Even more controversy at Red Bull?

A week since the Red Bull team was investigated for their torque mapping, and though initially cleared by the stewards, the FIA decided to clarify the ruling and outlawed the mapping Red Bull made. Now, in Hungary, a new controversy has occurred. And once again, Red Bull is the root of it.

There are rumblings in the paddock at Hungaroring on Saturday, that the FIA investigated Red Bull earlier this season, this one regarding the ride-height system during the Canadian Grand Prix last month.

According to Sky Sports, the investigation was conducted by official from the FIA´s technical delegation, but the results from this investigation is yet to be published. Craig Slater has more:

“There are fresh murmurings from some of the teams about the Red Bull car. We’ve already had this issue into their engine mapping; they’ve been forced to change that.

“Some of the teams are now learning that in the Canada grand prix a few races ago, a race which Lewis Hamilton won, the FIA had a query about Red Bull’s ride height. We haven’t got any more details about this yet but it could well be that this develops into quite a significant story throughout the day.”

This will be followed closely by the reporters present at Hungaroring and I will bring the latest updates as soon as I have more.

In the meantime, Mark Webber finished the final practice session in P1, ahead of Lewis Hamilton in second and Sebastian Vettel in third.

Move over Hammy, Webber tops final practice

Red Bull´s Mark Webber put up a fight against McLaren´s Lewis Hamilton, to compete for the P1 position i nthe final practice session at Hungaroring, ahead of the qualifying session starting in a few hours.

With a 1:21.550, Webber was little more than one tenth faster than Hamilton, who was P1 for some time. Vettel made it to P3, just 0.028 behind Hamilton, as Bruno Senna completed another great session result and finished fourth. Fernando Alonso fifth, Kimi Raikkonen sixth, Romain Grosjean seventh, Felipe Massa eighth, Paul di Resta ninth and Jenson Button tenth.

Pastor Maldonado makes it elevent, then it´s Kamui Kobayashi, Jean-Eric Vergne, Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg, Heikki Kovalainen, Vitaly Petrov, Charles Pic, Timo Glock, Pedro de la Rosa and Narai Karthikeyan.

 

 

Standings after the 10th round

Fernando Alonso extends his lead n the 2012 F1 championship, with a hefty 34 points lead over Mark Webber. Sebastian Vettel is in 3rd place, with Kimi Raikkonen 4th. The official results are:

Pos.	Driver	Points
1.	Fernando Alonso	154
2.	Mark Webber	120
3.	Sebastian Vettel	118
4.	Kimi Räikkönen	95
5.	Lewis Hamilton	92
6.	Nico Rosberg	76
7.	Jenson Button	65
8.	Romain Grosjean	61
9.	Sergio Perez	47
10.	Kamui Kobayashi	31
11.	Pastor Maldonado	29
12.	Michael Schumacher	29
13.	Paul di Resta	27
14.	Felipe Massa	23
15.	Nico Hülkenberg	19
16.	Bruno Senna	18
17.	Jean-Eric Vergne	4
18.	Daniel Ricciardo	2
19.	Heikki Kovalainen	0
20.	Vitaly Petrov	0
21.	Timo Glock	0
22.	Charles Pic	0
23.	Narain Karthikeyan	0
24.	Pedro de la Rosa	0

Rosberg, Webber to move five places back

Nico Rosberg and Mark Webber will have to move five places down on the grid, after Saturday´s qualifying session.

Rosberg was forced to change his gearbox after the second practice session on Friday afternoon, after he finished the session in 2nd place. Rosberg looked to be strong this weekend, at least for pole, but he will now have to add five places more to his qualifying lap times. Romain Grosjean, another potential pole sitter for Sunday´s race, is equally hampered by a five-place penalty, as he had to change his gearbox after the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, a fortnight ago.

And finally Mark Webber receives five places down on the grid, as his mechanics worked after hours, using one of the four exceptions of the curfew rule, in order to establish what the issue was. And it was a gearbox change for Webber as well.

 

Webber says he was in talks with Ferrari

Mark Webber on Tuesday confirmed that he was staying with Red Bull for another year, but admits that he was talking to Ferrari before meaking his final decision.

Still it was no great surprise when the headlines ticked in from Reuters, that the popular Aussie driver, 2nd in the championship after his recent win at Silverstone last weekend, has signed an extension with the double champions.

“It’s been an interesting few months,” Webber commented. “Overall the continuity and desire for me to continue at Red Bull Racing was very strong. My main focus is on this year’s championship, which is very important.

“There were discussions with Ferrari, but my decision was to stay here. I virtually know everyone’s shoe size! I know everyone’s names, I know how everyone ticks and I know all the departments which is very, very important for a driver. There’s a whole raft of factors. With Seb, we’ve worked very, very close together for a long period of time now. I think no-one would really have envisaged how long we have worked together, so that’s probably been a bit of a surprise.

“There are not many team-mates staying together for that long in Formula 1, but it’s proved to be a successful partnership with both of us working very hard with the key technical members of the team. It’s been a potent operation. We’re still competitive when we hit the track, no question about it, especially in 2010 and this year. Last year there wasn’t much racing between Sebastian and I, but in 2009, 2010 and this year, there have been some great battles.”

 

Webber confirmed at Red Bull for 2013

Mark Webber has signed a contract extension with Red Bull, which will see the Aussie stay with the championship winning team for one more season.

The rumours about Mark Webber was moving to Ferrari for a single season, to warm up the seat for Sergio Perez, was just that. Rumours.

On Sunday the 35-year old won the British Grand Prix and just two days later, on Tuesday, the popular driver has signed a one year extension with Red Bull, saying he is very comfortable with the team.

“I’ve been with Red Bull Racing since 2007 and have achieved nine grand prix wins during that time,” Webber began. “I’m high on confidence at the moment and firing on all cylinders.

“I know the team well and I’m very comfortable here; we have grown together over the years and it feels like absolutely the right thing to stay with Red Bull for another season. The team is constantly working hard to improve in all areas and we’ve shown that together we can win races.

“It’s great to be able to make this announcement off the back of the win in Silverstone at the weekend and I’m looking forward to competing on the edge and pushing myself in every race again next season.”

Webber has had a consistent campaign so far and have been able to score point in 8 of the 9 races so far with no retirements. Team mate Sebastian Vettel is also very good at collecting points, but have one retirement and are 16 points behind Webber, who at the moment seems to be the safest bet of the two.

Team principal Christian Horner is very happy to be able to keep Webber for one more season.

“Mark has driven very well in the first nine races of this season and his performance has been impressive,” said Horner. “Much of his Formula 1 success has been during his time with Red Bull Racing and together we have achieved 10 poles, nine wins and 31 podiums.

“As there was a strong desire from both sides to continue the partnership, it was a logical decision to extend our relationship and it is with great pleasure that we confirm Mark will drive for us in 2013.”

Many websites reports that the move is surprising, but I dno´t see that. I think it would be even more surprising if he left. Mark Webber has always had a special deal with Red Bull. Where Sebastian Vettel negotiates with Christian Horner, Webber only negotiates directly with the owner of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz.

British Grand Prix – The Day After

We are nearing the halfway mark of the season and the British Grand Prix on Sunday threw up another few surprises.

After a fantastic aggressive start from Fernando Alonso, and I have to say from Mark Webber too, because starts are not is forté, it looked as if Alonso might take this win too and make it two in a row. But those tyres…

Alonso pitted from the lead on lap 15, he had started the race on the hard compound, but surprisingly the harder compound didn´t seem to last much longer than the soft. Mark Webber started on soft tyres, which lasted 14 laps, so the gap of performance are so tight and the difference between the two compounds really small. comparing the two drivers and we see that Webber managed 19 laps on his hard tyres, after the first stop, then pitted for another hard tyre on lap 33, while Alonso managed 21 laps on his second set of hard. So at the end, we knew that Alonso needed soft tyres, but for some reason they couldn´t hold for the remainder of the race, despite the fuel load decreasing. Another thing that surprised, was McLaren´s tyre strategy for Hamilton. He pitted on lap 21 from hard to soft tyres, and was told to give it all. The problem was that the field was stretched out a little too far for Hamilton to capitalize on this and on his faster soft tyres he managed only to overtake Michael Schumacher for one position. He then pitted after just seven laps, came back out as 12th and ended the race in 8th place. Still, no matter how you look at it, Pirelli gave us another exciting race.

With the win at Silverstone, his second here, Webber is now carefully positioning himself as Red Bull´s best bet for a champion. We have heard him say, that he is driving for himself and that he will do everything it takes to win. There is also the added element of him being a, shall we say, grown man. He is 36 in a month and a half and if he doesn´t win this year´s championship, then what? He´s fast, reliable and consistent this year, while Sebastian Vettel seems to be having a little post of trouble from time to time.

But who did the best job on Sunday? Who surprised us and who failed?

Driver of the Day: Felipe Massa

I am so happy to give this one to Felipe Massa, after what has seem to be race after race of frustrations and finishing well away from the points, despite team mate Alonso getting a lot more out of the car. Of course there is the issue of personal driver set-up and for all we know, Massa needs the car to react very differently than Alonso. We know the car is a handful and can be tricky to get the most out of it, but his performance at Silverstone was aggressive, fast and calculated. It was a real joy to watch him. Great job.

The Oh No Not Again Award: Jenson Button

Seriously, what is going on at the moment? From what I´ve been told, Button is annoyed that he can´t tweak the car to his liking. He is a very smooth driver and is a very good tyre management driver, but I fear the ground model McLaren made has proven too hard to set-up. It´s like if you make a base model and then you know that as the season progresses you can bring updates. But I think that McLaren are really scratching their heads at this moment, because Button has always been able to get a lot out of a car that doesn´t perform 100%, but perhaps the base model is just not good enough? So the gap from the base model to the options the drivers have to adjust it to their individual settings, ie. Button´s, are just too large. I don´t know, but I am sorry to say that this championship is over for Button.

Driver Responsible For Putting More Action In The Championship: Mark Webber

You would have expected me to give Webber the Driver of the Day award, but even though he had a great race, I don´t think it can be labelled as the best of the day. I didn´t see much aggressiveness from him, but of course winning a race, is still winning a race. Did he deserve the win? Absolutely. As you can read below, this championship is not about who is starting from pole, or who has the fastest car. Ferrari has won two races with Alonso, and five podiums in total, in a car that´s basically not that fast. The Red Bull is the car to beat, but the tyres play such a big part that the usual driver set-ups can be thrown out the window. That´s why we haven´t seen Vettel go from win to win, but the reason Webber is winning, is due to his determination and his will. Whenever things aren´t going great for Vettel, he isn´t winning. Unless he is in front, he will have a tough time winning the race. So thank you Mark!

Worst Driver of the Day: Pastor Maldonado

Winning one race doesn´t give you permission to crash into others. Granted, the incident in Valencia wasn´t his fault, but I can think of a few that was. And if we look away from F1 and the other series he has participated in, he has a story of dangerous driving. In 2005, when racing in the World Series by Renault. In Monaco he failed to slow down for yellow flags after an accident, and seriously injured a marshal. And in GP2 he picked up a penalty for speeding in the pitlane at Silverstone, then another penalty for passing under yellow flags, then crashed into Adrian Vallés and Kamui Kobayashi on the final lap. And in F1, when at Spa in 2011, he and Lewis Hamilton had another run-in, after squeezing Hamilton during the qualifying session, for which he received a five-place penalty, in Abu Dhabi he ignored blue flags twice. In the opening race of this season, Maldonado crashed while fighting for points, in Monaco he was penalised with a ten-place grid penalty for a collision with Sergio Perez in a practice session, only to top off the weekend by hitting Pedro de la Rosa´s HRT and retired. In Canada, he crashed his car into the Wall of Champions, and finally at Silverstone last weekend, he collided with Sergio Perez, again, retiring the Sauber and finished 16th. Maldonado was given a reprimand and a fine of €10,000 with two penalties given due to the “serious nature” of the incident. So sorry for my lack of enthusiasm about this guy.

With the championship so unpredictable, when a surprise winner emerges I would say that his talent plays second fiddle. I am not saying that the drivers aren´t talented enough, absolutely not. I am saying that there is a very good reason we had seven different winners in the first seven races. When Maldonado won in Spain, it had more to do with the set-up, the tyres, the conditions, luck, than it had to do with his talent.

 

Mark Webber on winning the British Grand Prix

Mark Webber became the 2nd driver to win two races in the 2012 season, as he stormed to the front in a late dash to secure the win from Fernando Alonso.

Mark Webber scuppered the hopes of Fernando Alonso taking his 3rd win of the season, when the Aussie performed a series of brilliant laps towards the end of the 52 lap race. While Fernando Alonso seemed to be gambling a bit on the tyre strategy, pitting 14 laps before the chequered flag and with the softer compounds previously only lasting just that for the Spaniard, Webber was able to conserve his hard compound tyres and by the time he caught up to Alonso, it was a matter of time before Webber overtook Alonso.

After the race Webber was very proud of the team, saying the win was incredible for all of the team.

“It’s a very special victory for the team, just down the road and for all the guys it’s been incredible for them. Also for Renault, again another victory here in the UK so I’m very proud today,” Webber said after the race.

“Fernando looked very good in the first two stints. I was a bit surprised how his last options didn’t work, Ferrari are generally pretty good on those type of compounds – he was very quick here last year as well so it looked like things were going to work out OK. But it just goes to show you never ever give up, you keep pushing. I thought that he was playing with me a little bit in that last stint because he knew that he had the range, he could just wait a little bit after his stop and go quite slow on the tyre then if I arrived on him pick the pace up. But he couldn’t react and that was good for me, I smelt a little bit of blood and then I could put the pressure on him and get the move done.”

Webber has had no less than five 4th place finishes this season, collecting important points in the overall standings. After Bahrain he moved up to 3rd place, then dropped to 5th after a brilliant surprise win from Pastor Maldonado in Spain, a race where Webber finished outside the points. But his win in Monaco and his 4th place from the European GP, combined with his win today, secures his place as second in the championship for now, 13 points behind Alonso.