Robert Kubica Could Be Ruled Out For At Least A Year Following Accident

Polish racing driver Robert Kubica will spend at least one whole year recovering from a rally crash he suffered this morning, according to his surgeon. Kubica, who races for Renault Lotus crashed the Skoda Fabia rally car this morning and was airlifted to hospital suffering serious injuries. He has spent many hours in surgery, with [...]

Source: http://f1fanatics.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/robert-kubica-cold-be-ruled-out-for-at-least-a-year-following-accident/

Bernard Collomb Alberto Colombo Erik Comas Franco Comotti George Connor

New F1 season could prove unpredictable

The Formula 1 teams arrived in Melbourne's Albert Park to be greeted by grey skies, intermittent rain and blustery wind. But not even the weather could dampen the palpable excitement and nervous tension.

The start of the new season is just a few hours away and everyone from world champions Red Bull to lowly HRT is desperate to find the answer to the question they have been asking all winter. Where will they be come Saturday and Sunday afternoons?

The F1 teams like to keep outsiders guessing before the first race by saying they don't know where they are in terms of competitiveness, but usually this is little more than kidology.

Such is their capacity to analyse data with massive super-computers that usually they have a very good idea of their position in relation to their rivals, despite the well-known difficulty of predicting form from pre-season testing.

But this year seems different; they genuinely don't seem to know - so the usual anticipation ahead of the first race of the season is magnified.

Lewis Hamilton said that judging by the data that mattered from winter testing he felt McLaren were "in the top three or four".

Ferrari's Fernando Alonso has also bigged up his team's chances for the 2012 season. Photo: Getty

Meanwhile, a senior engineer from one of the teams who will be contesting what is expected to be a congested midfield battle told me he was pretty sure Red Bull and McLaren were out front but he didn't know "whether we will be third or seventh".

Some people's anticipation is more nervous than others', though.

For teams such as Mercedes and Lotus, there is a genuine sense that they have done a good job and moved forward over the winter.

In fact there is a growing sense in the paddock that Mercedes may even be able to give McLaren and Red Bull a run for their money, something team principal Ross Brawn was quick to dismiss as "unlikely".

For others, the desire to discover the true pace of their car is tinged as much with trepidation as anticipation.

Ferrari have had what Fernando Alonso described here on Thursday as a "tough" winter, struggling with "quite a complex car in terms of set-up and understanding it".

Alonso was doing his best to talk up the team's chances, saying: "Maybe we didn't reach our targets but it doesn't mean that we are slower than the other cars. That we will not know until Saturday."

Others are keen to play down the importance of this first race of the season.

Vettel said that Australia this weekend and Malaysia next would do no more than demonstrate a "trend" for performance over the season.

And Brawn said he "preferred to look at the first four races and the range of circuits we have and see how that looks".

But the statistics belie that point of view.

Albert Park might be a unique street circuit, with a dusty, low-grip surface, and the teams may only just be beginning to work with their new cars. But actually it has proven to be a rather good arbiter of the season to come - five of the last six winners of the Australian Grand Prix have gone on to become world champion that year.

Other themes are also emerging this weekend that will have importance to one degree or another as the season develops.

F1 wouldn't be F1 without a good technical conspiracy and this year looks like being no different.

Already during pre-season testing there have been eyebrows raised at the way some teams are trying to exploit exhaust gases for aerodynamic effect.

This practice was supposed to have been ended by rule changes that have restricted the positioning and angle of the exhaust pipes and put much stricter limits on engine mapping - both an attempt to rid the sport of so-called exhaust-blown diffusers that became such important tools over the previous two seasons.

But this weekend another potential controversy has emerged over the rear wings on several cars, particularly the Mercedes, Red Bull and the Ferrari.

These new devices - that some believe to be on the fringes of legality - seem designed to exploit the DRS overtaking aid in ways not originally intended.

The DRS was designed as a tool to make overtaking less difficult - if a driver is within a one-second margin of a car he is trying to overtake, he can use the DRS in a specified zone on the track to give him a straight-line speed boost.

Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, meanwhile, have what appear to be extra slots on the rear wing that can work in conjunction with the DRS to either increase straight-line speed even further, or allow the teams to run extra downforce with no drag penalty.

The most noticeable feature of the 2012 cars, though, remains the noses - and specifically the ugly 'platypus' step on all but the McLaren and Marussia.

This is a result of a rule that has lowered the nose tips of the cars to increase driver safety, but not lowered the top of the chassis.

The result is a grid full of ridiculous and ugly-looking cars, and very few are troubling to hide their frustration at the situation.

"It is unfortunate," Brawn said, "and the teams should look at themselves and blame themselves.

"[Governing body] the FIA tried to do what they could and a number of teams wouldn't agree to the changes because they said they wanted to carry over their chassis, which we all know is a load of nonsense because nobody has carried over their chassis.

"We've ended up with a very odd feature on the cars which is not very endearing and I'm sure will get fixed for 2013."

The noses, of course, will soon be forgotten if the season is close and competitive. And that will only begin to become clear as this weekend unfolds.


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/03/new_f1_season_could_prove_unpr.html

Ernesto Brambilla Vittorio Brambilla Toni Branca Gianfranco Brancatelli Eric Brandon

McLaren unveil new car for 2012

At McLaren Technology Centre, Woking

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button sat on the stage in front of the car they both hope will take them to the world title this year looking relaxed and happy.

Yet in their responses to apparently innocuous questions, both men revealed much about the different ways in which they approach the 2012 Formula 1 season.

They were asked how they had spent the winter. Button, fresh from arguably his best season yet in the sport, had spent some time in Hawaii. "Somewhere warm to chill out and train," he said, "but it's always the same - you spend a couple of weeks away and you are missing racing, so I was back on 5 January".

Hamilton's 2011, meanwhile, was self-admittedly his worst season yet in F1, with three superb wins interspersed with errors and controversy.

McLaren

McLaren are set to compete for the title with their new car which was unveiled ahead of the beginning of the Formula One season due to start in March. Photo: Getty

His response to the same question was enlightening."The opposite of Jenson," he said. "I was over in the cold in the mountains in Colorado. I wasn't missing the car too much - it was nice to be away from it awhile, to refresh, start anew, and just getting back to training was great.

"I altered it a little bit this year, I think last year I was training too much. I had a good break and I was grateful to Martin (Whitmarsh, the McLaren team principal) for giving me such a good break."

Later, Hamilton revealed a little more about his desire to make amends for 2011 with a sparkling 2012.

Which race are you most looking forward to, he was asked. "Monaco is the one for me - I want to get back there and have a better race [in which he collided with two drivers and caused a storm with his post-race comments] than last year."

It was a stark illustration of just how much is at stake in 2012 for the man who many still regard as the most naturally talented and out-and-out fastest racing driver in the world.

Whether Hamilton has found the mental equilibrium he desires to enable him to perform consistently at his brilliant best remains to be seen, starting with the first race in Melbourne, Australia, on 18 March.

But much of it may depend on the reason he and Button were up on that stage - the McLaren MP4-27.
His team's failure - for the third year running - to produce a car with which he could consistently challenge at the front was one of the main causes for Hamilton's frustrations last year.

He knows exactly how good he is, so it was galling for him to see yet again that he was not realistically going to challenge for the championship.

As is the way of things, the launch of the new McLaren shed no light whatsoever on whether that will change in 2012.

The car looks nice enough - and it mercifully lacks the "platypus" front seen on the Caterham, the only other new car to break cover so far this year, as a response to new rules lowering the height of the nose.

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There was a lot of talk about McLaren's focus on the aerodynamics at the rear of the car, which featured noticeably tighter packaging than last year, and particularly of the need to make the most of pre-season testing and start the season strongly.

That was where McLaren's campaign began to unravel last season - an over-complex exhaust system led to a terrible pre-season with a car Whitmarsh has described as "neither reliable nor quick".

This year's car contains no obvious stand-out innovations but the team were quick to deny suggestions that McLaren had reined themselves in an attempt to make sure the car runs in testing, which Whitmarsh described as "data-gathering".

Engineering director Tim Goss described the MP4-27 as "a complete re-work from nose to tail".

Technical director Paddy Lowe added: "The regulations are trimming us into narrower and narrower boxes so we don't see the big radical changes from one year to the next, so the car looks quite similar.

But there is a great deal of change underneath.

"There still are obvious innovations. We have done a lot of work around the back end, a lot more tidy packaging there. We have had to respond to the change in the exhaust regulations (banning the blowing of exhausts along the rear floor to boost downforce).

That's given the aerodynamicists a big challenge to come up with the (lost) downforce and the balance."

Lowe and Goss are old hands and they did a great job of straight-batting the questions on the stand-out features of the car and it was left to Whitmarsh to utter F1's dreaded c-word.

"I don't believe we've been inherently conservative," he said. "We've set ourselves some tough targets, targets that we think if we achieve them we will win the world championship. I think we will meet those targets, and if they are the right targets, we will win the championships."

To achieve that obvious aim, though, there is the small matter of having to beat the twin formidable forces of Ferrari and Fernando Alonso and, the combination expected to remain the one to beat, Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel.

Just as the car's tight rear takes more than a small bow towards the all-conquering Red Bulls of the last two seasons, it is clear that McLaren have had their eyes on other aspects of their rivals' dominance as well.

"It didn't go unnoticed that Sebastian Vettel put the car on pole a lot and then pulled the gap (from which he controlled the race)," said Goss. "We're aware of it; we've attempted to find ways to deal with it."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/02/at_mclaren_technology_centre_w.html

Felice Bonetto Jo Bonnier Roberto Bonomi Juan Manuel Bordeu Slim Borgudd

Q2: Silver polish

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher were 1-2 in the Q2 session, with Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button in hot pursuit. Fifth fastest was Romain Grosjean in the Lotus, while Sebastian Vettel was sixth ahead of Pastor Maldonado, Mark Webber, Nico Hulkenberg and Daniel Ricciardo. Out went Jean-Eric Vergne, Fernando Alonso, who spun off and caused [...]

Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/silver-polish/

Raul Boesel Menato Boffa Bob Bondurant Felice Bonetto Jo Bonnier