james Allen

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Welcome to the JA on F1 podcast for July.

This month we have a very special edition coming from behind the scenes at the FIA Sport Conference week in Goodwood. The three day event, in the days leading up to the British Grand Prix weekend, featured a wide cast of characters and was focussed on the challenges facing the sport, as well as the work that has been done in key areas.

We had a unique opportunity to go behind the scenes and talk with some of the big names;

In a rare interview, FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting explains his role and talks about the new rules on Driver Penalty points and the 2014 engines. In a fascinating insight, he estimates that the 2014 cars will be around three seconds per lap slower than today’s cars.

Maria de Villota was injured a year ago in a horrific accident while testing the Marussia F1 car at Duxford. She talks about her recovery and why it has made her a passionate ambassador for safety.

FIA President Jean Todt talks about his vision for the sport and particularly the new generation 2014 F1 turbo engines. He also speaks about the International Tribunal hearing.

Formula E CEO Alejandro Agag gives us an update on progress with the new series due to kick off in September 2014.

Former Williams chief engineer and JA on F1 technical adviser Mark Gillan looks at the fiasco at Silverstone with tyre failures.

And in a reflective interview Jenson Button talks about revising his expectations in the face of a disappointing car this year and advises his team mate Sergio Perez to learn from Fernando Alonso.

[LastSamurai]

and advises his team mate Sergio Perez to learn from Fernando Alonso.

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Posted on July 21, 2013
Now the dust has settled on the Young Driver Test at Silverstone, we can analyse who performed well and look at some of the drivers for whom this was a vital audition, like Daniel Ricciardo at Red Bull. We can also look at some of the tyre test runs carried out by the experienced race drivers to see what the new generation Pirellis will be like for the rest of the season.

With the help and input of JA on F1 technical adviser Mark Gillan, former chief operations engineer at Williams, we will look in detail at Kevin Magnussen’s run in the McLaren; Daniel Ricciardo’s run in the Red Bull and Susie Wolff’s run in the Williams in particular.

It is important to note that it is hard to draw too many comparisons from this test, as there are too many variables. With young drivers testing cars with various development parts on them, while experienced drivers were forced to tyre test only with no technical trickery, so you cannot compare them.

What you can look at, and what the teams will be looking at, is the consistency of the runs and the way the traces of lap time graphs are shaped. The rough rule of thumb is that a nice consistent line, gently descending, shows good consistency and minimum tyre degradation.

Explanatory note – To read these charts, the vertical axis is the lap time, the higher up the slower the lap time, the lower down the faster. The horizontal axis is the number of laps carried out. The early runs are on the left, the later ones on the right. A good long run is one where the lap times show a consistent grouping with a downward trend from left to right.


Magnussen – impressive consistency
Perhaps the standout performance of the test was young Kevin Magnussen in the McLaren on Day 1. The 21 year old has had limited experience in F1, but put in a performance that he and the engineers will be delighted with.

He was sent out with a lot of fuel in the car, but his runs (shown in blue below in Fig 1 below) show highly impressive consistency. If you compare the time delta between the high fuel runs, (shown on the left, the lap times are higher, reflecting the extra weight of the fuel in the car) with the lower fuel runs, on the right, you can see that the difference is what it should be – so he has been able to take the maximum from both the higher and the lower fuel load and has been able to string together laps very consistently in both conditions, with a nice downward trend on both long and short runs.

“If I was on the technical team at McLaren I would be very impressed and very happy with this run,” says Gillan. “It’s a very impressive run for a young man who has limited F1 experience.”


Fig 1
Daniel Ricciardo’s audition for Red Bull

All eyes were on Daniel Ricciardo on Day 2, as he went out and drove his audition for his big career break; a possible promotion to the Red Bull seat, due to be vacated by Mark Webber. Ricciardo is a known quantity to Red Bull, of course, because they have access to all the data from their junior team, Toro Rosso, for whom Ricciardo has raced for a season and a half. He also drove for Red Bull during the Young Driver tests before he made his Grand Prix debut in 2011 with HRT.

But this was an important occasion for the Australian as he battles with Kimi Raikkonen for the drive. Raikkonen is a known quantity, a very fast and consistent race driver who has competed for the world championship for the last two seasons and is on a record run of consecutive points finishes.

On paper Red Bull would be wanting to put the best available driver in Webber’s seat, which on the face of it is Raikkonen. So Ricciardo had to show on Thursday that he has the consistency at a high level and shows potential to be something special for the future, with Vettel only contracted for two more seasons to the team and his intentions unclear beyond that.

He needed to show Red Bull management that taking him is not the risk it appears to be in comparison with the known quantity (albeit far more expensive in wages) that is Raikkonen.

As you can see in Fig 2 below, Ricciardo did a good job in terms of consistency. His Toro Rosso runs (in Red) appear to have been done with lower fuel than the Red Bull runs, (the lap times are lower) probably around 50kg in the Toro Rosso. He was sent out with high fuel only in the Red Bull (hence the slower lap times shown on the vertical axis) but the downward trend in his last run is really nice, with the lap times coming down in line with the fuel burning off. The run shows little tyre degradation so he is managing the tyre as well. Compare this with Maldonado’s final run in Fig 1 in the Williams (shown in green) which shows significant degradation at the end of the run.


Fig 2
Ricciardo’s final run then is very strong and that will be the card he left on the table with Red Bull engineers from this week’s test. They will be reasonably impressed. Only they know how much fuel was in the car, so how outright fast he was. That is not possible for us to say here. If he was on the same fuel as Vettel the next day (Fig 3 below) then he looks slightly slower, but it’s not possible for us to say definitively.

Added to that is his strong qualifying performance in the last few Grands Prix for Toro Rosso, where he has been solidly among the front runners.

He’s giving it his best shot.

Susie Wolff – a competent job

Susie Wolff set a fastest lap 0.4s slower than Daniel Juncadella, the Euro F3 champion, but felt that her five lap run on the faster medium tyres had come too early in the day for her to push to the maximum. She completed almost 90 laps in total and the performance run came on lap 34.

She covered a lot of laps (89 is a more than a race distance and a half), but she didn’t string runs together like Magnussen or Ricciardo. So we cannot look at patterns. She improved in the morning (her runs are shown in dark blue in Fig 3), but there are no long runs to draw conclusions from. She didn’t go off the track and did a solid job, which allows her to speak more knowledgeably about the sport as as development driver in PR appearances and media commitments. She will no doubt push for more opportunities to drive the car and it will be interesting if she gets the chance, with increased testing next season, to see if she attacks it with more confidence next time.


Fig 3
“It was important for me to show I have the performance, it was important to show, given the limited laps I had, I can be on the pace,” Wolff told BBC Sport Online.

“I was only 0.4 secs off the F3 European champion, the guy who’s rated as an up-and-coming young star. For me that was important. If that has more meaning for other people because I am female, then I will use that to my advantage but I’m not going to play the card ‘I’m a girl so give me the car I’m fast enough’.”

Other performances
Carlos Sainz Jr was given plenty of opportunity to run and to showcase his speed on his first ever outing in an F1 with two days in both the Toro Rosso and Red Bull cars. The 18 year old did a 1m 33.061s on the fifth lap of a five lap run on medium tyres in the Toro Rosso on Thursday and a 1m 33.546 on the first lap of a six lap run in the Red Bull with hard tyres on the Friday. His father was delighted with his performance and Red Bull engineers will know how much fuel he had in the car on those runs. He seems to have done quite well.

New generation Pirellis – a more stable race tyre

The runs of Di Resta (Fig 1), Vettel and Sutil (Fig 3) show that the new generation Pirelli tyres, with 2012 constructions married to 2013 compounds are not only safer (no failures in hotter conditions at Silverstone than for the GP) but also more consistent with less degradation. The rest of the season should therefore see the teams doing fewer pitstops than in the early part of the season (Barcelona would be a 2/3 stop race, for example, rather than the four stopper it was) and the drivers will be able to push harder for longer.

There do not appear to have been any surprises on the tyres and therefore there doesn’t appear to be any reason to suspect a major change in the pecking order. The teams that look after their tyres better will continue to do so (look at the impressive final run of Sutil, for example (Fig 3).

But it is going to be hard for any team or driver to catch Vettel and Red Bull for the remainder of the season, as these tyres certainly will not constrict them and they will be able to get the most from the car at every round from now on. It comes down to whether any other team wants to allocate the money and valuable wind tunnel time away from their 2014 development work to have a crack at them this season.

Red Bull have a healthy margin and can thus manage the situation from here.

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/07/an...iver-test/

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New tyres and heatwave open a world of possibilities for Hungarian GP


This weekend’s Hungarian GP will be fascinating from a strategy point of view as it sees the debut of a new specification of Pirelli tyres at the same time as safety measures come in after the incident with a flying wheel in Germany. As a result the pit lane speed limit has been lowered to 80km/h from 100km/h which will add over three seconds to the time needed to make a pit stop. This makes multiple stops less attractive.

At the same time extremely high temperatures are forecast as mainland Europe experiences a heatwave. We could see track temperatures in the 50s this weekend.

Testing of the new Pirellis at last week’s Young Driver Test in Silverstone showed that these new tyres degrade less than the ones they are replacing, so – heat permitting – it will lead teams to want to run with as few stops as possible.

Although teams like Force India, Ferrari and Lotus blocked a change of tyre specification earlier in the season, it may be that with their more gentle action on the tyres means that they still have a benefit- especially in the heat – as pit stops take longer and are therefore less attractive. Being able to do one less stop than the opposition, or in Lotus’ case being able to run the faster soft tyre for longer still carries an advantage.

To make the situation more intriguing, the Hungaroring circuit is rarely used and so the track is usually dirty at the start of the F1 race weekend and the grip improves as the weekend goes on. This means that it’s very easy to be misled by the tyre performance on Friday and the only really meaningful work that can be done on car set up and planning race strategy is often the one hour session on Saturday morning.

The track is tight and twisty with generally a low grip surface and it is also quite bumpy.

The start is always crucial at the Hungaroring, as the slow second and third corners tend to open the field out. The run down to Turn 1 is quite long; from pole position to the braking point before Turn 1 is 400m. KERS will be important at the start, but in the race it will be less effective; there is not a lot of high energy braking time so it’s hard to get the KERS fully charged during a lap of the race.


Track characteristics

Hungaroring – 4.381km kilometres. Race distance – 70 laps = 306.630 kilometres. 14 corners in total. Average speed of 196km/h is the lowest of any permanent track on F1 calendar.

Aerodynamic setup – High downforce. Top speed 301km/h (with Drag Reduction System active on rear wing) – 291km/h without.

Full throttle – 55% of the lap (low). Total fuel needed for race distance – 150 kilos (average/high). Fuel consumption – 2.11kg per lap (average)

Time spent braking: 14% of lap. Number of brake zones – 11. Brake wear- High.

Total time needed for pit stop: 16 seconds

Fuel effect (cost in lap time per 10kg of fuel carried): 0.35 seconds (high)


Form Guide

The Hungarian Grand Prix is the tenth round of the 2013 FIA F1 World Championship and thus marks the half way point in the 19 race season.

Red Bull has control of both championships, but Mercedes has taken a big step forward in the second third of the season and has had two wins in the last four races. Sebastian Vettel, the clear championship leader, has also scored two wins in the last four. Mercedes has the clear edge in qualifying and is likely to dominate again in Hungary, but the race will be very tough as temperatures of 40 degrees are forecast.

The circuit and temperatures should suit Lotus, which ran Red Bull very close in Germany and they have to be the pre-race favorites if they can qualify in the top two rows of the grid. Raikkonen finished a strong second in Budapest last year behind Lewis Hamilton, despite starting fifth on the grid.

As far as drivers’ form is concerned; it has been a happy hunting ground for Hamilton with three wins and Jenson Button who has won the race twice. Fernando Alonso won in 2003, Kimi Raikkonen in 2005 and Mark Webber in 2010.

Weather Forecast

With a heatwave in Europe, it could be one of the hottest Grands Prix on record. The forecast is for temperatures around 38-40 degrees, but there are often thunderstorms in the air, which could bring rain, as in 2011.


Likely tyre performance and other considerations

Pirelli tyre choice for Budapest: Soft (yellow markings) and Medium (white markings). This is the same as last year, but this year the compounds are softer so the pace should be faster.

The tyre specification is new for this race, with 2012 constructions married to 2013 compounds, pushed through on safety grounds after the spectacular tyre failures in Silverstone.

With the predicted heatwave, track temperatures of 50 degrees plus could be on the cards. The strategy will probably come down to fine margins with two stops being the target. It will be interesting to see whether the soft or the medium turns out to be the better race tyre; if the low degradation seen in the recent test at Silverstone is carried through, the soft could be the better tyre to race on, with a performance advantage of 0.8s to 1s per lap. Lotus is likely to explore this option carefully. Raikkonen did two stints on soft tyres last year, with a middle stint of 25 laps.

The crucial thing for teams to understand will be the crossover point where the medium becomes better over the long run.

The target for the first stop will be around lap 17-20.

The Hungaroring is notoriously hard on the front tyres, partly due to all the long corners and partly due to the balance of the car being much more forward. High temperatures will also take their toll.

In the past, overtaking was extremely difficult at the Hungaroring and it is still tricky. There were few passes after the opening laps of the race last year.

But the DRS adjustable rear wing zone, situated on the pit straight, has helped create some overtaking opportunities into Turn 1.


Number and likely timing of pit stops

The time needed for a stop at Hungaroring has now extended due to the lower pit lane speed limit, which discourages pit stops.

As these new tyres are more like 2012 tyres than those from the first eight races of 2013, we are likely to see a similar picture to last season.

Last year two stops was the way to go and three stoppers lost out, surrendering track position at the final stop and struggling to regain it despite faster tyres at the end. With lower degradation tyres this is even more likely to favour the two stoppers.

It’s likely that we will see a mixture of predominantly two stop strategies this weekend, with some interesting things going on with stint lengths and compound choices. It could be a really interesting battle at the front if Mercedes, Lotus, Red Bull and Ferrari all play to their strengths.

Chance of a safety car

Safety cars are rare at the Hungaroring.

In fact the chances of a safety car are only 10% and there have been only two in the last seven years.

Sigue....


http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/07/ne...garian-gp/

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What is behind Alonso’s link with Red Bull?

The Formula 1 rumour mill was in full flow in the Hungarian Grand Prix paddock on Sunday with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso linked with a move to reigning world champions Red Bull.

So is this real, what is behind it and what happens next?

The suggestion is that Alonso’s management approached Red Bull on Friday in Hungary about the possibility of driving for them, with the Milton Keynes-based outfit having a vacant seat from next season as Mark Webber is leaving the sport to compete in sportscars.

Alonso told the BBC after the race: “Always in August there are rumours. It’s a good time for rumours because there are four weeks with no F1 race.” When asked whether his manager Luis Garcia Abad had spoken to Red Bull, Alonso said: “No I don’t think so. Not that I know of.”


A photo of Abad with Red Bull boss Christian Horner appeared in German tabloid Sport Bild (above) and this has triggered the chatter. Alonso’s camp say that Abad was talking to Horner about Carlos Sainz Jr, who tested for the team at Silverstone recently.

It’s not unusual for managers to speak to team principals, it happens all the time. For example, Richard Goddard, manager of Jenson Button and Paul di Resta was seen by this website coming out of a meeting with Horner in one of the back rooms of the Red Bull motorhome at the weekend. That doesn’t mean either of his drivers is going to Red Bull. But there is always a conversation to be had around this time of year.

Sources suggest that there has been a conversation about Alonso, but much like the one Lewis Hamilton had with Horner at Montreal in 2011, it is highly unlikely to lead to a marriage. Rather it shows a restlessness and desire to look around. Dangerously for him, Ferrari and the millions of tifosi, it shows disloyalty which doesn’t play well in Italian circles. And with four weeks for it to hang in the air, it creates an unsettled mood at the moment when the team needs to be united to find a competitive package for the second half of the season.

The fact is that Alonso has a five year contract at Ferrari, the team is based around him, he has a high degree of say on how the team is run and in major appointments, like incoming technical director James Allison.

However the clock is ticking for Alonso who celebrates his 32nd birthday today. All the signs are that Ferrari’s 2013 championship challenge is blunted, new developments have not kept pace meanwhile the momentum is now with Mercedes. Next year Mercedes is expected to have a title contending car under the new rules and Red Bull is certain to be the main opposition. The time for Alonso to get his third world title, the crowning ambition of this ambitious driver, is running out. There are question marks about how potent the Ferrari powertrain will be for 2013. Industry insight puts Mercedes ahead of Renault with Ferrari behind. Allison and his clever aerodynamics may not be enough.

It is very hard to imagine Red Bull, which has a very methodical approach to racing, wanting Alonso, for the same reason Ferrari don’t want Vettel alongside Alonso: It’s too inflammatory a situation. It would create great headlines but both drivers would be rattled and it would end in tears.

Raikkonen is a better fit because he is non-political. The problem Red Bull would have with Raikkonen is that he would want complete parity with Vettel on race strategy, rather than first call going to Vettel every time, as – judging from current qualifying form – he would be likely to be ahead on the road more often than not in the opening stint of a race.

Red Bull has a tried and tested formula, aimed at collecting maximum constructors’ points for the team and controlling the race with Vettel. Alonso would upset that formula totally while Raikkonen may ask for things they aren’t willing to give him. It would require them to run the team like McLaren, which has proven less effective than the Red Bull approach or the even more one-sided Ferrari approach.

So we are talking about some fundamentals about the way a team is run and Alonso clearly doesn’t fit.

However, what is interesting about this situation is 1) why has Alonso risked coming across as disloyal to Ferrari and its fans, creating a situation which destabilises Maranello over the long summer break 2) how the various parties have reacted to questions about it.


Ahead of the long summer break, Red Bull boss Christian Horner sees an opportunity for mischief, with no downside for him and his team. He said on Sunday that the team have not yet decided who will fill Webber’s seat, adding that several drivers have been in touch regarding a race drive.

“We are starting to get a clearer picture but then other options pop up. We are in fortunate position where we are not in a rush,” he said. “We have a great deal of interest in the seat and we just want to make sure we get it right.”

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel was asked by the BBC if he would like to race alongside Alonso.

Choosing his words carefully, the German said: “I’d prefer Kimi. I need to be careful now, but nothing against Fernando, I really respect him a lot as a driver, but I respect Kimi on track, off track because he has always been very straight with me. From that point of view it would be a bit easier.”

You don’t need a PhD in semantics to read between the lines of that answer. Vettel’s skill with English and the subtlety of nuance in his answers is always impressive.

Alonso started the season strongly with two wins and a second in the first five races, but his championship challenge has since tailed off and Vettel has been able to build a sizeable lead at the top of the standings.

If Alonso is not successful in winning the title this year – his first since 2006 – it would be a fourth missed opportunity with the Italian team.

The Spaniard has made a long-term commitment to Ferrari with his current deal not set to expire until 2016. He might argue that his loyalty over these last four seasons has not been repaid with competitive cars, despite competing for two of the last three world titles to the final race.

There will be get-out clauses in his contract if the car isn’t competitive enough, but Alonso has won twice this year and is third in the championship, with 77% of Vettel’s points, so we are unlikely to be in a position where he can action an escape.

Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali looked calm but irritated on Sunday when he said: “We have a contract with Fernando, Fernando is an asset for the team. “[The rumours] is part of the game in this F1 paddock. We are very used to it. Honestly it’s gone in this ear and gone out that ear.

“For sure [Alonso will be at Ferrari next year] he has a contract.”

He will be at Ferrari next year, no doubt. But what will be the legacy of this episode?

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/07/wh...-red-bull/

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Lewis Hamilton's Hungary GP win shows he is F1 title contender

Lewis Hamilton's dominant victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix made clear something that should have been more obvious already - the Mercedes driver is a genuine world title contender.
Hungary was the effective mid-point of the 2013 season - the 10th of 19 races, and the last before F1's summer break. The general perception of the first half of the year for Mercedes is one of a super-fast car held back by its excessive rear-tyre usage.
That perception is accurate, but even allowing for the team's tyre problems - on which count, Hungary augured well - their performances are starting to form a pattern that spells danger for Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel.
Hamilton is 48 points behind championship leader Vettel, with nine races left and 225 points still available.
Closing that gap will not be easy. But on the form Hamilton showed in Hungary, Vettel is far from out of reach. He said on Sunday evening he felt the Mercedes was fast enough to potentially win all the remaining races.

Hamilton seals first Mercedes win
"The tyres are going to play a massive part," he said, "but I truly believe in this car. It feels awesome."
Since the start of the Monaco Grand Prix weekend in May, Hamilton has scored only nine points fewer than the German. That includes a mistake behind the safety car that dropped him from second to fourth in Monte Carlo, and the tyre failure that robbed him of victory at Silverstone, where Vettel retired from a lead inherited from Hamilton.
Taking the best results of a Mercedes driver at each of those races - bearing in mind Hamilton's team-mate Nico Rosberg won in Monaco and inherited the victory at Silverstone - produces 17 more points than Vettel.
Meanwhile, there is another pattern emerging, which makes talk of a theoretical best Mercedes more than a merely interesting but ultimately irrelevant statistical 'what if'. And that is the steepening graph of Hamilton's own performances.
After six races, the qualifying score between Hamilton and Rosberg was 3-3. The Englishman looked uncomfortable, and complained he was struggling to adapt to the car.
He still is, albeit less so, but the comparison now looks very different. Since Rosberg took pole in Monaco - because his team-mate had not quite got his front tyres up to temperature for the start of his lap - Hamilton has out-qualified the German for four races in a row.
Hamilton also seems to have got on top of how to handle the tyres in races as well.
When heavy tyre degradation hit the team in Spain, Hamilton sank backwards through the field much more quickly than Rosberg, finishing 12th to Rosberg's sixth after they started together on the front row. But when it happened again in Germany four races later, Hamilton was in no worse shape than his team-mate.

Hamilton joy at first Mercedes victory
It is beginning to look as if Hamilton was right all along - that there was much more potential in him waiting to be unlocked.
In other words, the bar set for Rosberg by Hamilton's speed appears as if it was artificially low early in the season, and the German was just managing to clear it. Only now is it beginning to become apparent where that bar really is.
The potentially exciting aspect of Hungary for Mercedes was the hint that the introduction of a new tyre design - aimed at preventing the multiple failures seen at the British Grand Prix - could have played into their hands and made them even more formidable than they already were.
The new tyre uses Kevlar composite in its construction rather than steel and it not only runs cooler, but dissipates the heat that builds up better.
The fact Hamilton could run at the limit in the 50C track temperatures of a baking Hungaroring and not encounter the excessive thermal degradation that hurt Mercedes so badly in Bahrain, Spain and Germany bodes well for the team.
Admittedly, the characteristics of the Hungaroring do not put high lateral loads into the tyres, but the same is also true of the Nurburgring, which hosted the German GP three weeks previously. And there, on the old type of tyre, Mercedes did run into excessive degradation.
Given the problems Mercedes have had with tyres for the past three years, it would be a fool who said they were definitely over them, but the signs are promising, at least.
World Championship standings
1. Sebastian Vettel Red Bull 172 points

2. Kimi Raikkonen Lotus 134

3. Fernando Alonso Ferrari 133

4. Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 124

5. Mark Webber Red Bull 105

There are, though, far sterner tests of Mercedes's tyre usage to come - and one of them is the next race, the Belgian Grand Prix at the demanding Spa-Francorchamps circuit on 25 August.
As Hamilton put it in Hungary: "You go to the next race and you never know what these tyres are going to do.
"But considering we're at the hottest race we're probably going to have all year and we had the performance we had, it gives me confidence that, at least out of this next nine races we have moving forward, we are going to have some more good opportunities to do the same as we did today. Especially as at Spa it's cooler, and cooler temperatures work even better for us."
As far as Vettel is concerned, the form of Hamilton and Mercedes is bad news in several ways.
Not only is Vettel's points advantage potentially vulnerable to Hamilton, but if the German team can go on a run, then Hamilton and Rosberg will also prevent Vettel picking up the big points. And it is wins that really make a difference to a points margin - as Vettel proved when he hauled in Fernando Alonso's 39-point lead with four consecutive wins last year.
A super-competitive Mercedes adds to Vettel's problems in another way, too. The 25-year-old is a phenomenon, but he is most comfortable when at the front.
As has been proved time and again, vulnerabilities show, both in his driving and in his mentality, when Vettel has to fight in the pack - as they did in Hungary, when he damaged his front wing on Jenson Button's McLaren and finished third when he might have challenged Hamilton for the win.
Vettel's typical victory modus operandi is to qualify at the front, blast off into the distance and then protect his lead. But given Mercedes's form - one of their drivers has been on pole for seven of the last eight grands prix - he can no longer count on doing that.A Mercedes that can compete for regular wins would also make it harder for Vettel to extend his lead over the men who remain his closest rivals - Lotus's Kimi Raikkonen and Ferrari's Alonso - as well as open up greater possibilities for them to reduce their deficit.

Whether they have the consistent pace to threaten Vettel is another matter. But Lotus had the speed to beat him in both Germany and Hungary, and while Ferrari have slipped backwards, they have high hopes for a development package they are introducing for Spa.
Hamilton, though, is a mere 10 points behind Raikkonen, who is one ahead of Alonso, and Mercedes's form suggests that, while the Finn and the Spaniard remain Vettel's closest rivals mathematically, it may yet be Hamilton who becomes his biggest.
There were, I pointed out to Hamilton in Hungary, a lot of tracks coming up where he has traditionally excelled. I reeled them off - Spa, Monza, Singapore.
"Abu Dhabi," he interrupted, finishing my sentence for me. "So I'm really looking forward to the second half; that is usually my favourite part."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23529385

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http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/09/mc...the-hurry/

One of the more notable features of the Singapore Grand Prix weekend was the way McLaren dealt with the subject of their driver line up for 2014; especially in the face of the rumours about a dramatic reunion with Fernando Alonso.

On the face of it the team is all set to renew both drivers for next year, but it is delaying. In F1 any vacuum creates rumour and tension which escalates. Teams can take steps to avoid that and McLaren weren’t taking those steps.

As the weekend went on they made it clear that Button’s option has been taken up and he will continue, but they are in no hurry on Perez. Perez has disappointed in his first season as a McLaren driver on the whole and to leave the door open is good practice from McLaren as he is unlikely to leave so there’s no hurry to renew. Martin Whitmarsh responded smartly to a question from the media, “What’s the delay?” with the answer, “What’s the Hurry?”

It was 12 months ago that the pieces fell into place and Lewis Hamilton left McLaren to be replaced by Perez. The Mexican was evasive in the 2012 Singapore GP press conference on his rumoured McLaren move, but was confirmed soon afterwards.

His season to that point had been impressive, but his form dipped alarmingly once his McLaren deal was announced. He has not been able to pull his form back up since, not helped by a difficult car. Jenson Button has struggled with it too.

However it has been improved since the summer break and several engineers in the pit lane have observed wryly that had Lewis Hamilton still been in the car, McLaren might have had that first podium of 2013 by now, although Hamilton has been off form this month.

This is an emotive subject and one that insiders don’t like to be drawn on.

Instead they are going through a period of introspection, prompted by their failure to win. And for once they are not coming up with that well worn line of teams struggling for competitiveness, “The drivers are not the problem.”

The sense in Singapore was that the team is desperate to win again and it has much to look forward to with the return of Honda in 2014, with its turbo engines and its generous funding. It also has two very talented young drivers in Stoffel Vandoorme and Kevin Magnussen, who need to be channeled into F1 opportunities. The new Lewis Hamilton? Maybe, but the path in is going to be challenging with limited opportunity on the current grid.

Honda failed abjectly on its last F1 foray, as a chassis and engine maker, and it will be desperate to win on its return. So a top line driver line-up is essential and that again leads the team to look in the direction of Alonso.

He is clearly unsettled at Ferrari, despite his protestations to the contrary. He did seek an opening at Red Bull, which caused increased friction in Maranello. That does not mean he will leave Ferrari; he may stay there to the end of his career. Ferrari will certainly want to make it hard for him to leave.

But Ferrari couldn’t be sure and hiring Raikkonen was as much about an insurance policy against losing Alonso as it was about winning the constructors’ championship.

Alonso and McLaren has an underlying logic, however warped it may seem based on their history. If even Ron Dennis could be heard to say at the weekend, “Nothing is impossible” when asked about a reunion with Alonso, then you know that this desire to win again overcomes all prejudices and grudges. Whitmarsh quietly underlined that even if Dennis had a problem with it, that would not be an impediment.

When I asked a source close to Honda if they would like to have Alonso in the car when they return he said simply, “Of course.”

Perez is in a difficult spot. He got the dream breakthrough but not everything that glitters is gold and it’s not worked out. He’s dropped his manager and ally Adrian Fernandez and is on a tightrope. Even if he gets renewed for 2014, which is expected to happen, he’ll have to step up his game significantly if he’s to be a fixture of the team in the Honda era.

Perez himself was fairly open and honest in his appraisal of a “difficult car and a difficult year”.

He said: “My season looks worse on paper than it has been in terms of speed but I know very clearly that I have to improve and I am working to improve because once we get the car we have to be right in every single detail.

“Even though the car has not been there, we haven’t been good enough all together to maximise every single detail.”

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Nico Hulkenberg is the driver in demand at the moment after a series of outstanding performances at the wheel of the Sauber.

The 26 year old German is firmly believed to have signed a contract to move away from Sauber next year, but interestingly, there are conflicting reports about where he is headed. Several pundits, including BBC’s Eddie Jordan, believe he is going back for Force India, for whom he raced in 2012, while Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy has announced that he has signed for Lotus, the official announcement due imminently.

Hulkenberg, now managed by Werner Heinz, who managed ex-Jordan driver Nick Heidfeld, had hoped to land a Ferrari drive, but was passed over for Kimi Raikkonen last month, in a move that puts pressure on Fernando Alonso, but also provides Ferrari with an insurance policy against Alonso deciding to leave or take a year off.

Many in the paddock believe Ferrari should have taken Hulkenberg and looked to the future, as Red Bull have done with Daniel Ricciardo. Part of the reason Hulkenberg was at Sauber was to put himself in Ferrari’s orbit – the Italian team is the long time engine supplier to, and ally of, Sauber. The Swiss team walked out of FOTA in 2011, in solidarity with Ferrari.

But it has not worked out for Hulkenberg and now, if the Force India stories are to be believed, he may be thinking of shadowing Mercedes, putting pressure on Nico Rosberg’s (above right with Hulkenberg in Japan) seat with the team. As a Mercedes – supplied team, Force India is in Mercedes’ orbit and Hulkenberg may feel his best bet is to be patient, keep racking up results and hope something bigger comes along soon. At the same time, if the rumours on the engineering jungle drums are to be believed and the Mercedes is the best turbo engine next year, Force India is in line to benefit from a boost to competitiveness, along with McLaren and Williams.

According to Gazzetta dello Sport, however, Hulkenberg has signed for Lotus.

Lotus are delighted with the performance of Romain Grosjean, who was driver of the day in Suzuka, underlining his remarkable progress from 12 months earlier where he crashed into Mark Webber at the start. And the partnership of Grosjean and Hulkenberg would be very exciting, both young drivers yet to reach their full potential and a good mixture of raw speed and consistency.

The Achilles Heel with Lotus is the financial side, the team has significant debts and are well known for being late with payments. And Hulkenberg, unlike other candidates, does not bring any budget with him.

Cashflow issues were one of the reasons why Raikkonen decided to move, despite being happy at the team. From Hulkenberg’s point of view there is an element of risk over whether the team will be able to stay afloat, but a Lotus seat, based on their competitiveness of the last two seasons, is a definite move up and gives him the chance to race more regularly at the front, to show what he can do. Despite the financial concerns, the technical team now under Nick Chester, has done a good job to develop the car in the second half of the season and Lotus has had four podiums in the last three races. They have been the only team to take the fight to Red Bull in this Asian leg of the championship.

McLaren no longer appears to be a possibility: Sergio Perez brings budget from Carlos Slim’s Claro business, which will be important next year as McLaren have to pay Mercedes over US $20m for their engines. “Clarovideo” has been on the rear wing of the McLaren since Monaco, a deal worth around £4 million (US$6.3m) at standard rate card. Sergio Perez has not impressed McLaren so far, but the Mexican is likely to be retained pending Alonso’s arrival in 2015.

In 2015 when they move to Honda’s they are pushing hard to get the signature of Fernando Alonso, so Hulkenberg wouldn’t fit into that equation.

Hulkenberg’s destination will be made official soon, no doubt and that will leave Felipe Massa still looking for a seat. THe Brazilian out qualified his team mate Alonso again on Saturday and defied a team order to let him past during the race, coming in 10th. Many believe that Massa’s pace in qualifying shows that he is still a top driver and that in a new team he would flourish next season. He is highly experienced and also very light, both of which are first order priorities for teams in the new turbo era.
http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/10/hu...s-heading/

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Sebastian Vettel - without doubt an all-time F1 great

Sebastian Vettel did not quite know what to do with himself after clinching his fourth consecutive Formula 1 world title in India on Sunday.
He fought back tears, then admitted he was struggling to find the right thing to say. His speech veered seemingly at random from the inevitable congratulations for his team, through recollections of his time with his family as a young boy, to almost philosophical discourses on the nature of his success and the wonderful contradictions of the country in which he sealed his success.
Vettel has a right to feel "overwhelmed", as he put it.
To win four titles in a row is a magnificent achievement, and statistically it puts Vettel in rarefied company.
Only three other drivers have won that many - Juan Manuel Fangio, Alain Prost and Michael Schumacher - and only Fangio and Schumacher have won four in a row, as Vettel now has.
At the age of just 26, in the best team in F1, the sky is the limit for Vettel in terms of the statistics he could potentially rack up.
He is a likeable man and a rare talent, who has achieved great things in a fantastic car for the last five years. He works tirelessly with his team to create a car tailored to his skills, consistently does the job in qualifying, controls grands prix expertly from the front, makes few mistakes, and can race superbly, too, as he proved in his victory on Sunday.
He is, without doubt, an all-time great driver. But just how great remains an open question.
Vettel's records
Sebastian Vettel in 2006
Most points scored in a season: 392 (2011)
Most poles in a season: 15 (2011)
Most laps led in a season: 739 (2011)
Youngest driver to compete at a grand prix: 19 years, 53 days (Turkish GP, 2006 free practice)
Youngest driver to score an F1 point: 19 years, 349 days (US GP, 2007)
Youngest pole-sitter: 21 years, 72 days (Italian GP, 2008)
Youngest race winner: 21 years, 73 days (Italian GP, 2008)
Youngest podium scorer: 21 years, 73 days (Italian GP, 2008)
Youngest F1 world champion: 23 years, 135 days (2010)
Youngest double world champion: 24 years, 99 days (2011)
Youngest triple world champion: 25 years, 146 days (2012)
Youngest quadruple world champion: 26 years, 117 days (2013)
As the main architect of Red Bull's success, their genius design chief Adrian Newey, said on Sunday, statistics are not the only measure of greatness.
If they were, the likes of Jim Clark (two titles), Gilles Villeneuve and Stirling Moss (no titles) would not consistently figure in lists of greatest-ever drivers, and Schumacher (seven) would be considered more than twice as good as Ayrton Senna (three). Which he isn't.
The big debate is whether Fernando Alonso or Lewis Hamilton would do as good a job as Vettel in a Red Bull, even beat him? Who, in other words, is the best driver of this era?
As Hamilton's team-mate Nico Rosberg says: "For sure it would help his [Vettel's] perception if he had - and nothing against Mark [Webber], who is a fantastic driver and a great person - a Fernando calibre driver next to him."
You can think yourself round in knots over this.
Webber is a world-class driver, but the only team-mate Vettel has had of that calibre. And the only other top driver the Australian has had as a team-mate is Rosberg, back in 2006 at Williams.
That was Rosberg's first season in F1, and he was on average 0.15secs slower than Webber in qualifying. This year, Vettel is on average 0.29secs quicker than Webber in qualifying and Rosberg is 0.01secs slower than Hamilton.
Cross-compare those numbers and they suggest Vettel is 0.28secs a lap quicker than Hamilton, who was marginally faster than Alonso when they were team-mates in 2007.
But no-one knows how valid are these comparisons between team-mates across the years, with different circumstances, different types of cars and tyres requiring different driving styles, drivers being at different stages of their careers and so on.
Webber has driven against Vettel in the same team, watched how he works, seen the computer traces of his laps, for five years now, but he still believes Alonso is better.
That's an opinion apparently honestly held as a motorsport fan who happens to be an F1 driver. After all, if he said Vettel was the best, it would make Webber himself look better.
The great might-have-been

Whether Vettel cares about this we don't know. But we know Red Bull don't. They're not remotely interested in defining the level of Vettel's greatness; only in winning.
Red Bull could have signed Hamilton in 2011 - he practically begged them to. Alonso told them he was available for 2014. They certainly could have signed Raikkonen this summer.
But they took none of them because they preferred the team dynamic of Vettel and a de facto number two.
Vettel's position among the great F1 title winners
Michael Schumacher - 7 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Juan Manuel Fangio - 5 1951, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957

Alain Prost - 4 1985, 1986, 1989, 1993

Sebastian Vettel - 4 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Jack Brabham - 3 1959, 1960, 1966

Jackie Stewart - 3 1969, 1971, 1973

Niki Lauda - 3 1975, 1977, 1984

Nelson Piquet - 3 1981, 1983, 1987

Ayrton Senna - 3 1988, 1990, 1991

I'm told that Newey and team boss Christian Horner were both keen on signing Alonso, but that Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz said no, he wanted to give the company's young driver programme a go and take Daniel Ricciardo from Toro Rosso.
The Australian may surprise everyone next year - he has certainly shown a turn of speed on occasion. But it doesn't sound like Vettel expects too much trouble, judging from a throwaway remark he made in Singapore last month.
"If he wins the championship, I'll look pretty stupid," he said, with the self-confidence four titles brings.
On the evidence of the last four years, Vettel would undoubtedly be a truly formidable opponent for either Hamilton or Alonso in the same car, but it does not look like the world is going to find out how they would match up.
Senna had his Prost. Hamilton and Alonso have each other. Who will be Vettel's true yardstick?
Until he finds himself in that position, goes up against a rival of that quality in a comparable car, this debate will never go away.
How the fourth title was won

Vettel won this year's championship in style. No-one can argue it owed something to luck, or that another driver did better with the equipment at his disposal, as you could in 2010 and 2012 to one degree or another.
Red Bull operated at a level beyond the other teams, and Vettel went with them all the way and made absolutely the most of what he was given.
Vettel in numbers
Races: 117
Wins: 36
Championships: 4
Pole positions: 43
Podiums: 59
First race: 2007 United States Grand Prix
First win: 2008 Italian Grand Prix
Last win: 2013 Indian Grand Prix
Ten wins in 16 races; only three times off the podium, two of them in fourth place and one when he retired from the lead of the British Grand Prix. It has been consistent excellence of a level rarely seen.
The season has split into two halves - before and after the summer break. In the first, Red Bull were always there or thereabouts, their race pace always strong, but not always visible owing to starting behind a Mercedes, or sometimes compromised by excessive tyre usage.
Even so, in the 10 races to the Hungarian Grand Prix, Vettel won four times and consistently finished strongly elsewhere.
Then, after the summer break, changes to the Red Bull allied to Pirelli's reversion to 2012-spec tyres turned an already very good car into an utterly dominant one.
Vettel has not lost a race since, and after his sixth win on the trot in India on Sunday, he is on target by the end of the season to equal the all-time record of nine consecutive F1 world championship wins, held by Alberto Ascari since 1953.
Ferrari falter as Red Bull rise

His closest rival, as usual, has been Alonso, and for the first quarter of the season it looked like the Spaniard would make a real fight of it.
But mistakes by team and driver in Malaysia and Bahrain, in both of which Alonso may have challenged Vettel for victory, meant that after just four races the Spaniard was on the back foot, despite a win and a second place in China and Australia.
Back in the spring, Alonso was qualifying pretty close to the front of the grid and Ferrari appeared to have a better handle on the tyres than probably anyone else.

But then the team began inexorably to slip from the pace, their old bugbear of failing to keep up with the development race haunting them again. They were also negatively affected by a switch back to old-spec Pirellis.
Red Bull had been campaigning since the start of the season to have the tyres made more durable, arguing they were stopping the drivers pushing to the limit. Their fragility was also, as Newey admitted on Sunday, preventing Red Bull using all of their car's performance.
After months of politicking over whether the tyres should be changed, a series of spectacular failures at Silverstone left F1 and Pirelli with no choice. A tweak was made for Germany - where Vettel won again, brilliantly sustaining heavy pressure from the Lotuses - and then for Hungary Pirelli reverted to its 2012 design, which was less prone to failures.
Vettel suffered probably his worst race of the season in Budapest, compromised by damaging his front wing failing to pass Jenson Button's McLaren, getting stuck behind which turned a potential win into a third place.
That day in late July was the last time Vettel did not win - and Hamilton and Newey both said in India that Vettel would probably have won there, too, had he not been stuck in traffic.
Now able to fully exploit their car's formidable potential, Red Bull set about enhancing it. Changes to car after F1's summer break took it to a new level and Red Bull have not lost a race since.
How much better is the Red Bull than the rest?

One of the key technologies these last three years has been harnessing exhaust gases to boost rear downforce. One of the other top teams say this feature gives them between 70-90 'points' of downforce. Red Bull, they believe, get 140. Ten points of downforce is worth about 0.25secs if it applies over a whole lap, although in this case the benefit only comes in the first 100m or so after a corner.
Play media
Sebastian Vettel raised aloft after winning Indian GP
Vettel 'proud' to prove boo boys wrong
Vettel has adapted his driving style to this better than Webber, using a balletic, counter-intuitive technique that involves destabilising the rear end on corner entry and then requires early throttle application to get the exhaust gases blowing over the downforce-producing parts at the rear of the car to stop it sliding. This then gives higher mid-corner speeds and better traction.
From the Belgian Grand Prix onwards, Vettel was suddenly able to count on qualifying right at the front and controlling the races from there. But the car now had so much more performance than the rest that it didn't matter if he did not lead the first lap - as his victory in Japan proved after a bad start.
Ultimately, Vettel's fourth title was inevitable. Put one of the three greatest drivers in the world in a car on a separate level from the rest, with a team-mate not quite on his level, operated by the most efficient team in F1, and night follows day.
Is he the greatest of all? It is, as Newey said, a "hypothetical, armchair" question, to which a definitive answer does not exist. But he is, without doubt, right up there with them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/24691202

[maripi]

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/10/br...he-season/

Mercedes has refused to comment and a team spokesman told this website, “The team is making no comment. When we have something to announce we will do so.”

However Jordan’s sources have been pretty solid on Mercedes news for the past 14 months, due to long standing connections with one of the most senior figures in the organisation.

He predicted the hiring of Lewis Hamilton last year and has run a narrative all this year that Brawn is on his way out of the team. Our own sources during the Indian GP weekend indicated that Brawn was reaching the end of the road on negotiations over his role.

The 58 year old Brawn has been in limbo ever since incoming executive director Toto Wolff and chairman Niki Lauda made a move to hire Paddy Lowe from McLaren in January.

Originally a “soft handover” was scheduled, with Brawn gradually releasing control to Lowe over a period set to stretch into 2014. Then Brawn said last month that he would like to stay with Mercedes, but only if he could remain the “reference point” for the team.

It appears that the negotiations have not resulted in any conclusion over what role Brawn might fulfil in the vision Wolff and Lauda have for the team and so now Jordan’s sources say that Brawn will leave after the final race of this year.

He will be sad to do so, as he has expressed great interest in seeing not only the new 2014 turbo technology come through, but also the fruits of work he has done to build up the team to championship level. Lewis Hamilton has repeatedly spoken of Brawn’s presence at the team being one of the key reasons why he jumped ship from McLaren.

After three seasons in charge, following the sale of his Brawn team to Mercedes in 2009, Mercedes wasn’t making much progress, so the Daimler board called in Lauda and Wolff as executives and shareholders. They have a vision for the team in which Wolff runs the business and political side while Lowe runs the engineering and racing side.

Meanwhile Brawn, who will soon turn 59, may well have the appetite for a fresh F1 challenge, according to our sources in the F1 paddock. He has been linked with a return to Honda, when they partner up with McLaren in 2015, but no doubt other teams will be on alert. Brawn made a huge capital gain as main shareholder when his team was sold to Mercedes for £120 million after winning the 2009 world championship, so he doesn’t need to work again and his family has been expanding recently with the arrival of grandchildren.

But it may be that Brawn has one last F1 challenge in him, having won world titles with three F1 teams already, just like his nemesis Adrian Newey.