F1 Ð JEREZ HEIDFELD BAHRAIN & BLOWN FLOORS
- 29 May 2013
I seem to recall that at about this time last year the Saubers were very fast. It is quite amazing just how light you can make an F1 car even with seven or eight laps worth of fuel on board. You take out the ballast, KERS batteries and anything else not necessary for a six lap screamer and hey presto, there you are on top of the time-sheets. In days gone by teams have been known even to run with lightweight wings that would only last a few laps to get their headline time. I’m surprised that some haven’t given their driver a laxative and sent him out for a long run prior to driving. That would shed a few kilos. Now all of a sudden this years Mercedes and Williams challengers have gone fast for a day Just one.
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Far be it for me to suggest that Williams, for example, would not want a nice chart topping time just days before they float the company on the stock exchange. That would be way too cynical. Tut, tut, naughty boy, perish the thought. But somehow I just cannot see the front row of the grid in Bahrain being shared by a Williams and a Mercedes. Can’t see the McLaren’s only on the fourth row or the Red Bulls back on the seventh behind the Toro Rossos either. Especially considering their comparative pace through the rest of testing and the fact that the unter-ubermensch has already dampened Merecdes title hopes. He has stated that he doesn’t believe that they can make a title challenge and that "the target is still the same as we said weeks ago: to hopefully be, with this car, on the podium and maybe, if things go very well, to win a race this year.” As what they said “weeks ago” sounded very much like “Oh fuck” so does this latest statement.
Still, you never know, it might rain in Bahrain. More likely though, Bahrain will not take place. As the political dramas sweeping the Middle East escalate into violence in these countries with police shooting and killing protestors in Manama, Bahrain’s capital city, the GP2 race scheduled for last week was cancelled and the final F1 test and opening Grand Prix are in extreme doubt. The last time a GP was cancelled due to political unrest was in 1976 in Argentina.
After his chart topping run in Jerez Nick Heidfeld has been given the Renault drive, replacing the injured Robert Kubica. Robert, by the way, has undergone what is expected to be the final operation to fix the injuries he received in the rally accident and is making good progress. As many expected, Renault chose the German’s experience over their own reserve drivers as they needed someone that could guide the team’s development of the forward exiting exhausts. The idea here is that a blown floor will provide more down-force that just a blown diffuser and therefore claw back some of the lost down-force from the banning of the double diffuser. Rumour has it that McLaren are already well advanced with their version of this concept as well but they did not use any such system on their cars in Jerez. Still, if the teams have another two weeks to develop their mounts than expected, due to the Bahrain situation, who knows what the front row in Melbourne will look like.
Finally, a rumour doing the rounds is that Vitantonio Liuzzi will get to test for Hispania F1 in Barcelona with the chance of securing the final seat on the grid. They will still be running last year’s car at Catalunya and will not debut the F111 until the fourth and final test, wherever that may be. Probably not in Bahrain.
For full testing times from Jerez go to;
http://www.mmmsport.com.au/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=149&Itemid=38
Sam Snape
17-02-2011