Yearly Archives: 2012

When Sir Frank Wiliams was giving the victory speech, a fire broke out at the Williams F1 Team garage with an explosion say reports. Sir Frank Williams was immediately moved to safety, while mechanics from the Williams F1 Team, Caterham F1 Team and Force India brought out their fire fighting equipment and fought to contain the spreading fire. The pit lane could be seen engulfed in dark smoke.

Steve Slater has tweeted that the fire was due to a spark when emptying the fuel tank of the FW34 Williams F1 car for transportation. Head to Formula1.com for images.

“Four team personnel were injured in the incident and subsequently taken to the medical centre. Three are now receiving treatment at local hospitals for their injuries, while the fourth has been released. The team will monitor their condition and ensure they receive the best possible care.” said the Williams F1 Team in a statement.

“All the team’s employees have been accounted for and four people have been taken to the circuit medical centre for examination; one with a minor hand injury and three with respiratory issues.” said Caterham F1 Team in a statement.

While Force India has not given an official statement a tweet from the team said “Our guy is OK on the whole. Just some coughing from all that smoke. Our guys are made of strong stuff! Thanks for all your messages.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZHc_pfNh2k

Lewis Hamilton and McLaren Mercedes Benz not only gifted Williams F1 and Pastor Maldonado not just pole position but also race victory.  After what seems and is ages, the Williams F1 team returns to winning ways with its old consort Renault but a new arch angel who goes by the name of Pastor Maldonado.  After a disastrous 2011 and some hard re-organising decisions, 2012 has looked good for Williams and it is to its credit that the team and Maldonado won not because of any exceptional circumstances but purely on merit and good race pace.  The last driver to win a race for Williams F1 was Columbian Juan Pablo Montoya when Williams was running on BMW power and this was in the year 2004.  Maldonado’s teammate Bruno Senna rounded off his bad qualifying effort by not finishing the race, having been punted out by Michael Schumacher.

The year 2012 is also the first since 1983 when 5 different drivers belonging to 5 different teams have won the first five races of the year.  Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel and now Pastor Maldonado have won the first five GPs at Australia, Malaysia, China and Bahrain for McLaren Mercedes, Ferrari, Mercedes AMG, Red Bull Racing Renault and Williams Renault respectively.  The experience of Alonso was not of much use in his battle of wits with the relatively inexperienced Maldonado.  It was actually Alonso who won the race to the first corner and the lead of the race from the standing start.  But it was a better pit strategy and near flawless driving by Maldonado that ensured that Maldonado leap frogged Alonso after the first round of pit stops and stayed there till the end.  About 14 laps from the end, Alonso did mount an attack on Maldonado by closing to less than half a second of the Venezuelan driver but the latter held his nerve and the lead to gradually pull away from the Ferrari of Alonso who can take solace from the fact that they seem to seeing a resurgence of sorts in their own form.

It remains to be seen if the resurgence is genuine since Barcelona is Alonso’s home race and he could have been propelled to the front in qualifying and in the race by adrenaline and the support of home fans. The next couple of races should tell the real story.  Whatever the reason maybe the result has ensured that Alonso and Ferrari remain in the hunt for the world title for 2012.  The other Ferrari of Felipe Massa continued to show the driver’s ragged form and his inability to replicate the kind of performances that Alonso has been coming up with even in a grossly under performing car.  Today was no different with Massa confined to midfield scraps and remaining out of the points and ultimately finishing in a lowly fifteenth position.  As a team Ferrari should be concerned by Massa’s inability to pile in the points to be in a good position to fight for the constructors’ world championship.

Another driver who is having severe trouble finishing races in a car that has actually won a race this season is Michael Schumacher.  A string of errors right from the beginning of the season have seen Schumacher looking anything but a winner at a time when his younger teammate actually won a GP and has been finishing in the points consistently.  But the Mercedes AMG car has been battling tyre problems and those very problems ensured that Nico Rosberg could finish no higher than seventh, but crucially Rosberg was able to fend off the advances of a hard charging Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren that started right at the back of the grid.  Hamilton could perhaps have performed better if it was not for shoddy work in the pits that delayed the driver sufficiently from fighting for higher positions in the race which he seemed capable of, especially considering that at one time he had reached as high as fourth position.  His teammate Jenson Button had a lacklustre qualifying that was further accentuated by an equally lacklustre race.  Button may however draw solace from the fact that he actually finished in the points in 9th position just behind his teammate Hamilton who finished in eighth.  The final point scoring position of 10th went to Nico Hulkenberg in the Sahara Force India car even though his performance and that of the team was hardly anything to talk about.

The Lotus Renault team must be wondering what it must do to win a race.  It once again flattered to deceive.  Kimi Raikonnen and Romain Grosjean were both in good positions especially the former to win the race.  However he could do little to stop Maldonado and Alonso from racing away into the distance and a peculiar tyre and pit stop strategy ensured that third was the best that he could finish.  His teammate Romain Grosjean yet again drove a little raggedly in the beginning but consolidated to finish fourth behind his teammate.  Sauber Ferrari has been another team that has been sparkling every now and then this season and this time around it was the turn of Kamui Kobayashi to take the team to fifth position on pure race pace.  Kobayashi drove his now famous kamikaze laps and overtook several drivers including defending world champion Sebastian Vettel enroute to his fifth place.

Sebastian Vettel managed to finish in sixth place despite having to undergo a drive through penalty for not slowing down sufficiently when yellow flags were being waved.  He also had to change his nose cone and front wing owing perhaps to some problem with the aerodynamic settings since much before him his teammate Mark Webber in the other Red Bull Racing car had pitted to have the front of the car changed.  It is clear that Red Bull has lost the advantage that it had last year where it dominated qualifying and the races.  The exhaust blown diffuser ban seems to have hurt RBR the most.  Webber despite trying his best to get ahead of the Force India of Nico Hulkenberg could only finish behind that car in eleventh place and outside the points.  The racing maybe artificial thanks to the unpredictable Pirelli tyres and the DRS wing but all in all it is proving to be quite enthralling with different winners from different teams.  Kimi Raikonnen would be fancying his chances for the next race in another team that has been resurgent this year.

In a moment of deja vu that Hamilton fans would rather not have, the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes pit crew yet again messed up what could have been a perfect pit stop. Pulling into the pit lane for a tyre change in lap 15, Hamilton was in for a rude shock when he started to pull out of the pit stop, immediately jumped over something and had to stop for confirmation from the pit crew before setting off again.

Pit » HAM: “We think you hit one of the other tyres. Everything is okay, carry on.”

Source : http://www.mclaren.com/formula1

How many more times McLaren?

Hamilton joined in 14th and last we saw he was in a proper duel with Massa, do come back for our race report including our Editor Analysis and loads of images and driver quotes.

Montmeló is a municipality in the comarca ( Spanish equivalent to a district/country) of Vallès Oriental in Catalonia, Spain and is home to Circuit de Catalunya. Guess what, Ferrari also hands out a stunning statistic : If you had correctly predicted the top three order in today’s qualifying session for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix, apparently you could have won about 5500 Euro for each Euro bet!

Stefano Domenicali, Team Principal: “The session was very closely contested and packed with surprises. Finally this year, we managed to get to Q3 in a condition that meant we could show our worth, at least with one of the drivers. Fernando did a fantastic job from the first to the final lap of the session, constantly improving and, once again, getting all the potential out of the car. Felipe fought hard, but on his lap with new Soft tyres in Q2, he had a lot of traffic and lost a few tenths that would have brought him close to tenth place. We had a lot of new parts on the F2012 and the aim was to make up at least part of the gap to the best in terms of pure performance. We have made a step forward, this is a fact. Tomorrow’s race seems very hard to predict and tyre performance will make the difference. The weather could also play an important role, given we have already seen that a few degrees more or less can change the cards on the table.”

Fernando Alonso: “This third place is not what we had expected. We were counting on making a step forward that would allow us to get into Q3 with less difficulty than in the first races of the season and we managed it. But we certainly did not think we could be so high up the grid. I don’t know if this position is a true reflection of our car’s performance – it’s definitely not normal for a Red Bull and a McLaren to be eliminated in Q2 and that the other Red Bull gets into Q3 with no sets of new Soft tyre available – but what is certain is that the new parts we have brought here have resulted in us taking a step in the right direction: sure, it’s not yet enough to fight for the very top places. It’s a good basis to start from for this weekend, but the points come tomorrow. We will try and get a good start, especially as some of my main opponents in the title fight start behind us and we must try and make the most of that. Tyre performance will be a critical factor: we will have to be careful, because the forecast is for different temperatures to today and that could throw up some surprises. Racing in front of this amazing crowd always gives me some extra motivation!”

Felipe Massa: “When qualifying is as close as this, it is vital to manage to have everything fall into place on a clean lap and I never got that chance. On my second run in Q2, I came across at least seven or eight cars that were preparing their tyres for their timed lap and the time I lost definitely cost me dear. It’s a real shame to start seventeenth in a race in which our car has shown it has made a step forward in terms of performance, as could be seen from Fernando’s result. The new aerodynamic parts which we introduced on the F2012 seem to have worked well – we have a bit more aerodynamic downforce and a bit less drag – but we are well aware that there is still a lot to do. Tomorrow, on a track as hard as this one on the tyres, strategy will be crucial: let’s hope I can make it into the points.”

Pat Fry, Technical Director: “A good result with Fernando, who managed to qualify third, the best performance of the season. A shame for Felipe, who suffered because of traffic on his quick lap in Q2: right now, I cannot say if he would have made the cut out of Q2, but it definitely cost him some places. We brought various updates here, especially aerodynamic ones: some worked well, meeting our expectations, others less so: looking at this afternoon’s result we can say we have made a step forward, but it’s clear that there is still a lot of work to do to always be at the same level as the best. However, third place is a confidence boost and it is down to everyone who, these past weeks, back home and at the track, has worked hard to reach this objective. Now we must confirm this progress in the race as well. The forecast is for slightly lower temperatures tomorrow and that could have an effect on tyre behaviour. We have seen various choices in terms of tyre management: now we will see who made the right choice.”