Formula 1

Bahrain GP Raceday-Caterham

Sunday, 20 May 2012 10:47

Weather
Race: Dry, air temp 28° / track temp 32° (start), 27° / 30° (lap 27), 27° / 29° (lap 57)
Runplan
Vitaly Petrov
1431 leave for grid, 2 laps
Start on option tyres
Lap 11: pitstop 1, option tyres
Lap 24: pitstop 2, prime tyres
Lap 40: pitstop 3, prime tyres
Finished: 16th
Heikki Kovalainen
1431 leave for grid, 2 laps
Start on option tyres
Lap 1: pitstop 1, option tyres
Lap 14: pitstop 2, option tyres
Lap 26: pitstop 3, prime tyres
Lap 39: pitstop 4, prime tyres
Finished: 17th
Team Quotes Vitaly Petrov, car 21, chassis CT01-#2: “That was a really interesting race, particularly at the start when there was a lot of overtaking and it was good to be right in the middle of the early battles. We made some very good pitstops, quicker than in China and good enough to help me stay out ahead of Ricciardo who I had a good battle with for quite a lot of the race. It was only towards the end when we had to let the leaders pass that we started losing a bit of time but today’s performance shows again how strong we can be on Sundays. This has been a good weekend all round and a great way to end the first four flyaway races. We have a couple of weeks now until the next race in Spain and we’ll head there feeling very positive about how we keep progressing.”
Heikki Kovalainen, car 20, chassis CT01-#3: “I had a good start but then had contact with a car behind in turn 10 which caused a rear left puncture. We pitted immediately and from then on it was basically about putting in as strong a race as I could. I passed Glock quickly and pulled out a good gap to him and then went after my team mate and Ricciardo. It’s obviously a bit frustrating to have had the puncture on the first lap, but we can take a number of positives from this weekend, particularly from the pace we showed in qualifying and from the way we were able to look after the tyres, so overall it’s been pretty good.”
Thierry Salvi, Renault F1 Sport Support Leader: "I think that was a pretty good day for the whole team. Both cars showed good pace throughout the race and both Vitaly and Heikki were able to take advantage of the engine maps we gave them to easily pull away from the cars behind. Vitaly had a good fight with the Toro Rosso and did well to manage his tyre degradation, so this is another step in the right direction.”
Mark Smith, Technical Director: “We can be pleased with today’s performance from both cars. Despite the puncture Heikki suffered on the first lap he put in a very strong drive all afternoon and Vitaly was also racing Ricciardo hard for most of the afternoon. This shows we are definitely making progress, and our qualifying performance yesterday gives us good reason to look forward to the European season which starts in two weeks in Barcelona. We have a number of updates planned for the next few races, and more to come throughout the season, so we will aim to keep building on this type of performance and keep edging closer to the teams ahe

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Bahrain GP Qualifying-Williams

Sunday, 20 May 2012 10:47

•    Bruno will start 15th and Pastor 22nd for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix.
•    Bruno posted his quickest time in Q2 on a new set of soft tyres.
•    Despite making it safely through to Q2, Pastor’s session was brought to an early conclusion by a KERS problem.
•    Due to a gearbox issue on Friday night, it was necessary for the team to change Pastor’s race gearbox, incurring a five-place grid penalty. Therefore despite being classified 17th in Q2, Pastor will start 22nd.
Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Engineer: We have had a relatively tough day today with Pastor experiencing a KERs problem in qualifying which forced us to pit his car and take no further part in the session. This was particularly disappointing as Pastor felt that his car balance was good. Bruno continued to improve throughout qualifying, finishing in P15 in what is a tight grid. We now need to concentrate on tomorrow and hope to use our better race pace to potentially make our way up into the points.
Bruno Senna: It was really difficult today. Once again, a few tenths of a second make a big difference in grid position. It’s going to be a big challenge tomorrow but I think we can have a good race from where we are. I feel I got as much out of the car as possible today but we can be stronger tomorrow.
Pastor Maldonado: The car felt car felt quick this morning, so it’s a shame that we had a KERS problem which meant we couldn’t run in Q2. It’s going to be a tough race tomorrow with the added grid penalty, as well as it being a difficult track. We need to attack from the start and get our strategy right, but our pace looked good on race simulations so I’m looking forward to the challenge.

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Bahrain GP Qualifying-Marussia

Sunday, 20 May 2012 10:47

Rookie Charles steals the show in qualifying at the Bahrain International Circuit today
Track evolution and tyre degradation were the primary engineering challenges in Bahrain today, where the fortunes of our drivers were divided in this afternoon’s qualifying session.
Charles ended the day 21st on the timesheets after a solid progression through FP3 this morning, followed by a tidy Q1 performance. Changes made during the break between sessions appear to have paid dividends and as he is well-acquainted with this track from his GP2 days, familiarity is certainly breeding confidence here.
The day has not been without its challenges for both drivers, however, and the track evolution with the expected temperature hike caused a balance shift which hampered Timo's efforts in particular. Having banked a set of Pirelli P-Zero Soft tyres for tomorrow’s race in view of the degradation rate here, everything rested on the hot lap of his second run. As he battled for grip, he went off track at unlucky turn 13 and the opportunity was lost, leaving him P23 at the end of the Q1 session.
Charles Pic #25 “Not an easy day today, but I am quite happy with the result. This afternoon it was much hotter as forecast and the tyre degradation was maybe a little worse with the rears. We seem to have managed this quite well though and generally the team has done a good job through the day to keep pushing forward. The race will be tough as we will struggle with the tyres for sure, but we were quite conservative with them today so that we improve our chances for tomorrow and now we will have to see. For now, it has been good to get to grips with this track again and a good day.”
Timo Glock #24 “Not a very good Saturday for us. We struggled massively in terms of the car balance again this morning and also in qualifying because of too much instability at the rear under braking. The lap itself was not too bad until Turn 13, where I made a massive mistake and I think I lost everything in that corner. I tried to do a cool-down on the second lap, but the rear tyres were off already and we only had one set of the Soft tyres as we were trying to save them for the race tomorrow. So not the best at all and it is a shame that a fuel pick-up problem meant that we also dropped behind one of the HRTs as well. We’ll have to see what we can do in the race now. We’ve saved tyres, which is good, but I have my concerns about the rears again for tomorrow.”
John Booth, Team Principal “A very good job from Charles today in somewhat challenging conditions, given the quite severe tyre degradation issues we have been seeing. His solid progress in the four race weekends so far has not gone unnoticed and rightly so, as he has been applying himself fantastically well. The track evolution here has been posing a few problems, but Charles seems to have had the measure of them all weekend and his experience of racing here previously in GP2 is obviously a contributing factor. During Timo’s first run in qualifying we unfortunately experienced a fuel pick-up problem, which left him saddled with a significantly higher fuel load for his second run to overcome this. Timo then made a mistake at Turn 13, which was a real shame because he was going well before that. Unfortunately, a consequence of that has been that we will now have to start behind one of the HRT cars tomorrow, so Timo’s first mission will be to displace them before he sets about the onerous task that both drivers will face in managing the tyres through the race. They each have an extra set of the Soft tyre in hand and we know our race pace is strong against the cars around us. It will be a tough race tomorrow, but certainly an interesting one.”

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Bahrain GP Qualifying-Lotus

Sunday, 20 May 2012 10:47

Sand in My Shoes - Bahrain GP
Romain Grosjean qualified in P7 whilst Kimi Räikkönen was fastest of the non-Q3 participants in P11 during qualifying for tomorrow’s Bahrain Grand Prix. Kimi’s starting position outside the top ten means he has an open choice of starting tyre for the race.
Kimi Räikkönen, E20-03. Q: P11, 1:33.789. FP3: P7, 1:33.976.
“We had the speed today and we could easily have gone through to the final session with another run, but we thought it was worth taking the risk to only do one lap in Q2 and save fresh sets of tyres for the race. Managing the tyres will be a priority tomorrow, so while it was a gamble that didn’t get us through to the final session it will hopefully be a strategy which pays off in the race. We knew it was going to be close and of course we always want to be as high up the grid as possible, but there were two options and we went for the one which we believe will deliver the best result on Sunday. There are no points given out on Saturday, so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
Romain Grosjean, E20-04. Q: P7, 1:33.008. FP3: P9, 1:34.401.
“It was a good result for the team. We’ve now got through to Q3 at every race weekend this season and that’s always satisfying. I think we can be pleased with how the car is working. If I hadn’t made a small mistake on my flying lap we could maybe be even further up the order. It’s a big contrast here to the conditions we saw in China, and I think we can be proud of how well we’ve adapted to that change as it makes finding the right setup a big challenge. Today we were maybe a bit further behind the leaders than we’d like, but our race pace looks good and it’s another close grid so tomorrow should be very interesting.”
Alan Permane, Director of Trackside Operations:
“It’s going to be a long hot race...”
How do you assess today’s qualifying performance?
“We’re a little bit disappointed with our pace on the soft tyre and we need to assess where we lost out on speed as we didn’t achieve what we thought would be possible with Romain in Q3. Kimi’s pace was comparable to Romain’s and with another set of tyres he could have gone through to Q3.Tomorrow will be all about tyre degradation, so we took the risk not to run Kimi a second time in the Q2 session in order to save tyres. Unfortunately, he was pipped out of the top ten at the last moment. We knew it was a risk not running him again, but the performance penalty of not making Q3 was is not as great as it could have been due to the benefits of the fresh tyres saved for the race.”
How does Kimi’s P11 starting position look when assessing the race strategies?
“It’s better to be starting in P11 with four new sets of tyres available for the race than further up the grid with fewer new sets. Kimi’s in a strong position and there is the potential for a good result. We are capable of running for the entire race with only new tyres and the performance benefits that brings.”
Did you expect better from Romain’s qualifying performance?
“Romain did a great job in Q1 on the prime tyre, but his pace wasn’t quite there with his initial run in Q2 on the soft tyre so we ran him again. In Q3 he made a slight mistake which probably cost around two tenths, and the grid is very close out there.”
What is the difference between the two tyre specifications here?
“We’re seeing around 6-8 tenths, although it appears that some of our rivals are able to extract a bit more pace from the soft tyre than we are. This is not so much of an issue for the race, as we are confident in our long run pace.”
Thoughts for tomorrow?
“It’s going to be a long hot race tomorrow. There’s potential for high tyre degradation and it’s a physical race for the drivers because of the heat. Anything is possible.”

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Bahrain GP Qualifying-Mercedes

Sunday, 20 May 2012 10:47

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will start the Bahrain Grand Prix from fifth and 18th places following today’s qualifying hour.
• Nico qualified fifth and will start on the third row, having completed a single run in each qualifying session
• Nico is the only top-five starter to have a fresh set of option tyres available for tomorrow´s race
• Michael was knocked out in Q1 after a DRS failure on his quickest lap cost him around half a second
• The top 18 cars in Q1 were separated by just 1.051s, and eight different teams are represented in the top ten for the race
Nico Rosberg "In general, I felt very comfortable during qualifying today. However, as we have been focusing on our race pace, there is always a compromise in the qualifying set-up. I think that I’m in a good position for the race for tomorrow. I am the only driver in the top five who has a set of new option tyres which can be very useful at this circuit. It will be very important to drive carefully, and find the right tyre management in the race, as the conditions are very tough out there.”
Michael Schumacher “I am obviously very disappointed to have qualified in 18th position on the grid for a race which looks to be quite competitive for us. Unfortunately on my fast lap, which was looking quite good, my DRS broke in the last sector. We tried to fix it in the garage but were not able to go out again. Trying for a lap without DRS on different tyres would not have made sense. We now have to try to see what we can do from here and push as much as possible.”
Ross Brawn “A session of mixed fortunes for the team this afternoon. In Q3, we made the strategic decision for Nico to do just one lap and, although his starting position is not optimum, he is the only driver in the top five to have a new set of option tyres available. This could prove valuable in the race, and we will learn tomorrow if our strategic decision pays off. Looking to Michael, he experienced a failure of the DRS rear wing flap, just before he entered the back straight on what would have been his quickest lap. This cost him around half a second, and with little more than a second separating the top 17 cars in Q1, that proved decisive. Unfortunately, we were unable to repair the system in time for him to run again, and he was bumped down to P18 at the very last moment. It will be a long and interesting race tomorrow, in demanding conditions, and we will look to make the most of our opportunities to achieve the strongest possible team result.”
Norbert Haug “From the outset, our focus at this circuit, where tyre usage and availability of new tyres are crucial, was to be in a good position in that respect during the race on Sunday. We think this is even more important here than on the three circuits that we have already raced at this year. As a consequence, Nico completed just one run in Q3 in order to save a set of fresh options for tomorrow. We knew that this strategy would likely compromise his position on the grid. However, knowing that we will be well-placed tomorrow on the tyre front, I am convinced that this was the right thing to do. Last year, there were occasions when we were more than one and a half seconds behind pole position. Today, with one attempt compared to the two made by the teams ahead of us, we are behind pole by not quite four tenths. We are heading in the right direction, and our team is working in a focused and systematic way in order to achieve our targets. I feel sorry for Michael who had the pace for a good starting position, as he has proven with a fourth place and two third places in Q3 at the previous races. A problem with the rear wing mechanism prevented him from getting a good result - but he can achieve this tomorrow. Michael showed good pace during our long runs and he will be well equipped with fresh tyres. After our great result last weekend with Nico securing pole on Saturday and victory on Sunday, I am quite happy with our performance this weekend so far. Our team has demonstrated that we can be competitive in quite different circumstances. Well done Sebastian on your pole today.”

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