They have been testing at the Barber Motorsports Park circuit this week, in anticipation of the new season. The real racing will start in the 14th of March, in a street circuit in São Paulo, Brazil, same day F1 kicks off in Bahrain. I must say I was never a big fan of Indy as I find oval racing to be boring, and the constant safety cars in both oval and road races to be irritating, but it is still worth keeping an eye on it. A particular point of interest is that Takuma Sato will be there this year, with the KV Racing team, and has already been quick in testing.

This is Jules Bianchi. Take note of this name as you'll hear it a lot in the coming years.

Portuguese Álvaro Parente made a great comeback to GP2 putting his Coloni in 5th place, a rare sight for the italian squad. There are still no news as for what he will do during the main season, with the rumours around mentioning either a seat in Superleague Formula or in GT racing. If those are indeed the options I am hoping he’ll do Superleague as that still has a good degree of visibility, whereas GT would certainly mean the end of his open-wheel career. But unfortunately the Superleague rumours are a couple weeks old and might not mean much anymore.

Race 1 tomorrow is at the slightly inconvenient time of 9:40 AM, live on Eurosport 2.

Qualy times from Autosport:

Pos Driver Team Time Gap
1. Jules Bianchi ART 1m43.474s
2. Davide Valsecchi iSport 1m43.478s + 0.004s
3. Javier Villa Arden 1m43.519s + 0.045s
4. Luca Filippi Meritus 1m43.523s + 0.049s
5. Alvaro Parente Coloni 1m43.714s + 0.240s
6. Oliver Turvey iSport 1m43.818s + 0.344s
7. Giacomo Ricci DPR 1m43.918s + 0.444s
8. Christian Vietoris DAMS 1m44.086s + 0.612s
9. Charles Pic Arden 1m44.172s + 0.698s
10. Sergio Perez Addax 1m44.246s + 0.772s
11. Sam Bird ART 1m44.253s + 0.779s
12. Edoardo Piscopo DAMS 1m44.338s + 0.864s
13. Max Chilton Addax 1m44.617s + 1.143s
14. Michael Herck DPR 1m44.671s + 1.197s
15. Alexander Rossi Meritus 1m44.713s + 1.239s
16. Yelmer Buurman Ocean 1m44.724s + 1.250s
17. Vladimir Arabadzhiev Rapax 1m44.759s + 1.285s
18. Adrian Zaugg Trident 1m44.781s + 1.307s
19. Daniele Zampieri Rapax 1m45.079s + 1.605s
20. Will Bratt Coloni 1m45.320s + 1.846s
21. Fabio Leimer Ocean 1m45.371s + 1.897s
22. Josef Kral Super Nova 1m45.424s + 1.950s
23. Jake Rosenzweig Super Nova 1m45.980s + 2.506s
24. Plamen Kralev Trident 1m47.243s + 3.769s

I live in Calheta, an area where there were a few isolated incidents (sadly 3 people have died), but nothing like in Funchal and Ribeira Brava, and so myself, the family and closest friends are absolutely fine. However, communications failed for a while and the blog stopped, as motorsport fell down the priority order of things to worry about. One of the things that should be worried about now is the roads around the island. Rocks and mud occupied many of them, most can be cleaned up and made safe in a relatively short time, but one place where things are very serious is the connection between São Vicente and Ribeira Brava, which cuts across the island. Some bits of the road simply fell down the mountain, tragically together with houses and people. This connection will certainly prove difficult and slow to rebuild, although there are some plans already to make a new tunnel to fix this.

Map of Madeira Island

The main consequence of the non-existence of the road is that the people of the area, and the people of São Vicente and other nearby populations of the north, will now take much, much longer to travel to Funchal. There are also other side-effects, which although completely irrelevant next to the grief of the families that have lost their own, are relevant for the theme of this blog. What I’m trying to get at, is that this will bring severe headaches to the organizers of the Rali Vinho da Madeira, to be run next August. Not only a main connection road will probably be cut off, but it affects one of the most famous special stages of the competition, the one connecting Rosário to Serra d’Água, always starting with a climb towards the mountain and ending with a crazy quick downhill part, whichever direction it was being run at.

I am not entirely sure whether the large damages were in part of the stage or further lower down, but regardless, it is worth bringing back images of the competition there. The following video is an onboard recording of it, albeit in the wrong direction as the opposite one was a little more spectacular. This is in memory not just of the stage, but also, most importantly, of the dead in the area, as the enthusiastic population of the area is going through some very tough times.

Mikko attacking the snow surface

Besides the top 4 works cars, Ogier did fantastically well to grab a very solid 5th place in his Rally Sweden debut, not putting a wheel wrong all event; Henning Solberg and Matthew Wilson got 6th and 7th for Stobart Ford; Ostberg got 8th in an outdated Subaru; Petter Solberg managed to salvage a mere 2 points after the errors in Friday. Local driver PG Andersson completed the points scorers in a Skoda Fabia S2000, the swede having pulled away at a fantastic rate from his opponents in the Friday and then carefully managing his lead through the rest of the rally. Andersson was declared the S-WRC winner on the championship’s first ever round, 57 seconds away from Tuohino, albeit Mikkelsen was in-between them with a S2000 car but not as a S-WRC entrant. Patrick Flodin won in the P-WRC with a comfortable 1 minute lead over Anders Grondal.

PG Andersson was one of the stars of the rally, dominating the S2000 class

Kimi Raikkonen could not do better than 30th at the end of the rally, and Marcus Gronholm ended up a distant 21st too, but only because both had made major mistakes in the Friday, of course. Kimi regularly put top 10 times, a top 6 time being an highlight, while Marcus won a stage. Both will come home disappointed that they didn’t score, albeit Kimi shown some promise for the future.

To cheer up anyone that has just read this boring summary of the event, here’s a video with spectacular jumps, as the cars went by “Colin’s Crest” in the Vargasen stage:

Final results:

Pos Driver Car Time/Gap
1. Mikko Hirvonen Ford 3h09m30.4s
2. Sebastien Loeb Citroen + 42.3s
3. Jari-Matti Latvala Ford + 1m15.4s
4. Dani Sordo Citroen + 2m41.6s
5. Sebastien Ogier Citroen + 4m15.3s
6. Henning Solberg Ford + 5m23.4s
7. Matthew Wilson Ford + 7m53.9s
8. Mads Ostberg Subaru + 9m22.2s
9. Petter Solberg Citroen + 10m17.5s
10. P-G Andersson Skoda + 12m08.9s

It's still a little early to say whether Schumi's comeback will be a success or not - it's not looking 100% positive, however

To further complicate things, Sauber impressed last week, even if my feeling was that they were on less fuel than the others; Force India did the same this week and everyone in that team seems to be super upbeat – promising regular points and maybe even podiums; Renault have been far from the top, yet the quiet rumour around is that they’re mixing it up with the front teams once fuel-corrected, and have a large amount of car parts yet to be unveiled. Williams have not got any hype around them but they’ve been focusing on reliability testing for the Cosworth engine, and James Allen says “Hulkenberg has been quick”. Toro Rosso obviously aren’t favourites, but their car is pretty much the same car that dominated the end of last season, and have topped the testing timesheets in some days. This has been a very frustrating off-season to read, so I wouldn’t advise anyone to do some betting (unless you can get very good odds on Hamilton, Alonso or Massa). The good news is that there isn’t any dominating car like Brawn last year, and we are likely going to have an entertaining, close season.

Di Grassi has shown that the Virgin will be at least much quicker than the GP2 cars

The one team that has hit the track and certainly won’t be fighting for victories is Virgin. They were worryingly way off the pace until Friday, but then finally got a good chunk of laps in the Saturday and ended with a best of 1:22.9 by di Grassi. Notice di Grassi said that he wasn’t on a very light fuel load, he also admitted that he felt rusty as a driver since he doesn’t have much experience of Formula 1 cars. Add to it the tenths Virgin are yet to find through experience and setup breakthroughs, and we can now safely say they won’t be embarassingly bad come Bahrain. They are still likely to be slowest than all the established teams, but will at least be within the same timezone. It now remains to be seen how will they compare against Lotus, who hit the track next Wednesday, and Campos and USF1, if they ever make it to the grid.

This man might sport the #2 on his car, but he was #1 on the timesheets this week

A final word about the quickest time of the week which was done by Lewis Hamilton on the Saturday, which was only a 1:19.583: this simply proves that every single team out there in Jerez has been sandbagging. Because that is a staggering 2 seconds slower than Daniel Ricciardo’s lap last December with Red Bull’s 2009 car, a 1.17.418. And Ricciardo was sitting on a Formula 1 car for the first time on his career…

Saturday’s times:

Pos  Driver              Team         Time       Gap       Laps
1.  Lewis Hamilton      McLaren      1m19.583s            113
2.  Adrian Sutil        Force India  1m20.180s  + 0.597s  83
3.  Rubens Barrichello  Williams     1m20.341s  + 0.758s  90
4.  Robert Kubica       Renault      1m20.358s  + 0.775s  85
5.  Michael Schumacher  Mercedes     1m20.613s  + 1.030s  83
6.  Sebastian Vettel    Red Bull     1m21.203s  + 1.620s  89
7.  Felipe Massa        Ferrari      1m21.485s  + 1.902s  160
8.  Pedro de la Rosa    Sauber       1m22.134s  + 2.551s  105
9.  Lucas di Grassi     Virgin       1m22.912s  + 3.329s  63
10.  Jaime Alguersuari   Toro Rosso   1m24.072s  + 4.489s  98

Other than the 3 leaders, there were several other points of interest. Jari-Matti Latvala won a stage but is lagging a bit further behind in 4th. Former world champions Marcus Gronholm and Petter Solberg have ran into trouble. Marcus had a mechanical problem that put him way way back, and had been a little off the pace before, anyway. Petter had a series of bizarre incidents in SS5, and ended up rear-ending Matthew Wilson’s stalled car after Matthew had passed him in-stage. Both continued, but Petter lost about 5 minutes.

Of course for Formula 1 fans, the big news was the presence of Kimi Raikkonen for the Citroen Junior Team. Kimi had been consistently putting times in-between the Fords of Wilson and al-Qassimi, at the back of the WRC field – but then he got stuck into a sand bank in SS6, losing 26 minutes to the leader and effectively ending any chance of a points score result. Strangely his most impressive time was immediately afterwards in SS7, when he was 9th quickest beating Wilson, P. Solberg and al-Qassimi. Kimi’s team-mate Sebastien Ogier has been doing a remarkably strong rally and is 5th placed overall.

Unlike in F1, you do have to get your hands dirty in this sport... keep your car on the road next time, Kimi.

Below the WRC class, P-G Andersson has been doing an amazing job with the Skoda Fabia S2000, annihilating all the other S2000s (he’s got a 1 minute lead over Tuohino) and even beating some WRC cars in some stages – he is looking good for becoming the first S-WRC rally winner, and gets my award for driver of the day. Madeira driver Bernardo Sousa is 5th out of 7 participants, which sounds a bit crap but keep in mind that this is a very exotic surface for someone coming from over here.

On the P-WRC, Patrik Flodin leads with a 20 second gap over Anders Grondal. The portuguese Armindo Araújo, reigning world champion, ran 3rd for a while but eventually had to settle for 4th at the end of the day behind Martin Semerad.

Classification after today, from Autosport:

Pos Driver Car Time/Gap
1. Mikko Hirvonen Ford 1h08m04.8s
2. Sebastien Loeb Citroen + 6.2s
3. Dani Sordo Citroen + 10.6s
4. Jari-Matti Latvala Ford + 31.7s
5. Sebastien Ogier Citroen + 1m10.9s
6. Henning Solberg Ford + 2m16.2s
7. Mads Ostberg Subaru + 3m20.2s
8. Matthew Wilson Ford + 3m21.1s
9. P-G Andersson Skoda + 4m16.1s
10. Janne Tuohino Ford + 5m15.3s

Keep in mind that the WRC has switched to the same points system as F1 and now the top 10 classified will get points. If it ends as it is right now, Andersson and Tuohino will score WRC points with S2000 cars…

That is a stunning paintjob, on a very boxy looking car. I’m hoping that won’t hinder their performance, because on the looks they’ve made me a fan.

Meanwhile in Jerez testing continues. Today was another utterly uninteresting all-wet day, but yesterday there was some dry running. There was very little that we could make of the cars performance against each others, the most remarkable thing being a very good super-long stint by Fernando Alonso on the Ferrari: the italian team keeps looking like a front-runner in this off-season. It’s slightly weird that every team seems to be making happy comments about their car’s performance, even considering that at this point of the year everyone is always a little optimistic – that means that all the cars are close (as some drivers have pointed out), but that also means that someone is going to be caught very surprised at Bahrain thinking they had a more competitive package… I just can’t figure out exactly who, at this moment.

The one team that clearly isn’t at the same level of the rest of the pack, unsurprisingly, is the new Virgin Racing. A front wing fell off from Timo Glock’s car yesterday, it was a bit of a serious problem, and it took until the afternoon today to get the car running again. They are way way off in the laptimes, but keep in mind that they have done very little laps, and today again didn’t get to lap in the dry as some teams managed to in the early morning. Expect them to be slow at Bahrain, but far better than the 17 seconds lag on today’s timesheet!

Thursday’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Kobayashi BMW-Sauber (B) 1:19.950 103
2. Buemi Toro Rosso Ferrari (B) 1:20.026 121
3. Button McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:20.618 83
4. Hulkenberg Williams-Cosworth (B) 1:20.629 67
5. Liuzzi Force India- Mercedes (B) 1:20.754 80
6. M.Schumacher Mercedes GP (B) 1:21.083 124
7. Alonso Ferrari (B) 1:21.424 129
8. Kubica Renault (B) 1:22.003 103
9. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:22.043 99
10. Glock Virgin-Cosworth (B) 1:29.964 11

Today’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:19.919 76
2. de la Rosa BMW-Sauber (B) 1:20.736 58
3. Sutil Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:21.428 48
4. Massa Ferrari (B) 1:21.603 72
5. Vettel Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:21.783 59
6. Petrov Renault (B) 1:22.000 68
7. Rosberg Mercedes GP (B) 1:22.820 53
8. Barrichello Williams-Cosworth (B) 1:23.217 120
9. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:23.985 68
10. di Grassi Virgin-Cosworth (B) 1:37.107 8

The RB6 is an evolution of last year’s model, which was by far the team’s most successful car ever (even counting previous incarnations of it such as Jaguar and Stewart). My very non-technically-savy eyes spot very little interesting about it.

It ran today on Jerez, as did the cars of other 9 teams, but this day was a very boring waste of time for anyone eager to know how does the cars compare to each other, as the track was wet almost the whole time. The best times were set on the first hour of test before the rain arrived, and Nico Rosberg got a pretty meaningless quickest lap for Mercedes GP. Virgin Racing made their debut on official testing sessions, Glock being 17.8 seconds off the pace because he only ran in the wet, and only did 5 laps.

Times from Autosport:

Pos Driver              Team           Time           Gap   Laps
1. Nico Rosberg        Mercedes       1m20.927s              57
2. Sebastien Buemi     Toro Rosso     1m21.031s   +0.104     84
3. Nico Hulkenberg     Williams       1m22.243s   +1.316    118
4. Fernando Alonso     Ferrari        1m22.895s   +1.968     88
5. Kamui Kobayashi     Sauber         1m23.287s   +2.860     55
6. Jenson Button       McLaren        1m24.947s   +4.020     68
7. Vitantonio Liuzzi   Force India    1m24.968s   +4.041     71
8. Vitaly Petrov       Renault        1m25.440s   +4.513     27
9. Mark Webber         Red Bull       1m26.502s   +5.575     50
10. Timo Glock          Virgin         1m38.734s  +17.807      5

The first race had Charles Pic of Arden on pole, but he lost the advantage in the first lap with the iSport duo of Turvey and Valsecchi escaping ahead of him. Turvey would lead the pack for almost the entire race, but for a short moment after the pitstops when his team-mate passed him – only for Turvey to surprise him back and re-take the lead in the very same lap! iSport ended with a 1-2, Oliver Turvey getting his first GP2 race win, Valsecchi extending his championship lead, and Jules Bianchi finishing 3rd after an impressive debut performance for ART. The Qi-Meritus duo of Filippi and Rossi made for another interesting sub-plot of the race, both starting from the back despite showing pace in qualifying, and climbing through the field into the points. Filippi however ran out of fuel when he was on course for a 4th place, but Rossi did well to finish 6th.

Valsecchi will almost certainly be champion after another win and a podium in Abu Dhabi

The second race saw Max Chilton take pole for Ocean Racing thanks to the reverse grid. He started poorly however, letting Herck, Rossi, Ricci and Valsecchi get ahead of him, and soon we had the incredible vision of DPR taking a temporary 1-2 with Michael Herck and Giacomo Ricci at the top of the field – surely a first in the team’s history in GP2? Valsecchi harassed both for most of the race, got past Ricci at lap 15 and finally past Herck 2 laps from the end, with some ease. Valsecchi got a huge championship lead with this win (he has 36 points, closest challengers being Turvey with 16 and Rossi with 10), and DPR will be very pleased with the 2nd and 3rd places their drivers achieved.

As in the first race, there was someone keeping the spectators entertained by overtaking drivers everywhere – this man was Jules Bianchi. The frenchman started from the pitlane after stalling on the grid, and made a sensational comeback all the way up to 7th, in a short dry race without pitstops! He fell just short of getting a points position as he looked at the back of Max Chilton’s car while crossing the finish line. The following video is a compilation of Bianchi’s best moments through the weekend:

I haven’t seen this sort of ballsy passing in GP2 ever since Lewis Hamilton! Sensational stuff. Bianchi is not a regular in this championship but will do the main series with ART and will be looking at winning it on his rookie season, as did Rosberg, Hamilton and Hulkenberg in previous years.

Meanwhile Davide Valsecchi should become champion of the short and somewhat uncompetitive GP2 Asia championship, for all its worth. He will stick with the very competent iSport team for Europe (as will the rookie Oliver Turvey) and it remains to be seen whether he can make a title challenge there – that didn’t work for his predecessors, Grosjean and Kobayashi, but they still made their way into F1 afterwards. Whenever people talk of Valsecchi I remember the 2007 World Series of Renault season – the portuguese Filipe Albuquerque was his team-mate, and scored twice as many points despite having less experience than him. I wonder where would Albuquerque be now if he had been given the same chances to develop his talent as Valsecchi had…

The VJM03 isn’t the most exciting car out there on the grid, possibly due to its mostly white livery, but I have got a good feeling about their pace this season. They have made big steps forward last year, and the opposition is weakened for this season. Surely they’re going to look good?

Meanwhile, Autosport.com managed to take a photo of the brand new Lotus team’s first car, doing its shakedown out there in Silverstone today, at the hands of test driver Fairuz Fauzy:

That looks absolutely stunning – and I’m not usually a fan of green. Screw the poll over there in the right, this wins “best looking car of the season” by far. Autosport says they don’t know whether it’s the livery for the season or not, I hope it stays. People on the forums are saying that the car shape looks rather basic, but what would you expect for a team that was the last to know they’d need to build a car? At least they are on schedule and ready to go unlike Campos and USF1…

They will join the F1 pack in testing next week, whereas Virgin, Force India and Red Bull will make their first testing appearances of the off-season tomorrow in Jerez de la Frontera.

Vitaly Petrov in Renault colors

This comes off as utterly irresponsible – take a 7.5M€ debt to get your son into racing, without any guarantees you’d make any money from it? It could also be a “pity me” bullshit story to attract more sympathy for Vitaly among potential new sponsors, but it still comes off as weird and desperate, even under that logic. With Formula 1 going back into the paydrivers world, expect more similar stories in the coming months. Drivers will lose seats on the basis of missing payments, guaranteed.

Meanwhile, there are still no decent news about Campos Racing, which has been linked to a partial or full buyout by Tony Teixeira for a long time now – without any official denials. That would be the same man who left A1GP in a state of insolvency, and who still owes money to Ferrari. Desperate much?

I have another point to make. After a decade in which Bernie Ecclestone successfully conned several governments to get them to pay extreme fees to hold races, supposedly for the promotion of tourism and international recognition of the said countries, it appears the new teams like the scheme and want to cash in on it as well. Parente was supposed to have Portuguese tourism money (not a first unfortunately, ask Tiago Monteiro); Petrov has “the sympathy of Putin” – whatever that means; the very dodgy USF1 squad somehow got the Argentinian president to pose along with Windsor and JM Lopéz for pictures, and help fund Lopéz’ seat; Lotus appears to be owned and/or sponsored by a project of the malaysian government; and Ecclestone has recently said that the weird Stefan GP team is solid because it has got serbian government funding – confirmed to him directly by the serbian prime minister. All of this for what exactly? I am sure that in a time of economical crisis there are better ways to spend government money than by funding backmarker teams and drivers of unknown merit? Or am I missing something? Is the exposure gained really worth that much?

This is Mikkelsen.

Freddy Loix has also been recently confirmed to do some rounds of the championship later on the season, in a Skoda Fabia S2000 and I’m hoping that will include Madeira somehow. We need at least some Skodas here to get some excitement going on, and a Ford wouldn’t be bad neither. Meanwhile,on the short term, Rally Argentina will have just that, with the illustrious entries of Federico Villagra (hardly unsurprising, being a local driver) in a Ford; and Nasser Al-Attiyah, of P-WRC and Dakar fame, in a Skoda. I remind that the official Skoda team has already confirmed entries for the south american rounds of Brazil and Argentina, with Hanninen and Kopecky.

It’s a shame that only Kris Meeke seems to want to do the full calendar, but we are guaranteed to have a great field in almost every round of the championship anyway.