INDIA in F1

Author: David Bodapati

  • Team MRF the team to beat in APRC as it looks to 4th straight win

    Whangarei, 15 April 2015: Team MRF head into this weekend’s first round of the 2015 Asia-Pacific Rally Championship targeting their fourth successive win in the prestigious series.

    The 2013 champion, India’s Gaurav Gill, will head Team MRF’s attack, ably supported by his Skoda Fabia Super 2000 team-mat

    File picture of MRF team courtesy MRF.
    File picture of MRF team courtesy MRF.

    e, Pontus Tidemand, from Sweden. Frenchman, Jean-Louis Leyraud, will drive a third Race Torque-prepared Skoda in New Zealand’s Rally of Whangarei, from April 17 to 19.

    Gill will fancy his chances of a second title this year, having won in 2013 and finishing runner-up last year. With experience of the Skoda Fabia S2000 and the events that make up the APRC, he’ll be hard to beat.

    But the early season hype has been around his young team-mate, who led the World Rally Championship qualifying Swedish Rally earlier this year. “I’m really looking forward to this new challenge. It makes me incredibly proud to see my name on the list of ŠKODA’s drivers,” Tidemad said. “I have been waiting for a chance like this for years and I will take care of it in the best way I can, both in terms of performance and development, to get a good result for ŠKODA Motorsport.”

    Despite not having had any experience with the seven events that make up the APRC, Tidemand will be hoping that he can repeat the performance of last year’s champion, and Team MRF driver, Jan Kopecky, who won on his first attempt. “We will do everything we can to take podiums and victories as soon as possible,” Tidemand’s co-driver, Emil Axelsson, added.

    While both Tidemand and Gill will contest all events in the APRC, Leyraud, who is based in New Caledonia, will tackle only those events making up the Pacific Cup component.

    In past seasons the Race Torque-prepared Team MRF Skodas have been the cars to beat, and with a proven package, team manager Lane Heenan is hoping for similar success in 2015. “The Skoda Fabia is one of the most successful rally cars in the world at present, with many international victories around the world, and we’re hoping that continues this year.

    “We’ll be using the same cars that finished last season so successfully, and with further development we expect to our drivers to be right on the pace again.”

    However, the new Fabia R5 is likely to replace the current Super 2000 model before the end of this year’s championship. “We plan to have our team running the new ŠKODA Fabia R 5 in the APRC by the end of the year – after all, the season finale takes place in our most important market, China,” ŠKODA Motorsport Director Michal Hrabánek said.

    The Rally of Whangarei commences on the evening of Friday, April 17, with a rally show in central Whangarei, before they attack two passes of the night time Super Special Stage at Pohe Island. Leg one continues on Saturday, heading as far north as Kawakawa for eight special stages on the fast, flowing cambered roads the rally is famous for, while Sunday’s final leg heads south of Whangarei for a further six stages. A total of 282 kilometres of competitive stages make-up the event.

    Team MRF’s strongest opposition is expected to come from the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X of Indonesia’s Subhan Aksa, and New Zealander youngster Mike Young in a Subaru Impreza WRX STI.

    Calendar 2015
    1. 17-19 APR New Zealand
    2. 15-17 MAY New Caledonia
    3. 19-21 JUN Australia
    4. 14-16 AUG Malaysia
    5. 18-20 SEP Japan
    6. 30-01 Oct/Nov China
    7. 11-13 DEC India
    Subject to FIA Approval

    eom/MRF release

  • I do my talking on the track, says Hamilton ahead of Bahrain GP

    DRIVERS – Sergio PEREZ (Force India), Max VERSTAPPEN (Toro Rosso), Will STEVENS (Manor), Pastor MALDONADO (Lotus), Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes), Daniel RICCIARDO (Red Bull Racing)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Lewis, you’re coming off the back of three straight poles to a circuit where you’ve never been in on pole position before in your career. How do you see this weekend and the battleground that is qualifying on Saturday? 

    Lewis HAMILTON: The same as every race. Excited for it. The team have worked very hard to try to learn from the last race and improve. Naturally, for me, as you suggested, I’ve been on the front row but I’ve not been on pole here. So naturally that’s something I want to try to change.

    Now throughout Formula One history the psychological battle between title rivals has always been intense. Can you tell us a bit about how you’ve evolved your attitude that and your thinking about that as you’ve matured as a driver?

    LH: It’s not really changed much. I just do my talking on the track, that’s how it’s always been since I was eight years old. And naturally you juts try to learn from decisions you take and experiences you have and hope that you get better.

    So, the approach is not to get involved then?

    LH: That’s not what I said. You just do your talking on the track and try to do your best. All the stuff that comes out of the car I have no particular interest in it.

    OK thank you for that. Coming to you Pastor, some good battles in China last time out and breakthrough points for the team, scored by your team-mate. How do see this Lotus team evolving in 2015?

    Pastor MALDONADO: To be honest we’ve been a bit unlucky in the first two races, especially for me in the first corner I’ve been hit by Nasr in Australia and I was P6 already and the same in Malaysia, I was P8 or P9, I think it was P8, and I’ve been hit by Bottas in the first corner, so the first two races have been completely compromised by the first corner, you know. Last race was actually our first race where we’ve been able to compete against the other teams, or the other teams around us. We confirm what we’ve been expecting, the pace of the car. Actually in qualifying we still maybe are not at the top of our package. We’ve been working quite hard and hopefully this weekend it should be a bit better than it was in the past three races. But actually the race pace was quite good, encouraging and we are really looking to do our best and to finally be in the points this weekend.

    There’s been a Lotus in the final part of qualifying at every round this year so far but you yourself have only managed it once. Can you tell us what areas you are focusing on in particular to make sure that you get yourself into Q3?

    PM: Yeah, quali is maybe the main focus for the team. We just need to try to put everything together. I think the speed is there. But normally it has been like this, even in the past, we’ve been less competitive in quali than in the race. I really expect, and we will approach different ways the qualifying to try to get 100 per cent from the car and then trying to keep the same situation or the same pace for the race.

    Thank you for that. Coming to you Max: the performance in China. No points but plenty of praise worldwide for your performance there. Do you feel it’s put you on the Formula One map and what was the highlight?

    Max VERSTAPPEN: Well, first of all, I was really enjoying my race. We didn’t have a great qualifying, but still I was very confident that we could do a good race because I think the car and it’s race pace is really strong, especially high speed. I had some good overtakes, I was really enjoying that. It’s also every race I’m getting more and more confident in the car. Especially in the first two race you don’t want to take too many risks and I decided in China it was time to do some overtakes and take some more risk.

    Toro Rosso, apparently, have never scored a point here in Bahrain, amazingly in their ten years. This weekend that, I’m sure, will be your target, but you do have some engine issues going into this weekend. Can you give us your thoughts on how that’s going to stack up?

    MV: Yeah, for sure it’s very short notice for us after China, where we had the engine issues. But we will try to do our best to deliver a good race and try to score points, because I think at the moment the car is capable of it and I’m feeling much better every race in the car. So I’m really looking forward to this race.

    Sergio, coming to you, obviously 12 months ago here a very strong weekend, qualified well, in fourth, got up on the podium. Presumably it’s one of your favourite tracks. What is it about this place and you?

    Sergio PEREZ: Obviously it was great, no, to remember that day. It was a fantastic day, a fantastic race for me. It was really difficult to make it onto the podium, as it was a very intense race all the way through. Generally, I have been doing well [here]. The year before I did quite well at this track, so I think I get on with the track quite nicely. Unfortunately we are not in a similar position to dream about a podium for this weekend but I think, hopefully, we can score some points and make a great improvement. I think we managed to do a good step in China, we just finished out of the points, so I hope that here we can score some points.

    You have a big update coming in Austria. From what you know of it what is the target of where it’s going to put you in the pecking order?

    SP: It’s difficult to say, as everyone is improving all the time and everyone is bringing upgrades. We are not the only ones who are going to bring them but we really have identified our issues with the car, our weaknesses, so in that respect it should put us a lot better. I think if we can solve the general issue of the car, the main weakness of the car, then it can be a really good step that can put us in a really good position to be a constant points scorer.

    Q: Will, obviously didn’t start in Australia or Malaysia but a 15th place finish last time out in China. Tell us about the mindset in the team and how you set goals and objectives for each race – and what they are here.

    Will STEVENS: As you said, China was the first race that I did personally this year – but as far as the weekend went, I think it was a big step forwards for the team. I think it was good to get both cars to the finish for the first time this year. As the weekend went, it ran pretty smoothly. I think, looking forward to this weekend, obviously we want to finish the race with both cars again. Every time I we back in the car, especially for me, missing Malaysia, I’m getting more and more comfortable. I think the pace that I showed in China was pretty strong. We just need to keep moving forward and see where we can get to.

    Q: From what you’ve seen and experienced so far, what makes you believe in this project.

    WS: From where we set out, we knew the first few races were going to be difficult. The team, where they finished last year in the Constructors’, they’re in a different position now to what they were before. So I think, moving forwards for the future, we can only get better. I think moving towards the end of this year, hopefully we’ll get the new car coming in and then we can really start to make some progress.

    Q: Daniel, coming to you, you’ve scored in all three races so far but not the kind of scores I imagine you were hoping for when the season started. Can you give us a window in on the mindset with things like engine duty cycles and other challenges you’re facing, and how that’s changed your expectations?

    Daniel RICCIARDO: It sounded pretty good, finishing the first three in the points – but obviously we hope for more at this stage. Look, we’re trying to do what we can, that’s for sure. There is progress being made. Still, obviously, we’re wanting more each race and I obviously felt we had a better… or rather we all expected a bit more from China. I thought the weekend was going to be better for us, especially after Friday. I think we’d made real good progress. Didn’t turn out that way but here we are a week later. Obviously there’s not much, updates-wise, that can happen in a week but from myself and the team as well, we still know there’s more potential in what we’ve got for now, and I think we can definitely try to grab that this weekend.

    Q: Obviously your start in China was a bit of a talking point. I think I’m right in saying that, apart from your start in Malaysia, both you and Kvyat off the line have lost places every single time in the first three races this season. Can you tell us what that’s all about.

    DR: Yeah. To be honest, Melbourne wasn’t as bad as it looked. As I guess most people are aware, we had a lot of driveability issues going on in Melbourne and it wasn’t until we got the gears, and where these problems were affecting us, that’s what really hindered our performance in Melbourne – otherwise the actual launch was decent. And yeah, Malaysia wasn’t bad. Obviously it wasn’t ideal, what happened in China, and obviously after looking through everything, yeah, it was my mistake in the end. Sometime I obviously won’t let happen again. The important thing is that I’m aware why it happened and what happened and will move on from there. Definitely last year the starts weren’t the strongest on the grid. In general it’s a point that we all want to improve. I think it’s got to be better this weekend.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) I’ve got a question for Lewis. Your weekend in Shanghai has been rather overshadowed by coverage of the podium ceremony. I don’t know if you’ve heard the comments from the grid girl who was finally contacted and said she thought the entire thing was a bit of a fuss for something that lasted one or two seconds. What are your thoughts on the podium ceremony and the media furore that has surrounded something entirely normal in motorsport?

    LH: Good question. I hadn’t really heard too much about it until today. Obviously when you come into the team you get a kind of debrief of what’s happened during the week. So fortunately for me it’s not overshadowed my week. Ultimately it was a great weekend. My actions are through excitement. This is Formula One, it’s the pinnacle of motorsport, I’d just won a grand prix for the team and… I usually see it as a fun thing. I would never intend to disrespect someone or try to embarrass someone like that. So, yeah, I guess… I don’t really know the reasons why people are starting to bring those kind of things up but this is a sport that so many people love and the more we show character and fun, perhaps it reflects just how great this sport is. That’s what I try to do. I don’t really know what to say about it. It hasn’t really affected me and it’s nice to know that the lady wrote in… if it had been the other way and she’d wrote in and she was really unhappy, then perhaps there would be more concern.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action / Speed Sport) Daniel, you said China didn’t go quite the way you thought it would. Is there just maybe some fine-tuning in the setup that you can get the car much better to your liking?

    DR: I think so. I mean, there’s definitely, I believe, within the car, there’s more to be unlocked, so to speak. In terms of setup, I don’t think myself or Dany have really found a balance or setting that we’re really comfortable with. I think China took a step forward, we did start to feel more comfortable but it still obviously didn’t give us a big chunk of lap time that we thought was still in there. So, there’s still a few balance things. If we keep ironing them out we will find… I don’t think it’s a second but we are going to find a fair few tenths that will put us in that group with Williams and hopefully get us onto the back of the Ferraris. Yeah. Good race here last year. I think we had good pace. Again just optimistic for a better weekend here. Everyone’s ready to go, and obviously after my start last week I’m hanging out to get back on the grid and redeem myself.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Two questions for Lewis: the first is about management of the rear tyres. This is a hot track like Malaysia, the race is in the night. How afraid are you about the performance of Ferrari with the rear tyres? And the second one is about what Toto Wolff said about team orders. What comment can you make? If a driver says ‘too close’ they can make some unpopular decisions. I would like to have a comment from you.

    LH: Regarding the tyres, still as it was in Malaysia, very much a rear-limited circuit so you have to assume that Ferrari will be very strong again, but I think we’re going to try and take, from our experience with Malaysia, we’re going to try and take a slightly different approach and hope that that helps us combat that whatever you want to call it: weakness or area in which we can improve. I feel quite confident that as a team we can rectify that issue that we had in Malaysia, but it’s still going to be tough and Ferrari have been very very competitive in the last couple of races. So I anticipate they will be very strong this weekend and our race is definitely with them.

    I’m not really aware of Toto’s comments so I don’t really know anything about it. Team orders is not something we generally talk much about. It’s not our approach but ultimately our job as two drivers is to try to help the team get the best result overall and regardless of whether you’re first or second, it’s your job to try and make sure you try and secure the most points as possible for the team.

    Q: (Khodr Rawi – F1Zone.net) Sergio, how do you motivate yourself coming into this weekend, knowing that the maximum you could do is to score some points while last year you had a podium here?

    SP: Yes, it’s already the position that we have at the moment and only 12 months ago it was a different story but now it’s time to give our best, the same as we did those months ago. The difference is now that a great result would be to finish in the points, whereas 12 months ago a great result would be to finish on the podium. But it doesn’t really change anything. As a driver you have to be committed all the time and give your 120 per cent to your team to try to maximise the package that you have. It doesn’t really change anything. Obviously I wish to have a more competitive car with which I can show the potential that I have as a driver but it’s what it is and we will try to do our best. It doesn’t really change anything.

    Q: (Ralf Bach – Sport Bild) Lewis, did you really understand what Nico meant after the race that you drove too slowly? Did you truly understand what he meant?

    LH: Well, it’s something we spoke about after the race so I don’t particularly see a reason to go back into it. Obviously you know what my comments were after the race and some people have spun those words in whichever way they wanted to spin them. Yeah, we’re moving forwards and we will re-unite as a team this weekend and try to do a great job. There’s no issue between me and Nico. We saw each other this morning and everything is good. They’re going to be times when people are unhappy about some things but we’re grown-ups and we move past it.

    Q: (Ralf Bach – Sport Bild) The winner of the race is normally the quickest guy on the track, that’s what I mean.

    LH: But I was.

    Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Lewis, if I can go even further back, to last year’s race when you and Nico had a real battle here, given the comments that have been made over the last few days, do you think he’ll be even more fired up to try and get past you this time?

    LH: Well again, I don’t know what comments have been made over the last few days, I don’t read it, simply just not of interest to me, but last year we had an amazing race here, it was really fantastic, great fun, huge huge challenge both for Nico and for me and hopefully… that was the first night race here. It was honestly the best race, visibly, that I had seen here in Bahrain so it was great and I’m looking forward to that. I think with these tyres and with Ferrari in the mix, I think we could see a real special race here. On my part, I’m just going to keep doing what I do and try to… ultimately I want to improve. Last year I didn’t qualify on pole here, I’ve never been on pole here so that’s the challenge but as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the challenge of trying to win the race.

    Q: (Nahed Sayouh – Autosport Middle East) Max, after this race you will go to the European season where there are tracks which you have previously raced on. Do you believe that this will help you to show more speed?

    MV: To be honest I think so. You always try to do your best on every track and that’s how we are going to continue.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and Speed Sport magazines) Will, you did your first race distance in China; these guys all did race distances in testing. Do you foresee that you have a much better baseline now, starting out the weekend as far as the car is concerned?

    WS: Yeah, the longest stint I did before the race was six laps. So I had to learn the race as I was going. I think the race ran pretty smoothly so for sure starting here this weekend,

    Sergio Perez of Sahara Force India is on the left in the top row. An FIA image of the Thursday press conference in Bahrain.
    Sergio Perez of Sahara Force India is on the left in the top row. An FIA image of the Thursday press conference in Bahrain.

    we’re starting off from a much better position so I think as a team we can only progress and keep moving forward.

    eom/FIA press conference transcript

  • Warmer temperatures did not have a big influence on tyre choice: Birdgestone’s Manager Shinji Aoki

    Austin (Texas) 15 April 2015: Marc Marquez won his third consecutive race at Circuit of the Americas last weekend, the Repsol Honda star taking the chequered flag ahead of Ducati Team’s Andrea Dovizioso and Movistar Yamaha MotoGP’s Valentino Rossi.
     Start-of-the-2015-MotoGP COTA Bridgestone pic
    The race weekend was subjected to variable weather with cool, rainy periods giving way to warm and sunny weather on Sunday. The peak track temperature of 40°C during was the warmest reading for the whole weekend.
    Q&A with Shinji Aoki – Manager, Bridgestone Motorsport Tyre Development Department
    On Friday the MotoGP riders had their first ever wet session at Circuit of the Americas. What can you tell us about the grip level of the circuit in the wet, and how your wet tyres performed?
    “The grip level of the wet COTA tarmac was quite good compared to other circuits, and the riders were happy with how our wet tyres performed at this demanding circuit. Our main wet tyre option was our soft compound which offers a lot of grip, but the durability of this option in Austin was also very good as some riders completed half a race distance on set of wet tyres, with low levels of tyre wear. The alternative, hard compound wet tyre was also available but given the good performance and durability of the soft compound wet at COTA, I don’t think many riders would have chosen to use it if we had more wet sessions later in the weekend.”
    It seemed a lot warmer on Sunday compared to earlier on the weekend. Did this have an effect on tyre choice and tyre performance for the race?
    “Although temperatures were considerably warmer for the race, it didn’t seem to have a big influence on tyre choice for the race. There was maybe only a couple of riders who switched from the medium compound to the hard compound front slick for the race, but the operating temperature for our medium compound front slick is so good that most riders felt comfortable using this option for the race. In regards to tyre performance, the warmer temperatures didn’t have a considerable effect. Some riders did mention that the grip level during the race wasn’t as good as the day before, but this was likely related to the rain the night before rather than the temperature change.
    Unfortunately, due to the rain on Friday and cool temperatures on Saturday no riders chose to evaluate the hard compound rear slick during practice, and seeing as this tyre option was used by the race winner at this track in the last two years, I was curious to see how this option would perform this weekend. I believe had some riders assessed it earlier in the race weekend, it would have been a good race option, however, our medium compound rear slick handled the conditions well so it was still a positive outcome for us.”
    A few riders mentioned that the right side of the front tyre is put under considerable stress at Circuit of the Americas. Would asymmetric front slicks be well suited to this track?
    “There are sections of this circuit that place a lot of stress on the right shoulder of the tyre, but there are more left hand turns, so overall this circuit is still quite balanced. As we can only bring three different options of front slick to each race, I think the soft, medium and hard symmetric front slicks were the best options for this circuit. The soft front worked well when the circuit was cool with some damp patches, while the medium & hard were well suited when the track was fully dry and warmer. I think an asymmetric front slick may have performed well in certain conditions at the circuit, but as the riders were happy with the grip and stability on the left side of the medium and hard compound front slick, going softer on the left side of those tyres might not have brought much of an advantage. I can say that having three front slick options on offer at Circuit of the Americas this year was a welcome change for the riders and gave them enough options to deal with the variable conditions. ”
    eom/A Bridgestone interview

  • Marquez continues perfect record in USA with emphatic win in Austin

    Austin, 12 April 2015 (13Apr IST): Repsol Honda’s Marc Marquez has returned to winning form in the Red Bull GP of The Americas with teammate Hiroshi Aoyama – replacing Dani Pedrosa – fighting to the last lap to take 11th place.

    Pole man Marc dropped back briefly from the start to 2nd place behind Dovizioso whilst Hiroshi got caught up and found himself 20th, from 16th on the grid. By lap five, Hiro had climbed to 13th and after a brief battle with Dovizioso, Marc took first place.

    With Rossi and Iannone fighting with Dovizioso, Marc never looked back and led from the front for the remainder of the race – taking his 20th victory in the MotoGP class. Hiroshi progressed further and reached 11th place, which he briefly lost on the final lap, but showed a fighting spirit and re-passed Barbera taking 11th.

    Marc has won on all six occasions that he has raced in the MotoGP class in the USA, and Honda celebrate their 11th consecutive win on American soil. The last non-Honda MotoGP winner in the USA was Jorge Lorenzo, at Laguna Seca in 2010.

    Now the team packs up and head straight to Argentina for the third round of 2015.

    Marc Marquez said: “I am very happy with this victory! After yesterday, things looked positive for us, but the only doubt was about the weather. In the end, it turned out stranger than it had seemed. When I saw that it was going to be a dry race, I started out very focused – because I knew it was important to try to win today. However, right from the first lap I saw that the track was not like it had been before the rain of last night. There was less grip and it was harder to ride comfortably. I decided to keep calm in the early laps to try to understand the situation well, and when I started to find a feeling similar to practice, I decided to push the pace a bit. That was when I was able to open up a gap.”

    Results Session

    Pos. Rider Num Nation Points Team Time/Gap
    1 MARQUEZ Marc 93 SPA 25 Repsol Honda Team 43’47.150
    2 DOVIZIOSO Andrea 4 ITA 20 Ducati Team +2.354
    3 ROSSI Valentino 46 ITA 16 Movistar Yamaha MotoGP +3.120
    4 LORENZO Jorge 99 SPA 13 Movistar Yamaha MotoGP +6.682
    5 IANNONE Andrea 29 ITA 11 Ducati Team +7.584
    6 SMITH Bradley 38 GBR 10 Monster Yamaha Tech 3 +10.557
    7 CRUTCHLOW Cal 35 GBR 9 CWM LCR Honda +16.967
    8 ESPARGARO Aleix 41 SPA 8 Team Suzuki Ecstar +19.025
    9 VINALES Maverick 25 SPA 7 Team Suzuki Ecstar +38.570
    10 PETRUCCI Danilo 9 ITA 6 Pramac Racing +41.796
    11 AOYAMA Hiroshi 7 JPN 5 Repsol Honda Team +47.199
    12 BARBERA Hector 8 SPA 4 Avintia Racing +47.339
    13 HAYDEN Nicky 69 USA 3 Aspar MotoGP Team +56.484
    14 MILLER Jack 43 AUS 2 CWM LCR Honda +56.731
    15 BAUTISTA Alvaro 19 SPA 1 Aprilia Racing Team Gresini +57.372
    16 LAVERTY Eugene 50 IRE 0 Aspar MotoGP Team +58.898
    17 BAZ Loris 76 FRA 0 Athina Forward Racing +1’08.787
    18 DE ANGELIS Alex 15 RSM 0 Athina Forward Racing +1’22.236
    19 ABRAHAM Karel 17 CZE 0 AB Motoracing DNF
    20 MELANDRI Marco 33 ITA 0 Aprilia Racing Team Gresini DNF
    21 HERNANDEZ Yonny 68 COL 0 Pramac Racing DNF
    22 DI MEGLIO Mike 63 FRA 0 Avintia Racing DNF
    23 REDDING Scott 45 GBR 0 Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS DNF
    24 BRADL Stefan 6 GER 0 Athina Forward Racing DNF
    25 ESPARGARO Pol 44 SPA 0 Monster Yamaha Tech 3 DNF

    eom/Honda press release

    Reigning world champion Marquez returns to winning ways in Austin on Sunday. A Repsol Honda image
    Reigning world champion Marquez returns to winning ways in Austin on Sunday. A Repsol Honda image

  • Controlled aggression gets Hamilton a comfortable win: Chinese GP

    Lewis Ham

    Hamilton celebrates after winning the Chinese GP on Sunday. A Mercedes AMG Petronas image
    Hamilton celebrates after winning the Chinese GP on Sunday. A Mercedes AMG Petronas image

    ilton restored normal service for Mercedes with a controlled and relatively comfortable drive to Chinese Grand Prix victory ahead of team-mate Nico Rosberg.

    A fortnight ago in Malaysia, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, had shocked Mercedes by stealing victory from under the champion]s nose, but this time the German driver was forced to resume the best-of-the-rest status Ferrari had laid claim to in the opening round in Australia. He was followed to the flag in Shanghai by fourth-placed team-mate Kimi Raikkonen.

    At the start Hamilton comfortably kept his advantage, the Briton making a good getaway to power through turn one ahead of Rosberg. Behind the Mercedes pair Vettel slotted into third, but following him Kimi Raikkonen was on a charge, passing the battling Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa in successive corners. Massa, who had initially been beaten into turn one by his team-mate, eventually found his way ahead of Bottas again to claim fifth place.

    Further back, seventh-on-the-grid Daniel Ricciardo made a dreadful start. The Australian seemed unable to get any power from his RB11 and he dropped back to 17th. He spent the opening laps trying to recover the lost ground but was somewhat hampered by his own team-mate, Daniil Kvyat. The Russian, one of just two drivers (the other being Carlos Sainz) to start on the medium tyre, found himself in 13th place when he was told not to impede the hard-charging Ricciardo, but Kvyat made the pass difficult for the Australian and it took a lap before Ricciardo eventually moved past.

    At the front, Hamilton was firmly in control and by lap 12, the end of the first stint for most, he had opened up a 1.5 second gap to team-mate Rosberg and was 4.5s ahead of Vettel in third, with Raikkonen a further two seconds back.

    After the first round of pit stops, in which both Mercedes drivers took on soft tyres, Hamilton retained his lead and widened the gap to Rosberg to two seconds. Vettel stayed third ahead of Raikkonen, with Massa fifth in front of Bottas. Lotus’ Pastor Maldonado was enjoying a good race and had climbed from 11th on the grid to eighth place, ahead of team-mate Romain Grosjean. Behind them, though, Daniil Kvyat was in trouble. His car slowed and on lap 16 he pulled off track at turn 6 with smoke pouring from the back of his car.

    That initially put Felipe Nasr into ninth place but on lap 20 he was passed in a textbook move into the turn 14 hairpin by Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen.

    At the front, Rosberg was complaining that as Mercedes managed tyre wear in their second stint on option tyres Hamilton was running too slowly, with the result that the German was quickly being reeled in by Vettel. With the Ferraris also running the option tyres and closing, Hamilton was swiftly told to pick up the pace. He did so but Vettel continued to press, closing to within 1.5s of Rosberg.

    By the end of the stint, Rosberg was trailing Hamilton by 2.7s but had widened the gap to Vettel to two seconds. The Ferrari driver was asked if he could go faster, but the Malaysia winner responded that he was “on the limit”.

    The four-time champion was the first of the front runners to blink and he pitted on lap 30 for medium tyres. Rosberg was swiftly told to make his second stop and he headed for the pit lane on lap 31, where he also took on mediums.

    Hamilton made his final stop, for mediums, the end of lap 33, but Raikkonen elected to stay out, waiting until lap 34 to take on his final set of mediums.

    With the second stops done and Mercedes looking much more comfortable than Ferrari on the medium tyre, the gaps at the front stabilised, with Hamilton 5.5 seconds clear of his team-mate. Vettel was a further five seconds back with Raikkonen 3.7s adrift of his Ferrari team-mate.

    The top four were in a league of their own, however, with Raikkonen 27.9s clear of Massa in fifth. The Brazilian headed team-mate Bottas by nine seconds, while Grosjean held seventh.

    Verstappen was now an excellent eighth ahead of Felipe Nasr, with the Sauber driver running seven seconds ahead of team-mate Ericsson. The Swede was coming under heavy pressure from Ricciardo who was desperate to get his underperforming Red Bull into the points. The Australian eventually made a passing move stick on lap 44 to take a disappointing single point for the Milton Keynes squad.

    Further back Pastor Maldonado’s good early-race work was undone when he overcooked his entry to the pit lane for his second stop and was forced down an escape road. The time lost dropped him to P14. His race unravelled further when he spun and rejoined and he spent the last phase of the race chasing down McLaren’s Jenson Button for 13th place. He passed the Briton eventually but the advantage was shortlived. On Lap 49, Button tried to attack as the pair went towards turn one. The pair collided, with Button shipping front-wing damage and Maldonado spinning. The Lotus driver pitted for repairs but was eventually forced to retire. Button was later handed a time penalty for causing the collision.

    There was drama in the closing stage as Verstappen’s race unfortunately came to an end. As he put the power down on the exit of the final corner of his 53rd lap, the Dutch teenager’s Renault engine let go and he ground to a halt on the pit straight.

    That brought out the safety car and the seven-second lead Hamilton had built over Rosberg was erased. So too was the 11-second advantage Rosberg enjoyed over Vettel.

    However, with Verstappen’s car stranded on the pit straight and with no easy recovery possible, race officials were forced to end the race under the safety car and Hamilton cruised past the flag to take a comfortable second win of the season.

    2015 Chinese Grand Prix – Race
    1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1h39m42.008s
    2 Nico Rosberg Mercedes 0.714s
    3 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 2.988s
    4 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 3.835s
    5 Felipe Massa Williams 8.544s
    6 Valtteri Bottas Williams 9.885s
    7 Romain Grosjean Lotus 19.008s
    8 Felipe Nasr Sauber 22.625s
    9 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing 32.117s
    10 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 1 Lap
    11 Sergio Perez Force India 1 Lap
    12 Fernando Alonso McLaren1 Lap
    13 Jenson Button McLaren 1 Lap
    14 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso 1 Lap
    15 Will Stevens Marussia 2 Laps
    16 Roberto Merhi Marussia 2 Laps
    17 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso 4 Laps
    – Pastor Maldonado Lotus Retirement
    – Daniil Kvyat Red Bull Racing Retirement
    – Nico Hulkenberg Force India Retirement

     

    eom/FIA press release

  • Teammates Hamilton and Rosberg indulge in mud-slinging at the post-race FIA press conference: Chinese GP

    DRIVERS

    1 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    2 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)

    3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    PODIUM INTERVIEWS

    (Conducted by Edwin Moses)

    Lewis, the gap was relatively small in the first part of the race. What happened in the second part of the race?

    Lewis HAMILTON: First of all, a fantastic job by the team. It was great to have a smooth weekend, getting the sessions and really dialling in the car and today was kind of that effect of really putting the car in the place I wanted it and it was really just controlling the gap between myself and Nico and saving the tyres for when I needed to use them. I had lots left in my tyres at the end there [and] I was looking forward to eking out a gap but the safety car came out. But we’ve had such great fans here this weekend, thank you so much for the support everyone with all the big banners.

    Second question would be: when the safety car came out was the comforting to you, because I know you had a significant gap at the end of the race, which was comforting?

    LH: The safety car at the end wasn’t helpful, I guess for anyone, because it’s kind of an anti-climax when you have a good race like that. But naturally, as long as no-one was injured and all the cars got back safely that’s what matters.

    Alright Nico, another one-two for Mercedes-Benz. As a competitor I know it’s tough being a member of a team and an individual as well. How was your race today?

    Nico ROSBERG: Well, you wouldn’t know how it feels to finish second; you never did, did you! Well, that’s the way it is. I gave it everything in the end on the prime tyre to try to close the gap to Lewis and just took some risks. But it didn’t pay off because my tyres just died off in the end, so there we go, I wouldn’t have managed to get any closer.

    But your tyres were good enough to keep the gap between you

    Mercedes AMG Petronas driver Lewis Hamilton (centre) and teammate Nico Rosberg (left) comment on each others' race on Sunday. An FIA image
    Mercedes AMG Petronas driver Lewis Hamilton (centre) and teammate Nico Rosberg (left) comment on each others’ race on Sunday. An FIA image

    and Vettel that’s for sure?

    NR: Yeah, definitely. We’re happy with the gap to Ferrari, having beaten them here after they beat us in Malaysia. It was very important for us as a team, a good, important comeback, so more of that for sure.

    Sebastian congratulations, good to see you again. It was a tough day for you. The prediction was that Ferrari’s tyres would be perhaps superior and close in on the gap after the second pit stop?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Yeah. First of all, a huge honour to have you up here. I feel a bit small. OK, I mean racing drivers are small. I think it was a good race all in all. I think we were a bit closer probably on the softer compound of tyres and we were able to put some pressure on them. We tried to put more pressure by stopping fairly early for the last set of tyres, but I think on the harder tyres they were just that bit too quick, so they were able to pull away. From there onwards we tried to control the race and bring the podium back home, which is a great success for us, very happy. Thanks to the team. Thanks back to the factory, to Maranello, and obviously to all the support here from the fans.

    At the beginning of the season people were questioning whether Ferrari was going to get back on the podium. How do you feel today?

    SV: Yeah, good. It’s been three out of three so far, so it feels pretty good. Obviously a big change over winter. A lot of things have changed. It’s nice. I feel really happy in the team. The guys are great, so I’m really enjoying the work and hopefully we can get a little bit closer to challenge these guys.

    Thank you. One more question for you Lewis. Off to Bahrain next week. We wish we could see you at the Laureus World Sports awards, as well as Nico and of course Sebastian, as you all have been there. It started off good this year. I know you’ll be hoping that you remain… it’s better to be good then lucky! But you need luck in this event.

    LH: No, of course, but as I said the team have been doing a fantastic job. We did a great job to come back from the last race where we kind of struggled a little bit. And to come here and kind of up our pace and improve, it’s all down to the guys that are here building my car and the guys back at the factory, so massively proud and happy that we could get the job done today.

    Q: Lewis, many congratulations. Was the race as expected in terms of the challenge from Ferrari and, also, can you talk us through that radio message you got from the team about speeding up? Were you aware that Nico was getting so backed-up towards Sebastian Vettel?

    LH: I wasn’t controlling his race, I was controlling my own race but, great race, I’m really happy. Definitely going into the race we thought it would be a lot closer and we knew the Ferraris were very, very good with their long run pace and also looking after their tyres. So, today the real goal was to manage the tyres. And, as I said, my goal was to look after my car. I had no real threat from Nico through the whole race. So, I just managed it and got to really enjoy it, to be honest. A few of the real good fun laps were the laps before the pitstop, which I really enjoyed. Ultimately it was a much smoother weekend than we had in the last race where we got the whole, full practice sessions, on my side of the garage at least. And it made a real big difference to the balance of the car for the race. So really happy, and yeah, kinda excited.

    Q: Nico, can you talk us through your view of the race today. Started second, finished second but you sounded at times as though you felt at timed under a little bit of unnecessary pressure maybe?

    NR: No. It’s just now interesting to hear from you, Lewis, that you were just thinking about yourself with the pace in front, and necessarily that was compromising my race. Driving slower than was maybe necessary at the beginning of stints meant that Sebastian was very close to me and that opened up the opportunity for Sebastian to try that early pitstop to try and jump me. And then I had to cover him. So, first of all it was unnecessarily close with Sebastian as a result, and also it cost me a lot of race time as a result because I had to cover him and then my tyres died at the end of the race because my stint was just so much longer. So I’m unhappy about that, of course, today. Other than that, not much to say.

    Q: Lewis, would you like to respond?

    LH: Not really! My job is not to… it’s not my job to look after Nico’s race. My job’s to manage the car and bring the car home as healthy and as fast as possible – and that’s what I did. I didn’t do anything intentionally to slow any of the cars up. I just was focussing on myself. If Nico wanted to get by he could have tried but he didn’t.

    Q: Sebastian. You tried everything today. The undercut, everything really strategy-wise that you could. Mercedes just had a little bit too much for you today but also at the end there, Kimi was catching you. Were you worried about him catching up to you towards the end of the race as well?

    SV: Not really. I think I was in control. Obviously would have liked to have kept on racing, would have been close but in the end I still had a decent gap, obviously. I guess it’s a bit similar with Kimi and myself and Nico and Lewis. Obviously I try to be very aggressive. I think it was lap 29. That meant 27 laps on the Prime and I wasn’t sure if we really should try it – but then, I guess, we wanted to put pressure on Nico, which obviously makes the last stint very long, so at the end naturally you struggle with the tyres. I think Kimi was able to stay out a bit longer and therefore was a bit quicker at the end of the stint. But we tried everything we could today. I think it was very close, especially the first pitstop. I didn’t expect it to maybe be that close, so maybe I should have pushed a bit harder on the out-lap. Obviously it’s tricky here because you always try to look after the tyres but all-in-all I think it was a very good race for us. We were really able to put again some pressure on them, especially in the beginning of the race. Towards the end I think they were just too quick. They were pulling away. Nico had a sequence of really, really quick lap times – so we couldn’t do that – but all-in-all, as I said, closer here, which is great for us, and in front of the other teams. If we keep doing that, and keep getting closer, obviously there’s a point where we are some real challenge for these guys, which I’m looking forward to.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Niu Hong Lin – China Radio International) To both Lewis and Sebastian, question about the Laureus award. Since Sebastian has won the prize last year and you’ve been nominated this year and there are a lot of histories from 2004 and 2010, so do you think all those nominations, all these years, do you think there’s a special bond between this kind of award and F1?

    SV: Well, I think it doesn’t matter which sport you do, the special thing about the Laureus award is that you get judged by professionals, by sportsmen, by athletes, male and female. It’s a very unique award and it has been an incredible honour to be nominated. Obviously last year I didn’t really deserve the nomination or anything, so Lewis deserves to be nominated this year but to win the prize last year was fantastic and really something that stays with you for good, I guess. Also to have Mr Moses on the podium today – he’s really one of the top athletes in the world, ever, that the sport has seen so it was great to see him. It’s a great event, it means a lot, just the nomination already and obviously to win it, I don’t really need to comment. I guess Lewis is in that seat this year so I’m sure he’s very excited.

    LH: Not really, unfortunately I’m not too excited because I know that I haven’t won it. I think it’s a great award and very very prestigious and I’m proud to just be amongst the people that have been… the great athletes that have been nominated. I’ll keep pushing so that at some stage I do get it.

    Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Sera) Sebastian, did you expect more performance with the new soft compound in the stint or was it the maximum you could achieve?

    SV: You mean with the new tyre? Well, I think Nico was on new softs as well. I’m not sure about Lewis but I guess as well so yeah. We tried to save a set yesterday but unfortunately they did as well so I think it helped but we did all we could. Obviously it’s incredibly difficult. The closer you get, I was all the time something like 1.5s and then just before the pit stop, falling away a bit, around 1.8s-2.0s. To really get close, I tried desperately to get into the DRS (zone) but I couldn’t. Obviously it gets more and more difficult, especially with the type of corner you get here, opening onto the long straight, makes it quite tricky.

    Q: (Frederic Ferret – L’Equipe) Lewis, did you think that this weekend you could be beaten fair and square by Ferrari or did they need something to happen to Mercedes to be beaten? And Sebastian, did you have to try something different to beat them?

    LH: Well, evidently, I guess I probably did.

    SV: If we could have beaten them, I wouldn’t be sitting to the left of Lewis, he would sit to the left of me so the answer is probably no and the answer to could we have done something different, I think we tried all we could. I don’t think it was in range to do a one stop or a three stop. I think both were slower. So the two stop was fairly straightforward for everyone and I think we tried to be as aggressive as we could be. Yeah, so the answer is still no, unfortunately, but as I said, very happy that we were significantly closer than four weeks ago.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action and Speed Sport magazines) Lewis, we only hear some of the radio transmissions on the TV. We heard the team asking you to speed up a bit and nothing more. Were there further discussions and did you speed up a bit?

    LH: Well, there wasn’t really a time when I wasn’t… I mean I’m out there driving as hard as I can but within the constraints of the tyres. They kept coming on the radio and asking me to pick up the pace and I’m kind of ‘well, I’m trying to manage these tyres, I’ve basically got…’It’s like you have £100 and you have to spend it wisely over your stint and I was trying to make my stint go as long as possible and whilst keeping…

    SV: … how many pounds you had left at the end?

    LH: I was hopefully still wealthy at the end of it.

    Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Why is this circuit particularly difficult to follow another car? Why are the tyres, here, in the wake of another car, more destroyed than on other circuits?

    SV: Naturally, I think always with quick corners we struggle to stay close. The corners we have leading onto the straight, the most obviously straight, the long back straight, is initially quite slow but then it gets quicker and quicker, so that makes it quite tricky to really stay close and in general, the thing is if you try to overtake someone who is just as quick as you, maybe slightly quicker or a little bit less quick, you don’t really have that much of an advantage to really stay close. You lose downforce, the tyres start to slide, which means that they start to overheat and you struggle more and more, the closer you get. That’s what makes it tricky. There’s really no difference here to other circuits, I guess.

    eom/FIA transcript of the Press Conference

  • It is not realistic to talk about title challenge until we close the gap with Mercedes: James Allison of Ferrari

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Yasuhisa ARAI (Honda), Andrew GREEN (Force India), James KEY (Toro Rosso), Paul MONAGHAN (Red Bull Racing), James ALLISON (Ferrari), Pat SYMONDS (Williams)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    If I may start with you Arai-san: How would you characterise the past three months and also how tough has the start of this new F1 adventure for Honda been? 

    Yasuhisa ARAI: First of all, it has been very tough, but invigorating. We are always [ready for a] challenge, the challenge being that we are always looking for our progress and [to] succeed, so it has been a very good first three months.

    Can you quantify the progress that has been made over the past couple of months and especially since Australia? How much closer are you now to the performance goals you set out for this year?

    YA: So, as you know, we did not run so much in the winter tests but as you know we already progressed race by race, step by step. In Australia we ran 56 laps and also in Malaysia the gap was less than two seconds and today there is much progress and I hope that [continues] race by race and step by step for the future.

    Moving to you James Allison: how important has the win in Malaysia been for Ferrari, not just in terms of a short-term boost in confidence but also in validating the package and the engineering route you are taking?

    James ALLISON: I think the main thing it does… well, it makes everybody happy of course, but the main effect it does have is boosting everyone’s confidence. The team has had a difficult period over the past couple of years and to score a win was tremendously enjoyable and helps pump everyone up and makes it easier to work the hours that they need to work before we can close up and be properly competitive in every race.

    And the engineering?

    JA: Well, the stopwatch always tells you what you need to know engineering-wise and of course to finish at the front in a race is a great thing but it doesn’t tell you much about what’s going to happen in the future.

    Yesterday’s Sebastian said that “for here and for the next races it’s important to know what we want to achieve”. What is the level that Ferrari can achieve? Is fighting for the title something achievable or are you just going back to these two or three wins that Maurizio Arrivabene set at the beginning of the season?

    JA: I think that we’re up against a car, in Mercedes, and others too, that are strong competition. But Mercedes in particular, they have a bit more horsepower than us and a bit more downforce than us and until we’ve closed those two gaps it’s not realistic to talk about title challenges. Our objectives were set out at the beginning of the year, we thought it was realistic to score a couple of wins and of course we’ll take whatever comes our way and we’ll do our best to make our car close up as much as we can and who knows what after that during the course of the year, but I think that sticking with the objectives we stated at the beginning of this year is still realistic.

    Thank you very much. Coming you Paul: history shows that Red Bulls cars have progressed relative to the competition throughout every specific season. Is what we’re seeing now another example of that or are there deeper problems at the moment?

    Paul MONAGHAN: If you look back in the short term, [in the] Australia race we had a few stumbles but one car finished; Malaysia wasn’t our finest hour, we made a couple of small mistakes that cost us dearly. Here we’ll correct those and start to see where we sit in the pecking order. As James has alluded to, we’ve all got a development race to have. The bar is set and we’ve all got to try to reach that bar, so we’ll develop as quickly as we can, work as hard as we can and see where we get to.

    What are the major areas the team is focusing on with the chassis at the moment?

    PM: The team is focusing on what it perceives as its weakness, you’ll have to ask the others what they perceive as their weaknesses. As James has alluded to, we probably lack a little bit of downforce compared to some of the others, so we’ll chase the aerodynamic performance of the car but how we chase that is our business.

    Thank you very much. Moving onto James Key this time. We’ve spoken about Ferrari’s progress this year, but also Toro Rosso has made an impressive start to the season. Is this something that is a specific development, has any particular development allowed that, or is it just a continuation of what we saw last year from Toro Rosso.

    James KEY: It’s a mix of both really. We’ve had a kind of three-year plan really of trying to get the team from A to B, and A was where it was a couple of years back, which is not where we wanted it to be, and B is next year I suppose, so we’re in the middle of that process and we’ll have to see how we go, but through that, in the background, we’ve been doing a lot of work in how we go about the design process, building the team up and improving the facilities and so on and I think that probably this car is the first one that has been designed in the way I hoped we could design at STR and develop. Some of that was in last year’s car for sure but not everything. It takes a while to get these things sorted out, so we’re beginning to see a little bit of the fruits of our labours, but it’s not finished yet. We made a good step on the aero side I have to say over the winter, a really good step, the guys did a good job and there’s plenty more to do. So it’s work in progress still I think.

    How impressed have you been by the two drivers, the so-called inexperienced [drivers]?

    JK: Yeah, you wouldn’t know it, looking at some of what they’ve done actually. They’ve done really well. I think it’s a very exciting driver line-up for us. Again, it shows how much strength there is in the Red Bull programme to have the guys we have in Max and Carlos. They’re both doing a very good job. For Carlos to do two stops… Max was the headline in a way, because he did a lot of the action on the track for us, but for Carlos to do two stops last weekend in those hot conditions was the mark of someone who you wouldn’t think is in their second race. And for Max to do what he did after issues the day before was also extremely good. I think for them their preparation has been good, we gave them as many miles as we could in winter testing and so far we’ve been extremely happy with them.

    Q: We’ve heard a lot about the introduction of a ‘B-spec’ car for Austria – what exactly does that mean in comparison to the upgrades you would bring on a race-by-race basis?

    Andrew GREEN: Yeah, there’s been a lot of talk about that. In reality, we knew the beginning of the season was going to be quite difficult. It’s well known we moved to a new tunnel testing facility at the beginning of the year and we’re in the process now of re-correlating and understanding where we stand relative to the tunnel testing. In the background there’s an awful lot going on and the guys back at the factory are working very hard at putting together new packages to bring to the circuit. They will come along when they’re ready. There’s a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through and a lot of green lights have to be set for those parts to come to the track. It’s difficult for me to sit here now and say when and what is going to turn up. Those are the sort of decisions that we make internally and we’ll discuss those internally. They’ll turn up when they’re ready. They won’t turn up a day earlier than that.

    Q: Alongside an upgrade of major significance, is there also a plan of bringing smaller updates in the interim?

    AG: Absolutely. And we’ve done that since we started. There were updates here, there were updates at the last race. That will continue. Our process of learning never stops, so yeah, that’s the normal process that we – and everyone else – goes through.

    Q: Coming to you Pat, have the first two races been truly representative of where Williams stands at the moment – or is there a lot more to come?

    Pat SYMONDS: I think there’s a fair bit more to come. Obviously in Australia our biggest handicap was only having one car entered because of the problems Valtteri had with his back. Y’know, that takes a big hit in your total points for the year. We’re in a tough competition now, Ferrari have moved on a long way and we wish to fight them – and we will continue to fight them. So, I think that the first two races, they weren’t great for us. That said, we’ve come away from them with half as many points again as we scored in those first two races last year. But if you look historically, over the last five years, to finish second in the championship, you need to be scoring 22.2 points per race. To finish third, you need 18.6 – so we’re a little bit behind the curve at the moment but I hope we can catch up on it.

    Q: What are you unhappy with on the car at the moment? Which area needs addressing most urgently?

    PS: This is going to sound like a repetitive answer but it’s more downforce. That’s what makes these cars go so quickly. In terms of our power unit, we’re pretty happy with things. I think all the Mercedes customers are – so we need to keep working on the downforce and that will allow us to challenge harder to James and the others.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) I’ve got a question for Pat and for James Allison. You’ve both taken over roles that involve taking once front-running teams and restoring them to where they should belong but over the course of your careers the roll of technical director seems to have moved into a sort-of psychological… you have to do psychological man-management, you have to improve morale, change your working culture rather than sit at sketch board with a pencil. How has that role evolved in your experience – and how have you acquired the necessary skills to motivate people rather than design bits of kit?

    PS: Well I worked with James and I’ve obviously motivated him far too well because he’s beating me now! You’re right, these are very big racing teams now and when I started in Formula One they were much smaller. You were much more a jack-of-all-trades. You did a lot more hands-on design etcetera. When the teams get up to the size they are now, in our case over 500 people, some others bigger than that, you do have to manage them well: you have to motivate people, you have to organise people. You have to use your budgets wisely; you have to make intelligent decisions as to where you’re going to develop the car. You can’t go in every direction; you can’t hit things with a scattergun approach. So, yeah, I guess I spend more of my day these days in that sort of role than I do in the good, old-fashioned engineering. But I still have a passion for engineering. I attend every design review that we have. I get involved. But, no, it’ll be a long while before you see me on a CAD station, I think.

    James?

    JA: I’d echo much of what Pat says. I think, although the sport has changed in the direction that Pat suggests, I think it depends a lot on the individual. I suspect if Adrian were sitting here he would tell you he spends a lot of his time at the drawing board – Paul might be able to confirm it – and has a very direct influence of exactly what goes on his cars. But everyone works differently. I spent quite a lot of time working for Ross Brawn. I was lucky enough to spend a fair amount of time working for Ross and saw in him a technical manager who didn’t try to involve himself in the minutiae but was very skilful at picking people for key rolls, for allocating the resources that the team had in a way that was likely to bring most performance for the least spend, and was good about leaving people space to work in and not micro-managing them – but equally was ready to step in if he saw things going wrong. That was a tremendous lesson, working under a guy like that. I try to make my own pale reflection of the way I saw him work – but honestly, whether a team is good or not depends massively more than who the technical director is. The team has to have strong people across the board – from the team principal and the board of the team right the way down to the machinists that are making the parts. There are so many components of a Formula One team and you can have no weak link otherwise nothing works.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) To all except Arai-san, there’s been a lot of talk recently about banning wind tunnels, concentrating on CFD, possibly going as far as common chips, standardised chip sets. Seeing this has been discussed, how do you all feel about it, and seeing as it was mainly sparked off by Christian Horner, could I ask Paul to start please?

    PM: It’s a proposal which has been originated in Red Bull. I think, at the moment, it moves to a strategy group to decide whether they want the sport to go in that direction. If it comes down from the strategy group, then much more of the technical detail can be resolved once we have a mandate to do so – or if we don’t, and at the moment, I wouldn’t want to say any more than that.

    JA: I think Dieter knows my opinion on this, because we’ve discussed it before. I don’t think it’s the best direction for us to take as a sport. We do our best as teams to take our technical budgets and turn them into lap time. Aerodynamics are a huge part of the performance of your car and you need to be confident when you’re spending that budget that you’re going to deliver to your investors and your team the performance that you hoped you would do. At the moment, you wouldn’t find too many engineers who work in aerodynamics of any hue, who would recommend developing the type of thing we’ve got, using just CFD. It’s just too error-prone and you need to have the wind tunnel to keep dragging you back to reality and without that, you are at very high risk of spending your investors’ money foolishly and not delivering a car with the performance you thought you would have. That doesn’t really save any money or do anyone in the sport any good so I don’t think it’s the right direction.

    PS: Yeah, I disagree with the proposal to ban wind tunnels. I think some of the restrictions we’ve put in place over the last few years have been quite sensible in terms of saving money and actually forcing us into being more efficient. I think that Formula One has contributed an awful lot to the improvements we’ve seen in CFD and I think that’s something that has gone on and benefitted a lot of different areas of society. So I think we are doing quite a good social… we have social responsibility in what we do. But I think the same applies with the wind tunnel and in fact not that long ago I was doing some work with one of the top major motor manufacturers, showing them how they could use their wind tunnels better on production road cars to decrease drag, increase fuel economy etc. It’s techniques that I think we develop in Formula One that are actually quite useful in other areas. We’ve invested a lot of money in wind tunnels, we’ve invested a lot of money in CFD – it’s not as cheap as some people might think. I think we have quite a good balance at the moment and I’m pretty happy with the way things are.

    JK: I think every team will have a take on this, depending on their strengths and weaknesses, wind tunnels and CFD, but I suppose from my side, it’s really see what the strategy group decides and work  on it accordingly.

    AG: Force India are always looking to be more efficient and save money so it’s an interesting discussion but it’s probably going to be a discussion that’s way above my pay scale.

    Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) To follow up on that question, the other week we had Bob Fernley saying something along the lines of the fact that F1 is supposed to be technologically forward and that wind tunnels were almost the dinosaur technology and that we needed to be more revolutionary and take more forward steps. Do you guys agree with that at all or is the wind tunnel too vital to your programmes, that you would like to retain it in some capacity?

    PM: I suppose in our current format of working we’re dependant on the wind tunnel. If the format of our work changes and the wind tunnel is removed as a tool, we will find a way to work in the next environment. You adapt and that’s what we do. When rule changes come along, we adapt to those. If this is a rule change that’s invoked we’ll learn how to work with it. It’s a different way of competing with our opposition.

    JA: Well, I think if anyone were to come and see inside any of our teams, I don’t think they would regard the aerodynamics department – which is a mixture of CFD and wind tunnel – is in any way not forward looking. As Pat was saying, the techniques we develop in both those spheres, in both wind tunnel and CFD, are impressive by any measure. We, as an industry, have caused the CFD tools for low speed aerodynamics to be pushed forward very nicely to the benefit of more than just Formula One so I don’t think there’s any need to worry about us using dinosaur technology. I just think it is the right combination of tools with technology as it stands today.

    PS: I think it’s a clearly ridiculous provocative statement. Our wind tunnels are anything but dinosaurs. Just because a technology has been around for a while doesn’t mean that it joins those reptiles of old. Cars have been around for a long while. Are cars dinosaur technology? Maybe Bob ought to come and have a look at a decent wind tunnel and just see how technically advanced they are.

    JK: Paul is right: you do adapt to stuff if you need to accordingly. There’s always that need if a rule changes but equally, wind tunnels are still developing, they’re not static. There’s new methods, there’s new ways of measuring stuff, there’s new ideas to make the most of them. As it stands today – and this is how everyone works – you’ve definitely got a split between how CFD complements wind tunnel and the other way round. There’s stuff in CFD you can do which you couldn’t do in a wind tunnel and it’s the same in reverse so they complement each other very well. And to just take one of them in isolation right now for any team, if you had to do it tomorrow, would be quite tricky, so I don’t agree with Bob’s view.

    AG: I think Bob was trying to provoke a debate and he’s done that, for sure. It’s difficult for me to comment any further than what Paul suggested, that we’ll work around or work within the regulations as they’re written. If it means that it’s a CFD-based development, then we’ll work to it.

    Andrew Green of Force India is on the right, top row. Friday Press Conference image by FIA
    Andrew Green of Force India is on the right, top row. Friday Press Conference image by FIA

  • Everybody in the team is really pushing hard and there is hope, says Nico Hulkenberg, Sahara Force India

    DRIVERS – Marcus ERICSSON (Sauber), Nico HULKENBERG (Force India), Romain GROSJEAN (Lotus), Felipe MASSA (Williams), Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari), Jenson BUTTON (McLaren)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Image of Thursday press conference courtesy FIA.
    Nico Hulkenberg of Sahara Force India is at left on top row. Image of Thursday press conference courtesy FIA.

    Sebastian, it must have been a few really amazing days for you and we’ve heard you’ve been back to Maranello. What’s it been like to be back there as a winner and do you have to temper the enthusiasm right now?

    Sebastian VETTEL: No, I think we are realistic about where we are and what we want to achieve. I think the targets haven’t changed. Obviously it was a great victory we had in Malaysia and great for us as a team, and especially for myself a very emotional day – my first win with Ferrari. And then to come back – I think it was Wednesday – coming back to the factory and to see all the people there was quite special. There are a lot of people working there, so you can imagine, and of course they were very, very happy. The team hasn’t won for quite a while, so I think they enjoyed the fact that they had something to celebrate, there are a couple of rituals involved and it was nice for them to get that feeling again, but as I said, for the next races nothing has changed: we want to confirm that we have a strong package, we have a strong car and we want to make sure that we stay ahead of the people we stayed of in the last couple of races, but knowing that obviously Mercedes is in a very, very strong position.

    We saw really good pace from Ferrari in Malaysia. Is this pace for real and continue to take the fight to Mercedes?

    SV: I think it was for real two weeks ago. I don’t think Mercedes backed off and everyone else. It was obviously nice for us to see that we were so competitive but I think there were also a couple of circumstances coming together but most important we managed to capitalise and get a very good result and win the race. But for here and for the next races, I think in general [at] the start of the season, things can be up and down. We want to make sure that there is quite a lot of up, not so many downs but it’s normal that some races you are more competitive than others, so I think, as I said, that we managed to do a very good job in Malaysia but for here and for the next races we have to be realistic about what we want to achieve.

    Thank you very much. Moving on to you Felipe, Williams haven’t had the start to the year that they were hoping for. Have we seen the real pace of Williams this season or is there still a lot more to come? Can you claim you place back here in China?

    Felipe MASSA: Well, I think we cannot complain about how we start the season. You always want to be on top, but we are third in the championship, so we scored some good points as well, even losing some good points in the first race from Valtteri who was not there racing. But even counting that, I think it was OK. So we cannot complain [about] where we are, we always want to have more, we always want to be better, to be more competitive, and also we saw that Ferrari was pretty good. I think it was the team that made the most steps forward compared to how we finished the last race. We need to work as hard as we can to fight with them and even trying to get closer or better compared to Mercedes as well. We’re working for that, we just need to keep pushing and knowing race by race where we are, but I think we cannot complain. We are not far away compared to where we finished [last season] so we are there in the fight.

    The team admitted after Malaysia that there might be some operational procedures that need fine tuning, that there’s still room for improvement, and there are also some new upgrades to be shown or tested here in China. What are you hoping for this weekend?

    FM: I think you always have some room for improvement. You always can improve and you always need to keep working to improve the car, that’s what we’re doing, but it’s also what the other teams are doing, to improve maybe the car, the procedures, the pit stops, the pace – everything is important for every race, Here we have some new parts but I think maybe other teams will have as well, so we need to wait and see. I hope we bring what expect to bring race by race, which is always what we are working for.

    Marcus, coming to you: this year has been a step up for you coming from Caterham to Sauber. It’s been a quite promising start, pre-season testing, the first race, but Malaysia was a big learning process. Has the prospect of scoring points changed your approach going into racing?

    Marcus ERICSSON: First of all, it’s a big step up, like you say, coming from Caterham into the Sauber team. We’ve been competitive from the start and Australia was great for us, with both cars in the points. Then I think Malaysia was a really good weekend. I was top 10 in every session and managed to get to Q3, so it was a really great weekend and then obviously I did my mistake in the race, which I had to pay a big price for but that’s something you learn from. I’m not the first one and I’m not the last one that makes a mistake in a race. But yeah, overall, I think the Malaysia weekend was very positive and we bring a lot of good stuff from that and we showed again that we can be competitive and we’re going to aim to continue that form in China and I think it’s realistic that we can do as well. I’m really looking forward to getting going again tomorrow.

    The pecking order is beginning to take shape at the moment. Have you and Sauber set any targets for this year already?

    ME: Not specific targets for championship position but I think for us it’s the target for every race weekend now to try and score points and like I said, it’s a realistic target with the pace we have at the moment. We need to try to score the points and also keep up with the development of the car. That’s the big aim for us for now.

    Thanks. Moving on to you Nico. It’s been a difficult start to the season for you and also the team, with all the delays and pre-season testing. Force India seem to have slipped back in this pecking order we were talking about, so what are the challenges you are facing at the moment, especially now that the B-spec car has now been pushed back to Austria?

    Nico HULKENBERG: Well, yeah, the challenge is to get a faster car, to find performance. Like you say, clearly we are not in the easiest situation and Malaysia has been particularly tough on us but I think everybody in the team is pushing really hard and there is hope. There is still room for improvement with this car before we get major upgrades, so we just keep our heads down, focus hard and try to get the most out of it.

    We saw a lot of wheel-to-wheel racing in Malaysia. Do you think this something that can be repeated this weekend and which are the main challenges that everyone is going to face this weekend in terms of tyre deg or temperatures or reliability?

    NH: Usually China is well know for front graining so we’ll have to wait and see if that happens again this year. But Malaysia, with those high temperatures tyre deg was high and whenever tyre deg is high you have a lot of wheel-to-wheel racing. I think it was quite entertaining from that point of view. I think it’s going to be a little bit more difficult here to overtake but we’ll see what happens.

    Moving on to you Romain: 11th in Malaysia. We saw very good qualifying pace but then Lotus seemed to struggle for pace during the race and we haven’t seen a clean race from a Lotus this year, so where does Lotus stand in the pecking order?

    Romain GROSJEAN: Well, I do think our race pace is actually better than our qualifying pace. Of course, we didn’t show much in Australia and in Malaysia I think we had a good race. We didn’t finish where we were supposed to, we had a few issues with the car but generally I think we could have done better than we did and on paper everything is looking in that direction, so it’s very positive. We haven’t put everything together right now. I’m sure that we’ve learned a lot and from where we come back from last year it’s a massive step forward and I think we enjoy driving the car. There are updates coming and every time we put something on the car it works in a good direction so hopefully this weekend it’s going to be a bit better, an easier race and from there we can start scoring points.

    I was going to ask you: there’s obviously a lot more to come from this car this this year that we haven’t seen yet but how much are you enjoying it this year compared to last year and what are the targets to be set?

    RG: I’ll tell you one thing: if you could delete from the cloud of your life a year I would delete 2014. So let’s speak about 2013 and 2015. I have fun in the car, I do enjoying driving it, it works pretty well, you can set it up and I think all the credit goes to the engineers who have managed to listen to us and get in a good direction. After three laps in this car this year I was just happy that it goes right.

    Q: Moving on to Jenson. It’s also been a difficult start to the season for McLaren-Honda, especially pre-season. A lot of work but massive steps taken between pre-season to Australia and then Australia to Malaysia. What is expected for this weekend? How big can the improvement be?

    Jenson BUTTON: Hopefully very big! Yeah, it’s always tricky when you start off in the winter with not doing much mileage. I think for everyone it was a big surprise to see us finish in Melbourne. I think for the outside world, they probably didn’t think we made a big step from Melbourne to Malaysia but we did. It was very, very big. We weren’t able to finish the race but we got a lot of useful information, again for another big step forwards. We’ve got to see what we’ve got here. It’s a very long straight here, which makes it a little bit tricky but we’re all working very well together.  I feel we still haven’t got the best out of what we have right now, so hopefully we can do that this weekend – and there’s a lot in the pipeline for the future. A lot of people have asked me how I’m so positive and how the team are so positive and upbeat, and it is because we see a great future. It’s just a lot of hard work now improving before we can get there.

    Q: There’s two world champions in the team and a lot going on behind the scenes: a lot of work, a lot of hours but there’s also a very interesting competition between both team-mates. You seemed to have the upper hand in Malaysia. Did you enjoy that?

    JB: I don’t really think that was the case but when you’re fighting at the front or fighting at the back I think that’s when you more concentrate on your performance against the guy that’s in the same car. When you’re fighting in the pack it’s obviously very different. For us two to be competitive, like any team-mates in Formula One, it’s important for us to improve and to make big strides forwards. It’s great having such an experienced driver in the other car. Hopefully that’s going to help us, first of all get into the points and then hopefully challenge for something better in the future.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Sera) To Sebastian, a couple of questions. Do you expect only the confirmation of the potential of the car here or also a step forward? Second question, are you going to invite Nico, Lewis to the Ferrari debriefing tomorrow?

    SV: No, I think we rather stay amongst ourselves. Then, I think in general we had two races, usually you need a couple of races to really understand where you are. I think we have a decent understanding but the target is to confirm the fact that we were very close to the top cars in Australia and fighting with Williams for the podium. Obviously in Sepang two weeks ago we were very, very close, and close enough to win, so that was a great success – but, as I said, in general I think we want to establish as probably the team right behind Mercedes. That means that we stay ahead of strong teams like Williams, Red Bull, and not just for one or two races but ideally for the whole season. Once we’ve confirmed that, then the target is to ensure that the gap gets closer and closer with Mercedes.

    No invitation. No.

    Q: (Abhishek Takle – Mid-Day) Question to Sebastian. This is a two-part question. I’m sure you’re aware that you’re just one win short now of Ayrton Senna’s mark of 41. Is that something you think about heading into this weekend? And, as someone who’s very interested in the history of the sport, could you describe your emotions that you’re just one win shy of that mark? Second part, you and Lewis could both surpass that mark potentially this season – so do you think that number, the 41 is more attainable in modern-day Formula One, and if so, why do you think that is? Thank you.

    SV:  First of all, I wasn’t aware, to be honest. I know Michael’s number but that’s just ridiculous, if you look at numbers. I think it’s very special. Obviously it took me a long while to get the number forty done. I hope the next one is not that far away but, yeah, I think it would certainly mean a lot for any driver. That’s why I think statistics in this regard are quite nice. Once you are on the track it doesn’t really matter so much. The second part of your question, I think nowadays it’s probably not entirely fair to the guys in the past simply because we have more races. So, we were supposed to have 20 races but we have 19 this year, and in the past, if you really go back many years they only had ten races and then 13, 14, 15. Only in the last, probably ten years, it ramped up to 20 races a season – which obviously increases your chances of winning more races.

    Q: (Weian Mao – Titan Media) Question to Felipe and Jenson. You have been racing here in Shanghai since the very first one in 2004. What’s the most impressive thing for you, on track or in the city? And Seb and other drivers, if you would like to share your past memories of Shanghai.

    FM: Well, I think it’s a nice track. It’s a track that has a lot of high-speed corners, quite difficult for the front tyres, front-left. Very long straights, see some overtakings, is a nice place to be, so it for sure, since I came here for the first time – it was 2004 – to now, you see how much this place develops. Amazing. I remember on the first year, I was taking maybe two hours in the traffic from the city to the track, and now it’s much better. You see how much this country develops, and you see how nice it is here, the people. It’s nice, I really enjoy a lot to come here in China – and is also a nice track. Maybe we just need a little more people to watch the race, because here… I don’t know if it’s too expensive or what, but people, they’re always in the hotel waiting for you, a lot of fans but maybe they are not here on the track, so we need to push on that.

    JB: I agree with Felipe. This place has changed a lot since we came here in 2004. I think the circuit is a fun circuit to drive. I also think that the last couple of years we’ve had more people at the race, more supporters. Obviously the first year there was quite a lot because it’s new and it’s exciting but I would say the last couple of years it’s been pretty good. It’s still looks like we need more advertising in the city because, when you’re in the city you don’t know there’s a grand prix going on apart from the fans outside the hotel – but it’s great to see how passionate they are about the sport. And it’s men and women as well, which is good. Hopefully it can just keep growing – like China’s economy has.

    Sebastian, your best memories.

    SV: It’s quite funny. In 2007 I had a very good race here, finishing in the points for the first time with Toro Rosso. Finishing fourth. Before the race it was dry and I was speaking to Jenson on the drivers parade and Jenson’s car was not very competitive that year, not at all, so he wasn’t very keen to race in the dry, let’s say, and he was praying for some rain – otherwise he was looking forward to the party, he said, on Sunday night. But then the rain came and I think for both of us it was a great race. He finished fifth, I finished fourth and we both started P18 and P20, something like that. Definitely good memories. Also the win in 2009, the first win with Red Bull. Obviously quite a special place.

    Q: (Luis Fernando Ramos – Racing Magazine) To you all: you were talking about how the fans are passionate here and that means you are met at the airport and you get loads of presents from the fans. What was the most interesting, strange or different present you’ve ever got from a fan here in China?

    JB: I don’t know about strange and interesting. The little badges are pretty cool. Have you seen the badges? They put like bear faces with… it’s panda (faces). That’s pretty cool. Apart from that it’s traditional things like chopsticks and fans and what have you. It’s great, I love coming here, lots of goodies to take back home.

    SV: I had a panda experience as well but it was a stuffed panda, not a real one, obviously. But it was too big to take it home so I had to leave it in China I’m afraid. That was some years ago. It’s nice when you get something small to take along but that was too big, I struggled.

    JB: That poor, devastated person that gave you the panda, eh?

    SV: But I’m honest. At that time I couldn’t afford an extra seat to pay in the plane, so I couldn’t take the panda with me.

    FM: Well, I had a panda as well. I always have a lot of books and on every page they put pictures of all the fans, like a big book and it’s fantastic. So it’s really nice to put in the… I also have a museum where they can put everything, even some gifts and everything from the fans which is nice. I always receive a lot of things for my son as well, gifts and sweets and everything. They are really amazing.

    NH: No panda for me, no. It’s pretty much like the other boys say, local stuff, a lot of sweets, books, Lonely Planet so I can find my way around Shanghai, stuff like that.

    RG: I’ve received a very nice box of macaroons when I arrived at the airport. After a long flight that was pretty nice.

    ME: No panda experience for me so far but I’ve had some candy and stuff like that, local stuff.

    Q: (Gergely Denes – GP Live) Sebastian, can you give us a bit of an insight about the celebration at Maranello after the win? If I’m correct, you mentioned some rituals after a win. Can you give us just a little bit of insight about that process at Maranello?

    SV: Well, I was there anyway to do some work. It was planned to come on the Wednesday to be in the simulator but obviously it was also quite nice to receive a bit of a welcome after the win. All the factory got together for a quick lunch which was quite nice, to have all the people in one room – it was a big room – all together and able to celebrate a little bit. Also I learned that when you win with Ferrari, they put a Ferrari flag right at the entry gates. Obviously the last couple of years… it has been a long time since there has been a flag. I think some ten years ago there were a lot of flags, especially at the end of the season, so this flag will stay for the rest of the year. We will of course try to maybe put another one sometime soon, but it’s tough right now.

    Q: (Luis Fernando Ramos – Racing Magazine) Romain and then to Nico, there was some discussion among the fans and journalists about the incidents each of you had in Malaysia. I want to hear your views on that. Was the punishment a correct call or was it a racing incident in your opinion?

    RG: Well, I think, to be fair, it wasn’t really… with Sergio. During the race, it was a good move on the outside of the high speed corner. He took a risk and he came out of the way… ended up. Sergio came to see me and just apologised. He had no more tyres at that point of the race and he just went a bit wide. I think that was… Yeah, he got a penalty. He didn’t bring back by flat tyres of my spin the time lost but I think you just need to be careful in the high speed corners, not to get wheels in between other wheels.

    NH: Yeah, also I spoke to Dany after the race and he just didn’t expect me to dive back in and he didn’t see me as well. I still tried to pull out of it but it was too late so we touched. The penalty was maybe a bit harsh but it’s history now and we will move on.

    Q: (Gary Chappell – Daily Express) Sebastian, according to Bernie Ecclestone, you weren’t a very good World Champion, you didn’t represent the sport very well, at least, not as good as Lewis Hamilton. How hurtful are those comments and what’s your opinion of them?

    SV: Well, I think he’s free to say what he wants so it’s fine. For me, I’m very happy with what I have achieved so far and looking forward to what might be coming and that’s it.

    JB: Maybe it’s because you’re not on Twitter.

    SV: Yeah, is Bernie on Twitter then? I don’t know.

    JB: I didn’t think he was into that social media stuff.

    SV: Wonder how he knows, then?

    eom/FIA transcript of the Press Conference

  • Karun Chandhok confirms return to 2015 Le Mans 24 hours with Murphy Prototypes

    Le Mans, 8 April 2015: Indian racing driver Karun Chandhok confirmed that he will return to the historic Le Mans 24 hours race on the June 13 and 14. Chandhok, who was the first Indian to drive in the Le Mans 24 hours in 2012, goes back with a firm target of a podium finish at this iconic race. For the third year in succession, Chandhok will race with Murphy Prototypes and the Murphy Prototypes Oreca 03R Nissan-powered LMP2 car. He will be joined by GP2 driver Nathaniel Berthon and the experienced Mark Patterson.

    The Le Mans Prototype 2 (LMP2) category this year is the most competitive it has ever been, with new cars from Oreca and HPD as well as a more developed Ligier. However the team are optimistic following a strong pre-season test at Paul Ricard earlier this month.

    Chandhok, who is supported by JK Tyre, AVT Premium, Sidvin and Tag Heuer, reiterated his conviction on the Le Mans 24hours being one of the most exciting races in the world.  He commented, “Le Mans is one of the greatest races in the world and my ambition to be the first Indian on the podium is still burning strongly within. I am happy to be back with Murphy Prototypes as we have always worked really well together. Nathanael (Berthon) was very quickly up to speed last year and now has a year of sportscar racing under his belt and Mark (Patterson) has improved a great deal from when we raced together in 2013 so I think we’ve got a strong line up. We had a lot of speed and potential in the last two years there but the results didn’t work out for variety of reasons. Hopefully third time lucky!”

    Chandhok will add the Le Mans 24Hours to his existing program in the FIA Formula E series with Mahindra Racing. He added, “We’re still half way through the Formula E season and there’s plenty of work to do there with Mahindra Racing, but equally, pursuing my career in Sportscars is still very important to me. There are more and more manufacturers coming into Sportscar racing and having a good result in LMP2 is the perfect way to put yourself back in the shopping window for a full factory drive. It’s going to be a very busy few weeks in May and June with 5 out of 6 weekends on track for Formula E races in Berlin, Moscow and London and then the Le Mans test and race alternating in between!”

    Team owner Greg Murphy was excited about having Chandhok back with the team for another assault on the Le Mans 24Hours. He said “I’m really happy to have Karun back with us again. We work well together and we also drive each other mad, but it’s because we have an equally strong ambition to succeed at the biggest race in the world. Apart from obviously being quick, Karun has proven to be a real team player for the past two years at Le Mans for us and this is the main reason I keep pushing for him to join the team. For the first time, we are heading to Le Mans with all three drivers having previous Le Mans experience and this is very important I think.”

    The Le Mans 24 hours race, is widely regarded as part of the three Crown Jewels of Motorsport, along with the F1 Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500. The 13.6 kilometres long circuit at Le Mans winds through the French countryside, with cars touching top speeds of 315km/h. The race distance is more than 5000 km, which is equal to about 16 F1 races. 2014 saw a record 263300 spectators at the circuit to witness the race. Chandhok, who has a highest finishing position of 6th place, will return to the La Sarthe circuit where the race traditionally starts at 3pm on a Saturday and finishes at 3pm on the Sunday.

    Chandhok was also quick to thank his long time supporters JK Tyre, AVT Premium, Sidvin and Tag Heuer for their continued support. He said, “I am entering into my 15th year of association with JK Tyre which is just amazing. We’ ve been together from Formula Maruti all the way to F1 and now to Formula E and Le Mans. Tag Heuer, Sidvin and AVT have also been with me for a few years now and I’m proud to be carrying their colours with me once again.”

     http://www.facebook.com/karunchandhok

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    www.karunchandhok.com

    eom/Adrenna release

    Karun Chandhok poses with an Indian flag. An Adrenna image
    Karun Chandhok poses with an Indian flag. An Adrenna image

  • After spectacular Rossi win, Movistar Yamaha MotoGP team prepares for action in America

    Gerno di Lesmo (Italy), 7 April 2015: After Valentino Rossi‘s spectacular victory at the opening round almost a fortnight ago, he and Movistar Yamaha MotoGP teammate Jorge Lorenzo head to Circuit Of The Americas (COTA) for the Grand Prix of The Americas this weekend.

    The 2015 season has only just started, but the first MotoGP race has already given race fans lots of action and drama to talk about. Rossi rode a brilliant race from eighth on the grid to clinch victory.

    The nine-time World Champion aims to continue his form at COTA, though he‘s admittedly not a big fan of the Texan circuit with a sixth place in 2013 as his best result. However, he‘s still excited to hit the track after his sensational opening of the season and will again be giving his all to fight for a place on the podium.

    A Movistar Yamaha graphic
    A Movistar Yamaha graphic

    Teammate Lorenzo had a challenging start to the season. He led the pack in Qatar in the early stages of the race, but later lost half his vision due to a helmet malfunction. The mentally and physically strong Spaniard will use this misfortune as extra motivation to push his YZR-M1 to the maximum once more this weekend. Last year he had a difficult race at COTA, but he looks forward to being back at the front of the field to challenge for a podium place, like he did in 2013 when he finished third.

    The Circuit of the Americas is a relatively new track that was constructed in 2012 and first added to the MotoGP calendar in 2013. The 5513m-long, counter-clockwise track is not typically described as a ’Yamaha-circuit‘, but has an interesting mixture of fast straights and tight hairpins that make for a lively race. With 20 corners in total, 11 left turns and 9 right turns, and a longest straight of 1,200m, this circuit can seat 120,000 fans and is sure to bring more excitement to the season.

    Rossi said: “Beginning the championship with a victory is really nice, but now we must try to be just as competitive as we were in Qatar everywhere else. Austin is not our favorite track. Although the track is very modern and I really like some corners, the two long straights are weak points for us. Our opponents are strong, but it‘s also true that our bike has made major improvements. I‘m happy with my feelings on the YZR-M1. We will work hard to find the best possible solution, as we did at Losail. After the victory in Qatar we are all very motivated and we are ready for another weekend. I would like to get on the podium. It won‘t be easy, but we will try!”

    Teammate Jorge Lorenzo wants to forget the opening race and concentrate on the COTA: “Qatar is in the past and we thought our result would be better, but now I‘m just focusing on next race in Austin. I look forward to racing there once again, even if usually it‘s not a track that suits our bike. In the past I was able to get on the podium so I want to do my best in Texas and try to keep as focused as I was in Qatar. I‘m eager to race as soon as possible because I feel very fit and mentally strong. Hopefully we can do a better job than last year because both me and the bike have improved and maybe also the new tyres give us a chance to fight for the race. From my side, I‘m going to push at the maximum,” Lorenzo said.

    eom/A Movistar  Yamaha release