Week in Review. THE FIA World Council has proposed further changes to the F1 rules for 2014 following yesterday’s meeting in Geneva. They will be added to the rule book if they are approved by the F1 Commission. Among the changes is the power for race stewards to impose a five-second time penalty on a car which can be served during a pit stop. A driver serving such a penalty would have to sit in his pit box with no work being performed on his car for five seconds, after which his team may change his tyres and perform other tasks. Drivers will also be forbidden from stopping on the track after the race has finished in order to ensure they have enough fuel left in their car to provide a sample, as happened on several occasions last year. If it is approved by the F1 Commission, this will no longer be considered satisfactory grounds for stopping a car. A further proposal would allow teams additions exemptions from the current curfew governing how much time their mechanics can spend working on their cars during a race weekend. Instead of the current two, teams would have six exemptions this year, to allow for the added complexity of working on this year’s cars. The World Motor Sport Council also proposed requiring team members to wear helmets during qualifying as well as in the race, and increasing the minimum weight limit by one kilo to 691kg, due to differences in weight between this year’s tyres and those used last year. The changes were agreed at a Strategy Group meeting chaired by FIA president Jean Todt and attended by Bernie Ecclestone and team representatives. Seems everybody except the FIA themselves are all against the double points scheduled for the last race of the year (including yours truly… Seriously, what were they smoking?). Awarding double points for the final Formula One race of the season is a fake fix for pressing problems the sport must address, according to Caterham team owner Tony Fernandes. The Malaysian, who also owns English second tier soccer club Queens Park Rangers, said Formula One needed to act so the performance gap between teams could be reduced and all could have a chance. Caterham finished last overall in 2013 and have yet to score a point in four seasons that have seen Red Bull and Germanys Sebastian Vettel rack up four successive championships. The sport has made a controversial rule change to award double points, 50 for the winner instead of the usual 25, for the last race in Abu Dhabi in a bid to keep the title outcome open right to the end. Despite overwhelming opposition from fans on social media, and Vettel describing the move as absurd, teams appear unlikely to overturn it. The double points is a fake fix, Fernandes told reporters at a media event at the Caterham factory in central England. Whats better is to solve the issue and make the racing more compact. So that Sauber...or a Force India could make an upset. Thats what people like to see, thats what people come to watch and thats whats missing in Formula One, he added. We spend all this money and time on engines, KERS whatever. But the gap between the haves and have-nots has made racing boring. I agree. Formula One teams are at much greater risk of getting their race strategies wrong under the new engine regulations, according to Renault Sport F1′s head of track operations Remi Taffin. While the previous engines were a known quantity it will be much harder for teams to maximise the new power units. “With the V8 we decided on a strategy and knew at the end of the race we would be within 1% of the optimum,” said Taffin. “Next year we could have a delta of many tens of seconds if we get things wrong.” The complexity of the new engines’ electrical and energy recovery systems will give teams much more to do at each race weekend. Taffin expects pre-race workloads will double compared to last year. Renault have expanded their operations in order to meet the new challenge. “We have created an operations room to follow running in real time, which is a significant evolution over previous years when all data collection was monitored solely at the track,” said Taffin. “Additionally we will have greater support from the factory to analyse data post-sessions as we will repatriate information from the track to the factory more often. This quantity of analysis means we will use the dynos at Viry more often for ‘live’ simulations to optimise track performance. “It’s hard to say exactly, but I expect the dynos will be working up to three times more as there are more parameters to explore. With the V8 we could predict how it would go, and when there was an issue it was much more of a known issue. These units are vastly more complicated.” NASCAR team co-owner Gene Haas has confirmed he is hoping to put together a Formula One team for 2015 or 2016 after formally submitting his interest to the FIA. The FIA announced in December that it wanted potential new teams to express an interest in joining the grid by January 3. The FIA also said it anticipates that full applications will need to be submitted by 10 February 2014, leading to a decision on 28 February 2014, before adding In the event that no applicant is considered suitable by both the FIA and the commercial rights holder, no additional team will be selected. It is understood that there are three teams which have expressed an interest, with reports suggesting Stefan GP and a group including Colin Kolles are two of those to have done so. The most high-profile applicant, however, is the Gene Haas fronted Haas Racing Development. Haas currently co-owns Stewart-Haas Racing in NASCAR, while Haas Automation is also a large CNC machine tool builder. Stewart-Haas Racing won the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship in 2011 and Haas has now confirmed his interest in joining the Formula One grid via a statement released last Thursday. Banking group Santander has renewed its sponsorship deal with McLaren, a boost for the Formula One team which is still seeking a title partner for the coming season. Santander has been a backer of McLaren since 2007 and is also a sponsor of the rival Ferrari Formula One team. In such a competitive international sponsorship market, the fact that such a prestigious company has chosen to partner with McLaren Mercedes is a reflection of the strength of our brand, said Ekrem Sami, managing director of McLaren Marketing. McLarens former world champion Jenson Button will continue to feature in Santander marketing campaigns. McLaren had a dismal season last year, failing to finish on the podium in a race for the first time since 1980. It is yet to find a title sponsor to replace telecoms group Vodafone which pulled out at the end of last season. Talking about McLaren, they are launching the MP4-29 tomorrow night 23:00 AEDT via their website. Ferrari is tonight, 01:00 AEDT, again on their website. Below is an interesting YouTube clip celebrating the 10th year of racing for Red Bull. Next week is the first test. Bring it on! youtube/embed/oRDjCMdtWck?feature=oembed
Posted on: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 02:18:49 +0000
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