Red Bull sure of keeping Vettel as Newey steps back

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Christian Horner says he feels that Sebastian Vettel is unlikely to be affected by Adrian Newey’s repositioning when it comes to his future with the Red Bull team.

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Red Bull sure Vettel will stay despite Newey’s step back (ESPN)

Christian Horner: “I think the future is extremely bright. Sebastian is never going to talk about what the state of his contracts are, but he’s enjoyed a huge amount of success with the team and I’ve no doubt he will be with the team for many years to come.”

Ferrari F1 team says it never approached Adrian Newey (Autosport)

“Ferrari did not make an approach to sign Formula 1 design wizard Adrian Newey from rival team Red Bull, according to new team principal Marco Mattiacci.”

McLaren F1 team confident Austrian GP updates will be a good step (Autosport)

“The McLaren Formula 1 team is confident that the update package it is bringing to the Austrian Grand Prix will help deliver a good step forward in performance.”

Bottas is F1′s most prolific overtaker in 2014 (Capreis Sports)

“Counting all competitive passes so far this season… it is Valtteri Bottas who has successfully executed the most overtakes in 2014 thus far, having dispatched 21 drivers over seven races at an average of three moves per race.”

VIDEO: Formula One stopping power – 2014 style (Formula1.com)

“Formula One cars have used electronic ‘fly-by-wire’ throttle technology for years, but this season the sport has also adopted electronically-controlled rear brake systems for the first time. But just what is brake-by-wire and how does it work? This video guides you through the technology.”

Has Stig actually stolen an F1 car? (Lotus, Top Gear via YouTube)

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Comment of the day

After some reacted with cynicism to the news that Gene Haas is eyeing a technical partnership with Ferrari, American F1 believes that it would be unwise to underestimate F1’s newest team owner.

I gather from the comments many of you do not know much about Gene Haas. No, he is not suffering from “yanks do it best” syndrome in the least. IMO he is taking a smart, logical, methodcial, and business oriented approach to starting a brand new F1 team in a very competitive segment of auto racing.

Bear in mind that this guy is not in business to fail. He is an extremely successful businessman with Haas Automation (I would venture that several of the current F1 teams probably use CNC machines from Haas), an extremely successful NASCAR team owner with Stewart/Haas Racing, and he owns one of the most (if not the most) advanced full-sized wind tunnels in the world (used by several of the F1 teams on the grid today).

It seems to me he is going into this with eyes wide open and has already said it will take between three to five years just to be competitive. He has taken a look at Caterham and I expect Marussia as well and seems to be looking for a different way of operating. It would seem to me that would be a good thing, or is F1 some kind of Euro-only club?
American F1

From the forum

Happy birthday!

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On this day in F1

Michael Schumacher made it seven wins from eight wins at the start of 2004 after easily jumping ahead of his brother Ralf during the pit stops in the Canadian Grand Prix.

The Williams was disqualified after the race anyway, promoting Rubens Barrichello to second for Ferrari’s fifth one-two of the season so far.

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...

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64 comments on “Red Bull sure of keeping Vettel as Newey steps back”

  1. Well let’s face it Sebby, no-one else wants you now! Haha :D

    1. I know right? I mean, who would want to hire a four-times world champion?

      1. …who’s being trashed by his new title-less team-mate in his first year at the team. Just goes to show how WDC’s have devalued. It’s just an empty cup – Might have got that from a film.

        1. Yes, because Alonso is also just as useless due to the fact that he was also being ‘thrashed’ by his then rookie and thus unrated Hamilton back in 2007 >_> Challenged? Certainly. Thrashed? Perhaps you should go see the results of Kubica/Petrov in 2010 or better yet, Alonso/Massa from 2010-2013.

          1. his then rookie and thus unrated teammate Hamilton*

          2. OmarR-Pepper (@)
            13th June 2014, 0:57

            @woshidavid95 spot on! So I guess it’s a combination of both Seb having problems to adapt to this year’s car (but we have seen Vet coming back on this last races, so he’s almost ready) and Ricciardo is “the new Hamilton” or “the new Vettel”, I mean, RB doesn’t spend millions in the 2 teams to hire a Karun Chandok or a Taki Inoue .They knew Daniel was good, they gambled for him when Kimi asked for so much money, and the gamble has paid off. Even if Vettel moves to another team (and that’s almost sure if Red Bull gets stuck for a couple of years) they have in Daniel another great talent and a potential WDC.

          3. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
            13th June 2014, 12:54

            @omarr-pepper – Even though Karun Chandhok was a member of the Red Bull Junior Team…briefly…

            I would argue with regards to Vettel that the stylistic incompatibility of his former style, where he loaded the car with throttle very early in a corner, made impossible by barrels of torque and corner entry instability, will substantially handicap him to the extent that he will likely need to fundamentally redesign his driving style. And although he has been strong in race trim, his pace has still tended to be down on Ricciardo’s.

          4. Trashed is not the appropriate word in this case, In 2007 in the McRON team Alonso and Hamilton were tied in points,wins and podiums if i’m not wrong, Hamilton had the edge in 2nd places and Pole positions.
            Rookie is also relative again where unlimited testing was permitted, Hamilton did more than 20 000 KM of testing before partenering Alonso
            BTW Hamilton had that super natural speed which impressed everyone unlike Ricciardo who barely had the edge over JEV

          5. @tifoso1989
            The point is, Hamilton and Alonso in 2007 to Ricciardo and Vettel in 2014; if going by that guy’s definition of Vettel being ‘trashed’ by Ricciardo, then the same should apply for the Alonso-Hamilton situation (Which we know is not true) and hence the inverted commas; or in other words what he’s vastly exaggerating the advantage Ricciardo has over Vettel.

            Also, Ricciardo outqualified Vergne 15 times to 4 in 2013 so I’m not sure what you mean by ‘barely had the edge’ and he’s not a rookie unlike Hamilton in 2007, perhaps we should start acknowledging that Ricciardo is indeed potential WDC material instead of degrading Vettel’s abilities the same way people acknowledged Hamilton’s potential in 2007 instead of degrading Alonso’s abilities.

        2. It’s early days yet. Instead of saying how Seb is being “thrashed” (bit of hyperbole there on your part, buddy) why don’t you comment on how well Ricciardo is doing so far this season against his four time WDC team mate?

          Oh wait I know why, it’s because you have something against Vettel and make that known at every opportunity.

        3. “he did what in his cup?” – from the same film I believe :)

        4. Vettel has driven at least as well as Ricciardo so far this season, the difference in results between the two is entirely down to Seb having constant car problems.

          Next you’ll be proclaiming that Lewis is being “trashed” by Rosberg – after all, he is trailing him by 22 points!

    2. Things really change but the fact is drivers like Raikkonen and Vettel really know how to drive good cars and drivers like Alonso and Hulk drag bad cars.

    3. @Michael C: “Trashed” is probably the most exaggerating I’ve seen so far. In Australia, there wasn’t a fair comparison, in Malaysia Seb “trashed” Ricciardo – especially in qualifying, in Bahrain he had gearbox issues in qualifying and looked to like beating Ricciardo until SC. He has been overtaken afterwards but by no means been trashed – the only difference was that Ricciardo could overtake Hülkenberg, Vettel not. Ricciardo had also a bit more top speed with DRS (3 km/h).

      In China the issues seemed to get worse and he has chose the old chassis from testing again. From that point it looked like he has been better again. In Spain, he’s had issues in Q3 and the race looked quite handy again. Even if he wouldn’t have beaten Ricciardo, he would hardly been “trashed” in that race. In Monaco, he had some issues again in Q3 and probably finished the race ahead of Ricciardo. In Canada it’s been down to strategy. Ricciardo wouldn’t have either won the race if it weren’t for the brake issues by Perez in the late stage of the GP.

      And regarding Vettel and Kimi not being able to drive bad cars: Look at the Toro Rosso when he regularly has been able to put it in good positions. And Kimi did certainly the same in early 2004 when the McLaren MP4-19 wasn’t a good car at all. Hülkenberg hasn’t been able to drag “bad cars” so far. The Sauber was a different car in the second half of 2013. And the FI is by no means a “bad car” this year.

      1. Ok, we’ll see by the end of the season because there comes a point where it stops becoming “luck”, as you like to call it.

        1. I didn’t even name “luck” in any sentence. And you need to be ignorant to not see the issues Vettel had.

        2. Ok. He never said “luck” in that entire comment(don’t let your emotions affect your reading ability).

      2. Thats hardly an unbiased comment. Vettel has had a lot of issues, while Daniel has had both the luck and the reliability. While I’d rate Ricciardo as having a bit more of raw speed, he can’t match Vettel’s consistency.
        Ricciardo chose to have less downforce than Seb, which eventually did help him get Perez, but Vettel didn’t take long to dispatch the Force India either-Barely a lap. Daniel took much more than that, though Perez’s car wasn’t getting any better with his brake issues.

        I don’t know what @peartree meant by his comment, but IMO, Raikkonen won’t be able to do what Alonso did with instable cars like F2012 or FIAT. Yes, Spa 2009 was a pretty impressive result, but Alonso has outmatched Kimi this year, and the car is difficult to drive.
        Hulkenberg managed to get almost 10 points before the Sauber recieved that update in Monza. He had as practically many points as JEV and DR, despite having an inferior car.
        Sebastien hasn;t had a troublesome car yet, It’s one thing to have a slow car which struggles for points, and quite another to have an instable car which isn’t easy-competitively-to drive, like last years Williams, This years Sauber with its brake issues.
        No FI, isn’t bad this year, but it isn’t a Williams/Ferrari either.

    4. A) The season is far from over, so let’s see how this team mate battle unfolds.
      B) Let’s just wait for second half of the seasom Seb…

    5. Lauda wants Vettel to Mercedes even when he has two top racers there:

      http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns27445.html

    6. So many people taking this far too seriously. Dave, Dave, Dave, Omar, Squid, Max, Feuerdrache, David and RM – I meant this as a joke or a bit of banter but you were outraged enough to reply in your volumes. I’m not going to stop sharing my opinion/jokes as that is what the comments section is for. I apologise to all the people whose feelings I hurt, get well soon!

      1. Oh so when people tear your poorly formed opinions to shreds you were just “joking”? Great defence there (that’s sarcasm, by the way).

        Oh, and just so you know jokes are supposed to be funny….

        1. One persons view doesn’t represent anothers. Please stop arguing, this is a respected fan community website.

          1. Haha brilliant joke! I take it all back, you’re hilarious and don’t negatively impact the otherwise reasonable and informed discussion found on this site at all! That comment was fantastic and made perfect sense! COTD.

        2. In addition, I don’t see any Max replying to this comment (I presume he means @vettel1) so clearly he’s hallucinating… unless his (Max) comment got removed for whatever reason.

          1. You’re right.. about Max ;) Thanks for checking!

      2. So when I tore your opinion to shreds, your trying to defend it was also joking?

        1. “I know right, who’d want to hire a 4x world champion”? … I’m dissatisfied. Fsoud and Feuerdeache wrote their own novels.

          1. I hear its amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Hari Kiri Rock. I need scissors! 61!

  2. While Vettel might stay for a little while, I don’t see him ending his career at Red Bull. Next year, he’s gonna start thinking about moving elsewhere, I’m sure!

    BTW, great teaser video with the Stig :D very funny !

    1. Even if it’s not remotely likely, I’d love to see him partner Alonso at Ferrari for 2015. I can dream..

    2. Me neither, and from what Horner mentions, there is nothing in that saying that Vettel will or even has committed to Red Bull for a longer time. Just that currently he has a contract and no reason to leave immediately

  3. COTD is bang on.

  4. Maybe we can expect Romain Grosjean in the next TG series? Im really hoping they get Alonso on the show at some point.

    1. Lotus-Grosjean
      13th June 2014, 5:37

      What if Top Gear is Maldonadoed ;)

  5. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    13th June 2014, 3:06

    I can’t see Vettel going anywhere really. Even with Newey dialing back his involvement, Red Bull will still be a top tier team. I mean, I know that there’s been rumours of Seb wanting to drive for Ferrari someday, but he’s still very young, with plenty of years left in F1.

    And with the state that Ferrari is in right now, I can’t imagine why he’d want to go there. Probably safer to wait until Ferrari can prove that they’re at least competent when it comes to designing a race car first before he heads for a fresh start elsewhere.

    1. @tophercheese21

      Like any driver Vettel will aim to be at whichever team he believes gives him the best chance of winning more races and championships. Usually that means going for the best car, although sometimes they might prefer a competitive car but with either a weaker team-mate, no.1 driver status, or just a team they are familiar with and feel they will work better with. There might be a little leeway later in his career given that he has achieved so much already, so he might be interested in the prestige or enhanced reputation for winning with a different team (such as Ferrari), but i think that is still some way off.

      Only Mercedes is faster this year, and since no seats are available there any time soon Redbull remains the best option for Vettel. I believe the engine gap will close a lot next year and Redbull certainly has a very strong chassis, much better than anything else on the grid bar Mercedes. If another team bursts through to the front of the grid next year and Redbull struggles then he could consider a move after the 2015 season, but i don’t think it’s likely.

      (Ofc the other thing that can prompt a move is fallout at the team or consistently being beaten by a team-mate. It’s still too early to say how the Ricciardo-Vettel battle will progress, but first blood to Daniel!)

    2. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
      13th June 2014, 12:33

      @tophercheese21 – Exactly, he has no other options. Mercedes are happy with their line up, McLaren already have too many drivers to choose from (Button, Magnussen, Vandoorne and perhaps even Alonso), Ferrari have Hulkenberg, Bianchi and Marciello lined up if Raikkonen’s pace doesn’t pick up, and Lotus is broke (and likely to be replacing Maldonado with Fabio Leimer soon – he has £16million in sponsorship, £16million more than PDVSA are giving Lotus nowadays). And with Alonso set to stay at Ferrari, thus ruling Vettel out for Kimi’s seat (Ferrari’s “two cockerels” policy hasn’t changed THAT much) if his pace hypothetically does not improve, Ferrari may find themselves with the ideal Alonso-Hulkenberg line up in 2015 with absolutely no room for Vettel. So unless Vettel fancies replacing Massa at Williams, he will have to be a patient quadruple world champion and wait for either Alonso to retire or for Red Bull to refind their form. It is fully foreseeable, and perhaps not in the all too distant future, that Ferrari will be dominating F1 again with an all conquering Vettel-Hulkenberg line up with the ball of technical momentum well and truly back in their court, but until then Vettel might have to grit his teeth and watch the Mercedes drivers, and more worryingly his teammate, take the plaudits.

      The suggestion that Vettel might move put me in mind of the comment, from Lotus themselves, that they were afraid of loosing Grosjean, a clever way of complimenting him in that they can be safe in the knowledge that he has no other options. The grid is certainly quite backlogged, with the rather fortunate problem being that we simply have too many great drivers on the grid at the moment.

      1. Sadly, I must disagree with your last. We are in an era where we have many more impressive drivers than we have win-worthy teams. If the budget cap ever happens, all of the sudden F1’s current crop would be a great fit. Or, if we at least had one extra Red Bull/Mercedes quality team and one more Force India/Williams quality team. We don’t. Simply, we have a lack of anything close to parity, and we’re missing what could be a marvelous span. Between budgets, DRS, the incessant blather over noise just at the moment a car can sound beautiful without inducing pain, and television complaints, we fanatics miss out.

        The talent pool at our grasp is so rich right now that we all should be irate with the fact that it took severe hinderance to Rosberg for anyone else to have a chance.

      2. Ferrari drivers line up is unlikely to change before 2016, Kimi has a contract for next year too. From a marketing point of vue (Mattiacci’s territory) Sebastian Vettel could be the ideal replacement of kimi in 2016, the guy even if he’s not very popular within the tifosi (they will forget as soon as he signs with Ferrari) could promote very well the Ferrari brand. Sometimes in life you need a fresh air and Ferrari could be the ideal place for him, he’s already the youngest ever 4 times WDC, he also holds the record of wins and pole positions, even if he has to wait that won’t affect him, Alonso has been waiting for 5 years in Ferrari, and who knows if Ferrari won’t be competitive by 2016

  6. I love that Sauber video, I could listen to Willem Toet all day no problem, there’s clearly very talented engineers working at Hinwill right now, the problem is that there’s not enough of them and just like Lotus they’ve been loosing lots of people in the past two years… starting with Peter Sauber himself unfortunately :(

    1. Sauber also stopped hiring talented drivers, that’s their problem.

      I hope they hire Kobayashi next year, while ditching Sutil.

  7. Given the current state of affairs, the only move *up* for Vettel would be to go to Mercedes, and I don’t see there being an available seat for at least a couple of years. If he wants to go to Ferrari sometime during his career, he better wait until they start delivering. And I’d wait until Alonso is gone too, if I were him. Same for McLaren. So yeah, I’d bet he stays with Red Bull for the time being.

  8. Neil (@neilosjames)
    13th June 2014, 6:08

    “The McLaren Formula 1 team is confident that the update package it is bringing to the Austrian Grand Prix will help deliver a good step forward in performance.”

    Haven’t they been saying that every race since Australia?

    1. Yes, since Australia 2013.

    2. McLaren promises to make great step ahead. They are Ferrari 2.0 version I believe.
      It is staggering how they fell in two years. They were fastest in 2012, they could improve the car as every other team did and fight with Red Bull all year in 2013.
      Shame.

    3. I feel sorry for Mclaren,I hope the dont end up like Ferrari,but the way they go its possible.The Hamilton departure cost them a lot!

      1. “End up like Ferrari”

        Funny, really, considering Mclaren havent won the WCC since 98.

    4. It’s so convenient to ignore that the other ten teams also increase the performance of their cars all the time isn’t it?

  9. Guys,Does anyone know who the current Stig is?Alonso said at silver stone sometime back that he’s obviously an ex-F1 driver

    1. That was Ben Collins at Silverstone a few years back. The current Stig is Phil Keen

      1. Heard they don’t use just one person at the Stig

    2. I bet on Coulthard !

  10. Keith Collantine wished me happy birthday. My life is complete. Thank you @keithcollantine

    1. Well, happy birthday @major-dev!

      1. Thank you so much mate. This is why I love Formula 1 fans. So much respect for each other! :’) @bascb
        Love you people.

  11. @KeithCollantine I read an interesting article on f1technical.net and maybe you missed it, so I embed very interesting quote from Stefano Dominecalli:

    “After taking the decision the day after the Bahrain GP he made three phone calls. He called Fernando and Kimi who „are true friends to me”. The third driver was Sebastian Vettel. When he was asked about the reasons and whether Sebastian stood close to Ferrari and was about to join the team in the near future, he just grinned and said: „You’ll have to find out the answer for yourself, sorry.”

    Source: http://www.f1technical.net/news/19414?sid=bebaaf31472515e749a2b71f2999e064

  12. Pretty video about brake by wire, but wouldn’t we like to know some more gory details?
    Is the ECU standard? Is the software standard? What parameters does the software take into account? What’s the adjustment speed?

    1. @tricky I’m not an expert but I’ve read a little bit about it over the past months…

      Is the ECU standard? Is the software standard?
      The ECU is standard made by Mclaren Electronics but the braking system including the software is developed independently by each team, but I guess there must be only a hanful of suppliers and most have exactly the same parts anyway, so it’s how they use them that makes it different.

      What parameters does the software take into account?
      First of all brake preassure, the pedal has a sensor that tells the ECU how much braking is requiered then depending on how much energy is going to be harvested a certain amount of negative torque will come from the KERS working in reverse or the traditional disc brakes.
      The rear brakes are still hydraulic but are now controled electronically with a variable valve, if that valve fails it defaults to the regular circuit which is connected to the front brakes.

      What’s the adjustment speed?
      If you mean the sampling time from the valve to open and close then it has to be only a few milliseconds, if there was only a slight delay drivers would feel it straight away.
      To give you an idea, if you’ve ever played computer games on an old LCD TV, you can see a delay of around 15-20 milliseconds which is very noticable once you know it’s there.

  13. I hope the Stig stole Maldonado’s car. That means he can’t crash anymore.

    1. Are you sure that was Stig, and not half of Daft Punk?

  14. Bottas has the most overtake. I wonder it but I agree it.

Comments are closed.