contract, Checo’s is a renewal.”

Meanwhile Fernley says that the sixth and seventh place finish in Monza was the best the team could expect, given it had the fourth fastest car and there was only one retirement ahead.

“It was optimal for us, and you can’t fault optimal. It was a good race. Nico had some handling issues, he wasn’t happy with the handling of the car through all the race, so he did very well to keep Ericsson behind him for the distance, and he delivered it home. He was uncomfortable with it even when the tyres were new.”

Regarding the next race he said: “Singapore should be good, I don’t see any reason why we can’t fight for the top 10 again. What helps us now is that we’ve got a little bit of a cushion on the points, without worrying too much.”

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September 10, 2015 · 5:30 pm

Daniel Ricciardo: “I think the car has got better and better”

Daniel Ricciardo says his eighth place finish in Italy felt like a podium after engine penalties forced him to start at the back – and the Aussie believes that RBR can challenge for a real one in Singapore.

Ricciardo started on the prime tyre and ran a longer first stint than anyone else, giving himself soft tyres for a sprint to the flag at the end. He relieved Marcus Ericsson of eighth on the last corner.

“It was cool, it was a bit like last year,” said Ricciardo. “We had good pace at the end, and we were able to go longer on the first stint. I think we could have gone longer again, but I think we had to cover Dany [Kvyat] coming out, he pitted a few laps earlier. Anyway, I was happy with the car.

“We know we struggle on the straights, it was always going to be hard to get in the top 10 here with our package, but the chassis itself again I’m really pleased with, it’s handling well. To get in the top eight – I said at the start of the weekend if we can crack the top eight it will be like a podium for us.

“To finish top eight exceeded our expectations, to say the least. I just got Ericsson on the last corner, much to his dismay I guess. My smile got bigger.

“Some other positives, since we’ve had the new start procedures, I don’t know if it’s luck, but both my starts have been pretty awesome. I’ll take that as well as a positive from the weekend.”

Regarding prospects for Singapore he said: “I don’t want to get too excited, but we can all go in there with some confidence. I think the car has got better and better in the last few races, and Singapore will bring our car to life. Hopefully we can challenge Ferrari for a podium.”

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September 8, 2015 · 10:18 am

Red Bull and Toro Rosso yet to decide on using upgraded Renault

Red Bull and Toro Rosso have admitted that there is a chance that they may choose not to race Renault’s upgraded Formula 1 engine when it finally becomes available.

Renault has not yet used any of its 12 tokens, and the long-awaited upgraded D-spec is now not expected to be available before the US GP – leaving just four races in which it could be deployed, with the first invitably compromised by a grid penalty.

In Monza both teams made sufficient engine changes to get all four cars through to the end of the season with the current engine and without further changes, and thus grid penalties. If any of the drivers takes the upgrade, they would have to take an extra penalty in Austin in order to have use of a potentially stronger straightline package, and no more penalties, for the last three races.

RBR’s situation changed when one of Daniel Ricciardo’s new engines suffered a failure in FP3 in Italy, so the Australian is now obliged to make an extra change anyway, and take a penalty. Logic suggests that the team will attempt to postpone that change until Austin and thus give Ricciardo the upgrade for the end of the season races.

However, the decision on whether to stick with the proven old spec or go to the new one will involve weighing the potential increase in performance against any reliability risks associated with the upgrade.

Christian Horner admitted that it could transpire that neither RBR driver will actually use the revised engine.

“It’s a possibility,” he told this writer. “It depends on the value of the update. What you have to calculate is is the increase performance worth the deficit of grid positions?

“I think with Ricciardo he is going to have to take another engine, so theoretically that should be the D-spec if it’s reliable. At the moment I think a lot of work is being done in the background to make it reliable. It’s not a great situation obviously, but it is what it is, and we’ve just got to try and battle on through it.

“It’s beyond frustration, we’ve just got to deal with what we’ve got on a race-by-race basis.”

Meanwhile STR boss Franz Tost agreed that the potential performance increased was the key, and admitted that it could be worth taking the penalty in Austin if that led to a boost over the remaining three races.

“There are always different reasons behind an engine change,” he told this writer. “First of all we need a performance advantage behind it, otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Up to now we don’t have all the information about the D-spec. We will see.

“Of course if the D-spec is much better than the current one, we will take another penalty, because we need to show the best possible performance, and we need to take this advantage. After Austin in Mexico there’s a long straight, and in Sao Paulo there’s a very long straight. We need the best possible engine.

“If you ask me now from my personal opinion, then yes. But this is also a decision from the engineering side, not only my side.”

It could be argued that if after a huge effort Renault finally gets the upgraded engine to the track and it’s not actually used – or is perhaps used only by Ricciardo – it will represent a significant waste of resources. And that could be seen as an uncomfortable parting gift from the two teams…

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September 6, 2015 · 8:09 am

No engine concerns for Hamilton after Mercedes investigation

An overnight investigation by Mercedes has determined that Nico Rosberg’s issue in FP3 at Monza was caused by a coolant leak that contaminated the engine.

The problem forced Rosberg to make a hurried switch back to the older spec engine for aualifying, a move that contributed to him only making fourth spot.

A team spokesman told this writer that it was too early to determine whether Rosberg’s orginal upgraded engine will still be useable at a future event.

The team had been concerned that it would find something that might compromise Lewis Hamilton’s Sunday. However it is confident that there will not be a repeat, and nothing is being changed on the World Champion’s car as a result of the investigation.

The part design that failed has well proven and had been in use for some time, and was thus not associated with the Monza upgrade package.

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September 5, 2015 · 12:05 pm

Pirelli suspects that teams are flouting pressure requirement

The saga of Pirelli’s increased minimum tyre pressure requirements took another twist this morning when the Italian company warned teams that they cannot allow the pressures to drop below the prescribed minimum limit after cars leave the pits.

The minimum tyre pressures are measured by the car’s telemetry as they leave the pitlane, and that information is recorded by the Pirelli engineers who work with each team. Any anomalies are then picked up by the FIA.

There is clearly a suspicion that teams have found ways to meet the legal requirement as the car leaves the pits, but then run on track with slightly lower and thus more favourable pressures, which in turn aid car performance.

Pirelli says that if that is found to be the case the team concerned will be given higher minimum starting pressure figures.

In the letter Pirelli’s Mario Isola told the teams: “Our prescriptions about minimum starting pressures are based on the assumption that running pressures are higher than starting ones. These are the historical values we’ve seen, and we therefore need you to respect this in order to operate the tyres safely.

“If we find, during any session, that your stabilised pressures are equal to or lower than the starting pressures, we will give higher starting pressures limit to your Team, as agreed with FIA.”

One way to promote a pressure drop on track is to have very high blanket temperatures, and Pirelli has underlined that the temperature numbers are being watched: “I also remind you to respect the maximum temperature for blankets as we will ask FIA to random check the values.”

Teams are also believed to be trying to get around the pressure requirements via both set-up and operational means. It’s been suggested for example that drivers have been leaving the pits with new tyres and passing the minimum pressure requirement. They have then returned to the pits and the mechanics have reduced the pressures before the car heads out again to do a proper run.

“We need to be sure that the running pressure is in-line with the starting pressure,” Isola told this writer. “I fully understand that the teams need to find performance, that is clear. On the other side we have to be sure that the tyres are working in the right way. It’s always a balance between the two.

“When we find something that is not what we want, the tyre is not operating in the range we want we need to be sure to come back to a situation is under control.

“For me it is not correct to say that people are cheating. They are trying to find the room in the regulations to do something that is allowed because it is not forbidden. If we realised that this new idea has a negative impact on the tyre, we need to react, and to police it. They’ve found some grey areas where they can work at the limit, that’s all.”

Meanwhile one team insider told this writer that pressures could drop dramatically during the course of Sunday’s race: “The car set-up can promote a reduction in pressure, but the biggest factor is tyre wear. As the rubber thickness reduces the tread temperature decreases and this cools the air inside, and pulls the tyre pressure down. This is what happens during a long stint e.g. Ferrari in Spa. And it’s what’s going to happen tomorrow when everyone attempts a one-stop strategy.”

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