Monday 28 March 2011

A closer look at the pace of the F1 cars post Melbourne

Over the winter we were told by teams and drivers that it was very hard to guess what the pecking order was simply from looking at testing.
With so many variables like the DRS wing, KERS and fuel loads, establishing a clear picture was difficult during the four official tests.
On top of that the McLaren car which turned up in Melbourne at the weekend was so utterly transformed, performance wise, from the one which stuttered through testing that it was unrecognisable.
This shows that the scope for rapid development with these new rules is significant, at least in the early stages of the season. So the gaps will change a lot in the next few races.

Most of the downforce on an F1 car is generated by the diffuser and with these being cut back from single to double diffusers this year, the pressure is on to get the exhaust gases blowing across them and to find every possible way to maximise the downforce of the car, efficiently, with not to much drag. Hence the exhaust arms race going on at the moment, which was started by Renault.
Red Bull has clearly got the most advanced car; Vettel was 17km/h faster through the high speed chicane at Turn 11 than Hamilton’s McLaren and more like 25km/h faster than the midfield teams.
The time sheets from the first Grand Prix of the season tell a partial picture, as not everyone was able to unlock the pace in their car; Ferrari and Mercedes in particular were not as fast as they expected to be in qualifying and at the other end of the grid, Lotus did not show the step closer to the established teams on Saturday they believed they had achieved.
Vettel was on pole by 8/10ths from Hamilton, with Alonso six tenths slower than the McLaren, Petrov three tenths behind. To me that indicates that the Renault is probably as fast as the Ferrari. Rosberg was a couple of tenths behind, with the Sauber there too. Williams didn’t show what they can do in qualifying or the race, really. It was a messy weekend for them.
However looking through the fastest laps from the race points out a few more important indicators about performance. Jarno Trulli’s fastest lap was a 1m 32.550, one second slower than the Force India of Adrian Sutil. This is still not as close as Lotus thought they were, but still a big improvement on their qualifying pace and on where they were last year.
Meanwhile Virgin’s pace in the race highlights just how far off they are, D’Ambrosio’s fastest lap was two seconds slower than Trulli’s. They are adrift at the back of the field, and judging from a comparison of the lap times that Liuzzi turned in his brief spell on the track, there is a danger that Hispania might actually be faster than Virgin, once it gets a chance to do some set up work, in Sepang.
Meanwhile at the front, Vettel and Hamilton were cruising on Sunday, Hamilton had a damaged floor and Vettel just maintained his pace to manage his tyres. He could have gone a lot faster if he needed to.
So the fastest race lap was the Ferrari of Felipe Massa, pushing very hard in the closing stages after a late pit stop for new tyres, Alonso was also quick after his third stop. Although these laps on fresher tyres do not tell the whole story, they do show that there is pace in this Ferrari. Its problem is high tyre wear.
Sergio Perez amazingly set the 7th fastest lap – fourth fastest team – on tyres that had done 16 laps and when the car was still heavy on fuel. The Sauber is quite a car it seems, capable of qualifying in the top ten and easy on its tyres, with plenty of raw pace. That’s a points scoring combination.
Toro Rosso were consistent; they qualified 10th and 12th and in the race set the 10th and 11th fastest laps.
However we must be careful, Melbourne often shows a picture which isn’t born out by the races that follow. KERS will be more important in Sepang and Shanghai and whatever system Red Bull has, it’s going to need some help from it at those two circuits. Tyre wise Sepang is smooth, like Melbourne, although with some higher speed corners, so the tyre wear will be slightly higher, but not back to Barcelona levels.

Race results - 2011 Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix

Pos. DriverTeamTime
1. Sebastian VettelRed Bull1:29:30.259
2. Lewis HamiltonMcLaren+22.297
3. Vitaly PetrovRenault+30.560
4. Fernando AlonsoFerrari+31.772
5. Mark WebberRed Bull+38.171
6. Jenson ButtonMcLaren+54.304
7. Felipe MassaFerrari+1:25.186
8. Sebastien BuemiScuderia Toro Rosso+1 Lap
9. Adrian SutilForce India F1+1 Lap
10. Paul di RestaForce India F1+1 Lap
11. Jaime AlguersuariScuderia Toro Rosso+1 Lap
12. Nick HeidfeldRenault+1 Lap
13. Jarno TrulliLotus F1+2 Laps
14. Jerome d` AmbrosioVirgin Racing+4 Laps
15. Timo GlockVirgin Racing+9 Laps
Did not finish
16. Rubens BarrichelloWilliams+10 Laps
17. Nico RosbergMercedes Grand Prix+36 Laps
18. Heikki KovalainenLotus F1+39 Laps
19. Michael SchumacherMercedes Grand Prix+39 Laps
20. Pastor MaldonadoWilliams+49 Laps
21. Sergio PerezSauber+58 Laps
22. Kamui KobayashiSauber+58 Laps

Monday 7 March 2011

Massa samples new Saudi Arabian circuit

Last Thursday saw Ferrari’s Felipe Massa travel to Saudi Arabia in order to try out a brand-new race track, the Reem International Circuit close to capital city Riyadh.

The event, organised by Ferrari sponsor and Marlboro parent company Phillip Morris International, involved the Brazilian driving around 40 guests at the track in a Ferrari F430 challenge. Also present was Team Principal Stefano Domenicali, watching the action from the pit wall.



Team Principal 
Stefano Domenicali also attended
Team Principal Stefano Domenicali also attended
“It’s always nice to visit somewhere new and I’m just sorry I can’t spend more time here,” said Massa, who replaced team-mate Fernando Alonso, with the Spaniard having been described as ‘under the weather’ by the Italian team.

“The track is very interesting and fun, so I hope I get a further opportunity to drive here. At the moment, our work in the build up to the start of the World Championship is intense and so we have to get back to base soon.”

“Events and venues like these are important to boost motorsport in countries which have only recently embraced it,” Domenicali added. “For Ferrari, the Middle East is a very important market which we watch very carefully.”

Force India gets its day in court against Lotus

It has just been announced that Force India’s case against 1 Malaysia, the owner of Team Lotus, for infringement of intellectual property, will be heard in the High Court in London on January 16 2012.
Force India is also pursuing Lotus Technical director Mike Gascoyne personally as well as Aerolab, the wind tunnel where the two teams were working on cars when the alleged IP leakage is said to have occured.
This may prove to be Lotus’ third appearance in the High Court in 12 months, following the one starting two weeks today between Group Lotus and 1 Malaysia Group over the termination of the licence to use the Lotus name in F1. Depending on the outcome of that hearing, another case to settle the dispute as to who is the real Lotus in F1 may follow in the Autumn.
In a briefing note to journalists, Force India says that it “believes that Aerolab Srl. may have, during the course of its contract with the team, disclosed Force India F1 Team Ltd.’s intellectual property to 1 Malaysia Racing Team Ltd. and Mike Gascoyne, with whom Aerolab Srl. was at that time working through a sister company. The intellectual property was used in the development of the Lotus T127.”
There are also proceedings in the Italian court on this matter, with the same plaintiffs plus Tony Fernandes and the director of Aerolab, Jean Claude Migeot, a former F1 designer.
1 Malaysia did not have a great deal of time to design and develop a car. It was granted an entry for 2010 on 12 September 2009, just six months before the first race of 2010.
Gascoyne had used Aerolab for wind tunnel work when he was technical director of Spyker and then briefly Force India, before he and Vijay Mallya’s team went their separate ways.

But in November, Force India became concerned when Lotus issued a photo of its design in the wind tunnel and Force India felt that there was some cross over in the front wing design in particular. At the time they also noted that the Lotus was fitted with their wind-tunnel tyres.
At the time Gascoyne pointed out that the wind tunnel model was made by Fomtech and observed, “Some of the staff had been working on different projects. And whereas you cannot copy anything or take anyone else’s IP, you can use your expertise – and you will base that on what you know and what directions you know have been happening. That is what has happened.”

Murray Walker: Artificial rain not Formula 1

Legendary Formula 1 commentator Murray Walker has expressed his opinions over Bernie Ecclestone’s idea to introduce fake rain in a bid to spice up races courtesy of an automated sprinkler system, with the 87-year-old dubbing the idea as unnatural and not in the nature of the sport.

“I’m an old-fashioned traditionalist,” Birmingham-born Walker explained on BBC Radio 5 live’s season preview podcast. “I yearn for the days when the driver got in the car and there was a clutch pedal, a gear lever and a steering wheel and he went for it.



‘I would far 
rather have the races with rain coming totally unexpectedly’ – Murray 
Walker
‘I would far rather have the races with rain coming totally unexpectedly’ – Murray Walker
“Nowadays there are so many artificial aids, so many buttons for the driver to press - it’s going to be terribly confusing for them this year - but the thought of turning sprinklers on during a race…it’s so artificial and so contrived that it’s not going to be Formula 1 anymore.

“I would far rather have the races with the rain coming totally unexpectedly; when you go to Belgium and Spa, for instance, you can be sure that there’s going to be rain at some time during the meeting but you don’t know when it’s going to be. But I would hate to know that, at whatever race you are going to, there was going to be an artificially induced wet track.”

He added that such novelties would simply not be necessary as long as the audience is well-informed:

“You know as well as I do that there is no such thing as a dull Formula 1 race. There can be a processional Formula 1 race, but there’s always something dramatic and exciting if you know where to look. Formula 1 is a very complicated sport but there is always something dramatic going on.”