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Red Bull and Ferrari appear to concede over ‘development test’
It looks as though Red Bull and Ferrari believe the protest game is up and Mercedes and Pirelli will be deemed ‘in the clear’. Both teams have independently clarified their positions on why they protested the Mercedes/Pirelli development test in Barcelona.
Marko says to ServisTV, “Firstly we want to clarify the current situation, whether this is a breach of the rules, if not we’ll all accept it”.
He goes on to demand, “We want the same chance to gain the competitive edge Mercedes has. If it is possible that all teams can test under the same conditions, we also want to have this test. Logistically we can now only get this for Silverstone. In other words we lose two races until we have the same information”
Marko goes on to make the point that because of the speed the FIA operates, this will be difficult to resolve before Canada, but hopes the sport’s governing body can attend to this prior to Silverstone.
Ferrari too are explaining the reason for their protest. Stefano Domenicali says that they protested the test of Pirelli and Mercedes to gain clarity about what is allowed.
Ferrari is of the opinion that any test with a current car is illegal. Should this not be the case then they too now are happy to take part in the tests.
“We just want to know if it’s possible,” Domenicali said. “If it is possible, then we will be the first to raise a hand and make sure that we can do the same. As everyone knows, Ferrari has pressurised greatly for in season track testing. This is the reason why we want to understand this situation, nothing more.
If the decision is to be different from what we believed to be allowed, then we expect an immediate reaction [from the FIA] and request that this [for us] happens as soon as possible. In fact as soon as is technically possible.”
Amusingly, neither Red Bull nor Ferrari have faith in the FIA to be able to consider the matter quickly and properly and deliver a swift verdict without their prompting. Further, instead of arguing how they believe the Mercedes/Pirelli test to be illegal, both statements emphasise the need to ‘get on with it’ so they can now test as quickly as possible.
Ferrari have another possible headache as they well may be concerned that their ‘secret’ test in Bahrain – not reported in the F1 media at he time – may mean they’ve used their 1,000km of ‘development testing’ up.
TJ13’s summary declaration. FIA cockup means Mercedes and Pirelli will face no sanctions. Mercedes have stolen a march on the rest and as far as in season testing goes… here we come.
Let’s remember if F1 was just 18,19,20 races and we had no other soap opera tales to discuss – we’d all need a 2nd sport to follow just to fill in the time 🙂
Hamilton objects to Vettel ‘buses’ comments
Unable to contain himself at the post race press conference, Vettel concluded his comments on the race by saying that he thought he was to go racing but and expected to see, “two silver arrows and there were two buses today going for a cruise”.
Speaking to the Press association Hamilton has hi back at Sebastian, “He has had the fastest car for the last four years, so it’s easy for him to say that. He’s got it easy. We are making our way up, we are learning, growing, improving with a car that has great potential, so I don’t agree with him.”
Lewis refused to comment on the ‘secret’ test.
Old F1 drivers show their age
David Coulthard applauds championship contenders playing the percentages, not going for race wins, whilst criticising other drivers for taking advantage of their lethargy.
Writing for the BBC Coulthard states, “I said in commentary that it was rubbish, and I stand by that”, adding, “when you have drivers clearly racing way below the pace they are capable of, that’s not right”.
Speaking about Sergio Perez’s drive David remarks, “He was like the man at the Casino – winning, winning, winning, thinking he was invincible, and then it all goes wrong”.
David then makes a strange comment, “He [Perez] wants to show he is a racer but he was taking on those who know they need points at every race to stay in the battle for the championship, so in many ways it wasn’t a fair fight”.
SAY WHAT???
I think someone needs to sit David down and show him the inconsistency of the DC philosophy on racing. On the one hand he is demanding F1 be an all out pace race – and in the next breath excuses certain driver’s for being overly cautious because they are fighting for the championship.
Is Coulthard is suffering from grandpa issues? ‘Those bloody kids today, they’ve no respect for their elders…’. Then again maybe if Coulthard had been a little less deferential when he was a driver he may have won more in his career.
Evidence dismissed – as tripe! (or trite even – one’s more tasty)
Thailand engaging with the real issues of hosting an F1 race
The Nation, a Thai English publication, is reporting the ‘Pollution Control Department’ director-general Wichien Jungrungruang is giving F1 the all clear to race in Bangkok. Wichien says, “Will the noise be annoying? It will be loud for the people nearby but it won’t heavily affect the people outside the routes and far from the racing field. It is just a short period and short route.
People next to the track would need ear protection, while 100 metres away the noise level would fall to around 105-110 decibels.
The standard level for workplace noise should not exceed 105 decibels for more than one hour. But race fans would be exposed to bursts of high noise for much shorter periods.
On a cautionary note and with a view to proper due diligence, Tanet Visetsri, secretary of the Engineering Institute of Thailand, said more study and inspection was needed to estimate the race’s impact on structures.
The proposed 5.995-kilometre circuit would start at the Royal Thai Navy Dockyard at Ratchaworadit Pier and pass such landmarks as the Grand Palace, the Royal Plaza, Democracy Monument and the Temple of Dawn.
Ferrari accept Massa crash responsibility
Maranello have issued a statement accepting that it was suspension failure which caused Felipe Massa’s big shunt during the Monaco GP.
‘The findings validated the first impressions of the engineers, confirming that the accident was caused by an element of the front left suspension breaking,’ the statement read. ‘With all the required inspections completed to analyse what happened at the Monegasque circuit, the Car Assembly department can now start work in preparing the car for the Canadian Grand Prix.
The cars will be flown off to Montreal this weekend for the much awaited race at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit, which looks like being a very important one in terms of the Scuderia’s championship aspirations.”
It begs the question, what happened in FP3 with the second Ferrari? The footage appeared to show an unusually extended locking of the brakes yet at the time Ferrari said the car was fine.
Maybe the team from Maranello had more problems than they are letting on during the Monaco weekend as Alonso was unusually slow of the line and pedestrian during the race. Debris in the front wing? Who knows.
Comment of the month
If you missed it go back and check the comments section from yesterday in the FIA headless chickens article. Mattpt55 delivers a satirical story which is something quite special and well worth the read. To help you find it amongst the 50 other comments – it begins ‘HaHa….’
Hamilton Humility
When questioned about the ‘secret’ Mercedes test in which he drove, Lewis was politically precise and responded, “We were required to do some work, we did some work, it was good fun. Right now I’m not concerned about it, that’s for the team to worry about. I just have to focus on myself and try and get my act together.”
No bitching about team mate favouritism, team orders, dodgy tyres, Newey designed supercars, Ferrari money, debris in the front wing et al – just some well digested humble pie and someone taking personal responsibility for a change.
My driver quote of the weekend.
Sergio woe?
I’m not so sure about this. From what I hear Sergio would be favourite in a face off under ‘Queensbury rules’.
Carlos Gosn says, “We are not going to drop the price for anybody for 2014. But our commitment is every year we will be working hard to make this engine more efficient, to reduce the costs and then try to pass part of the cost reduction to the users.”
Gosn suggests they do not need more than three customers, yet Alain Prost told reporters in Monaco that Renault had spent 150m euro on developing the engines. Surely a fourth customer would be welcome.
Carlos continues, “There is some concern about the cost of the engine, I understand it, but our commitment is to work to reduce these costs.”
What has been crazy is the free rein the FIA gave to the engineers and technical boffins when developing the new engines. To ensure the cost was kept reasonable, a cap should have been set on total R&D spend and another on the price the engine producers can charge.
Both in tandem would have limited the blank cheque books that have been opened for this project.
The other side of the argument see’s the fact these engines will be in circulation for 10 years, and as such spreading the cost of the R&D over the term at 15m euro p.a. is not outrageous.
We seem to disagree a lot lately, your honour. Neither Marko’s nor Domenicali’s statements give me any sense of them thinking that the test was legal. They still think it was a breach, else they could’ve retracted their protest.
What both leave unsaid or at least packaged it in enough euphemisms, is, that they don’t WANT it to be deemed a breach. That might sound weird, but it makes sense in regards to Ferrari’s and RB’s agenda. If FIA rules this a breach, FIA will have to punish the raw stuffing out of Mercedes and Pirelli and RB and Ferrari still can’t test, but if they deem it legal, even though it wasn’t two weeks ago, RB and Ferrari get exactly what they want – in-season testing.
So, from where I am looking, it appears they still think it was illegal, but what they really want is FIA retroactively legalizing it, so they can bust out the test crews.
No worries DS. Everyone needs a nemesis.
Seriously, this site stands for everyone’s views and strong but fair debate – not just followers who agree with everything written here – though I’m rarely wrong… may I add 🙂
Don’t normally disagree with the Judge but have to say I also disagree on your stance.
It’s clear they where not allowed to use a car less than 2 year old for any activity unless filming under 100km. They had the provision to do the 1000km test but other teams had to be given the same opportunity which they were not.
Surely the “same opportunity” can’t be covered under teams been lead to believe they could only test a 2 year old car. But even if they where covered certain teams are denying they had any opportunity and the FIA has made it clear they received no confirmation all teams had been given the same opportunity.
I’m also growing weary of Coulthard but watching Herbert for the first time in long time on Sky made me reconsider as seeing how bad an ex F1 driver can actually get.
I’m not too sure what Red Bull are gaining from this considering their championship chances more or less depend on how radical the Pirelli tire revisions are.
This has nothing to do with in-season testing (for red bull) and everything to do with another major PR cockup at Red Bull. There were two teams who have designs that ate tires, Mercedes and Red Bull. While Red Bull chose to whine and complain about the tires and drag Pirelli’s name through the mud, Mercedes decided to keep quiet and let Red Bull do the dirty work then decided to let Pirelli test with their car to help influence the design.
Undoubtedly when you’re car is the one being tested as the benchmark there is a benefit, Mercedes appear to be the only ones who realized that and took Pirelli up on the offer to use their car for testing.
As a side note for the whole Coulthard comment, wasn’t it Senna who said something to the effect of “if you no longer go for a gap that exists, then you aren’t a racing driver”? It seems ridiculous that after all the media attempts to compare Hamilton-Button to the Senna-Prost pairing they seemed to have completely missed the much better comparison of Perez-Button.
Perez was one of the few drivers who actually went racing on Sunday. it may have been a little ugly and exploitive, but there was absolutely nothing stopping the same drivers he overtook from coming back and doing the same thing to him on the next lap.
I am not so sure about Red Bulls dependency on radical tyre revisions. They are comfortably in the lead in both championships with current tyres, so despite all their “struggle” with the current tyres, they seem to manage rather well, and they will find the way to overcome their problems as the season progresses.
Excellent contribution..
On the Senna quote, I guess we all know ‘Dour Dave’ was the antithesis of Senna – which explains matters.
Red Bull have certainly lost out in the PR wars this year so far.
I’m also hearing from my Red Bull friends that Mr. Vettel isn’t quite the golden boy he was before with Adrian and Christian – v. interesting and one to watch out for
Well, Mr. Vettel did the grave mistake of developing an own opinion. He didn’t like the moronic team order at Malaysia and showed the team where to shove it. That cannot go down well with a control freak like Newey. Horner was badly embarrassed by how Vettel ran roughshod over him, so he isn’t loving it either.
I think, when Vettels contract is up after 2014 he’ll be so out of there. Yes he won 3 WDC’s with them, but as a way of thank you he’s asked to gift 7 points and a win to an uncooperative team mate. That doesn’t go down well with any racing driver. On top of that he’s hated almost universally, especially in Britain, a country that he likes very much. I’m not sure another title is worth it and he might need a challenge after all.
DS – to keep us in balance, you could write a column for TJ13 entitled. “F1 week: From the World Champion’s viewpoint”
I thought his ‘buses’ comment was amusing BTW
I’d love to do that 🙂
Yep, the busses comment was somewhat funny and coupled to his sullen ‘but satisfaction’ reply to the ticking off he got for the fastest lap, it pretty much show just how frustrated he had been with the race. Probably not so much for coming second, but for having to dawdle about at a pedestrian pace.
Ok, I’ll give John – TJ13 project manager your email and you guys can arrange it then. I genuinely think it would be a good feature.
Satire and sarcasm is most definitely allowable.
…but the corollary of the Senna quote is that if you continue going for gaps which don’t exist, then you aren’t any good as a racing driver.
As for the buses comment, if the Mercedes were truly that slow, why didn’t Vettel do a Perez ?
:b
+1 Agree with you Nigel… Kimi showed it can be done, Perez showed it can be done, Sutil showed it can be done. Why can Mr Vettel not do it?
Sorry to repeat my mantra of the year – but – certain teams are not interested in winning races or driving as fast as they can per se – just beating their closest rivals/managing the percentages.
Alonso has said he doesn’t care if he finishes 2nd in every remaining race so long as he wins the WDC – clearly Vettel was playing the same game in Monaco
Certainly Perez was overreaching, but up until Raikkonen everybody else gave him a pass, Raikkonen was the only one who let him know that wasn’t okay. My problem is that we have a field that talks up and glorifies Senna, the man who’s career had similar overreaches as Senna. But when race day comes the same people exercise the same calculation, restraint and playing the percentages as Prost did.
I’m not a particularly big fan of Perez but I think that if you are at all a fan of Senna you can’t really be a critic of one of the few F1 drivers who are willing to push as hard as he was.
My point exactly! When there is no overtaking we have weeks of moaning how boring F1 is. When someone shows some balls then we have moaning because it is too dangerous.
I would watch 100 races where Perez rubs wheels with Jenson (and he spits his dummy out) as well as doing do or die moves rather than one race where all drivers race for %…
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Red Bull and Ferrari are the clever ones here by putting the FIA between a rock and a hard place: however FIA rules, Red Bull and Ferrari win. Either the test was illegal, and Mercedes is penalised, or the test was legal, and they have de facto legalised in-season testing with current cars.
Indeed StiginOman.
Are you really in Oman by the way?
We have clocked up about 136 nations reading thejudge13.com since September at the last count (the blog software gives us stats)
Yep, really in Oman 🙂 Beautifull country by the way!
Your Honour. Regarding Perez, I think that his first move, on Button, was perfect. Clearly ahead going into the corner, having been given the space by his, rightly, cautious team-mate, the move was completed before they turned the corner. With Alonso, who had left him enough space going into the corner, Perez was behind on the turn-in, and cut-up Alonso – forcing him off the track. It was Alonso’s sense of self-preservation (for his championship) that spared the pair of them having a collision. My litmus test for this is to imagine a wall at the edge of the track – if a move would have only been achieved by running the opponent into the wall, then I rule in favour of the defending driver – in this case, Alonso. The Raikkonen pass I believe to be a clear-cut case of ‘too late, too fast, into a gap that was always going to disappear’. Having pulled off the maneuver on his, somewhat compliant, team-mate, I believe Perez became more cocky than confident, leading to increased arrogance and sloppiness in his driving. Two points on his license.
He just needs to learn some patience Dobzizzle… I’m rooting for Mr Mexican from now on 🙂
As mentioned before, Kobayashi (officially AF Corse) did a test with a F10 at Fiorano, as preparation for the Moscow City Racing event.
“Japan is becoming Ferrari (FERI)’s next growth market.”
Registrations of Fiat SpA (F)’s ultra-luxury brand surged 40 percent to 144 vehicles in Japan last quarter, according to the Japan Automobile Importers Association yesterday. That’s more than twice the pace in the larger U.S. market, while demand is slumping in China, at home and across Europe.
To sustain growth, Ferrari opened a new after-service facility in Japan this month, said Herbert Appleroth, head of the company’s operations in the country.
“We are ever more committed to offer a quality of service to cater to the needs of our growing number of Japanese clients in every step of ownership,” Appleroth said.
For the fiscal year ended March, Ferrari registrations in Japan increased 46 percent to a 12-year high of 558, according to the import group.”
Source:Bloomberg.com.
Your honour, you can copy the link from the date in the comment, in this example you want http://thejudge13.com/2013/05/27/pirelli-mercedes-development-test-leads-to-f1-hysteria-fia-headless-chicken-impersonations/#comment-13466 which takes you straight to mattpt55’s comment 🙂
RE “Dour Dave” – Who was it that (mostly) replaced Senna in ’94 after he died – a certain mr Dour Dave.
RE Vettel – In a way, it’s annoying that he has 2 very differing sides to him –
he appears to have such a good sense of humour, and be able to come out with such good one liners (such as ‘satisfaction’ and ‘buses’ comments at the weekend), and yet his racing style is, well, questionable at times, even in his homeland (cough…Malaysia…cough) – as DS says, he isn’t exactly popular here in Blightly. These 2 differing sides make me (and others, I assume)love him one weekend, and others the complete opposite. Still want someone to win the championship though, for a change.
RE DC (again) – I thought exactly the same when reading the article – who cares who Perez is up against – DC is saying that, if Perez had come up against Gutierrez and did what he did to Alonso, it doesn’t matter, because he isn’t a contender, yet it’s unfair to do it on Alonso or Raikkonen because they need the points – what rubbish!
Praise for Perez from an unlikely source – “Alonso says it reminds him of himself in 2008 and 2009 when he wasn’t in a Championship position. Quite a compliment from a man who was on the receiving end of one of his assaults and a subsequent recipient of a ‘let Perez past’ official instruction.”
[From Martin Brundle’s post-Monaco analysis/blog/article whatever you want to calll it on Sky website]
DC’s comment that the race “was rubbish, and I stand by that”, is as you say your honour, “tripe”. It’s the sport’s dividing issue of the month, and he has stepped out to be strongly against soft tires. Let us remember that DC has been (and may well still be) employed by Red Bull. RB’s current media (manipulation) play is to cry loudly the tires won’t let F1 race, we need new tires to fix the problem. It’s ironic how successful RB’s pr campaign has been w/F1 fans, but that is a digression that I don’t want to travel now.
However, on the issue of Perez’ passing attempts at Monaco, note the strong symmetry of opinion by DC, Alonso, and Raikonnen. Underlying their comments, they’re seeing logical, and calculated bravado in Perez’ maneuvers. And like most things in F1 they were based on money and championship points:
For Perez, he is not fighting for the championship, but he is fighting to show his value as a fast, talented racer. He had little to lose, and much to gain.
For Alonso, he is fighting for the championship, and so the highest value is to bring home points. It’s better to give up a position, than to have zero points.
For Kimi… it was interesting, because like Alonso, he is fighting for the championship. But unlike Alonso, he took the risk and shut the door. Why? Because Lotus is missing a primary sponsor, and operating at huge loss. Their top-tier engineering talent is beginning to jump ship. Those factors effect the whole team, including Kimi. They have a great car that is scoring points regularly, they have a great driver, and also a young problematic (non-scoring) driver. So Kimi carries the point scoring burden on his shoulders alone. He is likely conscious that on the back half of the season, the odds are that Lotus will be out-developed, and not as competitive. So he can’t afford to give up any points now. So there was the collision, and afterwards a hard calculated drive to grab any possible point.
Kimi and Sergio… both desperate in Monaco for different reasons… causing them to race harder and take more risks. We should not be too surprised in hindsight.
good comparison between Kimi and Sergio
Don’t forget, Kimi might not be at Lotus next year – maybe he has already decided this, and does not care about where the team are going, that they are at a huge loss, etc. Maybe Kimi is following Allison to the same team?
Vortex, I can’t quite agree with your theory about DC. Yes, he probably still has ties to RB, but I doubt that his comments were fuelled by RB’s agenda. And it’s also not RB’s crying that makes F1 fans livid with the ‘racing’. RB is the most hated team in F1 for winning too much, not many fans are sad to see them suffer.
What makes people cringe is seeing van der Gaarde in a Caterham going faster than the leading Merc and drivers being told that their ‘pace management’ is good. Monaco brutally exposed what is wrong with F1 as all drivers were cruising around lazily refusing to race for fear of catastophic tire degradation. The BBC pundits as a whole were quite miffed about it. Benson’s article wasn’t exactly high praise either.
Danilo, You’re right to call me out on that… I do concede that others feel that same way, so it’s not correct for me to disparage his opinion as merely parroting RB’s pr campaign.
I think that RB’s campaign of whining about the tires is logical. If they were able to get there way, then the WC this year will not be close. So much to gain, little to lose by RB.
But I do find it perplexing that DC and Martin Brundle, are complaining. Given the history of F1, one would expect these gentlemen would not be surprised by the heavy tire degradation at Barcelona (as it happens every year there). Nor by the Monaco GP being primarily about qualifying on Saturday, and followed by relatively few passes on Sunday (again, every year).
I’m looking forward to seeing the reactions to this year’s Canadian GP.
Vortex, their complaining doesn’t come as a surprise to me, because, yes tire degradation was always high at Barcelona and processions are the norm at Monaco, but both these things things come in ridiculously exaggerated form this year.
In the past cheeky minds behind the pitwall came up with four stops at barcelona and made it work, because the driver effectively ran 5 qualifying runs in between. This year four stops wasn’t an option it was a neccessity since the tires barely held together for a dozen laps and even though the drivers were told to go slow so often that at one time we heard an exasperated Lewis wailing that he can’t go any slower without being classified as a glacier.
Same goes for Monaco. Imagine in ’96 Hill would have gone so slow in Monaco that a Minardi or a Forti would have produced the fastest lap in lap six. People would have called their therapists.
It becomes more and more apparent that Pirelli have overshot the target with their aggressive approach and if this scheme of drivers endlessly being told how fast they are allowed to go or how slow they are required to go, I’m afraid F1 will take a massive know.
German TV broadcaster RTL is already starting to complain about massive drops in ratings. And that is the country that already has produced 3 GP wins this year. People start getting po’ed and now the first pundits join in.
The surprise value is limited IMHO
My thoughts exactly on Vettel. I want to like him but I can’t.
I have to say I’m a bit surprised that there aren’t more articles or comments around the web about Lewis beaten for the third straight race.
Very humble and refreshing to see him say that he just isn’t good enough and needs to get his head down and work harder. That’s probably why I like him better than Alonso and Vettel over the years. He should be careful though not to go down a depressing downward spiral. Sometimes it’s good to also find a small excuse so that you preserve some of your confidence/ego.
With all the talk RE engines, how much are they going to save on fuel? I sure I read somewhere that they are using 150L of fuel per race with these engines, and will go down to 100L with the new engines. Assuming these figures are correct, and no extra need for fuel (ie if they bring back testing anytime soon), they they will save 1/3 of their fuel costs.
Is there anybody on here who would know how much of a fuel saving (in currency) this would represent? I’m not saying this would cover the increase in engine costs, but surely at least a decent chunk of it will be saved when you take into account the tests at the beginning of the year, then, lets say, 19 race weekends consisting of 3 practice sessions, quali and race, and maybe the increase in costs won’t be a much of an increase as being projected.
I don’t have cost of fuel but its not like they just buy it in. Ferrari for eg have a team of 40 people designing, making and analysing the Shell V Power fuel they use exclusively for F1 Plus a trackside laboratory.
I’ve been in the lab. Got some expensive gear in there too.
Hi, just a thought, I do wonder if Mercedes tyre problems are a left over from having Jense drive for them for years. Wonder if they developed a car for so many years ensuring they got heat into the tyres, not realising it was more driver centric and it just became a fundemental part of the design philosophy.
As always website is fantastic, my only gripe is the black background makes it a bugger to read on my iPad 🙂 sorry
Hi Jamie
Sorry. We’ll try to get mobile device friendly when we can.
Appreciate comments though
So Renault is not going to drop the price for anybody for 2014 ?
That could be a serious problem for Lotus, but i heard that Ferrari is more than willing to help them out.
“You wanna a cheapa engine? We’ve gotta one justa for you” 🙂
Interesting marketing of the brand
Funny how the attitudes of F1 engine manufacturers is changing
Renault supply a team with maybe 20 engines for a season, at a cost of EUR 20 million to the team. That is EUR 1 million per engine. How are they so expensive? What happens to the engines after the season? Do the team keep what they have paid for? They go back to Renault? They are scrapped? Or do 20 lucky people get an F1 powered Transit van?
Engines reduced to 5 per driver in 2013, for races. Of course there is testing too.
But I take your point. This also includes KERS, not in price at present.
That is even worse then. Assuming a couple of spares that is only 12 or 14 engines. That is about EUR 1.5 million each. I could buy a Bugatti Veyron for EUR 1 million and have change. But can you explain why these engines are so expensive? And seriously, what happens to them at the end of the season?
They often end up as memorabilia, either the whole or in bits – some are kept to run the cars at ‘historic’ race events in the future.
The research and development cost about 150m, so the suppliers are recouping some of that cost too.
They have, according to the story, spent 150MM Euros developing the engine. With four customers, that’s the best part of 40MM EACH. Obviously, that initial investment will be paid down over time, but there will also be further development as well as the actual cost of manufacture of each season’s engines.
I guess that’s why the cost per customer starts at 20MM…