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F1 2016: Qualifying Officially Returns to 2015 Format

The World Motorsport Council (WMSC) officially approved a change to the 2015 Qualifying for F1 on Monday by e-vote.

This turn around was prompted by teams standing united against a proposed aggregate qualifying solution. The widespread condemnation of the new 2016 format from fans and teams sent F1 management and the FIA scrambling for a change. After a few obstacles where teams were not happy to accept a hybrid approach where the 2015 and 2016 would be used together, the teams stood together and unanimously agreed not to accept the aggregate qualifying format.

The FIA and F1 management finally agreed to return to the 2015 format which was ratified by the FIA and the WMSC. In return, teams will explore new avenues to change up the race weekend format together with a new qualifying format.

Statement from the FIA:

“The World Motor Sport Council today approved, via e-vote, the decision to revert to last season’s qualification format for the remainder of the 2016 FIA Formula One World Championship.

The format, where the slowest six cars are eliminated at the end of the first two qualifying sessions before a final ten-car shootout for Pole in Q3, will return for this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.”

April 11, 2016
F1 Reverting Back to 2015 Format after United Stand From Teams

F1 is set to return to the 2015 qualifying format after Bernie Ecclestone and the FIA agreed to the request from the teams.

Team bosses met earlier on Thursday to decide on the new proposed aggregate qualifying format. In an unusual move, all the teams unanimously agreed in a letter sent to the FIA and Ecclestone not to go ahead with the proposed aggregate format but to revert back to the 2015 format.

With the teams standing united on this matter, the FIA and Ecclestone agreed that the way forward for the sport is to agree to go back to the 2015 format.

“At the unanimous request of the teams in a letter received today, Jean Todt, President of the FIA, and Bernie Ecclestone, commercial rights holder representative, accepted, in the interests of the Championship, to submit a proposal to the F1 Commission and World Motor Sport Council to revert to the qualifying format in force in 2015,” read a statement by the FIA

“This proposal, if approved by the F1 governing bodies, will take effect as from the Chinese Grand Prix and will apply for the rest of the season,” the statement continued

“Jean Todt and Bernie Ecclestone welcomed the idea put forward by the teams to have a global assessment of the format of the weekend for 2017. “

April 7, 2016
Formula One teams take a stand to save F1 qualifying

All eleven Formula One teams have taken a stand against the proposed aggregate F1 qualifying format, as well as the current elimination style F1 qualifying format, in a letter to F1 bosses.

It is reported that teams have unanimously demanded that the sport reverts to the 2015 F1 season qualifying format in an effort to do what they consider to be in the best interests of F1 fans and the sport in general.

The letter was sent F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone, commercial rights holders CVC Capital Partners, and to FIA president Jean Todt. In the letter, teams unanimously reject the aggregate F1 qualifying format which was proposed at a meeting in Bahrain on Sunday between the teams, Ecclestone, Todt, and Pirelli motorsport director Paul Hembery.

Thusfar, Todt and Ecclestone have stood firm on their opinion that reverting to the F1 qualifying format used from the 2006 – 2015 Formula One seasons and have refused to put it back on the table to be voted upon. Both believe that since teams voted the current elimination style F1 qualifying format in, they will have to continue with it, or come up with an alternative solution. This despite the added opposition from drivers and F1 fans since the knockout format was introduced.

Given the strong opposition on both sides, it would seem we will be stuck with the elimination format for the Chinese Grand Prix, unless either side changes their position before the race weekend.

There has been no comment from Todt, Ecclestone, or CVC Capital following receipt of the letter as yet.

April 7, 2016
Pirelli reveals driver tyre choices for Chinese Grand Prix

Pirelli has revealed the driver tyre choices for the upcoming Chinese Grand Prix and some interesting differences in tyre strategies have emerged.

Pirelli will be supplying the medium, soft and super-soft tyres for the race.

The two Mercedes drivers have made different tyre choices – indicating different strategies for the duo. Lewis Hamilton has chosen four sets of mediums – one more than his team mate Nico Rosberg. Both drivers have taken five sets of super-soft tyres with Rosberg taking an extra set of soft tyres.

Ferrari has opted for softer tyres, choosing six sets of super-softs, four sets of soft tyres and three sets of mediums for both of their drivers.

The Haas team is going aggressive again, choosing seven sets of super-softs, five softs and only one set of medium tyres. Both McLaren and Williams drivers have opted for the same tyre choices.

In contrast, the Sauber and Manor Formula One teams have have picked only four sets of super-softs with Sauber favouring the mediums, choosing five sets – more than any other team on the grid.

Carlos Sainz Jr has chosen the most soft tyres for the race, choosing six sets, with his Toro Rosso team mate Max Verstappen choosing an extra set of mediums instead.

Here is the full list of driver tyre choices for the Chinese Grand Prix:

April 5, 2016
Vandoorne Shows What he’s Capable of

GP2 Champion and McLaren Reserve Driver Stoffel Vandoorne showed just what he is capable of on his debut F1 weekend.

Vandoorne, who stood in for Fernando Alonso after he was declared unfit to race by the FIA medical delegate on the Thursday ahead of the race, claimed the Woking based teams first points of the 2016 season with a 10th place finish at the Bahrain Grand Prix race.

The young Beligian was in Japan when he got the call to fill in for Alonso on Thursday evening. He was immediately on a flight and he was at the Bahrain International Circuit just before Free Practice 1. As F1 debuts go, this was not the ideal situation, but Vandoorne took his challenge head on and went with it.

With not much time to prepare he got in the car and finished 18th fastest in Free Practice 1. In Free Practice 2 he managed 11th fastest and 14th in Free Practice 3. After FP2 he remarked that he was comfortable in the car as soon as he climbed in. His qualifying performance was impressive. He out qualified his team-mate Jenson Button by going 12th fastest.

Come race day he did not have it easy at the start. He almost got caught up in the chaos after Williams’ Valtteri Bottas tangled with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton at the start of the race into Turn 1. A relatively aggressive strategy of soft-soft-super soft together with some good overtaking moves earned him 10th place and a world championship point.

“This result was more or less what I expected – I maximised the opportunity and I’m quite satisfied,” said Vandoorne after the race on Sunday.

“The start was a little bit difficult. There was debris left and right – it was pretty hectic in fact – and there was a lot of fighting throughout that opening lap.

“Since the beginning of the weekend, I’ve felt very confident in the car, and pretty comfortable that I could do a good job.

“I’m pleased that I didn’t make any mistakes operationally – I was really focusing on that side of things – and I came away with a point, which was a nice bonus.

“This weekend was a big opportunity for me: I made the most of it, I showed what I’m capable of, and now I just need to wait and see what happens next.

“That’s not for me to decide – so let’s see what the future brings.”

The young Belgian may not have to wait too long as Button is out of contract at the end of the season.

Photo Credit: McLaren Honda Formula One Team

April 4, 2016
F1 2016: Bahrain GP Race Report – Desert Success for Rosberg

For nine years the Bahrain grand prix was run under the hot desert sun. For nearly a decade it wasn’t a race marked as one to look forward to and it almost always produced the most lacklustre racing of a season. But it would only take pushing back the starting time a few hours and a few thousand floodlight to ignite the Bahrain Gp into a spectacle of note. And in 2016 it delivered once more.

As if to emphasise its transformation the drama started before a lap could be turned in anger. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was forced into retirement on the formation lap. While Ferrari has stopped short of calling it an engine failure the plumes of smoke pouring from the rear of the car say otherwise. In Australia it was Raikkonen who retired with a turbo failure and there too Ferrari went out of its way to assure that there is no reliability concern. But even though its only two races into the season they’re developing a bit of an uncomfortable and undesirable habit of only getting one car to the chequered flag.

Lewis Hamilton was sitting pretty in pole position with teammate Nico Rosberg alongside on the front row of the grid but it wasn’t to last very long for the Brit. Hamilton struggled to get off the line and ended up tangling with the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and dropped down to seventh.

From fourth place Raikkonen made a poor start and dropped behind a pair of fast starting Williams’ and the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo. However, the Finn followed with some tenacious overtaking got himself into second place. By this stage the leading Mercedes of Rosberg was already eleven seconds up the road. The 2007 champion maintained a comparable pace with the Mercedes and even managed to reduce the gap to three seconds through strategy and occasional superior pace. But the number 7 Ferrari was never close enough to challenge for the lead of the race.

As Hamilton recovered to third with some damage to the right-side barge board Rosberg wrapped up his fifth win in a row. For years we’ve been calling for Rosberg to step up his game and make it a championship battle worth watching and he’s done it now. There is still an incredibly long season ahead but Rosberg has started 2016 in the way that he’s needed to, in a way that will give Hamilton a lot to think about.

With the top three positions established the rest of the points paying positions was an intense fight right to the chequered flag. The availability of three tyre compounds once again added a dynamism to the racing as drivers opted for strategies than ran the gamut of possibilities. Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo finished fourth thanks an early stop and rolling the dice by running the final stint on the medium tyres.

As the race strategy engineer for the Haas F1 team Ruth Buscombe once again worked a brilliant strategy for Romain Grosjean. The Frenchman ran most of the race on the supersoft compound which allowed him to scythe through the field. He ran as high as fourth at one stage and ultimately finished fifth in what is turning out to be a fairytale debut for the American team.

Toro Rosso’s Max Verstappen finished sixth ahead of Daniil Kvyat in seventh who recovered from starting fifteenth on the grid. After a difficult tyre strategy Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas finished eighth and ninth for Williams. Driver of the day belong the final points scorer Stoffel Vandoorne. The 24-year-old Belgian driver stood in for Fernando Alonso who is recovering from fractured ribs sustained in the Australian Gp crash. The difficulty of having to deal with the complexity of a 2016 F1 car, to understand the Pirelli tyres, and to fight with seasoned F1 drivers, must not be underestimated. Vandoorne put all of his talents on display and blitzed his F1 debut.

The 2016 hasn’t begun to hit its stride and already an immense battle is brewing up and down the field. Roll on China.

(All images courtesy of Pirelli Motorsport)

April 4, 2016
F1 2016: Bahrain Gp Tyre Strategy

The introduction of a third available compound by Pirelli has positively added to the spectacle. Here is a look at the different strategies adopted by drivers during the 2016 Bahrain grand prix.

In Friday’s second free practice session Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen competed a twenty lap run on the medium compound tyres. The stint showed up well in terms of pace and would’ve been considered a good choice for those opting for a two stop race strategy. However, conditions in Sunday’s race were not conducive to competitively running the medium tyre.

Although Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo ran his final stint on the medium tyre his second stint, on the soft tyre, was the decisive factor in his race. The Williams drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas started the race without any new sets of the soft tyre, thereby compromising how innovative they could be on tyre strategy. Massa ran the longest stint on the medium tyre and though he ran as high as second at the start of the race ultimately finished eighth ahead of teammate Bottas in ninth.

Haas’ race strategy engineer Ruth Buscombe calleed the most dynamic and aggressive of the race for Romain Grosjean. The Frenchman ran three stints on the supersoft tyre and his final stint on a new set of yellow-walled soft tyres.

April 4, 2016
2016 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Post Race Press Conference

DRIVERS
1 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)
2 – Kimi RAIKKONEN (Ferrari)
3 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

PODIUM INTERVIEWS

(Conducted by David Coulthard)

Congratulations, your 16th victory, your fifth in a row. Any man that has done that has won a world championship, so a good day in the office.

Nico ROSBERG: Oh for sure. It’s been an awesome weekend. The key was really the start. I got a great getaway and from then on I was trying to control the pace. Very, very happy with today; absolutely awesome to get another win.

Q: Fantastic, we’ll come back to you. I’ll move along to Kimi Raikkonen. Kimi, as was mentioned in the introductions, your fifth second place here, you were second here last year. It’s a good circuit for you. Just lacking that last little bit of pace this afternoon but it bodes well for the season?

Kimi RAIKKONEN: Yeah, obviously not too bad. I made a bad start and after a few laps we were one straight behind Nico, so it’s pretty difficult to recover from there, but we did what we could and we had pretty good speed. Not enough to win, but we’ll take second today and try to improve from there.

Q: What is it about this circuit that brings out the best in you? You do seem to have a good run here.
KR: I don’t think there are any special things we do. It seems to be happening here. There’s maybe some circuits that we seem to have all the time bad luck. But I’ll take it, but still we know… it was unfortunate for the team that the other car had an issue. We have some work to be done.

Q: Congratulations on your podium result. Ladies and gentlemen, Lewis Hamilton. Now Lewis, it seemed to me that it all went wrong at the start again. We saw a little hiccup in Melbourne, another little hiccup here, any relation or two separate incidents?
Lewis HAMILTON: I think two separate incidents, but both equally as painful, perhaps this one today more painful. Nonetheless, we still managed to get back up there and at least get some points. So again, damage limitation. Congratulations to Nico, kind of an easy race for him I assume, but I’m glad that it wasn’t more points and obviously I could have not finished the race so…

Q: Just tell us about that last pit stop. It seemed like you stayed out a bit longer. You were give seconds behind Kimi at one point and then you dropped to more than 12 seconds, so what was the thinking behind that?
LH: Well, the team was hoping that was potentially a safety car or something. I had so much damage on the car that I couldn’t keep up with Kimi. I was fighting but the rear end was nowhere. I did what I could with it and at the end I was just keeping the tyres in case I get an opportunity with the safety car, but it didn’t come.

Q: We saw you arriving this morning in traditional dress. You obviously love being here in Bahrain.
LH: I do and as you can see… a big thank you to the fans that came here this weekend. I’ve got some incredible support here. I was trying to enjoy the festivities here and I’ve been so well taken care of, so a big thanks to the Crown Prince and I look forward to coming back next year.

Q: Congratulations. Back to our race winner: what a dream start to this season. Do you want to share a few more thoughts with the race fans out there?
NR: No, just congratulations to Bahrain really, for staging such an awesome race weekend here. Such a great race track here also, in the desert. It’s been, I think, fantastic for all of you, I’m sure you had a lot of fun and we’ll be back again next year of course.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Nico, obviously the start was key – but also were some strategy decisions and changes, particularly favouring the supersoft tyre in the final third of the race. Can you talk us through the start and particularly those decisions and what it was like from the cockpit?
NR: Yeah, we’ve been working a lot on the starts. I’m pleased that it worked out so well, it was a really good getaway on the dirty side of the grid and that really made my race in the end. And from then on the car was feeling great and just controlling the pace and playing it safe. That’s what we were trying to do. Also, in case the Safety Car comes and things like that. So we really went for the safest strategy, not the fastest strategy. Just to cover all eventualities.

Q: So you anticipated maybe running supersofts later in the race?
NR: Anticipated? No. As I say, went for the strategy which was safest, to cover all eventualities like Safety Car or anything else that can happen.

Q: Kimi, just over six seconds behind at the end. If you reflect on where you were coming out of Turn Two on the opening lap, do you think with a cleaner start you might have been able to give Nico a run for his money today?
KR: It’s not possible to say. Obviously this is the end result and we had pretty okay speed in the race. Obviously bad start, I don’t know exactly what happened, if I had some issue or did some mistake. I just got wheelspin in the end. Obviously got surprised, managed to hold quite a good position after such a bad start, so it was a nice thing in the first two corners, didn’t lose too much. Then managed to pass cars, so that was a key point – but once I was second place I was already one full straight behind Nico so, obviously not an awful lot to do after that – but we managed to catch up little-by-little and I think we did the maximum that we could after that start. Not ideal for the team. We had some issue with the other car before the race even started, so yeah, we have quite a bit of work to be done – but the speed is more or less there and we just need to fix certain things.

Q: Lewis, another recovery drive two weeks after Melbourne. Obviously this one a bit more difficult I imagine because you seemed to have quite a bit of damage on the car. How did that feel to you, trying to make your way through the field? Maybe you could give us a little detail on the start and that first corner with Bottas.
LH: Yeah, obviously I just lost a lot of performance with the car and I’m not quite sure what happened at Turn One – whoever was on the inside was in my blindspot so I didn’t see them. It was a racing incident – those kind of things happen. After that just trying to manage the tyres, obviously with a lot less rear end and trying to get as many points as possible. I did the best I could with it.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Khodr Rawi – motorsport.com) Kimi, are you worried that the latest reliability issues could prevent Ferrari from fighting for the championship?
KR: I don’t know what happened to the other car. Obviously something went wrong. We had some issue… I had an issue in the last race. Seb had something here. It’s not ideal but, like I said, we have some work to be done and you never want to have a retirement and it’s going to cost points in the drivers’ plus the teams’. It’s an unfortunate part of the game.

Q: (Christopher Joseph – Chicane) Nico, how important is it now, confidence-wise and momentum-wise for you, having won the first two races of the season?
NR: It’s not something I think about. I’m just taking it race by race and it’s great to win here today, great to win two on the trot and that’s it. Next race – where are we going, China? It is a good moment because we have a good car and I just want to make the most of it.

Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, you have eight podiums here. If you could, would you like to change it to one victory, and how do you rate your record?
KR: Obviously we always try to do our maximum and this is the end result. There’s no point in wondering if and… We had some second places, some third places, no win but like today I take second place and go from here and see what happens.

Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Lewis, had there been a problem at the getaway, at the start, and then when did you realise that Bottas was too late on the brakes and you could be in trouble?
LH: I don’t really know what was at the start. I don’t think there was any particular real issue. I think it was just not a good getaway by myself and nothing technical or anything like that. Yeah, as I said, it was in a blind spot, I didn’t know if anyone was there, I didn’t know what had happened but I’m glad that I didn’t spin. At least I could keep going. At least I managed to continue and still have some performance left in the car that I could get back into the top three.

Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Nico, how does it feel to win five victories in a row?
NR: It’s not something that I think about. I haven’t thought about it right in this moment. I’m just thinking about the season, it’s two wins in a row now, good points, that’s where my focus is and that’s it really. Five wins, three wins in a row, it doesn’t make a difference. Sorry.

Q: (Khodr Rawi – motorsport.com) Lewis, did you have to run a more aggressive mode during the race to compensate for the lack of downforce?
LH: We just run the normal race mode, we don’t have any more… We just did the same as we normally do.

April 3, 2016
2016 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix: Post Qualifying Press Conference

DRIVERS

1 – Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

2 – Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)

3 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

TV UNILATERAL

Q: Lewis, great lap. Under a little bit of pressure after your first run in Q3, but you really hooked it up – fastest ever lap of this circuit?

Lewis HAMILTON: What a start. It’s obviously not been a smooth-sailing weekend in terms of pace. Nico’s been right on it all weekend and I was just generally struggling to put laps together. Luckily the one lap I did put together was the last lap. That was actually the only lap probably the whole weekend so far. I hope that’s the first of many. The car felt great. It’s quite incredible to think that we are quicker now to the V10 days. It just shows how far technology has come. Lastly, just for my engineers and mechanics who have been biting their nails all weekend and working so hard to get the car to where it is today, a big thank you to everyone here and also at the factory.

Q: Thank you for that. Coming to you Nico, just a few hundredths of a second between you and Lewis. As he was just saying, you’ve been on it all weekend. The difference?

Nico ROSBERG: I think Lewis just did a great lap in the end there. My lap felt good and I was actually sure that I was on pole! But that wasn’t the case, so there we go, that’s the way it is. Anyway, you know, at this track, I think it’s one of the tracks where pole counts least, because a lot of things can happen in the race and strategy and everything tomorrow is going to be quite messy maybe even, so there are still a lot of opportunities.

Q: Thank you for that. Coming to you Sebastian. Only a tenth off in the first run in Q3, but at the end when push came to show it was more like half a second, what is that all about?

Sebastian VETTEL: I don’t know, you should ask them [Mercedes]! I was very happy with the first attempt and yeah, my second attempt was more or less copy-paste. I thought that there was a little bit, there was, but five hundredths is probably not enough if they improve by half a second. I think very happy today, very happy with the car, the car felt fantastic throughout qualifying, it just kept getting better, which is natural as the circuit gets quicker. But there isn’t one place or anything wrong on the track, where the car doesn’t feel right. It feels good. We know that we are not where we want to be, but step by step I think we are getting there. We know what to do. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow. We’ll push them very hard. Ideally, we’ll do the same thing on the start as we did two weeks ago. I wouldn’t mind! So, yeah, we’ll see. It’s a long race. As Nico touched on, there are a lot of things that can happen here. Last year we saw an interesting race, so let’s see what happens tomorrow night.

Q: Thank you. Coming back to you again Lewis, on pole. Looking for your third Bahrain victory tomorrow but of course, as Sebastian just referenced, a good start tomorrow, unlike Melbourne, will be important for you?

LH: It will be, for sure it’s always important to get a good start. It’s a longer run down to Turn One than there was in the last race. Of course it’s something we’ve been trying to improve on, but it’s only been a couple of weeks so whether or mot we’ve made big improvements I highly doubt it, but hopefully it’s better than it was, on my side at least. But yeah, just really happy with that lap. So happy with that lap, because throughout qualifying and practice you go round, do a lap, it wasn’t quite perfect, Nico goes a tenth ahead or whatever it may be, so to finally pull it all together… It was actually even more of a pressured lap as well, because the previous lap I went off, so knowing that I’ve got to improve even more so than I did on the lap before, so yeah, super happy.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Q: Lewis, you were referencing the speeds there and looking back historically but times were a lot quicker compared just to last year. I wonder if you could put your finger on what that is. It’s a little colder ambient temperature, how much has that contributed? What else do you think is making the cars that much quicker this year?

LH: Well naturally it’s with the development of the car. It’s definitely a bit of… the tyres seem quite grippy this weekend so maybe a little bit of a step in grip on tyres compared to last year but just, overall, the car is globally, I guess everyone’s cars globally have improved, be it power and downforce. The race is a little bit different. Obviously with different kind of tyre wear, it’s still going to be a real challenge there, but every single lap it’s… you would hope that we would be faster, otherwise we wouldn’t be…

Q: Nico, I was going to ask you about the strategy choice tomorrow: two stop, three stop etcetera – then in your unilateral answer, you said you thought it was going to get ‘messy’. So do you want to drill down into that a little bit and explain why you think it’s going to get messy?

NR: I think we are going to see many different strategies and also surprises. People will be surprised if maybe their strategy doesn’t work the way they thought – because we’re going to see graining on the soft tyres because it’s so cold, and that always causes a lot of unexpected things – because if you get graining you lose a lot of time, and you’ll get it in different ways. And then three different tyres, Safety Cars maybe coming into it, it’s going to be all over the place.

Q: Finally to you Sebastian, this was a strong race for Ferrari last year. You’ve repeatedly said that, obviously, when it comes to the end of quali, you’re giving something away to Mercedes but that you’ve got much closer race pace. So, does that give you a degree of optimism you can get amongst them tomorrow?

SV: Always. I think, yeah, last year we were very strong in the race. Kimi put a lot of pressure on Nico at the end of the race and managed to get past so I think we can be in good shape tomorrow. Obviously it’s impossible to predict but the car feels good; the car felt good this afternoon with different conditions to the evening. It kept getting better. Some of it, I guess, is the track but also we made little improvements here and there. So, very happy with how the car feels on one lap but also for the race. So, yeah, high on confidence. Whether it’s enough, we’ll see – but we’ll try to give them a hard time.

QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action/Speedsport magazines) A question to all three. We’ve now had two sessions of the new format. Are they more stressful or less stressful compared to the old Q1, Q2, Q3?

Lewis?

LH: Honestly, there’s zero difference to us, I guess, at the front. You go out and position might help a little bit but really doesn’t make any difference. I have not noticed a single difference, personally – you have to go out and get your laps just as you did before.

Nico, I guess the only difference is that the laps are done earlier on rather than right at the very end, right?

NR: Yeah, but I think in the end we should just listen to everyone watching in front of the TV and the fans at the racetrack, see what they say and, if they continue to not like it – as I’m sure they won’t – we should change.

Sebastian?

SV: Well, naturally with this format everyone has to go out more or less straight away otherwise you get knocked out and then there’s quite a lot of time you spend sitting in the garage and waiting, so obviously for us, running in, let’s say, the top five… but yeah, I think it’s just not right when you have the last four minutes and nothing’s happening. That’s usually when people should be smashing the lap times: not only in Q3 but also Q1 and Q2.

Q: (Livio Oricchio – GloboSport.com) Nico, you were fastest yesterday and today you were 77 thousandths slower. Any reason – nature of competition or did you have any kind of a problem?

NR: No, all the way through the weekend it’s been going well and even in the end of qualifying it was going well. I got a good lap in, Lewis just did seven-hundredths better. That’s it.

Q: (Daniel Johnson – The Telegraph) Sorry to slightly move the conversation away from qualifying but to all three of you, and particularly Seb, given your role on the GPDA, Bernie said yesterday that drivers are just saying what their teams tell them to; they shouldn’t have an opinion and I think he used the word ‘windbags’. I just wondered what your response to that was, whether you think it’s valid for you guys to have an opinion and what your response to Bernie is.

SV: Look, we’re not political, I think if you read the letter, and you read the very end, it says, ‘on behalf of all drivers’. I think Alex, my name and Jenson but, in general, all drivers. So, I don’t read ‘on behalf of all the teams’ – or some of the teams. What I read is ‘on behalf of the drivers’. So that’s it.

Anything to add? Nico? Lewis? No.

Q: (Michael Schmidt – Auto, Motor und Sport) Sebastian, you challenged Mercedes in Melbourne with, let’s say, a riskier strategy, choosing more the softer tyres. Is the supersoft tyre here good enough to do the same, or is that only a tyre for the first stint?

SV: I think it always depends on how the race goes. I think probably here, more so that Melbourne, you have a couple of options with the strategy – but as I said it largely depends how the race goes. How you start off, where you are after the first corner, the first lap. And then it has to be seen. I think it should be fairly clear which tyre is the preferred one to use and then, I think we all go from there but, as we’ve seen last year, I think Kimi was on a mirrored strategy compared to Nico and Lewis, myself, and it worked out at the end – so there’s always room for doing something different, so let’s see what happens. If we can be smart tomorrow then I hope we will.

Q: (Christopher Joseph – Chicane) Question for Nico and Lewis. From this point on, how does the process work in terms of considering all of the variables tomorrow? How will you decide your strategy, both individually and how much do you look across the other side of the garage.

NR: So, the strategy is done by the team. We’re going to discuss it tomorrow morning and we’re going to go for the best possible strategy and then there will be a Plan B in case Plan A doesn’t work out and I’m not even 100 per cent aware yet what we’re going to decide to do – so let’s see for tomorrow morning and then go for it.

Lewis?

LH: Yeah, it’s not like we get any options. There’s the optimal, and then there’s sub-optimal and then there’s worse. The team choose the optimal. They do all the simulations and know what’s best. Of course you could ask for something different – but our strategist is incredibly smart, as all strategists in the teams will be, so we just follow in their direction.

Q: (Ralf Bach – Autobild Motorsport) A question to Sebastian. Do you really believe you can win the championship with Ferrari until 2020 and, if yes, can you tell us why?

SV: Until what? 2020? Well, it’s a long time. I don’t have a contract that goes to 2020 so that could be the first thing I need to sort out. Yeah, apart from being old at that time, I’ve very confident. I was very impressed when I first went to Maranello and saw the facilities, saw the potential, met the people and nothing has changed. Obviously it has been a very strong year last year which, to some extent, came unexpected – but obviously was very good to boost our motivation – but we know a lot of things have happened, a lot of things are still due to happen that will make us stronger in the future. Naturally some of the stuff happened already and I think this year’s car is a lot better than last year’s car, big step. Other stuff is in the pipeline, still to come – that’s talking about this year but also in general about the future. So once I think everything calms down and we focus and have everything in place then, I think, it will only make us stronger. Currently I think, if you measure on track, we are half a second behind today. Let’s see what the gap is tomorrow. I don’t see any reason why we cannot gain at least half a second or more in the future. To… whoever.

April 2, 2016
Hamilton Given Reprimand for Reversing In the Pitlane

Lewis Hamilton has been given a reprimand following his pit lane incident after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Hamilton who took a pole position with a record setting lap time was summoned to the stewards after qualifying for reversing in the pit lane. This is in breach of Article 28.3 of the FIA Sporting Regulations.

The stewards decided that a penalty is not necessary and the Briton was given a reprimand and will therefore keep his pole position.

“A reprimand has been imposed on the driver due to the fact that no clear instruction was given to the driver on where he should park the car after qualifying,” said the stewards in their decision document.

Picture by courtesy Pirelli

April 2, 2016