He does say it. Frequently: “He’s my mate’s mate, mate.” And I guess that’s what I like most about Mark Webber. He’s your mate – and he’s a mate of your mates. Which means, in Australian, that he’s usually having a laugh and usually looking out for the next bloke. I’ll miss him in the F1 pit-lane, and on the circuit – but I’ll enjoy watching him next year with Porsche. In the meantime, and in addition to our interview with Mark on the show this week, here, in Mark’s own words, are some pen-portraits of some of the key figures from his career. For more insight from the man himself, visit www.markwebber.comRead more…
In a slightly-changed format for The Racer’s Edge, and to give you more immediate access to what we’re filming and saying, we’re beginning this week with segmented, advance-view YouTube posts of the show. Whilst the full-length iTunes download version, now watched every week by over 60,000 fans around the world, remains unchanged as an on-demand production available late on Thursdays, YouTube viewers can now enjoy the show as “preview” segments, posted virtually as they happen. And don’t worry about keeping track with the show as it evolves: each episode by Thursday night (UK time) will be archived in “playlist” form on our YouTube Channel (www.youtube.com/peterwindsor) for easy, follow-on viewing.
In this first part of Episode 35 we have a lot of fun with Remi Taffin, the Head of Trackside Operations for Renault Sport F1. We caught up with Remi just after he had returned to Viry Chatillon from India and I think the tone of the conversation captures something of what winning a World Championship is all about. In the upcoming segments of the same show, to be posted on Wednesday and then again on Thursday, you’ll also be able to hear from Sir Jackie Stewart, John Surtees (in the studio), the respected Italian journalist, “Pino” Allievi, the GP2 Championship leader, Fabio Leimer and, also, in the F1 Racing studio, from Anthony Rowlinson and Tom Gaymor, the former driver who is now carving a name for himself with Eurosport and as the commentator for F1’s new livesteam, smart-device app.
Here, then, is Part One of Episode 35, The Racer’s Edge. Enjoy. Parts Two and Three will follow over the next 48 hours, together with a YouTube-only bonus Abu Dhabi GP preview video. To stay fully informed about all the new content, remember to subscribe to our YouTube Channel by clicking the (free) subscription widget on the right.
That was the verdict of Valtteri Bottas as he looked back at Suzuka, venue of last Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix. Williams didn’t have a great weekend (again) but that did nothing to dim Valtteri’s enthusiasm for the circuit and for the F1 disciplines in general. We tasted a flavour of that at another great circuit last week when Valtteri chauffeured friends and Williams team partners around the Brands Hatch Indy circuit in a hot little Renault Clio. Mundane the car may be (by F1 standards); perfunctory his lap was not – and I hope we captured a little of its flavour in a short clip within this week’s edition of The Racer’s Edge. In the Teddington TRE studio I was very pleased to welcome back our friend and regular technical expert, Craig Scarborough. There have been plenty of rumours recently about Red Bull possibly running some form of KERS-related traction control; Scarbs tackles this theory head-on as well as providing his own, inimitable, detailed analyses all of the teams’ latest developments. And I’ve always wanted to chat to Alex Lynn, the very fast young Englishman who won prolifically in Formula Renault before graduating to F3. Alex has now won three rounds of the ultra-competitive 2013 Euro F3 Championship and I think you’ll find him refreshing in his approach: he chose to drive for the front-running Italian team, Prema Powersport, (a) because it would leave him with no excuses and (b) because it would take him out of his British comfort zone. He’s risen to the challenge. On top of all that, Alex also finds time to race his father’s ex-Bob Jane 1965 Lotus-Cortina, so there’s no doubt that his heart’s in the right place. It’s been a sad week but I hope you enjoy Episode 33. It’s about people who love our sport and the passion that they engender.
The FIA today announced that the Young Drivers’ Test at Silverstone on July 17-19 would be opened up to regular F1 drivers “to allow teams to use drivers they deem fit to carry out tyre development work in a bid to solve the problems we saw at the British GP”. Even more significantly, the FIA says it will seek approval to “change the Technical Regulations to allow modifications to the specification of the tyres during the season without the unanimous agreement of all competing teams”. This, I think, is to be applauded, bearing in mind that Pirelli wanted to revert to Kevlar constructions after the first Bahrain incident and were forbidden for doing so by the teams, who could not come to a unanimous agreement. (Lotus and Ferrari were going well at the time and understandably did not want to see any major construction changes at that point.) It also seems likely that the ridiculous (current) requirement for Pirelli to define its 2014 tyre specification by September 1, 2013, will be re-written. Less comforting is the closing threat in the FIA statement today: “the FIA has asked Pirelli for an assurance that there will be no repetition of the tyre problems at this weekend’s German GP or at subsequent grand prix (sic).” I may be reading too much into it, but that to me sounds like a governing body potentially wanting to discipline a tyre supplier – the only tyre supplier that would step into the void left by Bridgestone – for making future mistakes. What would happen, for example, if Sebastian Vettel in Germany this weekend suffered exactly the same sort of tyre failure that took him out at the first corner at Abu Dhabi in 2011? Does anyone outside Red Bull Racing and Pirelli know exactly what happened on that occasion? Judging by the number of different opinions in the pit lane to this day, I think not. Surely the role of the FIA at this time – when Pirelli have been subjected to massive criticism from all quarters – is to re-assure the F1 tyre supplier that it has the support of the people who matter. Pirelli have made mistakes – and will continue to make mistakes – because that is the nature of the F1 business. Indeed, it is the nature of life. I make mistakes – plenty of them. The F1 teams make mistakes. The drivers make mistakes. And so, come to think of it, does the FIA. I seem to recall some FIA fuel rigs under-performing a few seasons back – and who ratified the regulations that are now being changed mid-season? Of course Pirelli have had a bunch of problems – but then so did Michelin back in 2005, at Indianapolis. I think it’s interesting that a number of F1 people who now dream of a Michelin return were the same people who refused to race at Indianapolis that year (when some sort of race could have been put together to save Michelin’s face in its biggest market) and who in 2006, at Monza, openly accused Michelin of cheating. Pirelli spend several hundred millions of Euros per year supplying tyres for F1; they don’t have to do it – and I’m sure that at present they wish they weren’t doing it. In the absence of Goodyear, Bridgestone and Michelin, though, the alternative three years ago was for the F1 industry to produce its own tyres, with the vague hope of a sponsor branding the sidewalls. Instead, Pirelli stepped up to the plate and everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief. In my view, it now behoves the F1 industry to stand squarely behind Pirelli, to give them the scope they need to do the job and not to threaten them with some sort of discipline if/when something again goes wrong.
Adrian Sutil was stunning to watch today – a Kimi Raikkonen clone in terms of his cornering technique. This is a smoother, more compliant Sutil than the one we saw at the end of 2012 – and even then he was very consistently quick. The new Sutil is all that and more. Into Turn Six he was able to arc-in a good half-a-car’s width earlier than his team-mate and secure a beautifully-straight exit. It was no surprise to see him run top-three in both dry qualifying sessions. It went away in the wet but that was no surprise. A suspected broken engine seal precluded any wet-weather running on Friday and Adrian, in these early comeback races, is in any event logically going to leave a little bit of margin in the wet.
Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton again showed their timing and class as qualifying came to a boil. Seb, as normal, had refrained from using the options in Q1 and consequently made the show by less than half a second. Mark Webber looked good in Q2. Then, in Q3, when it mattered, Seb reminded us that his prodigious success rate isn’t entirely due to his maximizing Adrian Newey’s downforce in the dry. His was a skillfully-honed pole, under pressure, in the mist. At AMG Mercedes, meanwhile, it was again Nico Rosberg who set the pre-Q3 pace. Lewis would do a time; Nico would better it. Lewis’s driving even began to look like Nico’s. Then, a little earlier than Seb, on the wet track, Lewis was suddenly Lewis again. Beautiful little neutral zones just when he needed them. Just the right amount of steering input versus load. Brilliant.
A big hand, too, for Felipe Massa. Felipe looked very Webber-esque on his quickest lap, flinging the F138 from one side to the other in a way that suggested he had total and utter confidence in Pat Fry’s running gear. Felipe’s edge is ragged; Fernando’s remains more-rounded. They make an interesting combo now that Ferrari’s Number Two is again quick enough to win.
Romain Grosjean, by contrast, is very different from the driver we saw last year. As reactive and on-the-edge as Romain is, “quietening down” was always going to lead to slower lap times. It’s only the vee-drivers – the manipulative drivers like Kimi, Lewis, Seb Vettel, Fernando (when he feels like it), Sutil, Bottas and a couple of others – who can develop maturity without eroding away their natural pace. No doubt Romain will soon let frustration get the better of him and will move the counterweight in the reverse direction; and that’s a good thing, I believe. If he isn’t going to change his technique, then there’s no point in just driving slower, even if he is going to finish more races. Above all, Romain Grosjean is a racing driver, not a professional F1 point-scorer. Let him be, say I.
Over in the GP2 paddock the scene was staggeringly underwhelming. Sweating under a giant tent, the Eu4m teams were separated only by temporary banners. There was no access for the GP2 personnel to the F1 paddock; there were no frills under that fan-cooled tent. Actually, I have nothing against communal garages like this. They used to work a treat both at Watkins Glen and Long Beach – and in Detroit, for that matter. The Monaco car park is too big to be included in the list but Sepang could have been very different if everyone had mucked in together and decided to go “open plan”, with the fans walking down the aisles as they watched the mechanics at work. As it was, Sepang’s GP2 paddock to my eye was just a sad attempt to look like F1’s second cousin twice removed. The awnings were there to give the team names some prominence – but who was going to take photographs?
I tweeted from Melbourne that Red Bull Racing are “potentially” going to try Hitco brakes in the near future. This is still the plan, I understand, although the rain in Melbourne and the obvious chance of rain in Malaysia has made their traditional Brembos the obvious choice in the short-term. It is confusing for mere observers, though, because it’s now well-nigh impossible to identify brake types without close examination of the products in question. Take the situation at AMG Mercedes, for example: Lewis Hamilton has lost no time in persuading the team to switch from their traditional Brembos to Carbone Industrie (the brakes he raced on at McLaren) but Brembo’s Massimo Arduini told me after Malaysian qualifying that Merc had reverted to Brembos “because they are so good in the wet”. As it happens, both Lewis and Nico qualified on Carbon Industries, so, if nothing else, I guess this just underlines how competitive the brake battle has become.More about that in next month’s F1 Racing.
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