Yearly Archives: 2012

Sebastian Vettel followed up his pole position with race victory at the politically torn Bahrain GP at Sakhir.  The Red Bull Racing Renault driver made a great start and stayed in the front for the whole race.  The surprise however came in the form of Kimi Raikkonen who drove from eleventh on the starting grid to come second in the Lotus Renault car.  At one point it did seem that Raikkonen had the pace to overhaul Vettel but the latter held his nerve and the first place as he pulled away to open a three and a half second lead.  The biggest disappointment of the race had to be McLaren’s Jenson Button who was forced to retire when in seventh place just two laps from the end.  Lewis Hamilton who started in second  place could manage to finish only in eighth position, rounding up a not so impressive day for McLaren.  Even the under performing Ferrari of Fernando Alonso managed to finish in 7th position ahead of the much more fancied McLaren Mercedes of Hamilton.  Sahara Force India’s Paul Di Resta drove a good race using a two stop strategy to finish in 6th place ahead of Alonso.  Felipe Massa finished in the points in ninth place after having driven a fairly uneventful race.  This drive should win him some reprieve from the relentless criticism that has been directed at him.

If Kimi Raikonnen made up 9 positions to finish second, then Michael Schumacher made up  12 positions to finish 10th and in the points for Mercedes after yesterday’s unfortunate events.  His teammate Nico Rosberg in the other Mercedes AMG car started poorly but clawed back to his starting position of 5th which is where he finished ultimately.  But two incidents involving Rosberg with Hamilton and Alonso will be investigated and one waits to see if there is going to be anything to the detriment of Rosberg who drove aggressively.  Vettel’s teammate in the second Red Bull Renault drove a quite but disappointing race only to finish fourth fairly behind the the third placed Lotus Renault of Romain Grosjean who along with Kimi Raikkonen is making a comeback to F1 after a two year hiatus.  The first four positions at the end of the race saw Renault powered cars (Red Bull Racing and Lotus Cars) and that is surprising considering the fact that the Mercedes Benz engine used in the Mercedes AMG and McLaren cars is touted to be anywhere between 25 to 40 hp more in power over the Renault units.  Ferrari started with the idea of damage control and they should consider themselves happy that they succeeded in doing so before new parts make their appearance at the Grand Prix of Catalunya.  The danger however is that other teams also are likely to have significant upgrades.  The season is shaping up well with four different drivers from four different teams winning the first four races.  Button and McLaren won the Australian GP, Fernando Alonso won the Malaysian GP while Nico Rosberg broke the duck at Shanghai last week.  This week it was Vettel who last won in the Indian GP of last year and since then experienced a small drought of victories.

The cathedral of two wheeled racing, Assen in the Northern part of the Netherlands threw up the newest winner in the World Superbike series in the form of Sylvain Guintoli who was riding an Effenbert Liberty Ducati.  However, the race was anything but straightforward with the threat of rain looming over the race.  When the red lights switched off, pole sitter Tom Sykes took off like a missile on the factory Kawasaki followed by the rest of the field which saw Marco Melandri and Leon Haslam along with Sylvain Guintoli closing up on Tom Sykes after Jonathan Rea fell back a little while chasing Sykes.  However with about 11 laps to go, the radiator on the Kawasaki of Tom Sykes blew up and forced the rider into retirement.  A couple of laps later the rain suddenly started pelting down and this saw the red flag being brought out after the bikes of Marco Melandri and a couple of other riders crashed.

The race was resumed after a while when the bikes were allowed to change to a wet set up and in the pouring rain, there were chances of the first ever victory for BMW in World Superbikes.  However, Leon Haslam who was leading by 9 seconds on his BMW crashed with a few laps to go and that briefly brought BMW Italia rider Ayrton Badovini into the spotlight as he took the lead.  However, Badovini too crashed while leading just as Haslam had.  For a while the lead was with Jonathan Rea who also crashed.  While riders were dropping like nine pins, Carlos Checa and his teammate on the Unibat Ducati, Davide Giugliano were in the lead before Guintoli came through to lead the Ducatis to the finish line.  Giugliano who is the reigning World Superstock champion clinched his first podium ahead of his more experienced and celebrated teammate and reigning World Superbike champion Carlos Checa.  The Aprilias of Max Biaggi and Eugene Laverty rounded out the top five in the race where there were not too many riders finishing the race.

Tom Sykes riding the sole Kawasaki ZX10R at the World Superbike race at Assen has qualified in pole position for the third successive time this season.  Tom Sykes and Kawasaki have been going well this season thus far with Sykes finishing in the top four positions in all the races held so far.  However, his teammate Joan Lascorz has been not only less impressive but also unfortunate in having crashed during testing and ending up with spinal injuries that seem set to end his racing career.  As respect for the injured rider, Kawasaki has decided not to enter a substitute rider at Assen.  Sykes now hopes that his pole position and a possible good race will bring a smile to his injured teammate. Jonathan Rea on the Honda will start in second position.  The Effenbert Liberty Ducatis of Jakub Smrz and Sylvain Guintoli in 3rd and 4th places and reigning champion Carlos Checa will start from 5th position.  John Hopkins who is returning to Superbike racing after fighting injuries and having surgeries qualified his Suzuki in a creditable eighth place considering that the Suzuki is a privateer effort supported by tuning firm Yoshimura.  The races should be most interesting.

The Mercedes AMG F1 team has decided to change the gearbox on Michael Schumacher’s car since he was starting down the order anyway.  Schumacher who was scheduled to start in 17th place will now start in 22nd place due to the change of the gearbox on the car.  Mercedes seems to believe that a changed gearbox far outweighs the disadvantage of a five place penalty.  All in all an interesting race for the great Schumacher.

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will start the Bahrain Grand Prix from fifth and 18^th places following today’s qualifying hour.

• Nico qualified fifth and will start on the third row, having completed a single run in each qualifying session
• Nico is the only top-five starter to have a fresh set of option tyres available for tomorrow’s race
• Michael was knocked out in Q1 after a DRS failure on his quickest lap cost him around half a second
• The top 18 cars in Q1 were separated by just 1.051s, and eight different teams are represented in the top ten for the race.

Williams F1 team’s qualifying notes

Qualifying Notes

• Bruno will start 15th and Pastor 22nd for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
• Bruno posted his quickest time in Q2 on a new set of soft tyres.
• Despite making it safely through to Q2, Pastor’s session was brought to an early conclusion by a KERS problem.
• Due to a gearbox issue on Friday night, it was necessary for the team to change Pastor’s race gearbox, incurring a five-place grid penalty. Therefore despite being classified 17th in Q2, Pastor will start 22nd.

Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer:
We have had a relatively tough day today with Pastor experiencing a KERs problem in qualifying which forced us to pit his car and take no further part in the session. This was particularly disappointing as Pastor felt that his car balance was good. Bruno continued to improve throughout qualifying, finishing in P15 in what is a tight grid. We now need to concentrate on tomorrow and hope to use our better race pace to potentially make our way up into the points.

Bruno Senna:
It was really difficult today. Once again, a few tenths of a second make a big difference in grid position. It’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow but I think we can have a good race from where we are. I feel I got as much out of the car as possible today but we can be stronger tomorrow.

Pastor Maldonado:
The car felt car felt quick this morning, so it’s a shame that we had a KERS problem which meant we couldn’t run in Q2. It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow with the added grid penalty, as well as it being a difficult track. We need to attack from the start and get our strategy right, but our pace looked good on race simulations so I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Lotus Renault has been one of the front runners in F1 this season.  Here was what the team says about its qualification efforts 2012/04/21 Romain Grosjean qualified in P7 whilst Kimi Räikkönen was fastest of the non-Q3 participants in P11 during qualifying for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Kimi’s starting position outside the top ten means he has an open choice of starting tyre for the race. Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03. Q: P11, 1:33.789. FP3: P7, 1:33.976. “We had the speed today and we could easily have gone through to the final session with another run, but we thought it was worth taking the risk to only do one lap in Q2 and save fresh sets of tyres for the race. Managing the tyres will be a priority tomorrow, so while it was a gamble that didn’t get us through to the final session it will hopefully be a strategy which pays off in the race. We knew it was going to be close and of course we always want to be as high up the grid as possible, but there were two options and we went for the one which we believe will deliver the best result on Sunday. There are no points given out on Saturday, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.” Romain Grosjean, E20-04. Q: P7, 1:33.008. FP3: P9, 1:34.401. “It was a good result for the team. We’ve now got through to Q3 at every race weekend this season and that’s always satisfying. I think we can be pleased with how the car is working. If I hadn’t made a small mistake on my flying lap we could maybe be even further up the order. It’s a big contrast here to the conditions we saw in China, and I think we can be proud of how well we’ve adapted to that change as it makes finding the right setup a big challenge. Today we were maybe a bit further behind the leaders than we’d like, but our race pace looks good and it’s another close grid so tomorrow should be very interesting.” Alan Permane, Director of Trackside Operations: “It’s going to be a long hot race…” How do you assess today’s qualifying performance? “We’re a little bit disappointed with our pace on the soft tyre and we need to assess where we lost out on speed as we didn’t achieve what we thought would be possible with Romain in Q3. Kimi’s pace was comparable to Romain’s and with another set of tyres he could have gone through to Q3.Tomorrow will be all about tyre degradation, so we took the risk not to run Kimi a second time in the Q2 session in order to save tyres. Unfortunately, he was pipped out of the top ten at the last moment. We knew it was a risk not running him again, but the performance penalty of not making Q3 was is not as great as it could have been due to the benefits of the fresh tyres saved for the race.” How does Kimi’s P11 starting position look when assessing the race strategies? “It’s better to be starting in P11 with four new sets of tyres available for the race than further up the grid with fewer new sets. Kimi’s in a strong position and there is the potential for a good result. We are capable of running for the entire race with only new tyres and the performance benefits that brings.” Did you expect better from Romain’s qualifying performance? “Romain did a great job in Q1 on the prime tyre, but his pace wasn’t quite there with his initial run in Q2 on the soft tyre so we ran him again. In Q3 he made a slight mistake which probably cost around two tenths, and the grid is very close out there.” What is the difference between the two tyre specifications here? “We’re seeing around 6-8 tenths, although it appears that some of our rivals are able to extract a bit more pace from the soft tyre than we are. This is not so much of an issue for the race, as we are confident in our long run pace.” Thoughts for tomorrow? “It’s going to be a long hot race tomorrow. There’s potential for high tyre degradation and it’s a physical race for the drivers because of the heat. Anything is possible.”

The Formula1 paddock has been going through troubled times with a number of politicians in Britain and some among the F1 fraternity claiming that going to Bahrain at a time when people were fighting for voting rights was not politically correct.  But economics have prevailed over politics and the teams have landed in Bahrain though Team Sahara Force India indulged in some antics and provided some off track entertainment.  First it was a member of the team flying home from Bahrain after a Molotov cocktail exploded in the vicinity of the car they were travelling in when some protesters clashed with the police.  Then fearing for the security of the other brave personnel who stayed behind, the team decided to abstain from participating in the second Free Practice session, a decision that manifested itself in the lack of preparedness for the actual qualifying session.

However, Bahrain could be the GP that puts the Red Bull cars back in the reckoning for this year’s championship after the initial races showed McLaren and Mercedes as front runners with Lotus biting at their heels.  The race pace of the Red Bull Racing cars has been reasonable but qualifying has not been upto the usual standards that they have set in the last couple of seasons.  At Bahrain the Bulls gathered enough strength and Sebastian Vettel proved to be a capable matador who took his Red Bull to pole position.  His teammate Mark Webber in the other Renault powered Red Bull Racing car finished a creditable third on the grid for the race.  In the Red Bull sandwich is McLaren Mercedes Benz star Lewis Hamilton.  His teammate Jenson Button will start the race from the fourth position while last race winner and pole setter Nico Rosberg will start from fifth this time.

Lotus’ Romain Grosjean will start from sixth while a resurgent Daniel Ricciardo will start from seventh on the grid.  Sergio Perez in an equally resurgent Sauber Ferrari will start from the eighth position while Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso could only manage ninth after exhausting most of the allotted quota of his option tyres and tenth place was salvaged by Force India’s Paul Di Resta while his teammate Nico Hulkenberg could manage only thirteenth.  Alonso’s teammate Felipe Massa’s cup of woes continues to overflow with him managing only 14th and the under fire driver finds himself hearing even more calls for his head even though Ferrari thus far are standing by him.  Kimi Raikkonen did not go out for a second run in Q2 and found himself demoted to 11th position while Kamui Kobayashi was in 12th.   Equally bizarre was Michael Schumacher not electing to do another run in Q1 and then finding himself out in the relegation zone after Heikki Kovalainen put in a stonker of a lap to grab 17th.  However a grid penalty for Pastor Maldonado means that both Schumacher and Kovalainen move up the grid by a place each.  Pastor Maldonado in the Williams F1 will in the 22nd position while his teammate Bruno Senna will start from 15th position on the grid.