Insight from Massa on quick new Ferrari

Felipe Massa has his tail up today, Ferrari are back in business and he knows that he has an important role in the outcome of the race, particularly at the start, where he lines up fourth on the grid.

Using the KERS system, which will give him an 80 horsepower boost on the run down to turn one, projections show that he should be second by the first corner, but if Button makes a poor start as he did in Bahrain and Kuala Lumpur, Massa will have him.

“It will be hard to pass in one go all three cars,” he says. “However the KERS has shown itself to be very efficient on other races. Let’s hope we get a good start and take advantage of it.”

He is clearly in the fight for a podium, which would be Ferrari’s first of the season.
“That’s the objective,” he says. “It would be a great result, if we think where we were in the first four races.

” Judging from Q2, on low fuel, I’d say that we are still a couple of tenths off (the Brawn and Red Bull cars). It doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you add it up over a race it’s quite a distance. I hope that the next evolutions which hopefully we’ll have in Turkey, will close the rest of the gap, even if it might be a little bit late in the championship.”

The new car, he says, is a marked improvement in a few key areas. The main thing is that it has more downforce, but it’s also more driveable,
“It’s more stable under braking and in the fast corners you can be more aggressive with it, ” says Massa.

Read Full Post »

Alonso furious with Spanish media

Fernando Alonso is not enjoying his home Grand Prix and yesterday evening he had a major blow up with some of the Spanish journalists.

It all relates to an autograph signing session on Thursday in the pit lane, where he was surrounded by photographers, so couldn’t get to the fans. He lost his temper and left the pits, then came back when the photographers had gone and signed the autographs.

This was reported in El Mundo in particular as Alonso being rude to fans and showing arrogance towards poor people who’ve saved up to see their hero. Alonso was very angry with this treatment: “I’m furious, ” he said. “I don’t like it when things are said to set me against the fans.”

When he had calmed down he gave an interesting view on how he and Renault stand at the moment in this critical weekend when so many teams have new parts on the car.

“The updates have given us more downforce, more grip. The car is more consistent now, but it’s not a magic solution.

“The situation is better than 2008, when we had a car that was difficult to drive, but this is the moment to score some big points because in two or three races time most of the grid will be out of the championship, where I want to be.”

This last point is the important one as far as Ferrari and McLaren are concerned and it’s why the next few races are so important. McLaren were making good progress, but were flattered by the circuit in Bahrain and they will be lucky to get a car into the top ten in qualifying, while Ferrari have moved forward, but we will only find out later in qualifying whether it is enough to get them into the hunt. They have to start racking up the points this weekend and in Monaco or they will be out of the championship.

Read Full Post »

Button struggles but Brawn looks fast

Jenson Button says that he is not happy with the performance of his Brawn Mercedes car today, the first day of practice in Barcelona.

The car is equipped with the new aerodynamic package, the team’s first major development step since the season started. It features a new engine cover, new floor and new bodywork around the rear suspension. It is supposed to have given around three to four tenths of a second to the car. Rubens Barrichello was fourth today and is happy with his car. It looks very much as though it is still the strongest car out there, as they had plenty of fuel on board to record the lap times they did, compared to the cars in front today, the two Williams and Alonso’s Renault.

Button, however, has some problems. His fastest time in practice 2 was two tenths slower than Barrichello’s and he is playing catch up before tomorrow’s qualifying session. Barrichello has always been strong here and will give Button a stern challenge all weekend.

A few of us caught up with Button after the session and he was asked whether he is thinking about the championship yet?

“It‘s only when I’m asked the question,” he said. “Every race I go to I’m thinking about how well I can do that weekend. It’s about not thinking too far ahead. There’s a long way to go, Brazil and Abu Dhabi are a long way away there are a lot of races between now and then, and we’ve got to do well in all of them.”

As for this weekend, there is work to be done,
“The Red Bulls look competitive as ever, but for me I’ve struggled today to get a balance with the car, I’m a long way off where I want to be, we’ve got a few problems and hopefully we can solve then tomorrow. It’s not the new aero package so much, it’s just something on the car.

“It’s about getting a good feeling for the car, a good balance. I hope we can improve it for tomorrow and I know we can, because we know what the problems are.”

“I’m loving being the championship leader, centre of attention, not really. I love the racing.

“Ferrari were quite quick this morning, so I don’t know, they might be playing games, a lot of people do on Fridays, we certainly have in the past. We’ll wait and see. If you look at the consistency of some of the cars, you’d say that the Toyotas and Red Bulls look pretty competitive, but the others I’ve not really paid too much attention to. I’ll look at the data tonight.”

Read Full Post »

Piquet looks for the arm around the shoulder

I went along to Nelson Piquet’s press briefing yesterday afternoon. The poor lad is under some pressure at the moment, with speculation that he has this race and Monaco to save his seat.

So far this season he has not impressed, struggling particularly in qualifying. Twice 15th on the grid, twice 17th he admitted that lack of testing had caused this problem,

“Not getting pre-season (testing), not running low fuel, and then suddenly, when you put everything together, you can’t get the maximum out of it. Or you push too much and you end up overdriving the car. I think I need to get qualifying sorted.. My strong point always in my career was qualifying. Of course it doesn’t mean much in lower categories, but I have been the driver with the most pole positions all the years. This year I’m struggling a little bit more. Last year it was okay because it was my first year. But this year I should have been much better in qualifying.”

Piquet is one of those drivers who needs miles under his belt to perform. He has to play himself in, can’t just turn it on straight away. It is no surprise that they have kept him in the car for this race and Monaco because they are both difficult tracks for a new guy to come in and master on a race weekend. But also because he knows this place really well, so if he’s going to do it anywhere it will be here.

Piquet can get the job done if given the preparation and the time, but what is happening to him is an illustration of the fact that in F1 nowadays you have to be adaptable and nail it first time, as drivers like Sebastian Vettel do. With no testing during the season, drivers like Piquet will become less attractive to teams.

In an amusing exchange, where he was asked whether he just needed an arm around the shoulder, a bit of a cuddle, he said,

“I think that’s also a part of it. There’s a lot of people in the team who don’t like being cuddling. But the important people that we work with day to day, the engineers, they are trying their best.

“I’m very happy to have them because they are trying everything possible to get my back into qualifying rhythm. I think I need to get my rhythm in qualifying back and once that’s sorted in the races I’m more than capable of doing it.”

He has been given a lot of help and support. Now the pressure is really on, he has to deliver on Saturday in qualifying.

Read Full Post »

Alonso reveals physical suffering in Bahrain

One of the striking images from the Bahrain GP was Fernando Alonso being carried from his car, having fought his way to the finish in seventh place depsite having no drinks bottle. That in itself is not unusual, but what made Alonso’s situation really severe was a further problem inside the car.

“I had very specific problems with not having enough water in the car because I lost five and a half kilos in the race, this is not normal, ” said Fernando. “There was a problem with the radiator, we had some hot gas going into the cockpit. It burned my back and that was taking out even more water from my body. It was a very unlucky combination of factors that put me in that condition in the race.”

Five and a half kilos of bodyweight is a lot to lose in 90 minutes, it’s about 8% of his total bodyweight. One or two kilos is normal for drivers to lose on hot days.

Alonso disagreed with Nico Rosberg’s claims earlier today that the drivers are struggling at the end of races this year because they have been forced to lose too much weight, to compensate for the KERS systems in the cars.

“Generally I feel in better condition at the end of races than last year,” said Alonso. “We are running with less aerodynamics in the car so maybe it’s not so demanding in the high speed corners in terms of the physical [side].”

Read Full Post »

Raikkonen in London ahead of huge weekend

Kimi Raikkonen will be in Regents Street, London this morning, opening the new Ferrari store. It’s a big site, I went past it yesterday and it’s full of Ferrari branded goodies.

It’s amazing to think that it’s a year since Raikkonen last won a Grand Prix. He dominated the Spanish GP last season from pole, but since then he’s failed to make the top step. He would probably have won in Canada if he had not been hit in the pit lane by Lewis Hamilton and he was on target in France until his exhaust started burning a hole in the bodywork of his car.

“It was one of my best weekends with Ferrari, ” he says on the Ferrari website. “Pole, win and fastest lap. A driver never loses his taste for victory and I want to try it again as soon as possible.”

Raikkonen did a great job in Bahrain, squeezing the absolute maximum out of the Ferrari there, putting to rest any doubts about whether he still has the motivation. He was unlucky at the end not to nick fifth place off Rubens Barrichello.

There is the spectre of Alonso in the background, with well-informed Italian colleagues assuring me that an agreement is in place with the Spaniard, just as it was with Kimi for almost a year before it became public in late 2006. The deal is for 2011, but may be brought forward to 2010 if Kimi underperforms or wants out early. The president of Santander bank was very high profile in Bahrain, spending a lot of time around the Ferrari area. The Spanish bank is due to come on stream as a sponsor of Ferrari next year, having left McLaren following the failure of their relationship with Alonso.

Spain will be a important weekend for Ferrari, with the updated car expected to give them more of the kind of performance the front-runners have had so far. A quarter of the season has gone already, however.

Some Italian papers are saying that based on the performance this weekend, Ferrari will decide whether to press on with development of this car or throw more effort into 2010, as Brawn did last year. But I’m not so sure about that. For a start, the scale of the aerodynamic rule changes for next year is nothing like what it was for this year. But also team boss Stefano Domenicali pointed out after the race in Bahrain that when you are Ferrari, “You don’t write off a season, ” however badly it might be going.

Meanwhile Felipe Massa is keeping the faith. He was in Rome the other day doing a road safety campaign, following in the steps of his mentor Michael Schumacher,

“I hope things will improve, ” said Massa. “I hope we can have a different championship now. We have to keep working, things don’t come to you for free. In the team there is still a lot of faith. The team is very united.”

Read Full Post »

Three days to save Donington GP

The would-be promoters of the 2010 British Grand Prix, face a crunch meeting with the local North West Leicestershire council on Tuesday which, if it goes wrong, could mean the end of plans for the race at Donington.

Already squeezed by a £2.5 million law suit from circuit owners the Wheatcroft family, Simon Gillett’s Donington Ventures group must persuade the council to give them more time to get the Wheatcrofts to sign a crucial section 106 spectator safety document, without which the race cannot go ahead.

According to the council leader, speaking in the News of the World today, either Gillett will get an extension until May 31st, or the planning consent will be thrown out and the race plans will be in tatters.

The council leader claims to be optimistic about the chances of the race being saved, but it looks like it will take payment of the outstanding £2.5 million of rent by Tuesday, or proof that it will be paid by May 31st for the council to move forward with granting planning consent.

Gillett is showing all the signs of having difficulty raising funds. Bernie Ecclestone, who appears to be giving Gillett every opportunity to come through said, “Donington’s problem is that it had a deal with a bank but then the credit crisis happened. Maybe the government can help.”

Gillett told me last December that he had a deal with Goldman Sachs for the debenture scheme. He was due to announce plans for the scheme by the end of March. Government funding of tens of millions for an F1 circuit at a time when the national debt is spiralling out of control is hard to imagine.

Bankers I spoke to at the time all said that the credit crunch was going to be very severe and that the bottom was going to drop out of everything. All the savvy business leaders were bracing themselves for the worst.

It’s all very surprising, then, that Gillett did this deal last July.

As to whether Bernie might relent and go back to Silverstone if Donington falls through, we’ll have to wait and see. He’s been negative about it lately, but he needs to leave himself some wriggle room. Just look at how many times he’s said we’re not going back to Magny Cours…

Read Full Post »

Remembering Senna and Ratzenberger

Today is the 15 anniversary of the death of Ayrton Senna. The day before we lost Roland Ratzenberger. Thankfully these were the last fatalities in the sport.

I was at Imola that weekend. I had been working hard on research interviews for the autobiography of Nigel Mansell I was ghostwriting at the time. I’ll never forget the chill that weekend, it seemed that the weekend was cursed, with Rubens Barrichello being hospitalised by a huge shunt on Friday, then Ratzenberger on Saturday and Senna on Sunday. Also there was a big shunt at the start and a wheel went into the crowd, then another in the pit lane.

I spoke to Senna on the Sunday morning, with Allard Kalff, who was then commentating for Eurosport. Senna seemed very pre-occupied. I knew him reasonably well, having regular contact with him as a reporter for ESPN television and for Autosport. He was always generous with his time and willing to share insights into racing and the experience of driving. He was intense and fascinating, utterly ruthless and had a God given talent. I’d followed him all the way through the ranks, from Formula Ford and he was the best. Simple as that.

I’ve been lucky enough to work closely with all the great champions of the last 20 years, but Senna was something very special.

Read Full Post »

Mosley’s response to Montezemolo

In response to the letter Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo wrote on April 28th to the FIA president expressing concern about having two classes of F1 car and about a possible legal challenge to the budget cap, Max Mosley wrote back the following day.

He quotes FIAT boss Sergio Marchionne, with whom Montezemolo works closely and his belief that in an economic crisis such as we are in at the moment, only an extreme response will do,
“We are just going to slam the brakes on, cut everything back to essentials. It may be painful, it may be ugly. But if we want to do the right thing for this industry let’s do it now. Today my gut instinct is to be truly Draconian.” These are Marchionne’s words.

Mosley's letter to Ferrari

Mosley points out that the car industry is in serious difficulty and that F1, as an extension of it, is extremely vulnerable. Honda’s departure was a wake up call and another manufacturer could leave at any moment.

“If we are to reduce the risk of the Formula 1 world championship collapsing, we have to allow new teams in. We also have to reduce costs drastically. The matter is therefore extremely urgent.”

Responding to Montezemolo’s legal threat over rights that have not been respected Mosley writes,
“The only radical elements are those needed to close the gap that would otherwise exist between a low-budget team and other competitors. Thus if Ferrari chooses to continue with an unrestricted budget, the new regulations will not deprive Ferrari of any rights…I do not accept that these proposed regulation compromise any commitment that has been given to Ferrari in the past, unless Ferrari would somehow argue that it is entitled to prevent new competitors from emerging at a time when the sport itself is in danger.”

He ends with a flourish, “We are confident (as are our accountants and lawyers) that a budget cap will be enforceable. The cleverest team will win and we would eliminate the need for depressing restrictions on technology, which the existing teams are discussing with a view to reducing costs. I hope Ferrari will take the lead in agreeing the cost cap mechanism, thus freeing its engineers to work and preserving its shareholders’ money.”

Mosley has always wanted three things; to see the playing field levelled so small teams can compete with big teams, to have full grids and he has always felt that the costs were out of control, long before the credit crunch hit the global economy.

What he has done here, along with his technical strategy guru Tony Purnell, is to take advantage of the car industry’s troubles to create a window for killing those three birds with one stone. The two class F1 is not ideal for anyone, but Mosley is calculating that no manufacturer will go for the uncapped option it because it would be unjustifiable to shareholders.

Meanwhile the five independent teams, Williams, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Brawn and Force India all welcome the budget cap at the £40 million level because to them it means survival, profit and the chance to compete against the big boys. It’s Christmas for them.

The teams formed their association, FOTA, to represent their rights, but here FOTA is in big trouble because the five independents are on a collision course with the manufacturers, so Max has also achieved a fourth aim, to undermine FOTA.

Many people dislike his methods, but think about it this way, if F1 didn’t exist and you were Ferrari or any other manufacturer and someone came to you and said, “I’ve got a great idea for a racing series; we’ll have 17 races in key markets around the world, great TV package giving your brand a media value in the hundreds of millions per year and it will cost £40 million and it capped, so you can innovate within that figure and beat the others.”

I’m sure if you started with a clean sheet of paper, in other words, you might well go for it on that basis. But it’s hard to see the Mosley/Purnell vision for F1 because we come from an era of £200 million budgets. But why does it need to cost £200 million to win?

Shouldn’t Ferrari continue to win races? If you have something very good and you distill it to its core strengths, you end up with something sensational. So surely the 350 best people at Ferrari must be the equal or better of the 350 at any of the other teams?

One of my readers, Martin Samm, made this very valid point today,
“What I (as a member of Joe Public) want is a series of interesting/exciting races – I dont care if they spent 40 million or 200 million, as I’m sure they’ll be as cutting edge as ever regardless; engineers tend to be cunning like that!”

Martin also points out this is all happening at a time when races are being won by two independent teams, Brawn and Red Bull. Most people find this very refreshing and a good thing for F1.

It’s really hard to know which way to go on this one, because it represents a huge cultural shift in F1. You can see Ferrari’s point and they believe that they have right – and the law – on their side.

The way is clear for a summer of messy legal challenges, which would throw 2010 into chaos. Ferrari will not go quietly on this one and they have gathered the other manufacturers around them for a council of war. They make the engines, of course, so the independents are dependent on them.

That is why Cosworth is sitting on the sidelines, waiting.

Read Full Post »

Letter from Montezemolo to Mosley

Although Ferrari is refusing to comment on yesterday’s budget cap announcement, some letters between its president Luca di Montezemolo and FIA president Max Mosley have come to light.

These show Ferrari’s concerns and hint at arrangements between Ferrari and the governing body, which Ferrari feel have not been honoured.

Montezemolo ; Legal challenge to cost cap?

On April 28th Montezemolo wrote to Mosley and other world council members,
unhappy that budget caps had been put on the agenda of a meeting which was called to hear the McLaren case.

He wrote, ” I have always been concerned about its introduction (cost cap) mainly because I consider that there are serious technical difficulties in making sure that any cap can realistically be monitored.

“There are..doubts as to whether or not two categories of teams should be created which will inevitably mean that one category will have an advantage over the other and that the championship will be fundamentally unfaor and perhaps even biased. In any event this would create confusion in the public’s mind, which would seriously lower the value of Formula 1.”

This is a view shared by all the F1 teams, that having capped and uncapped teams operating to two different sets of rules is unworkable. FOTA will discuss this at its May 6th meeting.

But Montezemolo then goes on to remind Mosley about the deal, which he signed in 2005 to commit Ferrari to F1 until 2012, the one which broke the idea of a manufacturers’ breakaway series and for which Ferrari allegedly received €100 million.

Montezemolo’s point is that under the Concorde Agreement the FIA “cannot pass or amend any regulation without it being approved by the F1 commission.”

When Ferrari did its secret deal and signed up to 2012, it demanded and was granted “all rights under the previous Concorde Agreement will continue to apply until 31 December 2010, exactly as if the Agreement itself remained in place.”

The language then gets quite legal, and Montezemolo says he ‘insists’ that the FIA respect the agreement they made.

Presumably this is a coded message that Ferrari would launch a legal challenge against the cost cap. The problem there is time. It would take months and that would delay the 2010 rules being published, which would throw the series into chaos.

Ferrari would only launch an action like that with FOTA backing, but that will be hard because half of the teams in FOTA agree with the cost cap, which guarantees not just their survival but that they will be able to compete with the big boys and make a profit at the same time!

I’ll post on Mosley’s response separately.

Read Full Post »