photo credit: Flickr/Vi Khoa Duong

Let me just say there’s nothing like waking up and finding out the Pastor Maldonado of last season is back and purposely crashing into people.

Maldonado hit Sergio Perez, barely giving him any room, during final practice. Maldonado eventually also just crashed out of the practice session. He has a ten grid spot penalty for the race, joining Michael Schumacher’s five spot for his incident last race.

So, not surprising that not even 5 minutes into Q1, Sergio Perez crashed out of qualifying. Perez looked completely unable to steer his car.

Drivers had to switch onto the supersoft tires, as the usual cars who qualify in the top ten were way down the charts, not even meeting the 107% rule! But all was well in the end, unless you were in a McLaren.

Knocked out in Q1: Heikki Kovalainen, Vitaly Petrov, Timo Glock, Pedro de la Rosa, Charles Pic, Narain Karthikeyan, Sergio Perez

Many cars started off on the supersofts for Q2. Jean-Eric Vergne lost his car and took off his front wing, knocking it under the front of his car. He limped his car back to the pits, probably ruining many a fast lap for cars that had to pass him.

With under 3 minutes left, Felipe Massa pulled off a time under 1 minute, 15 seconds, finally dethroning Nico Rosberg’s time. With that time, it was the first Q3 appearance of Massa this season. Finally.

Kimi Raikkonen barely squeaked through to Q3, but Jenson Button failed to make it out of Q2. Button joins the Force Indias, Toro Rossos, Kamui Kobayashi, and Bruno Senna. That’s two races in a row where Button has failed to get out of Q2.

Knocked out in Q2: Nico Hulkenberg, Kamui Kobayashi, Jenson Button, Bruno Senna, Paul di Resta, Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne

During Q3, more cars posted times in the 1:14 range. All cars were out on track for the last 90 seconds.

Mark Webber looked to be taking pole, and then Michael Schumacher went fastest.

…And while he held up a finger to indicate his number one status, and his engineer said pole position!…you’ve got that five grid spot penalty.

So, Schumacher will start sixth, and Mark Webber is actually on pole. That makes two races in a row where the driver who actually qualifies for first doesn’t start first. You are all terrible people.

Starting grid with two current grid penalties (hopefully no more come along):
01. Mark Webber, Red Bull
02. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes
03. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren
04. Romain Grosjean, Lotus F1
05. Fernando Alonso, Ferrari
06. Michael Schumacher, Mercedes
07. Felipe Massa, Ferrari
08. Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus F1
09. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull
10. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India (was not in Q3, starts P10 because of Maldonado’s penalty)
» Continue reading “Mark Webber On Pole Because Grid Penalties Are Awesome!”

photo credit: Flickr/Mypoorbrain

Pastor Maldonado managed to pull off a win at Circuit de Catalunya today, despite Fernando Alonso’s best efforts to win his home Grand Prix. Alonso took the lead in the first corner, but was not able to hold on to it.

Maldonado is the first Venezuelan winner of a Formula 1 Grand Prix, and this is also Williams’ first win since 2004.

Sadly, it has not been that great of a day after all for Williams. About 90 minutes after the race ended, fuel exploded causing a fire, and several team members from Williams, Caterham, and Force India had to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation.

The race also did not go so well for Bruno Senna. Michael Schumacher crashed right into the back of him around turn 1. Senna had moved over in what looked like a block, but the stewards apparently didn’t find that to be the case. Schumacher has been given a five spot grid penalty for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Kimi Raikkonen finished third, although he was right on Alonso’s tail at the end of the race. Romain Grosjean finished fourth, and Kamui Kobayashi stormed his way to fifth, which included a brilliant pass on Jenson Button.

Sebastian Vettel managed to finish sixth, despite being handed a drive-through penalty for failing to slow down for yellow flags near the Schumacher-Senna incident. Felipe Massa also received the penalty for failing to slow, but he only managed to finish 15th.

Lewis Hamilton, who had to start at the back of the grid after being excluded from qualifying, finished in the points in 8th, and one place ahead of his teammate.

Results
01. Pastor Maldonado, Williams
02. Fernando Alonso, Ferrari
03. Kimi Raikkonen, Lotus
04. Romain Grosjean, Lotus
05. Kamui Kobayashi, Sauber
06. Sebastian Vettel, Red Bull
07. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes
08. Lewis Hamilton, McLaren
09. Jenson Button, McLaren
10. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India

» Continue reading “Pastor Maldonado Wins Spanish GP”

photo credit: Flickr/Jose Mª Izquierdo Galiot

Williams chairman Adam Parr will be leaving the team effective this Friday. Frank Williams, obvious founder of a team named Williams, had said Parr would be his natural successor.

Parr will be replaced by Nick Rose. It is not immediately known what Parr will do next but he did say he wants to spend more time with his family.

There is speculation that Ecclestone wanted Parr out as part of the creation of a new Concorde Agreement. Parr is a business man with no background in racing. Most would probably not consider that a problem, considering Parr’s ridiculously awesome work to get such backing out of Venezuela.

But it doesn’t seem to make sense considering the team’s good showing so far this season, which is why the speculation kind of makes sense…I suppose we may never know.

Sauber is hoping their podium finish will attract financial backing. The team does not have much backing, which also leads to many, many jokes about money saving measures. (I have to give it up to I believe it was redbullf1spy for tweeting “does Sauber make Perez pay for his own tires?” regarding the way Perez can make the things last.)

Pat Fry, technical chief at Ferrari, says the win on Sunday does not ease up the work the team still has with the F2012. There are still big gains that need to be made on the car before they can consider themselves to be championship contenders.

Bruno Senna feels like pressure has been lifted after his excellent finish at Sepang. Who could blame him? If it wasn’t for Sergio Perez’s fantastic drive, I think more people would be talking about him. But of course, that’s silly of me to expect since there’s still a legion of fools out there who think he’s just in F1 because of his name.

Note: he has skill that actually does not just come from having an uncle named Ayrton Senna.

Join me tomorrow if something exciting happens, as I have to report to jury duty, and actually if anyone involved in Formula 1 even sneezes, it’d be far more exciting.

(photo credit: Flickr/jiteshjagadish)

Fernando Alonso posted the fastest time this morning with a 1:18.877. Insert some kind of discounting of it because it’s testing here. But come on, you know it makes Ferrari feel a lot better about their car after less-than-stellar showings earlier in the week.

Of course, the afternoon was a setback as hydraulic issues limited afternoon running for the team.

Overall, the typical frontrunners have been on top, although Lotus and Toro Rosso are showing tons of progress. It is of course hard to gauge anything about the upcoming season from testing, since every team has a different focus of what to work on throughout the four day period.

Red Bull had some electrical gremlins at work today. In the end he was able to complete 50 laps today with a third fastest time of 1:19.606.

» Continue reading “Ferrari Fastest As Jerez Testing Concludes”

(photo credit: Flickr/tik_tok)

OUR FIRST CRASH!

Bianchi was driving during the morning session for Force India when he lost control and hit the tire barrier.

Damage was thankfully minimal, but it was enough to keep the team busy on repairs for the rest of the day. Nico Hulkenberg was set to drive in the afternoon and lost out on testing time.

Bianchi apologized for the accident, saying he was sorry for causing the team delay.

The test driver shouldn’t feel too bad, since he’ll also be driving in the Formula Renault 3.5 series.

Also it could be worse… HRT’s new car failed its crash test today. According to Autosport, the car failed two of the 17 tests and was unable to complete one of them due to failure of the lateral nose test. » Continue reading “On The Third Day Of Testing, Jules Bianchi Gave To Me…”

This will be a launch/first day of testing combination party. I apologize for not getting to it until now, I was too comfortable to wake up this morning and had to immediately take off to class and FINALLY I can look at my laptop.

WOO ANOTHER CAR! May I also point you to the poll on the right, please vote for your favorite car so far. I suppose you can use knowledge from testing today to choose. Winning car will receive a cupcake from me. Somehow.

Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna with the Williams-Renault RW34. photo credit: Williams F1's Facebook page

So our final known launch date has arrived, as well as the first day of testing. Obviously Williams launched their car before testing started. It looks weird to see AT&T nowhere on the car. They’ve also gone with the stepped beak nose.

Onto testing!

We’ll start with the Williams: Maldonado completed 25 laps in the car, its first run after the team had to cancel a straight line run last week. The team chose to go with short runs today to run system checks, as they switched engines for this season. Williams used Cosworth engines last year.  » Continue reading “Williams Unveil Their 2012 Challenger Before Sending It Out On Track, Where Raikkonen Was Fast”

Barrichello and Jenson Button back in the Brawn days (credit: Flickr/ johanlundahl)

We are less than two days away from the February 1 launches of the new McLaren and Ferrari cars. These launches will occur at some godawful time in North America, but that’s life. Starting Wednesday, the week will be filled with launches and ugly cars, sadly, leading up to the start of pre-season testing.

Meanwhile, F1 veteran Rubens Barrichello had his first day of testing with IndyCar team KV Racing in Sebring, Florida, today. Barrichello lost out on his Williams seat to Bruno Senna, and decided to give the test a shot based on a suggestion from Tony Kaanan, a close friend of Rubens. Barrichello says he always wanted to try driving an IndyCar, and has gone into the 2 day test with an open mind.

It’s entirely possible he could make the switch to IndyCar instead of seeking out a test driver role to stay in Formula 1…I have actually not even seen that mentioned.

Today was the first day of Adrian Sutil’s trial in Germany. Sutil said he tried “everything” to diffuse the situation between him and Eric Lux, including an offer to do charity for Africa.

I’m not quite sure how that works. “Hey Eric, sorry for almost hitting a major facial nerve with that glass, can we just sweep this under the rug with a charitable contribution?”

Good luck with that. The trial continues tomorrow.

Just as planned, Bruno Senna was confirmed as Williams’ other driver.

The team also said that Senna will drive February 9th during the first test in Jerez.

In the statement from Williams, Senna says, ”It will be very interesting to drive for a team that my uncle has driven for, particularly as quite a few of the people here actually worked with Ayrton. Hopefully we can bring back some memories and create some great new ones too.”

A Twitter user pointed out that now Bruno will have driven for two teams that his uncle had driven for…kind of. I guess there’s not much of a chance at McLaren with Honda engines though.

In an interview with Autosport, Bruno Senna said it was not all about the sponsorship money he’s bringing in. He says the team put him through rigorous testing to prove his worth.

Bruno, anyone can go out and get sponsors, but of course they want the best driver with those sponsors. But who cares, if that means you over a couple other drivers, that’s enough to even make cynics of pay drivers like me very proud.

And thankfully Autosport asked the question I have seriously been wondering about for weeks: what exactly does your family think about you driving with the team your uncle was with when he died?

Senna said he believes everything happens for a reason, and that his family is nothing but thrilled that he has a drive.

Congratulations, Bruno!

Photo from Flickr user Gregory Moine

The rumors have reached full strength, and it is likely to be announced tomorrow that Bruno Senna will be driving for Williams next season. This leaves Rubens Barrichello without a drive, possibly ending his long career in Formula 1.

To read the quite bizarre story behind it, check out The F1 Mole’s blog.

If true, both of Williams’ drivers would be pay drivers. Of course, their financial woes were clear when AT&T didn’t renew their title sponsorship of all things.

I wonder though why nobody brings up how it seems somewhat odd for Bruno to drive for the team his uncle was driving for when he died. By no means do I mean that the team was at fault, as it really was a horrible perfect storm of conditions. I would just feel weird about driving for the team especially when their car is so bad. But maybe that’s why I sit here writing about racing and I’m not out there racing because I’d clearly be missing out on an opportunity that could be my last chance in F1.

Anyway.

Robert Kubica had to have surgery on his once again broken leg. Apparently the calcification that should have taken place in the bone did not happen. Kubica will have to rest for 2-3 weeks before continuing his rehabilitation.

Jenson Button gets to test the new McLaren car for this upcoming season before teammate Lewis Hamilton. Button will be driving for the first two days of testing that begins on February 7, and Hamilton will take over for days 3 and 4.

DRS zones may see some tweaking this season as the FIA looks to alter some of the overtaking zones. The rules for using DRS will remain the same.

Photo from Flickr user  ph-stop

Hired, fired, hired again. I wouldn’t want to be Sebastien Buemi. After being ousted in favor of Toro Rosso becoming a team for drivers with less experience in Formula 1, Red Bull have announced that Buemi will be the team’s reserve/test drive for Red Bull, and will perform testing duties as needed for his former team too.

In other news, Williams has confirmed they are looking for a new title sponsor after failing to renew a contract with AT&T. Supposedly they are already in negotiations with another telecommunications company for sponsorship. Embratel is thought to be the company, and if that is the case, Bruno Senna would likely be the one driving for the team next season.

Kimi Raikkonen had a seat fitting with Team Lotus today. Raikkonen has said the fanfare surrounding his return has not effected him. He’s Finnish, is this supposed to be a surprise?

Photo from Flickr user brad2021hk.