F1 silly season update

There’s been a few news regarding drivers this past week, most of them about testers/reserve drivers. Whereas test drivers nowadays are almost irrelevant, with the teams being given very little testing miles and their reserve drivers doing almost nothing but some simulator work, it still is important to understand what’s happening in the test driver market because it concerns quite a few important names.

Heidfeld will not be seen on the grid for the first time in 10 years

First, we had the confirmation that Nick Heidfeld will not race this season but instead will be 3rd driver for Mercedes GP. I find this quite sad because Nick is easily more talented than half of the guys on the grid – but he played it risky this off-season and there weren’t seats for everyone. He will be hoping Michael Schumacher’s neck has a relapse, or Michael gets bored of F1 again, or Nico underperforms. I honestly don’t think any of that will happen and I’m not sure Nick has a bright F1 future ahead of him.

Parente's F1 hopes just got a lot more complicated

Over here in Portugal, there are some mexican soap opera scenes following the announcement that Álvaro Parente will not be the tester for Virgin F1 anymore, because the Instituto do Turismo de Portugal (translates to Institute for the Tourism of Portugal, a government branch), will not pay the sponsorship they had agreed to. Both sides – Polaris, the management company that handles Álvaro’s career, and the ITP – have put out heavy press statements. First, Álvaro said the ITP had agreed a deal with Virgin, to be signed after the team’s car launch, but they suddenly backed off from the deal the following day, without ever giving any answers as to why. The ITP countered back to these claims, denying that Virgin signing Álvaro as a driver was a counterpart in the negotiations between ITP and Virgin!

Then today Polaris made another statement, saying the ITP is flat out lying, and publishing an email communication between the ITP and Virgin as proof:

“Dear Jim,

I am glad to inform that the Board of Turismo de Portugal has decided in yesterday’s meeting to move forward regarding a presence in F1, through Virgin Racing and Alvaro Parente project for 2010.

Turismo de Portugal is prepared to invest significantly in this project, not only in helping to put Alvaro Parente driving for Virgin Racing, but also and particularly important to us, in a marketing plan to promote Portugal’s image as a top tourism destination with Virgin’s support. We are confident that a constructive collaboration will help all of us to reach our objectives(…).

Best regards,
Frederico Costa
Vice-President”

Interesting that Polaris has access to communications between Virgin and ITP! I suppose that’s been leaked by someone in one of those parts?

In a way it’s been made some justice, as I wasn’t entirely comfortable with my government paying 2 million euros for a driver to go “test” in simulators – that can’t possibly be good value for money. However the whole situation reeks of utter unprofessionalism, and it is very bad for Álvaro’s career to now gain a reputation of being a paydriver whose sponsors may not pay – fully undeserved for this talented driver. It appears that Virgin had in their contract with Álvaro an option for him to become race driver in 2011, which could’ve been a great open door into F1, and now he’s suddenly in a much worse position. He probably won’t even do GP2, as the main seats are almost all taken. Polaris realises this big problem, and that’s why they’re being so aggressive. They’ve gone to the point of making Cristiano Ronaldo (also managed by Polaris) say some words to the press supporting Álvaro: that’s how important Álvaro is for them!

This man will be happier - di Resta will drive the Force India on race weekend Fridays

But now onto the good news – another highly talented driver, the scot Paul di Resta, will be Force India’s test driver this season and will run in Friday free practice sessions. That route went well for Vitantonio Liuzzi, and Paul will be hoping to follow his footsteps on the way to a Formula 1 race seat. Remember that this is the man that beat Vettel to a F3 title on equal equipment.

Vallés, the 4th spanish driver on the grid?

And finally, there is some rumours coming out of Spain that Adrian Vallés, the reigning Superleague Formula champion for Liverpool, will be the 2nd driver for USF1. I don’t think Adrian is any amazing but I feared they’d sign someone far worse! José Maria Lopez, who’d be his team-mate, has hinted at that this deal is true.

Having luck and being at the right place at the right time is still so important for every driver’s career…

Merc and STR show new cars as winter testing begins

The Formula 1 winter testing season started today at the Circuito Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, and the most awaited news of the day were the first looks at the brand new cars by Mercedes GP and Scuderia Toro Rosso:

The reigning champion team’s Mercedes GP W01 car is distinguished by a lower nose than their competitors, and by some very weird shapes going around the airbox area! The livery now looks ace on natural lighting. Scuderia Toro Rosso appears to have gone with a conservative design – largely based on the 2009 Red Bull, of course.

Now, the fun about testing is that it starts being a bit less about looks and a little more about performance. It is particularly hard to conclude anything this year, though. Testing times are always a bit deceptive because nobody knows what the teams are running – high or low fuel; soft or hard tyres; worn or new tyres; testing setup, reliability or ultimate pace, etc. If they want they can even be running underweight or with illegal parts. So this means that, although the laptimes can point at something, there is a large margin of error. And well, this year that margin of error just got twice as big, as refuelling is banned and fuel tanks will be much larger to accommodate that. The performance difference between the quickest and the slowest F1 car on the grid has recently been as low as less than 2 seconds – now with the difference between full fuel tanks and empty ones meaning possibly 3 or 4 seconds of laptime, it means analysing testing will be even more useless than it used to be.

Nevertheless, some things to take note of today:

• Felipe Massa doesn’t seem to be having any big side-effects of last year’s huge crash that put him out for half a season, because he was quick all day and ended the timesheet first. This also serves to calm down the rumours that Ferrari’s car was about to be as much of a failure that they were already planning some sort of B-version! Though James Allen says they are planning an extra big diffuser update that could be worth a lot.

• Another man making a comeback was the 7x champion Michael Schumacher, after 3 years without racing F1 cars. He beat his team-mate’s Rosberg morning time as the track rubbered up in the afternoon. Still, that was very impressive, and the Merc car seemed among the front-runners.

• Peter Sauber’s car was surprisingly competitive as Pedro de la Rosa was top of the times for a long part of the day and ended up 2nd. Nobody knows whether that’s legitimate or a desperate call for sponsors to join his squad.

• Gary Paffett and the McLaren were among the front in the morning but did not improve in the afternoon. McLaren fans are worried because some flow-viz paint appeared in the car (as it did last year when McLaren were in deep trouble!), but they can relax as Rubens Barrichello said he was most impressed by the McLaren’s straight-line speed, from all of his competitors.

• Williams and Toro Rosso had reliability troubles, Barrichello bringing the only red flag of the day, and Buemi being troubled by gearbox issues all day.

• Robert Kubica and the Renault were slow all day, that being quickly explained by the polish driver saying he never had driven with such an heavy F1 car – there’s the fuel load variable I was talking about. He went as far as to say that the general feeling about the car is good, a weird thing for a pessimistic guy to say after being dead last!

The tests continue for the next 2 days and it remains to be seen whether any decent hint at a pecking order will come out of it. Also remember that 6 teams aren’t there in Valencia, and one of them is particularly important: Red Bull.

Monday’s times, from Autosport:

Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Massa Ferrari (B) 1:12.574 102
2. de la Rosa BMW Sauber-Ferrari (B) 1:12.784 74
3. M.Schumacher Mercedes GP (B) 1:12.947 40
4. Rosberg Mercedes GP (B) 1:13.543 39
5. Paffett McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:13.846 86
6. Barrichello Williams-Cosworth (B) 1:14.449 75
7. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:14.762 18
8. Kubica Renault (B) 1:15.000 69

Here’s the new Mercedes paintjob

Let’s have a look at it (picture taken from Joe Saward’s blog):

The new Mercedes F1 livery for 2010

A lot of people have complained that the lighting on that presentation was completely messed up, and the car sure as hell looks a lot more white in there, compared to this mock-up picture they also have released:

And also in a couple other pictures from the presentation itself:

I think it definitely looks very cool when the lighting is not too bright, it’d be a bit shit and bland if it ran under the super flash lights it seems to be under in the first picture. Your guess is as good as mine as to which way it will look like in the race track, but silver clearly beats white here. I was actually hoping for a little bit more of Petronas turquoise, like the earlier photoshop, but it’s alright this way. A particular feature I enjoy is the big fat numbers both in the nose and in the rear wing, which are somewhat similar to Merc’s 1950s cars, it’s a nice touch after the past decade, where driver numbers become smaller and smaller to the point of non-existent. Another interesting detail is that the car will be named MGP W01 (Mercedes GP Wagon 01), instead of the previously rumoured RB 01 in honour of Ross Brawn -  that had annoyed some fans, given the Red Bull cars are already named RB-something. But please be aware that the car in the pictures is last year’s BGP 001 painted in this year’s colours, not the brand new MGP W01!

An important thing to note is that the only drivers seen in Mercedes overalls in Stuttgart today were Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg – Nick Heidfeld was not hanging around, thankfully. That might not mean anything, Nick could still go there as a test driver, but I’m cheering for him to grab the remaining race seat at Renault as he deserves.

F1 pre-season kicks off tomorrow

Okay, Mercedes are only going to show off a livery tomorrow, but it’s the first glimpse as to how will the Formula 1 grid look like next season. Things are going to get more interesting later in the week, as McLaren, Ferrari, Sauber and Renault will show off their new machines – as I wrote before. Expect pictures of the new Merc livery everywhere in the internet tomorrow morning.

This photoshop released by Merc recently should resemble what we're going to see tomorrow at their launch

Meanwhile, since I’ve been busy this week and felt like doing other things in the weekend, here’s a quick recap of what happened this week in Formula 1 (not much). Alguersuari was finally confirmed at Toro Rosso, ending nonsense rumours that Bortolotti or Fisichella would move there. The argentinian press has yet again said José Maria Lopez is right about to sign for USF1, and the international press has now followed on their lead, but it’s still not officially confirmed (should be this week). No word yet on who will be his team-mate, with the second USF1 remaining the most mysterious of this silly season.

José Maria López, a couple years back when he was a Renault tester

The shocker of the week was Nick Heidfeld’s manager confirming he’ll be the test/reserve driver of Mercedes, and then denying it. There are some rumours saying he is still in contention for the much wanted Renault seat, but these statements by his manager are very worrying news as it could well mean he does have a contract with Merc, which can’t be announced yet (perhaps tomorrow). I think it’s completely mad that a driver of Nick’s caliber might not have a seat, but he played it risky this silly season and these are the consequences. We get paydrivers instead, a sign of the crisis…

The goofy-bearded Heidfeld is at a serious risk of not making the F1 grid this year

Speaking of paydrivers, the man who is thought to be #1 on Renault’s list right now is the russian rookie Vitaly Petrov, who comes with a large chequebook. Will be interesting to see if this means Robert Kubica will drive a car with big fat “RUSSIA” letters on it, as Petrov used to race in GP2 – the polish fans on the forums are already mad about this possibility! Petrov was also rumoured to go to Campos, but from the spanish squad there have been very little news on the press recently. I have, however, heard that things are not well with them, and they’re unlikely to make the grid. This would be an absolute shame as more cars on the grid are always nice, and because it would put yet more F1 people out of a job, one of which is Bruno Senna. The brazilian driver would get shafted by the second consecutive year, since he was a strong contender for the Honda seat last year.

Vitaly Petrov raced with "Russia" adverts in GP2

By the way, back to cars and liveries – Lucas di Grassi has said the new Virgin F1 car will be black, a color we have missed in F1 (old black Arrowses and Lotuses were awesome!). And I’ve not spoken the truth with the first paragraph of this article, as the Mercedes livery is NOT the first glimpse into how F1 cars will look like this year. Because photos emerged, of Fernando Alonso doing some promotional work for Santander, racing a 2010-liveried last years Ferrari…

I’m not sure if I like it or not, it’s too many Santander adverts? The car shape doesn’t help it. I’ve added a poll to see what you people think of this livery, despite the fact the blog doesn’t really have any regular readers at this moment – my perseverance isn’t fading just yet.

Pre-season calendar starts shaping up

Sauber today was the first F1 team to confirm the date of the new car launch, and that is going to be at the 31st of January. There’s also some rumours around, coming from the german newspaper Bild, that Mercedes will launch their car at the 25th, and that it is going to be named RB-1, presumably as some sort of tribute to Ross Brawn. So it looks like we’re going to have some action by the end of the month, rather than in the mid of the month as I predicted recently.

Meanwhile, Planet-F1 (not a great source perhaps) has a full calendar for the February tests:

Test Schedule
01 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
02 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
03 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
10 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
11 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
12 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
13 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
17 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
18 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
19 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
20 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
25 February Circuit de Catalunya
26 February Circuit de Catalunya
27 February Circuit de Catalunya
28 February Circuit de Catalunya

Sauber have been clever and will hold their car launch right at the circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, where they’ll test the following day, a nice way to cut some costs. It’s also nice to hear that all 13 teams are supposed to be there, although many people on the internet seem to be doubting Campos’ and USF1′s presence (there are even some indications that Campos might skip more that one test!).

Now, sadly, it doesn’t look like the F1 cars are coming back here to Portugal this year. I’ve been a bit baffled by what exactly is the business plan of the Autódromo do Algarve in Portimão, being built as a test track in an era where there is little testing, and with 4 big competitors in Spain (the circuits of Catalunya, Jerez, Valencia and the yet-to-be-used-by-F1 Motorland Aragon). I hope I’m wrong but it seems concerning for the future of the circuit that the cars aren’t coming. A guy in the forums remarked that last year it rained in the F1 tests, and that might have been a big reason why the teams aren’t keen to come back – that’s just plain bad luck.

F1 testing at the Autódromo do Algarve produced some lovely photos last year.

At least there’s another interesting list of events for the year in Portimão, with GP2 as the open-wheel headliner, coming back for another standalone round, but GP2 doesn’t attract spectators, the TV stations pay little attention to it, and I doubt that they profit much from it (if they do at all). There’s also something big and new in the WTCC, with Formula 2 and International Formula Masters as supporters; the FIA GT1 World Championship; the uninteresting F3000 Euroseries, now re-badged as “AutoGP”; and the World Superbikes, which I’ve heard has some of the greatest racing in the world at the moment, but for some reason I’ve never been able to get into them – maybe this year?