F1 Insiders Est. 2012
Contributors: Alistair Hunter, John Myburgh
Formula 1 2013 Round 1 – Melbourne Circuit:
The Rolex Australian Grand Prix is held on the Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, street circuit located three kilometers south of the central business district of Melbourne around Albert Park Lake. The circuit is also referred to as Albert Park by most people in Formula 1.
Below follows an analysis provided by German publication AMuS and kindly translated by Patrick Heemstra. Paraphrased by thejudge13 and John Myburgh.
The ‘perfect lap’ is defined as one where the best 3 sector times from any driver are added together to give the ultimate lap time at a given race occasion. So before the cars hit the track in Melbourne here’s one last look at what we can glean from Barcelona test 2.
Barcelona was the last time Formula 1 cars are driven in anger until Albert Park in around 10 days time, and whilst the past week or so was a case of smoke and mirrors (to be expected) there was quite a lot to be learnt once you dug up under the surface. Some teams struggled, whilst others prospered, and it creates a very interesting picture ahead of the first race of the season. So without further ado, let’s grab a spade and see what we can uncover.
The stand out performers from the second test had to be Mercedes. Yes I will be the first to admit, I was one of the big detractors over the winter period, criticising their management structure and how they were so drastically reorganising the team so close to the start of the season. But if the past few weeks are to go by, the W04 does seem to be a very competent car indeed. Whether showing front running pace for the majority of testing has shown the team’s hand far too soon is another matter, but when Rosberg went 1.6 seconds faster than his Qualifying time last year in Barcelona, it shows progress has been very good over the winter at Brackley.
| Barcelon pre-season test 1: Day 3 | |||||
| Driver | Car | Best time | Laps | Diff | T |
| 1. Fernando Alonso | Ferrari F138 | 1’21.875 | 97 | S | |
| 2. Nico Hulkenberg | Sauber C32 | 1’22.160 | 91 | 0.285 | S |
| 3. Romain Grosjean | Lotus E21 | 1’22.188 | 119 | 0.313 | S |
| 4. Nico Rosberg | Mercedes W04 | 1’22.611 | 108 | 0.736 | M |
| 5. Pastor Maldonado | Williams FW35 | 1’22.675 | 79 | 0.800 | S |
| 6. Valtteri Bottas | Williams FW35 | 1’22.826 | 68 | 0.951 | S |
| 7. Jenson Button | McLaren MP4-28 | 1’22.840 | 71 | 0.965 | H |
| 8. Adrian Sutil | Force India VJM06 | 1’22.877 | 78 | 1.002 | S |
| 9. Mark Webber | Red Bull RB9 | 1’23.024 | 108 | 1.149 | M |
| 10. Jean-Eric Vergne | Toro Rosso STR8 | 1’23.366 | 106 | 1.491 | S |
| 11. Max Chilton | Marussia MR02 | 1’25.690 | 58 | 3.815 | S |
| 12. Giedo VD Garde | Caterham CT03 | 1’26.177 | 93 | 4.302 | S |
Not big on testing times, but Jenson on the hard tyre looks good. Sutil may be a little disappointing but its been a while and Caterham bottom of the pile again. TJ13 believes and stated for some time Marussia will overtake Caterham in 2013 and those colours are still nailed to the mast.
Tony F is AWOL and has apparently just spent £70m on 2 footballers for QPR (acquisition fee and wages over the life of their contracts). His tweets are mostly Air Asia and QPR related too.
Red Bull
I don’t know what this tells us about the team but Red Bull tweeted today, “Most obvious sign of changeover from Seb to Mark? Car’s parked on other side of the garage today… “.
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Lack of effort
The Red Bull launch has been received in a number of different ways. The preview video, ‘The rhythm of the factory’ (check it out in F1 Forensic) seems to have gone down quite well. This was the pre-cursor to the big live unveil. I have spoken to Christian, and he accepts the reveal of the car in the video could have been better – more like in the TJ13 video – with some more effort from the RB graphics team, and the matter has been duly noted for 2014.
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Marko Watch: For those new to TJ13, we have fans in 132 different countries on the look out for the regular and dastardly mischief making in which Helmut Marko and Niki Lauda frequently engage.
All is not well for Helmut, he is beginning to wear the cut a forlorn figure in present times. Last week Lauda Watch saw Niki rustling up a mean looking posse to confront the good Austrian doctor. As if that wasn’t enough for Marko to contend with – he needs to watch his back. There’s dissent within his own ranks.
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I have now put 2 RSS feeds at the bottom of the right hand bar for those of you who know how to use them for updates. Today thejudge13 in 18 weeks and 2 days will see its 100,000 visitor. Thank you all. Any comments you have please feel free to add them.
I have been trying different styles of content to see what fits best – so we’re on this journey together.
Alonso and Politics: You have to love Ferrari and when I reported there was a new communications man in charge, Renato Bisignani, I was concerned we’d see a drastic change. I need not have been worried. This went out on their website today – I’ll publish it word for word
Madonna di Campiglio, 17 January –Alonso, politics and rivals: a lot has been said about this triumvirate during 2012 and someone – over the other side of the Alps – has felt the need to kick off 2013 on the same note. Clearly, the media who do their job and usually enjoy these verbal skirmishes, made the most of the situation, repackaging some of these now classic questions for Fernando.
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Where exactly are Mercedes up to? According to Schumacher, money was “a factor” in Mercedes’ F1 team’s failure to succeed during his three year comeback to F1. It is clear to the world that the ‘Silver Arrows’ team spends about 100m euro’s less than Red Bull each year and at least the same less than Ferrari.
Schumacher tells Auto Motor und Sport: “It’s a factor. Over the years Red Bull built an infrastructure and has a budget giving them the possibility to respond to anything in the best possible way. This is nothing less than what we had at Ferrari”.
Mercedes, have never been higher than fourth in the constructors’ championship since the Brawn buyout in 2010 and their Chairman has strongly denied they will now pump in more funding for 2013 and beyond. Of course Lewis Hamilton has signed for the team and claims he wants to help turn them into a title winning outfit.
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thejudge13 archive: There have been a number of questions about Nikki Lauda, his time at Jaguar, why Mercedes recruited him…I did a couple of articles around the time of the announcement so if you’ve joined the site since then, here they are. “Lauda: Ross Brawn’s new boss” I wrote this about 2am on October 2nd after reading an online article on a German newspaper site – that was going out the following day. The story hadn’t been picked up even on titter to my recollection.
This was a part 2 follow up – written when I was more alert (the next day) and had time to reflect on the implications. “How Lauda got the top job in Mercedes F1” – my conclusions are now quite interesting post Haug’s departure.
Barcelona shafts Valencia: The circuit de Catalunya has over the past 2 years been making consistent noises about how much money it is losing which resulted in an initial agreement with Valencia, also under big financial pressure, to alternate the Spanish GP between them – al la Hockenheim and Nurburgring.
This deal has been agreed with Ecclestone clearly as Valencia’s extended contract signed in 2009 meant they would remain on the calendar until 2014. So either they are paying out $30m a year in hosting fee’s and not having a race – or the Spanish GP sharing with Barcelona has been agreed with FOM.
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thejudge13 archive: I was reminded yesterday by Kevin McCauley that there are new readers coming to the site all the time. There are some articles I have written since the launch of the site nearly 13 weeks ago that they may not be aware of. A lot of the articles though are part of the daily news I’m afraid, hence why I have put a search bar on the right hand side.
If you type “Mallya” into the search bar for example – all the articles that have that string “Mallya” within them (main body not just headings) will be presented for you. However, every few days I’ll put a complete feature from the past just above “On this day in F1” for those of you who missed them. Today’s archive article, “F1: Breeding ground for road car technology? No chance“.
