F1 Madness

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  • F1 2015: Italian GP – Hamilton On Pole, Ferrari Shines

    F1 2015: Italian GP – Hamilton On Pole, Ferrari Shines

    Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton secured his seventh consecutive pole position for Sunday’s Italian grand prix.

    Bright sunshine bathed the famous Monza circuit as the one hour qualifying session got underway.

    Both McLaren’s failed to get out of the first part of qualifying as Jenson Button lapped a fraction faster than teammate Fernando Alonso to set the sixteenth fastest time.

    monza-verstappen-engine-coverToro Rosso driver Max Verstappen, who will serve a grid penalty, did not set a time and lost some bodywork in his short qualifying session.

    The second part of qualifying saw Lotus driver Romain Grosjean advance into to the top ten shoot-out for the first time at the Italian circuit. Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson too made into the top ten battle but is under investigation for impeding Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg earlier in the session.

    The final part of qualifying commenced with the expectation of a showdown between Lewis Hamilton and teammate Nico Rosberg. However, Rosberg’s subsequent change to the older spec engine, after a reliability issues in FP3, compromised his run. According to Rosberg the team had to revert to an engine that has completed six races. It showed in the laptimes too as the German was only able to set the fourth fastest time.

    Lewis Hamilton secured his seventh consecutive pole of the season but it was Ferrari who gave the Tifosi reason to cheer. Kimi Raikkonen will line up his Ferrari in second place after setting a time a mere two tenths off Hamilton’s pole lap. Sebastian Vettel will start third in the sister Ferrari and share the second row with Nico Rosberg. Williams drivers’ Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas will start fifth and sixth respectively.

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  • F1 2015: Free Practice Three – Hamilton Heads Vettel

    F1 2015: Free Practice Three – Hamilton Heads Vettel

    Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in his Mercedes for the final free practice session ahead of Sunday’s Italian grand prix.

    The Mercedes driver set a time of 1:24:554 two and a half tenths clear of Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel. Nico Rosberg in the sister Mercedes was third quickest ahead of the two Williams drivers Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa.

    The session got off to a quiet start as the teams opted to stay in their respective garages while the circuit dries. Overnight and early morning rain had cleared up by the start of the session by the famous Monza circuit was still sporting some wet patches in the early part of the session. After roughly half an hour drivers took the track to set for a final check before the qualifying session.

    As the circuit and lap times improved lap by lap it was ultimately Lewis Hamilton who set the quickest time of the day. There was more woes for the Red Bull team as Daniel Ricciardo was ordered to stop and not shift gear at the exit of the Roggia chicane. Manor F1 driver Will Stevens set the fifteenth fastest time overall ahead of both the Red Bull and Toro Rosso teams.

    The qualifying session is expected to be run in dry and sunny conditions. Lewis Hamilton’s seventh consecutive pole position looks to be under threat only from teammate Nico Rosberg at this stage.

     

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  • 2015 Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    2015 Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES:

    Robert FERNLEY (Force India)

    Matthew CARTER (Lotus)

    Paul HEMBERY (Pirelli)

    Christian HORNER (Red Bull Racing)

    Maurizio ARRIVABENE (Ferrari)

    Eric BOULLIER (McLaren)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Maurizio, if we could start with you. Obviously you’ve been here many times before as a partner of Ferrari. You’ve lived the moments of victory in front of the tifosi with Schumacher, Barrichello, Alonso etc. Tell me about the sense of responsibility you feel today as the boss of the Ferrari Formula One team at the Italian Grand Prix ?

    Maurizio ARRIVABENE: You’re right, it’s a big story, because you feel Monza, Milan, all the region here on your shoulder. Yesterday, we were out of the track to meet the tifosi and you know looking at the enthusiasm of them, looking at the high of them, the way they were screaming, were thinking myself, Sebastian and also Kimi, we were thinking ‘OK, we have to do something for them’ and your pressure and your emotion is going up to the sky. You want to give them something and you want to see in their eye a big smile. But you are also conscious about what you can do here. So if I… I feel my responsibility here in Monza is huge, especially yesterday when we were nearby the tifosi and we were looking at them and their enthusiasm, I hope that the heart, the big heart that normally they took here after the race can be the equivalent of a token and it goes straight in our engine. What can I say more than that!

    The Italian Grand Prix is the only race along with the British Grand Prix that has been on the F1 calendar every year since the start of F1. We hear all the time that the race is potentially under threat. Can Ferrari allow the possibility of there being no Italian Grand Prix? Are you playing any role in this process?

    MA: Playing a role is a big word. I mean we are not negotiating with Bernie. It’s not our job, it’s not our responsibility. Having said so, I think the grand prix of Italy is Monza and I want to be very clear on that. The only picture that I saw in Maranello of Enzo Ferrari at a track actually was here at Monza and I said many, many times something very clear: there is a core of Formula One that in my opinion is represented by Monza, Spa Francorchamps, Hockenheim, Silverstone and Monaco. This is the core of Formula One and I think we have to preserve it. Because every person that is losing his own culture, he’s losing the roots, he’s not anymore a person – I mean if we are talking about human beings. But also for these kind of things. If we are losing the core in my opinion then we are losing the show, so I think we can do everything that is in our possibility to defend a grand prix and the clear statement is the following: the grand prix of Italy is Monza. The second sentence is that we need to preserve the core of Formula One. I have nothing against all the other grands prix, because it is an international show but even a show has a core and the core for Formula One is the number of grands prix that I mentioned before. This is my personal opinion and it’s also I think our opinion as Ferrari.

    OK, thank you very much. Eric, coming to you: the performance curve is clearly upwards from a fairly low baseline at the start of the season but is the curve moving upwards fast enough for you?

    Eric BOULLIER: No. Obviously we would like to be a little higher up in the hierarchy and maybe fighting for more points regularly. There is obviously the last… Spa and here would be difficult for us but we knew this coming here. We see some positives as well, because reliability is a bit better and we keep developing the car as fast as we can.

    It’s no secret that you have quandary again over drivers for next season. What plans do you have for Jenson Button, Kevin Magnussen and Stoffel Vandoorne. How many of those three do you expect to be racing in Formula One next year and which one of those three will be in a McLaren?

    EB: Obviously we expect the four of them to race. As far as we are concerned, at McLaren we have only two cars, so there will be only two race seats. We have two world champions today and we do intend to keep them, so far. Nevertheless it’s a luxury problem to have four good drivers and we will do obviously… Kevin and Stoffel are very good drivers, both of them we expect to race Formula One but if we can’t fit or accommodate them at home we will do our best to make sure they can race next year.

    Matthew, what did the podium at Spa mean to the team last time out and how much were you able to celebrate given all the stuff that was going on after the race?

    Matthew CARTER: The podium meant an awful lot to the team and it really is testament to the guys back at Enstone and the guys that work week in, week out and the quality that know we’ve got down at Lotus. It was obviously was bittersweet because of everything else that was going on and I don’t particularly want to talk about that at this stage but certainly for the team it was a real shot in the arm and it’s really helped us and hopefully it’s a stepping stone to go forward.

    It’s no secret that the ownership situation at your team has moved on a little in recent weeks. What can you tell us today about the future ownership and direction of this team?

    MC: It’s difficult for me to say too much. Obviously my job is to run the team and to look after the team as it stands. The ownership and the shareholding of that team are down to our current shareholders and our potential future shareholders. All I can tell you is that negotiations with a certain car manufacturer have been ongoing for a number of months and as far as I’m aware we’re just trying to run the team as best we can with the tools we’ve got.

    Thank you. Coming to you Robert, obviously there’s a draft calendar at the moment for next year with 21 races on it and discussions are ongoing about various areas of that, but the summer shutdown appears to be a talking point amongst your peer group. Can you tell us your thoughts on how important that is and how it would be not to have it?

    Robert FERNLEY: I think it’s also very important to support the commercial rights holder. We understand the challenges it faces to put a global sport on and we have to make efforts to accommodate races where we can. But I think also that has to be done around the teams. We run a very tight ship. Most of the teams run a tight ship. The travelling staff need to have that summer break and if we don’t do that we’re going to burn them out or we’re going to have to bring in a second crew. Either way it’s not good for Formula One or the costs of the independent teams. The other thing I think as well is that from a media point of view there is a certain amount of anticipation that comes after the summer break for the second half of the season and I think we shouldn’t forget the importance of that from the expectation of fans and the eagerness of fans to get into the second half. So I think the summer break ad a whole, from my point of view and from Force India’s point of view, should be retained at all cost.

    It’s been a strong middle part of the season for Force India – strong points, good qualifying performances – and you’ve just re-signed Nico Hulkenberg. How important is that piece of the jigsaw for the future?

    RF: I think it’s very important for us to try to keep stability and I expect we’ll do that. Vijay is working very hard now to finish off the second contract with Checo and hopefully we’ll get some news on that for Singapore. With the continuity and the stability of rules into 2016 hopefully we can carry the performance through.

    Paul, we saw a lot of long run practice today, some pretty big mileages notched up in free practice two. Can you tell us about what was learned in terms of where race strategy is?

    Paul HEMBERY: Well, it’s pretty much going to be a one-stop race; we’ve known that coming into the weekend. That I guess is what the teams have been focusing on and 1.2 difference between the two compounds and as I say one-stop race unless of course we get some rain.

    Spa was the first time for a while that you’ve had some tyre failures. We saw yesterday’s report but what more can you tell us about recommendations to the teams and what went into that report?

    PH: The first thing I’d like to underline is the outstanding collaboration we’ve had from particularly Ferrari, Maurizio’s team, Toto and the Mercedes team. We’ve had a good sharing of information. And that’s been very positive as well, the involvement of the FIA. I think that’s something that sometimes gets lost in the media that behind the scenes there is a lot of collaboration that goes on and we thank everybody for that. Going forward I think it’s important to underline that we feel we need to have a little bit more collaboration directly with the drivers and we’ve already discussed that with a number of the teams and we have an agreement that there should be a clearer exchange between us all so that we’re all aiming for the same things going forward and that opens up what we feel needs to be a very serious testing programme in the future. If we are going to carry on in 2017 there are very dramatic changes to the tyre sizes involved and that needs a proper testing programme. In years gone by tyre suppliers in Formula One have been able to test for 100,000km every season and we’re currently unable to use any Formula One car whatsoever to do testing. We are working with the teams behind the scenes and I believe that going forward we will find a solution that will allow us all to be a lot more comfortable going forward.

    Q: Coming to you Christian, obviously not a straightforward afternoon for Red Bull Racing. Can you tell us what was going on, some of the problems you had?

    Christian HORNER: Yeah, we’ve had a couple of issues. We had a hydraulic issue on Daniel Ricciardo’s car, which was caused by the DRS system, so that just was a wing change that sorted that out, and we had a gearbox issue on Dany Kvyat’s car that needed some attention after the first session – so it’s certainly been a busy time for the guys downstairs so far.

    Q: Red Bull’s owner Dietrich Mateschitz has said he’ll quit Formula One if Red Bull doesn’t have a competitive engine. It’s no secret you’re pushing behind the scenes to get either a Ferrari or a Mercedes engine – what kind of relationship can you promise them if you succeed?

    CH: Well. Sitting here today we still have a contract with Renault. To my knowledge I’ve not had any discussion with Ferrari – unless Maurizio can tell me differently. But we’ve got an agreement with Renault as I say, we’ve got conditions within that agreement that aren’t privy to this group here and time will tell in terms of what their future holds for them. So hopefully something will be forthcoming in the near future.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Question to Matthew. Matthew, it’s no secret there have been certain financial issues surrounding your team. A couple of days after Silverstone for example, winding up applications whatever, but from here on in you face enormous expenses in terms of running costs, freight to flyaway races etcetera. Can you guarantee us that you will in fact be at Singapore. Has, for example, your sea-freight container left for Singapore and when did it leave?

    MC: I can guarantee you that we’ll be at Singapore. The sea-freight container… one of our sea-freight containers has left, our airfreight will leave next week. We will be in Singapore. As far as the first part of your question is concerned, yes, we’ve had… the financial issues are all over the press, everyone is aware of them. We’re working as hard as we can behind the scenes to get them sorted out. None of them have become terminal, obviously. We’re still here, we’re still racing and we will continue to do that. The negotiations that were referred to earlier on are going on behind the scenes. I’m hopeful that’s going to secure our future one way or the other going forward – and when I say one way or the other it just means we have more than one option going forward to secure the future of the team. As far as the race of the races this season, we have a budget in place and we will operate to that budget and will be at all the races.

    Q: (Barna Zsoldos – Nemzeti Sport) Question for Maurizio, Christian and Eric. Sitting on the pitwall during the race, what was your best and worst decision, best and worst moments and most memorable and maybe most embarrassing moments so far?

    CH: Christ! I’ve been sitting on there for ten years now so there’s been a few. Most memorable moments, probably 2010 when we managed to go into the last race in Abu Dhabi and there were obviously four drivers in contention for the Championship and we managed to call it right on that day – so that was certainly a memorable moment. There’s been quite a few over the years but difficult to hightlight too many today.

    Maurizio?

    MA: In eight months I don’t have a lot of stories to tell you…

    What was your best decision?

    MA: My best decision, or my best thought, it was in Malaysia when we won the race. The first thought was ‘oh my God, it’s too early.’ In terms of embarrassment, I have two choices: one was Austria, the other was Canada when we don’t have a very good race in front of Mr Marchionne. I mean, pick one of the two, it’s the same.

    Eric?

    EB: Best race would be Abu Dhabi with the Kimi win, obviously. The worst one would be Germany 2013 where Grosjean was on his way to win and couldn’t because of a safety car. Embarrassing moment… I have plenty now.

    Q: (Miguel Sanz – Marca) Question for Eric. Which one of the seven remaining circuits, apart from Singapore suits well your car?

    EB: Maybe Sochi. There is… it’s not as bad as Spa or here. It should be a bit better in every track. Singapore should suit us much better than the other ones, but more or less the other ones are fine.

    Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) A question about the tyre situation today. Paul, could you confirm if the values that have been circulating in the press regarding pressures like 21 front and 19.5 rear have been correct. And have there been any other recommendations regarding cambers? And the same question to a couple of team bosses, especially Christian and Maurizio: are you satisfied with these values and how did it effect your performance today?

    PH: Yeah, the values are based on information given to us by the various teams. Of course, not every team is the same so you have to take analysis based over the whole field. Based on what we’ve seen today, we haven’t seen any issues of blistering which might be one of the concerns if you raise the pressures. So, from what we’ve seen, it appears to be working for the vast majority of people.

    Christian?

    CH: I’m not actually sure what the pressures are: they seem to go up and down like a fiddler’s elbow. I think Pirelli have reacted well to the situation last weekend, Maurizio’s obviously far more informed than I am in that respect. Hopefully there won’t be any issues here this weekend. Certainly in the long runs we’ve had in practice, that we’ve mainly focussed on today, everything’s been 100 per cent normal.

    Maurizio?

    MA: For us, I said yesterday, we said everything. We have clear and constructive conversation and explanation from Pirelli. Today have another constructive meeting and we are going to meet each other even more often to better communicate between ourselves. I’m perfectly satisfied regarding the pressure. We’ve got that information very clearly from Pirelli and we are perfectly fine with that.

    Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Paul, just to follow up that earlier question, could you actually give us the tyre pressures that have been recommended by you. As Christian says, they seem to have been going up and down like a fiddler’s elbow. And, are they just a recommendation is there any action to enforce a particular pressure?

    PH: Well, from P1 they’ve been 21, 19.5 on the rear. So, that’s what they are, that’s what they’ll be for the weekend.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action / Speedsport magazines) Christian, I realise your big engine upgrade is coming for Russia – but for the new units coming in this weekend, what has Renault told you? Do you have some tweaks in them?

    CH: No, they’re pretty much the same specification we’ve had so far. At the moment no tokens have been used. When the upgraded engine will appear is TBC. There’s nothing actually confirmed yet. We’ll wait to here in due course, no doubt.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Maurizio, I heard that last night Kimi set a record for signing autographs with the tifosi for half an hour. Did you push him or where did that eagerness come from?

    MA: No. I was simply talking with him in my way – no, I’m joking now. We had several conversations and I said I know that you are a very cool guy and most probably because you are cool, they like you but at least if we meet the guys – the tifosi – you have to sign and at least move your hand and say hallo and possibly to smile. And he stuck to these instructions and I was thinking, is there something wrong here? I was happy, of course, but then I was thinking that maybe he’s becoming superstitious and he’s doing this and tomorrow it’s raining and also on Sunday. And I was hoping about that. He’s becoming a good guy and I was pleased about that, even if I’m still thinking and when I’m thinking, I said it can’t be Kimi, it was a sosia (doppelganger) or somebody else.

    Q: (Fernando Ramos – Racing Magazines) Paul, you talk about the need of proper track testing in the future. Is this a condition for Pirelli to stay in F1 or if teams and the Federation and everybody don’t see common sense, can Pirelli afford to stay in F1 for five years without proper testing in the future?

    PH: With the proposed changes that have been more or less confirmed with all the teams now with the dimensions of the tyres – going to wider tyres – then yes, it has to be a condition for staying in. You can’t make such a dramatic change without testing.

    Q: (Fabrizio Corgnati – Diario del Web) Maurizio, based on the data that you learned today in free practice, what are your realistic goals for the race?

    MA: There needs to be an awful lot to look at Mercedes. I think – being serious – we saw, as expected, Mercedes are very very strong in shape but our pace was not bad. It’s too early to promise something but we try to do our best, especially because it’s our home Grand Prix, but again, we have a lot of competitors but Mercedes is still far away from us at the moment.

    Q: (Graham Kill – Grand Prix Times) For everyone, apart from Paul: we heard the latest team, Williams, confirming an unchanged driver line-up for next season. There’s a bit of a perception out there that the drivers’ market has become a bit more conservative and teams are more reluctant these days to change drivers. Do you agree that that’s the case and if so, do you have reasons for it, perhaps the testing ban or something else?

    RF: Yeah, I don’t think there’s any reason to assume that you’re not going to move drivers and change drivers. I think you’re always looking for stability and if you have drivers that are performing well, you want to retain them. And equally, if they move on and the opportunity comes to bring somebody new through, certainly in the independent teams, you’re going to take that opportunity.

    MC: I think we’re probably in a slightly different position in that we have two drivers under contract. The only reason that we haven’t announced our driver line-up for next year is that we’re waiting to see what pans out in the next few weeks/month or so. So absolutely no reason to change, both drivers under contract but I think there’s probably wider issues to play at Lotus at the moment.

    Q: Eric, you’ve kind of half answered it already.

    EB: Yes, I did it.

    MA: We confirmed Kimi after Hungary. Again, he’s a World Champion, he’s the last World Champion with Ferrari. We don’t have to forget that. And the second reason was for stability with the team, it’s quite a new team and we would like to keep the stability in the team and to have a clear goal for everybody. I have nothing to add. And you see also, yes, he is very very good in PR so he’s becoming another Kimi. Vettel, I don’t need to say a word about Seb.

    CH: Well, changing drivers in any team is quite a big thing. The drivers are pretty fundamental components and I think that if ever you’re going to change, you want to change for the better. So in answer to your other question, our driver line-up… Ricciardo was on a long term contract as is Dany Kvyat who obviously, from our perspective, has options that we have to exercise at certain points in time. Now Red Bull has always invested in youth and brought in some really young talent and it’s great to see Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz Junior doing such a wonderful job this year and again, through GP2 and other categories, Red Bull continues to be investing in young talent so we’ve got quite a large talent pool but of course you always want to put your best foot forward.

    Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS.NL) Maurizio, I saw a lot of yellow T-shirts at Ascari with the text Lello and that’s an Italian driver in GP2, Marciello, so the question is who will be the next Formula One driver from Italy and when?

    MA: There is no time. The yellow rumour at the moment in Italy is Valentino Rossi. The yellow. Lello is a driver and all the drivers in the Ferrari Academy have to prove their talent before (they get) a contract in Formula One. I’m pleased that Lello has a lot of fans or supporters. Supporters count a lot but at the end he needs to prove his talent. This is for everybody in life. You want to go there, deserve it. We are pleased with him but the season isn’t finished yet. Sorry people, I was hearing yellow and I was thinking Valentino.

    Q: (Dieter Rencken – Racing Lines) Paul, obviously there’s an awful lot of PR fall-out after the incidents at Spa-Francorchamps and then this week we had some rather warm words coming out of the commercial rights holder. We can think of millions of reasons why but the fact of the matter is that it’s virtually unprecedented. We know that you’re locked in a battle with an opposition tyre company for the contract going forward. Were there any thoughts on the part of Pirelli’s management and board to withdraw from Formula One after the fall-out?

    PH: No, I think the fall-out was rather exaggerated. As I said earlier, we’ve been working extremely well behind the scenes with Maurizio and his team and also with Toto and a number of the other Formula One teams and the FIA so I think a lot of it’s more in the media rather than a practical situation. We’re obviously discussing at the moment going forward and there are a number of areas that we need changing to enable that to happen. I’ve already mentioned testing, we also want to make sure that we’re all singing off the same hymn sheet so the teams, ourselves and the drivers all know what we’re aiming for and we’ll all agree with what we’re doing, that there’s a common sense of purpose, so that’s really where we’re at.

    Q: (Alan Baldwin – Reuters) Maurizio, is there news on James Allison’s contract? Has he signed a new long term contract with Ferrari?

    MA: I already said so, I already confirmed that in Belgium. Yeah. He’s got a long term contract with us.

    Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Maurizio, could you please confirm that Ferrari has upgraded its engine for Monza and by how much?

    MA: The super engine, the famous super engine. We’ve spent a couple of tokens here but we have a little improvement but we are far from this super engine that has been mentioned, a lot of time. I can confirm that we have spent a couple of tokens but I don’t confirm that we have a super engine here. We have a Ferrari engine, this is enough.

  • 2015 Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    2015 Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    DRIVERS:

    Marcus ERICSSON (Sauber)

    Daniel RICCIARDO (Red Bull Racing)

    Carlos SAINZ (Toro Rosso)

    Felipe MASSA (Williams)

    Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    Nico ROSBERG (Mercedes)

     

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Nico maybe we could begin with you, congratulations, I understand you became a father. How will it change you and have you decided on a name yet?

    Nico ROSBERG: Yeah, for sure it’s been very exciting, very intense of course. Big respect for all the mothers of this world – unbelievable. No, very emotional and super happy. Very excited.

    You’ll obviously be losing a little bit of sleep then in the coming weeks but you’ve also been losing a few places off the start line lately, with both the old and the new rules on starts, so it’s now three races in a row, making race day a bit more complicated for you. What thoughts have you and the team had on that and how you are going to address it, as particularly here in Monza it’s a long run to turn one so any loss off the line would be amplified by turn one?

    NR: Yeah, it’s true that starts have not been our strength lately, so we’ve been working on it a lot, making progress and then of course the rule change also came in right in the middle of, or off the back of two starts that hadn’t been fantastic. So it’s a work in progress and we need to improve for sure, we know that, and we’re all getting into it.

    Thank you. Sebastian, when you started with Ferrari you said you were living the dream and here you are, at Monza, a Ferrari driver, in front of the tifosi. Can you put into words the sense of pride, responsibility, expectation, dare we say even emotion that comes with the job?

    Sebastian VETTEL: No! Well, I’m about to find out. Obviously I’ve heard lots of good things. I’ve been here before so obviously [I have seen] the passion for Ferrari, so obviously very much looking forward to becoming part of that. If we do well, which is our target, and we manage to be on the podium on Sunday I’m looking forward to not receiving booing for a long time. So, yeah, plenty of stuff to look forward to. So far we have had a great season. This is our home grand prix as a team and since I didn’t have a home grand prix this year I adopt this one as well and hopefully we can make it a good one.

    Now, you made you feelings very clear to the media in Spa about Pirelli and the tyre failure. Having now seen the results of the investigation, what are your considered thoughts on the matter?

    SV: Well, first of all I think there was a lot of stuff explained or written that I think was not correct, the way it was expressed. I think it was very clear what I said. I think the most important point is that obviously we have been looking into the issue we had very clearly and Pirelli has been supportive and very open in the discussions, so I think that’s the most important thing and we need to make sure that we learn from that. Other than that we are in Monza now and, as I said, there is plenty of other stuff to look forward to.

    Thank you for that. Felipe, coming to you, obviously confirmed for 2016 [at Williams]. On the podium here last year, third for Williams and you’re always popular here with the fans thanks to your years with Ferrari. Given Williams’ chassis and engine characteristics can you dream of maybe moving to a higher step on the podium on Sunday of this weekend?

    Felipe MASSA: Yes, for sure. Dreaming is for free. You always dream about the best, about winning the race. Here is one of the best places to be on the podium, to see the whole people, the whole straight [full] of people, especially. Last year that everybody was also happy that I was there on the podium, screaming my name, I think it was so nice, so I’m really looking forward for another one and definitely we dream even to get a better position than third. When you go to the grid you’re thinking about doing the best and thinking about the victory. That’s what I’m doing every race and it’s another one where I will try everything I can to be there.

    If we you look at your recent record, you out-qualified Bottas six-five this season, finished ahead of him in the last four races and moved ahead of him in the championship. What’s driven this strong run of form for you?

    FM: I think last year I was very competitive as well with my team-mate. We were fighting the whole season I would say. The only thing is that the results of the race are a lot more consistent this year. Last year I had a lot of problems, many races where so many things happened and I couldn’t finish in the position I was supposed to. I think this year the situation is a lot more consistent and I managed to score points and finish more or less where I was supposed to in most of the races. I think that’s really good, but we have many races to go and you always want more.

    OK, thank you for that. Daniel, coming to you, you obviously come from an Italian family that emigrated to Australia. When you come here how Italian do you feel and how have the Italians welcomed you in the last few days during all the various promotional activities you’ve been doing?

    Daniel RICCIARDO: I start talking with my hands a bit more! It’s automatic: you arrive in Italy and you start using your hands. What was the question?

    Apart from how Italian you feel, how have the Italians welcomed you in the past few days in the various different things you’ve been up to?

    DR: It’s always a warm welcome here, for sure. The fans are… I’ve always said it, they’re passionate; they’re full on but they’re great. They love the sport, they love getting close and having their moment and stuff. It’s pretty cool walking into the paddock. It creates a bit of a road block but… I think it’s the craziest paddock entrance we go to all year in terms of the fans spreading their love, but it’s nice. I remember the warm-up lap here last year, I think I crossed the second Lesmo and there was a flare blowing across the track… it’s unique, so it’s cool.

    Red Bull has yet to lead a lap in 2015 and you’ve spent a fair chunk of the races somewhere between P5 and P7. Tell us about how you’ve set targets for the remainder of the season and also about the decision on power units for you and your team-mate this weekend?

    DR: Looking now towards the last part of the season, the last couple of races have been our strongest, as of late, Budapest and Spa have gone well for us. I think in terms of understanding the car we’re much more on top of it now than we were earlier in the season. I think the chassis is back to a really strong level. Monza’s not obviously a circuit that suits us particularly. We’ve got the penalties as well, so you know that’s obviously a strategic things as well – take the penalty here rather than in Singapore where we expect to be very competitive. Then, yeah, have some fun here on Sunday, come through the field as far forward as we can and then Singapore, we can really fight for a podium there.

    Coming to you Marcus, 25th birthday celebrated yesterday, happy birthday. Scored points in the last two races consecutively and beaten your team-mate in the last four, do you feel it’s all starting to come together?

    Marcus ERICSSON: Yeah, I think my form, like you say, has been strong now lately and it’s nice to see. I’ve been working a lot with myself, trying to change my approach during a race weekend, focusing more on myself and not other people, what they are doing. It’s nice to see that it’s giving results on the track. I just need to continue that form, not relax but continue to work really hard to continue that way.

    New start regulations in Spa; it wasn’t the smoothest start for you. What happened there and what do you generally think of the new rules?

    ME: I think I did quite a good start. I gained a position, so for me it was pretty good. For me, it doesn’t make a big difference. It’s a bit more feeling for us drivers than there has been before. It’s very similar to how it was in GP2 and I was always a strong starter in GP2, so for me it’s not a problem.

    Thank you. Coming to you Carlos, another birthday celebrated, 21 years old now. If we look at your performances, you’ve reached Q3 six times and out-qualified Verstappen 7-4, yet the results show four consecutive retirements from the races and a best result of eighth. Are you getting concerned that the performances are being overshadowed by the results and the retirements?

    Carlos SAINZ: No, not really. It’s not my main concern at the moment, because at the end, what is under my control everything is going so far quite well. The retirements are obviously totally out of my control, but four consecutive ones is a tiny bit too much. But I’m confident that this well end soon and I’m confident that it will start playing a bit to my side now and we can have a smooth second half of the season and start finishing races and going back to where we were at the beginning of the year in terms of points and position.

    We mentioned that you’ve out-qualified Verstappen to this point, have you been surprised by the speed you’ve been able to find in qualifying?

    CS: Well, you never know what to expect when you come to Formula One. I just know that last year in World Series I made a very big step forward with myself in qualifying and in the race and I just brought it to Formula One this year. You never know how you are going to be, you never know how you’re speed is going to be in Formula One. What I am quite sure is that Saturdays this year have gone very well for me and I am performing at a very decent level. I just need to make sure now on Sundays I perform at the same level and we finish races and I’m sure we’ll be in a good position.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Agris Lauznieks – Kapitals Lativia) This is last race in Europe this season. What are your thoughts about the opportunity to add extra races in Europe, especially northern Europe – to do Riga Grand Prix in Latvia. How would you feel about it?

    NR: I’ve heard great things about Riga, I’ve got a good friend from there also so that would be fantastic but I don’t know. Races in Europe are great, wherever they are to be honest, so it’s always good to have more of those.

    Sebastian, anything to add?

    SV: Not many things I know about Latvia. But yeah, would be, I think, a nice place to go to. I think in general it’s a bit of a shame that we don’t have a grand prix in northern Europe, also Scandinavia because people are quite passionate and crazy about racing. I’ve been to Rally Finland some years ago and I was wondering why we don’t have a Formula One grand prix but I guess that, especially next year, we have quite a lot on the calendar so it looks sort-of busy now – but maybe in the future.

    Marcus, maybe you can tell us why we don’t…

    ME: I think we should have a snow race in Sweden – that would be something! I don’t know. Like Sebastian was saying, we have a lot of passionate fans in all of Scandinavia and northern Europe so it would be very nice to have a race somewhere in these countries, for sure.

    Q: (Vladimir Rogovets – Sb Belarus) My question is to Felipe Massa. Today here you are between the very young drivers and in the race you are very quick and very competitive. My question, where is your personal secret to be very young and very quick?

    FM: I still feel young, honestly. Definitely when you here with 21 years old, 17… it’s really young, definitely. I think you just need to… I always do my best. I feel quick, I feel competitive and definitely the experience helps in so many areas. I’m happy for what I’ve learned with these days and, definitely also when I see you are competing with young drivers and you show good speed in the qualifying, in the race good performance is always nice – nice feeling, so we always compete for the best result you can. That is what gives you pleasure. I can say I have many pleasures in racing and by the result I finish in races – sometimes not, something yes, this is part of our feeling. I still feel good motivation and I’m not finishing the race tired or whatever, so I think that’s what counts at the end.

    Q: (Andrea Cremonesi, La Gazzetta dello Sport) Question for Nico Rosberg. Nico, before you talked about the birth of your daughter. I would like to know if you can compare the happiness of that to some other things in our job, like victory and nervousness. If you can compared nervousness in that moment? And a technical question about the gap with Lewis. The gap has increased a lot in the last two races, do you think this is one of the last chances to recover? To change the direction of the championship?

    NR: Emotions extremely intense, more intense than any racing success or anything like that. And also, yeah, because there’s factors… love and health and all these things playing a part. That’s definitely more than a race victory. Then the gap to Lewis, yeah, points of course it’s gone in the wrong direction but it’s just over one race difference so I’m very optimistic and pushing and definitely want to try and close that  back down now.

    Q: (Andrew Benson – BBC) To Sebastian, Felipe, Daniel and Nico. Are you satisfied with Pirelli’s explanation for the tyre failures in Belgium – especially as a couple of you described them as unacceptable over that weekend? And to Sebastian personally and additionally, have you raised your concerns, as expressed after Spa, with Bernie, who’s deciding the new tyre supplier?

    SV: I think in all honestly I had a bit more insight because I was obviously one of the two cars that had a failure during the weekend in Belgium – a bit more insight on what was going on after the race in terms of the analysis and so on, than probably Felipe and Daniel. I’m not sure about Nico. But yeah, from what I mentioned also before, it has been very professional, the way it was handled. It was taken very seriously. And obviously our target is to improve the situation. I think it’s natural that you always try to improve your product. I think if you look at the cars, if you talk about the cars today, the cars are quick and so on, and the cars are safe. They’re surely safer than they have been 30 years ago but there is still room for making them safer: we still have accidents and so on and still some things can happen. It’s a one-way street: you want to make progress and keep making progress. So I think that’s more important than any sort of press release, the feeling that I got when I spoke to the engineers and spoke to Pirelli.

    Nico?

    NR: It’s being handled with extreme precision and a lot of energy is going into it, which I’m happy to see, of course. It requires that also. I’m confident that we’ll be here and driving safely.

    Felipe, what were your reflections on Spa?

    FM: I think maybe they know better than me. They were there, they were inside. All these problems the two cars had in Spa with the tyres. For me it’s a little bit more difficult to explain. We want to be safe. What we want is to not have this problem happen – or maybe to understand 100 per cent why it happens and change whatever needs to be changed to give us the most safe tyres and the most safe opportunities to race and to risk ourselves in a safe way – which is what we want. Don’t know what they changed from there to here, but for sure if they change somethings from Spa to Monza, maybe with the tyre pressure and everything. So we need to understand if really they understand what’s happened or not – which is the most important thing. We always want the most safe car or tyres to race.

    Daniel?

    DR: That’s right. It’s all been covered.

    Q: (David Croft – Sky Sports) With all due respect, Daniel, I don’t think it has all been covered. I’m still at a loss, guys; are you satisfied with Pirelli’s explanation? They say as well, in the press release, there were 63 cuts to tyres over the course of the weekend. We know two of them, for Sebastian and Nico, did any of you other guys experience cuts on your tyres? Did your teammates experience cuts? Is this statement right? Were there that many cuts? Was the track that dirty because of all the debris?

    DR: There was blistering. I don’t really know the difference in a way, the details: what’s a blister, what’s a cut? Yeah, we experienced some blistering. Certainly not the first time we’ve had it in Spa. It’s pretty common around there. Yeah, so we did see some activity, I guess but there again, not the first time. It’s probably hard to be as attached to it as Nico or Seb. Obviously I wasn’t in the car but I still saw it and I feel their concerns or their disappointment with the situation. I think what Pirelli’s put out has been as much as they can for now. That’s all they can say really is that we’re working on it. Obviously they’ve given us some answers so, yeah, that’s just where it is for now. It’s hard to predict what will happen now in the future.

    Q: Carlos, any cuts in your team?

    CS: No, not really. I think they’ve given us an explanation, the reasons. I hope they’ve done their job properly. I’m convinced they have because they are the first ones that don’t want to put us drivers at risk so they are giving us those explanations and I’m convinced that at least it will not happen again and we can race safely here in Monza. And if it does happen again, then maybe we need some more investigation.

    Q: Marcus, did you have any cuts in the Sauber team?

    ME: Yes, we had some issues with some cuts on some tyres but I think they came from debris on the track. That was the explanation that we got. I didn’t experience anything else, not any problems with my driving.

    Q: Felipe, Daniel just said it’s quite a common problem at Spa. Could you explain to us why Spa, why it’s particularly common that you pick up debris there?

    FM: No, I don’t believe it should be common. Debris we have every race. Some races we have more debris than others. For sure, the tyres should be strong enough to accept the debris or what we have beside the track. I don’t think it’s common. We had cuts as well during the weekend.

    Q: (Kate Walker – motorsport.com) More about the tyres, I’m afraid. We know that you guys all have Pirelli engineers embedded in your garage, giving you advice on cambers and pressures and whatever else. To what extent, in each of your teams, is that advice listened to? Do they have real input in the strategy? How can things go wrong when you’re supposed to have an expert with you, telling you what to do safely?

    NR: Well, sometimes there are strict things that you must follow and other times there are just suggestions on everything. I’m not sure… we handled everything accordingly in Spa and made modifications also throughout the weekend to make sure we were running the tyres as safely as possible, according to guidelines given by Pirelli. I don’t know about them, what their situation was. I can just say that we did manage things, yeah.

    SV: I think it’s fairly simple. There’s a lot of things that you have to stick to because it’s part of the rules. Also the FIA is checking so you can decide not to listen but then obviously you risk to be disqualified, so I don’t think there’s any team taking that risk. And then there’s other things that you talk about and use the expertise of the Pirelli engineer inside your garage and I think it would be stupid not to listen to him, for all of us, for all the teams, because obviously they have knowledge that we can’t get about their tyres etc, so of course we take it very very seriously.

    FM: Yeah, I think the same, not really more to add.

    ME: Same, same stuff, yeah.

    Q: (Daniel Johnson – The Telegraph) Seb, sorry to labour the point slightly. After the race in Spa, among many other things you said was that the current situation was unacceptable. If I can put it this way, is the situation now acceptable to you and any of the drivers who want to chip in?

    SV: Well, I think it is not acceptable to have a blow-out at that sort of speed, out of the blue and I think that’s what I said also after the race, so there’s nothing really to add. But, as I said before, I think the investigations that have been going on, the stuff that obviously has been analysed and talked about, explains some of it, maybe not all of it yet but it’s still ongoing and obviously, as I said, the most important thing is that we make sure that we make progress. At the moment, from Pirelli’s side, it looks very very professional, they handle it with extreme care, and I think things are going the right way.

    Q: (Daniel Johnson – The Telegraph) So has enough changed from Spa to here? Is the situation more acceptable?

    SV: Well, I think there are some short term changes, as I learned, if we talk about tyre pressures, for example. We obviously see how it feels but if that’s a short term reaction within those couple of days or weeks that we’ve had, that’s one thing. Then obviously long term I think we need to understand properly what happened. I think it’s very clear that everybody is trying to do their best. I think we had a situation a couple of years ago which wasn’t acceptable and there was immediate change and we didn’t have problems afterwards so you can see that the professional approach does work and usually leads to the right result.

    Q: (Silvia Arias – Parabrisas) Felipe, I would like to know if something has changed in the team after the mistake they made with Bottas’s car when they put on the wrong compound, please?

    FM: Well, it should, definitely. We always work for trying to do everything in the correct way, in the best way we can. Sometimes mistakes can happen in our working but for sure mistakes happen which we cannot repeat, so definitely we are always trying to improve things when we see they are not working in the way we want, so we want to be perfect, we want to do everything correctly. This is part of the working we are doing from race to race, the changes we are doing from race to race and whichever mistakes or things that can happen we are always working not to repeat and that’s what we’re doing as a team.

    Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Daniel, you’ve mentioned that you are starting to understand the car better, and it was obviously in Spa, the efficiency is there, you were very quick in the second sector in spite of running a very skinny rear wing but the top speed was not there. Do you think that Red Bull again has one of the best cars on the grid and again, is it obvious that now the engine is the biggest hindrance for you?

    DR: I think we’re now back at a level we were at last year. We knew the chassis was strong, we felt most of our deficit was the power and then yeah, I think earlier this season it looked like we obviously had issues on both sides, the chassis… obviously I had experience from last year and I didn’t feel like it was where it was last year so I thought we had similar deficiencies on both sides but yeah, we’ve had quite a few updates since. All year we have updates but I’d say since Silverstone it’s really come on strong and we seem to be in the window a lot easier now with getting the car there so I’m definitely a lot happier with where the chassis is now. I feel it’s like we were last year and then yeah, the power we know, we’re trying to make up what we can but we know we started too far back and it’s… I don’t like the word impossible but it nearly is impossible to make all that gap back in one season so I think that’s what it is for now. We’re always going to be somewhat down for the rest of the season, that’s why we look at Singapore and some of these circuits which are obviously a lot less power-dependent, a lot more chassis and we look at those as potential podiums for us.

    Q: (Louis Dekker – NOS.NL) Sebastian, can you take us back to a couple of years ago, your first victory here and also explain why it is harder this year to win here for Ferrari than back then for Toro Rosso?

    SV: I don’t know yet. I don’t know if it’s harder yet. Obviously it was a miracle that was happening in 2008 so only positive memories of the whole weekend really. But yeah, some years later, obviously another highlight and I’m looking forward to it and obviously can’t promise anything but for sure I can promise that we will give our maximum, trying to have a very very successful home race. I think that I know a lot more than I knew in 2008 so in this regard it should be easier but obviously it’s never easier. If you look on paper, it looks like a simple track with low downforce but still it’s also very technical so for us drivers it feels that the car is moving a lot, it feels very light under braking so it’s still a big challenge around here. You need to get the braking points right etc so it’s not that straightforward and obviously I’m sure that people expect a lot from us, but I think the one thing that we can promise now is that we will give everything we have.

  • 2015 Formula 1 Shell Belgian Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    2015 Formula 1 Shell Belgian Grand Prix: Friday Press Conference

    TEAM REPRESENTATIVES:

    Nick CHESTER (Lotus)

    Andrew GREEN (Force India)

    Giampaolo DALL’ARA (Sauber)

    James ALLISON (Ferrari)

    Paddy LOWE (Mercedes)

    Paul MONAGHAN (Red Bull Racing)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    If I could start with a question for all of you: coming in next year are further restrictions on driver aids and team radio assistance. Can you give us your thoughts on the difference it will make that fans will be able to appreciate? James, why don’t you start?

    James ALLISON: Well, if it has its intended effect it will make it so that the drivers who are most on top of their game can do a better job than the ones who needed to be led a little bit more by the hand. I think on the whole the drivers are all pretty good in Formula One so I imagine that within six months or so, or maybe sooner, it will feel very much like it did before but maybe in the transition to that there will be a few mistakes made and maybe some interesting events as a result.

    Giampaolo?

    Giampaolo DALL’ARA: Yeah, well, I can tell you about the engineering side of it: it changes quite a bit the way we work, approaching the issues involving the driver more and the engineering side of the car. Eventually I think the result is what James has just mentioned. The driver will be more in charge of what he is doing, also on aspects that today maybe are driven from the back. Judging then the perception on the spectators, this is very difficult from where I sit, honestly.

    Thank you. Paddy, there is obviously a big list of things you can and can’t say on the radio. How do you remember all those things?

    Paddy LOWE: I know. It’s actually quite tricky. We police ourselves on the intercom. People often ask: “Can I say that? Can I say that?” But yeah, we will work our way through it and get used to it in time. As the other two have said, I think we will see a little bit more variability. But the big thing for me is that to a larger extent if a driver has a good or a bad start that will be down to his skill and less dependent on the team’s performance on configuring the start.

    Nick, a step in the right direction?

    Nick CHESTER: I think everybody wants to see the drivers being in charge of their own starts, so I can see why it has come in, but I’d echo the comments earlier, I think people will get used to it very quickly. There might be a few little mixes early on but it will settle down fairly quickly.

    And Paul, looking ahead to next year, obviously more sweeping changes as well, what difference will that make?

    Paul MONAGHAN: I think you’ll see a little bit more variability. We’ll see the odd fluffed start; we’ll see a bit of a shuffle up of the grid order approaching turn one. Mid-race I think when the drivers get used to it and depending on how the teams treat the level of automation there will be subtle differences maybe in ultimate performance you can extract from the car, after that I think it will settle out. What the fans will see? A little bit at the starts maybe but once you’re in the race I’m not sure there’ll be much other than less radio traffic.

    A final thought from you Andrew?

    Andrew GREEN: Yeah, I’m the same. I think within a few months the differences will be quite subtle. Like people have said, maybe a few fluffed starts. But the main thing is that the radio is going to be quite quiet.

    OK. Coming back to you then James. Back on top with a victory in Hungary for Sebastian, but another technical problem on Kimi’s side. What was the reason for that and what expectations do you have both in terms of performance but also reliability for the remainder of the season?

    JA: I don’t think we tend to go into the nuts and bolts of why our bits and pieces fail on our car but enough to say that we had a problem with the ERS system that meant that we were unable to continue in the race. Initially we lost a decent amount of power and then thereafter unable to continue. I hope we have put that behind us with the modifications that we’ve made during the last few weeks and for the remainder of the season, I think it’s going to be a bit like the first half. We’re not a bad car, but we’re not as good as these guys [Mercedes] and if they have a bad weekend while we’re having a good weekend then we can upset the apple cart a bit and if things pan out more normally then we tend to come in behind them. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that they have a bad weekend and we do the opposite.

    Q: Paul, if James is saying the Ferrari’s not a bad car compared to the Mercedes, it looks as though the Red Bull has become a substantially better car in the last month. Obviously a double podium in Hungary. Big progress on the chassis side. Was that a question of new parts or was it just, as much as anything, unlocking the potential of what was already there?

    PM: It’s a combination. We have some new parts there. We’ve improved the car a little bit in many areas, not just, shall we say, focussed on one of them. It’s starting to show benefits. We’ve seen the benefits in increments and in Hungary it was more complete, shall we say. It was nice to be challenging at the sharp end of it again and I think at the moment we have to accept Mercedes have a bit of a performance advantage. Maybe they have a bad weekend, maybe we have a good weekend and then I think it’s all up for the fight, isn’t it? We’ll put ourselves in there such that, if we can benefit from circumstances then we’re there to do so.

    Q: Andrew Green, coming to you from Force India, talking about upward performance curves, you’re certainly a good example of that with Force India. New car, of course, introduced a few rounds ago certainly contributed to that. What do you think is possible for the rest of the season for your team?

    AG: Well, I mean we’ve bought new parts here, we’ve got new parts coming for the next couple of races. I think once we get to Singapore, we’ll start to begin to understand where this car actually sits – that’s where we plan to bring the last of this current suite of updates to the track. We’re looking to start moving ahead of the guys behind us, obviously for sure, and looking to see if we can stay on the coat tails of Red Bull to a certain degree. If we hadn’t had the issues in Hungary, we were racing well in Hungary. Hungary was a shock to us, gave us a bit of a shot in the arm. We’ve learned from that, we’re moving forwards. We’ve got some exciting races coming up for Force India.

    Q: Paddy, first of all, any update on the cause of Rosberg’s tyre failure from your side. What did you see on the screens?

    PL: I think we’ve really only seen the same the same thing that everyone else has seen on the video. So very unusual situation where there seemed to be some bits of tyre structure coming out up to a minute before the actual terminal failure of the tyre. Not something I’ve seen before. So Pirelli have obviously taken the tyre away to analyse. I think we’ll have to wait to see what emerges from that. We’re double-checking everything to do with the car as well, obviously. But yeah, that’ll be something we’ll work through the evening.

    Q: Obviously the reversed qualifying battle between Rosberg and Hamilton this season. Last year 11 poles for Rosberg, this year just one for him in the first ten races. Hamilton seven last year but nine from 10 this year. As the technical boss, the guy who oversees all of this, what do you see is going on there?

    PL: I think it’s just the two drivers’ form as it varies. I know Nico was finding it quite difficult at the beginning of this year but actually he picked himself up from Spain onwards and he’s shown himself a great competitor to Lewis, so the battle’s far from over. As we can see, it isn’t always won on the Saturday grid position so the championship is wide open to the end.

    Q: Coming to you Giampaolo, obviously you have bought some updates to the car this weekend. How happy are you. It certainly looked reasonably encouraging from the practice runs this afternoon. Obviously you can’t draw too many conclusions from Friday but how satisfied are you with what you bought to the track this weekend.

    GD: At the moment we are finding what we are expecting to find. Difficult to say, as you mention, what this will mean for the race. What leaves us with quite some optimism more in general is that we got to the point where, after some frustration after losing some momentum, we expect some updates to come. Some are already here, as I mentioned. This is mostly on Ferrari’s side: we have an upgraded power unit fitted which is seemingly giving up some laptime. On top of this, let me add, it’s one of those tracks where our car feels more comfortable. It was lately some track-by-track troubles that here we don’t expect to have. Plus, in the next couple of races and ultimately Singapore we expect some major aerodynamic update which for us means the main target of getting back into the fight to get the guys here in the midfield in order to be able to score points more regularly than we are now.

    Q: Finally Nick, a couple of talking points for you. On the one hand obviously encouragement with Romain Grosjean I think seventh fastest in that practice session, on the other an accident for Pastor this morning. How much does that kind of thing set you back in a race weekend?

    NC: Well obviously it does set up back a little bit. Pastor was having quite a good P1 session until he had his off, and then that disrupts his P2 because it took us a while to get the car back together. So he’s missed a bit of running in P2 but he’s got back out there, proved the car out again and I’m sure he’ll be back on it for P3.

    And encouragement from the performance of the other car?

    NC: Yeah, quite pleased with Romain in P7. I think there’s only nine-hundredths to P4 and the car’s going quite well.

     

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Mike Doodson – Grand Prix Week) I’ve been very puzzled by the clutch stories we’ve been told. We haven’t been given a lot of information about what the procedure was and I wondered, now that it’s no longer what it was, whether one of you could explain to an ignorant journalist exactly how these clutch procedures worked. I understand there are two clutches, you give advice to the driver over the radio, you’re not allowed to do that any more. Could I ask for a volunteer from the front row to go through the procedure just for me?

    JA: The overall procedure is fairly long and tedious so I will try and shortcut it a bit. When you go with the car from stop to going, there’s a certain amount of grip available on the track. The tyre has a certain amount of grip, the track has a certain amount of grip, you want to go as close to that available grip as possible but not over it and you don’t want to go under it otherwise you’re not making as much performance as there is available. Now if you were super duper skilful you might have fingers that could judge exactly where that grip is but it all happens very very fast so a perfect start is one where you can just let go of the clutch, let go of it and it closes to the perfect point where it delivers exactly the right amount of torque, such that the tyre doesn’t light up and spin, but neither does it give less torque to the road than the road is capable of taking. So our job, during the weekend, is to try to judge exactly how much grip is available and to adjust our clutches so that when the driver says go, the clutch closes the perfect amount to deliver the perfect amount of torque to the road and then off it goes. And that’s something that happens without the driver adjusting stuff, he doesn’t fiddle around with his fingers. The way that we used to do that in the past was there’s two clutch paddles, one which he holds all the way in, keeping the clutch fully open and the other which he holds in a partially closed and open position. We then, as engineers, adjust the clutch so that this partially closed and open position is at exactly the right point to get this magic start. And then when the light goes green, he lets go of the first clutch and the clutch closes to the point that is being held by the second paddle. Off the car goes.

    All that’s changed is that now we‘re not allowed to advise or make any adjustments to that biting point between when the car’s on the grid preparing for the start of the race and when the driver actually does it so the parade lap start and the real start is done all by the driver and if he thinks it’s not closed enough or too open, he has to make his own judgement about that and make the calls. We can be sitting in the garage going ‘no, don’t do that’  but we don’t have any power to stop him.

    Q: (Mike Doodson – Grand Prix Week) I understand what you say but you could, from the pits, via telemetry, actually adjust the clutch? You could, or you couldn’t?

    JA: No, we can’t. All we can do is instruct the driver to change a map that he himself has to do with his fingers but we can judge what he should do. Now we can’t say anything. We can still judge but all we can do is go ‘no!’ or ‘hooray!’

    Q: (Joe van Burik – NU.NL) Paul, Renault Sport have indicated that they worked through the summer break to keep developing the power units. They say that they conducted some notable performance work and also concepts for next year, pleased with the results. How were you involved in the development as a client and do you expect a notable increase in the overall performance when the upgrades arrive for Russia, as Christian Horner stated before?

    PM: As a client, our involvement is in several stages. Clearly we will make a judgement on the relative performance of the car and power unit package. Then we try to separate the power unit from the chassis side of things if you like, to try and offer to – in this instance Renault – to say OK, that’s where we think you sit in relative terms. That sort of sets your targets, if you like, relative to how we perceive the best power unit. They will always push to get as much out of their power unit as they possibly can and it sets a target for that year, the following year and try to give them a relative positioning. If the changes are internal, it’s very much the business of Renault. If the changes again become more external, which can affect our packaging, then clearly we have to be involved. What they may want to do may not fit the car or may require changes to the car and that’s up to us to agree with them on an introduction and how we’re going to do it. So, if that’s making sense, it becomes a multi-phase project. We can get involved, we’re not necessarily involved, we look forward to whatever power increase is coming in the future and hope to exploit it as best we can with Renault.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) James, how close are the driving styles of Sebastian and Kimi compared to how it was last year with Fernando and Kimi, and if they are closer, is it a big advantage for the designer of the car?

    JA: They are certainly closer. I think what Sebastian wants from a car is pretty similar to what Kimi wants and that’s mildly helpful but it really doesn’t make much difference in the way that you set about designing the car. You’re looking for downforce, they both like that. You’re looking for power, they both like that. If one likes a front ride height or a spring stiffness a bit different to another, well there’s very… you’ve got a whole range of springs and dampers that you can fit to either car. It’s only flavours of set-up that change, not fundamental design parameters of the car and that would be true whether it was Kimi, Fernando or Sebastian.

    Q: (Pierre van Vliet – F1i) Nick, you told us a couple of times that the Lotus team is not for sale. Is that still the case and if not, how does it influence your planning for 2016 and maybe even 2017?

    NC: OK, but I’m not sure that I actually told you that but there’s a lot of press about discussions that are on-going. They’re not really at my level so I can’t really give you a lot of information about it.

  • 2015 Formula 1 Shell Belgian Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    2015 Formula 1 Shell Belgian Grand Prix: Thursday Press Conference

    DRIVERS:

    Max VERSTAPPEN (Toro Rosso)

    Daniil KVYAT (Red Bull Racing)

    Will STEVENS (Manor)

    Fernando ALONSO (McLaren)

    Kimi RAIKKONEN (Ferrari)

    Lewis HAMILTON (Mercedes)

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Kimi, we have to start with you. Obviously Spa has been very good to you over the years – four wins – but your drive for 2016 confirmed yesterday. What do you hope to achieve given the way the team is developing at the moment and your own performance level at this stage of your career?

    Kimi RAIKKONEN: Well, obviously it the same as every year – we want to do as well as we can and hopefully challenge for championships for next year and I’m sure we can produce even a quite bit better car than this year next year. Obviously the team is all working well together and we all feel very good and obviously I’m happy to stay there but we have to try to do a good second part of the year and maximise what we have and then prepare for next year.

    You will have seen that after he won Sebastian gave you a lot of support with his words in Hungary before the break. What did that support mean to you?

    KR: I know him well and we have a very good relationship and it’s nice… I don’t know exactly what you mean, I mean I haven’t read so much things lately, but he tells me and I tell him if he does well and I do well, we have a very good feeling of respect in the team. It’s always nice to hear from him also. We try to beat each other in the races but we still can be friends as before, so I think that is also very good for us as a team that we can work very closely.

    OK, thank you for that. Lewis, coming to you: twice on pole here, you’ve got a win, of course, at this circuit as well. You said that your performance in Hungary was short of your own expectations, but you still managed to increase your championship lead. Does that kind of thing make you feel that this might be your year?

    Lewis HAMILTON: Definitely not, definitely not. I think the team effort that goes in; seeing how hard my team is working, seeing the progress we’re making I think encourages me to believe that it’s going to be our year. You know you just have to keep your head down and you can’t win them all.

    Sebastian Vettel is just 42 behind you at this stage; 225 points maximum up for grabs. Any concerns there about the threat from him or does your qualifying superiority underpin confidence for the second half of the season in particular?

    LH: Well naturally we’re here to win and we’re focused on making sure we stay up front but we’re conscious… we’re fully aware that other teams are pushing very hard and Ferrari are looking great. So we don’t arrive at any race thinking that we are superior to anyone. We know that we have a fight on our hands and so we’re doing to work at trying to make sure we work harder than them.

    OK, thanks for that. Fernando, coming to you, amazingly you’ve never won at Spa in Formula One. You’ve won in plenty of other categories but not in Formula One. Looking back a remarkable Hungary; fifth place for you, both cars in the points. Does that represent real progress or does it just represent and opportunity taken?

    Fernando ALONSO: Well, I think half and half; a little bit of both. There was a better performance from us in Hungary. I think the circuit layout helped us a little bit in terms of the characteristics of our car and then secondly, I think we have been lucky with some of the retirements and some of the incidents that happened in Hungary, [they] helped us to get some places. I think 12 or 13 cars had some issues during the race in terms of penalties or in terms of mechanical failures, so I think that was definitely a help.

    Now, you’ve experienced many different situations, technical situations and rules around grand prix starts during your long career, could you give us an insight into how much these new rules, starting this weekend in Spa, will change things for the drivers?

    FA: I think not much. It will not be a significant change. I know that there is some talk about this but maybe for next year or the following years will be more different. What we will have here is just some restrictions in communications with the drivers and the team etc but I think… at least in our team we were not doing any specific communication or strategy during the formation laps etc so it will not change much.

    Q: Coming to you Will, on podium here I believe here in World Series, first time here racing in Formula One. What are your thoughts on racing at this historic venue, what it means to a driver in his first full season in F1 to race here. Is this one that, when you looked at the calendar on your kitchen wall you looked at and really thought ‘I’m looking forward to racing at F1 car at Spa.’

    Will STEVENS: Yeah, I think Spa is always a special circuit. I think all the drivers always like coming here a lot. Every car you come in goes quicker and quicker and the track gets better so really excited to get out to see what an F1 car feels like ‘round here. It’s always been a good track for me and looking forward to getting out there.

    Q: Tell us about the match-up with your team-mate. It seems to have been in his favour a little bit in the last couple of races. What’s the story behind that.

    WS: I think our pace has been really strong throughout the year. Just the last few grands prix haven’t really fallen my way to be honest but I know that I’ve got good pace in the car and I think coming back to a circuit like this it should really suit what I like. I’m confident to kick on for the rest of the season and finish strongly.

    Q: Coming to you Daniil. Obviously your best-ever Formula One result last time out in Hungary, second place, also, the best result for a Russian in Formula One. What was the reaction like back home?

    Daniil KVYAT: It was a good race for me in Hungary. Hard to say what was the reaction – I didn’t count any reactions or stuff like that but I think it was good for myself, good for the team generally to achieve that in this hard season. Now there’s been the summer break and we are back to our basic work. We hope to keep working hard to achieve similar results – even though we know it’s not going to be easy because also in Hungary we had to take some opportunities. Nevertheless, when they come, you have to take them.

    Q: It’s very clear that Red Bull has made significant steps, particularly on the chassis side since Silverstone. How do you fancy your chances of repeating that kind of result in the second half of the year? Which races are you looking at in particular?

    DK: Once it happened I think it’s possible to do second time as well. We should never give up on that. I think you know in theory Singapore is looking good for us but I wouldn’t limit… I wouldn’t say that we would just work on one particular race. We have to take any chances in every race – and this will be one of them. Anything can happen in any other race and we have to keep pushing for any opportunity because every race is a new chance.

    Q: And talking of best-ever career Formula One results, Max Verstappen, you won three times here in F3 at Spa but you got your best-ever Formula One result, fourth place in Hungary, a real breakthrough for you. What does that say about you and your challenge this year?

    Max VERSTAPPEN: I think it was also a bit unexpected result there but, I mean, you still need to be there when people make mistakes or have problems so, at the end, I was very happy to finish fourth especially after the beginning of the race which was a bit difficult for me. But I think the first half of the season went quite well. I think if I new this before I would have signed off – I would have liked it like this but now it’s time to focus again on this weekend. On my home grand prix. Won’t be as good, I think, as Hungary but you never know. We can get some good chances here again. We just have to optimise everything.

    Q: You’re about to race a Formula One car around this daunting F1 track – but can you give us an update on how you’re going with getting a road car licence?

    MV: I still don’t have it. Still not 18. But yeah, I don’t have so much time – so I’ll do it a bit later.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Kimi, fighting for your fifth victory here, does it help you that all the pressure of the new contract is now put behind and you don’t have to prove yourself that much any more?

    KR: It doesn’t change anything. I mean we still try to do the same as every other race. So, that contract thing, it’s not going to change our approach for the weekend or the end result. Hopefully the end result will be good but no, we will do the same things as in all the other races. So, hopefully we can have a good weekend, no problems and see where we end up.

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action, Speedsport Magazines) Next year, the engineers will not be able to coach the drivers over the radio on things like tyre degradation and fuel saving, so I would like to ask an experienced driver, Fernando, and a new guy, Max, if you welcome this because it’s more in the driver’s hands or do you prefer to have as many tools and inputs to optimise your driving?

    FA: Well, I don’t think it will make a huge change because… yeah, we are receiving some information now on the radio about tyres, about fuel or other things on the car but we are perfectly aware of what is happening in the car and what is the best solution for the specific issues that we are facing during the race so if that information is not coming, it will come anyway by instinct and by the reactions of the car. So yeah, we will have to pay a little bit more attention to a few things that now we rely a little bit on the radio but it’s not a big change and probably it’s welcome, all those changes, to have a little bit more to do in the car and feeling a little bit more important.

    MV: For me, I don’t think it will change a lot. You always drive on your instincts. You feel when the tyres are dropping off so the engineer doesn’t need to tell you that. I think you learn that already from a very young age so yeah, I don’t mind, to be honest, to talk a little bit less on the radio.

    Q: (Flavio Vanetti – Corriere della Serra) Kimi, you are approaching your sixth season with the red car. You have won a title, some races, you’ve got some podiums. What are you still missing in your experience with Ferrari?

    KR: Obviously we want more wins, me and the team, but I’ve had good years, difficult years, some up and downs but I always enjoy it, always enjoy it more when things are going more nicely when you get results but as a team, I’ve had a great time there and I’m very pleased that we can be working together next year again. As a team, as they are now, I really feel that we are going in the right direction and we can do great things in the future. No, if I miss something… like I said, people more happy, we are more happy when we can do better results. Obviously you write less negative things after that. We keep working and believe in what we’re doing so I’m sure we will get there and we will have many happy days in front of us and a lot of good results.

    Q: (Thomas Bastin – La Derniere Heure) Max, I remember your wins last year in Formula Three very well. It seems that when you arrive at this track you were immediately very much at ease. Does it give you more confidence before your first attempt in Formula One?

    MV: I’m always confident but I’m racing against very competitive and experienced guys so we will see. I always try to do my best and from there on we always go into the weekend.

    Q: (Angelique Belokopytov – Autodigest) Lots of drivers just love Spa for its legendary corners, for opportunities to overtake and so on so my question is for all drivers: what do you dislike in Spa, what would you optimise or improve? So let’s start with Kimi as he has the record for the most wins of any driver here?

    KR: What would I change? I think I would go back to how the last chicane was, coming into the chicane and I guess it was called the Bus Stop at that time, it was nicer than how it is now. It was just better, kind of more like it should be. Now one part is a bit different to the others, the new one doesn’t feel like it fits exactly there. I think it was a nicer corner, there was a bit more speed, over the kerbs more. I guess that not much else has changed really, a little bit the first corner.

    LH: I think I would agree but I never drove that circuit, I just watched and played it on the computer game but it was definitely even more fun on computer games so I would imagine it would be better in real life.

    Q: Is this one of your favourite tracks?

    LH: No

    Q: Anybody else like to make any changes?

    MV: There are quite a lot of wasps. I don’t like them. That’s the only thing. I think the track is great.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globosport.com) Lewis, you have been seen in the social media, many pictures of your maybe new way of life. What do you think, do you think you can arrive at the races more relaxed, it helps you to develop even better work? Or in the future, you can charge some price?

    LH: I don’t really have a new way of life. This is what I’ve sort of been doing… it’s just more visible to you, that’s about it. It’s been working quite well the last couple of years.

  • F1 2015: Hungarian GP Review – “This victory is for Jules” – Vettel

    F1 2015: Hungarian GP Review – “This victory is for Jules” – Vettel

    Formula 1 headed to the Hungarian grand prix with a heavy heart after the passing of Jules Bianchi. The hope was that it could put on a show that the young Frenchman would have revelled in. As fate would have it the Hungaroring saw the best and most dramatic race of the season.

    It wasn’t a surprise to see Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg lock out the front row of the grid. But the ultra-quick starting Ferrari’s of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen turned the race on its head from the second the lights extinguished. The two scarlet Ferrari’s exploded off the line and swept into first and second halfway through the first lap.

    Pole sitter Lewis Hamilton lost three positions off the line but it was only the start of a dramatic afternoon of racing. The defending champion would first run wide at the chicane and later incur a drive-through penalty and lose his front-wing in a clash with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo.

    GP UNGHERIA F1/2015By the mid-way point of the race Vettel and Raikkonen had built a nearly fifteen second lead over Nico Rosberg which left the Mercedes driver in a fairly distant third place. Ferrari looked set for a one-two finish but a MGU-K (kers) failure of Raikkonen’s car meant an eventual retirement for the Finn. A cruel end to a very good race.

    Ferrari would have to face more pressure as Vettel had to cope with a safety-car completely eradicating his healthy lead after Nico Hulkenberg’s front-wing failed spectacularly littering turn one with shards of carbon fibre. It didn’t take long for Rosberg to take second-place off a wounded Raikkonen but again the German was unable to make an impression on Vettel’s number five Ferrari. By now Daniel Ricciardo, on the quicker option, tyre was catching second-placed Rosberg and with a handful of laps to go lunged for the inside line into turn one. It appeared to be a clean move on the Aussie’s side but Rosberg’s cut back on the exit of the corner ensured a damaged front-wing for the Red Bull and a punctured right-rear for himself.

    This incident promoted Daniil Kvyat into second and with the nifty reward of his first ever F1 podium. Ricciardo recovered to third with Max Verstappen scoring an impressive fourth place finish. This marks the first race since the 2013 Brazilian grand prix which did not feature a Mercedes driver on the podium. McLaren’s Fernando Alonso boosted the team’s morale with a fighting fifth place finish.

    Hungarian Grand Prix, tribute to Jules BianchiIt is on such dramatic days and moments that world championships turn. Hamilton was given a helping-hand with the safety car but needed a new nose after sliding into the side of Ricciardo at turn one. He was also given a drive-through penalty and emerged from the pitlane in twelfth. It looked for the majority of the race as if the lead of the drivers’ championship would go to Rosberg. Miraculously, after several incidents and a penalty Hamilton fought his way to sixth and extended his championship lead.

    Romain Grosjean finished seventh for Lotus ahead of a recovering Rosberg who finished eighth ahead of Jenson Button in ninth. Marcus Ericsson took the final point in tenth for Sauber.

    Up front Sebastian Vettel serenely led the way from lights to flag. The four-time German champion is now equal with Ayrton Senna on 41 victories. He capped the impressive win by dedicating it to the memory of Jules Bianchi.

     

  • 2015 Formula 1 Pirelli Hungarian Grand Prix: Sunday Press Conference

    2015 Formula 1 Pirelli Hungarian Grand Prix: Sunday Press Conference

    DRIVERS

    1 – Sebastian VETTEL (Ferrari)

    2 – Daniil Kvyat (Red Bull Racing)

    3 – Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull Racing)

     

    PODIUM INTERVIEWS

    (Conducted by Kai Ebel)

     

    Sebastian, congratulations, and it’s your first ever Hungarian victory. How proud are you in front of all these people after this very special race?

    Sebastian VETTEL: Incredible day but this victory is for Jules. We know that it has been an incredibly tough week and it’s, I think, for all of us very, very difficult, so this one is for him and especially all the people in Ferrari and all the Ferrari we knew that sooner or later he would have been part of our team, part of this family. Cette victoire, c’est pour Jules.

    Great gesture from Sebastian. Sebastian, coming back to this very exciting race – what was going through your mind when you heard the safety car is coming out after a fantastic first part of the race?

    SV: Well, there was definitely, from our point, no need for that, but it obviously made it a lot more interesting at the end. We had a great start and obviously it was crucial to get in the lead straight away. The car was difficult but great to drive and it has been a great race, we showed great pace. Thank you very, very much to the team for the recovery since Friday and today I think it just came together and despite the safety car we still managed to win, so this one is for the team as well.

    Dany Kvyat, it seems to be the day of surprises – your very first podium. How surprised are you by yourself?

    Daniil KVYAT: Well, yeah, thank you, thank you to everyone, it’s been a very tough year, race, everything, but I think as a team we all deserve this podium very much. I thank my team very much for this podium. But you know this podium it goes first of all to Jules Bianchi and to his family. We lost a great guy, a great driver. So all my thoughts are with him right now. But first podium, like you said, it’s a great achievement and it feels great.

    Thank you, great gesture from you, Dany. But at what stage of the race did you start thinking, well, I can do it today?

    DK: Well, after Turn One I thought my race was over to be honest, because I had such a massive flat spot I could hardly stay on track. But then the team told me to keep pushing. You know some people say “never give up” but they don’t know what they’re saying and until today I didn’t also know what it means really, but today I really learned what it means to never give up because it can always come your way.

    Thank you Dany and coming to the next Danny – Daniel Ricciardo come to me – the honey badger is on the podium. Lots of tough fighting today. How tough was the fighting on track for you?

    Daniel RICCIARDO: It was a crazy race. There was contact in Turn One, I thought there was a lot of damage, I thought the race was over. Then contact on the restart with Lewis, I thought the race was probably over and then contact with Nico as well. We were resilient today. I left it all on the track. Let’s say I put my heart into everything today. I think that’s the way Jules would have wanted it, so I owe that race to him and I’m very grateful to be on the podium, it’s feels like a victory. It’s been a long time, a long season for me, so I feel that I gained some strength today and I owe this one to me. Yeah, that’s it.

    Coming back to… a lot of incidents today, to the incident today. Did you think you would keep the third position? We have to talk about this, because it was a really tough manoeuvre between the two of you?

    DR: I came from a long way back. We know we don’t have the speed on the straight, so… I knew we were quick enough to win. I saw Seb wasn’t getting away, so I thought if I could get Nico I could probably get Seb, so the laps were counting down, I saw a gap and I went for it. At that stage the move was clean and then it just looked like Nico cut back on the exit and came across and just… I guess I didn’t have enough room and we touched. I touched his tyre and he touched my wing. It was close. It’s disappointing, we both obviously ruined our chances of a win but I wanted to leave it all out there.

    Thank you Daniel. Final word with Sebastian. Sebastian, going to the summer break and I know you’re here with your mobile home. Why not spend a couple of weeks here in this fantastic land of Hungary with all the guys?

    SV: Yeah. The weather is always great, the people are great…. Now I have no choice! No, I’m sure we’ll have a great night. Obviously I still remember what happened in Malaysia after the race, so I hope it’s going to be very similar. No, it’s great, it’s great; so many fans around here, so much support all around the track, a lot of German flags, it’s really special. Thank you.

    PRESS CONFERENCE

    Sebastian, congratulations and amongst the other things to note today, you equalled Ayrton Senna’s 41 career victories, and a great example of how motor sport can stir the emotions in so many ways. The win obviously built on the performance at the start; the safety car threatened it towards the closing stages, but how proud are you of the win that you achieved today and the way that you did it?

    SV: Well, as you mentioned, it’s incredible the ups and downs you can go through… look, in the end we have a common passion, something we love, something… we are very different people, different guys, but we share a great passion and that is what drives us. I think the love for racing is bigger than anything else. It was a tough start, a tough week, obviously with Tuesday, and then to think about Jules again on the grid – certainly very emotional and difficult to get back in the rhythm. But then you find yourself back in the car, visor down and there are so many things you have to think about there’s not really much space for other things. I guess we do what we love to do, what we have to do. Equally mentioning Senna’s record is something incredible. I don’t know how to put this in words. I think nevertheless today is for Jules and his family. I think that’s bigger than everything else. But certainly for us, for the team, for myself, it was an amazing day. A great start. Obviously a bit hairy at the end where we had to push again. Unfortunately lost Kimi’s comfortable second position, also due to a problem that he suffered. So, I don’t know, I think if you take the last couple of days, the up and down, both emotionally and in terms of performance, I think it’s difficult to beat, but obviously it’s great to come out on top and sit here now.

    Thank you, coming to you Daniil, your second season in Formula One, your first podium. Early on in the race you had to let Daniel through but you made quite a recovery to finish in second place. Was strategy they key to that?

    DK: Well, yeah, it’s fantastic to be on the podium for the first time, it’s hard to describe what I feel today. I think first of all, the second place goes to Jules Bianchi and his family. You know, we lost a great guy, a fantastic person and a great driver. Yeah, it was a race where everything happened for me to be honest. After the start I thought my race was over, because I had a massive flat spot. We were discussing with the team whether we should box straight away or not, but we decided to stay out. Then we had a decent stint on the prime but still it wasn’t feeling great through the race. But then something picked up and it was going in the right direction in the second half of the race. The rivals were fighting and I found myself in second place. Today I definitely learned never to give up, whatever happens. It’s a great lesson today. The team, you know, we’ve been having such a hard year and I think all the team, all the guys in the team, all the mechanics have been working so hard and they all deserve this so much. Today I understood that we want to be back to the top one day.

    Q: Coming to you Daniel, obviously a double Red Bull podium, your best result of the season as well. You had such an eventful afternoon: the start, I think you dropped down to seventh place in the opening lap, contact with Bottas I believe, later on you had contact with other drivers as well, including, obviously, Nico Rosberg at the end. In amongst all of that some trademark Ricciardo overtakes as well – so it was an afternoon that had pretty much everything I guess?

    DR: It was a crazy race. Already from the start, the first corner there was pretty big contact with, I think, Bottas and yeah, the front of the car jumped and I thought we’d damaged something. It was quite a big hit. But then, yeah, we seemed to still have relatively good pace. I saw Dany in front was struggling, so then the team decided to, let’s say, let me go through. I was saying I was faster and knew we could do better pace. So then we got quickly past the Force India and then quickly back past Bottas with some good moves. Then the pace was pretty good. At the restart we had the Option, that was an advantage. That was pretty much an advantage from yesterday by only using the Prime in Q1 so were able to take advantage of that today I guess. Then the restart, I just tried to go around the outside of Lewis. You don’t see much in the cars. Obviously your peripheral vision’s pretty limited but I just felt him come in, so I just assumed he’d locked the front wheel and slid up into me, so we had more damage after that. I saw the right sidepod flapping around. Nonetheless, we’re in third. I saw the pace was good, we were catching Seb and Nico and I was close – but not close enough – to Nico and obviously they’re not so slow on the straights. The laps were ticking down, I had to try something and I got a pretty good run out of the last corner and yeah, just said ‘I’m going for it this lap, no matter what,’ and I went for it. To be honest, the move, it was, for sure, late but it was clean. Up until the apex it was fine. Obviously Nico saw me and left me room on the entry and then, just the exit, from what I recall he just came back across and just basically didn’t give me enough room. I don’t know if he thought he’d cleared me yet – but we made contact and that was when he earned a puncture and I got the front wing damage. We gifted the young Russian his first podium – but obviously he was there to take it so congrats to him and, I mean, we pitted for a front wing and fortunately we still ended up on the podium. As all the drivers have said, this race was for Jules. I left everything on the track. Whether some competitors like it or not, that’s how I wanted to do it and that’s how I’ll always do it. And watching Jules grow up, that was how he did it. He had amazing race craft and made some pretty impressive lunges. I feel all the moves on track were… I drove inspired today and I’m happy to be standing up here. It’s been an emotional week. Before the race was emotional. Obviously very nice to have his family in the presence and, yeah, this one’s for him. Hopefully we find… yeah… some happiness from this weekend and move on.

    QUESTIONS FROM THE FLOOR

    Q: (Dan Knutson – Auto Action / Speedsport Magazines) Daniel, you’ve told us that, other than winning, you love fierce battles. You had those today but is it a bit bittersweet that you saw second and maybe first sort-of slip away?

    DR: Yes, it’s a lot of mixed emotions about many things right now. Firstly, I’m definitely still grateful to be on the podium. It’s been, I guess, a long year, a tough one definitely. All of a sudden to find two of our cars on the podium, it’s pretty surreal. But yeah, I knew I could have sat in third and accepted that but knowing that I had the pace – I had the Option, compared to Seb and Nico on the Prime – I had an opportunity to do something about it. It was nearly like Déjà vu, nearly like the end of the race last year. Basically I’ve come third before, I thought ‘we have a chance to win,’ so I went for it. I guess it’s a bit of a shame how it ended up but at the same time I don’t regret anything I did on track today. I definitely left it all on there and I thought I drove with a heavy but a strong heart, and that makes me happy. Definitely no regrets.

    Q: (Oleg Karpov – motorsport.com) My question to Dany – two questions actually – first of all, you were catching on those last laps Daniel and Nico. Do you think you had the pace to give them a fight in the end. Secondly, what did you think when they collided, what was going through your mind?

    DK: After the safety car restart there was an open fight for the podium between all of us. To be honest, I must give a credit to Daniel. His pace has been better this weekend than mine, I think he had a better chance of a shot for victory this weekend than I did. Certainly had a shot for podium in the end but, y’know, my tyres were not in a great condition, to be honest. I was coming closer, step-by-step but I think it would be really hard, especially considering the Mercedes straight line advantage, to give them a fight for the podium, so Daniel, I think, did the right thing trying to go for it – but yeah, this weekend I think, like I said, I’ve been able to take every opportunity and that’s where I am right now. The pace we will have to analyse. But, you know, sometimes you are faster, sometimes you are slower and this is how it goes in racing.

    Q: (Heikki Kulta – Turun Sanomat) Congratulations Sebastian for winning the so-called Finnish Grand Prix first time! How much better it would have felt to have to have first one-two for Ferrari in five years?

    SV: I think it looked pretty promising off the line. Obviously it was a great move from Kimi. I think, obviously, he started another row back and we managed to be one-two after the first couple of corners. So, I guess he did a hell of a job to get these Mercedes in the first two corners. Yeah, then I was told during the safety car phase that he has a problem with the car. He lost the [MGU]-K and obviously then you’re pretty chanceless, you lose a lot of power and then all the systems start to misbehave, so in the end he didn’t finish. It’s a shame – because I think it could have been, first of all, a very, very strong team result and second, y’know, a one-two. Yeah, it’s a great day for Ferrari but not as great as it could have been. Obviously a bit of a shame for Kimi – it’s not my job but all the bullshit that’s been going around recently, I think both of us were driving a very consistent race and deserved a one-two today. I think that’s a couple of answers to some questions.

    Q: (Barna Zsoldos – Nemzeti Sport) Sebastian, this is your ninth Hungarian Grand Prix but only your first win. On most of the tracks you’ve got much better statistic. Do you think that with this victory you can change your luck in the future here?

    SV: I hope so! It has been a while. In all honestly, I’m a little bit disappointed because we didn’t have the traditional Hungarian trophy with the porcelain on the podium today. So, 99.8 per cent happy. I was looking forward to that – not that I have a crush on porcelain or a weakness for porcelain but I think it belongs to this grand prix. To the organisers, please go back and… [to Daniel] did you have a porcelain one last year?

    DR: No, same as yours

    SV: S*** I don’t know what happened. I think 2010 I was very close to win and did a stupid mistake and then we had this very ugly – I’m not saying the brand – dog with four legs, or five legs, or six, I don’t even know – then they went back to the porcelain one, now they’ve gone back to something else! Obviously it’s great to win but not entirely perfect. I’ve always liked this track. Great to see so many fans, a lot of German flags, a lot of Germans and Austrians coming to support… I guess a little bit less Austrians this year… supporting me but therefore a lot of Italian and Ferrari flags around, so it was great. I’m very, very happy to tick this box finally.

    Q: (Peter Farkas – Auto Motor) Sebastian, how much of a surprise was the pace of the Ferrari to the… where has it come from because we didn’t see it on Friday and Saturday? And did you think it was a mistake to switch to the medium tyres behind the safety car for the last stint?

    SV: Well, we had to run the primes at some point so no choice. Obviously we knew that by going option, option and then have to go prime, it’s not ideal for the safety car but it was the quickest race. I think without the safety car no questions to be answered now but that’s how it goes:  sometimes it’s in your favour, sometimes it’s not. I think Friday was obviously a bad day for us so I don’t think you can take that as a reference and yesterday I think we had a good recovery and then it remained open how quick we really were on a long run but today was really really good, I think. It makes a difference if you find yourself in clean air, dictating the pace rather than following the top two cars. In some races we didn’t really see them for long. In other races we were sort of stuck behind them and you cannot really show your true pace so I think – especially in the beginning of the race, but then again, I think the whole race – the pace was really really good. I think Lewis was still probably a little bit quicker but didn’t have a smooth Grand Prix so this is how it goes sometimes.

    Q: (Viktor Bognar – Magyarszo) I think this must be the best ever race for Red Bull drivers because all three of you were part of Red Bull plus Max Verstappen finished fourth. What do you think Helmut Marko is thinking right now?

    SV: I think he’s pretty happy. To be honest I have a… obviously Helmut loves racing, he’s very straightforward as we all know and for sure he would have loved me to be third and not first today but he has always been a man with great respect and since I obviously told him my decision, he has still been a supporter, we are still in contact. It’s great to see that despite the colour that we wear that we still share something that is larger than that. I think that he has… I know that he has received a lot of criticism in the past for his programme, his Junior programme that he’s mostly looking after and I think that if you look at the podium today, I think he’s very happy.

    DK: I owe a lot to Helmut, Dr Marko. He’s a kind of racing father for me. I wouldn’t be sitting here without his support right now.

    SV: We all wouldn’t.

    DK: We all wouldn’t actually so yeah, Seb answered it correctly right now. Always great opportunities, great chances but you have to deliver, simple as that and today it felt like I did my best, super opportunities and this podium is also… you know we all share this podium with him today and I’m extremely happy to share it with him as well.

    DR: You never know what he’s thinking! I’m sure he’s happy.

    Q: (Livio Oricchio – Globoesporte.com) To both Red Bull drivers: here is a circuit where the power of the engine doesn’t have as great importance. Can you analyse the development of Renault and the development of the chassis?

    DR: I think that what’s been the most positive thing about this weekend is from Friday morning, first run on the track, the car felt good. I think it’s the first race in a long time where we haven’t really touched the balance throughout the weekend. We haven’t been chasing our tail, the car had more feeling about it this weekend, at least from my side. I felt like I could dictate the balance a bit more and position the car more where I wanted to. It’s quite a bumpy circuit. I felt the car was behaving well over the bumps, even comparing to last year I thought we definitely made some progress. Even though for sure this circuit suits our car more, I did feel like we’ve taken a step forward and the updates and everything we brought over the last two races, we made them work in the right way this weekend so definitely a lot of positives and yeah, it’s nice to have I guess a smile on both of our faces but also the team, give them some positivity coming into the break now. I’m sure Spa… you know there’s more straights there but I’m sure we can still be strong. We’re going to be enjoying the second sector a lot. It was a pretty good circuit for us last year. I think we’ve made some good progress nonetheless even though it’s track specific.

    Renault?  On Friday it was an old power unit, old spec everything  so that was not an issue. Today in the race I thought it performed well. Here it’s obviously less… yeah, less sensitive, thanks Seb, with the power and everything. It was good. As we saw in the last part of the race, we had the pace to win. We were there, fighting for it so I think from Renault’s side, from the team’s side, it’s been our best weekend yet and I’m proud for everyone in the team to show that and show some progress and maybe we won’t get asked so many questions now in Spa.

    Q: (Peter Vamosi – Vas Nepe) Sebastian, before you leave Hungaroring, please sign the 2015 picture in the pit tunnel and draw a picture of you. There is a picture now? OK. Great.

    SV: That’s quick.

    Q: (Peter Vamosi – Vas Nepe) You can sign it now.

    SV: I’ve been thinking about that all weekend when I’ve walked through. I was looking at Piquet, Senna and then Daniel at the end and I thought haaa.

    Q: (Peter Vamosi – Vas Nepe) Now it’s your opportunity, yes. And of course is Hungary right now in a special place in your heart because your last World Series by Renault race was here, your first race for Toro Rosso was also here and after nine years, you managed to win?

    SV: Yeah, it’s definitely special. I remember I was late, I missed the flight coming for my first Formula One race on the Thursday, I was late, obviously my first time with Toro Rosso. It’s a good story now but back then I wasn’t making myself very popular being the new guy in the team and arriving late. I don’t know, it has been a little bit up and down here. I don’t know why. I think we had quite a lot of pole positions in the recent years. I think 2010 was the most obvious race that I should have won but messed up with that silly mistake during the safety car phase and after I think that we had the pace but then the races decided to go a different way and yeah, despite the fact that we had a great car… we always had a great car around here, couldn’t really use that. It’s great, obviously, to turn around, very special to do it now with Ferrari as well, so very happy and hopefully it’s a sort of turning point in my Hungarian Grand Prix career.

    Q: (Attila Lenart – Auto 2) Danil, does it mean anything to you… I mean does it make the champagne sweeter that your first podium actually happened in a country where most of the people have been taught to learn Russian, so they can more or less spell your name correctly?

    DK: Well, yeah, it’s been a story for a while I guess. It’s only five letters but so challenging to say.

    SV: How do you actually say it?

    DK: I already forgot how to say it right to be honest myself! It’s Kvyat, it’s quite easy but you’re right. Before the Russian Grand Prix, before any Russian circuit was built, this was kind of a home race for myself, I would say, because it’s the most eastern country in Europe where we race. It’s a pleasure. The Hungaroring has been up and down for me in the junior formulae; there have been good races, bad races. Today was a really good race so yeah, like you said, a very special day.

  • Lewis Hamilton makes it a clean sweep for final Hungarian GP practice

    Lewis Hamilton makes it a clean sweep for final Hungarian GP practice

    Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton again posted the fastest time during the final practice session ahead of the Hungarian GP making it a clean sweep for the practice sessions.

    Hamilton, who was also fastest in the first and second practice sessions, was the only driver to get below the 1m23s mark, posting a time of 1:22.997 on the option tyres. His time was 0.098s clear of his team mate Nico Rosberg.

    Rosberg found himself walking back to his garage two minutes before the session ended after stopping at the end of the pit lane while attempting a practice start. He’ll be thanking his lucky stars that this was a practice session and not the actual start of the Hungarian GP.

    Mercedes continued to dominate though, comfortably clear of the rest of the pack. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel posted the third fastest time, a full 8 tenths of a second behind the Mercedes drivers.

    Daniil Kvyat finished in the fourth spot for Red Bull, ahead of Carlos Sainz Jr and Nico Hulkenberg. Young Max Verstappen came home with the seventh fastest time and Fernando Alonso was eighth. The McLarens are looking good on the soft tyres and stand a good change of getting one of their cars through to Q2 during qualifying for the Hungarian GP later today.

    Daniel Ricciardo managed ninth place after going wide at Turn 5. The Red Bull drivers definitely dealing with a lot of frustration following news that they will need to wait for the Russian Grand Prix before any upgrades are made – a long wait considering the fact that Renault of not yet spent any of their development tokens this season.

    Romain Grosjean beat team mate Pastor Maldonado to round out the Hungarian GP final practice.

    Williams, despite their recent good form, only came in at 12th and 14th positions, with Jenson Button splitting Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas.

    Sergio Perez – who suffered a massive accident during Friday practice, posted the 15th fastest time, while Kimi Raikkonen finished in only 16th place after a water leak prevented him from completing a proper qualifying simulation about 15 minutes before the end of the session.

    Felipe Nasr and Marcus Ericsson brought their Sauber’s back in only 17th and 18th places, ahead of of the Manor Marussia boys who were almost three seconds behind the Sauber team with Will Stevens putting team mate Roberto Merhi in the final placed position.

    Mercedes certainly remain dominant ahead of the Hungarian GP qualifying and look on track to lock out the front row of the grid. With Williams a little further down the rankings, the Ferraris could lock up the second row with Red Bull possibly getting their heads in somewhere.

    Please join us on Twitter @F1_Madness for live Hungarian GP qualifying commentary and chat at 2pm GMT+2.

    Here is the full Hungarian GP final practice timesheet:

    Pos Driver Car Gap Laps
    1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes 1:22.997 12
    2 Nico Rosberg Mercedes +0.098s 20
    3 Sebastian Vettel Ferrari +0.889s 19
    4 Daniil Kvyat Red Bull/Renault +1.218s 17
    5 Carlos Sainz Toro Rosso/Renault +1.329s 22
    6 Nico Hulkenberg Force India/Mercedes +1.486s 30
    7 Max Verstappen Toro Rosso/Renault +1.681s 22
    8 Fernando Alonso McLaren/Honda +1.849s 16
    9 Daniel Ricciardo Red Bull/Renault +1.932s 12
    10 Romain Grosjean Lotus/Mercedes +1.944s 22
    11 Pastor Maldonado Lotus/Mercedes +1.956s 16
    12 Felipe Massa Williams/Mercedes +2.097s 13
    13 Jenson Button McLaren/Honda +2.232s 16
    14 Valtteri Bottas Williams/Mercedes +2.348s 17
    15 Sergio Perez Force India/Mercedes +2.396s 25
    16 Kimi Raikkonen Ferrari +2.664s 12
    17 Felipe Nasr Sauber/Ferrari +3.063s 20
    18 Marcus Ericsson Sauber/Ferrari +3.098s 20
    19 Will Stevens Marussia/Ferrari +5.760s 19
    20 Roberto Merhi Marussia/Ferrari +5.911s 20
  • No Renault Engine for Upgrades For Red Bull Until Russian Grand Prix

    No Renault Engine for Upgrades For Red Bull Until Russian Grand Prix

    Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner has said that they will have to wait till the Russian Grand Prix in October for their engine upgrades from Renault. Until then, it is something the Milton Keynes based outfit will have to live with.

    This comes after Daniel Ricciardo’s engine failed in the second free practice session for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Speaking at the team representatives press conference on Friday, Horner said that he expects Renault, who have not used any of their twelve development tokens, to roll out their updated engine in October.

    “I don’t think there is anything scheduled now before Sochi,” said Horner.

    “That probably is the earliest that we are going to see any form of development or use of the tokens, so the engines we’ve got at the moment are what we’re having to live with for the time being,” he added.

    Horner confirmed that it was engine No.4 that failed on Ricciardo’s car, and that engine 5, which was first used in Austria will now be used until Sochi.

    “Engines four and five of what the drivers have been using between Friday and Sunday racing, unfortunately Ricciardo has now lost engine four, so he’s only got engine five, that came into service for the first time in Austria, to get him through the next few races.”

    Red Bull are hoping that they will not incur any further engine penalties until Sochi.

    “Only time will tell as to whether we can get to Sochi or not without incurring another penalty before introducing an upgraded unit.”

    Horner conceded that the long lead times in engine development slows down the progress.

    “They are making progress, they are making strides. I think the problem with engines is it’s – unlike the chassis – long lead-time items”