James Allison leaves Lotus F1
Stefano Domenicali 'Ferrari must be perfect for the rest of the season'
After a stronger start to the season with a stronger car than last year, Ferrari's title bid has been hit by problems in two of the first four races (Alonso's front wing incident in Malaysia, and his DRS failure in Bahrain) (also Massa's tyre issues in Bahrain). All these incidents already mean that Fernando Alonso (in 4th place) is 30 points behind leader Sebastian Vettel and Massa (in 6th place) is 47 points behind Vettel. In both incidents involving Alonso when the team reacted, their call was wrong, costly Alonso a 3rd in Bahrain and 5th in Malaysia. Without mistake he would currently be only 2 points behind Vettel.
McLaren 'The 2013 Car Can Still Win'
Martin Witmarsh (Team Principle) certain the MP4-28 will win races in the 2013 season. Though he did not rule out resorting back to the 2012 (MP4-27). He gave a strong indication that the team is confident in the fact that they can turn this years car around.
He stated:
'All things are options, we ave not ruled anything out but we have made some progress here this weekend and I am expecting us to make progress before we get to china.'
'We will make this car a winning car before the season ends. Not as quickly as I would like, because I would like to be winning the race tomorrow. We will work hard, we will get to a position where we can win.'
During the dry running the McLaren was seen to be closer to the pace compared to Melbourne, suggesting the team is slowly understanding the problems. Whitmarsh said 'Clearly, its (the MP4-28) a long way from being as competitive as it should be even now, but the encouraging sign is that we have made some small, incremental improvements'
Tyres were the main talking point after Australia, but only one man had no complaints, Kimi Raikkonen. Is he set for another win?
The weather in Malaysia has left some questions about the first day of practice at Sepang. Both RedBull drivers have complained about how tyres have become the main focus of whether a team is competitive or not. However, Lotus are not complaining.
The single lap qualifying pace between the Redbull and Lotus was very close though during longer runs the Redbull and the majority of teams were shredding the harder compound prime tyres. In the case of Lotus and Kimi Raikkonen however they did not have the same issue. Even when his KERS failed in practice he was still able to secure the 2nd fastest time (1.37.003) and then take the fastest in P2 (1.36.569) beating Romain Grosjean by over 6 tenths of a second.
Bob Bell (Mercedes' Technical Chief) insists tyre management issues are a thing of the past.
The new 2013 Formula 1 Pirellis have proved more predictable in behaviour than last years however so far degradation has been an issue for all teams.
Mercedes struggled in the early 2012 races with high degradation similar to what the teams are experiencing now. However Bob Bell says Mercedes has learned from last year's experiences and will not get caught out again.
Bell said:
Mercedes AMG - Passive 'Double DRS' System'Although it didn't show it on track last year - and you could spend a day debating why that was - we did get a lot of understanding during the course of last year with the tyres and what was needed to do to manage them,""It didn't reflect on the performance but that may be for different reasons. But it did mean that we entered this season with a pretty firm understanding of what we needed to do to address the issues and hopefully we now proved that we got that right over the winter.'
Mercedes are evaluating their 'double DRS' system in Abu Dhabi. As both systems used by Mercedes currently (use of the front wing) and Red Bull (which stalls the rear beam wing) will be banned next season as they are actively integrated with the DRS system itself. However Mercedes' solution at the rear will be allowed, as it is passive and relies on F-duct-style air pressure switches.
However Ross Brawn (Team Principle) has suggested it will be unlikely to see it on the 2013 Mercedes.
Lotus Confirm Replacement for Grosjean at Monza:
- As Grosjean has a one race ban (from the first corner incident which happened at Spa) and therefore will not be able to race in the Grand Prix at Monza.
- Jerome d'Ambrosio the Lotus reserve driver (who drove for Virgin F1 in 2011) will take his place. To join the World Champion, Kimi Raikkonen in the Monza race.
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| Ross Brawn: "We've struggled a little bit to follow the needs of these tyres" |
Even though Mercedes won its first Grand Prix since 1955, in China earlier this year (through Nico Rosberg), however the car is more inconsistent than its competitors this shows in the results as Mercedes have only picked up 14 points in the last 3 races. Ross Brawn states:
'I'm not aware of any significant deficiencies of the car, this year's car was a good step forward in many areas and we were able to demonstrate that at the beginning of the year.'Updates have been made to the car to improve tyre management however this has 'not necessarily helped our qualifying performance.' Ross Brawn said that Mercedes has a Monza-specific package for the car which has also increases the rate of development on the car for the second half of the season.
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