08-Mar-10: Renault Hoping to Fight in Top Four

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This is F1 Minute for the 8th March 2010.

The ongoing saga with McLaren’s rear wing continues, as the FIA will now wait until Bahrain to inspect the design. Charlie Whiting was due to visit the factory last week, but travel delays meant that could not happen. Apparently, McLaren and the FIA have corresponded previously, and there was no problem found with the part, but they will confirm this in Bahrain.

Preview quotes are coming thick and fast now, and team principal of Renault, Eric Boullier, has said he hopes the team will be fighting in the top four for the championship. He says their testing performance seemed slow because they ran with heavy fuel loads.

Finally, a quick note that Sir Stirling Moss was injured over the weekend in a lift accident at his home. He fell down three floors after the door opened without the lift present. He suffered broken ankles and bones, underwent some surgery and is now safe and stable. His wife has said he is in high spirits after his fall. We wish him a speedy recovery.

That’s all for today, I’ll be back tomorrow with another F1 Minute.

05-Mar-10: Ian Phillips Leaves Force India F1

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Welcome to F1 Minute for the 5th March 2010.

Force India have confirmed that Ian Phillips, their director of business affairs, will be leaving the team. Phillips has been with them for 19 years, since they were Jordan but is now being let go. The consensus of opinion appears to be that he was not popular after letting slip Fisichella’s move to Ferrari last year before it actually happened, and that people tend to go to Phillips for the gossip. A Force India statement simply read: “The team would like to wish Ian every success in his future endeavours.”

Elsewhere, McLaren have invited the FIA to come to the factory and take a look at their rear wing, after Red Bull queried the design. Charlie Whiting was due to inspect the part today, but didn’t make it to the factory.

Very quickly to finish, Mercedes won the race to get their preview quotes out first, and Schumacher says: “Finally the season will start! I feel like a child looking forward to Christmas.”

That’s all for now, please join me on Monday for another F1 Minute.

24-Feb-10: US F1 Inspected by the FIA

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This is F1 Minute and today is the 24th February 2010.

Today, Autosport is reporting that US F1 are being inspected by the FIA, as the doubts about their being able to join the grid in Bahrain keep on growing. Charlie Whiting has apparently been dispatched to Charlotte to see how they are getting on. The FIA haven’t commented on whether this is fact or not, and there is plenty of other speculation surrounding the team as well, including that main sponsor Chad Hurley may have left for Campos instead, or that they may be trying to merge the new teams together. Given the uncertainty, US F1 driver Jose Maria Lopez has confirmed that his manager is in talks with the new bosses at Campos to try and make sure he has a spot on the 2010 grid.

Elsewhere, James Key, who was the technical director at Force India, has taken up the role at BMW Sauber for this year replacing Willy Rampf. He said: “There is significant potential at Sauber, and with the ever-changing world of F1, I think the team is very well placed at present.”

That’s all for today, please join me tomorrow for another F1 Minute.

Ex-Drivers in the Frame

Charlie Whiting is set to get some extra help during race weekends in 2010, as the stewarding process has changed. Instead of a panel of ever-changing names, there will be a permanent fixture of stewards, including ex-F1 drivers. Alan Donnelly’s role has also been made non-permanent, with a different chairman voted for each Grand Prix.

Credit: GEPA pictures/ Franz Pammer

17-Aug-09: Renault Hearing Gets Underway in Paris

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Today is the 17th August and this is F1 Minute.

The FIA Court of Appeal are gathered in Paris today for the Renault hearing. Bob Bell and Pat Symonds are representing the team and arguing that they should not have been given a suspension from the upcoming European Grand Prix. Charlie Whiting is there on behalf of the FIA, saying the penalty should be upheld, as releasing Alonso from the pits with an unfastened wheel was unsafe and therefore against the rules. We should hopefully find out the result of the hearing tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Luca Badoer is keeping himself busy by running the F60 around their Fiorano test track, with promotional tyres on. Badoer will be taking part in this weekend’s Grand Prix after Schumacher confirmed his neck injury wouldn’t allow him to fill in for Felipe Massa. Ferrari are circumventing the testing ban by shooting a promotional video that allows Luca behind the wheel of this year’s car. He won’t get much useful information from the super-hard tyres, but any chance to turn corners will help the Italian.

That’s all for now, I’ll be back tomorrow with another F1 Minute.

08-Jul-09: FOTA Walk Out of FIA Meeting in Germany

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Welcome to F1 Minute for the 8th July 2009.

Here we go again. FOTA, the FIA, and the five non-FOTA teams gathered today at the Nurburgring to discuss the technical regulations of the sport for next year and onwards. It did not go well.

The FIA’s side: “The eight FOTA teams were invited to attend the meeting to discuss their further proposals for 2010. Unfortunately no discussion was possible because FOTA walked out of the meeting.”

FOTA’s take on things: “During the course of this meeting, the team managers were informed by Mr Charlie Whiting of the FIA that, contrary to previous agreements, the eight FOTA teams are not currently entered into the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship and have no voting rights in relation to the technical and sporting regulations thereof.”

The FIA confirmed that there was progress in terms of the regulations but at this point, the future of Formula 1 becomes an unknown once again.

That’s it for now, I’ll be back tomorrow with another F1 Minute.

FOTA – Press Release

Representatives of all FOTA teams attended a meeting of the Sporting Working Group at the Nürburgring today.

During the course of this meeting, the team managers were informed by Mr Charlie Whiting of the FIA that, contrary to previous agreements, the eight FOTA teams are not currently entered into the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship and have no voting rights in relation to the technical and sporting regulations thereof.

It will be remembered that all eight active FOTA members were included on the “accepted” entry list as endorsed by the FIA World Motor Sport Council (WMSC) and communicated by FIA press statement on June 24.

In light of these claims, the FOTA representatives requested a postponement of today’s meetings. This was rejected on the grounds that no new Concorde Agreement would be permitted before a unanimous approval of the 2010 regulations was achieved.

However, it is clear to the FOTA teams that the basis of the 2010 technical and sporting regulations was already established in Paris.

As endorsed by the WMSC and clearly stated in the FIA press statement of 24 June “the rules for 2010 onwards will be the 2009 regulations as well as further regulations agreed prior to 29 April 2009”. At no point in the Paris discussions was any requirement for unanimous agreement on regulations change expressed. To subsequently go against the will of the WMSC and the detail of the Paris agreement puts the future of Formula 1 in jeopardy.

As a result of these statements, the FOTA representatives at the subsequent Technical Working Group were not able to exercise their rights and therefore had no option other than to terminate their participation.

The FOTA members undertook the Paris agreement and the subsequent discussions in good faith and with a desire to engage with all new and existing teams on the future of Formula One.

Quotes Roundup – Week Ending 1st Feb

The very best from the mouths of those in the know.

Charlie Whiting

The FIA chat to Charlie for clarification…

• “Through the Technical Working Group, we set up a KERS Safety Working Group chaired by BMW. They’ve met quite a few times and they’ve come up with a long list of suggestions, parts of which have already become regulations.” Charlie Whiting
  
• “We gave all the teams the opportunity to submit a list of things they would like to change in order to achieve engine parity, because there seemed to be some disparity between engine performance, which was not intended… The engine manufacturers agreed among themselves that they would not seek any engine parity changes, and they would allow Renault to do something.” Charlie Whiting
  
• “The rule introduced in 2007 was a bad one, and we’ve gone back to the 2006 regulations. The only difference is we intend to implement a minimum time back to the pits. When we deploy the safety car, the message will go to all the cars, which will then have a “safety car” mode on their ECUs.” Charlie Whiting
  

Ron Dennis and the Future

The McLaren chief takes a look at where he’ll be this year…

• “I’ll attend most if not all Grands Prix this coming season, for two reasons… The second reason is that I continue to love the sport of Formula One with every fibre of my being. That’ll never change. So, yes, I’ll be in Melbourne for the 2009 Australian Grand Prix.” Ron Dennis
  
• “Anybody who’s in a position of leadership of a company has to live, sleep and breathe that brand, and I think it would be impossible for me – even though I consider myself extremely disciplined – to be completely impartial regarding all the teams.” Ron on why he won’t head up the FIA
  
• “The DNA of McLaren is in me and I’m in the DNA of McLaren. I simply can’t imagine ever being able to put my mind where it would have to be in order to function effectively in another Formula One environment. It’s as simple as that.” Ron on why he won’t work for another team
  

Ready to Go

Teams continue to gear up for the new season…

• “Some areas of the car matched very well with the new packaging requirements we had, while in other areas it was significantly different. Effectively we have had to redesign quite a bit of the car, and starting in November, that’s been quite a major undertaking.” James Key, Force India Technical Director
  
• “The cost-cutting measures in F1 are useful and appreciated, we can save a lot of money by them,” he said. “For both teams we can save 100 million Euros. Our overall marketing budget usually ranges from 30 to 40 percent of our turnover. We can easily reduce it to 25 and we would still invest much more than most other companies. But this is only a possibility.” Dietrich Mateschitz
• “If all the teams use KERS, they will use it in the same way, in the same places, at the same times, and so there will be no advantage. On the other hand, not having the system will be an enormous handicap.”" Christian Horner
  

27-Jan-09: Charlie Whiting Clarifies ‘09 Rules

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It’s the 27th January 2009 and this is F1 Minute.

The FIA have issued an interview with Charlie Whiting, which clears up some of the confusion over the 2009 regulations. There are two items I want to point out, the first regarding engines. Charlie clarifies that a team will be allowed eight over the course of the year, and won’t be penalised until the ninth is used. The team can use them however they like, there is no three-race ruling.

The second point is about the safety car, and Charlie admits that the recent regulations were a mistake and did not work. Now the pit lane will not close, but each car’s ECU will calculate a minimum lap time, and it’s up to the driver to ensure he doesn’t return to the pits too fast.

Finally, a spokesperson from Honda has said not to worry too much about the end of January deadline. She said: “Don’t focus too much on speculation regarding time frames and deadlines. Work on our race car is progressing well. We’re optimistic but may not be able to say more for some time.”

That’s it for today, please join me again tomorrow for another F1 Minute.

Technical Briefing With Charlie Whiting

2009 REGULATIONS

With the Formula One teams beginning their development programmes for the upcoming season, Charlie Whiting provides an overview of the main regulation changes and their implications.

REVISED AERODYNAMICS

What was the idea behind all the changes we’ll see this year in this area?
CW: This was all a result of the work done by the Overtaking Working Group, as it was called, made up of the technical directors of Renault, Ferrari and McLaren, plus myself. After a lot of research, we came up with a package that gave a following car less disturbance and would make overtaking less difficult.

The key element of this is, first of all, a neutral section of the front wing (the middle half metre of this device is a prescribed section). The incidence of that profile and its position relative to the reference plane are carefully prescribed. It’s the most critical part. The front wing is wider and there are no turning vanes or bargeboards: the area where you can put them has been severely restricted, because there’s only room for very small devices.

Also, the diffuser has been made smaller, and the rear wing is higher but narrower. I can’t go into the specifics of why these things were done, but we arrived at this package by five sessions of wind tunnel work. It’s been carefully thought through. Now, we’ll have to wait and see how it works on the track.

What has been the loss in terms of downforce of these measures?
CW: The target figure was 50% less. But, as ever with these things, one never knows how much the engineers have managed to claw back.

Have some unexpected devices already appeared on the new cars?
CW: You know, we write the rules to enable the teams to design cars as close as possible to the technical spec. They’ve been working in areas they hadn’t previously been trying to work in, so there’s not much we can do about that. I’m confident we’ve achieved a fairly significant reduction in downforce, but that’s not the critical thing: the critical thing is the effects. As long as we have the effects, we should be okay.

SLICK TYRES

Presumably, these effects have to be considered in conjunction with the slick tyres…
CW: Yes. An increase in mechanical grip and a decrease in aero grip were what we wanted. We’ should achieve 6 to 8% more mechanical grip with slick tyres, but it’ll clearly depend on the compound because Bridgestone will provide a range of tyres -4 different ones to be exact. They are still developing these, so we don’t know exactly how it’s going to work out.

Is it true to say that Bridgestone is working on a bigger gap between the available compounds at each race?
CW: Yes. This year, once again, each driver will have to use two different types of slick tyres during the race. We wanted to have a bigger difference between them. Sometimes, in 2008, this gap was a matter of one or two tenths. We thought it would be better if it was bigger. The Bridgestone engineers are working on that.

There seems to have been some talk during the winter tests about this difference being massive…
CW: What happens in winter testing is probably not indicative of what will happen in the warmer conditions of the first four races. It’s something we’ll have to look at, as we certainly don’t want too big a difference between the two types of tyres available at each race. This said, I think it would be to everyone’s benefit if there were a slightly bigger gap.

What would be this ideal gap?
CW: My personal opinion is at least half-a-second. But it’s only a personal opinion. Sometimes, in 2008, the difference between the two types of tyres was negligible wasn’t it? One couldn’t see the difference between the two, really.

KERS SYSTEM

A lot of teams seem just about ready to use their KERS system now. Is it worrying?
CW: The reason for KERS is very clear. We want to showcase technology. I think F1 using this sort of system will help manufacturers. Obviously, Formula 1 is going to be doing something to speed up the development pace on road cars. The other thing, obviously, is overtaking. For a driver to be able to use the extra horsepower at his disposal for overtaking has, I think, the potential to improve racing and that’s what we’re hoping for.

Team are using very different solutions in this area. Is it healthy for Formula 1 to have so many dissimilar ideas for a new technical challenge?
CW: Difficult to say. Presumably the teams involved have done things for their own good reasons. Obviously, the best solution will emerge, eventually. This is what always happens when we have something new. All the teams have significant simulation tools at their disposal. They’ve used these the best way they can to find and arrive at the best technology. There’s no clear leader as we speak but one will emerge, I’m sure.

Also, I think KERS will add significant interest to Formula 1. It’s going to be very interesting to see how the drivers deploy it, because the rules state that the release of the power has to be under the complete control of the driver – that’s the important part.

Some people have raised some concerns about safety with KERS. What has been done, as far as the FIA is concerned, to make sure the system won’t cause any problems?
CW: “Through the Technical Working Group, we set up a KERS Safety Working Group chaired by BMW. They‘ve met quite a few times and they’ve come up with a long list of suggestions, parts of which have already become regulations, and some of which will form the basis of a comprehensive document we’ll circulate to all circuits and tracks hosting a grand prix.

The teams are taking this very responsibly for their own safety, of course. They’re also looking at how the marshals will respond to broken-down cars. There will be things like the KERS status warning light that will be on all cars. Marshals are going to be educated by the documentation we’ll provide.

Also, the systems themselves should be safe. If there’s a risk, it should be clear to a marshal who walks up to the car. He should approach the vehicle, look at the KERS status light and, if it is in the wrong state, he shouldn’t touch the car. Also, people working on the track are being briefed about how to pick up parts, which will be clearly identified by colour coding. If they potentially contain high voltage, they have to know how to move them. They will also wear gloves, which are good for a thousand volts.

What about safety in the design of the KERS components and their integration in the cars?
CW: The teams are coming up with this themselves. All the electronics experts are talking to one another and coming up with various ways to make sure they don’t get into any kind of difficulties.

UPGRADED ENGINES

There’s also some king of uncertainty recently about the number of engines the teams will be able to use over the season…
CW: It’s eight engines for the whole year. A driver will only incur a penalty if he uses a ninth engine. So the teams can use the engines as they like. There’s no three consecutive race rule because there doesn’t seem to be a need for it any longer. The engines will not have to do three complete events now.

In the past, as you know, the two-race engine was used only on Saturdays and Sundays. Now, for 17 races, the eight engines will have to do the three days of each grand prix. What the teams will do is to have a Friday engine that’ll probably do the first four races or something of that nature. They’ll then take the engine out and use another one for Saturday and Sunday. All we’ve got to do, – it’ll be extra work – is to make sure that these engines remain sealed and are untouched.

So, once you’ve started the event with one engine, you will be able to change it whenever?
CW: Exactly!

In terms of performance gains, can you say what has been allowed for the teams, especially for Renault?
CW: As you know, I can’t really give you confidential information. But we gave all the teams the opportunity to submit a list of things they would like to change in order to achieve engine parity, because there seemed to be some disparity between engine performance, which was not intended. Then, with Honda’s withdrawal – they appeared to be the ones down on power – the engine manufacturers agreed among themselves that they would not seek any engine parity changes, and they would allow Renault to do something. It’s what I would describe as a minor upgrade. It’s a one-off thing; it’s not an on-going thing. Now, teams have submitted their list; we’ve agreed to it and that’s the end of it until 2012.

SAFETY CAR RULES

It was difficult to follow some races in 2008 because of the safety car rules. Will you change them this year?
CW: Yes. The rule introduced in 2007 was a bad one, and we’ve gone back to the 2006 regulations. The only difference is we intend to implement a minimum time back to the pits. When we deploy the safety car, the message will go to all the cars, which will then have a “safety car” mode on their ECUs. As soon as that message gets to the car, it’ll know where it is on the circuit, and it’ll calculate a minimum time for the driver to get back to the pits. The driver will have to respect this and the information will be displayed on his dashboard.

If you remember, the reason we closed the pit entry was to remove the incentive for the driver to come back to his pit quickly. That’s gone now, as you won’t be able to reach the pits any quicker than your dashboard display allows you to.

PRIVATE TESTING AND USE OF WIND TUNNELS

What other measures have been taken recently in order to reduce costs?
CW: What we’ve done, as far as regulations are concerned, is to slash the maximum amount of testing from 30 000 to 15 000 kilometres. Moreover, there will be no in-season testing. That means no testing between seven days before the first race and 31st December of the same year. So no testing whatsoever except for eight days of aero testing in a straight line.

This might be a big problem for young drivers who want to get into F1. They won’t be able to get any kind of training…
CW: There’s provision for a few days of young driver training as well.

Finally, there’s a big cut in wind tunnel testing…
CW: That’s right. No more than forty hours per week for each team.

Why was this measure taken and what does it imply?
CW: This is simply because some teams were running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week with three shifts -including model makers- and all that sort of thing. Quite clearly, it’s very hard for a team that hasn’t got that kind of resources to keep up. Forty hours a week seems to be something everybody can cope with.

Will you be able to check that nobody uses a sub-contractor to do extra work in a private facility?
CW: We’re obviously looking into all those things: if it emerged that anyone had been doing something underhand, they would be in very serious trouble. Also, we’re putting measures into place in order to make sure that people don’t have any incentive to do so.

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