The Hispania Racing Team suffered the ignominy of not qualifying for the race in Melbourne due to the 107% rule which says that the time set by a car to qualify will have to be within 107% of the time set by the pole position car. In the second race in Sepang last week, the HRT cars just about scraped through but at Shanghai they were comfortably within the 107% rule. Both Narain Karthikeyan and Vitantonio Liuzzi are now confident that they can put the fear of 107% firmly behind them and concentrate on racing. We hope this is not a case of misplaced optimism.
Yearly Archives: 2011
Nico Rosberg declared that he was happy with the way his car performed and that he was thrilled with a top five qualifying. He believes that the problems of Mercedes GP are getting sorted out and that the car has the genuine pace to challenge leaders. However, Michael Schumacher lamented that he had issues with the Drag Reduction System or the movable rear wing which made him qualify only in 14th place. He also believes that the car has now more or less been sorted out. Lets see how it functions in the race.
Deutsche Touring wagen Masters or better known to us as DTM is a premier touring car racing series. Presently Audi and Mercedes Benz are the two marques that race in DTM and BMW has expressed intention of joining the series in 2012 after it quit Formula1. Motorsports Director of BMW Mario Theissen had said that BMW had decided to take part in production car racing rather than F1. Volkswagen, the parent company of Audi had always insisted that it would look at production car racing seriously since that has relevance to cars that are made for everyday use. This year Audi has high hopes since there is a new tyre supplier in the form of Hankook and it believes that it can turn the situation to its advantage. Here is a press release from Audi in it entirety. The spelling of tyre as tire is Audi’s own.
DTM countdown: Proven technology, new tires
2011 is the fourth and final year of racing for the current A4 DTM originally developed by Audi Sport for the 2008 season under the project name “R14.” The car evolved to become the “R14 plus” in 2009 after a technical update. Both model versions are in action again this year, since DTM car technology is frozen since August 2009. Further developments are prohibited.
While Audi Sport works feverishly in Ingolstadt and Neckarsulm on the internally labeled “R17” successor complying with the new regulations valid from 2012, the technicians face a completely different challenge for the 2011 season: They have to adapt the A4 as well as possible to the tires of new DTM exclusive supplier Hankook, without being able to change the car’s basic technology.
Audi suffered painfully last season through the significance of the tire’s impact in the DTM. The new design of the former supplier did not harmonize with the A4 DTM. The Audi drivers complained about the lack of “feedback” from the front axle and the rear tires could not be stressed as in the previous years. “Our hands were tied since the technology is frozen,” remembers Head of Audi Motorsport Dr. Wolfgang Ullrich uneasily of the 2010 season in which Audi could only win two races after taking three successive DTM championship titles.
The Audi Sport technicians were justifiably sensitive when in the DTM – just like in Formula 1 – a change of tire supplier appeared on the agenda. During joint development tests with the new Korean partner, the primary aim of all parties involved was to configure a tire for the 2011 season which disadvantaged none of the competing manufacturers – despite the technology freeze.
Previous test results appear to confirm this goal. “We have to applaud Hankook,” says Mattias Ekström, DTM Champion in 2004 and 2007. “The company has designed and produced a tire for the first time for demanding DTM race cars like our A4 DTM. The tire works very well. Hankook deserve a big compliment.”
General Motors has designed a new State of the Art one litre engine featuring three cylinders. This engine has been jointly designed by GM Torino (Turin) and GM India and will be first used in India before it goes to any other part of the world. GM will be producing the engine at its Talegaon plant near Pune in Maharashtra. In its Indian specs the engine will produce 140Nm@1750 RPM while globally it would have 120Nm@1250 RPM. The company has not revealed the horsepower figures.
Features of the engine include an iron block, aluminum DOHC cylinder head, lifetime maintenance-free timing chain, centrifugal blowby separator filter for lower oil consumption, low-noise timing gears, a balancer shaft for state-of-the-art NVH and a precisely sized waste-gated turbocharger. This engine will find its way into the Chevrolet Beat that is destined for a second half of 2011 launch. We had reported earlier that the engine will probably be branded XSDE or Xtra Smart Diesel Engine. It remains to be seen if that will be the final nomenclature.
“GM India President & Managing Director Karl Slym said, “This new state-of-the-art turbo-diesel engine will enhance the competitiveness of our Chevrolet line-up in the Indian market. The addition of diesel options to our portfolio will continue to improve our sales volume and market share,” Slym added.
Vitaly Petrov was driving very well today and in the second session of qualifying he put his Lotus-Renault in P4 and was charging again when disaster struck him. His car lost its gearing and rolled to a halt on the circuit bringing out the red flag. His car was stuck in gear and refused to budge making it imperative for it to be lifted by a crane and that meant Petrov had no further part to play in qualifying. He however will be tenth on the grid if no penalties are awarded to him. As per this season’s rules gear boxes have to last five races and if the situation warrants a change of gear box it means that he could get penalties that could push him down five or ten places. Meanwhile his team mate Nick Heidfeld was most unimpressive and did not make it into Q3.
It is not just Vettel whose form shows continuation. Michael Schumacher’s form also continues, only in this case it is disastrous. Michael Schumacher could only finish in P14 while his team mate Nico Rosberg continued into the third and final qualifying session to finish ahead of the Toro Rossos of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastian Buemi and the Force India of Paul DiResta. DiResta yet again finished ahead of Adrian Sutil who was in P11. Schumacher’s performance or the lack of it is proving to be heart breaking for his legion of fans and some are questioning if he did the right thing in coming back and destroying his reputation.
Vettel seems unstoppable in qualifying. In the third Formula1 GP of the year at Shanghai in China, Vettel stormed to pole position yet again making it a perfect three out of three by comfortably beating the McLarens of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton. Mark Webber’s woes continued with the KERS on his car not functioning yet again and he managed a lowly sixteenth position. Wonder what Helmut Marko’s take on this will be. For Force India, Paul DiResta did a sterling job finishing in P8 while the real story of today’s qualifying will be both the Scuderia Toro Rosso’s drivers Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastian Buemi making it into the final session and qualifying in 7th and 9th positions.
Our correspondent was riding around when this beautiful baby caught his eye. She was standing at the side of the road in South Bangalore, all wet from the recent showers in the city. Apparently, Bajaj is testing the KTM Duke 125 in and around Calicut and Ooty. There is a little bit of confusion regarding the cubic capacity of the engine with some reports saying that Bajaj will launch the KTM with a 200 cc engine to justify the high price tag that it will come with. The question really is, will Bajaj really get the 125 Duke or the 200 cc Duke down here? We think it may be prohibitively expensive at 2 lakhs for a 125 cc to make any serious sales figures, but we never really know, do we? We are waiting like you and hope one of the two or maybe both will make into the market place. Why not be greedy, when you can?
Beautiful looking motorcycle, no?
Ford have today shown the new Fiesta which will hit the market in a month or two. The prices of the new Fiesta were not revealed but engine specs were. There is a 1.6 litre petrol engine which is capable of putting out 120 horses and also a diesel engine of equivalent cubic capacity that puts out 90 horses. Ford is very keen on taking the fight to the opposition and has been buoyed by the recent success of the Figo. Ford has increased the prices of the Figo by one percent and has joined the band wagon of increased prices. The segment that the new Fiesta operates in has some very formidable opposition in the form of the evergreen Honda City, the Volkswagen Vento and the Maruti Suzuki SX4.Ford has reiterated today that there will be a total of eight new models launched in India by 2015. That promises exciting times.
Autocar is reporting that Nissan has finalized plans to bring the Infiniti brand and its cars to India. But it is also saying that instead of bringing it through the Hover group which is handling its Micra car, it will be doing so with the Shreyans group which is dealing with ultra luxury brands such as Ferrari, Maserati and Porsche. Nissan seems to not want to leave anything to chance and are therefore making sure that the Infiniti brand will be spoken about in the same breath as the other hallowed marques mentioned above.