Six points for Williams

Williams scored another 6 points to the total, as Bruno Senna fended off Mark Webber for most of the race, while also fighting with Jenson Button.

“Today was a nice race,” said Senna after the race.

“We pushed very hard on the strategy to make it work especially as the track conditions and the weather were very different from what we were expecting, so I’m happy with the team and I hope we can carry this momentum on. There were a lot of battles for me and it was hard it keep the tyres alive because the temperatures were so high, but it’s good to start in ninth place and finish in seventh. I think this is a turning point for us. The race was good, it was a fun weekend, the team are happy and the break is now welcome as it will be a chance to rest before we continue to push in the second part of the season.”

The Hungarian grand Prix marks the sixth occasion where Senna picks up points, and he now 24 points, just one behind Felipe Massa, three behind Paul Di Resta and five behind Michael Schumacher., and also five points behind team mate Pastor Maldonado, who finished outside the points.

“It was a difficult race today,” Maldonado said. “I had a bad start and lost a lot of positions which compromised our race from the beginning. It was hard to keep good pace in the traffic and then we also had to serve a drive-through penalty. I was on the limit racing Di Resta when I locked the brakes and lost some grip, but I was on the inside of the corner and so there was some light contact. We had to concentrate on tyre management today and we gathered a lot of information for the future. We weren’t as competitive as we have been, but we now need to work hard to focus on the second part of the season after the summer break.”

The field from tenth to fifteenth is relatively tight, just nine points separating six drivers.

Senna awarded Bandini Trophy

Bruno Senna has been awarded the prestigious Bandini Trophy, named in honour of the Italian driver Lorenzo Bandini.

There have been 19 previous winners, including David Coulthard, Juan Pablo Montoya, Jacques Villeneuve, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and many more.

“It’s a great honour to receive the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy, particularly when you consider the excellent racing drivers that have been awarded it in the past,” the Brazilian said. “I would like to thank the people of Brisighella for their kind support and generosity, as well as all of those who have helped me in my career so far. I’m very much looking forward to the prize-giving ceremony next month, which promises to be a great event.”

The trophy is awarded drivers who has shown great promise in the beginning of his career. Senna receives the trophy on July 15th.

Brisighella was the hometown of Lorenzo Bandini, and drivers who receives the award are expected to take the 12 kilometre journey from Faenza to Brisighella to receive the award, while locals gather and cheer the recipient.

As mentioned the trophy is named after Lorenzo Bandini, the leading Ferrari driver until his untimely death in 1967 in the Monaco Grand Prix. Running in second behind Denny Hulme, Bandini suddenly lost control of his Ferrari on lap 82, at the harbour chicane. His left rear wheel hit the guard rail and sent him into a skid he couldn´t save. The car hit a lamp post and overturned. The fuel tank ruptured and sparks ignited the fuel as the car rolled over.

Bandini was trapped inside the car and marshalls flipped his car back and retrieved Bandini, who at this time was unconscious. A second fire occurred when the gas tank exploded after Bandini had been pulled from the wreckage of the Ferrari. Bandini succumbed to his injuries three days later. He was buried in Reggiolo and 100,000 people attended. Read more about Bandini here.

New elaborate rear wing design for Williams

The Williams team has come up with a rather aggressive new design in their rear wing department.

Testing it during the Friday free practice session, the team will see if this can help the performance of it´s DRS, which hasn´t been as reliable as the team has hoped for, especially in qualifying. The rear wing, which is curved at the bottom, as just one part of a whole array of updates the team brings to Canada.

“In Barcelona it was OK,” Maldonado said of the DRS. “We have a new rear wing here, and I hope it will be better for the DRS but also for all the weekend.

“It’s all to discover. We need to test tomorrow and analyse many things on the car. We have a completely new aero package, so let’s see.”

With the field so tight this season, where ten drivers are usually within one second of each other in qualifying, gaining three tenths of a second due to an improved DRS system, is critical, Bruno Senna said in China.

“If you can get three tenths from the DRS effect, which is not impossible, then you are already jumping three or four positions,” said Senna.

“We know all the other teams have a bigger effect [from DRS], so on tracks with long straights it is hard.”

Maldonado testing the new rearwing in Canada

 

Schumacher drops five places for Monaco

Michael Schumacher has received a five-grid penalty after his collision with Bruno Senna during the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.

Schumacher was catching Senna down the straight on lap 13, but suddenly smashed into the rear of the Williams car. Both drivers retired. After the retirement, Schumacher commented on the incident.

“I just took a minute to watch the video and if you look at the overhead shot you can see that he moves right to defend his inside position, but in the braking phase he moves back left right in front of me,” said Schumacher.

“Then I tried to avoid to the inside again, but too late. Then it’s done because that’s in the braking phase. Very frustrating. Very much annoyed about that. We’ve had already a strange manoeuvre from him in Brazil last year and a lap before he had a get together with [Romain] Grosjean, I don’t know what exactly happened there. I hope they [the stewards] understand the video pictures good enough to clarify that.”

Unfortunately, the stewards were not on seeing the issue the same way Schumacher did, who called Senna an idiot and the former seven time world champion has been given a five-grid penalty for the Monaco GP in two weeks.

Speaking about the incident, Bruno Senna´s comment was:

“Of course he’s not going to say it’s his own fault, but at the end of the day he had much newer tyres than me, I was on very old rubber by then, so I guess our braking points were uneven for Turn 1,” said Senna.

“I’d already seen Grosjean braking very late and hitting me into Turn 1, and I didn’t want Michael to do the same.

“When I went to brake, he probably just tried to cross and he hit me, so what can you do?”

To make matters worse for Senna, a fire broke out in the Williams garage, after the team had started to celebrate team mate Pastor Maldonado´s maiden victory. Thick smoke covered most of the pit area, several members of rival teams rushed to aid the Williams people, and the fire have been put out. Unfortunetale, Senna´s car was damaged in the fire.

Williams happy with progress

Pastor Maldonado took 2nd place in the battle for the coveted pole position, at Catalunya in Spain on Saturday.

The Williams team hasn´t won a race since the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2004, when Juan Pablo Montoya finished a second ahead of Kimi Raikkonen. Incidentally, it was Montoya´s final race for Williams, but since then a new South American driver has been hired.

Pastor Maldonado has had a poor start to the season, with just 4 points from as many races. Team mate Bruno Senna, on the other hand, has collected 14 points but after Saturday´s qualifying session, the shoe could be on the other foot.

Maldonado was clearly fast in the second qualifying session, as he sat on provisional pole. Then, in the all-important final shoot-out, he lost out to a superbly driving Lewis Hamilton, who bettered Maldonado´s time by a whopping half a second. But Maldonado is positive and slightly optimistic.

“We have been working so hard all year to understand these tyres and with the updates we have brought to this race we have made a very good step forward,” said Pastor Maldonado. “The car is very consistent and its race pace is good so I am really looking forward to the race tomorrow. There has been a really positive atmosphere in the team all season and this is a great result for them and Venezuela.”

Bruno Senna hit a kerb too fast during the Q1 session, and spun his car, ending up in starting position 18. But Senna thinks that he can score points, and he has one extra set of tyres for the race to make it happen.

“It was a disappointing qualifying for me and I had back luck with traffic when on the soft tyre. I have a lot of work to do tomorrow if I want to score any points but I have had good races from the back before and our car is looking competitive this weekend.”

 

Spanish Grand Prix preview – Williams

Despite a positive start top the season for Williams, with Pastor Maldonado running in sixth place in Melbourne before an accident, and a 6th and 7th place for Bruno Senna in the following two races, the team is in need of a good result very soon. 18 points from four races is still miles better than last year´s results in the first four races, but Force India is one point behind and Williams have 13 points less than Sauber in 6th.

Pastor Maldonado says:

“We have done a lot of running here pre-season so hopefully that experience will help this weekend. It is a very enjoyable circuit to drive, technical but still quick with turns three and nine a real test. It is also difficult to set the car up here because there are high, medium and slow speed corners. We have been working hard since the last race and hopefully the updates we bring will lead to some good points.”

Bruno Senna:

“Barcelona is one of my favourite tracks and I get a lot of support there so I am really looking forward to the race. It is a very tough circuit physically and mentality, with plenty of high speed corners and a technical last sector which separates the drivers. Lots of cars will come to Barcelona with new parts so it will be interesting to see who has progressed.”

Rémi Taffin, Head of Renault Sport F1 Track Operations:

“We covered over 3,600km in winter testing at Barcelona, so we got plenty of data for how the engine-chassis package works round this track. This will help as there are a few challenges in Barcelona. The torque delivery has to be very accurate to deal with the slower corners in the third sector, including turn ten and the new chicane, but the engine also has to give response and drive through the upper end of the rev range to deal with the high and medium speed bends in the first half of the track. There are also several undulation changes so the gear shifts have to be correctly calibrated to give effective acceleration up the hills. The long pit straight gives an opportunity to release the KERS energy twice as the counter energy resets which should increase overtaking possibilities.”

Malaysia – The Day After

It´s been a while since I have done my usual reports the day after a race. For some time I simply couldn´t find the time for them, there are so many details needed to be correct and was it lap so or so, that this driver overtook that driver and so on. It´s not that I don´t revel in the work, I love it, it´s just so time consuming. I also used to do a HOT/NOT list, where I compressed most of the updates on the Day After article into easy-to-chew bits, where I name the best three and worst three drivers or teams on the day. I have instead deviced a cunning plan. Yes, I have!

Instead of giving the usual race report, complete with who did what on which lap and was it raining by the way – the answer to that is YES! – I am simply going to name the drivers I feel made a difference. It can be good, it can be bad. Let´s do this.

Best Team: Lotus

Romain Grosjean placed his car in sixth place on Saturday, Kimi Raikkonen went fifth fastest of all, but was penalised for changing the gearbox, so he started tenth. In the race, Grosjean retired on lap 3, just before he was about to pit for full wet tyres. He is coming back to F1 after a couple of years out, and never had a full season in which he could learn and develop. he is facing a steep learning curve in 2012, but the speed of Grosjean is there and so is the car. Kimi finished fifth, and could perhaps have done a little better, had he not been penalised. Very good effort from Lotus.

Best Performance: Sergio Perez.

No contest. Perez opted for one of his now famous one-stop strategies, and drove his backside out of those overalls. There are times you see glimpses of brilliance in some drivers, we saw that with Kobayashi in his first race and certainly in 2010. Also when Fisichella came second in Belgium or when Vettel won his first race in a Toro Rosso. But Perez is not only a real gem, he drove an almost perfect race, and more importantly, he breathed down Alonso´s neck for some time. is it a sign of things to come? Is the Sauber, running with a Ferrari engine, just better than the Maranello team? Is it a true picture of how the season will unfold? Am I asking too many questions…?

Almost There: Bruno Senna.

The Almost There award, goes not to a driver who almost won the race, but one who almost won the coveted Best Performance Award. Bruno Senna started 13th and drove a really good race in Malaysia. He started the race by going off, actually hitting team mate Pastor Maldonado, and personally I thought that we would see him go off again or crash into someone else pretty soon. After the re-start, Senna was now 11th, the started to line up the drivers in front of him. Hulkenberg, Massa, Vergne, di Resta, and finishing sixth in such a mad race as it were, is just a very big thumbs-up from me.

Worst Performance: Felipe Massa

There are many things you can say about Felipe Massa, many are true. I don´t think we can put his performance down to one single incident, the accident he had in Hungary in 2009, there has to be something more to it. It if is ‘just’ the accident, then we are talking about the fear a driver has. A boxer, a race driver, needs the fear to work around the contrasting feelings he get when he performs. Placing yourself in a tub going 320 kmh is not a very safe thing to do, and the fear exists in all of them. All drivers have that, but it seems it weighs too heavy with Massa. If that is the fact, of course. Massa´s performance in the race, was completely anonymous and is by far not a sign of what either he or Ferrari can do.

Best Post-race Comment: Sebastian Vettel on Narain Karthikeyan.

“Like on normal roads you have some idiots driving around and you have one here.”

Senna´s seat not safe at all

Bruno Senna might think that he has taken a giant leap forward this season, from his debut for HRT in 2010, over to Renault for eight races and now Williams. But though his seat was believed to be something he fought really hard for, he is in no way safe at the former champions.

While everyone seems to be revelling in the fact that Sebastian Vettel is looking like he could face a strong opposition, especially from McLaren, not many have noticed that Valtteri Bottas was driving Bruno Senna´s car in the first practice session in Malaysia. And did rather well in the process.

In fact, Bottas did so well, that not only did he just lose out on entering the top ten times, he beat Pastor Maldonado´s time, by 0,059 seconds. And he will take part in a lot more Friday sessions over the season.

The idea is that Bottas will be driving Senna´s car on fourteen more occasions during 2012, and this means Maldonado will keep his car for every session.

10.	Nico Hülkenberg	Force India	01:39.440
11.	Valtteri Bottas	Williams	01:39.724
12.	Pastor Maldonado	Williams	01:39.783