Team orders row “won’t happen again” – Williams

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Claire Williams says there will be no repeat of the row over team orders which occurred in Malaysia.

Formula Renault 3.5 on BT Sport

Some exciting news for me – I’m going to be commentating on the opening races of the new Formula Renault 3.5 season this weekend. I’ll be on BT Sport alongside lead commentators Ben Evans.

It’s a brilliant championship to be involved in, one which has promoted the careers of talent like Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Kevin Magnussen and more.

Here’s details of when and where you can catch this weekend’s races:

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Back at the sharp end – Q&A with Claire Williams (F1)

“I think Felipe thought that he was going quicker than Valtteri, so he thought ‘okay, go and try to overtake me!’ Fine – that’s fair enough to me. But we talked it over after the race and we now have procedures in place for such a situation that we have all agreed to. Such a situation will not happen again.”

Montezemolo tries to reassure Alonso (ESPN)

Fernando Alonso: “[Luca di Montezemolo] came on Sunday morning and we worked together in my room for ten minutes. We tried to put together everything we found in the first two races and what will be the next steps coming from the performance side and the car, with maximum pushing and maximum dedication from everyone in the team.”

Fernando Alonso calls on Ferrari to work ‘day and night’ for improvement (The Guardian)

“The test is very important. We have a very aggressive programme, which we need as our rivals will not just be sitting back and watching.”

Niki Lauda on the critics: “I’ll just tell them to get lost…” (Adam Cooper’s F1 Bog)

“It was very good, a perfect race, and it couldn’t have been better. It was the best race that has happened this year, so whoever complains about it, I’ll just tell them to get lost, very simple.”

Ecclestone: no easy fix for F1 noise (Autosport)

“It is not any one person who can decide. We have this group now that can sort this out. But at the moment no one knows what to do.”

Car bomb explodes in Bahrain capital, F1 race unaffected (Reuters)

“A home-made bomb exploded in a car in the centre of the Bahraini capital Manama on Sunday, the interior ministry said, as the kingdom hosted a Formula One motor racing Grand Prix.”

Team-mates battling in Bahrain (MotorSport)

“Did anyone expect Daniel Ricciardo to be so good so soon? I doubt it. His smiling demeanour outside of the car turns to steel inside and his cool team radio message, when he was getting held up behind Vettel – ‘Guys, we’ve got to make a decision about what we are doing here…’ – was the mark of a racer who respects himself and not simply someone who is too grateful for the opportunity to sit behind and enjoy the view.”

Top of the Flops (Joe Swawrd’s F1 Blog)

“I read [Ferrari’s poll press release] with fascination, it was like a chapter from Suicide 101, explaining how to load a pistol and point it at one’s head. I even went to ask the Ferrari PR man if there was any possible logical positive strategy for such a ridiculous release. His argument was not convincing.”

Tweets

Comment of the day

@GeeMac’s thoughts on how Nico Rosberg reacted to his defeat at the hands of his team mate on Sunday.

Nico Rosberg’s demeanour after the race on the podium and in all his post-race interviews was pretty telling.

He seemed to be pretty irritated, initially I thought that would have been at the team or Hamilton, but the more I think about it, it has to be at himself. He had all the tools to win (the quicker tyre, DRS, no team orders) and yet he couldn’t get the job done.

People said that Malaysia was a big psychological boost for Hamilton, I have to think that Bahrain was even more so.
@GeeMac

From the forum

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On this day in F1

And happy birthday to 1997 world champion Jacques Villeneuve who is 43 today. Villeneuve will compete in the Indianapolis 500 and selected rounds of the World Rallycross Championship this year.

Image © Williams/LAT

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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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53 comments on “Team orders row “won’t happen again” – Williams”

  1. Here’s a novel suggestion Bernie. Leave the cars alone. The sound – though not ideal – is perfectly adequate as it stands, and there are far more important considerations to be addressing before the difficult task of improving such an inherent characteristic of small capacity turbocharged engines (in the lack of noise). Do I need to spell out what the main area in which F1 needs to improve to endear itself to the fans is?

    1. Agreed mate . Even thought the DRS is slightly better , the defending driver is essentially toast . Double points is another of those things yeah . But looks like Bernie is determined . The question comes to how they will change the exhaust if they do ? I think RBR will be waiting for a way to enable their diffusers in case the exhaust exits are changed which , will give an advantage to them .

      1. The trick is, Todt agreed to a committee to come up with solutions, but alas to implement them this year they need to unanimously agree on them. Which is almost no chance of happening. So in effect its once again just acting as if doing something but really the maximum outcome of those meetings is going to be advising some minor changes for next year.

      2. the defending driver is essentially toast

        Unless you’re Lewis ;)

    2. Agreed. I don’t understand the need to artificially change the sound. Hypothetically though, we could artificially change lots of things. We could make the exhaust fumes artificially smellier; that would be visceral and evocative, wouldn’t it? And tracks that struggle with low attendance, we could use artificial spectators. And teams that can’t get sponsorship, they could be given pretend ones that make it look like a sport that is financially sustainable.

  2. It seems to me that most of the drivers are pretty comfortable with the new regulations and rules (except for double points, hah). It’s just BERNIE and a bunch of guys in suits who won’t take it unless Formula 1 works exactly how they want to, which just means making them millions at the cost of everything.

  3. Many congratulations Keith! All the more reason to watch FR3.5 this weekend :)

    1. @craig-o Thanks! Am really looking forward to it :-)

      1. Good luck @keithcollantine . From the times I’ve seen you on Sky Sports News I’m certain you’ll do a great job :)

      2. WilliamB (@william-brierty)
        9th April 2014, 13:14

        @keithcollantine – I am so jealous. You’ve only gone and managed to go to Monza, my favourite track, to comment on my favourite sub-F1 single seater series! Congrats Mr Collantine!

  4. To be honest, I never liked the ‘if you don’t like it, you can leave’ argument, as it generally doesn’t do much good as an argument or eventually as an action.

    However, with F1 viewing numbers declining already, I think people who want F1 to change are best off to turn off the TV. By decreasing the numbers further, FOM and FIA might get an idea. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with F1 2014, but I wish people would use their only bargaining power against Bernie; decrease his income stream by even that little bit.

    That being said, I do love how F1 manages to completely fail to catch any momentum from an amazing race and have rumours everywhere about a breakaway series, declining TV figures, noise complaints and general cynicism from the media.

    1. You make a good point, especially about all the bad press F1 gets whether it’s tyres (last year), noise, double points, changing the rules, etc. Like some commenters on here have said regarding new viewers, they don’t find it easy to follow at first as it is – all of this will definitely just put them off.

      That last race was brilliant; more of that this year and less off the moaning could well help viewing figures.

      1. *of

        Also, is there any analysis of viewing figures on here? (On my phone and I can’t search for it on F1F.)

    2. Turning off the TV makes no difference in the UK unless you are one of the select few with a TV monitoring device.

      1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
        9th April 2014, 2:28

        @matt90 don’t newspapers or other kind of media run polls about it? Here in Peru TVs don’t have the monitoring device, yet every weekend showbiz programs mention the rating of the top-watched during the weel.

        1. OmarR-Pepper (@)
          9th April 2014, 2:29

          week

        2. @omarr-pepper They extrapolate from the few who they have figure for. About 5,000 households have the box, with each monitored household representing around 5,000 households.

      2. turning off in the UK would make no difference for the people without sky because there’s nothing to watch! looking at the schedule, the beeb have only 1 live race a month now until october – what a joke.

        i enjoyed the highlights of the bahrain race, but it finished too late in the evening and the highlights are just not the same – there’s no ebb and flow. it just seems so short-sighted not to have F1 on terrestrial tv in what is surely still an important market for the sport.

        and anyway, i don’t want to switch off!

        1. there’s no ebb and flow

          I watched a live stream, then caught the highlights. The way Rosberg appeared to come in moments after Hamilton just looked wrong. It was important that he delayed by 2 laps, but we didn’t get to see that.

          1. Agree about the BBC highlights – usually they work well but this time they didn’t do justice to the race. It looked like there were very few slack periods in the race – the whole race was a highlight maybe?

        2. One thing I noticed about the BBC highlights for Bahrain was that they went straight to the race, without showing the formation lap which they always did, so I was quite surprised when I saw them going at such a high speed!

  5. OmarR-Pepper (@)
    9th April 2014, 0:47

    How hard do ALL the teams need to work to catch Mercedes? Not just Ferrari of course, but they have the resources to try the catch up. A different story is to see if they can catch up AND be better. Recent history is not on Ferrari’s side. 2008 (their last WCC) looks like old history now.

    1. Chris (@tophercheese21)
      9th April 2014, 1:23

      I’m not sure if they can. They’ll have to redesign their cars almost entirely to try and catch them this season. Because Mercedes PU placement and geometry is just better. They’ve designed their entire car around the arrangement of it. Not to mention the effective placement of their turbo, which also helps them.

      They’ve just got a far superior setup, so I don’t think anyone will catch them this season without completely overhauling their car. No amount of “Newey-Genius” in aerodynamics can make up the deficit that their engine lacks.

    2. I think one of the main problems is the lack of in-season testing. Thankfully, we have some of that this year, but now the engines are frozen and I’m not familiar with the degree to which they can alter the things around the whole PU, and how much performance can come from the elements that are still open to modifications.

      Freezing development and ban on in-season testing go 100% against what prototype racing should be and yet we find ourselves in this situation for the last half a decade. Engine freeze being even longer than that, but thankfully, at least now we have new engines. …that we can’t really develop as much as we’d like to.

      That all leads to the matter of money again. And while money is being drained from F1, I don’t see any hope for it to change. Of course, as they say, teams will spend what they have, but you need to make reward money more equally distributed and make it big enough to cancel out to some extent the difference in the budget that biggest teams can bring.
      On the other hand, you can just shell out the money, because it leaves F1 open to be exploited by some teams who’d just turn up and do nothing except qualify within 107%.

      It’s a conundrum, but I guess all of those who are running the sport could try earning some of that pay they are getting, instead of just sucking it out as if it’s their god given right.

      1. On the other hand, you CAN’T just shell out the money…

  6. Getting fed up with hearing these contsant “assurances” from Ferrari. Enough! Build a car that can actually go quickly on a straight and around corners!

    The problem with Ferrari is that they are like the great old former colonial superpower, basking in the glory of yesteryear but failing to keep up with the realities of the modern world. They need a reset, and they cant be blamed for not trying. Perhaps, we need to give the likes of James Allison more time?

    They need to find a 2012 style performance gain, if not more. Give Fernando and Kimi the tools that are half good and they can do the business.

    1. To be frank, that has always seemed to be the Ferrari way. Have a terrible performance for a couple of years, and then have a comeback every decade. The Schumi years were a total curb-stomp battle but it took them what, ten years to get to that level?

      1. More I learn about it , more I feel it was Schumi and Brawn were the orchestrators of the high in ferrari’s form .

      2. Getting Schumi and Brawn in was a mark of Ferraris desperation after a long run of poor results doing it the Ferrari way, history continues to repeat itself.

      3. And Rory Byrne.

  7. Following last weeks and all the talks around driver’s weight one can wonder if this is a chance for having a woman in F1. When you think about it, it’s much easier to slim down a woman to even 50 kg than a man. It has been said that each 10 kg’s can give you several tenths off your time. I know some small women who weight 45-50 kg. Compared to a “regular F1 style” man that weight around 70 kg it can give you maybe even 1 sec per lap.
    Having said that, it’s getting really ridiculous. How hard can it be to equal everyone’s chances? You can always make the seat + driver a 100 kg “package” and agree to weight on the seat in one specific area. Other sports use BMI as a general rule.
    Some of the F1 rules really make you wonder if it’s really the “pinnacle of Motorsport”.

    1. They say a 10kg weight reduction is equivalent to a saving of around 0.2-0.3 seconds in laptime. But this is only if the car is currently over the weight limit. Several teams have said they are borderline, but I have only heard Sauber admit that they are actually over the weight limit. For anyone under the weight limit, the benefit is only in ballast to improve weight distribution/centre of gravity which is worth significantly less.

      Also, i’m fairly sure that for the same height, women are generally slightly heavier than men (although i’m not sure if this also applies to athletes) so i wouldn’t think it was much of an advantage for women. If the teams really wanted to they could find drivers of around 50kg of either sex but there is a lot more to it than weight – skills, experience, financing etc.

      I agree with the last point though, i can’t see why you wouldn’t have combined driver+seat weight to balance things out. It seems ridiculous that Sutil has to race without a water bottle and is still losing up to 0.5secs per lap over his team-mate purely because of his weight (basically his height/frame size).

      1. Even if they’re well under the weight limit though a lighter driver is always preferable as it allows more flexibility with ballast placement. This is why I think the idea of implementing a minimum weight for driver and seat should be implemented by the FIA. If ballast must be placed in the seat of all drivers to reach the minimum then the playing field will be much more level.

  8. Re: Comment of the day, I think more than anything else Rosberg is simply sick of coming second to Hamilton. He even specifically said after the race I strongly dislike coming second to Lewis, not just that he dislikes coming second. They raced each other growing up and Nico has always been in Lewis’s shadow to some extent, going back as far as their karting days. Even though Nico won GP2 and got to F1 first it was Hamilton with the Mclaren backing and who has been winning races and a world title, while Nico has spend a lot of time in midfield cars. I imagine there probably is some envy there, and a case of Nico feeling that that could have been him if he had gotten the same opportunities that Lewis did.

    Nico was trying to be diplomatic but you could see how upset he was that he got beat by Lewis, even more so given the tyre advantage he had. However I’m not so sure his reaction would have been quite the same if say, Vettel or Alonso had beaten him; I think the fact that Hamilton got the better of him again is something that bugged him more than anything as he really wants to show he is every bit as good, or better than Lewis in particular.

    1. He isn’t though, no matter how hard he wants to show it and Sunday proved that.

  9. I recall Ferrari complaining about the engine freeze , (when getting smashed by red bull aero) years ago saying something along the lines of, we have great engine men sitting in Italy on their hands. i am struggling to call myself a Ferrari fan, they just seem to be dramatic, whiners. Less excuses

    1. Ferrari is about emotion (the “roadcars” I mean), but German are about engineering. Downsizing and hybrid doesn’t sound too Ferrari (if it was a diesel, may be Fiat but not Ferrari). If the Ferrari engine weighs 13 kg more than the Mercedes engine, tells a lot about which guys have more experince on efficent engineering.

      1. The PU weighs more, to correct myself.

      2. The Mercedes F1 engine factory is actually just the old Ilmor facility in Brixworth. It is more artisan than the branding would have you believe.

        1. So its English engineering? :) If it’s true that Ford is going to supply engines too (next year?), it’s probably going to sell it’s Ecoboost-concept, so American or English?

          1. Indeed it is @Sammo

            My guess re: Ford would be that they will hook up with Cosworth as usual to get their race engines made which is an English company.

  10. Even though F1 drivers are used to winning all the time and being faster than everyone from the junior categories, they must also know what it’s like to be comprehensively beaten and having to fight back.

    Obviously the environment is very different in F1 but if Nico managed to get all the way to the top and to be able to fight for the championship in such a dominant car the easy part has to be beating his teammate, his been there before, so it shouldn’t demoralise him if Lewis is ahead in just two races.

  11. F1 has been a series in decline for several years, really ever since engine equalisation was introduced, followed by the quick fix DRS and the quick fix marshmallow tyres. Where were the careing, listening fatcats then? Bernie was against this new formula from the beginning because it justified the teams demands for a greater share of revenue, Bernie made the claim that the sound would be awful and the fans wouldn’t like it before an engine was even made let alone run and he has kept telling the fans how bad it would be ever since so it is hardly surprising that agroup of fans have heard the new sound and decided it is awful after being so thoroughly primed to believe they would be loseing something of value.

  12. I must say I am 100% with Niki Lauda on this.

    If the sport panders to all this dummy spitting from Red Bull and Ferrari because they aren’t winning (yet) it will just reveal to the world what a contrived farce some fear F1 is becoming.

    Every team was hoping to steal a march with an innovative design (Non more so than Red Bull) but as it turns out the Works Mercedes Team have done the best job to date. Who knew?

    Unfortunately for Red Bull Adrian has come up with one of his customary overly ambitious prototypes which will take 12 months to get working as originally conceived and then will be unbeatable. Diddums!!! They rolled the dice and now they need to take it on the chin, suck it up like big boys and stop whining like spoilt Etonian babies.

    The funny thing about this whole debate is that whilst Mercedes are clearly dominating (for now) the new regulations appear to have breathed new life into the racing up and down the grid and all the mardy power brokers can think of doing is talking the sport down. It’s utterly absurd which also makes it highly suspicious when you consider Ecclestone and Mateschitz are angling to buy the sport outright and probably think they’ll get a bargain if they can significantly devalue the F1 brand.

    Are these people not subject to article 151c? They should be.

    F1 has so far this year been a breath of fresh air when compared with the snorefest which was last years tedious run in to the championship with Vettel winning every race from Spa onwards. Red Bull even started letting Vettel do donuts to try and cheer up the utter tedium which their whining about tyre construction had created.

    F1 is in rude health as it stands and a sure fire way to spoil that would be to let Red Bull call the shots so I say stuff ’em.

    1. Unfortunately for Red Bull Adrian has come up with one of his customary overly ambitious prototypes which will take 12 months to get working as originally conceived and then will be unbeatable

      On the contrary. FORTUNATELY for Red Bull Adrian has once again come up with a great chassis and great working car. The engine is holding them back in comparison to Mercedes, but it’s remarkable as it is that they’re effectively the second best team. It’s really telling of a great design.

      1. @MattDS

        You didn’t detect the irony then? Like 2009, Adrian will have to wait a year to be dominant again was what I was getting at.

        Anyway, It’s not only the engine, it’s the installation too. Adrian tends to design things the way he wants them to be even if it doesn’t work at first, preferring to find a way of making it work rather than changing the concept.

        Yes they are hampered by the Renault but they are also hampered by being unable to max out the motor because of the damage it does to ancilliary components when they do. Heat rejection is an area they are paying close attention to so they kind wind the bobbin up properly so to speak.

        1. No, I didn’t really detect any irony. Going from your latest reply I’m pretty sure you are saying Newey’s design in itself also adds problems that they still have to sort out before the car starts shining. And I’m not sure of that.

          Sure, there were problems with overheating in pre-season testing. However, none of that seems to still be a problem. The car seems to be working as intended and they’re now waiting for Renault to get their act together and fully turn up the wick.

          With only 1 real mechanical retirement they even are the most reliable Renault team together with STR. As for the number of allowed PU parts that they have used up until now they’re only trailing STR a bit. Whereas Caterhams are on their fourth “Control Electronics” units by now out of 6 allowed, so they will be running into grid penalties or pit lane starts fairly soon.

          TL;DR: RBR doesn’t look bad as far as reliability is concerned compared to the other Renault teams and not being able to max out the engine, at this point, is a Renault-problem, not an RBR-problem.

          1. But the overheating problems pre-season will have a lingering effect since their pre-season testing was so severely restricted that a lot of the development time and effort was wasted fixing the problems in the car’s design. This means that now that they have sorted that they remain further behind Mercedes and other teams than they might otherwise have been and they will likely remain behind the curve for a long time.

  13. I know that it’s not comforting but Alonso knows that it’s not his fault that he didn’t won another title….

    1. Maybe he can have a chat to Max Chilton about it, he would understand that feeling.

  14. It is always a nice surprise to see your name under the COTD. :)

  15. @keithcollantine I don’t have BT Sport but I’ll be streaming the race only because of you. Congratulations and a very good luck from all of us here.

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