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Motorsports Mondial - April 22, 2012

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f1weekly @ 9:26 AM

 

Vettel holds off Kimi’s Lotus for victory in Bahrain.

Sebastian Vettel:“It’s a very tight season, the cars are very close to each other and small things can make a huge difference on a Sunday.

I think we started the season saying that the McLaren is the fastest car by quite a bit and we’ve seen that on Sunday it can be a different picture. I think they still have one of the strongest packages.

But you need to get everything right, you need to have the right tyres, you need to treat them right, you need to find the right set-up through the course of the weekend, so a lot of things to look out for.” I am very happy we made it to victory here. We were not quite sure how competitive we would be.

I think China was a very good lesson for us to understand the weakness of the car a little bit more by driving with two different packages. Here we focused on the new package and pushing that forward. I’m just happy for now, I don’t really care what happens in the next race, at least not today. I think we will have a good time now and push harder so that we make sure we are there again next race”.

Kimi Räikkönen: “It’s a great result for the team and we deserve it as everyone has been working very hard. To be honest, I’m slightly disappointed we didn’t take the win because we had the pace. I only had one chance to overtake Sebastian (Vettel) and unfortunately I chose the wrong side to try and get past. If I hadn’t made a small mistake at the start and allowed Felipe (Massa) to get through then maybe it would have been a different story, as we spent quite a lot of time fighting with him. At the end of the day, it’s good to have both cars on the podium, especially after last race which didn’t go to plan, but I honestly think we could have taken the victory today.”

Romain Grosjean: “It’s a great feeling to get my first podium, and I’m really proud of the whole team for doing an incredible job today. We’ve known all season how quick the car can be, but with such a tight field any small mistakes can make a huge difference. Today I think we got everything right, and we’ve finally been able to prove how competitive we are. Last week I was aiming for my first points, this week I was hoping for top five, but here we are on the podium so who knows where we can go from here! We can be very happy with what we’ve achieved today; hopefully we can now head to the Mugello test and find that last bit of to push us right to the top.”

Pos Driver Team Time
 1.  Vettel        Red Bull-Renault           1h35:10.990
 2.  Raikkonen     Lotus-Renault              +     3.300
 3.  Grosjean      Lotus-Renault              +    10.100
 4.  Webber        Red Bull-Renault           +    38.700
 5.  Rosberg       Mercedes                   +    55.400
 6.  Di Resta      Force India-Mercedes       +    57.500
 7.  Alonso        Ferrari                    +    57.800
 8.  Hamilton      McLaren-Mercedes           +    58.900
 9.  Massa         Ferrari                    +  1:04.900
10.  Schumacher    Mercedes                   +  1:11.400
11.  Perez         Sauber-Ferrari             +  1:12.700
12.  Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes       +  1:16.500
13.  Vergne        Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +  1:30.300
14.  Kobayashi     Sauber-Ferrari             +  1:33.700
15.  Ricciardo     Toro Rosso-Ferrari         +     1 lap
16.  Petrov        Caterham-Renault           +     1 lap
17.  Kovalainen    Caterham-Renault           +     1 lap
18.  Button        McLaren-Mercedes           +     1 lap
19.  Glock         Marussia-Cosworth          +    2 laps
20.  De la Rosa    HRT-Cosworth               +    2 laps
21.  Karthikeyan   HRT-Cosworth               +    2 laps
22.  Senna         Williams-Renault           +    3 laps

Fastest lap: Vettel, 1:36.379

Valsecchi wins dramatic Sprint Race in Bahrain

Perfect end to a perfect weekend for the DAMS driver

It was another good day at the office today for Davide Valsecchi: the DAMS ace pocketed a second consecutive win in Bahrain this Sunday in Bahrain, from P8 on the grid. The Italian spoiled Esteban Gutierrez’ race when he passed the Mexican on the last lap and dashed to the chequered flag. James Calado completed the podium.

Action-packed seemed to have been the key word again this morning as the twenty-six GP2 cars made their way to the grid for the Sprint Race. The start was aborted when Felipe Nasr who was last on the grid stopped a few meters away from his starting position. More drama occurred when Tom Dillmann stalled from P3 for the second formation lap. Both men were pushed back into the pitlane and had to settle for a start from there.

When the lights went off, Calado made the perfect gateway from P4 to take the lead. Fabio Leimer and Gutierrez also made their way to P2 and P3 respectively, but the Mexican quickly found a way round the Swiss and after just one lap into the race, both Lotus GP cars were in control of the rest of the pack. The teammates started a battle of their own with Gutierrez putting immense pressure on Calado. As they were busy fighting off each other, Leimer snuck past Gutierrez and then easily overtook the Brit for the lead on Lap 5.

Calado started to struggle and was unable to keep his teammate at bay. Gutierrez took P2 and tried to close in on Leimer, but the Racing Engineering driver maintained a good pace to build a comfortable gap. Behind the top three, Max Chilton set his sights on Calado. Valsecchi in sixth overtook Luiz Razia and started to pick up the pace. He first passed Chilton and then closed in on a slower Calado before overtaking him for P3.

Leimer was enjoying a 2.3s lead on Gutierrez when he was given a drive through penalty for ignoring yellow flags which handed the lead back to Gutierrez and put Calado on the podium. Further down the pack, the battle intensified between Chilton and Razia, the latter eventually getting rid of the feisty Brit for P4. At the front, Valsecchi reduced the gap from 2.4s to one second with Gutierrez, and on the last lap he inevitably got past the Mexican to cross the finish line just three tenths ahead of Gutierrez.

Calado managed to retain P3 ahead of Razia, Chilton, Nasr (who made an incredible come back from last), Jolyon Palmer and Simon Trummer. Valsecchi now leads the drivers’ standings on 70 points with Razia on 57. Gutierrez stands in third place six points ahead of his teammate Calado whilst Chilton is fifth on 35 points.

The third round of the 2012 GP2 Series will take place next week on Friday 27th and Saturday 28th of April at the Bahrain International Circuit.


F1Weekly podcast # 569 - April 20, 2012

Filed under: General,Grand Prixview,Motorsport Mondial,News,Podcast
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f1weekly @ 11:30 PM

 

Photo: gp2media

Davide Valsecchi flies to Bahrain pole position

Davide Valsecchi was once again untouchable during today’s qualifying session at the Bahrain International Circuit: he put his DAMS car at the top of the timesheets early on and his laptime of 1:41.200 was never bettered. With this result, Valsecchi pockets his second pole position of the 2012 season. Esteban Gutiérrez and Felipe Nasr finished P2 and P3 respectively.

It was slightly cooler as the twenty-six GP2 cars fed onto the track. Johnny Cecotto set the early pace, but on his third lap and on Option Pirelli tyres, Valsecchi dipped under the 1m42s, setting the fastest first and second sectors. Gutiérrez on his third attempt as well was also able to break the 1m42s barrier but ended a tenth shy off the Italian. Rookie Stéphane Richelmi found his way to P3 ahead of Max Chilton, but the pair were pushed back when Nasr moved up to third.

Ten minutes into the session and Series leader Luiz Razia shot to P4, 0.6s behind Valsecchi. The Italian then improved by one tenth for good measure. The proceedings were red flagged following a small collision between Brendon Hartley and Giedo van der Garde. The Caterham racer overtook the Ocean man in the last corner. During the manoeuvre the two cars touched slightly and Hartley’s front wing came off. Debris was left on the track thus calling for a quick red flag. Along with the rest of the field, the Kiwi driver re-entered the pits to have his car fixed and was able resume his session.

At the restart, all eyes returned to the timesheets. Marcus Ericsson found some extra pace to move up to P5, but Fabio Leimer also improved and made his way to P4 ahead of Cecotto and Ericsson. No one however could match Valsecchi’s pace and with three minutes to spare, Gutiérrez, Nasr and Leimer re-entered the pits and chose to end their session early in order to save their tyres. Two minutes later, Ceccoto, Richelmi, Ericsson and Calado did the same.

At the chequered flag, Valsecchi enjoyed his new success while Gutiérrez and Nasr also celebrated their best qualifying ever. Leimer will start from P4 ahead of Cecotto, Richelmi, (Marcus Ericsson will be dropped ten places following a grid penalty picked up in Malaysia Sprint Race), James Calado, Razia, Chilton and Rio Haryanto.



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Motorsports Mondial - April 13, 2012

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f1weekly @ 8:44 AM

 

Photo:Lotusf1

Drivers on Chinese Friday free practice

Kimi Räikkönen: “It’s not often that you have a perfect car on Friday and there are certain things we have to improve. To be honest, it doesn’t matter if you are the slowest car on Friday if you are fast for the rest of the weekend. We now just need to look at the information and change the usual things on the car to improve it. We’re aiming for better results than what we’ve achieved from the last two weekends. For sure, we have some work to do on the car. We tried some different things with the set-up today so we have some information to look at, and we know there are certain areas where we have to improve.”

Romain Grosjean: “We had strange conditions this morning and a little bit of a difficult session this afternoon to be honest. We’re not where we would expect to be, partly due to the low temperature which we didn’t expect. We’ll analyse what’s changed coming from two warm weekends to here where it’s pretty cold and has changed the game. On a positive note I’m comfortable with the way the car feels; we have a few set-up issues but it’s not as if the car is nowhere. I’m sure we’ll improve tomorrow, and of course if the weather changes again then everything will change. It’s never easy to learn a new track in varying conditions, but it was good to get out there and find my way around, and also to get a proper impression of the intermediate tyres which is a bonus for me. The track itself is quite nice to drive, and I was pleased to be reasonably close to Kimi who obviously has a lot more experience around here. I’ll be working late with the engineers tonight.”

Nico Hulkenberg : “A very short FP1 with the mixed weather, but the running I managed was still useful because we did a few laps on the medium tyre towards the end of the morning. Then we had a very smooth FP2 in the dry conditions, which allowed us to complete all our objectives with long runs and tyre evaluation. Already I have a positive feeling in the car: it feels good to drive and I’m happy with the balance.”

Paul Di Resta : “It was a solid afternoon session and a positive start to our race weekend. The baseline set-up was pretty good to begin with and we just worked away at fine-tuning that during the session. As for the tyres, I would say the medium and softs are quite similar and we managed to get good data during the long runs on both compounds.”

Jules Bianchi : “It was my first ever practice session in Formula One and my first time driving the Shanghai circuit, so there was quite a lot to learn. We tried to do as much as possible, but the weather made things difficult and we didn’t do a lot of laps. After the install lap the track was still a bit damp in places, but almost immediately it started to rain again so we decided to wait for conditions to improve. I went out for a timed lap on the intermediates towards the end before switching to the dry tyres, but the track was very low grip and it was hard to push to the limit. It was good to work with the team and any time in the car is always valuable experience.”

Heikki Kovalainen : “A bit of a tricky day and one where I’m not sure how much we’ve learnt. The conditions this morning meant we didn’t learn too much, even though it was good to get some mileage on the inters, and this afternoon I had a few issues trying to find decent grip but we can work on that tonight. I’m pretty certain we can find quite a lot more from the whole package for tomorrow so let’s see where we find ourselves when it gets serious on Saturday afternoon.”

Vitaly Petrov  : “I had a slightly interrupted session this afternoon with maybe one run lost to an alteration to the front suspension early in the session, but despite that I’m reasonably pleased with how the rest of FP2 went. Tyre degradation doesn’t look too bad on either compound and I think we can find more time with some changes to the mechanical grip, so with some hard work tonight I think we can be ok for tomorrow and the race on Sunday.”

Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography

Lynn on top in Monza British F3 free practice

Fortec Motorsport sprung a 1-2-3 surprise at Monza this afternoon, British rookie Alex Lynn leading home his team-mates Pipo Derani and Hannes van Asseldonk in free practice for the weekend’s rounds of the Cooper Tires British Formula 3 International Series.

Fortec’s trio were impressive in this afternoon’s dry track conditions, Essex-based Lynn posting a best lap of the Italian Grand Prix track of 1m 46.607s, a tenth quicker than Derani, who had led the way for much of the session.

Lynn, who was only seventh fastest in the wet morning practice, said: “This morning in the wet we were just preparing for qualifying tomorrow, bedding in pads, scrubbing tyres and that sort of thing, so it didn’t really count for us. This afternoon was really good: we went through our programme and finished up fastest.” Lynn was quickest in free practice last week at Oulton Park, but failed to repeat his pace in qualifying: “These times don’t count, as we saw last week, so I am saying nothing more.”

Brazil’s Derani was happy but a little disappointed not to have ended the session quickest: “I think I could have gone a little bit quicker because I made a small mistake, locked a little bit the wheels on my fastest lap, and I ran a little wide and lost a bit of speed. But overall it’s OK.”

Jazeman Jaafar was fourth fastest and the best of the Carlin men, the Malaysian just ahead of Carlos Sainz. The Spanish driver was blisteringly quick in the wet this morning, setting the best time a quarter-second clear of second-placed Derani.

“The track was really, really slippery this morning,” said Sainz Jnr. “With so many straights here and not so many corners you don’t have time to warm up the tyres, so you have to be really patient with the car and then suddenly the grip starts to come.”

Spike Goddard crashed his National Class Dallara at Ascari in the wet, bringing the first session to a halt five minutes early, but the T-Sport team did a sterling job to rebuild his car and put him back on track in the afternoon session, in which the Australian outpaced his class rival and countryman Duvashen Padayachee (Double R) by a clear second.

Official qualifying is scheduled for Saturday morning, with Round 4 of the championship in the afternoon ahead of two further races on Sunday.


F1Weekly podcast # 568 - April 12, 2012

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f1weekly @ 6:09 PM

Photo: gp3media

F1weekly podcast number 568 china preview.

On the GP3 front MW Arden’s Mitch Evans quickest on day two at Silverstone

The final pre-season test concluded in Silverstone today before the GP3 Series heads to Barcelona next month to kick start the 2012 season. The session got underway under dark clouds on a chilly morning at a slippery circuit which was declared wet at the start of the test. Maxim Zimin stepped into the Jenzer Motorsport and was fastest for the first hour until Tio Ellinas in his Marussia Manor Racing car took control of the timesheets. The morning test was eventful: five red flags occurred with several drivers getting caught out in the tricky conditions.

Antonio Felix Da Costa went top as the times continued to improve on a drying track as the drivers switched from wet tyres to slicks. Aaro Vainio then shot to P1 as the session was red flagged when Kotaro Sakurai spun off into the gravel. Ocean Racing Technology’s Robert Cregan suffered a technical issue when he was forced to stop on the circuit, giving a premature end to his morning test.

The position at the top of the timings then changed numerous times before Felix Da Costa regained his place back at the head of the standings. Conor Daly and Ellinas jumped up to P2 and P3 ahead of William Buller who was confirmed as driving for Carlin for 2012 this morning. David Fumanelli, Marlon Stockinger, Vainio, Daniel Abt, Matias Laine and Kevin Ceccon completed the top ten.

Following the one hour lunch break, it was the fastest man from day one, Mitch Evans who set the early pace in the afternoon. The New Zealander quickly improved on his best time from yesterday by a tenth of a second setting a lap of 1’50.150. Buller then made a trip into the gravel, thus causing a halt to proceedings. As the rest of the drivers concentrated on long runs and some pitstop practice, Laine had a quick, therefore a red flag arose. Within the final forty-five minutes, the rain began to lightly fall, as the session came to a close with Evans heading the pack again. Robert Visiou was a late addition to the top ten and went P2 in the dying stages ahead of Vainio, Fumanelli, Abt, Ellinas, Stockinger, Daly, Laine and Alex Brundle.

GP3 Series is next on track when the 2012 campaign begins at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona on 11-13 May.



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Motorsports Mondial -

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f1weekly @ 8:57 AM

Photo: HRTF1team

HRT Formula 1 Team presents driver Ma Qing Hua at the Shanghai International Circuit

The official presentation of Ma Qing Hua took place this morning at the Shanghai international Circuit. The Chinese driver joins HRT Formula 1 Team’s driver development programme with the team intending on creating a platform for the formation of professionals in the pinnacle of world motorsport.

The 24 year-old driver born in Shanghai has taken part in various categories of national and international motorsport over the years and, after competing in competitions such as Formula Campus, Formula Renault and F3, Ma Qing Hua reaches Formula 1 at the hand of HRT. Ma says he feels honoured by this opportunity presented by HRT and feels ready to take the step into the pinnacle of motorsport and become the first Chinese driver in Formula 1.

Alongside Ma Qing Hua were Luis Pérez-Sala, HRT Team Principal, and Xiang Tong Chun, Secretary of the Federation of Automobile Sports of China.

Ma Qing Hua: “First of all I must say thank you to everyone for their support and for giving me the opportunity to share with you how honoured I feel because of this opportunity presented to me by HRT Formula 1 Team. I know that I will learn a lot from everyone, especially my teammates, who will surely pass on to me their experience and knowledge. From now on my main objective is to study and learn a lot quickly, I must extract as much information as possible and take in both the most basic concepts and the most technical and specialized ones of Formula 1. Thank you very much to everyone for all the support you have given me”.

Luis Pérez-Sala, Team Principal: “This year we have two experienced drivers, Pedro and Narain, who we’re very happy with, since they’re helping us to develop in the path that we wish to follow. We also have a driver development programme which started with Dani Clos and that Ma Qing Hua has joined in order for him to develop alongside us. I’ve spent years forming young talents and that is why I know Ma from a few years back and I know what his potential is. Before incorporating him we tested him on our simulator in Barcelona and with a World Series car in Valencia. The data which we obtained proved what we already believed, that he is a very good driver. He’s very secure, sensible in the car and has a strong and balanced mentality. Because of all this we believe that we can help him in his development as a Formula 1 driver, we want him to test as much as possible and, if possible, for him to take part in the young driver tests this year”.

Xian Tong Chun, Secretary of the Federation of Automobile Sports of China: “Before anything I must thank everyone for attending this event, I welcome you all to Shanghai. I want to congratulate Ma Qing Hua for this new stage in his professional career that starts at the Spanish outfit HRT Formula 1 Team. In 2004 China entered Formula 1 with the inauguration of this circuit in Shanghai and I thought to myself that in ten years we could maybe see the first Chinese driver inside a Formula 1 car. Not that many years have had to pass for that to practically come true and because of that I am extremely proud to see what Ma Qing Hua has achieved. He is an excellent driver, who has taken part in numerous championships, national and internationally, and last year he won the Chinese Touring Car Championships, so I don’t doubt his potential. I must thank his representative for having discovered this great driver and HRT for giving him this opportunity to form a part of their driver development programme”. 

Ma Qing Hua started racing at the tender age of 8 and won the youth National Karting Championship when he was 12 years old. He continued to race and achieve successful results in karting until 2004, when he entered the Asian Formula Renault Series and won the championship. In 2005 he represented Team China in A1 Grand Prix. From here he would move on to Formula Renault 2.0 NEC, before competing in Formula 3 Spain and Formula 3 Spain Copa de España, managing two podiums this season. One year later, the Chinese driver took part in various events of the British Formula 3 International Series. In 2010 he represented Team China for two races in Superleague Formula before moving onto the Chinese Touring Car Championship in 2011 where he came away with the title after four wins and four podiums in the eight-race season.


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