McLaren Honda 2015

Okay so I got the year wrong, and maybe I've got the team wrong. Autosport have reported that their source inside Honda has confirmed that they'll be back in Formula 1 in 2015 with McLaren.

McLaren, of course, continue to muddy the waters on this much flagged return with Martin Whitmarsh reiterating that they have a deal with Mercedes for the next three seasons (should they so desire) and saying

I can't elaborate any further

The tone of the "denial" leaves it open for McLaren to confirm the anticipated switch of engine supplier to early next year when they will begin designing the 2015 car.  I'm assuming that will be the time when it will be necessary to make the confirmation in order that they'll be able to design the car around the new engine.

Mansell leads Piquet to a 1-2 at the British GP in the FW11 Honda at Brands Hatch in 1986
Copyright LAT Photgraphic/Williams F1

 Should Honda wish to supply a second team Williams are the natural recipients.  They too have a great history with Honda, particularly during the turbo era when they ran a 1.6 Honda V6 turbo engine between 1984 and 1987, winning two Constructors' and one Drivers' Championship.

Personally, I'd like to see Williams get a works engine.  The team has achieved its best results in these circumstances and I think history has shown that, with the right equipment Williams is a force to be reckoned with.

Kylami, SA 1985, Mansell leads the chasing pack away in the FW10 Honda. Williams score a 1-2 with Mansell and Rosberg
Copyright LAT Photographic/Williams F1

LADY VIRGINIA WILLIAMS DIES AT THE AGE OF 66

Below is the relevant press release from the Williams Team which I only picked up late today while checking my email for F1 news after work.

I would just take this opportunity to offer my condolences to Sir Frank Williams and his family on their loss

8th March 2013. Grove, UK. It is with great sadness that today we report the death of Lady Virginia Williams, wife of Williams Founder and Team Principal Sir Frank Williams.

Lady Virginia, or ‘Ginny’ as she was better known, died peacefully at the family home last night surrounded by Frank and the rest of the Williams family. Ginny had been bravely battling cancer for the past two and a half years.

Ginny will always be an integral part of Williams’ history and success, and today we pay tribute to a much loved member of the Williams family who will be sorely missed. Please respect the family’s wishes for privacy at this time.

Marussia may not be seen in Melbourne

It's not that they won't show up but rather that FOM will not allow them to be shown on television during qualifying or the race.

The problem seems to be the lack of any signed agreement between Marussia and FOM who holds the commercial rights to Formula 1.

ESPN F1 have the story where they say that a spokesperson for Marussia told them yesterday that:

We are in active discussion with the Commercial Rights Holder but, as of today, we do not have a signed agreement with them

As this blog has previously reported on a couple of occasions now, the lack of any signed agreement means that Marussia receives no cash from FOM, no revenue from the sport's profits and is reliant upon the money coming in from the few sponsors they have, their bank loans and their drivers.

Recently Bernie appeared to relent when on February 7th last he met with the smaller teams and confirmed that agreement would be reached to include Marussia (or the 11th team) in the F1 revenue stream.

It seems that to this point nothing has been signed between the pair.

Marussia don't seem to be worried about that though with John Booth the Marussia Team Principal saying that the lack of any agreement is more of a headache for FOM:

It's vital for Bernie because he won't be able to film us without it

I don't agree with his reading of the situation based on the rumours which emerged from Bahrain in the wake of Qualifying last year.  While I didn't watch the race due to my comprehensively explained feelings about the  use of my beloved sport as a PR opportunity there were numerous reports in the media afterwards saying that Force India had not been shown on the televised feed for qualifying, likely due to the fact that the team did not take part in FP2 on Friday evening in order to enable their team members travel back to their hotels in safety.

The fact is that FOM would appear to have no difficulty excluding a team's cars from live broadcast.  Whie various excuses were given by Bernie at the time, none of them stood up to scrutiny.  the Guardian reported:

Force India refused to comment last night, but a team insider who declined to be named said: "Everyone knows what happened. Bernie is giving Force India a slap on the wrist for missing Friday's second practice session."

It's not so difficult for FOM to ignore a car; even though numerous Broadcasters are at each GP the television pictures come from the feed controlled by Formula One Management.

From the Darkness into the 5 Red Lights

From the unbearable silence to the sound of 22 V8 engines accelerating into Turn 1 at Albert Park. This is what has driven my passion for F1. This is what the first notes of The Chain do to me on the first day of coverage every year. This is the reason I get up at a godforsaken hour to tune into live coverage of Melbourne. The beautiful, momentary pause between the lights going out and 22 drivers putting the pedal to the proverbial metal.  That is the moment when the off-season becomes a distant memory and last season becomes just another footnote in the history of the sport.

This year the sound of The Chain won't be heard before the live race.  This year, sadly, I won't be able to watch it live on the BBC so I'll have to find it elsewhere...

With 9 days to go to the Australian GP it's prediction time for the first race! About time!

I wrote these predictions down four days ago and have been trying to write justifications for them but, having failed to do that this year I'm basing my predictions on my complete inability to get my head around the sheer volumes of data, lap charts, testing regimes, etc.

Over the 12 days of testing I've read, seen, and written about so much stuff that I just can't functionally pull all of the disparate information into any coherent narrative.  Believe me I've tried to write the "complete" summary of where everyone seems to be after testing but, while I think I might have an insight I can't provide it as an outsight.

My predictions for Melbourne are based on my own understanding of the teams and testing and are probably completely and wildly inaccurate. My  results are reliability assumed, with everyone finishing the race

World Drivers' Championship Standings after Melbourne

2013 Helmet	Position	Driver	Team
	1	Sebastian Vettel	Red Bull 25
	2	Fernando Alonso	Ferrari 18
	3	Mark Webber	Red Bull 15
	4	Jenson Button	Mclaren 12
	5	Felipe Massa	Ferrari 10
	6	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes 8
	7	Nico Rosberg	Mercedes 6
	8	Sergio Perez	McLaren 4
	9	Kimi Raikkonen	Lotus 2
	10	Valtteri Bottas	Williams 1
	11	Pastor Maldonado	Williams
	12	Romain Grosjean	Lotus
	13	Nico Hulkenberg	Sauber
	14	Paul di Resta	Force India
	15	Adrian Sutil	Force India
	16	Esteban Gutierrez	Sauber
	17	Daniel Ricciardo	Toro Rosso
	18	Jean Eric Vergne	Toro Rosso
	19	Jules Bianchi	Marussia
	20	Charles Pic	Caterham
	21	Giedo van der Garde	Caterham
	22	Max Chilton	Marussia

Now, I'd prefer if Mark Webber won in Melbourne because it's his home race and I like him a lot as a driver but I'm not giving it to him based on his team-mates previous performances.  Similarly Felipe might be in the running for second and, on the same basis Fernando Alonso gets the nod ahead of him.

Jenson Button, I believe is still faster than Sergio Perez, so he gets the nod as does Lewis over Nico, though I'm open to Nico proving me wrong. Where team-mates are side-by-side the names are interchangeable as with Mercedes, Williams, Force India, and Toro Rosso.

I'm pretty sure that we'll see at least one of the Williams and one of the McLaren's retire, due to the fact that these are not evolutionary cars unlike the majority of the rest of the field, so technically there's more chance of something going wrong.  I also think one of the Lotus might fail to finish due to their inconsistent nature over the course of testing so far.

That would give points to Sauber or Force India should their lead drivers come home.

You might notice that I've put Jules Bianchi ahead of the Caterhams and that's because, after only one and a half days of testing he was right in the mix.  He might well be Rookie of the season if he can continue in that vein.  It's not inconceivable either that Esteban Gutierrez ends up behind the Toro Rosso's if they have made improvements which they have deliberately "Sandbagged" throughout testing.  They did a good enough job in Jerez to warrant a closer look.

But I'm excited because I've seen the lap charts from Barcelona, read the experts and listened to the teams, and I think I can give a good guess as to who's been sandbagging and who has given it their all.  I think I may have an idea of what we'll see Down Under even though the weight of information has left me reeling.

It looks as if Sauber are slightly faster than Force India at this stage, with Toro Rosso coming up fast behind Force India.  This is based on similar testing runs, but without knowledge of the fuel loads.

Mercedes look as if they may be just ahead of the Ferrari and on a par with the Red Bull, particularly over one lap, but both of the latter two teams are well known to run heavier fuel loads to hide their true speed. No matter, the Mercedes cars are there or thereabouts.  They are likely to be in the mix at the front.

McLaren look to be off the pace by around 0.3 of a second but once again without fuel data it's based solely on the similarities between their test runs with those of other teams.

Williams seem to have been doing their own thing and therefore I can read nothing into their performance other than to say that it is consistent, though it is worth noting that the driver's consider the car to be significantly better to drive than last year - that does not necessarily translate to quicker.

Lotus have shown the ability to consistently put in the laptimes over the long runs so it may be that they, once again, will have a good relationship with the tyres and can challenge at the front on a mixture of speed and strategy.

Caterham, as I've said before would appear to be under serious pressure from the Marussia team.

When all is said and done though, testing is, for us fans simply a portal through which we must travel to bring us from the darkness of the off-season to the 5 red lights; from the unbearable silence to the sound of 22 V8's fighting to achieve the first win of the season.  All this is happening in less than 10 days.  Be prepared!

Predicted Constructor's Championship after Melbourne

	Position	Team	Points
	1	Red Bull	40
	2	Ferrari	28
	3	McLaren	16
	4	Mercedes	14
	5	Lotus	2
	6	Williams	1
	7	Force India	0
	8	Sauber	0
	9	Toro Rosso	0
	10	Marussia	0
	11	Caterham	0

Testing is another Country

The problem with having testing on the weekend is that I can't get to blog about it and, what's worse, I can't even get to see it or keep up with it. I mean, a race, yeah I can justify a race no matter where or when: I can tell the kids that they can watch it or find something else to do with their time, I can ask my wife to look after them, but once the race is over that's it, no blogging until either very late at night or the next day.

Testing is another country. Everyone knows that testing means nothing at the end of the day (or 4 days) so I would be asked why I need to watch it, or follow it, when there are more important things to be done?

Its a good question which I cannot answer. Sure I could plead, cajole and beg but ultimately it's pointless - no-one pays me to watch it and there's no money in blogging - so I didn't bother watching or following the last three days of testing at all. Sad but not at all surprising; or unexpected.

I did see that Jules Bianchi got the second seat at Marussia thanks to Luiz Razia's backers failing to make a second payment to Marussia. I found that interesting but also not surprising or unexpected, Jules brings a little bit of cash and also the promise of good relations with Ferrari which might benefit a team, currently with Cosworth, who need an engine to go racing next year.

And I looked at the odd report which told me that Mercedes were ramping up their public profile in terms of, perhaps, showing their hand a little too early.

However none of this was particularly surprising. I was making the point in an earlier post after the first Barcelona test that Mercedes appeared to be very excited and were at pains to play down their chances - probably superstitious.  In any situation where Mercedes delivers with this year's car there will be a few shocked faces in the Mercedes boardroom, given that they've been encouraged to hire expertise at "telephone number" salaries in order to improve the performance of the team for 2014.

All smiles at Mercedes as they realise they have achieved an impressive gain over last year
© MercedesAMG

The speed shown by the Mercedes car was impressive but then, just as impressive was the pace of Mark Webber's Red Bull on Thursday when, on a drying track, he ended up over 1.5 seconds ahead of anyone else.

But the fact is that Mercedes, in the off-season, said that it needed to make up three seconds to catch up to their rivals. If you take their lap of 1m 20.130s versus their fastest qualifying lap at Barcelona last year of 1m 22.882s, it equates to an improvement of 2.75 seconds, which by their calculations should leave them two tenths per lap slower than the leaders last year.

Having said that you have to factor in that Pirelli launched their tyres saying that they were faster by about 0.5s per lap than last year's tyre compounds which brings that down to an improvement of 2.25s which is about where Ross Brawn thought they would be at the start of the season.

Mercedes position was, of course that they would expect the other teams to find two seconds over the off-season and they would then have to find another second on top of that time to come close. Given the evolutionary approach to the majority of the designs, is it likely that tweaking would give a 2 second per lap improvement?

Red Bull have yet to sparkle
© Getty Images

McLaren & Red Bull yet to reveal themselves
© Vodafone McLaren Mercedes 

Of the top five teams I expect that Red Bull and McLaren have still to reveal their true pace. Red Bull's fastest time was set during the second test, the first at Barcelona with a time of 1m 22.197s which is comparable with their particularly bad (for them) qualifying time of 1m 22.884s at this venue during qualifying last year. McLaren qualified last year with a time of 1m 21.707s last year (Hamilton Pole Disqualified) and Jenson Button put in an equivalent time of 1m 21.444s in testing yesterday.  I expect there's a fair bit more to come from both cars, particularly the Red Bulls.

Lotus may have revealed themselves too early
© LAT Photographic

I'm afraid that Lotus and Mercedes have revealed themselves; Lotus in order to try to find a primary sponsor, other than Genii Capital, and Mercedes in order to assuage HQ that the team is moving forward under the new management.  Lotus did a 1m 22.424s in qualifying for Spain last season and their fastest time of Barcelona testing has been 1m 21.658s.  I think there's not much more improvement left to them than the anticipated improved half-a-second pace from the tyres and any minor element resulting from their DRD use within the DRS zones at a track, which would put them behind Mercedes.

Ferrari may well have been managing expectations at the tests
© Scuderia Ferrari

Ferrari timed a 1m 22.302s in qualifying last year and have done just enough in testing with a time of 1m 20.494s to let everyone know that they are in the mix, without giving too much information away.  The last thing they wanted was to receive the level of pre-season criticism in the Italian press that happened last year.

Of the midfield teams I remain unsure. Certainly we would expect that they've closed the gap somewhat but to what extent I think we'll have to wait for Melbourne.

Williams seem to be hiding their true potential
© LAT Photographic

Williams, for instance, have not gone testing to provide impressive lap times. If that were to be the case then the team have gone backwards from last year when in qualifying for Spain Pastor Maldonado put in a laptime of 1m 22.105s. In testing his fastest time over the eight days at Barcelona was 1m 22.305s. The response to testing by Williams has been positive without being effusive. The team and the drivers talk in terms of benefits and improvements over last year's car so I think we can definitely say that the times we've seen from that team equates to "sandbagging" on their part; how much sandbagging remains to be seen.

Force India have shown their improvement
© Sahara Force India F1 Team

Force India's 1m 21.627s is 1.5s faster than last year's qualifying time in Spain, but their car was improving over the final part of the 2012 season so I don't know whether to read their time as improvement or just evolution. Sauber are in the same position in that their best time of 1m 21.541 is around a second better than their qualifying time of 1m 22.533 last year. 

Sauber showed improvement during their testing
© Sauber Motorsport AG

Toro Rosso qualified on a 1m 23.265s time last year and their best time of testing in Barcelona has been a 1m 23.265s so we can expect that they, like Williams have a bit more in reserve and are holding their cards closer to their respective engine covers than the others in the midfield.  They've been talking up their chances this year in a big way so we'll have to see whether Australia shows it up as a possibility or whether it was all hot air and their season deflates in a big way.  Their times in Jerez were favourable to an assumption that they may well be in and around the rest of the midfield. 

Another team that could be "sandbagging" Toro Rosso showed good comparitive speed in Jerez
© Getty Images, Courtesy Scuderia Toro Rosso

At the back, as per usual, we have the Caterham and Marussia teams.  Last year Caterham qualified with 1m 25.277s and Marussia with 1m 26.582s  This testing has seen Caterham come up with a fastest lap of 1m 23.115s and Marussia 1m 23.167s.  Caterham pipped Marussia on the final day of testing after lagging behind for the entirety of the pre-season, but for Caterham the worrying thing is that they literally only pipped them by 5 hundredths of a second.  Based on the foregoing times we can see that Caterham improved by 2.16 seconds, but Marussia has achieved a massive improvement of 3.41 seconds over last years qualifying pace in Barcelona.    The differential between them is very very slight if any and can be read as inconsequential.

It's going to be tight between Caterham and Marussia
© LAT Photographic

Even more interesting is that the Marussia time was posted by Jules Bianchi on only his second day in the car.  It must have sickened Max Chilton, nearly a full second behind, who has been testing this car almost without interruption for the entirety of the pre-season.