This weekend the teams race on the new Buddh International Circuit, located about 50 kilometres south east of New Delhi. The track has similarities in composition of corners to a number of F1 circuits but it has unusual features too. So how will the teams tune the cars in to the circuit and what will the winning race strategy be on Sunday? Here is a comprehensive guide to the considerations the F1 engineers will be looking at when deciding how to attack this weekend’s race. Track characteristics Buddh International – 5.125 kilometres. Race distance – 60 laps = 307.249 kilometres. More…

We’ve done some great competitions this season, taking the fans closer to the sport of F1 and taking them to Grands Prix and overseas events. But for those fans who dream of getting behind the wheel, here is something a little bit special; we are delighted to offer JA on F1 readers the chance to experience a 3 hour in-depth driving session on a real simulator, with coaching from Darren Turner, who has over 10 years experience of F1 sim development. Turner now runs Base Performance Simulators in Banbury. Turner is an expert on F1 simulators. He did the initial More…

Here is my video of the day a F1 fan drove Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren F1 car at Silverstone. Djorge Simic works in a bank in Serbia, but for one day he got to taste the shattering performance of a 2008 F1 McLaren, the car in which Lewis Hamilton won the 2008 British Grand Prix. Contributing to the video are Mika Hakkinen and Hamilton – “I bet he’s crapping his pants!” says Hamilton when asked how the fan will be feeling moments before the off. Simic was chosen from 17 finalists to win the drive as the top prize in McLaren More…

On Friday evening in the US news began to emerge that there could be a second US Grand Prix from 2013 onwards, with suggestions that a street circuit in New Jersey would be announced as an F1 venue on Tuesday. According to Autoweek, the circuit is believed to have the Manhattan skyline as a back drop and the concept has been developed over several years by Leo Hindery Jr, who is married to the daughter of legendary US motorsports promoter Humpy Wheeler. There are suggestions that the race would be paired in June with Montreal, which is a short distance More…

This week I went along to Silverstone to see something I haven’t seen before; a member of the public driving a Formula 1 car. This extraordinary happening was the final stage of the Drive of a Lifetime programme, which is organised by one of McLaren’s sponsors, Johnnie Walker. Thousands of entries from all over the world were narrowed down to 17 finalists, who came to England for a three day experience, which took in some time at McLaren’s HQ in Woking, a day driving fast cars at Jonathan Palmers’s track in Bedford and then a day in single seaters at More…

In the last 24 hours it appears that a clarification has gone out from the FIA’s Charlie Whiting to all teams regarding exotic engine maps, to the effect that they aren’t allowed after the end of this 2011 season. Many engineers I’ve spoken to are rejoicing, because they feel that at last there is clarity on exhausts having an aerodynamic effect by continuing to blow over aerodynamic surfaces while the car is in corners. The feeling is they can all get on with designing a nice F1 car for next year, without worrying about how engine modes are going to More…

The Korean Grand Prix was a fascinating race from a strategy point of view, with many talking points and there have been lots of questions from fans about whether Mark Webber could have won the race if he hadn’t pitted at the same time as Lewis Hamilton or whether Fernando Alonso could have got on the podium if he’d been released from behind Felipe Massa, as he was in Suzuka. Hopefully the answers are all here. This was one of those races where strategy was always going to be decisive, but where it was vital to be flexible and adaptable. More…

We’ve been running a competition in conjunction with our friends at Shell, to find a Fan Ambassador to go to Abu Dhabi a week after the Grand Prix, to experience the amazing Ferrari World theme park and get a taste of the Yas Marina GP circuit in a racing car literally days after the F1 Grand Prix and the Young Guns F1 test. The winner will take part in the Shell V Power Network of Champions event in November, meet fans from other countries around the world and will get to write and produce content on his or her experience, More…

With the championship settled, teams are using the final races of the season as a test session looking at “carry over” items, which could be used in 2012. Ferrari’s Nicolas Tombaszis said last week that they would be trying out some new parts, including a new front wing. And so it proved in Korea. Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa carried out back to back tests over the weekend, with Alonso taking the wing for the qualifying and race. It featured several Red Bull-esque touches, such as the endplates, the main plane slot and the large top flap, and was considered More…

The accident which killed British racing driver Dan Whedon yesterday in an Indycar race at Las Vegas has raised a number of safety questions, including the wisdom of running 34 open wheel cars on a tight 1.5 mile oval track such as Las Vegas with an average speed of 220mph. But it has also revived discussion about the possible use of canopies to make the drivers safer in the cockpit from flying wheels or debris, as happened with Felipe Massa and Henry Surtees. The FIA Institute has done some work in this area and produced some interesting content in the More…

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel racked up his 10th victory of the season with a dominant performance but there was plenty of action all the way down the field. So who was your Driver of the Day? Sebastian Vettel Didn’t trouble the top of the timesheets in a wet Friday practice and then saw Red Bull’s run of pole positions come to an end when he could only manage second. Made a clean start before passing pole-sitter Hamilton at the end of the back straight. From then on, the German controlled the race from the front, as he has so often More…

Sebastian Vettel may have clinched the 2011 World Championship, but it’s not dented his motivation as he again out raced and out thought his opponents, despite the race not working out the way Red Bull had thought it would in terms of tyre strategy. Pole sitter Lewis Hamilton battled with understeer all race and finished second. It was Vettel’s 10th win of the season, making him the only driver apart from his countryman Michael Schumacher do win 10 or more races in a season. It was the 20th victory of his career and with Mark Webber’s third place it gave More…

Lewis Hamilton rediscovered his form in qualifying for the Korean Grand Prix, breaking the stranglehold Red Bull have enjoyed on pole position since November 2010. It is his 19th career pole position and his first for 27 Grands Prix, stretching back to Canada 2010. Although Red Bull’s tactics showed that they had accepted they were not going to be able to beat McLaren to pole, Vettel nevertheless managed to fight Hamilton and to split the McLarens on the grid. Hamilton was on sensational form, setting a time three tenths of a second faster than team mate Jenson Button and squeezing More…

I’ve got a fantastic competition this weekend for JA on F1 readers around the world; we have four signed Senna movie posters and DVDs of the film, released this week, to give away. All you have to do is predict the time gap between the two McLaren drivers at the finish of Sunday’s Korean Grand Prix and in whose favour. So for example if you think that Jenson Button will finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton by 4 seconds use the comments box below and write “Button by 4 secs”. Or you could predict that one will finish and the other More…

Earlier this year I wrote a post about Force India’s initiative to try to find a driver from India whom they could develop – they call it the “One in a Billion” search. I was reminded of this yesterday when Force India announced the deal with Sahara. There were seven karting trials across India giving 14 to 17 year-olds the chance to show show their talent. The best from each trial, a total of 100 kids, reached the national finals in September. Now ten finalists have been chosen to come over to Silverstone next week for the grand finale. The More…

Force India boss Vijay Mallya today confirmed that he has sold 42.5% of the F1 team to Sahara India Pariwar, described as “a leading promoter and patron of sports in India.” The fee is US$100 million The deal therefore values the team at $235 million (£150 million), a significant uplift on the price Mallya paid to buy the team known as Spyker. It is the same Silverstone based team which was originally known as Jordan, founded by BBC pundit Eddie Jordan. “With this investment both the Sahara India Pariwar and Dr. Mallya will own 42.5% each in the team. The More…

The Japanese Grand Prix was all about race strategy. With tyre wear much more tricky to manage than expected, throughout the field the drivers who succeeded were the ones whose teams got the strategy right, not just on race day but on qualifying day too. There were some pretty contrasting races at the front. Of the top three, Sebastian Vettel’s Red Bull had the worst tyre performance and Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari had the best. Alonso was nowhere near as quick as Vettel at the start of each of the stints, but he was always the quickest of the three cars More…

Some say he’s going to win as many titles as Schumacher, others say he’s still improving as a driver, while others say it’s all the car and Vettel cannot overtake. No 24 year old driver has achieved more – two world titles, 19 wins, 27 pole positions. And now Fernando Alonso has challenged him to a contest to see who can be the youngest ever three times world champion – one of them is likely to beat Ayrton Senna’s record of 31 years of age. Alonso has been waiting five years for his third title.. Whatever the hype, the hyperbole More…

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel may have sealed his second successive title at Suzuka, but there were plenty of exciting battles all the way down the field in what was another unpredictable race. So who was your Driver of the Day? Jenson Button Dominated the weekend leading up to qualifying by topping the times in all three practice sessions. Missed out on pole position by 0.009 seconds to start second. Pushed towards the grass by Vettel at the start and lost a place to team-mate Hamilton, but kept calm and maintain the gap to the leader while looking after his tyres. More…

Sebastian Vettel became the youngest double world champion in the history of F1 today, the 24 year old finishing third in the race and wrapping up the title with four races still to go. “To win the championship here is fantastic,” said an emotional Vettel. “I’m so thankful to everyone in the team, working day in and day out pushing hard. We found ourselves in a strong position and it’s great to achieve our goals. This year we have always been one step ahead. There is no secret, it’s step by step. The hardest thing is winning after winning, to More…

It’s a story that has been running for 12 months and now two Formula 1 teams want to change their names, but the other teams are not going to make it easy for them. Team Lotus wants to change the team name to Caterham F1 Team while the Renault team wants to change the “Lotus” in its name from a title sponsor to the team and chassis name, but both parties may have to wait until the F1 commission next meets in order to do so. The F1 commission normally meets in the first week of December, but Bernie Ecclestone More…

Many F1 drivers and F1 commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone have got behind the efforts of Kamui Kobayashi and others to raise money for victims of the tsunami, which devastated areas of Japan earlier this year leaving over 20,000 people dead or missing. The 80 year old F1 boss has bought 3,000 tickets for this weekend’s race at an average price of 35,000 yen to give to people who have suffered through the disaster. The total bill is almost £1 million. Meanwhile a puppet of Ecclestone has been commissioned for sale to raise money and there are paintings of the five More…

Ferrari chief designer Nikolas Tombazis has promised a more aggressive car from the Scuderia next season, as it looks to close the gap to the pace setting Red Bull. Over the winter of 2010/11 Ferrari went too conservative under the technical leadership of Aldo Costa, leaving some ideas untested in a generally risk averse strategy. McLaren went the opposite way with initially calamitous consequences, of the kind Costa was trying to avoid, but they changed direction before the first race and got the car on track. However they, like Ferrari, have been playing catch up all year. Meanwhile Red Bull More…

There is an interview with Mark Webber posted on Yahoo News Singapore today, which a JA on F1 reader flagged up to me. There are some interesting comments in it which are worth highlighting, although it appears that Webber belives he has been misquoted on the main one. Webber is quoted as saying that last season, where he lost the title at the final round, was his “last chance” to be world champion, a rare admission for an active racing driver, especially one who is sitting in the fastest car on the grid. He goes on to explain that a More…

The aftermath of the collision between Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa at Singapore shows no signs of abating. Immediately after the race we had Massa attempting to confront the Englishman, who rebuffed him in front of the TV cameras at the track. Then there came the suggestion that the F1 drivers want to meet with FIA Race Director Charlie Whiting in Suzuka this weekend to discuss Hamilton’s overly aggressive driving. Then at the weekend F1.com ran a race edit featuring a radio clip of Massa’s race engineer Rob Smedley urging his driver to,”Hold Hamilton as much as we can. Destroy More…

Pre-event strategy content Suzuka Circuit October 7-9 2011 The Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka is a race at which the Drivers’ World Championship has been clinched on many occasions in the past by greats like Senna, Prost, Schumacher and Hakkinen. And this weekend it is likely to see Sebastian Vettel clinch his second consecutive world title for Red Bull. The Suzuka circuit has a special place in the drivers’ hearts, along with Spa Francorchamps, as it provides a great driving challenge with its high speed corners and the first sector of the lap in particular is special, with a series More…

Next Monday, October 10th, sees the UK launch of the DVD of the award winning F1 documentary film “Senna”. The film has won awards, including an audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and has had great reviews world wide for its portrayal of the tragic icon and his struggles to reach the top of the F1 ladder. Much of its success lies in its crossover appeal – many people with no interest in F1 have been captivated by it and hopefully some of them now take more of an interest in the sport. Britain’s leading film critic, Mark Kermode, More…

There was an article in the Austin Statesman on Friday which caught the eye and suggests that there are some changes imminent in the management and promotion of the US Grand Prix at Austin, which is due to have its inaugural event in 13 months from now. The paper has seen a letter sent by the Texas state comptroller Susan Combs to F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone which deals with a transfer of ownership rights to the US Grand Prix in the promoter contract. It appears that Tavo Hellmund, who struck the deal with Ecclestone for the US GP to More…

JA on F1 is delighted to launch a very exciting new F1 competition in partnership with Shell. We are looking for a Fan Ambassador to go to Abu Dhabi in November, the week after the F1 Grand Prix, to have the experience of a lifetime at a Shell V-Power Network of Champions event at Ferrari World, then experience the Yas Marina GP Circuit and then report on the trip for this website. If you can convince our expert panel of your passion for F1 and performance, you will be invited to travel business class to Abu Dhabi from London, stay More…

Mercedes GP has announced today that both Geoff Willis and Aldo Costa have joined the team, beefing up a technical staff which is already well stocked. This is part of a process in which Mercedes are adding a significant number of people to their team, which was slimmed down in the Brawn GP era of 2009. The signs are clear; Mercedes are going for it. The board has signed off on an expansion plan to take the team up to the limits imposed by the Resource Restriction Agreement and enable Ross Brawn’s team to challenge Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren More…

Strategy wise, this race didn’t turn out as expected. The key consideration for the strategists on Sunday was thermal degradation of the tyres, especially the rears. This is due to the surface temperature of the tyres being very high, due to braking, traction and very heavy fuel loads at the start. With Singapore being a high fuel consumption track, cars were over 10 kilos heavier at the start than for the average F1 race. Before the race, the talk was of three stop strategies at the front and so it proved for the leading four cars, but the way they More…

For many years Emerson Fittipaldi held the record of the youngest world champion, until the new breed of Alonso, Hamilton and Vettel lowered the bar. Now we need to keep an eye out for Emmo’s grandson Pietro, who has just won NASCAR Limited Late Model series at the age of….15! Racing under a special licence, Fittipaldi minimus has come up through karts and this season entered the Limited Late Model series, a 24 round championship, which is a breeding ground for NASCAR stars of the future. “I’m very proud, not because he is my grandson, but because he’s the first More…

Each driver has just eight engines to see him through the F1 season. All drivers took a new engine for both Spa and Monza, the two great power circuits, but Singapore not being a power circuit, most drivers used a high mileage engine to do this weekend’s qualifying and race. One of the Ferraris was running an engine that had already done one race weekend and the other had a two race old engine, according to Luigi Fraboni, who is head of Ferrari’s engine operations side and formerly the engine engineer for Schumacher and Raikkonen. At this late stage of More…

Engine supplier Renault Sport F1 has been making moves recently with its partners, first a long term deal with Red Bull Racing, essentially its ‘works’ team and now Team Lotus. The deal announced on Sunday in Singapore takes the partnership through to the end of the V8 engine era and also adds in KERS for the first time. This will come along with the gearbox from Red Bull Racing, which the team has been using this year. Although the deal runs to the end of 2013, team boss Tony Fernandes said that his intention is for a longer term deal More…

Championship leader Sebastian Vettel may have dominated the Singapore Grand Prix from the front to stand on the brink of his second world title, but there were also plenty of impressive performances from others further down the field. So who was your driver of the day? Sebastian Vettel Arrived in Singapore with a mathematical chance of winning the world title, but appeared unfazed by the pressure and produced another storming lap in qualifying to secure his 11th pole position of the season. Made a clean getaway from pole before flying off into the distance. Saw his lead evaporate when the More…

Sebastian Vettel is just one point away from clinching the world championship after another dominant performance in the Singapore Grand Prix. Only Jenson Button stands in his way, but a single point from any of the remaining five races will do it for him. It was Vettel’s ninth win of the season, he joins Michael Schumacher and Nigel Mansell as the only drivers who have won nine races in an F1 season. It was also the 19th of his career. Amazingly, having led almost 600 laps this year this was the first time this year he has led a race More…

Today’s Singapore Grand Prix should provide a thrilling spectacle on track between the world’s leading drivers but there is also fierce competition in the pitlane between rival teams of mechanics for the fastest pit stops. As you would expect from the team which has raised its game in all areas of late, Red Bull leads the way on the fastest average pit stop across the season, but they have some stiff competition from Mercedes in particular and it is a point of contention for the Red Bull crew, directed by Jonathan Wheatley, that Mercedes has set a faster time this More…

This weekend there has been a lot of confusion in the paddock as a few teams have been caught out by the strange hours at the Singapore circuit and marketing staff have violated the curfew, by coming into the track too early. Red Bull, Mercedes and Virgin all had staff inside the paddock during hours when it was off limits to team personnel, as prescribed by the FIA. The idea of the curfew came in when race teams went down to 47 people per team working on the car. It was to stop those 47 people working all nighters during More…

Many readers will be wanting to know the mathematical situation going into tomorrow’s Singapore Grand Prix with regard to Sebastian Vettel clinching the championship. As I said in my qualifying post, Vettel has been untouchable all weekend in qualifying and race pace and only a misfortune of some kind will rob him of victory tomorrow. He easily has the pace to win. Thanks to Sean Kelly, who goes by the soubriquet of Virtual Statman and is the stats guy for many of the TV companies working in F1, here are the permutations which will clinch it in Singapore. If Vettel More…

Sebastian Vettel set a blistering pace in qualifying today for the Singapore Grand Prix, taking his 11th pole position of the season. Mark Webber was second, with Jenson Button third and Lewis Hamilton fourth. If tomorrow’s race ended like that it would mean that the title race goes on to the Japanese Grand Prix, with Webber still in the hunt. In all likelihood we will see Alonso come up from fifth on the grid as the Ferrari has better performance and stronger tyre life in race conditions. It was Red Bull’s fifth 1-2 grid lockout of the season and Vettel’s More…

The race organisers are putting in an all-night stint with a massive programme of works to remedy problems with the kerbs following the first day of practice in Singapore. The plastic kerbs, in only their fourth year of use, were lifting up with retaining bolts raising out of the ground, due to the forces the cars are putting on them. Tonight most of the kerbs are either being removed or bonded to the ground. The kerbs at turns 3, 5, 10 and 17, for example, are being removed and markings are being painted on the ground. The kerbs are of More…

Kimi Raikkonen is on the verge of signing a deal to return to F1 with Williams. The 2007 world champion has been in discussions with the team for several weeks, following a recent visit to the factory in Grove. Sources suggest that discussions are going the right way and they are now close to a deal. It is understood that the Finn, who will be 32 next month, is keen to get back into F1 competition after two years on the sidelines in rallying. The timing is significant as Williams are on the look out for a bold move to More…

Jean Eric Vergne is a name that is coming up increasingly frequently in F1 circles at the moment. The Frenchman is another of the Red Bull young drivers coming into the F1 orbit and this weekend he’ll be doing a job behind the scenes for them. Speaking to L’Equipe he revealed that this weekend he will be “in the Red Bull simulator at Milton Keynes supporting Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber for the Singapore GP.” Teams send all the data from the track in real time back to their factory bases and after the debriefs the engineers at the factory More…

Ron Dennis was on confident form at the launch of McLaren Automotive Asia in Singapore today. Taking the stage with his local partner, entrepreneur Peter Lim, he said that his vision for McLaren is that within 10 years F1 will be only 10% of McLaren’s turnover and he will make it a company which measures its turnover in the billions of dollars. Among confident predictions of how McLaren will press on into the Asian market, he also confirmed that the USA is going to be McLaren’s leading market at around 42% and that it is likely to start a racing More…

World champion Sebastian Vettel may be on the point of clinching his second consecutive world title, but he said today that he is in no hurry to do it here in Singapore with six races to go. Vettel, 24, can leave Singapore as world champion on Sunday, with the right combination of results for him and his rivals. But he says that he is taking a measured approach to the weekend and is neither keen to close it out here, nor risk averse with the prize in his grasp, “So far we haven’t won anything but we are in a More…

As predicted by a number of JA on F1 readers, following the news of McLaren’s business development relationship with Glaxo Smith Kline last week, today it has been announced that the team will be henceforth be sponsored by Lucozade, one of GSK’s consumer brands. When asked whether there was a branding side to the deal last week a McLaren spokesman yes that there was but that it wasn’t what the deal was mainly about. It was about McLaren lending expertise to GSK in improving its speed and performance as a business. Lucozade will appear on the car and the drivers’ More…

After 80 years in the motor sport business and statistically the most successful team in Formula One history, it is no surprise that Ferrari are experts in spotting talent for the future. The signing of a young Gilles Villeneuve towards the end of the 1977 season showed Ferrari’s prowess for spotting raw talent. Villeneuve had only driven in 3 Grand Prix for McLaren before Ferrari noticed his potential and immediately put him in their car for the last 2 rounds of the 1977 season. He was to stay in this seat until his untimely death at the Belgian Grand Prix More…

This weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix will be absolutely fascinating from a strategy point of view. Find out how some teams will try to do the race with only one stop, how much effect the Safety Car can have on the outcome and check out a new feature: the League Table of Team’s Pit Stop Performance; there are some surprises here! Contents – The Key Strategy considerations • Track characteristics • Form guide • Weather forecast • Likely tyre performance • Number and likely timing of pit stops • Chance of a safety car • Recent start performance & Pit Stop More…

One of the most striking stats from the JA on F1 Strategy Briefing, supported by UBS, is the start record this season of Mark Webber. The Red Bull driver had lost 20 places on aggregate off the start line and after he lost five places at the start in Spa many readers have posted questions about this recently. So we spoke to Red Bull boss Christian Horner and he gave this explanation, “It’s been a culmination of things really, ” he said. “The Spa thing was more a calculation on the Renault side really, measuring the amount of torque that More…

McLaren has today announced an interesting partnership with GlaxoSmithKline, one of the world’s leading phamaceuticals companies. The deal is all about McLaren applying know how and technology from years of perfecting the racing game to a corporate environment, such as GSK’s business. It’s something I’ve suggested for some time that F1 could usefully do for the outside world. The sport is all about innovating, adapting, overcoming, planning, reacting quickly, making strategic decisions and building a stable base. Pat Symonds once said that the attitude of the top engineers in F1 should be, “I don’t know how to do that, but More…

The decision of reigning F1 champions Red Bull and Renault to extend their deal with for a supply of customer engines for five more years was announced over the Monza weekend, before Sebastian Vettel went out and won a second race in a row on what’s always been considered a “power circuit”. This deal is significant in that it means that not only will the team use the current V8 units with the Renault KERS system for 2012 and 2013, but is committed to the marque for the new generation of fuel efficient V6 1.6 litre turbo engines from 2014 More…

The mystery over where outgoing Williams technical director Sam Michael would end up was resolved today when McLaren announced him as their new Sporting Director. The post has been vacant since Dave Ryan stepped down from the job at the Malaysian Grand Prix of 2009. The role of Sporting Director can mean many things in F1. For some teams it is a kind of glorified team manager role, for others it can been more engineering-led. Usually the Sporting Director is the senior person who is required to know the FIA Sporting Regulations rule book inside out and back to front. More…

Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix was one of the best races of the season from the point of view of wheel to wheel combat. But because of the unique nature of the Monza circuit, it also featured some fascinating decision-making by teams on race strategy, not just in terms of tyre strategy and pit stops, but also in terms of how to set up the cars, particularly wing level and gearing. With top speeds reaching 350km/h, one of the key decisions was how to balance the use of the DRS wing (giving a 6-8km/h speed boost) while not hitting the rev More…

The legendary Monza circuit provided an entertaining race with thrilling battles all the way down the field but which driver impressed you most? Sebastian Vettel Found half a second in the final part of qualifying to take his 10th pole position of the season. Had no answer to Alonso’s lightening quick start and lost the lead. Reclaimed the lead with a sublime move on the Spaniard into the second chicane and then never looked back as he claimed his eighth victory of the season. The German now leads the championship by 112 points and can become the youngest double world More…

Sebastian Vettel is now potentially just one race away from being crowned world champion for the second year in a row and at the age of 24. A win at Singapore would guarantee him the title. He won his eighth race of the season on a track where Red Bull had not been considered one of the favourites, thanks to a bold pass on Fernando Alonso in the early stages of the race. It was Vettel’s 18th career win, his second at this circuit and Red Bull’s first at Monza. Behind him there were intense battles featuring Hamilton, Button, Alonso More…

This morning Team Lotus has confirmed that Jarno Trulli will race for the team again in 2012. Although, as posted yesterday, the team is likely to be racing as Caterham F1 Team next year after reaching a settlement with Group Lotus. The 37 year old Italian starts his 247th Grand Prix today and next year will be his third season with Team Lotus. This has been a difficult year for Trulli, who struggled with the lack of precision in the steering of the Lotus until a new power steering system came on stream in Hungary. This weekend he outqualified team More…

Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo made his customary Saturday visit to Monza with a clear message to the tifosi and the team itself. “We had hoped to win in our 60th anniversary year, but the truth is that the car is disappointing,” he told Italian media. “And some circumstances have not favoured us. I’m thinking about the interruption in Monaco, the incident between Alonso and Button in Canada and then the safety car always there.” Montezemolo had said before the start of the season that “Ferrari is condemned to win”, but the only win this year has been at Silverstone, More…

There will shortly be only one Lotus in F1 and it will be the black and gold cars, not the green and yellow. The word this weekend in Monza is that a deal has been struck between the Malaysian owned Team Lotus and Group Lotus, which is a sponsor of the Renault GP team, to end the naming conflict. Tony Fernandes is understood to be on the point of applying to the FIA and FOM to change the name of his team to Caterham F1 Team. Although the details have yet to emerge, it’s likely that, to avoid confusion, the More…

As if the tifosi (Ferrari fans) didn’t have enough to worry about, with F1 ticket prices ranging between €170 and €520 each and serious traffic problems getting in, due to labyrinthine road works, Fernando Alonso’s body language after practice will have made their hearts sink further. “It seems that Red Bull and McLaren and also Mercedes are quite competitive,” he said.”Tomorrow we will need to find something more in the car to be fighting with them. In Belgium we were not as good as we expected. You cannot create a miracle in two weeks. Here so far we struggle with More…

Daniel Morelli, the manager of Polish driver Robert Kubica, has just delivered an upbeat assessment of his condition, saying, “We have no more concern on the final outcome of the recovery.” Pressed to explain what exactly he meant by that, he said that he had “no doubts” that the Pole would recover fully from the nerve damage to his right hand sustained in his rally accident in February. There were some concerns about the range of movement he might have prior to the most recent operation on his right elbow. But having gained full mobility as a result of the More…

It is three years since the F1 teams got together to form FOTA, here at the Italian Grand Prix weekend and this weekend also marks the end of the tenure as Secretary General of Simone Perillo. His role as secretary general is being taken up by an British lawyer, Oliver Weingarten, who has extensive experience as in house counsel at the English Premier League, dealing with clubs and with a wide range of issues such as illegal video streaming. He will be charged with steering FOTA through the next delicate phase of negotiations with the FIA and FOM over the More…

The new sponsors are very much in evidence on the Toro Rosso, with Spanish oil brand Cepsa on the rear wing, joining Falcon Bank and Nova Chemicals, other new sponsors which joined the team earlier this season. All three are owned by Aabar, the Abu Dhabi investment vehicle which is also a shareholder in Daimler and in the Mercedes F1 team. Its chairman Khadem Abdulla Al Qubaisi has been a regular recently at the side of Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost in the paddock and pit lane, promoting speculation that the team was being taken over. However this is not More…

Ralph Lauren and Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay are among the first names on the order book for the new F1 simulator launched yesterday by Ferrari here in Monza. The simulator is essentially the same as the one I drove at Spa(above), which Shell had purchased from Ferrari’s supplier All in Sport, which is run by former Ferrari and Red Bull electronics guru Anton Stipinovitch. I posted on it at length during the Spa weekend. It’s a great tool, with stunning graphics and gives a real sense of how the tyres work and how the downforce comes in at speed and bleeds More…

After the stand-off in Spa over the way Red Bull were using the Pirelli tyres beyond the manufacturer’s recommended limits, here at Monza Pirelli have got tough, setting lower than expected limits, which potentially gives Red Bull and others a headache. The issue revolves around camber angle, the degree to which the tyres lean inwards at the top, relative to the bottom. Pirelli sets a recommended camber angle at each Grand Prix. Normally with plenty of dry running in practice they can evaluate their limits and set them appropriately for the race. However for some time they have been uneasy More…

The second year of the FIA Institute Young Driver Excellence Academy is about to get underway, with young drivers wanting to be in with a chance of being selected, required to get their entries in by tomorrow (Friday 9th September) All eligible young drivers, aged 17 to 23 years old, need to apply to their National Sporting Authority (ASN) and each ASN is then responsible for assessing the applications they receive and choosing two candidates to be put forward to the FIA Institute. This year, 30 candidates will be chosen to go forward to the selection event on 15-18 November More…

The latest country to see motor sport as a vehicle for positive growth and international prestige is Iran. Yesterday one of F1′s leading PRs issued a statement on behalf of the TSI Group, based in Tehran, which laid out details of a new facility, which is already under construction just outside the capital city. Called iLand, it is a multi-purpose facility with a 5km motor racing circuit at its heart. The facility has not been designed by F1′s favourite architect Herman Tilke, but rather by a UK agency called Apex Circuit Design. The press statement says, “The iLand Race Resort More…

The fourth FOTA Fans Forum took place today at the HQ of Pirelli in Milan. It was the first FFF to be conducted in a language other than English. An audience of 200 Italian fans interacted with a panel comprising Ferrari boss Stafano Domenicali, drivers Nico Rosberg and Jarno Trulli, Sauber engineer Gianpaolo Dallara, Toro Rosso aerodynamicist Niccolo Petrucci. Veteran Italian journalist Pino Allievi was the master of ceremonies and it was a lively discussion ranging across many subjects. Fans had a wide variety of questions for the panel on topics from the cost of tickets for Monza, young drivers More…

Italian Grand Prix Monza, September 9-11 2011 The Key Strategy considerations • Track characteristics • Form guide • Weather forecast • Likely tyre performance • Number and likely timing of pit stops • Chance of a safety car • Recent start performance Track characteristics Monza – 5.793 kilometres. Race distance – 53 laps = 306.72 kilometres. 11 corners in total. Average speed 247km/h. Historic race track in a Royal Park. Aerodynamic setup – Low downforce. Top speed 340km/h (with Drag Reduction System active on rear wing) – 334km/h without. Full throttle – 75% of the lap (high). Total fuel needed More…

There’s an awkward interview in El Pais, the leading Spanish daily paper, which was done during the Spa weekend with Felipe Massa and which slipped under the radar. Reading it through, it seems very familiar; a newspaper goes to interview the underachieving team mate of its national hero and asks him how he feels about being beaten by their man. For Massa in this scenario you could insert any driver down the years who has found himself paired with an ace. However Massa is slightly different in that he was a contender; 11 times a Grand Prix winner, he almost More…

There is a story at large today that Donald Mackenzie, the guiding light behind CVC Investment Partners, has become chairman of Delta Topco, the company which owns the commercial rights to Formula 1. This in effect makes him the Chairman of F1. The detail behind it is that nothing has actually changed, as Mackenzie was already the acting chairman, which was looking to place a top business name in the role. Sir Stuart Rose, formerly chairman and chief executive of Marks and Spencer, was tapped up about taking the job, but is believed to have declined unless the role meant More…

According to a report in today’s Mirror, a member of the coalition government, who sponsored a motion against News International, has called for the BBC director general Mark Thompson to explain how the BBC/Sky F1 deal came about. Under the deal, BBC will show only 10 of the 20 races, the rest will be on a SKY pay platform. In a letter to Thompson, which was leaked to the Mirror, Lib Dem MP Don Foster says, “I do not believe plans to share coverage between the BBC and Sky promote the best interests of licence fee payers and motor racing More…

There are plenty of signs that Team Lotus and Virgin, newcomers in 2010 are making big moves behind the scenes, consolidating their place in F1 and putting new things in place to move forward for next year. And at next week’s Italian Grand Prix in Monza we will start to see signs of that. Virgin will have an upgrade to its car and is now starting to talk openly about its new structure, with everyone coming under one roof at the old Ascari factory in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Virgin famously tried to re-invent the wheel in F1, with Richard Branson praising More…

Once again JA on F1 is reaching out to F1 fans around the world to dig deep for a very worthy cause. Felipe Massa’s race engineer, Rob Smedley and his wife Lucy are hosting a fund raising evening for Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice in Middlesborough, which looks after very small children suffering from life threatening conditions. The Smedleys lost a baby a few years ago. The fundraiser is taking place in Middlesborough tomorrow night and details of how to attend are below. But fans anywhere in the world are able to bid for the fantastic auction prizes listed below. There More…

Ever since the FIA fired the starting gun on Formula E; a challenge to the motor sport industry to come up with the best model for a premier level electric vehicle international racing series starting in 2013, there have been all kinds of expressions of interest in the tender process. Today the French aerodynamics guru Jean Claude Migeot, who designed the distinctive high nose Tyrrell, driven by Jean Alesi in the early 1990s, has unveiled Formula REV, his vision for how it should be done. Migeot, who now runs the Fondtech wind tunnel business in Italy, used by Team Lotus, More…

The Belgian Grand Prix was one of the most interesting races of the season from a strategy point of view, with the top four finishers using four different strategies. Most of the practice was run in wet conditions, so no-one had any tyre data and therefore raceday was a voyage into the unknown. How long would the soft tyre last? How much slower would the medium tyre be than the soft per lap? What was known after qualifying, as a result of most drivers doing up to six laps in Q3, was that the soft front tyres were blistering, even More…

Sebastian Vettel’s win on Sunday had many significant aspects to it, but perhaps the most significant is that it dealt a body blow to his rivals’ chances of closing the gap in the championship. Vettel has now extended his lead in the championship in the last two Grands Prix to the point where he can clinch his second world title as early as the Singapore Grand Prix, five races before the end of the season, if he wins in both Monza and Singapore. At just 24 years, he would be the youngest ever double champion. The reason is that with More…

Sebastian Vettel may have led team mate Mark Webber home in a triumphant 1-2 for Red Bull yesterday, but behind the scenes feelings are running high between the team’s technical chief Adrian Newey and the F1 tyre supplier Pirelli about the safety of what Vettel did yesterday. Pirelli were unhappy with Red Bull for running extreme camber angles, outside of their recommendations. The reason for doing this is to get better turn in to the corners. But the problem is that with the unique vertical loads every time the car goes through Eau Rouge and then the high wheel rotation More…

Today was a fascinating Belgian Grand Prix with Sebastian Vettel taking the lead on four separate occasions, giving an idea of how things chopped and changed. Here are a few other numbers from today’s race to provide food for thought: There were 8 lead changes in the first 18 laps. Vettel today moved onto 259 points, which is more than he scored all of last season in clinching the 2010 World Championship Vettel becomes only the second winner at Spa from pole position since 2002. The other was Raikkonen in 2007. It was Vettel’s 17th win, from his 24th pole, More…

Romain Grosjean clinched the GP2 title this weekend, following in the footsteps of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg. Now he needs to move back into F1 and it will be very interesting to see what happens. Grosjean has had an F1 chance before, of course, in 2009 when he was drafted in by Flavio Briatore to replace Nelson Piquet Jr. It was the wrong move at the wring time, he came in with no testing, mid season and up against Fernando Alonso in the other car. He was too young, not prepared and wasn’t physically strong enough. Now, More…

The FIA Stewards have penalised Pastor Maldonado for the incident in qualifying with Lewis Hamilton. The Venezuelan will drop five grid positions from 16th to 21st on the grid after the stewards decided that he was the one most at fault. Hamilton gets off with a reprimand, but it’s important to recognise that in the stewards’ eyes he too is guilty of “a breach of the regulations” by causing an incident under article 16.1 – in this case the relevant definition from the menu of definitions in that Article must be “caused a collision”. Close inspection of the replays show More…

Mark Webber has signed the long expected one year contract renewal deal to stay at Red Bull, after a summer of negotiations with team boss Christian Horner and Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz. The deal was announced this morning, his 35th birthday. The deal means a sixth season with the team for the Australian, who has played a key role in building Red Bull up to world championship level, along with David Couthard, although more recently Sebastian Vettel has been the one who’s taken the spoils. Webber described the decision to add another year as a “no brainer”, given the More…

Although there appears to be a commercial dimension to Renault’s decision to replace Nick Heidfeld with Bruno Senna, it is also based on performance. The German was outqualified 8-3 by Vitaly Petrov and although he has performed slightly better in races, as you would expect relative to an inexperienced driver, this is clearly not in line with what Renault management was expecting. It’s hard for a driver to come into a team mid-season, but the team has said they expect Senna to be on Petrov’s pace by Singapore. As for this weekend, I’ve commissioned some stats from the leading stats More…

This morning I had the chance to drive in the latest generation mobile simulator, which has been designed and built for Shell by ex Ferrari and Red Bull electronics chief Anton Stipinovitch. The simulator, based on a 2009 Ferrari chassis with 2011 electronics, is due to be launched publicly later today, but I had an early go this morning here at the circuit and it’s mind blowing. Stipinovitch’s company, All in Sports, is based in Modena and does a lot of work with Ferrari on their in house simulator. The new mobile version, which Shell plans to take to events More…

With this weekend being the 20th anniversary of Michael Schumacher’s debut in F1, there have been tributes aplenty from fellow drivers but none more effusive than from his great rival of the mid 2000s, Fernando Alonso. “I have great respect for him, he’s one of the greatest or the greatest in our sport,” said Alonso. “The numbers are there and impossible to repeat for us. It’s been a great pleasure to drive with him all these years. I will always remember all the battles with him. It was a priviledge to drive against Michael Schumacher. “He decided to stop and More…

There was drama in the Spa paddock this afternoon as the jilted driver in the Renault camp, Nick Heidfeld, turned up wearing team gear and saying that he has a valid contract to race and has launched legal proceedings against the Renault team. His replacement, Bruno Senna, said that he has a confirmed deal for two races, Spa and Monza and that beyond that it depends on some legal issues but that “the intention is to do the rest of the season.” Renault confirmed this at 4pm with a statement saying, “The team’s present intention is to give Bruno the More…

Less than 24 hours before the drivers are due in the Spa Francorchamps paddock for the FIA Press Conference, Renault has confirmed that Bruno Senna will race for the team this weekend. A brief statement said only that he would race in Spa in place of Nick Heidfeld and that he would be in the press conference. The team will announce more details in due course. The news was first broken by BBC’s Eddie Jordan on Monday and comes after a disappointing campaign for Heidfeld, who was drafted in to replace the injured Robert Kubica. Senna drove in Hungary on More…

Riad Asmat, who was one of the founders of Tony Fernandes’ version of Team Lotus, has been promoted to a CEO role in a move which brings the recently acquired Caterham Cars operation and the GP2 team all under one umbrella. Asmat will be in charge of anything to do with automotive and engineering. Formerly he was CEO of just the F1 team. “In F1 the goal remains the same,” said Asmat. “Grow over the long-term and achieve our goals in realistic timeframes. Next year we need to take another step up and we have the building blocks in place More…

Track characteristics and key strategy indicators Spa Francorchamps – 7.004 kilometres. Race distance – 44 laps = 308.052 kilometres. 19 corners in total. Average speed 238km/h. Circuit based on public roads. Aerodynamic setup – Med-low downforce. Top speed 322km/h (with Drag Reduction System active on rear wing) – 312km/h without. Full throttle – 80% of the lap (high). Total fuel needed for race distance – 150 kilos (high). Fuel consumption – 3.35kg per lap (high) Time spent braking: 14% of lap. Number of brake zones – 6. Brake wear- Low. Loss time for a Pit stop = 18 seconds (average) More…

John Surtees the 1964 world champion with Ferrari got together with the man who leads the Scuderia today, Fernando Alonso, to discuss the magic of Spa Francorchamps, venue for this weekend’s Shell Belgian Grand Prix. It’s only a four minute edit, but you can tell from the questions they ask each other that this is an engaging meeting across the generations; Alonso asks Surtees about the sensitivity of slipstreaming in his day, for example and they discuss the challenge of the key corners on the track. Surtees won the race for Ferrari in 1966, but Alonso has never won at More…

This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix at Spa marks the 20th anniversary of Michael Schumacher’s F1 debut at the wheel of a Jordan-Ford, a truly astonishing statistic. Schumacher becomes the first F1 driver in history to still be active 20 years after his debut. He also took his first F1 win at Spa in 1992. It is also 17 years since he was disqualified from victory in the 1994 race for having worn down the plank under his floor too much, and 7 years ago at Spa he clinched his 7th world title. “Everything for me comes back to Spa. The More…

It is said that “tradition is an experiment which worked’. This evening on Facebook there is an experiment taking place which will be eagerly watched by sponsors, rights holders and broadcasters and, if it works, could have a significant role to play in the way F1 media is consumed in the future. Budweiser, the sponsor of the FA Cup competition, is streaming the opening round of the FA Cup live tonight at 7-45pm on its Facebook page, taking the content live and direct to its consumers. It expects around 100,000 of Facebook’s 700 million audience to watch and may show More…

I posted the other day on Kamui Kobayashi and his chances of moving up the grid to a top team and made the point that Japan could do with it as the sport is in decline in Japan. Several readers asked why this is the case, so here’s an overview of the situation, as I see it. It’s a slightly misleading picture to look only at the fans who come to Suzuka each year as they are some of the most dedicated fans on the planet. Their consumption of team merchandise and willingness to queue the night before the race, More…

Kamui Kobayashi has won many fans in his brief F1 career to date for his swashbuckling style; not just his signature bold overtaking moves, but also his defensive driving, which has also been very effective. I’ll put my hands up and admit I love Kobayashi as a racer, he’s top quality entertainment and I love his spirit in a car, which reminds me a little bit of Jean Alesi. Alesi made a big impression in a midfield Tyrrell car and ended up in a Ferrari, something which many fans would like to see happen with Kobayashi. It would be an More…

Sergio Perez has been quietly effective in his rookie season in F1, doing enough to ensure that the team took up the second year of his contract. Looking closely at it, he has done rather better than that. He’s outqualified his team mate Kamui Kobayashi on five occasions of the nine that they have been racing together this season, he’s scored points in two races and in only two of his races has he finished lower than the position he started in. Those are pretty reasonable figures for a rookie in F1, but he will want to move forward from More…

By their own admission Team Lotus is not where it expected to be at this stage, which was fighting with the slowest of the midfield teams; in Budapest the car was three tenths slower than Buemi’s Toro Rosso and half a second slower than Maldonado’s Williams. Although the car was two seconds per lap faster in Budapest than Virgin or HRT, it remains perilously close at the foot of the championship table with Trulli’s two 13th place finishes keeping the team in the lucrative 10th place, ahead of HRT with one 13th place. One topsy turvy race could turn that More…

It’s good from time to time to glance at the Constructors’ Championship table and remind yourself of the big picture in terms of the state of play between teams. There is the usual disproportionate sharing of points with the top two or three teams hogging the majority and the new teams desperate for even a sniff of a single point. But it’s the midfield teams which are so interesting at the moment. Last year the top four teams were followed by Renault in fifth, then Williams, Force India, Sauber and Toro Rosso. This year Renault has 66 points, Sauber 35, More…

The battles over the greening of F1 continue, with Bernie Ecclestone again casting himself in the role of the roadblock. This time he has said that the concept of F1 cars running on electric only in the pit lane – one of the new regulations for 2014 approved by the World Motor Sport Council – is not right for the sport and he will personally see to it that it doesn’t happen. “Formula One is absolutely not the right place to have electric engines. It’s like having ballet dancers with sneakers. More comfortable, but it doesn’t work,” F1′s 80 year More…

It’s now August and although they lead both championships comfortably, Red Bull’s last race victory was in Valencia in June. They have maintained their 100% record in qualifying, but on race day they no longer have the fastest car. In Budapest we saw a reaction with Red Bull mechanics using up one of their four curfew free nights of the season on Friday to work into the small hours on the car to get it right for qualifying and the race. This involved changing the specification of the car from what they had intended to run, with modifications to the More…

To follow up the post after the Hungarian Grand Prix regarding the explosion on Nick Heidfeld’s LRGP car, which aroused great interest from readers, the team’s investigation has now been completed and the results found. The simplest thing is to let technical director James Allison explained what happened: Three days after the incident on Nick’s car, has the team identified the reason why it caught fire after the pitstop? Allision: “As with most accidents, several incidents combined to cause the fire that Nick suffered in Hungary. First of all, we ran a slightly different engine mapping strategy in qualifying, which More…

The Hungarian Grand Prix was a fantastic race, again very close between the top four cars, any one of which could have won it. The closeness of competition and changeable conditions made it another race where strategy was the decisive element. The winner put together the right combination of decisions, based on the data assembled in practice and a judgement when a sudden shower fell late in the race, not to pit for intermediate tyres but to wait it out. Meanwhile several drivers saw their races compromised by poor strategy calls and we had three midfield runners in the points, More…