No Bahrain? Australia to start? What will Ferrari and Nico Rosberg do?

With the political unrest currently in the Middle East spreading into Bahrain over the past week the world of F1 seems set to end up making some sort of political statement. They have a scheduled test and then the first GP of the year both set to happen in the next month in a country that is beginning to show the same dissatisfaction as other Middle Eastern countries and bar Iran they have succumbed to the pressure and had to do something.

F1 will want to keep it’s hands clean in the political sphere to avoid harming and future deals with either the current or any future power holders in the country but without a swift end to the protests it can’t justify aligning itself with any faction that would be the case were the GP to be held. I suspect that the situation will have calmed down for the race though the test will be moved to Spain.

What would a cancellation mean for the season though? Well it would deny Ferrari the chance to run away with a victory like last year with a car that likes the Sakir circuit and Nico Rosberg would be denied the chance to trounce Michael Schumacher at one of his favourite tracks. But apart from that? Not much would change, we’d have one less race to watch, but it’s not the most exciting track of the year, Bernie’s pockets would probably be a little less full, but I’m sure he can cope (he’ll probably pass the loss on to the teams anyway).

So F1 don’t hold turn away and take the money, make the right decision based on what’s happening.

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Testing continues in Spain

Williams will have done their stock price no harm with this test showing as Rubens Barrichello pulled out the fastest time in Jerez. The testing regime doesn’t really allow for a comparison, we all saw what Sauber did last year in the pre-season – and look where they are again.

The headline times don’t tell the whole story as the big teams seemed to set the most consistent fast times with Red Bull and Ferrari looking the strongest of those. McLaren may have to play catch up yet again, if only they’d make it easy for themselves at the start of the year.

Mercedes seem in all sorts of trouble with issues with the car and not seeming like they have the pace, though again it is only pre-season and in F1 terms there’s still a long way to go until that first race.

Renault continue to evaluate drivers to replace Kubica who looks likely to miss the whole year, if he manages to drive an F1 car again that is. Senna was on duty for the last day but it was Heidfeld who looks likely to replace the Polish driver with his experience putting him ahead of the other drivers, his fate seems inextrably linked to that of Kubica doesn’t it – that said from their respective performances last year Heidfeld seems the faster too.

All the teams will be in action back in Barcelona for the next test this week before the season opener in Bahrain on 13th March.

1 Rubens Barrichello (Brz) Williams-Cosworth one minute 19.832 seconds
2 Kamui Kobayashi (Jpn) Sauber-Ferrari 1:20.601
3 Fernando Alonso (Spa) Ferrari 1:21.074
4 Sebastien Buemi (Swi) Toro Rosso-Ferrari 1:21.213
5 Bruno Senna (Brz) Renault 1:21.400
6 Heikki Kovalainen (Fin) Team Lotus-Renault 1:21.632
7 Nico Rosberg (Ger) Mercedes 1:22.103
8 Sebastian Vettel (Ger) Red Bull-Renault 1:22.222
9 Jenson Button (GB) McLaren-Mercedes 1:22.278
10 Jerome D’Ambrosio (Bel) Virgin-Cosworth 1:22.985
11 Paul Di Resta (GB) Force India-Mercedes 1:23.111

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Testing for the new season begins

The 2011 began in Valencia as the teams set out to prove that their news cars are up to speed. Some teams opted to miss this first test entirely or run their old car, most notable of these was McLaren. While some may criticise that decision it didn’t seem to affect Red Bull last year who didn’t even attend the first test.

Robert Kubica ended the last day fastest, showing that the Renault may yet have some pace this year, though he may not get to drive it again due to his accident. The Red Bulls seems to be putting it some solid runs but the Mercedes car still doesn’t seem to have much pace compared. The picture is far from clear in testing though with different fuel loads run lengths and testing programmes at play. We’ve also yet to see some of the new cars for comparison.

Testing continues this week at Jerez where we’ll see the new McLaren in action amongst others, this season is shaping up to be a good one though I wonder what effect the new rear wings and KERS is going to have on racing.

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Red Bull set for Audi tie up?

2010 Constructors champions Red Bull Racing looks set to agree a deal with Audi to use their engines in Formula 1 in 2013. This follows months of speculation in which the German manufacturer was also linked to Williams F1.

Road car innovation

Audi’s parent company VW is believed to have been enticed to finally enter F1 following moves by the sports governing body, the FIA, to make the sport both more environmentally friendly and road car relevant. These two things are not mutually exclusive with road car companies becoming increasingly preoccupied with reducing the fuel consumption of their vehicles in light of ever increasing fuel prices. Many of the sports key players realised that the sports negligence to address these issues in the past couple of years had played a big part in the withdrawal of key players BMW, Honda and Toyota.

It was therefore announced that engines would be downsized from the current 2.4 litre V8 engines to much smaller 1.6 litre four-cylinder turbo power plants. This is the first time that turbo engines have been permitted in the sport since 1988 in a decade where drivers such as Nigel Mansell (prior to becoming the star of Money Supermarket commercials) drove 1500bhp rockets. However, the turbo is now being permitted in order for the small capacity motors to produce a sufficient amount of power to allow the sport to remain as the pinnacle of motorsport while at the same time allowing the car manufacturers to develop a F1 engine which is much more in line with road car engines than has ever been possible before.

The Williams approach

Porsche chairman Matthias Mueller made it clear at the Paris Motor-show in October that he felt it was no longer appropriate for his company to compete against its sister company Audi in sports car arena. Mueller therefore stated publicly that he felt that parent brand Volkswagen should place one of the brands in F1 and leave the other in sports car category.

Williams were the first team to pounce on this stated interest with Williams CEO Adam Parr alleged to have missed the season ending Abu Dhabi grand prix in order to meet Volkswagen board members in Qatar. However, despite initial interest from Volkswagen and the fact that the two companies had an existing relationship from a collaboration on the Porsche GT3 hybrid programme (in which Williams supplied KERS devices), it is believed that Volkswagen members felt that Williams would not be capable of meeting its objectives of being capable of winning races right from the start of the 2013 season. A number of negative comments from Porsche board members followed in which they made it clear that F1 participation was unlikely and Porsche appeared to have once again given up on an F1 project at the last minute.

The Red Bull approach

Red Bull Racing is believed to have approached Volkswagen shortly before the end of 2010 in an attempt to revive their interest in taking one of their brands to F1. Red Bull and Volkswagen have an existing relationship from joint programmes in F3 and DTM and it was therefore felt that creating a joint F1 programme would be the natural progression. Red Bull’s domination of the 2010 world championship, in which its lead driver Sebastian Vettel became the youngest ever world champion, is believed to have been sufficient to have convinced Volkswagen that it could realistically expect to win the opening round of the 2013 season.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner refused to deny that negotiations had taken place when asked about the matter, simply confirming that there were exciting plans for the future. However, it is unclear what effect the loss of Sebastian Vettel would have on a potential deal, with the young German being linked to both Ferrari and Mercedes upon the completion of his Red Bull contract at the end of 2012.

What now for Williams?

If Williams have lost out on the Volkswagen engine deal then it will be a bitter blow to the British team. The former championship winning outfit hasn’t won a race in almost seven years and recently had to offload the highly rated Nico Hulkenberg in exchange for the crash prone Pastor Maldonado who comes armed with pockets full of PDVSA sponsorship. This highlights Williams delicate financial situation which the Volkswagen tie-up would have helped to address.

However, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel with Renault likely to be looking for a new partner should the Red Bull alliance come to an end. This could see the reformation of the famous Williams-Renault combination which was so successful in the 1990s. A Red Bull-Volkswagen deal could be the best thing for all concerned.

Guest Post by Mark Martin

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