Jerez test week ends without conclusions
The final day of last week’s Jerez test, Saturday, was mostly dry but even then we could not take much from it. Who caught the eye was Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren with two very quick stints, further confirming that Mac is somewhere along the front runners. So seems to be the opinion of Geoff Willis, who thinks Red Bull are on par as well, despite not putting any impressive times so far. Ferrari keeps on having great stints as well, both in the hands of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, and remarkably have avoided reliability issues alltogether. Merc seems to have some sort of issue and are yet to shine, yet Willis ranks them together with Ferrari in a group just behind Mac and Red Bull, and Schumacher thinks they still are part of the top 4 teams group.
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…
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
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…
Virgin shy to show off the machine for the first time
That’s about how slow they were to get those pictures out on the internet today – yeah, I had to make a stupid pun. Expect lots and lots of them for this season. Here’s the brand new Formula 1 car of the brand new Virgin Racing team, the VR-01:
Everyone seems to be raving about its looks, I’m not as pleased. I find the design a bit corny – was expecting more of the black, less thick white lines, a less orangey looking red, and less tribal design nonsense. The car shape seems a bit basic, which is kinda expected for a new team, as they will want to have a solid base to start developing from for the next few years. They also keep talking about how the car never saw a wind tunnel and is fully based on CFD, which is another reason why we shouldn’t expect a fantastic performance on track.
People on the F1 forums I frequent have been talking about the resemblance to the 2006 Midland F1, and even more so to the Dale Coyne Indycar (click on the links to see them, unfortunately there is a bug in this site that doesn’t allow me to post pictures in the same post that has a gallery). I have to agree, I thought of that Indycar as soon as I saw the Virgin pics.
About liveries, the poll on the Ferrari livery says the majority vote thinks “it’s alright” – even if we only had 6 votes. New poll will be up as for what’s the best looking car and livery so far. I’m divided and not sure on who to vote for!
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