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Post by blacktulip on Feb 28, 2011 18:36:15 GMT
;DHeikki Kovalainen says Team Lotus has the potential to get better and better as the 2011 season goes on, as he reckons the squad will prove this year that it can out-develop its midfield rivals.
Last season the team admitted that there was little it could do to improve its basic and hurriedly-designed T127, which was quick enough to beat the other new teams but rarely got near the pack ahead.
However Kovalainen said the package being used in testing at present was just the start for the 2011 T128.
"We have a much more advanced package to build on this year," the Finn told Lotus' official podcast.
;D
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Post by blacktulip on Feb 28, 2011 18:38:54 GMT
Sergio Perez says Sauber has encouraged him to push in testing and was relaxed about him crashing at Jerez recently.
The GP2 graduate did put his Sauber into the barriers at Jerez and had a spin into the gravel in the rain at Catalunya last week.
But Perez says rather than castigating him for errors, Sauber has accepted that they are part of the learning process - and has given him the green light to keep running at the limit.
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Post by blacktulip on Feb 28, 2011 18:43:49 GMT
Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler AG has announced that, together with Aabar Investment PJS, it has acquired the remaining 24.9 per cent stake in the Three-Pointed Star's 'works' F1 team from the Ross Brawn-led management group.
Related LinksBrawn buoyed by Barca tests
..Having taken an initial 75 per cent stake in the former Brawn team ahead of last year's 'debut', Daimler and Aabar now own 100 per cent of Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix, with Daimler increasing its stake from 45.1 per cent to 60 per cent and Aabar taking an additional ten per cent to own the remaining 40 per cent. The Abu Dhabi-based investment company is already the biggest single shareholder in Daimler AG, with nine per cent.
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 2, 2011 10:16:42 GMT
Ecclestone: Bahrain rescheduling decision soon (Article)Bernie Ecclestone says both he and FIA president Jean Todt agree that decision on whether or not Bahrain GP rescheduled for later in 2011 needed before season starts
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 7, 2011 11:20:58 GMT
Lewis Hamilton says the need to nurse the new Pirelli tyres is making Formula 1 “painfully slow” and “just not exciting”.
Pirelli has responded to requests from F1 teams and rulemakers that its new-for-2011 rubber should not have the longevity of predecessor Bridgestone's.
The authorities want to create more races like last year's well-received Canadian Grand Prix, when the Bridgestones – which were often capable of lasting an entire race distance - wilted, prompting plenty of overtaking, multiple pit stops and strategic variety.
The Pirellis have certainly met that specification so far in testing, but Hamilton thinks that rather than spicing things up, the short-life rubber is forcing drivers to prioritise nursing their tyres over pushing hard.
"There is more to think about in the car, but Formula 1 does seem to have slowed down," he was quoted as saying by the Guardian.
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 7, 2011 11:22:49 GMT
Ferrari have made a further change to the name of their 2011 Formula 1 car – and hit out at Ford for complaining that people might be confused between the Italian racer and the American firm's pick-up truck brand.
Originally the 2011 Ferrari was known as the F150, a name chosen to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy – a choice that many commentators felt was a nod to team president Luca di Montezemolo's future political ambitions.
But Ford then initiated legal action, claiming that Ferrari were infringing the F-150 trademark that they used for their pick-up truck.
Ferrari responded by amending the name of their F1 car to F150th Italia, and on Friday Ford said they considered the matter resolved.
However Ferrari were not finished yet, and announced on their website that the car would henceforth be known as the 150° Italia.
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 8, 2011 17:11:29 GMT
A decision on whether the Bahrain GP is rescheduled for 2011 has been delayed, with Gulf nation's authorities told to make the call on race by May 1
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 15, 2011 9:17:06 GMT
World champion Sebastian Vettel has committed his future to Red Bull Racing after signing a contract extension with the team until the end of the 2014 season.
The 23-year-old’s deal with the Milton Keynes-based outfit had been due to expire at the end of this season – although the team retained an option on him for 2012 – and RBR have made no secret of their desire to tie him down on a longer deal.
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Post by blacktulip on Mar 21, 2011 14:50:19 GMT
Martin Whitmarsh admits McLaren have taken some risks in making last-minute changes to the MP4-26 – including the decision to shelve a more complex exhaust layout – in a bid to ensure the team is in more competitive shape for this weekend’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
The McLaren team principal conceded at the end of last week that the team had “pushed over the limit” in the design of certain aspects of the 2011 car, which had caused the squad an usual amount of reliability problems during pre-season.
The MP4-26 had also not shown itself to have the outright pace of perceived pacesetters Red Bull and Ferrari.
However, speaking in a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes media phone-in on Monday morning, Whitmarsh revealed that the team had already taken some radical steps to improve their fortunes in time for this weekend’s race – changes he is optimistic will give the MP4-26 a performance step forward of a full second.
“I’m not satisfied where the car was from a reliability or performance [perspective] in the tests,” Whitmarsh said.
“We have I guess, with some risk, made some fairly dramatic changes to the car and those changes we will see in Australia.
“So there is some risk in that, but I think it was the right thing to do and we’re hopeful that that risk comes off and the car is a lot more competitive in Australia.”
He added: I want us to be significantly quicker and I believe we’ve implemented some changes which are aimed at making the car over a second quicker than it was in the tests.”
Whitmarsh explained that the major changes were “a completely new floor” and the decision to go back to a more standard exhaust layout after deciding that the more intricate original one on the MP4-26 was causing too many problems.
“I’d say it is a simpler design than we had before,” he explained.
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Post by blacktulip on Apr 7, 2011 16:59:12 GMT
Lewis Hamilton says he is content to bide his time in the 2011 championship chase while McLaren works on getting their MP4-26 on a par with Red Bull’s RB7.
The 2008 champion qualified and finished second at the first race of the campaign in Australia, although was some way behind RBR’s Sebastian Vettel in both as last year’s world title-winning driver and team got their seasons off to fine starts.
But with at least 18 more races to come between this weekend at Sepang and late November, Hamilton is happy to continue racking up strong podium and points finishes for now so he keeps firmly in touch in the standings.
“I think you can bide your time, especially if I am able to finish on the front row [in qualifying] and finish second more often [in the race],” he told reporters in Malaysia.
“As long as you are scoring points… look at world champions in the past who have just scored points finishing second and third throughout the season and actually not won races.
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Post by blacktulip on Apr 7, 2011 17:00:09 GMT
Christian Horner says Red Bull are hoping to run KERS throughout an entire race weekend for the first time in Malaysia, but says they will first assess the performance of the system in Friday practice before committing to it for Saturday onwards.
The world champions ran their system on the opening practice day in Australia but opted to take the energy-storage device off their RB7s for the remainder of the weekend after becoming concerned over a potential reliability problem.
But despite comfortably winning the season-opening race with Sebastian Vettel, the team have acknowledged they need to get it back on the car as soon as possible for the performance advantages it brings and Horner says they will return for Friday at Sepang at least to see how it performs.
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Post by blacktulip on Apr 7, 2011 17:02:25 GMT
Michael Schumacher says rain would turn Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix into a lottery, given the teams’ lack of experience with Pirelli’s wet-weather tyres.
Late-afternoon downpours are common in Kuala Lumpur at this time of year, with Thursday’s arriving right on cue at 4pm – the scheduled start time for Sunday’s race.
The 2009 race had to be truncated due to torrential rain and fading light, and although the event now gets underway one hour earlier, it is still squarely within the late-afternoon rain ‘window’ in deference to Formula 1’s core European television audience.
The F1 teams had little meaningful running on Pirelli’s intermediate and full-wet tyres during pre-season testing, although the Italian tyre firm has conducted some private testing on an artificially dampened track.
“It’s difficult in terms of preparation because I have had basically no rain running over the winter – I had some in Barcelona but it was so wet that I couldn’t run,” said Schumacher.
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Post by blacktulip on Apr 22, 2011 7:56:51 GMT
ISTANBUL - Istanbul will not host a Formula One Grand Prix in 2012 due to a disagreement between Turkish officials and F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone over payments to stage the race, Turkish media reported on Friday.
The Hurriyet daily quoted Murat Yalcintas, head of the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce which backs the race in Turkey, as saying the government rejected a bid by Ecclestone to raise the payment to stage the race to $26 million from $13 million.
"Formula One says goodbye to Istanbul," said a headline in the Haberturk newspaper.
Yalcintas commented on the situation on his Twitter account.
"It looks like the Formula One race will not be held in Istanbul next year," he said, referring to the bid to double the fee. "Because it found this figure very high it looks like it (finance ministry) will not make the payment. That is the reason the race is not happening," he said.
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