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Tag: Ferrari
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Ferrari’s Vettel tops timesheets in FP1
Bahrain, 14 April 2017: Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel topped the timesheets as practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix got underway at the Sakhir Circuit, with the German finishing four tenths of a second clear of Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo.
It wasn’t a wholly successful session for Ferrari, however, with Kimi Räikkönen stopping on track early in the session with smoke rising from the back of his car. It left the Italian squad bookending the timing, with Räikkönen 20th and last on the sheet.
Vettel’s P1 time, set on soft tyres, came with around half and hour left in a mid-afternoon session conducted in high temperatures.
The German was followed by Ricciardo whose best time was a 1:33.097 that left him exactly four tenths of a second adrift of the Ferrari man. Ricciardo’s lap was good enough, however, to put him almost half a second clear of team-mate Max Verstappen.
Mercedes, meanwhile, had a low-key start to the weekend with Lewis Hamilton tenth quickest and Valtteri Bottas down in 14th place. Hamilton briefly held sway with an early run on softs, set during the hottest part of the session, but gradually slipped down the order as the track improved.
Fourth place in the session went to Force India’s Sergio Pérez, who finished 1.398 seconds behind pacesetter Vettel. The Mexican was 0.151 clear of Williams’ Felipe Massa while team-mate Lance Stroll was eight seven hundredths of second further back in sixth place.
Seventh place went to the second Force India of Esteban Ocon, while Fernando Alonso, who on Wednesday revealed that he is to contest this year’s Indianapolis 500 over competing at the Monaco Grand Prix, was eighth for McLaren. Romain Grosjean was ninth for Haas, ahead of Hamilton.
Räikkönen’s woes came on his seventh lap on track when he slowed and stopped just after Turn 13, with smoke pouring from the back of his car. Ferrari later reported that the Finn’s car had suffered an overheating issue with the turbo.
Räikkönen was not the only driver to be sidelined by an engine issue. McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne also stopped out on track when his engine cut out after 10 laps. He finished with the session’s 13th fastest time.
Elsewhere, Pascal Wehrlein made his first appearance on track since FP2 at the Australian Grand Prix after which he complained of a lack of fitness following a pre-season crash at the Race of Champions. On his return to the cockpit with Sauber he finished in 18th place, seven hundredths of a second behind team-mate Marcus Ericsson.
2017 Bahrain Grand Prix – Free Practice 1
1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 21 1:32.697
2 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull 22 1:33.097 0.400
3 Max Verstappen Red Bull 23 1:33.566 0.869
4 Sergio Perez Force India 22 1:34.095 1.398
5 Felipe Massa Williams 24 1:34.246 1.549
6 Lance Stroll Williams 25 1:34.322 1.625
7 Esteban Ocon Force India 23 1:34.332 1.635
8 Fernando Alonso McLaren 14 1:34.372 1.675
9 Romain Grosjean Haas 21 1:34.564 1.867
10 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 28 1:34.636 1.939
11 Daniil Kvyat Toro Rosso 13 1:34.838 2.141
12 Nico Hulkenberg Renault 13 1:34.927 2.230
13 Stoffel Vandoorne McLaren 10 1:34.997 2.300
14 Valtteri Bottas Mercedes 27 1:35.002 2.305
15 Jolyon Palmer Renault 19 1:35.068 2.371
16 Kevin Magnussen Haas 21 1:35.579 2.882
17 Marcus Ericsson Sauber 23 1:35.888 3.191
18 Pascal Wehrlein Sauber 23 1:35.959 3.262
19 Carlos Sainz Jr. Toro Rosso 16 1:36.079 3.382
20 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari 6 1:42.333 9.636eom/FIA press release
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Ferraris looked so fast and we knew it would be close: Hamilton
Hamilton celebrates after taking Chinese GP pole on Saturday. An FIA image Shanghai, 8 April 2017:
DRIVERS – 1. Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes), 2. Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari), 3. Valtteri BOTTAS (Mercedes)
TV UNILATERAL
Lewis, many congratulations on what looked like a great lap at the end of Q3 there. Talk us through the lap and your session.
Lewis HAMILTON: Thank you. Yeah, it’s been an interesting weekend so far, obviously without testing yesterday. Today was a real challenge for all of us in the sense that we had to compile a lot of yesterday’s testing into this morning and hope we’d hit the nail on the head with the balance of the car. But the Ferraris have looked so fast, through practice this morning and then through each qualifying session. We knew it was going to be close, and it was going to mean we would have to pull out all the stops and really have a very, very perfect lap, you know, a solid lap. I managed to just chip away at it from session to session. No major issues. But the last lap was my best lap, which is always the plan – sometimes it’s in another session. The lap started off not as good as perhaps the Q1 first lap but then the rest of the lap got better and better – I think it may have been tyre temperatures or something, who knows. It felt strong and then obviously coming into the last corner knowing I was up a couple of tenths… it’s always nervous going into Turn 14 because you want to break late and gain some but you don’t want to throw away everything you’ve gained. And through the last corner and coming across the line, and then just waiting after that to see what everyone else had done. These guys behind were still finishing off their laps. So, very, very happy, super grateful for the huge efforts that the team have put in to keep us in the fight. It’s more exciting than ever for me, because we’re really fighting these guys, you know. It’s amazing, and I think that’s what racing’s all about. It really pushes you to raise the bar every time you go out, which I love. Lastly, just a big thank you to all the fans. We’ve got a lot of British flags here in China, which is amazing.
And Lewis what does it mean to you to take the 75th pole in the history of Mercedes?
LH: Well, I’ve been with Mercedes for a long, long time, since I started when I was 13 actually. Since I’ve been in Formula One, all my wins, all my poles have been with Mercedes, so very grateful and thankful to be in the family, and to be a part of this amazing journey that the whole team is on, that this whole brand is on. I’d like to go along and keep stamping something in the history books so someday I can look back on it.
Q: Sebastian, a great session from you and Ferrari as well. How important was it for you to get on the front row today?
Sebastian VETTEL: We’ll see tomorrow how important it was. It was a nice session; I enjoyed it a lot. I think if we could have been a bit quicker at the end I would have enjoyed it a bit more. I think I was very happy with the lap I had. Last corner maybe I lost a little bit – maybe I ‘chickened’ onto the brakes a bit too soon. Obviously it was very close with Valtteri, good job we got just enough margin to make it to the front row.
Q: Do you think you have a better race car than qualifying car at the moment?
SV: I think our car is strong no matter what. It obviously depends what these guys are doing. Certainly we’ve seen also in the previous years that in quali they seem to be able to really get on top of what they have. I think we can still improve. Let’s see what the race looks like tomorrow. The conditions will be quite different. Maybe we should put fuel in the car and race now. I don’t know what happens tomorrow.
Q: Valtteri, have you worked out where you lost that one thousandth of a second to Sebastian?
Valtteri BOTTAS: I think on one lap around here there are quite a few places. One thousandth, like you mentioned, it like this maybe? It’s not so much. It is a real shame he managed to get between us. I think last time it was two thousandths and now it’s one thousandth, so…
SV: I think it was two hundredths, I don’t know.
VB: It’s getting closer! So yeah it’s a shame but the race is tomorrow. We are starting as a team first and third. It’s a good place to start. The weather can be anything really tomorrow. Lewis was strong today, Ferrari was strong and we were always expecting a close fight today on track. I think it will be the same case tomorrow. Thanks to the team again. We did a good job in the short amount of time in the practice today to get the car set up well and it was enjoyable to drive, but let’s see what tomorrow brings.
Q: Thank you Valtteri. Coming back to you Lewis, well, it looks like you’ve got a real fight on your hands tomorrow. How much are you relishing this battle with Ferrari?
LH: Particularly for tomorrow, it’s going to be an unusual day. I heard it’s going to be wet potentially, to start off the race. I’ve not driven the wet tyre this season, so that’s going to be fun, to experience the bigger car, wider tyres for the first time. I mean I did an out lap yesterday on the extreme, but it was a very slow lap, so I’ve not actually experienced it. So tomorrow will be a new lesson for me to learn if it is wet and it will be interesting to see… I think the Ferraris have a very, very strong car, particularly a step-up more so in the race pace and how they treat their tyres, particularly when it’s warm, so it will be interesting to see what the weather brings us tomorrow. But I think we have worked hard to understand our car a little bit better and I think whatever the case it’s going to be close between us and that bodes well for one of the most exciting days to come for a long time.
Q: Lewis, how much do you feel that you are on the back foot after the lack of running yesterday? How much has it set everybody’s programmes back?
LH: I don’t know. I think the thing is we’ve all been here for so long and the more you drive the more you learn to minimise the loss of a day like yesterday. So, y’know, as a team we’ve learnt so much over the years, and as a driver as well. You learn, even while you’re not driving, you’re thinking about the steps that you need to take. So we try go into a day like today as if there hasn’t been a loss. But as I said, this morning we had to do long run, short run, and a qualifying run in one short session, as opposed to doing it in three sessions – but I think we got as much as we could done and if we had had yesterday, I don’t think we’d have been much further up the road, if any at all, to be honest. Don’t know how these guys feel but we’ve got great engineers who analyse and analyse and analyse and did a fantastic job and, I’m assuming, for Sebastian.
Q: The weather forecast looks indifferent for tomorrow at best… it could rain. You’ve touched on it already that you haven’t used the new full wet tyre from Pirelli. Does that make you nervous?
LH: No, I’m excited about it, to be honest, because it’s a new experience. I’m sure it’s not a huge, huge difference to what we’ve had in the past. Perhaps a little bit. I’m kind of excited about. It makes it more… it’s great to have some excitement. To be faced with a new challenge. You just have to be the most proactive, most reactive tomorrow. If it is wet. If it is raining I just hope that the clouds stay high so that the helicopter can stay take off so that we can actually do a race. We’ve got an amazing turnout here so we want to make sure we can put on a good race for them.
Q: Sebastian, it’s 380m from the grid to Turn One tomorrow. How significant is that going to be – or do you think you are going to be able to overtake tomorrow?
SV: For me it’s 388m, I guess. Hopefully I can make up those eight metres. Which side are we starting on. Where’s pole? [on the outside] OK, so if I make up 8m then it looks pretty good. I don’t know. There’s a lot of things that can turn out in many ways tomorrow. That’s one option that I mentioned but we don’t know what the conditions are going to be like. We’ll see. I think it should be an exciting race nevertheless. Obviously very limited running yesterday, hardly any for me. I think I did two laps but nobody really did a lot of laps, so we’ll see. The car is good, the car is fine, so I’m confident, no matter the conditions that the car is working, and then we try to do the fastest race.
Q: Lewis has already said that racing against someone like yourself is what racing is all about. Just how much are you relishing the battle with him?
SV: Well, it’s been a while so yeah, I think we’re on a good way. Obviously it’s a lot of fun when you fight for poles and wins. Certainly enjoyed Australia a lot, despite the outcome on Sunday which obviously was fantastic – but in general, to be able to fight at the front for the podium, and really fight for it is a great feeling. Same here. You go into the weekend and… we didn’t really have much expectation because it’s a completely different track but on the hand we did know that our car is working well. So, just need to keep it up. Need to try to improve it whenever we can. So overall, I can only give it back, and hopefully there’s a lot more for the rest of the season. But this is only race two. A lot of things can happen but we need to obviously give everything we have to stay there.
Q: Valtteri, as Sebastian says, this is only race two, it’s your second race with Mercedes. How comfortable are you feeling in the team? Are you settling in? Are there still a few things you need to learn?
VB: Definitely. Approaching this weekend, compared to Melbourne, the first one of the year, it was a different feeling. Being true, that one full race weekend with the team, doing the qualifying session and the race, with a podium finish, it was a nice start, so definitely feeling more and more comfortable. I think still, as I’ve been mentioning, there is a big learning curve for me with everything and I feel more better and better still, every single day with the team and every single lap with the car. So, yeah…
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto Motor und Sport) Maybe a question to all of you. Different circuit, same result as in Melbourne. The advantage a little bit smaller than in Melbourne. Where does Ferrari stand against Mercedes? What do you think Lewis, Sebastian and Valtteri?
LH: I’m not really sure how to explain that. Close. The times show it as close as it’s been. It’s within a tenth, I think, the distance between us.
SV: Being pragmatic, I think if you take the average of what we’ve had so far, then you can say that in qualifying we’re still lacking a bit and in the race I think we are a good match. I think Lewis was struggling a bit in Australia with his tyres. We weren’t as much. I don’t know what happens tomorrow. It will be a lot cooler. Certainly after tomorrow you can draw another average – but what matters most is that after 20 races you draw the average and we come out on top. That would be great! But it’s a long way, as I said. So, for now we’re very happy being able to challenge Mercedes and hopefully we can do that more and more.
Q: And Valtteri? What did you expect the gap between yourselves and Mercedes to do here in China?
SV: A thousandth!
VB: Yeah! I was hoping for one thousandth at least. We were always expecting it would be really, really close. Everything between the two teams is between one or two tenths, depending on conditions for the sessions, race or qualifying. That’s why it’s going to be interesting tomorrow.
Q: (Luigi Perna – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Seb, the distance between you and Lewis, Ferrari and Mercedes in general, seems to be even closer than last year and the past years in general. This difference in qualifying, compared to last year and previous seasons; do you think it can be a trend throughout the season?
SV: Well, I think we’ve made a big step as a team so I think it’s really thanks to the team that simply supplied me with a better car. I think in general I like this formula a lot where you can push on the limit. Probably the last couple of years it was creeping away from all of us, step by step, and with this year’s cars it’s back to how it was a long time ago and back to how it should be. I don’t know if it’s a combination of things; as a driver you jump into the car and you always try to do your best but as I said, big thank you to the team to supply me with a great car this year, right from the first outing and I have high hopes that we can still improve it from where we are. I know the team is still growing together, there is still a lot of progress that we can make but the way I feel and the way the team feels and the way the team shows it to me directly and indirectly, there’s no rush. We are here to do our job and we know that we can be strong. I think we’ve laid a good foundation and now it’s up to us to build onto it. Now it’s April, we still have a lot of time. The most important thing, I think, is that we enjoy it.
Q: (Keren Wang – Top Driver) Lewis, we’ve seen a bit of happy tail from your car today on your flying laps. Could you tell us a little bit about your car set-up; is it compromised for a wet race tomorrow or is it somewhere between wet or dry, either condition?
LH: What was the first part? Happy tail, ah oversteer. It’s actually a little bit understeery I would say.
SV: Where was the happy tail? One corner to another?
LH: It was pretty good. It’s like a see-saw, you know? You can decide to have it more understeery or oversteery. This is a track where you need to have a very good front end. I think generally in Formula One it’s not too often where we have to set the car up for a wet race, particularly when you don’t know if it’s definitely going to be wet so you set it up for what you’re faced with that day and tomorrow you can make changes to the wing; tomorrow, for example, if it is wet, that’s the only real difference you need to make. It’s not like go-karting where you loosen everything off, you slacken the car off. You don’t really need to do that necessarily for… If we know it’s a completely wet weekend and maybe we can do some small things but it’s quite similar. We’ve got to make sure we’ve put ourselves at the front.
Q: (Jens Nagler – Bild) To all three of you: what do you think will be the key tomorrow: the start, the strategy or perhaps even some overtaking which would be exciting?
LH: I think probably in that order: start, strategy and then, depending on what the conditions are on the track… if it’s wet of course there are opportunities to overtake, if it’s dry it’s very hard to follow as has been the rule now, particularly when there’s thousandths between us. You lose a lot of thousandths behind each other with the loss of downforce. Yeah, I think it would be great if we get some… a wet race would be exciting.
SV: I think… mostly conditions. If it’s dry we know what to do, everybody knows what to do. It’s fairly easy knowing what to expect. If there’s an element of wet then it can mix things up so we will see. I think we wake up tomorrow, look outside and see what to do. We have enough wet tyres so it should be fine if it’s wet.
VB: Seeing the forecast, I think really making the most of the conditions throughout the race, being on it with the strategy. I think that’s going to be one of the key points.
Q: (Fu Yu – China International Radio) Valtteri, you’re only a thousandth of a second slower than Sebastian on the front row. Do you think you could have done a little bit better and how confident do you feel about making up that gap tomorrow?
VB: Always if you could do the lap again, especially when it’s one thousandth, you can find it somewhere, especially with the short amount of running throughout practice. We only really had practice three. Yes, definitely, I could have done better but I think every driver on this grid, having got a second qualifying, would improve and then it becomes more and more tricky to improve.
Q: (Fu Yu – China International Radio) How confident do you feel about making up that thousandth of a second tomorrow?
VB: When we’re on the grid tomorrow then it doesn’t matter. I always tend to get all the points from the qualifying that I need to improve and what we need to improve as a team. We move on for tomorrow and tomorrow I’m not going to think about the one thousandth; it’s a new day and a completely new opportunity and we are going to do everything we can to be one and two and for me still chasing my career-best result.
Q: (Marius Salvini – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Lewis, pole position number 65 is even closer. What do you think about it, is it something of a magic number for you?
LH: It really is, I think. Every pole has been – it might be hard for you to believe – but every pole position has been so unique in its own way. There’s always been a different journey to gain that pole, there are different things that have happened on that lap. It’s still today – and I’m sure it will never change – it’s still so real that I have that amount of poles and to think you can have a pole in Formula One…. because the dream was to get to Formula One. And now, it’s perhaps even more exciting, I’m nearing Ayrton, he had a lot of pole positions with less races. We know what he did back then was just phenomenal, the same with Michael but just grateful to be up there up amongst them. I definitely feel that what I love even more now is that I feel like more than at any other time, I feel like I’m really having to earn those pole positions being that it’s so close, so again, on top of that the feeling is even better.
eom/FIA transcript of the press conference
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Tactical mistake costs Hamilton dear; Vettal puts Ferrari on top
Vettel celebrates after winning the Australian GP on Sunday. An FIA image Melbourne, 25 March 2017: Sebastian Vettel took his and Ferrari’s first win after the Singapore Grand Prix of 2015 beating Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas to Australian Grand Prix victory after a strategic slip by the champions allowed Vettel to inherit the lead midway through the race at Albert Park.
Pole sitter Hamilton was in control of proceedings ahead of Vettel until his first pit stop on lap 17. After taking on soft tyres, the three-time champion emerged behind the slower Red Bull of Max Verstappen, as Vettel took the lead.
Hamilton could find no way past the Dutchman and when Vettel made his sole pit stop he emerge ahead of both, in the lead. The German then built a solid gap and controlled the pace until the end, finishing 9.9s ahead of Hamilton.
There was drama before the start as on his lap to the grid, home favourite Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull slowed dramatically. The Australian’s car had been repaired overnight following his crash in qualifying and his team had performed a gearbox change, which dropped him to 15th on the grid.
As he circled to take that spot he reported that the car had lost power and then stuck in sixth gear. It was recovered to the garage and his crew then began to work frantically to get the car repaired so that he could start from the pit lane.
They were afforded a little more time when there appeared to be confusion about grid slots following Ricciardo’s stoppage and the start had to be aborted.
After another formation lap the race finally got underway and Hamilton held his advantage, taking P1 through Turn One. He was followed by Vettel, Bottas, Kimi Raikkonen and Max Verstappen.
As the field flowed across the line at the end of the first lap, Ricciardo’s car was finally fired up and he joined the action – a lap down.
At the front, Hamilton attempted to stretch a small gap to Vettel but the Ferrari driver responded and over the course of the first 15 laps the deficit stayed hovered around 1.5s. Bottas held third, some six seconds behind the Finn, while Verstappen was fifth ahead of Felipe Massa, Romain Grosjean, Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Daniil Kvyat.
Grosjean’s stint in the top 10 was coming to an end though. On lap 15 smoke began to billow from his Haas’ engine cover and he quickly steered towards the pitlane where he retired from the race.
Hamilton made his first stop on lap 17 and took on soft tyres. He emerged in P5 behind Verstappen. Thus, Vettel assumed the lead. Soon after, Hamilton was told that it was “race critical’” that he pass Verstappen but the Briton was quick to point out that there was no way past the Dutchman. As Hamilton’s pace dropped behind the slower Red Bull, Vettel powered away at the front and when the German made his first stop, for soft tyres, on lap 23 he emerged ahead of both Verstappen and Hamilton, with Vettel quickly building a 6.0s advantage.
Later, Hamilton would say that his early stop was caused excessive tyre wear and that he has simply ‘run out of grip’.
Elsewhere, Ricciardo’s frustrating afternoon came to a close when he suddenly lost power on lap 29 and ground to a halt at Turn 3.
By lap 40, Vettel was looking comfortable in the lead, 7.8s ahead of Hamilton who was in turn 2.8s ahead of Bottas. Behind the podium positions Bottas was 13s ahead of Raikkonen and the Ferrari driver was 4.0s ahead of Verstappen.
Verstappen was making headway, though, and on lap 41 he turned a 4.0s deficit to Raikkonen into a 3.3 gap. A lap later he clawed another eight tenths of a second back. It looked like there might be a late-race duel on the cards but as his supersoft tyres faded it was as near as Verstappen got. By lap his pace began to drop and the gap to Raikkonen drifted to 2.2s.
Further back Fernando Alonso was heading for a P10 finish and McLaren’s first points of the season. However with just a handful of laps remaining the Spaniard was in trouble. First with Ocon and Hulkenberg swarming all over the back of his McLaren and then with a mechanical issue that was making his car pull to the right. Ocon swiftly pounced and took the final points position for Force India. Alonso steered to the pits to retire from the race.
At the front, Hamilton was offering no threat to Vettel and the order remained stable, with Bottas third ahead of Raikkonen and Verstappen now settled in fifth place.
Vettel took the flag for his and Ferrari’s first win since Singapore in 2015, followed by Hamilton and Bottas. Raikkonen took fourth ahead of Verstappen. Massa was sixth for Williams with Perez scoring solid points for Force India with an impressive seventh place. It was a good day too for Toro Rosso, with Carlos Sainz eighth ahead of team-mate Daniil Kvyat. The final points position was taken by Ocon.
Just three other drivers finished the race, with Nico Hulkenberg 11th for Renault and Italian Antonio Giovinazzi 12th for Sauber on his Formula One debut. Thirteenth place went to McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne. The weekend’s other rookie, Lance Stroll retired from the race at two-thirds distance.
eom/FIA press release
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Team Principals at the FIA press conference at season opener in Australia
Melbourne, 24 March 2017:
FIA Friday press conference in progress. An FIA image TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Toto WOLFF (Mercedes), Eric BOULLIER (McLaren), Maurizio ARRIVABENE (Ferrari), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing), Paddy LOWE (Williams)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Opening question to all of you gentlemen: obviously it’s the opening day of a new season of Formula One. Lots of changes on the cars but sum up how your first day went? Eric why don’t you kick us off?
Eric BOULLIER: Reasonably well. Obviously we didn’t add as many laps as we were expecting but if you compare with the testing it was a little bit better. Obviously the cars look more spectacular more aggressive, It was a good working day for us.
Christian, obviously you had the incident with Max that lost you a lot of track time but Daniel’s long run looked pretty reasonable.
Christian HORNER: Yes, not too bad. Certainly the first session today was encouraging. The few changes that we made the drivers didn’t like too much. Max did a little bit of grass mowing at Turn 12 and that compromised his session in the late afternoon but we got a lot of good information and we’re generally quite encouraged.
And Paddy, how was your first day of action at Williams?
Paddy LOWE: It was sort of a mixed day because we had a great first session, some encouraging pace. [It was] Lance’s first practice ever in Formula One, so he was taking it steady, step-by-step, making good progress. But into the afternoon we had an electrical problem on Felipe’s car, a short circuit, and that really ended his session very early. So we didn’t get the homework we would have liked on that car. But overall, quite encouraging for tomorrow.
Maurizio, did today go as you thought it would?
Maurizio ARRIVABENE: We were working mainly on car balance. This morning we were struggling a bit more than normal. But then in the afternoon we were still working on the car balance, but nothing different versus our Friday programme.
Toto, Lewis looking very much the man to beat.
Toto WOLFF: Yes, he had a very good day overall. For the team it was one of the better Fridays. Having had some question marks over testing in Barcelona it was encouraging to bounce back in that way, but it is a day that doesn’t matter.
Q: Eric, coming back to you. We hear you are collecting quite a lot of air miles at the moment going forwards and backwards to Japan. How serious are your problems and what steps are you taking with Honda to resolve them?
EB: Well, obviously we had a very bad winter testing, a lot of troubles, didn’t do many miles, no race simulations but like you said we are having many, many meetings with Honda. We both take it very seriously. All the options are open. Today we discussed how we can catch up and recover from that situation.
Q: Toto, they say you should never change a winning team, but here you are after three dominant seasons with a new technical chief and a new driver, so how has the dynamic in the team changed?
TW: It’s a very large organization, between Brixworth and Brackley it’s almost 1500 people and the dynamic is positive. Every year we are trying to reinvent ourselves without compromising performance and we are in good spirits.
Q: Christian, a slightly quieter testing period than with Ferrari and Mercedes, but lots of new parts arriving on the car today. Tell us how the development race will impact this year’s championship. Is it going to be the deciding factor and are you going to come out on the right side of it?
CH: Well, I think it’s going to be a big factor. These regulations are still very immature and there are going to be a lot of gains in a short space of time and it’s a matter of who can most efficiently develop their car and effectively get components on the car that drive performance forward. It wouldn’t be unrealistic to expect the cars to be 1.5s quicker by the time we get to Abu Dhabi than where we are here today. It will ebb and flow during the season but at the front of the grid hopefully we get a bit closer to Toto’s guys and have some closer races this year.
Q: Paddy, you’ve gone back to the team you did some winning with back in the early 1990s, a dominant period with Mansell and Prost. Why is this move to Williams the right thing to do at this time of your career?
PL: I had a great three years in my previous team, some great success there, but there was a great opportunity, a challenge at Williams. As you say, it’s going back to the team where I started my career in Formula One. It was quite emotional and special going back there a week ago, seeing people I literally hadn’t seen for 24 years, but fantastic team and we look forward to making substantial progress over the years to come.
Q: Maurizio you have been downplaying expectations going into this season, but what I’d like to know is, inside the team, how hard it was to build what looks to be a very competitive car given all the technical changes and staff upheaval that you had in the second half of last year?
MA: If you change something, it’s for the better, not to get worse. We have a change, the team is working very well together. Over the winter the guys were exchanging information; they have a common goal. Working all together, having a common goal and exchanging all the information they have, the car becomes not the car of one but the car of everybody and this is what has driven us until today and into the future.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (John McEvoy – Daily Mail) To Maurizio. Liberty have arrived, and one of the things they have said they want to do early on is make everyone more available to the media, but after arriving here it seems you have gone in the other direction. One of your drivers was unavailable yesterday in advance of this big race at the beginning of the season, from an organization as big as Ferrari. I was wondering why that is, whether that will go on or whether that will be addressed?
MA: Define media. What do you mean by media? Today, defining media is quite large in terms of communication media. It’s also social media. It’s not only what we are thinking about. Yesterday we had Sebastian who was talking and we were using social media and posting something related to Kimi. Liberty also said that in this business at the moment the digital platforms are used at only 1% of the potential. So, the good thing is to find the right balance. Instead of having two drivers on Thursday and talking and doing a copy and paste of one versus the other with the same questions we made sure that Sebastian was talking in one way and Kimi in the other. So we cover all the communication platform. Making happy also Generation Z.
Q: (Seff Harding – Xero Xone News) – To follow up on that, a question for all of you, do you feel that there does need to be a change in accessibility to the press, to arrange interviews that may be on social media, Facebook Live, Instagram, to reach out to other audiences, in other markets and of course to other demographics?
CH: I think the changes that have been put in place this year have been positive. I think that relaxing the rules regarding the digital platforms, allowing content to be generated… non-circuit content giving the ability for fans and followers to get a little bit beneath the covers and closer to seeing the personalities of the drivers in the build-up to a grand prix or pre-season is certainly positive. It’s a media business at the end of the day. Formula One is a media business. We have to engage with the media. It’s important that we give access to the drivers, access to the fans or how else are we going to promote the sport.
Toto?
TW: I think like Maurizio said, we have to cover three different generations. We have to cover the long-time followers, so-called middle ages, the Millennials and Generation Z. You kind of need to play the full span. For example, when we launched the car we put some time into the car launch, which is a risk on the engineering side, you’re compromising your time, and we did a Facebook Live launch, 360, and we had almost a million views in 24 hours and it was successful. We have to embrace all that, not forget any audiences within these groups but target all of them and Liberty’s approach has been right so far, in opening up.
Q: (Giles Richards – The Guardian) Question for all of you: we’ve had the big regulation change this season, can you tell me whether you think we will actually see better racing and the reason why this is so or why if not?
Eric, why don’t you start?
EB: I think the car, obviously it’s a hot topic with everybody talking about overtaking numbers and manoeuvres and whatever. I think 90 per cent of the overtaking is thanks to DRS since this device has been introduced. So as far as we are concerned the DRS is still on so I don’t think there will be many changes on this: the number of overtaking. The car philosophy stays the same as the previous generation and, as long as it is dictated by this front wing, you will have this loss of downforce effect into the corners. On the positive side, I think the drivers were the ones lobbying us, all of us, to have a faster car, fastest cornering cars and clearly we have achieved this, I think, with bigger tyres, more downforce, fastest cars today and obviously that’s going to facilitate, or help the bravest drivers to try or attempt some manoeuvres to overtake. So, I don’t think there will be a big difference compared with before. I think, and the drivers as well, I can already feel – and I’m talking for McLaren only – Fernando clearly was the one who was complaining about the previous generation, and he’s clearly happier now with this kind of car. He enjoys driving the car and you can see the cars today, in some fast corners they are flat-out already on Friday afternoon – so I think it’s a good sign about what we wanted to achieve. I think all the drivers happier should make the show better.
Paddy, any thoughts?
PL: Yeah, I agree with what Eric said but on top of that I think the other element we will see with much higher loads now in the car, with higher cornering speeds, driver endurance is much more demanding, so we may see more mistakes in races, drivers more on their human limits. So, I think that could be another interesting factor.
Anything to add Christian?
CH: I think the guys have covered it pretty well. I think the cars are going to stretch the drivers. I think sitting here, and we don’t know whether the racing is going to be better over the year or not, but I think the drivers are going to be working harder, you’re going to get perhaps more differential between drivers and they’re going to have to work harder for overtakes when arguably some of them have been a little bit too easy over recent years.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Based on comments that Ross [Brawn] made earlier today and also previously, it appears that the Commercial Rights Holder could play a more active role in the regulatory process. Which means that possibly entertainment could take precedence over technology etc. How do you feel about this? About the commercial rights holder getting increasingly involved in the regulatory process?
Toto?
TW: This is an entertainment platform and it should be around the entertainment of the fans and I think with Ross in place it’s the right individual. He has seen it from the other side; he knows pretty much what matters to the teams and now trying to seek a good balance between keeping the DNA of Formula One, keeping it at the pinnacle for racing drivers and for engineering and equally making sure it’s the best possible show for our fans will be the main priority. I think we are definitely in an interesting place and it looks positive.
Maurizio?
MA: I think for the future cost and performance, they are two key factors. Reducing the cost and increasing the performance, they are the two key factors. Then, of course, it’s an entertainment, what we are doing here. It’s part of the entertainment business. Everybody, they’re open to discuss and talk about new ideas in the appropriate places. At the moment we have governance, so talking to everybody to help the sport to grow is fine until we are all aligned to the actual governance. Or, if we want to change it, we have to sit and discuss about this.
Paddy?
PL: yeah, we welcome a focus on entertainment. That is what this sport is all about. I think the really encouraging thing is that Ross is building a team behind him who are going to do proper research into proposals that are under consideration, so I think there’s every reason to feel positive about the future.
CH: I personally think there is far too much emphasis on technology at the moment and we’re spectacularly bad at communicating that. I think the average fan and viewer understands very little about the technology that’s in a Formula One car which, as Maurizio alluded, is enormously expensive. So, I think the Commercial Rights Holder, it’s their business at the end of the day. They have to decide what they want the sport to be and, if the route is fan-attraction and creating a really exciting product, and at the end of the day they want to create great content on TV then it’s vital they come up with an outline of what their vision of Formula One is. And then, obviously, the FIA have a regulatory position and the teams need to be involved in that process. We have a process that that can be achieved in if two of the three parties agree.
EB: All has been said I think
Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Sera) To Maurizio, given the results of the test and what happened today, do you have an accurate idea of the position of Ferrari?
MA: Yes, we have it in Barcelona and in Barcelona we have our programme, we follow our programme since the last week and as well it’s what we are doing here on Friday. On Friday we are working on the balance of the car, as on Day One in Barcelona we were working on finding the best performance day after day without panicking, without being under pressure and being focussed on what we were doing.
Q: (Luigi Perna – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Another one for Maurizio. Daniel Ricciardo recently told us in an interview that Sebastian Vettel becomes even quicker and more motivated when he has a winning car in his hands. Do you expect him to give an extra performance this season? And what do you need: Ferrari and Seb to go home together, to sign another contract for 2018?
MA: I’ll start from the end of the question. Talking about contracts now is only distracting the attention of our drivers so I’m not ready to talk about any contracts. Then, I would like to see Sebastian happy during the season because if Sebastian’s is happy that means the car is very quick.
Q: (Jon McEvoy – Daily Mail) Maurizio, do you have as much belief that you can win this race now, as you did this morning. I hear what you’ve said and the work you’ve done during the day – but do you have as much belief that you can win it as you did at the start of the day?
MA: We want to keep our feet on the ground. It’s Friday. We have to work this evening. Tomorrow we continue our job and then, until Sunday, we have a lot of things to do, still. So, I don’t want to do any prediction.
Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS) For Christian. It’s only Friday but can you imagine Daniel winning on Sunday or is the gap too big?
CH: I think, being realistic, the performance we’ve seen today from Lewis, he’s the absolute favourite. He was the favourite coming here and all today has done is underline that. But then it’s motor racing and anything can happen. We’ve seen spurious results in opening grands prix in previous years and obviously to have a home winner would be an unbelievable result – but if you look at the pecking order at the moment that is a long shot.
Q: (Andre Leslie – DPA) Question for Mr Wolff, to do with the makeup of your team this season, with Valtteri Bottas now replacing Nico Rosberg, obviously Nico leaves a big hole in the team but Valtteri is keeping pace brilliantly today – we’ve seen twice. How do you see his role going forwards this season?
TW: It’s obviously very big shoes to fill. Nico is the reigning World Champion and Valtteri has to fill those shoes. He has a couple of days of testing behind him which were very positive and the work with the engineers went very well and today was the first proper day on a race weekend. I think that in terms of the mindset, he has settled in very well into the team and how he has to find his grip and benchmark himself against probably the best driver in Formula One at this time. I’m very confident he is going to find the pace and his place in the team.
Q: (Heath McAlpine – Auto Action) For all of you: today’s first practice session saw minimal running from the teams worried about engine mileage. Would you support a change in the engine regulations to increase the Friday running for your teams?
EB: Good question. I think if we don’t run it is because we may have some technical limitation or let’s say no interest to gather data at that stage so if we do between let’s say 18 and 30 laps per session it’s because it depends on the engine plan generally. I know you can have a different regulation to have more laps but we could do it simply by making sure there is an interest for the teams to run.
PL: I don’t entirely agree with what you’re saying, really. I think the teams are running pretty much a full programme during both sessions. If anything they’re limited by tyres more than engine mileage.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) I would imagine that this is the first Grand Prix that any of you have attended without having Bernie Ecclestone in overall control and charge. Have you, today, thought about the fact that you can’t just pick up the phone and phone Bernie if there’s some sort of issue?
CH: How do you know he’s not still in charge? What Bernie’s done for Formula One has been amazing. The sport is what it is today because of what he created. I think in the role that he has, he’s still going to be in a position to contribute, he still has a huge amount of historical knowledge, respect and relationships around the world and I think that harnessed and used in the right way is an asset to Formula One. I’m sure he’ll be at some forthcoming events and yeah, I think hopefully the new owners can use him constructively and beneficially to build on the good work that’s already been done.
MA: I think that Bernie deserves all our respect because if we are here and if the sport grows it is thanks to him. I think that the new group that is owning Formula One is here to make this sport grow even more so there is no future without the good historical base. If we have a good historical base then I think the new owners are looking forward to continue to grow and that’s thanks to Bernie for everything he’s done and now we need to look forward.
Q: (Mat Coch – pitpass.com) Earlier there was a question about cars not running on the circuit; what can be done in the interests of entertainment to spice up the Friday action which is comparatively dry for those at the circuit, given that everyone’s involved in their own programmes, preparing for the weekend?
PL: I don’t know. We used to have qualifying on Friday as well as Saturday back in the old days. Maybe that could be considered. I think the great thing now is that we have an evolving process to consider the rules properly and develop a sport that incorporates new ideas.
TW: I think you need to differentiate because we had a very busy afternoon with lots of track action. We had a morning which is completely normal and a green track so there is not a lot of interest in testing cars on a track that’s going to develop a lot with the limitation on tyres, with the limitation on engine mileage and if you start to open that up it’s like Pandora’s box because we’re trying to limit costs. The question is that as much as you need an entertainment most of the time entertainment on track, I think we have a good compromise at the moment.
Q: (Sam Tickell – Flagworld.com) We’ve had a lot of positive reaction to the change and the look and the appearance of the cars this year and it was mentioned previously that Liberty are looking to research for the future. How radical to the change in the appearance of the car would teams like to go to in the future, should the research suggest that a major change should be needed?
MA: Radical change with the new rules, everybody already changed their car and I think these regulations are offering the possibility to the designers of the cars, to the aeros, to exploit even more in terms of creative approach is the first step and then in the future we can do something more. We need to make sure that the car it’s still looking like a car and not something that is a bit strange, that’s for sure.
CH: I think the looks of the car… I think they currently look great. I think it’s all about evolution. I think that rather than focus on the looks I would prefer to focus on the sound. I think the best sounding car we have here this weekend is a 12-year old Minardi that 12 years ago had the worst sounding engine in it and was hopelessly uncompetitive and I think that when you hear the acoustics of a V10, you’ve only got to go and see the faces around the circuit to see what it embodies in fans of Formula One, so I would be far more focused on addressing that element than the aesthetics of the cars at the moment.
TW: I think we’ve changed the aesthetics of the car. I think trying to figure out what we could do next is maybe too far. Like Christian says, if we can work on the sound of the car and if we look into a future generation of engines that is something that needs to be considered. There wasn’t enough emphasis on the sound in the past and if we can combine great technology, affordable technology with a lot of horsepower and a good sound, that would be really ticking a box.
Q: (Luigi Perna – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Last year Ferrari lost the pace compared to Red Bull for example in the second part of the season. Are you confident you can have a quick and a more efficient development during the season this year?
MA: What I can tell you is that we are putting all our effort to do all our work best to avoid the same result as last year. That’s it. What more can I say?
Q: (Leon Alepidis – F1fan) Regarding the new commercial deal and the discussions that will be taking place soon, we have already heard from the new owners that they are planning to scrap the historical status for a team and the money that that brings. Would you agree that in order to have a more fair distribution of the prize money and a more competitive sport or not and why?
MA: This kind of discussion you do it with the people who have the contract with you and not in public.
EB: I guess if you ask the people for more money they will be against and you ask less money they will be in favour but this is a discussion behind the scenes, not to be done in public.
CH: Well, there’s probably not a team principal in the paddock that would say they are happy to take less money. If they are, they’re mad so therefore I think it’s a question of bringing the bottom up rather than the top down and hopefully that may well be achievable.
eom/FIA press release
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Gill notches up fourth win in APRC: Rally Hokkaido
Obihiro (Japan), 25 Sept. 2016: Gaurav Gill of Team MRF chalked up his fourth consecutive win in the 2016 FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship as he cruised to victory in the Rally Hokkaido here on Sunday.Having earlier won in New Zealand, Australia and China, Gill, the 2013 APRC champion with a new co-driver in Belgian Stephane Prevot, came up with another near-flawless drive in the MRF Skoda Fabia R5 to win by one minute, 50.6 seconds over his team-mate, Germany’s Fabian Kreim (Christian Frank) who finished ahead of Cusco Racing’s Michael Young (Malcolm Read).
Enjoying an overnight lead of 01:24.9, championship leader Gill maintained a scorching pace to extend his lead by over two minutes, winning the first four of the day’s eight Special Stages before cruising home for his 13th win in the championship since his debut in 2007.
“It’s great to win. Four out of four is awesome,” said Gill. “Everything worked well. The tyres worked well since Saturday when it was wet on the tarmac and I have to thank the team for the good setup.
“It was a very difficult rally because of weather conditions constantly changing. Mornings were all wet, afternoon became all dry, then become pretty rough, so pretty difficult but I’m happy.”
Kreim, who is placed second in the championship behind Gill, said: “I think we got a lot of experience especially on these very demanding roads with very fast parts and very big ruts. All of the ruts have a lot of loose gravel and compared to the other events, it’s completely new to us and it’s very good for us.”
eom/AP Media Comm. Release
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Kimi, Vettel to continue at Ferrari
Maranello, July 8 – Scuderia Ferrari announces that it has renewed its technical and racing agreement with Kimi Raikkonen. The driver line-up for the 2017 racing season will still consist of the Finnish driver and Sebastian Vettel.
A press release from Maurizio Arrivabene, team Principal and Managing Director Scuderia Ferrari said on Friday.
eom/Ferrari release
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Happy and excited to be here, I always enjoy myself out her in the States: Hamilton
Austin (USA), 22 October 2015: The following DRIVERS attended the FIA Press Conference ahead of the US GP her on Thursday: Marcus ERICSSON (Sauber), Alexander ROSSI (Manor), Valtteri BOTTAS (Williams), Daniel RICCIARDO (Red Bull Racing), Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN (Ferrari), LEWIS HAMILTON (Mercedes)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Q: Lewis, three times a US Grand Prix winner, twice at the Circuit of the Americas. You, Nico [Rosberg] and Sebastian [Vettel] have finished one, two, three, in that order, on four occasions this season. If it happens again on Sunday, you are the world champion. What are your thoughts?
Lewis HAMILTON: Well, first of all, just happy to be here, excited; I always enjoy myself out here in the States. The track is fantastic; the race has been great here since 2012. Just excited for another weekend. I missed driving the car for the last two weeks.Q: You spend a lot of time in this country, as we can see from your regular social media output? Why do you like the US so much?
LH: Well, I like travelling everywhere in the world, so it’s not just the US, but I have a lot of friends out here. There’s a lot to do. America has a lot to offer, in such a big space. I do a lot of my music out here, so this is kind of the central hub for music, so that’s probably why I spend more time here than usual.Q: Thank you for that. Moving on to Daniel: a podium here last year, of course, at the Circuit of the Americas, but pointless in three of the last five races, although your best result of the season came during that run, the second place in Singapore. This recent run now means you’re behind your team-mate Daniil Kvyat in the championship. How important to you is it to finish ahead of him at the end of this season?
Daniel RICCIARDO: I don’t know to be honest. Because we’re not really fighting for the title it’s sort of irrelevant. I think I have missed out a fair few bags of points at various occasions this year. But, yeah, I’m not too worried. Obviously you want to finish in front, I’m not going to lie, but when you’re seventh or eighth in the championship it’s sort of irrelevant. Yeah, the little Russian’s jumped in front of me, but we’ll see. I’m confident I’ll end up with more points, but as I said, I’m not too fussed about it.Q: So, we’re reaching the end of October now, how confident are you about being on the grid next season and what assurances have Red Bull given you about how this whole thing is unfolding?
DR: Not much has changed to be honest. Yeah, we’re still not really confirmed with anything yet. From my side I’m still confident I’ll be racing. Confident we’ll be there, hopefully competitive. I think that’s more the concern. I have confidence we’ll be on the grid it’s just the concern is can we be competitive? I want to make sure we can be. This year, obviously we have got a couple of podiums, which is nice, but certainly not enough to keep us extremely happy. So, yeah, we want to be competitive again and I think that’s just as important as being on the grid.Q: Alexander, coming to you, the only American driver in the field and the first American to race in the US Grand Prix in eight years. How proud do you feel about being in the series today and what’s the reaction been like here in the States in the build-up to the race?
Alexander ROSSI: I think, first of all, that the reaction has been very positive, which is what we wanted to see, Of course there is pride that goes along with it, but that started in Singapore and Japan as well. Obviously to be here at home means a big deal, but at the same time we have a job to do and very clear objectives to meet. I’m looking forward to it; there are a lot of friends and family that will be coming this weekend. But I think once you get in the car and on track you appreciate the fact that there is a bigger picture.Q: Obviously you jumped into the car quite late in the season. Two race outings so far and you beat your team-mate on both occasions. What goals have you set for yourself for the remaining events this season and how confident are you of securing a full-time ride for 2016?
AR: With the current situation with the performance difference in the cars I think it’s very clear that the objective just needs to be continuing what we’ve done in the first two, as you said. Both of those weekends there was quite a disrupted Friday for the whole team, so I think if we have a strong Friday the Sunday result can be even more positive. In terms of next year, I’m obviously quite keen to be in a full-time seat next year, which is apparent. The position that I’m in with the team at the moment is good and we’re looking to put that all together for next year.Q: Kimi, coming to you, you said in Sochi that the collision with Valtteri Bottas was a racing incident, you’ve watched it again by now I’m sure, so how do you feel about it now and how have you left it with Valtteri?
Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: Well it hasn’t changed. Obviously there were some discussions and penalties given to me, but I would still do it tomorrow again, that doesn’t change the story. Unfortunately, we came together in the end and we both lost a bit, but that’s life, that’s racing. I don’t feel bad about it and if somebody feels that, it’s up to them. It’s OK for me. Like I said, I would still do the same thing next time and maybe it goes better.Q: There was another good battle with your team-mate Sebastian Vettel in Sochi. Is the objective for 2016 to beat him or finish in front of him on a more regular basis?
KR: Well, obviously this year hasn’t exactly been what we hoped but it’s been much better than the previous year and I’m sure we are doing the right things but we don’t get the results sometimes. That’s fine, we are going in the right direction all the time and I’m sure when we get things running smoother and all the time better so we can definitely fight with him every week. Like I always said: I wouldn’t be here if I wouldn’t feel like that.Q: Valtteri, coming to you, obviously in that incident in Sochi you lost what would have been only your second podium finish of the year. After some considered thought what’s your attitude to it now?
Valtteri BOTTAS: For me it’s the same really. It was a good weekend until the last lap, so of course disappointing to lose the points but my opinion hasn’t changed. I wouldn’t do anything different and it’s now history, so I’m 100 per cent ready to move on.Q: The result means there are only two points now between you and your team-mate Felipe Massa, so similar question to the one I asked Daniel I guess, how essential is it for you to finish ahead of him in the final standings?
VB: Of course it is, yes. As a driver you always want to beat your team-mate but as Daniel said, when it’s not for either the top three or winning the title it’s not that important. The main thing is to get the maximum points for the team with the two drivers. But personally I would prefer to keep in front and that’s one of the goals for the rest of the year.Q: Marcus, you didn’t race here last year as Caterham didn’t make the trip, but you were here, so what are you most looking forward to about racing on this Circuit of the Americas track?
Marcus ERICSSON: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to driving the track, I think it looks really cool; some nice corners, the first sector especially. Like you said, it was the first race I missed out last year, so I’m really looking forward to driving the track.Q: You were out on the first lap in Russia, ending a 12-race finishing streak. You’ve been knocked out in Q1 in the last three races in a row but you have outqualified your team-mate five time in the last seven, so how would you sum up the state of play Sauber as we get to this closing part of the season?
ME: I think I’ve had a really good run from the middle of the season really. Then the last three weekends we’ve had some messy weekends with difficult Fridays and difficult Saturdays, so I’m not entirely happy with the last three events. I think we could have done better things there. Like you said, Russia was a tough one, going our on the first lap, especially because I think our car was competitive around there. So not very happy with the last three but looking forward to turning it around here in Austin.QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Peter Windsor – Clarksport). Question to Valtteri. I’m sorry I know it’s history but it’s still interesting at least for us. After the race Kimi said that he was surprised the move didn’t work because he had done that earlier in the race to you, at the exactly the same place, in exactly the same way and you had let him through and I wondered if that was the case from your point of view? And Kimi please add to this if necessary. In other words, earlier in the race did he do that pass exactly as he trued to do it later in the race?
VB: Yeah, I guess it’s still interesting for you guys, but for us not so much. From my point of view the first one was quite a different one, it was much more clear that he could do it. And of course for me, as a driver, not going to leave the door open two times. So, for me, it was a different kind of situation, as we saw from the result.Kimi, any response?
KR: No. It was for him anyway.I’m just giving you the right of reply.
KR: Why would I need to reply? It doesn’t change what we say anymore.Q: (Peter Windsor – Clarksport) I guess the follow up question to Kimi is: did you not see that Valtteri was going to close the door on that second occasion?
KR: I saw it in the end but obviously once you’ve decided to go there… I tried to brake and turn in as much as I can but there’s no way to avoid it. That’ why… what can you do? Once you go there you do it or not. Once I saw that he’s coming… I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t expect or didn’t see me. Tried to slow down and turn in but y’know, in the end if there’s no space there’s no space. We’re going to collide. It’s an unfortunate thing but it’s a part of racing. You get penalised sometimes, sometimes not. We are here to race, it’s pointless to cry afterwards. I’m sure that people like it more like that than just following each other, so… it’s part of the thing.Q: (Joesph D Love – Tennessee Tribune) This is a generic question, how do you create more enthusiasm in urban black America for Formula One? I know we’re up against football and basketball – how do you make Formula One as exciting for the urban kid in America?
LH: Don’t look at me, ask these first. I’d love to see what these others think!
DR: Just try and be as ‘lads–y’ as possible. Just make it exciting. I mean, we try. I think the sport’s, most of the time, pretty exciting. As performers – let’s say – we try and do what we can to make it cool. In all honest I think Austin, this circuit, is one of the best on the calendar for excitement. I’ve said it before, there’s so many places to overtake, I think the layout is perfect with big, wide apexes, so you can have a lot of fun on this track. I these terms, I think that creates the excitement: overtaking, fights. If it’s just a single train race it’s obviously less exciting so… I think this track creates a lot of that. I think as drivers most of us try to be y’know, like… cool people, funny people. We try to bring fans into the sport. Yeah… I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question.
Alexander, do you want to have a go at it?
AR: Sure, I mean, from an American perspective, I think the biggest thing, leading onto what Daniel was saying, the excitement level needs to be there but beyond that I think the accessibility. Obviously motorsports is something that is quite difficult to get into – and that’s the same for any young kid trying to do it. I think the biggest thing is a direction where to go. I think that’s the thing that’s missing the most. Beyond that, kind of just… there’s always things that can be done in terms of making it expand to a different part of the States. I think it’s very much… Formula One is three locations and in America we’re trying to grow it as much as we can. I think once that happens it’ll appeal to a much broader mass.Final thought Lewis?
LH: Yeah, just sitting here trying to think. I agree very much with what they mentioned. It’s difficult for people to get attached here in America. Obviously they’re crazy about NFL and NBA and there sports that you can just go and guy the equipment; buy a ball or a racquet and go play down the road or in the street, whereas karting, you can’t. I was very lucky, my Dad bought me a go kart and we drove it around a car park, like a DIY Homestore car park for a while – but there’s not that much accessibility, as he was saying, for kids who say “hey, I want to go go-karting.” You have to plan it weeks in advance almost, or save up. So, I don’t really know. Maybe Formula One can start to engage more with the NFL or with the other sports. The brands that you have here in the States, and start to engage with them. I never, every see… I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an NBA player come – I’ve had a friend come once. Otherwise it’s never really been anyone from those sports, different kind of sports come and try to see what Formula One’s about to maybe bring some attention to it, maybe. As you can see, I’m doing as much as I can – but I’m only one person. Yesterday I was go-karting with some kids, there were two black kids with us. One passed me, the first time I’d ever been on track with a black kid and, coming past it was like seeing myself come by – it was kinda funny. It was good. It’s open to everyone.Q: (Seff Harding – Zero Zone News) This question’s for everyone. There’s been a lot of talk about rule changes, or taking a more of an old school approach to the sport. I wanted to know how you guys felt about that – because I guess there’s a little fear that maybe the cars are getting too technical, you guys might end up being like David Hasselhoff in Knight Rider, talking the car and the car’s driving itself. Just wanted to know how you guys feel about taking a more old school approach to the cars, taking a little more tech out of it.
KR: I think it’s the right direction. F1 should be easily the fastest racing cars in the world and it doesn’t look right some races where we go and GP2s are a few seconds off almost. They should be definitely faster, more like they were in the mid-2000s. I think that’s the way they plan to go and I think it’s more fun for us, it looks much more greater to the spectators. But also, they have to make it also… nicer for all the people. Everybody is complaining it’s boring, it’s this and that. If something doesn’t change nobody will care how the car looks or how fast they are. Something has to change, that’s for sure, for F1 to get back more interesting for everybody – but I think it’s a good way to go, make the cars faster and more exciting looking.Valtteri, your thoughts on this.
VB: I think the main thing, like every driver for sure, it’s likely the cars are going to be quicker, so that’s a good thing. Maybe more tricky to drive, hopefully. The main thing, the cars are fast and more spectacular for everyone. I’m not sure it’s really an old school thing because the sport will keep developing. It’s a good direction.Marcus?
ME: First of all, I think the cars today are still a lot of fun to drive for us drivers but like Valtteri says, of course faster cars are always going to be nice for us drivers – but I think there’s a fine line there. To not make it too much like ten, 15 years ago when there was not so much overtaking. I think the racing today is great, with a lot of fights and overtaking. I think we should not cross that line and make the races just follow each other and no overtaking. But yeah, of course, faster cars is going to be more fun for us and more fun to watch.DR: I think sometimes having such a big difference between cars is not so fun for a spectator as well. You see, I think it was a Williams pass a McLaren in Sochi and it was like it was standing still. That… for a spectator seeing that. That driver’s not better and he’s passed him… holding your foot flat down the straight – there’s no real skill required so when it looks that easy then it’s a little bit… I think it takes something away from the sport, one way or another. So, you always want a bit more equality. I mean, sure, you always want the top teams and you always want to look up to racing for a top team, so you always… there’s got to be some sort of division but a smaller division would be nice. More competition I think, more drivers fighting for wins. I think then, when you win a race also, the reward is much bigger. Somehow to get that back, I think, would be good.
LH: I think it does need to change. I’ve not really looked at the changes they’re proposing, to be honest, but it needs to be… for example, with the DRS, it doesn’t feel organic, like natural racing. Whatever changes they make, I want to see closer racing. Wheel to wheel racing. It needs to be like go-karting was. If, y’know, go-karting, wheel to wheel and those guys following the train overtaking. We need to make Formula One a bit more like that. Somehow. I don’t know how they’re going to do it. It needs to be a lot different to what it was in the last 20 years.
AR: I’m going into my third race so I don’t really have much of a comment, other than the fact I’m not really racing anyone at the moment other than one other car. Obviously I have to agree with what everyone said but for my own personal views, nothing different.
Q: (Greg Creamer – COTA Big Screen Production) Kind of following up this discussion, there’s been a lot of talk about the power units in that and the fact that they are a little bit disparate right now in terms of performance. But what about a re-vamp of the aerodynamic approach, because what you guys were talking about – Lewis in particular – about the go-karting and running close and that, you don’t seem to be able to do that right now because you get close enough, you wash the front end out, there’s no stick? How about re-vamping the aero on the car to get more done, maybe with a tunnel, less sensitivity in the nose so you can follow somebody through say, the last turn at Monza and be able to run right up and not lose the nose as opposed to all the focus on all the power units? That seems like that would improve the racing.
LH: It does seem that way but I don’t think that’s possible. You’ve got turbulence behind the plane, it’s the same thing, you get turbulence behind the car. All these vortices that are bouncing off the car, whichever rule they change to keep downforce, it’s always going to be like that. They need to do something like where when you’re getting close to another car and the car in front has to… the cars always have to have the same amount of downforce, no matter how close you get, so I don’t know how they’ll achieve that but that would be kind of neat.Q: (Tony DiZinno – NBC Sports) Alexander, having had FP1 a couple of years ago, how much nicer is it to have past F1 machinery track experience as opposed to the last two events you’ve done?
AR: I’ll let you know tomorrow. Obviously it gives you a baseline but at the same time the cars in ’13 were clearly very different to what they are now. I don’t know how much is applicable to be honest. I think it’s more of a bonus, the fact that I’ve actually driven the track, more than anything else.Q: (Dan Knutson – Honorary) Daniel, Renault has a new engine in the works. What has Renault told you and what has the team told you about this engine?
DR: Yeah, it’s available if we want to use it. Obviously that would mean a penalty, though, so we’ve got to understand if it’s worth it. Last I heard, it’s not massive so from my understanding it’s probably not worth taking it but yeah, I think we’re down such a chunk that I don’t think we’re going to gain enough in this short time to make it up so if we start from the back, I don’t think we’re going to make (up) the ground we need. Right now, I would say we’re probably less likely to take it. That’s about it. Hopefully today they tell me something different and we’ve found a bigger chunk of horsepower from it but I think realistically there’s not a whole lot.Q: (Peter Windsor – Clarksport Ltd) Just following up on what you were saying there, it looked as if in sector three in Russia your car was actually not bad at all in terms of putting its power down and racing Ferrari- and Mercedes-engined cars and on that basis, I wonder where you feel you’re at around here now, on this circuit, bearing in mind the sector three here as well? How quick is the car now?
DR: The car’s good and I was surprised to hold Valtteri and Kimi off for as long as I did. Once they caught me I thought I wouldn’t have sat in front as long. That was definitely some nice little surprises, I guess, in Russia. I think it has progressed for sure, the power as well but I think the car has really come alive and yeah, the grip we have through all those tight, twisty bits is really good. I think this circuit will suit us more so yeah, I’m hoping we can be more competitive here. It just seems that (in) qualifying we don’t really have that one lap pace but then (in) the races we seem to be a lot more competitive so if we can somehow start towards the front then I think we can stay there. We’ll see how we go but I’m definitely excited to race here if we’re not floating down the river.Q: (Diego Mejia – Canal F1 Latin America) To all of you; Pirelli is set to stay for quite a few years. What would the drivers like to see from the tyres looking at the next few seasons?
VB: Maybe more grip, that’s always nice, more grip. I think there have been some tracks that – for example Russia – even the supersoft has been a bit too hard so yeah, I’m sure that they are learning from all these things but I think this is adjusting to the different tracks because every tarmac is so different tracks because every tarmac is different, every track is so different, so to make the races exciting, a good quick tyre for the track, I’m sure they are pushing for that so we will see what they can do.
KR: I think we’ve had a lot of discussions about Pirelli and obviously they have been blamed for many things but it’s not easy for them to produce tyres that… first of all I don’t think they are ever going to be able to produce tyres that everyone is happy with. Somebody is always complaining and then we are not allowed to do testing so how can they improve the tyres? We always say, OK, we should go this or that way but they don’t have the time on the circuit to do anything so that doesn’t help them. I don’t really see the point of discussing here what we would like. For sure they will talk to us. I think everybody has to work together with the teams to decide that OK, we can do testing, also helping Pirelli in that way. When teams cannot decide themselves together who does the test or whose car is being used then Pirelli cannot do any laps. It’s very difficult to improve tyres and do what the teams are asking of them. I think it’s up to the teams to provide them also the possibilities to get the tyres running in a proper test and try things. I’m sure they will find a way to do that and I’m sure we will get what everybody’s more or less happy with.
LH: I don’t know. As Kimi said, it’s pointless everyone saying what we would liClockwise: From top left: Marcus ERICSSON (Sauber), Valtteri BOTTAS (Williams), Daniel RICCIARDO (Red Bull Racing), Alexander ROSSI (Manor), LEWIS HAMILTON (Mercedes), Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN (Ferrari), At the FIA Thursday press conference before US GP. An FIA image ke if we can’t do any testing. I don’t really particularly… more performance is what we always want and I think they’ve got to make a big step if that’s going to be the case.
eom/FIA transcript of the Press Conference
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With very little track time, we had to guess a bit and it worked: Nico Rosberg
DRIVERS
1 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)
2 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)
3 – Valtteri BOTTAS (Willams)TV UNILATERAL
Nico, you were fastest in Q1 and Q3, fastest after the first run in Q3, on pole by a decent margin. Are you pleased with that?
Nico ROSBERG: Yeah, for sure, I’m very happy. It’s been a difficult weekend actually, because of the little running that we got; we didn’t get much practice. Qualifying worked out really well; found a good balance on my car, thanks to my engineers as well. We had to guess a bit where is it going to be and it all worked out well. I felt comfortable, so got some really good laps in and I’m very happy with that.Very well done. Lewis, obviously you were trailing your team-mate after the first part of Q3 and then you didn’t go for the extra lap at the end. Why not? And I saw you looking around the Ferrari afterwards, did you learn anything from it?
Lewis HAMILTON: No. I did go for my second lap; I just didn’t finish it. I made a mistake at Turn 13 I think it is. Yeah, a difficult weekend I think for everyone. Nico did a great job on his lap. I wasn’t quite perfectly happy with the balance that I had. But overall really happy. I think it’s great for the team and yeah, as you say last year this is not such a bad race for P2.OK, thank you for that. Valtteri, you matched your result of last year, do you feel you have the measure of Ferrari this weekend?
Valtteri BOTTAS: Well, it seems like it, at least today. We were quite competitive. It’s good to be third; it’s a good place to start here. Obviously it has been a tricky weekend for everyone but I really think we managed to use Practice 3, well, part of it, what we had, pretty well. I managed to get some good laps in qualifying, consistently, and I pleased with the laps and what we did as a team.Well done. Coming back to you Nico, obviously you’re going for the Constructors’ Championship tomorrow, trying to clinch it here for the second year in a row, but have you personally got a plan for worked out for Turn One. Lewis referenced it in
Nico Rosberg flanked by Hamilton (P2) on his right and Valtteri Bottas (P3) on Saturday after taking the pole. A Mercedes AMG Petronas image his answer, after what happened here last year.
NR: No, not yet. I haven’t thought about that yet. At the moment just enjoying being on pole and I’ll dig into that this evening or tomorrow morning to work out a plan for that. Of course the Constructors’ Championship is a really important target for us this weekend – it would be amazing to clinch it for the second time so early on in the season – so we’re out to do that, but at the same time, of course, I’m out here to try to reduce the gap to Lewis in terms of points.PRESS CONFERENCE
Nico, you mentioned in your first answer about the lack of running this weekend, the really unusual situation. We had it in Japan but even worse here because of the curtailed Free Practice 3 after Carlos Sainz’s accident. So what have you been able to find out in terms of long runs with this much softer tyres than last year here in Russia and how much guesswork is going to be involved in strategy and race performance tomorrow?
NR: Well, we tried to prepare as best we could. So this morning we did do some high fuel running, everybody did. So we do have an idea of how it’s going to be tomorrow, so it’s not completely just guessing. No, we’re quite comfortable that we know what to expect and strategy-wise we think we have got a good strategy, so it should be fine.Lewis, I wonder if you could give us your view on what happened this morning – the accident of Sainz and going under the barriers? Your thoughts on that speaking on behalf of the drivers?
LH: To be honest I don’t know anything about it, so I couldn’t really comment. I’m just glad he’s OK.Q: OK, well I’ll throw a question maybe you can answer. You obviously mentioned the fact you are quite happy to start in second place, based on what happened here last year. So, obviously today didn’t work out for you in the single laps but fro the little that you’ve been able to learn from the high-fuel running, do you think you’ll be able to challenge for the win tomorrow.
LH: I wasn’t saying I was happy, I mean I have no choice of being second right now, obviously Nico did a better job in qualifying but I feel there’s still all to play for, as you’ve seen in many other races where I’ve started second. I think it’s exciting. It makes the race ever more exciting and, as I’ve said, Turn One, it’s a long, long way down to Turn One. Probably one of the longest ones of the whole year so it should create opportunities. But there are other opportunities throughout the race as well.Q: Coming to you Valtteri, obviously both these gentlemen managed to get through Q1 without using a set of Supersoft tyres, just showing the performance that they have. A lot of your competitors struggled, it seemed, to get temperature into the tyres today as the temperatures actually came down during the course of the qualifying session. Is that something you struggled with – and can you articulate what it was like to use these tyres here today?
VB: Yeah. We already saw last year it’s quite tricky to get tyres to work in the first timed lap, and that’s why you could saw many people doing many laps and longer running in qualifying than normal. What we did in the practice and in Q1 also, we just tried to learn more about the tyres so we’re sure we’re making the right decision what we’re going to do in Q3 in terms of tyre temperatures, pressures and how many laps we do. So I think everyone struggled with it today – but we got it right. We got the max out of the car and the tyres.QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi, La Gazzetta dello Sport) Question for all of you about the accident of this morning, car that went through the barrier. Would like to know if you’re worried about it: the dynamic of the accident. The car was inside of the barrier.
We’ve already asked Lewis that question so we’ll start with Nico.
NR: I haven’t seen it so difficult to comment. Of course we always need to push to improve things. Apparently it’s not good, not ideal, so let’s see if we can make progress on that.Valterri?
VB: I haven’t seen it either, so can’t really say that much. Like Nico, we always need to keep pushing on the safety.Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globoesporte.com) Nico, in the last race you were very conservative at the start and maybe that was one of the reasons you lost the victory. How do you plan your start tomorrow?
NR: On the one side I don’t agree with your opinion – but that’s OK. On the second, just work on it tonight and tomorrow. Work on the start, get everything right there, look at last year’s start, learn from that. That’s it.Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) To both of the Mercedes drivers: you were very aggressive – Hamilton was very aggressive – here last year and you were very aggressive also in Japan. I would like to continue on this matter, to know that if, as you have this goal tomorrow [the Constructors’ Championship] does it change you approach for the first corner?
LH: You said I was aggressive here last year? Here? I don’t remember being aggressive. But whatever I did last year it worked so I plan to stay the same really.
Q: I think the point of the question is that you have had a few starts where you have been quite close, not least the last one in Japan and as you’ve got the Constructors’ possibly tomorrow, is it going to change your thinking going into the first corner. For both of you.
NR: No. Nothing changes anything. It’s one way and that’s it.Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globoesporte.com) In Q1, only Lewis and Nico were on soft tyres, all the others were on supersoft tyres. Is this some kind of reference that we can expect in the race?
NR: Looks like we were especially quick on the soft which is always a good thing of course in the race, because everybody has to use them once so that can only help us.Q: You’re expecting this to be a one-stop race tomorrow then?
NR: I don’t know about the strategy yet. That’s look into that this evening.
LH: Yeah, very strange coming into the weekend – people were making assumptions that we would have a repeat of Singapore. Obviously I had no idea what it’s going to be like and to think that now we have it the other way round it’s very, very strange. I don’t have answer for it but the car felt good otherwise on the tyres today. I don’t know how it will be for the race. I think from our short long run, the seven laps that we might have got, we have to take information from that, but it didn’t feel bad.Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Valtteri you were a very consistent third in every session; was this your strongest qualifying hour of the season?
VB: Well, I think compared to the number of laps I’ve got and everyone has yesterday and today it was not bad from my side. I felt very good. I could have been feeling very good in the car all weekend and managed to do multiple laps in a very consistent way without any mistakes. Yeah, I can be happy for the session but it’s difficult to say if it’s the best or one of the best.eom/FIA transcript of the Press Conference
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A double DNF was massive frustration: Neale on McLaren’s Singapore flop
TEAM REPRESENTATIVES – Jonathan NEALE (McLaren), Yasuhisa ARAI (Honda), Luigi FRABONI (Ferrari), Paddy LOWE (Mercedes), Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing)
PRESS CONFERENCE
Arai-san, Suzuka is Honda’s home grand prix. How do you feel to be back home here and are you getting pressure from within the company and from fans?
Yasuhisa ARAI: So, it is great to be back home, our home. Suzuka is such a special place for us and for Honda’s 200,000 employees and associates and many fans. They supported us and they want success [from] our team. So it is a little bit big pressure I have got. But there is a very good feeling, not only for Honda but McLaren-Honda.
You’ve had two very difficult weekends, in Spa and Monza, with updated power units, and even in Singapore you had issues when you were expecting points. Realistically, what do you expect from the race here in Suzuka?
YA: You know I think Suzuka is the most difficult circuit in the world – for the driver and also the machine, power unit, so it is not so easy to get a good place but we will do our best as a team.
OK, thanks you very much. Let’s move on to Jonathan Neale. Jonathan it’s been a difficult year for McLaren, with most of the focus on Honda and the power unit but how happy are you with your side of the team’s performance?
Jonathan NEALE: I think we’ve difficult made steps to improved the McLaren racing organisation over the last 18 months. We’re not where we want to be but we can see progress. We see progress on the chassis; we see progress in aerodynamics. It was frustrating that we didn’t score the points that we should have done in Singapore; at this game you don’t expect a double DNF, so that was massively frustrating, But we’re definitely moving forward; we have a lot of work to do as a team and a very busy winter [ahead].
OK, let’s move to what happened yesterday, when Jenson Button was in this press conference. He said he was exploring “plenty of opportunities”; those were his words I think. Is one of those with you and if so how are the talks going?
JN: With me personally?
It’s up to you – if you are starting a team that’s fine!
JN: I get the sense from the media there was a big anti-climax yesterday and there was a lot of discussion about where Jenson was at. Jenson is a fantastic guy, a world champion and a big part of the family at Honda and McLaren – he’s been with us for six seasons – and we’re contracted with him, we want him to stay, we like him very much. But if your driver doesn’t really want to be in the seat we have to respect that. I really hope that we have done enough between us to continue those discussions with him and have the confidence to have him with us, and that’s what we’d like.
Thank you for that. Let’s come down to the front row and move on to Luigi Fraboni from Ferrari. Ferrari had a really good result in Singapore but in very different conditions to here in Suzuka. What do you expect from the race this weekend?
Luigi FRABONI: Yea, of course, here is completely different. Let me say that we were very pleased with the great weekend in Singapore. We are looking forward to what is going to happen here. Today, of course, it was wet so it is difficult to say. We know that things are a little bit different but on the other side we are waiting to see what is going because for sure on our side we have improved and we are confident we can do a good job here.
How happy are you with the engine performance and do you think there are other tracks this season at which Ferrari can challenge?
LG: Well, of course, on engine performance, because I did all the last year’s season and I know what it mean. This year we did a big improvement and I think I have the opportunity to say thanks to all the guys at home because it was really a fantastic job. I had today in Maranello… after Singapore I was pleased to see the face of all the guys that are working in the department because it is a good motivation for us. During the season we have some improvement and we are happy about what we are doing and I think we can do even more and we are also completely focused on the project for next year. About the other tracks, I think that we think that in every track that we will play our cards and do our best, because I think that the pack is competitive.
Q: Paddy, have you worked out what happened last time out in Singapore – and maybe more importantly, are you confident it won’t happen again?
Paddy LOWE: I keep getting asked that actually. It’s not a simple answer at the end of the day. One of the things we’re very clear on is that, even if we got everything right in Singapore, that doesn’t necessarily mean we would have been at the front. We’ve got some strong competitors, the two gentleman on my sides here [Horner, Fraboni] came to Singapore with very strong packages. So, there are things we didn’t optimise for that circuit. It’s a very unusual circuit and, in fact, it was our weakest one last year as well in qualifying. So we’ve definitely learnt some lessons from that. We still have a lot more to learn but our focus now is on this race, which is a very different track so some different things to apply and get right – and we don’t take for granted, again, that we will be strong here but we’ll do our best.
Q: As the season progresses you switch more of your resource towards the 2016 season. How far advanced are you in that process given that you’re leading both the Constructors’ and the Drivers’ Championship by some points.
PL: It’s fairly normal. All the teams have to migrate their resource through the year, more and more to the next year. Slightly different this year because we have an extra month – apparently – next March with the current provisional calendar but I think probably we’re not unusual. Everybody will have moved pretty much to next year by now, so we’re almost all there but still a few more things to do.
Q: Christian, where are you with Ferrari and with Renault?
Christian HORNER: In Japan actually! Where are we with Ferrari and with Renault? Well, our situation with Renault, there’s obviously a lot of column-inches that’s filled. All I can really tell you is that there’s some positive discussions going on behind the scenes with Renault. I think both Red Bull’s position and Renault’s position is fairly clear in what we want to achieve and hopefully that should be concluded within the coming days. As far as anything else, it’s purely speculative but of course we’re having various different conversations.
Q: How real is the threat to quit?
CH: Well, Dietrich Mateschitz, he doesn’t talk very often but when he does you have to sit up and take notice – and I think he’s somewhat disillusioned with Formula One at the moment. He’s been very consistent in that statement. It’s my job to try and find a solution. We have a big commitment to Formula One, a big workforce, a very talented team and I’m doing my best to try and ensure that we find a competitive engine to power the team next year – but of course if that’s not the case there is a risk because Red Bull’s position is different to teams such as McLaren or Williams or Ferrari. Formula One has to provide a return. A marketing return globally. And, in order to do that, you need to be able to not be restricted in terms of the tools at your disposal.
QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Q: (Kate Walker – Motorsport.com) I’ve got a question for Christian, Paddy and Jonathan please. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve had a lot of speculation about the future of wind tunnels in Formula One. I was wondering: can any of you three see a future without wind tunnels? And, if you can, what safety concerns do you have about that hypothetical future?
JN: I think the answer is: I think it’s possible. The progressive march forward of supercomputing and the software and CFD and the ability to run sensors on the car use the car more as a full scale wind tunnel is definitely a direction that’s happening. I wouldn’t like to predict a pace or timescale on that. I know there have been discussions recently about the proposal to eliminate wind tunnels from the process. We are fairly neutral about that. I personally don’t have concerns from a safety point of view. I think there are plenty of other ways of validating that what you have works.
PL: I think there will come a day when we will stop using wind tunnels all on our own – because new technology becomes superior. I think the timing of that is a long way off. Many, many years. At the moment CFD is a great compliment to the wind tunnel process – but only when it has the ability to be calibrated against the tunnel on a regular basis. I think I’d have to disagree with Jonanathan there to some extent, that there is an overriding safety demand. We’ve seen other formulae in which cars become unstable at high speed. We must make sure the cars are fully validated from that point of view and the wind tunnel, at the moment, is the only reliable way of doing that.
Christian?
CH: I guess what you’ve got to remember is that they’re both simulation tools ultimately and a wind tunnel to feed and to run is extremely expensive compared to, in comparison, CFD. I think the strategic discussion to have is at some point CFD will become strong enough and powerful enough to replace the wind tunnel. At what point is that? I think the Strategy Group are having responsible discussions about what the time frame, if that scenario happens, is. Because we all have big investments. Every team in the pitlane has multi-million pound investments in this technology and to unravel yourself from that isn’t an overnight scenario. So, I think we all need to get on the same page about it, take away competitive advantage or differences. And if we do that by looking far enough down the road, then a road map hopefully can be achieved.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Jonathan, by my calculations in 2013 McLaren Racing lost about £12m. You haven’t yet published 2014’s results but I would estimate it to be probably double that because you lost your title sponsor, plus your results went south. This year’s even worse. If we add all these together, we are probably looking at a figure of fifty or sixty million pounds over three years. How much longer can a team actually sustain this sort of loss?
JN: Well you’re right. I don’t want to make light of that financial situation, Dieter, but the reality is McLaren Racing is part of the McLaren Technologies Group and to some extent that’s a source of strength for us, it’s not something to be taken lightly or be complacent about. Of course, if we finish way down in the Constructors championship, that has an impact on prize money for next year and of course that will be part of our focus, as I say, but we are fortunate in having a technology group on which we can at least shelter for some of these difficult times. But it’s not something that we can sustain indefinitely.
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Luigi Fraboni, I would like to ask you about the fifth engine that you are supposed to be using in Austin. How will be the characteristics of the engine, I suppose it will be the engine that you will use next year?
LF: Well, at the moment we are happy with the power unit that we have. We are continuing to develop the engine on the dyno. We have four tokens to play so if there is the opportunity, and we saw that this was to do then can introduce a fifth power unit but at the moment there is nothing defined especially for Austin.
Q: (Koji Taguchi – Grand Prix Tokusyu) Arai-san, if next year any other power unit company doesn’t have enough capacity to deliver a power unit, does Honda have any chance to give their power unit to other teams?
YA: I have had lots of the same question. We don’t have any offers right now. I think that for Honda and for the other power unit suppliers it is a very difficult time to prepare for next year, to supply other partners. And also, Honda has a strong relationship as a works team, McLaren-Honda. We don’t have any plans.
Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Christian, you spoke earlier on about your big commitment to Formula One and when I say your commitment, I mean your team’s commitment to Formula One. But there is obviously talk about possibly withdrawing from Formula One. Over the last two years or so, you’ve actually justified Red Bull’s position on the strategy group and as a CCB team etc on the basis that it had given a commitment through to 2020. So how does this square with the threats to withdraw? Are there financial penalties which you are prepared to carry or will Red Bull just walk?
CH: Well, as Bernie Ecclestone would say, circumstances change and circumstances now are very different, obviously, to when we entered into that agreement. Our intention is to find a solution and there’s an awful lot of work going on in the background to try and find a solution. Some of that is out of our hands but rest assured that every effort is going in to ensure that Red Bull will be here until 2020 and hopefully beyond, but there’s some big questions that obviously need answering.
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Another question for Luigi about the technical possibility to support two more teams, Red Bull and Toro Rosso, for next year?
LF: Well, honestly I’m not involved in all this stuff so the only thing that… this kind of decision is taken by our president and by our team management, so at the moment I cannot tell you anything of this. For sure they have all the information that they need in order to have the right collaboration for next year.
Q: (Andrea Cremonesi – La Gazzetta dello Sport) Is it technically possible?
LF: I think it could be, yes.
Q: (Kazuki Kasahara – Car Watch) I would like to ask Jonathan and Arai-san: in the 1990s and 1980s, McLaren-Honda had a special feature, a Suzuka version. Do you have any special features for this Suzuka?
JN: Special feature, that’s a tough question. The short answer is no, other than it’s a great opportunity for us to spend some time here at a fantastic race circuit but also behind the scenes together, getting our engineers and people together, looking at what we have to do to put ourselves in a competitive position. We have the guys from Exxon Mobil here as well so for the Esso and the Mobil 1 brands there’s a good chance for us to get together with the guys at Honda and really give that a push. Everybody’s working very hard, but we don’t have any unique feature on the car that’s special for here yet. We will wait until we’re winning before that starts.
YA: As I answered before that this is a very special circuit for Honda but unfortunately the current regulations cannot apply such kind of special feature. But my heart and Jonathan’s heart has a passion, very very special for Suzuka.
eom/FIA press release
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Vettel takes third win of the season; Hamilton retires; Spectator invades track in a bizarre incident
Sebastian Vettel took his third victory of the season for Ferrari in an incident-packed race at the Marina Bay Circuit that saw Lewis Hamilton retire with technical problems and a spectator invade the track.
Vettel took his fourth career Singapore Grand Prix win ahead of Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo, with Kimi Räikkönen third in the second Ferrari ahead of Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg.
When the lights went out at the start of the race Vettel made a good getaway to take the lead ahead of Ricciardo. Räikkönen too held his starting position to sit in third ahead of Red Bull’s Daniil Kvyat, while Hamilton and Rosberg kept their starting positions of fifth and sixth position, ahead of Williams’ Valtteri Bottas.
There was trouble for Max Verstappen though. The Toro Rosso driver, who was starting eighth, stalled on the grid and the rest of the field swarmed past him as the grand prix got underway. Verstappen was wheeled back to the pit lane where his car was restarted and he re-joined a lap down.
Vettel meanwhile was flying. By the end of lap two the Ferrari driver was a 4.4s ahead of Ricciardo and after four laps he’d stretched the advantage to 5.2 seconds.
After six laps, though the lap times began to stabilise, with Ricciardo’s race engineer Simon Rennie telling the Red Bull driver that “Vettel has calmed down a bit”. Ricciardo began to chip away at the gap and took a second out the German over the next handful of laps.
Lotus’ Romain Grosjean was the first to shed his opening supersoft tyres – the Frenchman switching to soft tyres on lap 10. On the next lap he was followed to the pit lane by McLaren’s Fernando Alonso, Toro Rosso’s Carlos Sainz, Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson and Lotus driver Pastor Maldonado. Sainz lost time in the stop though as he was held in his pit box as Ericsson and Maldonado made their way along the pit lane.
On lap 13, however, the Virtual Safety Car was deployed as Williams’ Felipe Massa and Force India Nico Hulkenberg made contact. Massa was re-joining after his pit stop and Hulkenberg gave the Brazilian nowhere to go as they went into the following corner. They collided and Hulkenberg was pitched into the wall and out of the race. The Singapore Grand Prix’s 100% safety car record was maintained when the physical safety car was then briefly deployed as marshals cleared the debris from the crash.
Hulkenberg was later penalised with a three-place grid drop at next weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix for causing the collision.
The period under the SC meant that all cars pitted, though some with more success than other. Jenson Button’s stop in front of the McLaren garage went horribly wrong as a problem with his front right wheel delayed him for some time and he rejoined in P16.
The order at the top under the SC saw Vettel leading from Ricciardo and Räikkönen, with the top three having taking more supersofts in their stops. Hamilton was fourth on soft tyres as was fifth-placed team-mate Rosberg.
Kvyat, also on supersofts, lost out under the VSC and had dropped to P6 ahead of Bottas, Force India’s Sergio Perez, Sauber’s Felipe Nasr, who has climbed to P9 from 16th on the grid and Lotus’ Romain Grosjean. Verstappen, meanwhile, had the chance re-join the lead lap during the safety car period.
When the action resumed Ricciardo kept pace with Vettel and on lap 22 the Australian was 0.8s behind the lead, with Vettel appearing to hold back a bit. Räikkönen was another 0.9s back but Hamilton was beginning to lose touch with the podium positions, slipping to over 2.0s down on the leaders.
On lap 27 Hamilton began complaining of a loss of power and the Briton was swiftly passed by Rosberg and Kvyat.
The team told Hamilton that his throttle was failing to open completely but that there was no electrical problem. Hamilton responded that he could no feel a pedal issue and as the investigation went on Hamilton to P11 by lap 30.
It was then Felipe Massa’s turn to encounter problems as he radioed his team to say that his car had suddenly jumped into neutral. He made a detour through the pit lane without stopping and then was told to retire the car.
Hamilton’s frustrations finally came to an end on lap 33. The championship leader had been complaining that the issue was worsening and then informed his team that the brakes were becoming too cold to continue in comfort. The team told him to box and he too retired.
On lap 35 Kvyat made his second stop from P5 but there was a problem with the rear left wheel and he lost out again as his stop took 6.6s. He dropped to seventh.
On lap 37 the Safety Car was deployed again, though this time it was because of a spectator invading the track.
It was the cue for all of the field to make another pit stop and when the order sorted itself out under the SC Vettel still led from Ricciardo and Räikkönen but Rosberg was now fourth ahead of Bottas with Kvyat sixth. Perez was now seventh in the sole remaining Force India, with Grosjean eighth ahead of team-mate Pastor Maldonado. Button, in the sole remaining McLaren following an earlier retirement for Fernando Alonso, was in the final points position, though he too would soon exit the race with a gearbox issue.
When the action resumed, Vettel this time powered away, with the German rapidly building a two-second gap to Ricciardo. Further back Button tangled with Maldonado as they battled for P9 and the Briton clipped the back of the Lotus, losing his front wing in the prices. He pitted for a new wing and re-joined in P14.
Toro Rosso’s drivers, meanwhile, were on a march, with Verstappen passing Maldonado for P9 and with Sainz repeating the moved almost immeditaley afterwards. Verstappen then set the fastest lap of the race so far on lap 43 of the 61 scheduled.
The Dutch teenager then passed Grosjean for P8 on lap 47 with an excellent move into Turn 16. Sainz followed but his move was riskier and both drivers went over the kerbs on the exit, with Grosjean complaining that he had been forced wide and had “no place to go”. The move stood, however, and Sainz held ninth.
Verstappen’s next target was Perez in seventh but he could find no way past the Mexican. His race ended in somewhat controversial circumstances when his engineer told him to swap places with Sainz in the closing laps. Verstappen refused and held station to claim eighth ahead of his team-mate.
At the front the order also remained unchanged, with Vettel taking his 42nd career win just 1.4s ahead of Ricciardo, with Räikkönen third. Rosberg closed the gap to title rival Hamilton by 12 points by claiming fourth with Bottas fifth ahead of Kvyat and Perez. With the Toro Rosso pair eighth and ninth, the final points position when to Sauber’s Felipe Nasr.
2015 Singapore Grand Prix – Race
1 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari 2:01:22.118
2 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull Racing +1.478
3 Kimi Räikkönen Ferrari +17.154
4 Nico Rosberg Mercedes +24.720
5 Valtteri Bottas Williams +34.204
6 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull Racing +35.508
7 Sergio Perez Force India +50.836
8 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso +51.450
9 Carlos Sainz Jr. Toro Rosso +52.860
10 Felipe Nasr Sauber +1:30.045
11 Marcus Ericsson Sauber +1:37.507
12 Pastor Maldonado Team Lotus +1:37.718
13 Romain Grosjean Team Lotus +2 laps
14 Alexander Rossi Manor +2 laps
15 Will Stevens Manor +2 laps
– Jenson Button McLaren Gearbox
– Fernando Alonso McLaren Gearbox
– Lewis Hamilton Mercedes Power Unit
– Felipe Massa Williams Power Unit
– Nico Hulkenberg Force India Collisioneom/FIA press release
