Tag: mercedes

Monaco Grand Prix Free Practice 1: Rosberg Fastest in FP1

Nico Rosberg topped the timing sheets in Free Practice 1 of the Monaco Grand Prix.

On a sunny and warm Thursday in Monaco Merdeces’ Nico Rosberg was the fastest with a 1:16.195. Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was second only 0.087s off the pace with a 1:16.282. Felipe Massa put his Ferrari in 4th with a 1:16.394. Lewis Hamilton could only manage 5th. The surprise was Williams’ Pastor Maldonado in 6th. The two Red Bulls of Vettel and Webber were 9th and 7th respectively. Lotus’ Kimi Raikkonen could only manage 13th. His team mate, in the other Lotus, Romain Grosjean, finished in 3rd.

As we all know from Free Practice, these times are not representative of the absolute pace of the cars. We only get to know that during qualifying and to some extent in FP3.

We’ll be back again for Free Practice 2 at 14:00. As always you can follow us on Twitter at @F1_Madness for live updates.

May 23, 2013
F1 2013: Lowe blow for McLaren

McLaren’s techincal director Paddy Lowe is join the Mercedes team in June after recieving an early release from McLaren.

Lowe will start work at Mercedes on 3 June but was originally expected to see out his contract with McLaren until the end of the year. Lowe will join the Mercedes team as executive technical director and will work closely with team principal Ross Brawn.

“I am excited to become part of a highly talented and capable technical organisation, ” said Lowe about his move.

“The team has already produced probably the fastest car of the 2013 season while the technical challenges of the new regulations for 2014 will give us the opportunity to maximise the synergies available to a works manufacturer.

“That is a challenge I am relishing. I have worked closely with Mercedes-Benz for almost 20 years and deeply admire the company’s phenomenal commitment to Formula 1. I look forward to much success together in the years ahead.”

No wonder Lewis feels so at home!

May 22, 2013
F1 2013: Pirelli tyre plans reigned in by FIA

Pirelli’s planned ‘tweaks’ to the 2013 tyres from the Canadian GP onwards has been reigned in by the FIA.

A ruling made by the sport’s governing body has stipulated that it will only allow changes to be made to the tyres on the grounds of safety. As a result the expected changes will be less significant that intially planned.

The FIA has clearly stated that it will not accept changes aimed at cutting down on the number of pitstops much less to reduce tyre degradation. Instead of reverting back to 2012 specification tyres Pirelli have been instructed to make adjustment to the current specification of tyres.

Article 12.6.3 of the technical regulations have been cited by the FIA with regard to their decision. The rule states:

“Tyre specifications will be determined by the FIA no later than 1 September of the previous season. Once determined in this way, the specification of the tyres will not be changed during the championship season without the agreement of all competing teams.”

There is however a different clause within the regulations which states that changes could be introduced “if the tyres are deemed by the tyre supplier and technical delegate as technically unsuitable.” But the FIA is adamant that the current ‘issues’ with the 2013 tyres falls within the purview of this rule.

Pirelli motosport director Paul Hembery admitted that the changes to the tyres would now be of a more modest nature. “Let’s wait and see exactly what changes we will be making, but we are doing everything we can to minimise what will be different,” he said.

The prospective changes were expected to benefit teams such as Mercedes and Red Bull who have been struggling to get on top of the tyres. In contrast, Ferrari and Lotus will breathe a sigh of relief as they look to maintain their tyre advantage.

May 19, 2013
Mercedes F1: Silver Arrows in the grey

There’s been plenty of talk amongst Formula One fans lately about the terrible form of the Mercedes F1 team. They’re performing really well over one lap for qualifying, but when it comes to race pace they’re just falling flat on their faces. Reynard Gelderblom wrote in to share his thoughts on the problems over at the Mercedes F1 team.

Silver Arrows in the grey

Three consecutive pole positions, front row domination and statistics favouring the front row starters at the Circuit de Catalunya. Still, Petronas Mercedes AMG F1 fell away like the American economy on Black Thursday.

In the Chinese Grand Prix Lewis Hamilton managed to salvage a podium. Not that this is much to write home about considering he started from pole. A week later in Bahrain Nico Rosberg again had the statistics in his advantage, but yet again he could only secure ninth with Hamilton at least salvaging some honour with a fifth place. After the three week break, the F1 circus moved to the traditional gateway to the European part of the season – Barcelona.

With all teams utilizing the opportunity to improve the cars closer to home and race at the only pre-season test venue slotted into the calendar, Mercedes was looking forward to converting pre-season pace into race winning performance. Back in February during their launch, the team promised that the 2013 season will be the start of the next phase in their evolution – the return of the championship contending Silver Arrows. To back that up, they arrived in Spain with a car that included a little bit more silver than grey. Performance, however, still proved to be a grey area that outshone that silver lining. Despite their dominant showing in qualifying, Rosberg had to settle for sixth with Hamilton finishing a lowly twelfth – managing to pass a Williams as one of his highlights of the day.

Where do the problems lie? Both Rosberg and Hamilton are more than competent drivers. For three years Rosberg has been faster than Michael Schumacher – granted this wasn’t the Schumi of old, but still. Hamilton is a former World champion with McLaren and except for choosing the wrong pit box, he’s really started to look like the driver who burst onto the scene back in 2007.

Tyres have been a great concern for Mercedes, but this isn’t a problem that just affects them. To some degree everyone has struggled with the tyres. Sebastian Vettel may have been very critical about them after Barcelona, but then again, Vettel and Red Bull have been competitive on days when Mercedes have just faded away.

There certainly is no shortage of funding and knowledge in this team. All this brings me to one question: Are we seeing yet another Toyota here? They used to have a bigger budget than Ferrari and certainly enough resources to build the next shuttle, yet none of that materialised into anything worth writing home about on the circuit.

I have been looking forward to a Silver Arrows revival ever since Sauber took to Kyalami in Free practice in 1993 with the “Concept by Mercedes-Benz” writing on the side. This was echoed by the McLaren livery change in 1997.

In 2010 I was smiling when Mercedes purchased the Brawn team. Mercedes is indeed on the platform to regain the glory years. All the components are there, they just need to present the complete package. I hope that day comes sooner, rather than later.

Reynard Gelderblom is the motorsport editor for Street Motion.

Keep up to date with the latest local motorsport news by following Street Motion on Twitter.

May 17, 2013
2013 Spanish Grand Prix – F1 Technical Round Up – Part 1

Formula 1’s return to Europe this past weekend signaled the first round of major updates for most teams. Since most teams are based in Europe it makes bringing more substantial updates to the cars much more easier. Not that teams don’t update their cars at the fly-away races, but returning to Europe just makes things a little more easier. Here is a Part 1 of our F1 technical round up of the Spanish Grand Prix.

Some of the updates were major changes as in the case with McLaren and Toro Rosso. McLaren were somewhat relying on their Barcelona updates to bring them up to pace with Red Bull and Ferrari. Did it work for them? Not so much. Button struggled to make it into Q3 while Perez did slightly better and qualified P9. Their race performance, however, was much better and they finished P9 and P10.

Lets take a look at some of the teams.

Ferrari: They had little tweaks here and there with their body work. They brought a new engine cover which features a longer fin at the back and thats slightly lower than the one they’re currently using. The rain in FP1 put a spanner in the works for them to test it. They will bring the same engine cover to Montreal. Together with the new engine cover they tested a new longer exhaust outlet with a more shallower angled exhaust. They also tried new sidepod airflow conditioners, similar to Red Bull’s “D” wing airflow conditioner, except the top section extends over the sidepod and attaches to the cockpit. They’ve somewhat kept the original design of the split airflow conditioner, only with this variation, the front section curves over the top of the sidepod and the rear section remains vertical. The purpose of the curved section is to bring the airflow around the outside of the sidepod, over the exhaust and eventually out the diffuser at the back. Both Ferrari drivers ran an additional horizontal cockpit fin ahead of the wing mirrors in addition to the two horizontal airflow conditioners behind the wing mirrors.

Lotus: Lotus came to Catalunya with a new front and rear wing. There were two changes on the front wing. They had a curved vane on the outer part of the end plate. The main deflector vane in the front wing is not slotted. The rear wing features tiny separated vanes on the endplate.

McLaren:McLaren brought along a new front wing. This new wing had one vertical slot on the endplate and a new upper flap.

They still stuck to the old three element front wing, whereas other teams are using 5-6 element wings. The sidepods have been given a make over. The vertical air flow conditioners are now attached to the edge of the sidepod making it similar to the “D” wing of Red Bull. They have ditched the horizontal airflow conditioner above the sidepods and went with twin vortex generators, similar to what they ran in 2012

Mercedes: Mercedes have dropped their three horizontal vortex generators on the side of the cockpit and have replaced it with one larger

wing. The rest of the car remained largely unchanged with most of the changes unseen.

Part 2 to follow soon.

May 16, 2013
Formula 1 Breaking News: McLaren and Honda together again

Japanese manufacturer Honda has announced its return to Formula 1.

Honda has not competed in Formula 1 since shutting down its works team at the end of 2008. However, as a result of Formula 1’s planned change to 1.6 litre turbocharged V6 engines it has announced a ‘joint project’ with McLaren starting in 2015.

Rumours about a reunion between McLaren and Honda have been making the rounds for quite some time and the manufacturer is believed to be well advanced in the development of their an all-new 1.6 litre V6 turbo Formula 1 engine.

Honda is no stranger to Formula 1 or McLaren and have won both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles four times. The Japanese manufacturer’s previous partnership with McLaren stretched from 1988 to 1992. This alliance brought back fond memories for McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh. “Together Honda and McLaren have a great legacy; we formed a uniquely successful partnership that took on and beat the world,” he said. “Together, we created some of the greatest, most iconic Formula 1 moments of all time which are still being talked about today all around the world.”

Jenson Button, a former works Honda driver, was equally chuffed about the announcement.

“I’m so thrilled and excited about what is not only a fantastic opportunity for the team but also a great development for Formula 1 fans and the sport as a whole,” said the former champion. “I grew up watching McLaren-Honda Formula 1 cars racing and winning around the world – they wrote their own glorious chapter of F1 history.”

This brings to an end McLaren’s long-standing relationship with German engine maker Mercedes. The Woking based team have been using the Mercedes powerplant since 1995. Gone will be the familiar McLaren Mercedes to replaced, and re-named, McLaren Honda.

Hopefully, the gleaming silver livery of McLaren will still feature prominently as Honda doesn’t exactly have the best track record when it comes to the design of livery – the 2007 ‘earth dreams’ paint scheme being the perfect example.

Could this be the dynamic step that McLaren so desperately need to get back on track?

May 16, 2013
Video: Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying Top 3

The post qualifying press conference for the Spanish Grand Prix

May 11, 2013
Mercedes steal pole position in Barcelona F1 Qualifying

Not many would have predicted that Mercedes would steal the pole position today in Barcelona F1 Qualifying, but they did.

After FP3 this morning, it looked almost certain that either Ferrari or Lotus would lock out the front row but it was the German Mercedes team that took the honours.

Rosberg delivered two amazing qualifying laps, both good enough to take the pole position. Lewis Hamilton was forced to settle for second place 0.254 seconds adrift of his team mate.

Sebastian Vettel placed his RB9 in third place for Red Bull Racing, followed by the Lotus of Kimi Raikkonen.

Fernando Alonso only managed 5th place at his home qualifying with his team mate Felipe Massa behind him in 6th place. Massa however will have to see the stewards later today for impeding Mark Webber during Q2.

Romain Grosjean put his Lotus in 7th place, ahead of Webber.

The McLaren team are not having the greatest weekend of all. Perez did however manage a last minute surge to qualify 7th but team mate Jenson Button only managed to qualify 14th.

Esteban Gutierrez will be seeing the stewards too after impeding Kimi Raikkonen and Button also complained that he was held up “massively” by Maldonado but both the Massa and Gutierrez incidents seemed far more severe in comparison.

Giedo van der Garde is a very happy man at the back of the grid after qualifying at the front of the bottom four, a triumph for the rookie driver.

Here are the full time sheets for today’s Barcelona F1 Qualifying session:

Pos Driver                Team/Car              Time         Gap

1. Nico Rosberg          Mercedes              1m20.718s

2. Lewis Hamilton        Mercedes              1m20.972s + 0.254s

3. Sebastian Vettel      Red Bull-Renault      1m21.054s + 0.336s

4. Kimi Raikkonen        Lotus-Renault         1m21.177s + 0.459s

5. Fernando Alonso       Ferrari               1m21.218s + 0.500s

6. Felipe Massa          Ferrari               1m21.219s + 0.501s

7. Romain Grosjean       Lotus-Renault         1m21.308s + 0.590s

8. Mark Webber           Red Bull-Renault      1m21.570s + 0.852s

9. Sergio Perez          McLaren-Mercedes      1m22.069s + 1.351s

10. Paul di Resta         Force India-Mercedes 1m22.233s + 1.515s

11. Daniel Ricciardo      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m22.127s + 1.126s

12. Jean-Eric Vergne      Toro Rosso-Ferrari    1m22.166s + 1.165s

13. Adrian Sutil          Force India-Mercedes 1m22.346s + 1.345s

14. Jenson Button         McLaren-Mercedes      1m23.166s + 2.165s

15. Nico Hulkenberg       Sauber-Ferrari        1m22.389s + 1.388s

16. Esteban Gutierrez     Sauber-Ferrari        1m22.793s + 1.792s

17. Valtteri Bottas       Williams-Renault      1m23.260s + 1.532s

18. Pastor Maldonado      Williams-Renault      1m23.318s + 1.590s

19. Giedo van der Garde   Caterham-Renault      1m24.661s + 2.933s

20. Jules Bianchi         Marussia-Cosworth     1m24.713s + 2.985s

21. Max Chilton           Marussia-Cosworth     1m24.996s + 3.268s

22. Charles Pic           Caterham-Renault      1m25.070s + 3.342s

May 11, 2013
Mercedes would offer Robert Kubica an F1 test

Mercedes has said that it would be willing to give Robert Kubica a Formula One test as soon as the Polish driver is ready to make a return to single-seaters.

Until now, the German Formula One team has declined to comment on reports that Kubica has been testing in Mercedes’ sophisticated F1 simulator at Brackley.

But Kubica himself confirmed the reports, prompting chief executive Toto Wolff to admit that the former BMW and Renault driver is currently “helping” the Mercedes Formula One team.

Wolff told the BBC, “If there’s any chance of getting him back in a DTM touring car or F1 cockpit, we’d love to do it.”

“Any team would love to have a Robert Kubica.”

Wolff did however clarify that Kubica’s main focus is still rallying. “He is somebody I have known for 10 years but it’s absolutely his call how he wants to help us and his main focus is rallying,” he said.

In January, Kubica tested a Mercedes DTM car at Valencia’s Circuit Ricardo Tormo in his first taste of a high-performance track car since injuring his right arm in a near-fatal crash during a rally in 2011. He is currently taking part in the European Rally Championship and WRC2, but Kubica himself said that he believed he could still make a return to Formula One as soon as he regains movement in his wrist.

Wolff said that it is up to Kubica to let him know when he would like to test.

“This is where he wants to be successful and what he wants to do in the future.”

Kubica last took part in a Formula One Grand Prix back in 2010 with the Renault team. He has worked very hard on his recovery since then and many an F1 fan has expressed their hopes of seeing him return.

May 3, 2013
Spanish F1 Grand Prix Preview Quotes: Mercedes F1 team

Here are the Spanish F1 Grand Prix Preview quotes from the Mercedes F1 team:

Nico Rosberg: I’m looking forward to traveling to Spain next weekend. We know that the car went very well at the Circuit de Catalunya in pre-season testing so I am hopeful that we can have a strong weekend. We will have to wait and see how our pace compares however. I’ve been in the factory for a couple of days this week, on the simulator and meeting with the team, and everyone has been working hard to make progress on our race day performance. It will be an interesting weekend and once we see how everyone performs in Barcelona, it should give a good idea of how the rest of the season will look.

Lewis Hamilton: It feels like a long time since Bahrain so we’re all looking forward to getting to Barcelona next weekend and starting to get into the routine of the European season. The short break has been good however, and I’ve had the chance to catch up with family and friends, and also spend some time at the factory with the guys, working on our efforts to improve. We’ve been boosted by the results that we’ve had at the start of the season and to come away from the first four races with two third and two fifth places feels like a real achievement. I’m feeling very comfortable in the car now and we know the areas that we need to improve so a lot of effort is being put in to close that gap to the front-runners. Barcelona should be a good test as we know the circuit so well having completed most of the pre-season test programme there. The weekend should be a good benchmark of the progress we have made since then.

Ross Brawn: In the two weeks since we returned from Bahrain, there has been a lot of hard work taking place in Brackley and Brixworth to prepare for the start of the European season in Barcelona next weekend. We have focused our efforts in two key areas; finalising our upgrade package for Spain and understanding our comparative lack of race pace in Bahrain. We have made progress in the latter area and will evaluate some developments over the upcoming race weekends to help improve the situation. We’re not there yet but we are making progress and of course, performing in the race is what really counts. The Circuit de Catalunya is a circuit that we know well and we have a lot of data from the two pre-season tests to help prepare for the weekend. However in the late spring conditions, we can expect the track to be of a very different nature to what we experienced earlier this year. Overtaking is more difficult there than at some of the early season tracks and, of course, every team will be bringing new developments so the weekend should provide an interesting challenge.

Toto Wolff: The three-week break between the Bahrain and Spanish Grands Prix was welcome, as it gave us extra time to analyse in detail what happened at the last race. We have built a good picture of our varying levels of race performance and why we under-performed overall in Bahrain. In Barcelona, we will test some solutions aimed at improving our tyre management in addition to our planned upgrade package. The circuit itself is well known as a benchmark for aerodynamic performance and we performed strongly there at the end of winter testing. The track conditions and temperatures will be very different on the race weekend, though, so we must dial the car in to those circumstances. Our target is to improve our Sunday afternoon performance to match what we have delivered on Saturday in the past two races. It will certainly be interesting to see what gains everybody has made since the last time we were at the circuit and how the planned upgrade packages work from car to car.

May 3, 2013