photo credit: Flickr/Nadir Hashmi

Yes, Maldonado. The Williams driver had the fastest time today, with a 1:22.391.

The afternoon was spent by teams as usual on long runs. Michael Schumacher completed a 59 lap run. His fastest time for the day overall was second fastest.

Kamui Kobayashi was third fastest, and Jenson Button fourth; both just under 1:24. Jean-Eric Vergne was fifth fastest, followed by Mark Webber, Felipe Massa, Paul di Resta, Timo Glock, and Vitaly Petrov.

In other plans, Ferrari and Red Bull have switched up their days at the third test. Most teams will run Thursday – Sunday next weekend, while these two will run Friday – Monday. Next week, Lotus will get another testing day since they’ve lost this entire week.

Additionally, the FIA is going to close a loophole in engine mapping that relates to exhaust blowing. This has been a big thing for the FIA to regulate, and apparently as is, it allowed an increase in exhaust flow if a team would be desperate enough to use it if they knew about it.

Rear suspension on a Ferrari, (credit: Flickr/evasèe)

Friday night, teams received a note from the FIA saying the reactive ride height system, pioneered by the Lotus team, has been banned for the 2012 season.

This comes just a week after the FIA confirmed the system was good to go.

It’s entirely possible that some teams made a push to get the FIA to ban the system. Ferrari was concerned with the legality last week, before the FIA said the system was fine. Christian Horner of Red Bull said he wasn’t sure about the system’s use. No need to waste anymore time on it then.

No word on why exactly the FIA decided to ban reactive ride height, but if the details come out, this story will be updated.

Slow. Slow slow slow times. It’s getting desperate out there. I mean people are resorting to asking so much out of Fernando Alonso. See below:

- Some genius decided to ask Fernando Alonso how he feels about Alguersuari losing his seat. The two aren’t even friends. Protip: not everyone from Spain knows each other, isn’t that shocking?

- Alonso believes Ferrari will have a dominant car next season. I’ll believe it when I see it.

- He also welcomes the return of Kimi Raikkonen. See, you can get a decent answer out of him if it’s someone relevant to his interests like a fellow world champion coming back.

- In case you haven’t seen Senna, and you happen to be a Netflix instant subscriber, you can watch it on there right now. And you really should watch it right now. It’s also available on video on demand services, not sure on the cost. The DVD/Blu-Ray version is due out March 6, 2012.

- There is a massive effort underway on Facebook of Bruno Senna fans petitioning Williams to sign Bruno. When I say massive, I mean their Facebook page has more fans than Bruno Senna’s official page. Some Italian site claims Senna is going to look at his options in NASCAR if he doesn’t find a place in F1. I found said article and using my poor understanding of anything but present tense Italian verbs, I think it’s THEIR idea and his.

- Construction at Circuit of the Americas is full speed ahead. Still no info on tickets.

- The constructors of a track in Argentina hope it will attract Formula 1 interest. The track should be completed in 2014. Formula 1 last held a grand prix in Argentina in 1998.

- Allegedly (never gets old) Ferrari is showing some interest in Adrian Sutil. Right.

- Renault is nearly ready to test one of the 2014 spec V6 engines next year.

Photo from Flickr user formula1wolf.

I fell asleep sometime after 4am waiting for this news, woke up at about the time it was finally news, and could not be bothered to get out of bed at that point. Two hours later…

The World Motorsports Council did not make any changes to the 2012 F1 calendar, meaning races are on in Bahrain and Austin. There are, of course, issues with both that still remain.

Of course, the only thing to go on is a press release filled with other information. There’s not much else to go on, other than the calendar remains unchanged, and it was officially confirmed. Here is the super official press release statement.
The 2012 FIA Formula One World Championship calendar was confirmed as previously published.

That’s all.

The Circuit of the Americas has released a statement, which basically just says a deal was reached, Bernie Ecclestone has his money, thanks for supporting us. Work will be back on at the track immediately.

Hopefully everything goes to plan, and hopefully more info comes out as the day goes on, considering it’s early.

A number of new rules were also confirmed for next year, one of the most interesting being a four hour time limit on a race. No more races like Montreal this past summer then.

Also approved rule changes:

• All cars must pass a crash test in order to participate in winter testing.
• A 3 day in season test was approved.
• Lapped cars can pass the safety car in order to go to the back of the field without getting in the way at a restart.
• Drivers cannot move back to the racing line if they move away to defend position.
• Cars in the pitlane when a race is suspended are allowed to rejoin in the position they were in when the race was stopped.
• Teams can use as many tires as they’d like at the Friday practice sessions.
• No cutting chicanes or gaining an advantage to save time/fuel allowed without a justifiable reason (how is this new?)
• The regulations are now more organized regarding stewards’ decisions.

First and foremost, let’s look at who has to pay up for errors at Singapore!

Renault was fined 7,500 Euros for a communication failure under the safety car. The team told Bruno Senna that he was behind Sergio Perez. He was indeed behind Perez on track, but in actuality Senna was a lap down from the Sauber driver. When Senna went in for the overtake after the safety car, he collided with Perez.

Team Lotus was fined 10,000 Euros for the unsafe release of Heikki Kovalainen in the pit lane. Kovalainen nearly collided with race winner Sebastian Vettel.

Michael Schumacher received a slap on the wrist for his accident, which saw him go slightly airborne as he ran into the back of Sergio Perez’s car. Despite everyone running into poor Sergio, he finished the race and appeared NOT to lash out at anyone…unlike a certain Brazilian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqJfg-vjEgA

Felipe Massa interrupted an interview Lewis Hamilton was doing by slapping and pulling on his rival’s arm while saying “well done, good job.” You can hear Lewis tell him “don’t touch me.” Massa now claims that he is “over it.” Note that his boss, team principal Stefano Domenicali, said in an interview that he believed the contact between Hamilton and Massa during the race was just a racing incident.

Next month’s Indian Grand Prix comes with a slightly ridiculous tax issues. There is some confusion on whether or not drivers will be taxed on their income, but it looks like India wants a seventy percent corporation tax on 1/19 on each team’s turnover. Organizers have claimed they would pay customs and taxes for the teams, but that has yet to be seen. The 70% tax is absolutely insane, though. I’m not entirely sure how it works, but let’s say it’s $19 million (seems way low), 1/19 is a million, and 70% is 700,000. That is just a bit ridiculous for these teams towards the back of the grid. There’s talk of boycotting the event, and I’d completely understand. India, that’s a bit greedy for an event you’ve yet to even hold.

Additionally, a couple weeks ago some press members and others related to the sport were having issues getting visas for visiting India. Journalists need journalist visas, and they cost more than the tourist visas, and for god’s sake, the director of communications for the FIA is unhappy. If things continue like this, this race is going to have the plug pulled on it faster than you can say Istanbul Park.

This article is in German but it is a collection of ugly Formula 1 cars in celebration that rule changes next year will bring us another wave of ugly cars. Hopefully this time around, the cars that are ugly due to their 1970s dates will not be back. There are some hideous things in here.

Autodromo Nazionale Monza Track Layout

Last year’s winner: Fernando Alonso

All times eastern
Friday, September 9
First practice session: 5am
Second practice session: 8am, live on SPEED

Saturday, September 10
Third practice session: 4am
Qualifying session: 8am, live on SPEED

Sunday, September 11
Race: 8am, pre-race show on SPEED begins at 7:30am
race reshown at 4:30pm and Monday at 12pm

First and third practice sessions can be streamed live on speedTV.com

This is the last race in Europe for the season, it’s sad to realize it’s almost over!

Sebastian Vettel had his first win here back in 2008 in the rain. It looks like this weekend will be dry: there is a 40% chance of rain Saturday and Sunday right now, though.

Like Valencia and Montreal, this weekend’s race will feature two DRS enabled areas. However unlike these previous races, which had just one detection zone, there will be two completely separate detection zones at Monza for each DRS area. The first will be on the start/finish straightaway, with the detection zone coming right after the last corner on the track, Parabolica.

The second DRS zone will be between turn 5 at Lesmos and Variante Ascari, with the detection zone between turns 4 and 5.

Tires will be the soft and medium compounds, and they should be run on the previously mentioned 3.75 degrees of camber, just remember.

Going back to Tuesday’s story, the Grand Prix Drivers Association said they support Pirelli’s idea to change the allotment of tires for races. This could help the company change the rules for next year if they still need to present their idea to the FIA.

Finally, Virgin has new upgrades to unveil for this race, as rival team Lotus doesn’t seem to even care what happens this weekend as long as it means the cars finish. Meanwhile Virgin has not had that problem in 9 races…should be interesting to see if a) Virgin finishes ahead of the Lotus cars and by how much, or b) who doesn’t finish out of the four cars!

Should be a good race, of course, it is a classic!  Check back with Practice Makes P1 for updates throughout the race weekend.

Pirelli is set to ask the FIA to change some regulations involving tires next year after the teams have not unanimously supported the idea. The tire company hopes a change in the rules could cut down on wasted hard compound tires.

As it stands, each driver has five sets of the softer (option) tires and six sets of the harder (prime) tires for each race. At every single race so far this year, Pirelli has found that absolutely no one has used that 11th set of the harder tires.

Pirelli wants to switch the amount of tires around: six sets of the options, five sets of the primes. The company must now go to the FIA if they want anything changed, as they think even five sets of each is fair. There’s no need to continue wasting this sixth set that nobody uses.

Unused tires are destroyed after the race, making them extremely wasteful.

Paul Hembery, director of motorsport at Pirelli, thinks it’s nonsensical that some teams don’t want to change this, especially after some have not even run in the last qualifying session in order to “save tires.”

Following the six options, five primes concept, after qualifying, a team would have four sets of options and two sets of the harder tires for the race.

Although no names were named, sounds to me like somebody out there wants to keep messing with teams and don’t care about their own benefit from it…

Okay I fully admit…This headline is kind of dumb because really, you can’t expect some turbo V6s to be able to rev to 18,000 RPM like the current V8s. Then again, it probably would have been boring as hell if they were limited to 12,000 RPM.

Have no fear, all is well! The FIA has confirmed that the rev limit with the introduction of new engines will be 15,000 RPM. There are a couple other new rules for 2014 as well. Drivers must be the ones who start the cars, eliminating the use of the external starters currently used. The cars must also run in an electric mode down the pit lane, and an eight speed transmission will be introduced. It will be mandatory to use one.

Earlier this year, FIA President Jean Todt stated that he would be willing to allow teams to have limited in-season testing. Currently, teams can only test their cars prior to the start of the season. This was a change from completely unlimited in-season testing.

Todt says he thinks it was stupid to cut in-season testing out entirely. The only chance for young reserve drivers to get any experience outside of the pre-season is for them to drive a Friday practice session. This can potentially take away from one of the actual driver’s time to get the car to his liking if the reserve driver were to crash or damage the car in any way.

In a time of cost cutting measures, this may not fare too well. However, the Sporting Woking Group is looking for a way to make it work for the teams. The sport would not go back to the unlimited testing days, but something may be worked out at one point. Also, since the majority of teams have simulators at their factories, there would not be a need for too many days.

It’s not a high priority right now, and it’s likely to cause very little conflict compared to more serious rule change issues.

- First up, it’s official: blown diffusers are go for the rest of the season. This mess will never be mentioned again, and you can probably bet blown diffusers will not exist for 2012. Of course, in case you aren’t done with the madness, you are more than welcome to read the FIA’s Q&A on the issue.

- Adam Parr, chairman at Williams, says that Formula 1 needs to embrace social media. There are a couple teams and drivers that have a very good presence online, especially on Twitter. A couple days ago, Heikki Kovalainen was looking for a way he could chat with his fans other than via Facebook. Lotus Renault is one of my favorite teams to follow. Red Bull Racing has a good online community and their Facebook page is decent, as is McLaren Mercedes.

One of the biggest problems though is of course, ancient Bernie Ecclestone who, when interviewed, seems to think the internet only consists of videos and the only use F1 could have for the internet is video. This will probably take a bit of time.

- There’s a Formula 1 invasion coming to Russia ahead of the future race in Sochi. Jenson Button will be behind the wheel of McLaren’s 2008 car in Moscow and Russia’s own Vitaly Petrov will be showing off last year’s Renault in Sochi this weekend.

- Mark Webber appears to be set to sign for 2012 with Red Bull, again killing all my hopes and dreams of a Vettel-Raikkonen lineup. Oh wait, Dr. Helmut Marko already told me that was ridiculous like five times. Sigh.

- Finally a Robert Kubica update! He hopes to be back on the Formula 1 grid for 2012. He says he’s still a bit weak physically, but of course that’s what rehabilitation is for. He also notes that there has been no mental impact from his February rally crash that left his right hand severed. Bravo, Robert, stay strong and get back to the track!