F1 links: Schumacher on Silverstone ’99

Michael Schumacher speaks of near-death experience at Silverstone

‘The seven-time F1 champion, who retired at the end of the 2006 season, crashed at the high-speed Stowe Corner at Silverstone. "I suddenly felt my heart beat slowing and then completely stopping. The lights went out," Schumacher said "Then I thought, ‘Ah, that’s the way you feel probably when you are on the way up.’ I only know that my heart stopped beating, at least the way I felt."’

Nose cone changes to take longer in ’09

Easier to damage and harder to replace – a lose-lose situation.

Deceivingly simple Ferrari front wing

“Contrary to last year, the 2009 style panels aim to direct air to the outside of the front wheel, contrary of the inside as last year’s front wings were considerably smaller. You can also notice a small winglet attached to the end plate’s floor, also directing air away from the front wheel.”

Ferrari dismiss Fernando Alonso rumours

‘Domenicali further shrugged off reports that Raikkonen had been assigned a new race engineer, Andrea Stella, because of differences with Australian Chris Dyer, who has moved on to become Ferrari’s track engineer for 2009. It was pointed out that Massa seemed to blossom under his relationship with Englishman Rob Smedley, while the Raikkonen-Dyer axis was less cosy. "First of all let me underline that speculation of a negative relationship between Kimi and Chris Dyer is a complete fabrication," Domenicali said. "It was nothing to with technical difficulties or deficiencies. This is a natural development of Stella’s career. The relationship between him and Kimi was always good in the past and I was in favour of this change.”‘

Formula 1’s virtual reality

‘Ferrari has been using a fairly simple unit, which is housed at the Fiat Research Centre in Turin. The team had recently announced a partnership with the US firm Moog. This will be the very latest dynamic device. “The dynamic driving simulator is a new step for us in developing virtual tests that give drivers the true feel of a real environment and direct feedback on their actions,” says Scuderia Ferrari’s head of R&D Marco Fainello. “It will support the new breed of tests we are planning to launch.”‘

The importance of simulation in F1

“It is believed that Ferrari is working to expand its computational fluid dynamics capabilities but there is also major work going on to create a fullscale F1 simulator. McLaren is believed to be the only F1 currently using a dynamic simulator at the moment, but teams are incredibly secretive about what they are doing and the Woking team will not even confirm this. The team is believed to have spent as much as $40m on this and worked with British Aerospace engineers.”

My tribute to Nelson Piquet Sr

“Making bunny ears and trying to hug Jean-Marie Balestre on the ’91 USA GP podium. Fooling around with Murray Walker and Mansell while the BBC commentator tried to record the intro of the TV coverage. These are all little things that make an everlasting impression on us. When you see the group photo of Prost, Senna, Mansell and Nelson, the latter was always the one who would seem to be enjoying himself the most.”

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