Friday notes - Renault
The Renault F1 Team completed a trouble-free opening day of practice for the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix in the humid heat of Sepang today. As will become the norm in 2006, running was extremely restricted in the opening practice session, and only marginally less so in the second, as teams limited their mileage in order to find the most effective compromise between the running required for tyre and set-up evaluations, and economising engine mileage.
The two Renault drivers completed just installation laps in the opening session, before one short run and one long run in the second hour of practice. They immediately found the R26 to be well-balanced and performing well in the high-speed corners, while the Michelin tyres seemed well suited to the tropical conditions, delivering very consistent performance. The set-ups still require fine-tuning this evening, but the team has had a promising start to the weekend, with the cars finishing well up the timesheets.
Fernando Alonso: We did our job today and the R26 seems competitive. Sepang is a great circuit to drive, one of my favourites, and I was very happy to be out there this afternoon. The heat is really difficult – not just in the car, but in the garage when you stop and there is no ventilation while you are in the car. We have made the usual modifications, but as a driver, you just need to be ready for it, and well prepared. The car is easy to drive here, but we still need more grip and some small changes to the balance. But I think we have a good starting point for the rest of the weekend.
Giancarlo Fisichella: I didn't put a clean lap together on new tyres today, but the car was very consistent indeed on the long run this afternoon. We made some adjustments during the second session, and we have got more to do tonight, but we are definitely moving in the right direction. The car is very stable in the high speed corners, but we need to eliminate a little oversteer in the slower parts. Overall, though, the Renault is consistent and quick here. I am happy this afternoon.
Pat Symonds, Executive Director of Engineering: We once again limited our running owing to the increased mileage required in the new qualifying session. We fully achieved our objectives for the day, with both R26 chassis enjoying a consistent handling balance from the first run onwards. The engines and tyres are both performing well in the very hot conditions.
Denis Chevrier, Head of Trackside Engine Operations: Engine builders like nothing more than trouble-free days at the track, and that's exactly what we experienced in Sepang. The RS26 V8 is running well, and as usual, our Friday programme consisted of fine-tuning the mapping, and ensuring the engines were coping with the demands of the high temperatures. We obtained the answers we wanted, and have experienced no incidents during the day. It has been a solid start to the weekend.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
2006 Malaysian Grand Prix - Race 2/18
- Thread starter Flibster
- Start date
More options
View all postsFriday notes - BMW
A good start for the BMW Sauber F1 Team to the PETRONAS Malaysian Grand Prix in the sauna of Sepang. All three drivers ran well as we concentrated on tyre evaluation.
Jacques Villeneuve: It was a pretty good start for us today. To be honest, much better than I expected. The balance of the F1.06 was really good, which is very important so early in the weekend. I had a completely troublefree day and it was fun to drive with the high level of grip available.
Nick Heidfeld: Our first day of practice was fine, so I'm quite happy. This afternoon it wasn't necessary for me to do a lot of running, because the balance of the car felt good straight away. Sepang is a circuit I really enjoy, driving is so much fun here.
Robert Kubica: We gathered plenty of data today, especially this afternoon when we did some race simulation, and obviously that is the most important thing on a Friday. Sepang is quite a difficult circuit, with a lot of long corners with different lines, but I think after five laps I felt quite familiar with it.
Mario Theissen (BMW Motorsport Director): This first practice day went as expected. Robert did 59 laps and most of the set-up work, and as in Bahrain he did a good job. The only problem we had all day was a slight glitch with the clutch as he was leaving the pits on his last stint this afternoon. We now need to make our tyre decision and to work on set-up for Saturday, and thanks to our reliability today we have plenty of data to enable us to optimise the cars.
Willy Rampf (Technical Director Chassis): Today we concentrated completely on tyre evaluation. Robert was doing the long-runs, so we were able to collect a lot of data which we now have to analyse in order to make the best decision for qualifying and the race.
Friday notes - McLaren
Team McLaren Mercedes drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya ended Friday afternoon's free practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix at the Sepang circuit in fifth and 14th positions respectively, with ambient temperatures reaching 37 degrees centigrade and track temperatures of 44 degrees. Kimi completed 16 laps and set a time 1:36.132 whilst Juan Pablo did 16 laps with a best time of 1:37.463. In the morning Juan Pablo had been fourth fastest with a 1:36.709. Kimi did not set a time in the session due to a data logging problem on his car. The afternoon session finished with Team McLaren Mercedes drivers Kimi Raikkonen and Juan Pablo Montoya setting the sixth and 15th fastest time of the day.
Kimi Raikkonen: "I am happy with the set up of the car and we managed to complete our programme today despite the small problem this morning with the data logging, where the team decided to cancel my run, whilst there was nothing wrong with the car. The Michelin tyres are working well and I think we look strong compared to our main rivals but we will have to see what happens tomorrow."
Juan Pablo Montoya: "I am pretty happy with the car this weekend. This morning we completed one run to see how the car felt and this was pretty good. This afternoon we concentrated on the race set up. There is still a little bit of work to do tomorrow with understanding the car a little better, but the whole package has improved from last weekend. Despite stalling at the end of the grid in the second session and a spin later on we managed to complete our programme and we will see if we have done enough in qualifying tomorrow."
Ron Dennis: "A relatively uneventful first day of practice and the team now looks forward to tomorrow's qualifying session."
Norbert Haug: "A normal Friday practice session where we completed out planned programme and made good progress with the set up of the cars for the weekend."
Friday notes - Ferrari
Jean Todt: "I am happy to be here in Malaysia, a country which in recent years I have really learnt to love and that I find fascinating. As usual, Friday is mainly for comparing the two kinds of Bridgestone tyres we have available. Today this work was done mainly by Felipe, because, unfortunately, he had to fit a fresh engine on his car. The track results seem to have confirmed the considerable potential that was shown by the cars and the Bridgestone tyres in Bahrain and during the winter testing. We're competitive in race trim and we count on looking good in qualifying tomorrow as well in that I think that, as on the Sakhir circuit last week, it's going to be a close battle for pole. As usual here in Malaysia the weather conditions are tough for the cars, the drivers and for the people working in the pits."
Michael Schumacher: "In general we're pleased with the way things went during free practice. Towards the end of the session we managed to improve the balance of the car. As far as times are concerned, apart from what the third drivers do, who do a different job compared to the others, I think that the situation is quite clear. I could have been a bit quicker with my new tyres when I went out on my first run, but I lost a lot of time in a corner of the third sector. The consistency of the Bridgestone tyres looks pretty good, which of course is very important. The actual time recorded is of less importance at this stage because the times improve as the weekend progresses. I reckon that we're competitive and that, like in Bahrain, here in Malaysia we can fight for pole position and for a win on Sunday."
Felipe Massa: "I think it went very well. We worked for the race by doing quite a few long runs. The car went well both with used and new tyres and I am very pleased with our race pace. In my opinion we have a good car for the race. Qualifying will of course be a bit difficult for me because I have to pay the price for the engine change, but considering the pace we had during the long run, I think we're in good shape for a good result on Sunday."
Ross Brawn: "I'd say that it was a good day during which we made a really extensive assessment of the two Bridgestone tyres we had available. The overall balance of the 248F1 is very good. There are a couple of details we need to sort out but we've got plenty of time to do it. The drivers were quite happy with the cars that looked very consistent."
Friday notes - Toyota
After its disappointing performance last week in Bahrain, Panasonic Toyota Racing today began its quest for improvement during free practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix. On a hot but cloudy day at the Sepang circuit near Kuala Lumpur, Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli put in their first laps of what promises to be a challenging weekend. Both drivers put in more laps than usual for a Friday as Toyota seeks to learn how to make the most of its new package. Ralf and Jarno completed their programmes of tyre comparison and set-up work and will now look to continue the learning process over the rest of the weekend.
Jarno Trulli worked hard to gain information to help Toyota progress from last week's performance.
Jarno Trulli: "We spent the two sessions trying to collect more data on our new package. Our grip level is not yet there and although we look slightly more competitive than in Bahrain we still have work to do. Our challenge is to get the car and tyres working together. For that we need to carry out a detailed analysis, but of course there has been no chance to test since Bahrain so we will have to continue that work this weekend. I am sure we have not seen the true potential of our car yet. We understand the problem but the solution is not straightforward. We are obviously looking to have a better race than we had in Bahrain but the important thing for us is to spend these early race weekends getting to the root of the problem."
After the difficulties of Bahrain, Ralf Schumacher was happier with his TF106 around the Sepang circuit.
Ralf Schumacher: "Today we completed more running than usual because we are still trying to find out how to make the most of our package. We've been struggling for grip and the Bahrain weekend showed us we still have a way to go. But today the car felt much better and the grip level has increased quite a lot. The traction and the tyres seem to be working better with this track surface and the heat. I was caught in traffic on my last run so we could have further improved our time. Our aim this weekend has to be to collect information for future races but we have already collected some useful data. So that's an encouraging start."
It was a hard day of preparation for Panasonic Toyota Racing in preparation for Sunday's Malaysian GP.
Dieter Gass – Chief Engineer Race and Test: "Today we made a step forward from what we saw in Bahrain. We've done a lot of work on the tyre and the set-up and we've collected some good information, especially from the tyres. For tomorrow we will try to improve the set-up of the cars. We did more running than we normally do because we saved some mileage last weekend which we can use here to get the maximum information possible. Given all that, we have plenty of information with which to make the tyre choice. It's still a bit early to say how much the conditions here will affect our performance. But given that we have struggled to get temperature into the tyres the higher track temperature should help us."
Friday notes - Bridgestone
Bridgestone-shod Alex Wurz set the fastest time of the day this morning at the Sepang International Circuit as the Formula One teams prepared for round two of the FIA Formula One World Championship in Malaysia. As a Friday test driver, Wurz has the benefit of running without the need to preserve his engine and carries out essential tyre assessment work on behalf of his team. His Williams teammates consequently did not run in the first session and waited until the afternoon practice before venturing out of the garage for a limited number of laps. Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro's Michael Schumacher and Felipe Massa were also up with the front runners in today's sessions, setting the tone for the weekend ahead. MF1 Racing made use of their Friday test driver Giorgio Mondini, the Swiss driver putting in 22 and 20 laps in the respective sessions on his F1 debut.
Hisao Suganuma, Bridgestone Motorsport Technical Manager: "As is the case on a Friday the track conditions took a while to clean up but the grip improved towards the end of the session. WilliamsF1's Alex Wurz used the session well to get some consistent and competitive runs in, setting the fastest lap of the session in the process which will be encouraging for the Bridgestone runners. The afternoon session produced more action from the teams and the improved conditions allowed for a fuller assessment of the teams' primary and option specifications. Although we still have tomorrow's session it looks as if we will see a cross section of our tyre specifications in the race on Sunday. We expected hot conditions for this race weekend and it seems as if the specifications we have brought will be competitive this weekend."
Friday notes - Michelin
Honda test driver Anthony Davidson was the quickest Michelin runner on the opening day of the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Englishman posted a 1:35.041s lap in the second free practice session, which took place in hot, muggy conditions similar to those that are likely to prevail during Sunday's 56-lap race. Robert Kubica was third on aggregate while world championship leader Fernando Alonso was fourth overall and quickest of the regular race drivers, a fraction ahead of Kimi Raikkonen and Giancarlo Fisichella.
Honda test driver Anthony Davidson and MF1 racer Christijan Albers were both fined for speeding in the pit lane this morning.
Davidson missed a large part of the day's second free practice session after spinning off the circuit at Turn 14.
David Coulthard and Felipe Massa will be docked 10 places on Sunday's grid after making unscheduled engine changes. Giancarlo Fisichella and Jacques Villeneuve also have fresh V10s this weekend. As they failed to finish the previous race in Bahrain, however, the regulations absolve them of any penalty.
Giorgio Mondini conducted testing duties for the MF1 team today. The Swiss driver is one of several youngsters MF1 intends to evaluate during grand prix weekends.
Red Bull driver Vitantonio Liuzzi spun into the pit lane entrance during today's second free practice session, but didn't make contact with the barriers.
Nick Shorrock, Michelin Formula One director: "Conditions were cooler than we anticipated during the first free practice session, which caused softer compounds to grain a little, but that problem went away this afternoon when the heat returned to its customary ferocity.
"As we saw in Bahrain, the level of competition promises to be extremely high this season and today's closely-matched times reflect as much. Our partners have completed a number of useful long runs, however, and that has given us an excellent platform for the balance of the weekend. We have brought seven different types of tyre to Sepang and, on the basis of what we have seen so far, I expect a number of them to be used in Sunday's race."
Midland calls on tougher restrictions for Toro Rosso
The biggest issue on the opening day of practice at the Bahrain grand Prix a week ago was that the new Toro Rosso was, as expected with the restricted V10, quicker than a lot of their rivals, and according to our spies in Bahrain, after some quick times and a good long run from Liuzzi were put on the board at the end of day one, MF1 team principal Colin Kolles asked the FIA to hand out tougher restrictions to the Cosworth V10 powerplant.
While many thought that this would be the case if the Cosworth proved to be remarkably quicker, Midland was not alone in their complaint with other manufacturers also backing Kolles up including Mario Theissen from BMW…
“We measured on a V10 with a rev limit of 16,70p rpm and an air restrictor of 77 mm around 800 hp. For sure this engine has a 20% better torque,” he said.
However, Toro Rosso team Principal, Franz tost kept his cool in the situation and blamed the situation on his rivals lack of track time…
“How can they complain? We tested in Bahrain in February and did a lot of laps on Friday. If the others stay in their garage all the time they only have themselves to blame for not producing good laptimes.”
Briatore calls for qualifying tweak
Renault team boss Flavio Briatore is pushing for a change to Formula One's new qualifying rules after just one race of the season.
The Italian, who was a prime mover in the decision to drop the single-lap format, said in Malaysia that the new rules introduced in Bahrain last week are a big improvement. But he believes the third part of the session should be simplified.
"I'm not happy with the first part of qualifying three," he said. "It's confusing. Firstly there should be a times window on the TV because it is difficult to follow. It's hard for the spectators to understand why they are going round and round."
Briatore said that the reactions from audiences has been positive, but believes that the rule that dictates cars start the final part of the session on race fuel levels should be dropped.
As things stand, the cars spend the first part of the session lapping constantly to burn off fuel and then go for a time.
Briatore believes a simple rule-change would spice up the battle for pole position.
"One by one is boring. I don't want that. But I believe in qualifying three you should have 15 minutes to set your time. You put as much fuel in the car as you want - say 70 kilos – and then at the end the car goes into Parc Ferme and however much you have left is the amount you start the race with."
There is a precedent for changing qualifying during the season. Last year an aggregate system was dropped in favour of a single run.
"I believe it is possible to change," said Briatore. "We just have to sit down and decide. Let's see. Bernie [Ecclestone] is the first to understand these things."
Briatore: no rush over Fisichella's future
Giancarlo Fisichella has been told that he has at least until the start of the European season to convince Renault bosses that he is worth keeping for next year.
The Italian endured a frustrating 2005 campaign with the team, as poor reliability wrecked his chances of fighting for the title, and had hoped that the new season would bring improved fortunes.
However, his year got off to the worst possible start when engine problems ruined his Bahrain Grand Prix weekend and left him unable to show what he could really do.
Renault boss Flavio Briatore insists, however, that a decision about Fisichella's future has not been taken yet - and claims the team are not in a rush to choose a replacement for Fernando Alonso.
"We have a very competitive team, so we need to find the right drivers," said Briatore at Sepang. "We'll see what happens.
"Fisichella's problems in Bahrain were completely our fault, we blame ourselves. We'll see how he is after three or four races. It is his second year with the team after a difficult season last year. We have plenty of time.
"We also have (test driver, Heikki) Kovalainen and we are pleased with him. Anything can happen."
Schumacher to change engine too?
Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher was expecting his engine to be completely fine. His team mate, Felipe Massa, had to change his engine already as it would probably not last until the end of the race in Malaysia. After Friday's practice Schumacher got doubts about his engine too.
"It could be possible that we have to change our engine, but we hope we don't have to take these actions. On Saturday evening we will know more…" commented Schumacher in Malaysia.
If Schumacher will need to change his engine Red Bull driver Christian Klien is the only one left at the grid that will use his Ferrari V8 engine two races. Coulthard had an engine failure right after the finish of the Bahrain Grand Prix and Massa changed his engine before the start of the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend.
So..50% failure rate after 1 race...
Could be 75% after tomorrow...
Standard ECUs facing opposition
Formula One's manufacturers have expressed their reservations about a future switch to standard ECUs in the sport.
Following a series of meetings between the carmakers and the FIA in Bahrain to discuss the issue, high level sources have revealed that the standard ECU issue is now the major hurdle to be overcome to head off the threat of a breakaway championship.
But even though FIA president Max Mosley is understood to be unwilling to back down in his plans for the ECU, the manufacturers have said they are still not convinced it is the right way for F1.
BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen said: "As we understand, the original aim was to rule out artificial driver aids and we fully support that, even if road cars have it, we want to see the best drivers out here and want them to cope with the car at the limit and that is certainly more exciting without driver aids.
"We have had talks between the manufacturers and some teams, I think it was a year ago - at least a year ago – about how to achieve that, and we came to the conclusion that it should be possible to do that with a controlled section, accessible to the FIA, to make sure that there are not artificial driver aids.
"We would prefer to go along this route because today there are not the mechanical parts, components, development on one hand and the electronics components on the other hand. Virtually everything comes with its electronics and virtually every functionality is controlled electronically.
"So in order to have the possibility to test new functionalities, we would need to have access to the electronics and then you are immediately down to the question: what is standardised?"
Toyota president John Howett added: "I think in principle, most of the manufacturers would prefer freedom with the ECU, at least the actual cost of the ECU itself is not of an extreme magnitude. OK, one would probably need to be more draconian in restricting electronic capacity to significantly reduce the cost area.
"I think there is an issue of actually ensuring that there are no artificial aids which are intended to be eliminated, such as traction control in the future, and therefore by having a standard ECU it may make it very easy to police and avoid any rumours of a certain team having this capability or not.
"I believe that's one of the reasons that the FIA wishes to integrate the actual standard ECU, but I think as a preference we would prefer to keep freedom."
Honda Racing technical director Geoff Willis also claimed it would be difficult for the teams to integrate standard ECUs into their cars in time for the start of 2008.
"Changing ECUs and changing all the integrated code with it and the software the team uses is a very big challenge and there's not a lot of time between now and the beginning of 2008," he explained.
"And none of us would want to be starting on January 1, 2008 with a new system. We want to be trying to test it earlier so I think there's a pretty tight timescale."
No plans to replace Schumacher's engine
Ferrari are confident they will not need to change the engine on Michael Schumacher's car ahead of the Malaysian Grand Prix, even though they are monitoring its performance carefully.
Concerns about Schumacher's engine have been evident at Sepang following the failures suffered by Felipe Massa and David Coulthard's V8 power-units in Bahrain.
But despite rumours spreading around the paddock that Schumacher's engine could need to be replaced as well, a Ferrari spokesman has told autosport.com that the team are content with the situation at the moment.
"There is no problem with Michael's engine," said the spokesman. "It is sleeping well right now in his car.
"Of course we are monitoring the situation - it is quite natural when you have failures like Felipe's and Coulthard's. But there is no discussion on replacing Michael's engine."
Schumacher himself said earlier that the team were looking closely at his engine as a precaution, to ensure there were no risks of a failure in qualifying or the race.
"At the moment there isn't a real problem, but we'll check it and reflect over it. We'll know with certainty tomorrow," he said.
"Let's put it this way: there is a theoretical possibility we'll have to change the engine, but I hope it won't happen."
Willis: rear wing rules not tight enough
Honda Racing's technical director Geoff Willis believes the regulations concerning rear wings should be tightened up, to ensure teams do not use parts that flex at high speed for performance benefit.
The matter of flexing rear wings has been on the agenda for the past week, after claims at Bahrain that Ferrari's rear wing could be flexing at high speed even though it was found to be fully legal when stationary in the garage.
Following the close examination of the Ferrari rear wing in Bahrain, FIA technical delegate Charlie Whiting conducted further tests of the Renault and Honda Racing wings in Sepang on Friday.
Willis claims, however, that the existing tests may not be sufficient to prevent such flexing from happening.
"The issue about the flexibility of rear wings is a difficult one, because clearly all engineering structures do deflect," the Honda technical director said.
"The question is whether you are allowed to make performance benefit from that, and the FIA has clarified on several occasions that you are not.
"The difficulty is what sort of a test you can come up with that is safe to perform in parc ferme conditions. The rear wings do have very significant loads on them, which you probably wouldn't want to place on the car in parc ferme - in case they fell off and hurt somebody."
The focus on rear wings is believed to revolve around the possibility that careful designs could allow the gap between the two top elements of the wing to close-up at high speed - therefore greatly reducing drag.
Willis believes that new regulations may be needed to ensure teams do not get around the regulations in this manner.
Brawn: current wing tests are sufficient
Ferrari's technical director Ross Brawn does not believe there needs to be a change in how rear wings are tested for flexibility, despite growing calls for the FIA to impose tighter restrictions.
Rear wing deflection has become a hot topic since last week's Bahrain Grand Prix, after Renault's Pat Symonds and others suggested that the wing on the Ferrari 248 F1 may meet the letter of the law, but was not within its spirit.
Deflection is currently measured by applying loads at certain points on the rear wing, but Ferrari's rivals have pointed out this doesn't mean that the wing cannot deflect between those points.
The Ferrari rear wing was given the all-clear by FIA delegate Charlie Whiting, and Brawn was adamant that the current tests used to verify the wing legality are accurate.
Furthermore, the Briton insisted that any component is designed right up to the very limit allowed in the regulations, with rear wings being no different.
Asked about the accuracy of the testing method employed by the FIA, Brawn said: "It's accurate enough. It's a device, they put a load on it, and they measure the deflection. It's an accurate enough process, and we all have a set of rules that we comply to.
"Within the spirit of the regulations it's up to the F1 teams to take the maximum advantage as they can from the regulations. It's been like that ever since I've been involved in F1, and any team that wants to be competitive has to take that approach. And that's everything.
"You run within a one kilo of the weight limit. You don't run 10kgs within the weight limit because you want to be safe, you run one kilo within the weight limit.
"The FIA defines how stiff they want the wing to be, and you make it that stiff, or slightly stiffer.
"That's how it's laid out in the regulations now, and we may well see some new tests evolve in the next few races. But I think what we have now is accurate."
However, with calls for the FIA to adopt stricter tests, Brawn said he expects the FIA to give the teams ample notice should they choose to introduce new methods, and not make such changes during a Grand Prix weekend.
"They're entitled to change the regulations any time they want, which may be the case," Brawn said.
"Maybe they decide that the wings are evolving in a way they don't like, and they'll change the regulations again. But that's their prerogative.
"In theory, they can change that today. The trouble is that if they enforce structural changes to something as critical as a rear wing, it's not a sensible thing to do [in short notice].
"If people have to modify the rear wings because they impose a test, and they try to impose that during a race weekend, you've got a situation where a critical component - and a very highly stressed component - could be compromised.
"So I don't think it's very sensible. History shows that they've always done it between races, and gave people a couple of weeks to react. I think that's the most likely scenario, if they choose to change."
Friday's press conference - Malaysia - Part 1
Participating: Patrick Head (Williams), John Howett (Toyota), Mario Theissen (BMW Sauber), Geoff Willis (Honda).
Q. Geoff, you have a new driver this year in Rubens Barrichello. What has he brought to the team?
Geoff Willis: I think he brings a lot of experience of how to win. He's won nine races, I think. He's been with a championship-winning team for many years. Certainly, he strengthens our driver line-up hugely, and he brings that experience, that knowledge of what it feels like to win and makes us a stronger team, so it's been good working with him. Let's see how we do this weekend.
Q. Does he tell you much about Ferrari?
GW: Certainly, he's used to working in a slightly different environment, how they operate certain technical aspects of the car. The driver can often explain what the car feels like, the way he thinks it operates and other bits about the car, but generally the teams don't tell the drivers an awful lot about the cars that other teams might be interested in, so it's really just his experience, how he feels the car and how he wants to work on the car.
Q. You have a third driver again, having not had one last year but having had one the year before that. Is it more of a benefit now than it was two years ago?
GW: It's certainly very useful this year because, unlike in 2004, when we had just one engine to last just one race weekend, we have an engine to last two race weekends, so even more we are biasing the running on a Friday to the third driver. Anthony's been with the team for a long time, he's very quick, very consistent and our race drivers have got a lot of confidence in reading what he says about the car. So it's certainly very useful for us.
Q. You certainly did a job with him today, getting him back out again at the end.
GW: I'm not quite sure how the car came back so quickly, but we got a call from Charlie Whiting to say we would get it back so we were well prepared.
Q. Was there any damage to it?
GW: Only after I think the marshals got to it and they pushed it into the gravel, and we had quite a lot of gravel to take out of it which wasn't there when Anthony left it.
Q. We're seeing fewer and fewer laps from the drivers on the Fridays; do you think there is a case for making Friday an unlimited test day?
GW: I think it would be very difficult to make it a usable test day. Typically, on a test day, we are getting quite a lot of cars going round, we're running six or seven hours. We can probably achieve 500+ kilometres.
It is also difficult coming to a race track, where usually there hasn't been anything on the circuit for at least a week, if not longer than that, so the circuit conditions are fairly poor on the first day.
So I think there is not an awful lot that we would learn and part of the reason why a lot of the race drivers don't go out in the first session on Friday is just because the circuit conditions are not really very useful.
Q. John, today Jarno Trulli was eleventh. Was this a little bit of relief after last weekend?
John Howett: Well, yes, I suppose you can say a slight relief but obviously a very disappointing start to the season, and not really where we expect to be or want to be. So we have to work a lot harder. We are getting a bit more temperature into the tyres here so it's helping, but still we have to work hard. It's clear that we're not where we need to be and how competitive we should be.
Q. Was it tyre choice or a little bit of how the chassis used the tyres?
JH: I think it's the way the chassis is utilising the tyre. We can't condemn the tyre because we clearly had very similar rubber to both Williams and McLaren in Bahrain and it's the way we are actually utilising the rubber.
Q. We talked about the third driver; you don't have one this year. Are you missing him?
JH: Yes, clearly. It did help a lot last year (having one) but I think it's part of the route to the top and you just have to learn to cope without that. As you notice, we did a lot of laps today with both race drivers.
Q. Have you had to build that factor into the race engines this year?
JH: Well, I think we have a strong engine but obviously we hadn't planned that sort of mileage on a Friday, so we have to see how the engine stands up to the pressure it's had today in a fairly hot environment.
Q. Now Mike Gascoyne is still back in Germany, I believe. Was that a knee-jerk reaction from last weekend?
JH: Not knee-jerk. He's here tomorrow but he's obviously stayed in the factory an extra two days just to keep the pressure on and look for further improvements.
Q. You've got a massive build programme as well, haven't you?
JH: Yes, that's correct. That's part of it.
Q. Mario, your third driver, Robert Kubica has been impressive this year; what are your thoughts on him?
Mario Theissen: Yes, absolutely. Obviously we watched him last year and on that basis we contracted him, but we didn't know too much about him. He's only 21-years old, he hadn't seen these overseas tracks before: Bahrain and Sepang were both new to him, and we couldn't expect him to be so quick on pace.
He didn't make any mistakes. Over the two days he has accumulated a lot of mileage, always did his programme perfectly and he's even quite good at reporting to the engineers, so very useful data. I think he's a very promising guy.
Q. After Jacques Villeneuve's engine failure in Bahrain, are you worried about the same thing happening to Nick Heidfeld here?
MT: It's true that Nick's engine is built to the same specification as Jacques'. On the other hand, the failure had never happened before, this type of failure. So far, we can only assume it was one faulty part in the engine, and so we don't feel a reason to change Nick's engine, we will see.
Every engine manufacturer is concerned about engine life here, especially in Sepang, where a V8 goes into the second weekend. It's a hot race and I think we will see something over the weekend.
Q. You're building up a new team from the basis of Sauber; what still has to be done? Is there a huge amount still?
MT: Yes, of course. I can say that I'm proud of what the team has done over the past eight months, but that was only the start to a programme of several years. We have decided to take on more than 100 additional people. The team is really small compared to our competitors.
We started last summer with 275 people in Switzerland. Now we have 320, still one to two hundred fewer than our competitors. We have decided to expand the factory, which will only start this summer, so I'm happy if we have everything in place by the end of '07.
Q. Patrick, a lot of people see you as an independent team again, therefore they see your performance in Bahrain as very praiseworthy. What were your impressions?
Patrick Head: Obviously it was encouraging to get two cars in the points, and both cars ran reliably through the weekend. In developing our transmission, a lot of it had to be done at the track because we didn't have the facilities to do it on the dyno.
So we spent rather a lot of time in the garage looking shrapnel round the back of the car over the winter, so that rather interrupted our winter testing which wasn't ideal, but I was happy.
I don't think we're ever going to get too excited about a sixth and a seventh but it was very pleasing to see Nico's charge having made a mistake at the beginning of the race and unfortunately to Nick Heidfeld's detriment but it was very encouraging.
Q. Last year, we saw you doing few laps in practice, thinking it was conserving the BMW engine but it seems that that continues with Cosworth. What is the thinking behind that?
PH: Particularly with a new engine, obviously we've done a number of double race distances or double race simulations and things over the winter, but I doubt that anybody has really done enough to say 100 percent that they know exactly where they are in their engine life.
I think Honda, as you will have seen from the testing mileage, have done easily the most and even they have probably not been absolutely 100 percent. So the best thing, particularly with the opportunity to run a third car on the Friday, the best thing is to limit the amount of running and get the best out of it in qualifying the race.
Q. But how much does Nico suffer from that, particularly on the circuits he doesn't know?
PH: He was due to do a few more laps this afternoon but we had a small fuel system problem that shouldn't have happened but it did. He seems quite happy with the track and knowing the track. He doesn't think he's at a disadvantage.
Q. A general question for you all on the testing agreement; could someone clarify 1) if it's been signed and 2) what is consists of?
GW: I'm not sure I can clarify how many have signed it, whether it's completely signed.
PH: It's signed by everybody now.
GW: It's very similar to the testing agreement that was agreed by nine teams last year. The number of days is slightly more and there's a little bit of detail tidy-up about how you use... you can nominate your home circuit and on those conditions you can count for a half car day rather than if you use a single car on that track.
So certain teams have circuits which they can only use one car on and so we've agreed that we can all nominate one circuit that allows you to count - if you only run one car on it - half a day.
So in general I think it's pretty consistent. It gives a realistic target cap on distance per day, the number of days per year, so I think it's fairly well understood that it will keep us in a sensible position on testing.
PH: Yes, I think it's an outer perimeter on testing but I think the most significant thing is that we've at least got back to a common agreement between all teams, so it's a good platform to work on.
Q. This is a question I've been asked to ask about the measurement of rear wings: is there another way of measuring rear wings, the flex that might appear, that you would want to see, that you would be happy with?
GW: I'll have another go at it. The issue about the flexibility of rear wings is a difficult one because clearly all engineering structures do deflect. The question is whether you are allowed to make performance benefit from that, and the FIA – Charlie Whiting – has clarified on several occasions that you are not.
The difficulty is what sort of test you come up with that is safe to perform in parc ferme conditions because the rear wings do have very significant loads on them that you probably wouldn't want to place on the car in parc ferme in case they fell off and hurt somebody.
The designs of the wings that people have used in the past and certainly have either allowed what we call the slot gap – the gap between the first element and the second element of the wing to either close up or to open up and by doing so change the drag and the lift on the car, and you can see that in the past a number of teams have gained extra top speed from that - that's been tightened up a certain amount by regulation changes in the last year or so or more stringent application of certain stiffness tests.
I think we probably still need to see a change in the regulation there to see that that geometry has to remain constant all the way across the speed, and one way to do that is to make sure that the physical arrangement of what the rear wing is like is consistent with not being able to change that gap.
Friday's press conference - Malaysia - Part 2
Questions From The Floor
Q. (Anne Giuntini – L'Equipe) I would like from all of you to know what is your opinion about the new qualifying format?
MT: I think it is exciting, I love it, I think the spectators will love it. It is one hour full of action, three runs, and I think it is the best way we ever had. You can always talk about refining it, question of going with or without fuel, how to deal with that, but altogether I really like it.
PH: I think Mario is right. It is certainly exciting and quite tense in the garage and of course with Kimi's accident and the big rush then going out it was certainly quite tricky and I think it particularly did not work out in Ralf's favour. Basically you got one lap and if you happen to have a slow car in front of you when you go out, your are in big trouble.
The only bit that is a bit dubious and I think the crowd will find rather difficult to understand is this business of having fuel in for the last practice and then while the cars are going round seemingly not doing quick laps and obviously the influence of the weight of the fuel is huge.
When this qualifying format was first proposed it was on the basis of not carrying fuel in any of the three qualifying sessions and that probably would have caused a problem at the time had the tyre situation stayed the same.
But with us being able to change tyres at the pit stop as I understand it being proposed at the same time, personally I would be happy to have all three sessions on low fuel, but as Mario says there is room to trim as the basic format is pretty good but I think the FIA are not really willing to trim race to race. If they are going to make a change it will be at least mid season, I think, and obviously after some discussions with the teams.
GW: Well I think it was great fun, something we had studied in a lot of details and rehearsed a lot and made the specific preparations for handling the cars, particularly in the last session, trying to get the cars with their tyres changed simultaneously. Having said that, having practiced everything and rehearsed everything, I think the first session showed that you could revert on the edge of getting it wrong badly, so there is a lot of learning during the first weekend.
It will be interesting to see what the qualifying brings up this weekend. I am sure everybody will learn again for a couple of more races and it will settle down. But it is very busy and there is no room for error and that certainly is a challenge, a challenge we will enjoy.
JH: I think the qualifying we have to look at it from a consumer's point of view, the public. From inside the team it is a pretty exciting format. It is very busy but we have all the times so we can see. I think the key point really is to see what television viewers also think about the format and whether they can really follow it.
And I think there seems to be some mixed reactions. So for the end consumer we have perhaps to wait a bit longer but from within the teams and probably for track action it is a very positive move.
Q. (James Roberts – Motorsport News) Patrick, what did you think when you saw Villeneuve's BMW retire in Bahrain?
PH: A loaded question. That was quite interesting really, because I was called up on Wednesday to be asked whether I'd come here and I said to Silvia, who rang me up, Mario Theissen being asked as well? I'm not sure if I got a reply there, but I thought 'this is a set-up'. You're so busy during a race that you're not really looking too often at what's going on on other cars but I don't think tears welled up in my eyes.
Q. (Tetsuo Tsugawa - Tetsu Enterprise) After last Bahrain race, what did you think about Scuderia Toro Rosso's V10 engine? Do you think we need more restrictions or to change the rules, or just keep going?
PH: Mario's really the one to talk about it, but I think from what I've seen of power curves, run at its maximum, it's certainly below the V8 from Cosworth. The thing about it is that it's so under-stressed, in effect, that it can be run at its maximum every lap of the race, every lap of qualifying, every lap of practice. That gives a certain advantage.
The other thing is that it would have been a much bigger problem, I think, if one of the manufacturer teams had decided to go that route because the Cosworth V10 engine never had variable trumpets and as I understand it, it has not been optimum-tuned for the lower revs, for the restricted intake, and I'm sure that for any of the manufacturers - because you are allowed to run with those engines in exactly 2005 specification, so with variable trumpets, if you'd re-done the camshafts and the ports and all the rest of it, to optimise it for those rules - I'm sure there would be a few people howling like hell now.
Providing it's only the Cosworth V10 and it doesn't get developed to be optimised for that, then it brings another team out there which wouldn't otherwise be out there but I'm not sure that Colin Kolles from Midland feels the same way, but I don't have a problem with it. But Mario's opinion, I think, is probably more significant.
MT: I see three advantages of a restricted V10. One is peak power, even if you apply the restrictions in a very rude way by putting in a plate into the air trumpet, I would expect it to have a higher peak power – maybe not too much. Second one is higher torque, which should put you in a position at the start to overtake maybe one or two cars, and at the exit of a corner, to accelerate much quicker.
That's what we saw in Bahrain. And the third advantage is, as Patrick said, that this engine is good for several thousand kilometres and you can basically go at qualifying pace throughout the race. Those are the major differences from a technical perspective.
JH: I think that the only thing you have to recognise is that the FIA have indicated that they will change the restriction or the peak power of the engine if they determine it is necessary, and therefore it would be very difficult for any of the main manufacturer teams or main teams to really consider that, because you don't really know what could happen between one race and the other, and I think that should be considered as another element.
Q. (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) The third car facility has been questioned recently; would you like to see that reviewed?
PH: I would have to say that we are very happy with the third car facility and I think last year I'm sure Ron Dennis was very happy with the third car facility. It was actually proposed, I think, for some of the teams nearer the back of the grid to be able to have paying drivers on a Friday and it certainly isn't being used in that way.
But on the other hand, it is a bit of an advantage to the lower teams and therefore, as a corollary disadvantage for the upper teams. I would have to say that they are probably happy about it this year and I hope to be in a position where we are unhappy about it next year.
MT: Similar view. It certainly is an advantage especially now, in the early phase of the season because, as we discussed before, everybody is concerned about reliability and keeps engine or car mileage low. We are happy to benefit from that. Maybe we can change it after every team benefited from it for one year – don't know if that works out. On the other hand, you have to see what would happen without the third cars on Friday.
Certainly the teams who have a third car, their race drivers would maybe do a few laps more but not too many, and now at least, we have some cars going around on a full programme. Robert Kubica did 49 laps today and together with the third drivers that was quite interesting to watch.
JH: Clearly it's an advantage, but as we don't have it, it sounds sour grapes to say you can't. I think you just have to live with the rules as they are, but clearly we did gain advantage from it from the last two years with Ricardo driving on the Friday, no question.
GW: Yes, I agree with everything that's been said. It's clearly an advantage for us but maybe it's just a way of helping to mix up the grid to try and give a little bit of a penalty to the top four teams and a little bit of a bonus to the following teams to maybe avoid teams just running away. It keeps you having to work hard.
Q. (Anthony Rowlinson - Autosport) Patrick, how long can an independent team continue to be competitive against a manufacturer in the current era of Formula One?
PH: I suppose it depends on how good they are at generating their funding and whether they spend their money wisely. I think if you looked at the Renault budget for last year, both engine and car, you'd find it probably only the fourth, fifth or sixth biggest budget out there, so efficiency is a very important part and equally, it's fairly well known, the sort of magnitude of money that we're paying Cosworth for the engine this year, it's certainly very much less than 20 million Euro, and I mean by a long way, and I would have to say that I'm very happy to be running a Cosworth engine.
I think it's fully competitive and relative to some, a more than competitive engine and Cosworth are not making a loss on that engine. But as testing gets limited more, which inevitably it will, it will put more emphasis onto the simulation tools, both virtual and physical that you have within your facility, and some of those simulation tools are pretty expensive and I mentioned beforehand – I'm not complaining about it but we had to de-bug our gearbox out on the track.
It would have been much more efficient and much more clinical if we could have de-bugged it on a more sophisticated transmission dyno than we have available to us.
These sort of facilities will certainly, in the longer term, be very useful, but to be precise in terms of saying how long, I suppose it depends if Max (Mosley, FIA President) is successful on what he has been talking about which is to try and reduce the slope of spend against performance.
Q. (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) Question for all of you: honest and frank thoughts on a standard ECU, please?
JH: It's a difficult one. I think in principal, most of the manufacturers would prefer freedom with the ECU, at least the actual cost of the ECU itself is not of an extreme magnitude. OK, one would probably need to be more draconian in restricting electronic capacity to significantly reduce the cost area.
I think there is an issue of actually ensuring that there is no artificial aids which are intended to be eliminated, such as traction control in the future, and therefore by having a standard ECU it may make it very easy to police and avoid any rumours of a certain team having this capability or not and I believe that's one of the reasons that the FIA wishes to integrate the actual standard ECU, but I think as a preference we would prefer to keep freedom.
GW: Not really my area to comment that much apart from the fact that in both road car engine design and in race car engine design the engine hardware and the controller is very much thought of as a complete package, so it's a thing where an engine manufacturer, a car manufacturer would always normally want to be developing engine and ECU together so in that sense, it's something we would rather keep and not go to an independent third party.
The other issue from the team side is that changing ECUs and changing all the integrated code with it and the software the team uses is a very big challenge and there's not a lot of time between now and the beginning of 2008 and none of us would want to be starting on January 1, 2008 with a new system. We want to be trying to test it earlier so I think there's a pretty tight timescale.
PH: I'm not convinced that it automatically follows that if you have a standard ECU that there's no more possibility of some sort of power modulation but if we all get put to a standard ECU then those of us, few of us, with devious minds will turn their attention to other means.
I did actually...Niki, I lost the 'and' between your first two words. I thought you said ‘honest Frank' and I thought, who's this? (Laughter) But you said ‘honest and frank.'
But it's a change and I can understand that a lot of people like BMW, building their own ECUs, it's an interesting challenge for them which I'm sure has some relevance and some knock-on to their road car development and it must feel very uncomfortable for engineers to be told ‘no, you can't do this, no you can't do a job in that area' and be given what will probably be a fairly middle-of-the-road type piece of hardware, it doesn't feel very Formula One-ish but anyway, that's what we're told we're getting and it seems it's still Max and Bernie's game so that's what we've got to play.
MT: As we understand, the original aim was to rule out artificial driver aids and we fully support that, even if road cars have it, we want to see the best drivers out here and want them to cope with the car at the limit and that is certainly more exciting without driver aids.
We have had talks between the manufacturers and some teams, I think it was a year ago – at least a year ago – about how to achieve that, and we came to the conclusion that it should be possible to do that with a controlled section, accessible to the FIA, to make sure that there are not artificial driver aids.
We would prefer to go along this route because, as Geoff said, today there is not the mechanical parts, components, development on one hand and the electronics components on the other hand.
Virtually everything comes with its electronics and virtually every functionality is controlled electronically. So in order to have the possibility to test new functionalities, we would need to have access to the electronics and then you are immediately down to the question: what is standardised?
Is it a certain area of the hardware, is it the basic software as well, even, as the application software? It's quite a difficult and tricky area, so, as I said, we would prefer to have a common standard which ensures that there is no driver aids and it cannot even be perceived to be there but then to do our own stuff in order to use the same stuff for testing and racing.
Q. (Niki Takeda - Formula PA) Mario, can I follow up on that? What is currently the definition of a standard ECU then?
MT: There is no precise definition, especially not when it comes to software.
Q. (Mark Hughes – Autosport) Geoff, in the lead-up to the season, it seemed it was very close between you, Renault, Ferrari and McLaren. With one Grand Prix weekend out of the way, do you see any patterns in the performance which might differentiate?
GW: Seeing the pattern that the teams which we thought were going to be strong are strong on race pace last weekend, it certainly was very close with ourselves and those three teams. I think it's quite an even field this year. I think there are a lot of teams very close in performance.
It will take the new few races, I think, to get a more detailed pattern but for sure, I think we all know which are the strong teams and what you have to do with such a tough grid is you have to be right in every session, in every race and you can't afford any mistakes, whether they are reliability or strategy, you have to get it right and it's the person who is going to be most reliable, most consistent who is going to win this year.
Q. (Heinz Prüller – Kronen Zeitung) May I ask each of you, from what you know so far, on which circuit do you think your car and your team has the best chance to win a Grand Prix this year?
MT: I would prefer to answer the question after Sao Paulo.
PH: We obviously design a car and intend a car to be quick on all tracks. We were quick in the race at Bahrain but we didn't do a good enough job in practice to be able to make good use of it, but I don't think that we can say there's any characteristic of our car that means it will be better on one type of track or another.
We obviously aim to try and make the car to be quick everywhere and anybody's who's hoping to participate in the championship I think…. I rather like the position that everybody's talking about Honda and McLaren and Ferrari and - who's the other one? Oh yes, Renault, they're rather good as well, aren't they? I think if we can keep our heads below the parapet but I think we're players in there as well, but we will see, we've got to go out and do it.
GW: I think Patrick's right, you never design a car to be quick on one type of circuit, you want to be quick everywhere and certainly we're looking at this year with strong pre-season testing knowing that there are quite a few teams with very similar performance.
We really have to go to every single race and try to do as well as we can at every race, just take them one by one, so we're not developing the car specifically for any one circuit and I don't think any one circuit is more important than another although clearly there are some races you can think of as home races or not and there are some circuit which may have historically proven better but no, I think we're trying to go and be quick everywhere.
JH: I think it's the same. We haven't designed the car for one circuit. I guess until we have resolved the problem we've got at the moment, using the tyres, we will have a similar challenge on a number of circuits.
Just been sent this....Not sure wether this belong in GD or here but...
LOONEYS!!!!
Penn and Teller do a show called Bull****! Peta had a show to themselves...
Peta are a bunch of nutters...
Banning milk as it's a racist drink? C'mon!!!
Alonso's posturing upsets PETA
Animal rights organization PETA are again attempting to gain publicity for animal rights - but they have picked the wrong example.
Indian MP Maneka Gandhi, on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, has interpreted Fernando Alonso's posturing during the Bahrain Grand Prix as a mimicking of the motions of a bullfighter.
Gandhi has therefore written a letter criticising Formula One's world champion.
The Renault driver was seen posturing on top of his car and on the podium after finishing the Sakhir event, and, after the Spaniard refused to explain the move, speculation has been rife about the possible explanation.
The posturing, however, is believed to have nothing to do with bullfighting, and Spanish media claim Alonso's move was an imitation of actor Jim Carrey in the movie How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Gandhi said attempting to glorify bullifight offends millions of opponents of animal abuse.
"The torment of a living being and his subsequent repeated stabbing and often slow death, as well as the removal of his ears, is barbaric and no longer acceptable by any humane standards", wrote Gandhi.
"Even in Spain, awareness is growing fast, and some towns have already banned this crude, cruel and cowardly spectacle."
In the past, PETA had called to ban the habit of drinking milk at the Indianapolis 500 podium because it was a "beverage born out of cruelty to baby calves" and a "racist drink."
LOONEYS!!!!
Penn and Teller do a show called Bull****! Peta had a show to themselves...
Peta are a bunch of nutters...
Banning milk as it's a racist drink? C'mon!!!
Last edited: