james Allen

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http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/01/a-...-for-2013/


interesante

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The final player to take the stage at Ferrari’s pre-season warm up event in Madonna di Campiglio was Fernando Alonso. The Spaniard, who narrowly missed out on his third world title at the final round in Brazil last year, is refreshed and ready to challenge again with the new Ferrari, which will be launched in just over two weeks time.

Ferrari got their sums wrong on the 2012 car and started the season around 1.5 seconds off the pace. This year Alonso sees no reason why the new car, developed in the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne by a strengthened aero team, shouldn’t be there or thereabouts at the start of the season, giving him a chance to challenge,

“This year everything should be much more normal and we are much more confident,” he said.
“We can be faster or slower, but not 1.5 or two seconds off the pace. It is maybe impossible to be worse than last year, so I am confident.”

With no significant rule changes, in theory the cars will be evolutions of the 2012 models with declining margins for development, so it should be a close season. Alonso will be hoping so, with little margin between the top cars, as this will give a platform for his consistency to prevail.

Alonso made comments towards the end of last year about who he rates most highly among his opponents and cited Hamilton, today he was back on the subject,

“Who is the strongest driver? My answer is Hamilton. It was true last year, it was true this year,” he told the audience.

“It is a personal opinion, not political, not to make people think something. Who is the strongest opponent, the strongest driver on grid? Who is the one you have to keep an eye on? It is Hamilton – and it will still be Hamilton next year.

“He is a super good driver because he won every year with any car: he won in 2007 and 2008. In 2009 they started around two seconds off the pace with the McLaren, and Hamilton was able to win races – and it was the same in 2010. Last year also Nico we saw winning in China with Mercedes. So with Hamilton he will be able to win more than one race.”

But Hamilton has won only one world title during Alonso’s career, while Sebastian Vettel has won three, more than the Spaniard himself. Asked why that didn’t rate more highly for him Alonso made clear that he felt Vettel deserved the success he had enjoyed, “In 2011, there was a fantastic performance from him. It is true the car was much in front of everybody, they [Red Bull] were first and second consistently, and when the car is good you tend to relax in some races. But I remember difficult races in 2011 with wet/dry conditions, and he did not do any single mistake.

“So for sure in these three years there were moments when he was better than anybody else and he deserved these three championships.”

It’s not necessary to see this thesis as disrespectful to Vettel. Alonso has to view it this way, after all Hamilton he is the only one of his rivals who has raced alongside him in the same team and been able to beat him over a season. You can debate the rights and wrongs of that momentous 2007 season at McLaren, but Alonso knows Hamilton’s strengths and weaknesses from that experience far more closely than he can know Vettel’s, never having competed in equal machinery with him.

None of this will bother Vettel one iota; the German has three world championship trophies in his cabinet and no-one can take them away from him. This year he will go out and seek a fourth and Alonso will be one of his main rivals again. Meanwhile Hamilton is not expected to challenge for the championship, given how far back Mercedes were at the end of 2012, but Alonso has no doubt that the Briton will win a race or races in 2013.

http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/01/co...ee-titles/

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The Marussia F1 team has confirmed this morning that Timo Glock will not be driving its car this season.

The 11th hour announcement, just two weeks before the start of the F1 pre-season tests, came with an acknowledgement from the team that this move was forced by a need to survive financially; Glock was paid a salary by the team and clearly his replacement will be a driver with a solid budget.

Given the Russian connections and sponsor backing that Vitaly Petrov enjoys, it looks very much as though he will be the replacement.

“The ongoing challenges facing the industry mean that we have had to take steps to secure our long-term future,” admitted team principal John Booth in a statement. “Tough economic conditions prevail and the commercial landscape is difficult for everyone, Formula 1 teams included.”

Over the winter the HRT team failed and there were many stories about the state of Marussia’s financial health over the closed season.

The Chilton family has come in and invested in the team, with Max Chilton taking one of the race seats, but clearly survival is at the top of the agenda.

Ironically the Marussia may not be a bad car this year; the team is now benefitting from its association with McLaren, the wind tunnel programme is believed to have produced quite an improvement. And under the canny technical management of ex Benetton and Renault engineer Pat Symonds and with KERS for the first time, the Marussia may well be quite a tidy car.

Glock had a valid contract for 2013 and the lateness of the move means that he will be entitled to quite a reasonable pay off. Rather than this becoming acrimonious, as it was a few years ago when Tonio Liuzzi was dropped by Force India, the driver and the team has sorted it out and Glock is believed to be close to a DTM drive.

* There was reaction from Glock’s fellow drivers: Jenson Button Tweeted, “It’s a Shame to see that @realTimoGlock is off the F1 grid for ’13. No way that’ll be the last we see of him.”

Sergio Perez tweeted, “Mate big shame to hear the news !! We will miss you specially at the drivers dinner! I’m sure you will be back soon @realTimoGlock”, while there was this from Mark Webber, “@realTimoGlock you’ll be missed matey on the drivers parade and drivers meetings chats. One of the good guys, and never went to your head.”

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http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/01/me...oss-brawn/

New Mercedes head of motorsport Toto Wolff has denied speculation that he plans to replace Ross Brawn as team principal of the Mercedes F1 team, but refused to be drawn on stories that he plans to hire McLaren technical director Paddy Lowe,

Sigue

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There have been some interesting developments behind the scenes in F1 in the last week, all related to the fact that there is currently no agreement in place binding in the teams, governing body and commercial rights holder, known as the Concorde Agreement.

A meeting was held in Maranello, with a select group of top teams and Ecclestone while the FIA’s Charlie Whiting convened a meeting of the Technical Working Group and Sporting Working Group in London. But in the current regulatory vacuum, the outcome was that Whiting would forward the recommendations of the Groups directly to the World Motor Sport Council, which is due to meet again shortly before the start of the new season.

It sounds dysfunctional, but what it this all about, does it matter and what are the risks of not having an Agreement in place?

Essentially the arguments revolve around these key issues: money, who should make the rules and what is the cost control mechanism?

Although there may be some dire warnings at large about F1 falling apart or teams boycotting races, the racing will go ahead this year, because the teams (with the exception of Marussia) are all signed up to commercial agreements with Ecclestone, which provides a significant slice of their funding. Those deals were done just under a year ago.

However the regulatory process is what Ecclestone and some of the teams want to get control of.

In April 2011 Ecclestone lashed out at Todt saying, “We should write the rules with the teams. The competitors have got to race and have got a big investment. We have got a big investment. It (the FIA) should be like the police – the police don’t write the rules and say you’ve got to do 30 miles an hour. The FIA is a joke.”

Rule making falls under FIA control and with no Concorde Agreement in place the FIA is theoretically able to dictate what the rules are. Some smaller teams, for example, would like a budget cap and the FIA could impose one at the moment in the vacuum created by no Concorde Agreement. But that would cause World War Three in F1 terms and the season would be threatened.


FIA president Jean Todt has his hands somewhat tied by a re-election campaign coming up and also the FIA’s need for money. A deal was agreed last year whereby the FIA would get $15 million from teams in the form of bonus payments for points scored in the previous season and $25 million from the Commercial Rights Holder – but that is being used as a bargaining chip at present, as we will examine later.

It appears that the team have paid their basic entry fees, but McLaren and Mercedes have so far withheld the bonus payment element, pending satisfactory resolution of these outstanding issues. Both teams want a Concorde Agreement, as it seems does Ferrari, but there are some question marks about whether Red Bull wants one or whether it is playing a different game, once again, from the other teams.

Ecclestone made his position very clear after the Maranello meeting when he told ESPN, “We don’t need the Concorde Agreement signed. It doesn’t matter to me whether we have got the Concorde Agreement or not.

“The Concorde Agreement is really made up of two sections. We have already dealt with the financial section with the teams. It is all done so it is a case of the regulations which change all the time. It’s a case really of how you change the regulations.”



The 2014 V6 turbo unit

Ecclestone remains of the view that the new generation 1.6 litre turbo engines are bad for business and he, together with some of the race promoters, continue to apply pressure on Todt to drop the new formula, even at this late stage.

That – and the wider issue of who controls the regulations – is the nub of this current instability.

Stability of rules is of first order importance to the teams, from a cost-control point of view. The 2014 rules will cost everyone significantly more money, with new chassis rules and a more expensive engine.

This is one of the reasons why we are seeing a rise in pay drivers; teams are making sure that they have plenty of cash this year to fund their 2014 projects.

The teams have been notably unable to agree among themselves a cost control structure and in desperation last year it was suggested that the FIA should control this, but some of the bigger teams are against this, as is Ecclestone.

It is reported that relations between Todt and Ecclestone have been strained this month over a letter the Frenchman sent to the Englishman which featured some strong sentiments and language. Todt had previously avoided confrontation with Ecclestone, telling me in April 2011, “What is important is never to overreact. I feel confrontation, unless it is necessary to achieve the final result, you lose time.”

On Wednesday Ecclestone attended a meeting at Ferrari’s base in Maranello hosted by Luca di Montezemolo and Stefano Domenicali, along with Martin Whitmarsh from McLaren, Christian Horner from Red Bull and Niki Lauda representing Mercedes.

This was not a convening of the “F1 Strategy Group” – the select group as proposed under the new Concorde Agreement to decide regulation changes – as it did not include Williams and the floating fifth member which this year would be Lotus.

Does all of this matter, or is it just another bout of posturing among the sport’s rich and powerful?

Well, it does matter because instability is not good for anyone, from teams to investors. It certainly means that the planned flotation will remain on hold, but F1 commercial rights owner CVC took steps to broaden the investor base last year, selling down its holding from 63% to around 35%.

The Concorde Agreement is essentially the labour agreement at the heart of the sport of F1, which binds in the teams, the FIA as governing body and the Commercial Rights Holder, which is CVC and Bernie Ecclestone.

Any business worth a reputed $9 billion, with the stakeholders it has and the amounts of money at stake, logically requires a labour agreement to provide stability.

But with the F1 season due to start in six weeks time, there is no sign of one being signed any time soon.

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Fuertes declaraciones de Webber

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Analisis tecnico del nuevo Mclaren

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http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/02/do...mpetitors/

Ferrari Team Principal Stefano Domenicali believes that this year’s car, the F138, must be on a par with its competitors from the outset in order to give the Maranello based squad their best chance of winning their first Formula One Championship since 2007.

Speaking at the launch of the car at Ferrari HQ today, Domenicali says that they must make amends for a slow start last year, which cost them Championship points in the early stages of the season, and hit the ground running in order to compete with McLaren and Red Bull.

“The key objective that we must have is of immediately delivering a competitive car to our drivers,” Domenicali acknowledged. “Unfortunately in recent years we have at the beginning of the winter not been able to be right on top of what we are doing. I don’t think we can expect a car that is much faster than the others – this would be fantastic. We have to keep our feet on the ground and have a car that is equal to our competition.”

Despite a poor start to the season, performance wise, Ferrari came very close to claiming the Drivers’ World Championship with Fernando Alonso last year, having led a large proportion of the season and finally ending the year just three points off Sebastian Vettel. And although they held this lead, it was more a case of others having reliability issues, rather than Ferrari producing the fastest car on the grid.


Alonso agrees with Domenicali and believes that we will not see a reoccurrence of seven different winners in as many races, and his team will need to be fighting for victories from Melbourne through to Sao Paulo.

“It will be very difficult to repeat what we saw last year with seven different winners from the first seven races,” said Alonso. “That was a one off. With things a bit more stabilised, the top teams emerged at the end of last season, so I think highly there will be two or three teams who will win the majority of the race.” He added: “We need to be one of them.”

Alonso is most likely correct in his presumption of a more stable field, as this year brings relatively minor changes in design rules to what we saw in 2012. With this being the case a slip-up from any of the leading teams could see them suffer a larger points deficit then we saw during the mixed up early phase of last year.

The F138 will have its first track outing at Jerez next week at the hands of Felipe Massa and development driver, Pedro de la Rosa. Alonso will take part at the second pre-season test in Barcelona

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http://www.jamesallenonf1.com/2013/02/ne...in-london/

Por si estais cerquita, podeis ir a la exibicion de Darren en Londres

[Wallabee]

Que dice el James que McLaren ha comprado Cosworth esta mañana. ¿Se veía venir?