Webber “uncertain” over Red Bull’s Singapore pace

F1 Fanatic round-up

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In the round-up: Mark Webber says he’s “uncertain” about Red Bull’s potential at Singapore but expects them to be “very competitive” at the next two races.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Q&A with Red Bull’s Mark Webber (F1)

“We are back on high downforce and the track temperature is quite hot, so it is hard on the tyres. My prediction is that we will be very competitive in Suzuka and Korea. In America and Brazil we should be strong. The uncertain candidates are here and a little bit in Abu [Dhabi], but at the rest we should be strong.”

Standing By (Marussia)

“Max Chilton, has been elevated from our Young Driver Programme to the position of Formula 1 reserve driver with effect from the 2012 Japanese Grand Prix next month and for the rest of the current F1 season.”

Sergio Perez flirts with idea of joining McLaren (The Guardian)

Lewis Hamilton: “When we had troubles in the pitstops we eventually got it right. You trust the people you are working with – there has to be a lot of trust in every team. When the driver is going around the track at 200mph, you have to have confidence the team has done a good job, which I have always had.”

Hamilton: Overcoming Alonso very hard (Autosport)

“He has had an incredible run through the year with great consistency. He would be even further ahead if he didn’t have his problem in Spa. He was quicker than me that weekend, so his lead would be even greater.”

Hamilton’s building so Alonso knows it won’t be child’s play to block him from glory (Daily Mail)

Jenson Button: “I think it’s great. Every day I read the papers and the websites – because we all do, even if we say we don’t. I don’t know how much truth is in any of it – and I’m not saying you guys (the media) don’t always write the truth – but there are many interesting things out there.”

Kimi to be plan B? (Sky)

Ted Kravitz: “Or what’s much more likely I think maybe is Kimi Raikkonen. He’s won a championship, he’s won races and he knows how to do it. You could parachute him into that McLaren and he could do the job.”

City state aims high (FT, registration required)

McLaren managing director of marketing Ekrem Sami: “The Singapore Grand Prix has gone from nought to 60 in an amazingly short time. In commercial terms, Monaco used to stand alone as the most important race in the calendar, but because of the increasing significance of fast growing Asian markets to our partners – such as Vodafone, Johnnie Walker, Exxon Mobil and GSK – Singapore is now also a jewel in the crown. Add in the amazing spectacle of an F1 race, at night, around the iconic high-rise Singaporean streets and you have a very attractive proposition.”

Track star (FT, registration required)

Hermann Tilke: “There are two kinds of thrills. One [circuit] has one or the other, not usually both. One is a difficult circuit – fast corners and a flow that keeps it interesting for the drivers. On the other hand we have the spectator: they want to see challenging races with lots of passing and overtaking, they want to see the drivers make mistakes.”

Psy to Add Excitement to Korean F1 Grand Prix (The Chosunilbo)

“The organising committee has lowered the ticket prices this year to make the event more accessible to local fans. The cheapest ticket for the preliminaries on Friday costs W10,000 (£5.50), down 46% from 2011. Meanwhile, the most expensive ‘R’ ticket on racing day that puts spectators on the main grandstand costs W890,000 (£489)”

Formula One Betting: Introducing The Grand Prix Street Fighters (Unibet)

My Singapore Grand Prix preview for Unibet.

Tweets

Comment of the day

Dan Harrison wasn’t impressed by the limited questioning in yesterdays’ drivers press conference:

To have six F1 drivers available for questions and run out of ideas after 15 minutes was shocking. No wonder Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel spent the entire time larking about.

When Sergio Perez was asked whether he’d been approached by any big teams and responded with a story-crushing “no”, the interest drained out of the room – presumably the journalists were wondering where today’s Hamilton story was going to come from.
Dan Harrison

From the forum

Happy birthday!

No F1 Fanatic birthdays today.

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On this day in F1

F1 returned to Austria 15 years ago today. The 1997 Austrian Grand Prix was held at the A1-Ring, a remodelled and renamed version of the Osterreichring.

For the first half of the race it looked as though it might produce a surprise winner as Jarno Trulli, substituting for the injured Olivier Panis, led for Prost.

But Jacques Villeneuve took the lead off Trulli, who later retired with a blow engine.

With Michael Schumacher only able to finished sixth, Villeneuve closed to within a point of his rival in the championship.

The race also saw this alarming crash involving Jean Alesi and Eddie Irvine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihPpZsFZ2Q

Image © Red Bull/Getty images

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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33 comments on “Webber “uncertain” over Red Bull’s Singapore pace”

  1. So Jaime will be driving, somewhere, in something, against someone! Hope it’s in F1!

    1. Perez to Ferrari, Jaime to Sauber ?

      1. Or Heiki to Ferrari, Jaimie to Caterham ?

        I think we can rule Jaimie out as a replacement for, MSC, LH, or FM. That still leaves room for weeks of speculation, rumour, and punditry.

        1. Jaime to Caterham actually sounds possible. He is better than Petrov

        2. Maybe going to FI if either Di Resta or Hulk move to Mclaren/Mercedes or Ferrari?

          1. Or Hamilton to Mercedes, Perez to McLaren and Alguersuari to Sauber.

            Although from the sounds of things, Alguersuari already has a contract signed, which is at odds with Hamilton and Perez not having made their moves yet. Unless Alguersuari would be replacing Kobayashi at Sauber, but that begs the question of where Kobayashi would go.

            Alternatively, Alguersuari might replace Senna at Williams. It’s been generally assumed that Williams are going to put Bottas in the second seat, but that has been unsubstantiated, an if Alguersuari has a sponsor who wants to get involved with a team that has potential, then it wouldn’t be too difficult to get that second seat.

            It’s a shame both Williams seats aren’t available, because then we could potentially have Alguersuari and Kobayashi in the team, and I think that would be a very exciting line-up.

    2. @craig-o I checked his earlier tweets when I saw that and he did say he was in Singapore…let’s see!

      1. Is he not there as part of the five live crew?

  2. So even insiders like Ron Dennis see a race in terms of value to sponsors rather than value to fans, a sad trend, how long before we have massive roll-bars for “safety” and then the rear and front wings merged into a single central wing mounted on top of the roll-bars, followed by billboards on the wing a la “World of Outlaws”.

    I know, it is far fetched but when a sport becomes a business inevitably it shifts its emphasis towards the lowest common denominator. Let’s hope we don’t see it in our lifetime.

  3. I don’t think Raikkonen will rejoin Mclaren. What happened to him, in the past years, there, should be a strong reason.

    1. A shame, because I loved that combination. Although with Newey gone, he wouldn’t have the disaster of championships ruined by poor reliability (of course it also means he wouldn’t necessarily have car guaranteed to be competitive).

      1. Interesting comment. Interesting because there does seem to be a pattern to Newey’s reliability issues. When Tech Regs remain unchanged for long periods and the game of dimishing returns becomes increasingly frustrating Newey seems to repeatedly fall into the reliability trap as he pushes the boundries and compromises in the search for performance.

    2. I have heard that Raikkonen left McLaren on very bad terms. He was supposedly promised a World Championship within five years by Ron Dennis, and it never happen. Peter Sauber was also apparently quite upset by it at the time.

    3. Also, if they cant pay lewis what he demands, no way can they pay kimi.

      1. At the moment Kimi earns like a third of Lewis

        1. Mclaren can’t pay Kimi yet Lotus can? :P

          Kimi is earning a 7-digit number at Lotus right now, Lewis’ salary is an 8 digit number. Nuff’ said.

      2. Kimi will not even get a bigger pay than Jenson Button.

  4. I didn’t see that quote from Jenson Button in the Daily Mail article you linked to but I did see it in this Telegraph article:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/motorsport/formulaone/9556019/Lewis-Hamilton-keeping-quiet-about-McLaren-future-ahead-of-Singapore-Grand-Prix.html

  5. Noticed something about getting articles from the Financial Times, and abbreviating them as FT. What a day brightener Keith :P

  6. Jenson reads the news sites everyday? HELLO JENSON!!! I am a BIG fan and would be honoured to accept an offer of free tickets to a race…

    1. Should he address the tickets care of Kelloggs?

  7. I didn’t have lot of faith in Ma Qing Hua, and have less now he’s apparently crashed before driving the car ;)

    If they were doing an extraction test, it makes sense to do it on the person most likely to crash anyway!

    1. Did he actually crashed or that was that just a show to display marshals at work?

      1. Extraction test I think.

    2. If they were doing an extraction test, it makes sense to do it on the person most likely to crash anyway!

      Just because Ma is inexperienced, that doesn’t mean he is the most-likely driver to crash. Statistically, that dubious honour goes to Pastor Maldonado.

      No, I’d say they picked Ma for an extraction test because he probably hasn’t done one before. This way, both the marshalls and Ma get experience in extraction tests.

  8. Congratulations to Max Chilton! This may lead to him getting some FP sessions in next year if he can retain that reserve seat in 2013.

    I’m surprised by Webber’s comments, I thought Singapore would be right up their street (excuse the pun). Maybe It’s just the temperature that’s going to cause them problems with tyres…and alternator? ;) Don’t know…they did alright in Bahrain.

    1. I thought Chilton was one of Marussia’s test drivers already? Anyway been watching him in GP2, got strong potential that can be very strong overall with a competitive car underneath him, certainly one of the young, upcoming drivers that’ll hopefully be part of F1 in the future.

    2. Hey, it works for Fernando!, soon they will all be at it.

  9. Anyone else notice that they omitted the stepped nose in the Lego Ferrari?

    1. @adrianmorse That’s because it’s a model of last year’s car, the F150° Italia.

      1. Would building a Lego model of this year’s car break testing regs? Or does that only apply to Meccano?

  10. My Analysis of Singapore using Motec i2 pro(Mainly braking)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_u59PEvcFs&feature=plcp

    Singapore has no shortage of light to medium braking points. So Kers can pretty much be deployed anywhere, as recharging won’t be a problem. Where the drivers actually use it will be interesting to watch. I suspect drivers will be using kers more for gain in acceleration than top speed.

    I’ve used various parameters in my analysis

    1) A map of the circuit with a small dot indicating the position of the car. (note the darker colour in the braking zones)

    2) Brake pedal position

    3) Throttle position(green)

    4)Then there is a numeric bar gauge displaying longitudinal & lateral g-forces

    5) Then there is a red colour graph of brake-pedal position(in %) vs time(in sec)

    6) Then there is a green colour graph of throttle pedal position (in%) vs time(in sec)

    7) One more graph depicts brake temperature vs time

    8)There are 3 gauges displaying the Gear,engine rpm & cornering speed.

    9) In addition to the above, I’ve included a Scatter Plot of Brake temperature( in Celsius) Vs Engine RPM(in rpm)

    10) You can also see the variation of the brake temperature in the numeric bar gauge.

    11) A scatter ploy of G-forces Vs Acceleration(in m/s2)

    Note:- I’ve slowed down the simulation by 50% for people to compare the various parameters simultaneously.

  11. I have to admit that after last year, i was fully prepared to write Max Chilton off as nothing more than a pay driver racing in a category that would otherwise be beyond his means. But the team has really come together in their second season, and Chilton has put together some very impressive drives. I don’t think he’s ready for Formula 1 just yet, and he’s going to have a really hard time shaking the pay driver tag, given that the last driver to make it to Formula 1 from a family-owned team was Nelson Piquet Jnr., but I am willing to admit that maybe I was a little too quick to judge Chilton.

Comments are closed.