Innehållsförteckning för February 5, 2015 från Autosport

“It’s early days for the relationship but, now that it’s one of four works teams, there’s no hiding place” McLaren-Honda MP4-30 McLaren is now back to where it has wanted to be since losing Mercedes as its works partner. Thanks to its Honda deal, the squad can now be classified as a factory team along with Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull. NOSE The nose is a fairly simple interpretation of the regulations. It continues forward more or less the width of the chassis at the front bulkhead until the leading edge of the frontwing central section. The undersurface rises up fairly steeply, creating a larger column at the trailing edge of this part of the wing. This expansion will work the centre section of the front wing, creating a small…

Could you call it a dream start? Yes, you could, for Sebastian Vettel’s mission as a Ferrari driver is to replicate his hero Michael Schumacher’s feats and return the Scuderia to the front of Formula 1. Certainly testing counts for little in the grand scheme of things, but setting the pace during your first official run with a new team is no bad way to kick a new partnership off. Of course, it’s foolish to read too much into laptimes so soon in the season, influenced as they are by incomparable fuel loads and variable testing programmes across the different teams. But a driver will have a fair idea straight away whether his new steed is something he can learn to love, or a complete dog that he would rather…

What goes up must come down. This is as true in grand prix racing as it is in life. Lotus suffered a spectacular fall from grace last year, recording its worst finish in the constructors’ championship (eighth) since 2009, when ‘Team Enstone’ was still the Renault works squad. By contrast, Mercedespowered Williams rose like a phoenix from the flames to beat Ferrari to third spot in the title race, its best season since it finished runnerup to the Scuderia way back in 2003. Lotus has ended a 20-year association with Renault to join Williams in running Mercedes engines this season. The Three-Pointed Star produced comfortably the strongest power unit for the first year of F1’s new V6 turbo hybrid regulations. Now that Lotus has the benefit of that (updated) package…

MERCEDES F1 W06 The Mercedes looks very similar to last year’s and there’s a good reason for that. If you look back over the 2014 season and jot down the negatives, it’s difficult to make that list very long. The car went well on a wide range of tracks, it was good in qualifying, good over race distances, so to identify the downsides is difficult and those that were there wouldn’t have been big issues. So you either do something new or just try to find more grip. This car is all about the small details and there’s nothing too revolutionary. In effect, it’s an extension of last year’s car because that’s what the regulations dictate. FRONT WING The front-wing pillars are very narrow. The pillars themselves won’t do much…

RED BULL-RENAULT RB11 The special camouflage test livery doesn’t make it particularly easy to see the detail on this car, but it’s very clearly the latest in the long line of this family of Red Bull cars that stretches back to 2009. Adrian Newey hasn’t walked away completely so I’m sure he is still guiding this one. The car that we saw at Jerez very much looks like a b-spec of last year’s and there could be a lot of changes to come. But while that’s a good foundation, Red Bull also has to be careful. A lot has changed. Sebastian Vettel, the man the team built itself around, has gone and Adrian’s role has changed, so it’s a different team. Daniel Ricciardo had a great year in 2014, but…

Daniel Ricciardo is a very conventional driver in terms of his style. That’s not a criticism, merely a reflection of the fact that he does the basics extremely well and is therefore able to perform through a wide range of conditions. In a way, he’s something like Jenson Button, but able to deliver with a wider range of car and track characteristics. Ricciardo usually carries good speed from turn-in to apex with a progressive entry to the corner, letting the car do the work. By contrast, his 2014 team-mate Sebastian Vettel would tend to rotate the rear more aggressively, with the relative lack of rear downforce compared to the exhaust-blown-downforce days often putting him in trouble mid-corner. Ricciardo, by contrast, has the car very much under control, so you rarely…

SAUBER-FERRARI C34 The main thing that strikes you about the Sauber is that it’s now blue and yellow! The Swiss team understands exactly at what level it was operating last year and just needs to quietly start to move forward. The car does have a fair bit of carry-over, which you would expect for a team that is regrouping after failing to score a point. The positive thing is that it’s likely there will only be nine teams on the grid this year, so that guarantees Sauber will finish at least a place higher. But with the best will in the world, it’s desperately unlikely that it will break back into the top six in 2015, so the priority is just to make some progress. REAR PACKAGING The bodywork is…

The 750MC’s core values shine on, 75 years later With the benefit of hindsight, nobody would have founded a motor club in Britain in 1939. The stoic spirit that sustained the 750MC through to its first race meetings, based around cheap and available Austin 7-based cars, post-WWII was still nevertheless evident throughout its successful 75th-anniversary season. I enjoyed Brands Hatch and three Silverstone events, and was delighted to work with fellow commentators Ian Sowman and Matt Suckling at last Saturday’s 2014 awards dinner. More than 400 people congregated in Stratfordupon-Avon as racers from 10 championships and two series received their hard-won trophies. Bikesports champion Adrian Reynard was the best known. The celebrated designer and eponymous marque chief – who raced a Radical SR3 with all the gusto I recall from…

Formula 1 teams do not cover 432 miles of running, complete long runs and ft in 17 practice pitstops because they’ve run out of things to do on their schedule on the frst serious day of running with a new car. Well, they didn’t until the new Mercedes F1 W06 hit the track at Jerez last Sunday. While Ferrari stole the limelight with Sebastian Vettel topping the timesheets on the frst two days of this week’s opening test of 2015, the Silver Arrows lurked ominously in the middle of the pack. The Mercedes remains the car to beat. Only a water leak, suffered with Lewis Hamilton at the wheel during Monday afternoon, not long before rain hit the track in southern Spain, derailed the progress Mercedes was making. And even…

TOYOTA RETURNS TO RALLYING WITH YARIS Toyota’s return to the World Rally Championship in 2017 will be a success, according to the marque’s 1993 World Rally champion Juha Kankkunen. The news that Toyota would be back in the WRC for the first time since it departed as manufacturers’ world champion in 1999 was broken at a press conference in Tokyo last Friday. The Japanese firm’s Cologne-based Toyota Motorsport GmbH arm will spend the next two seasons further developing the Yaris WRC, which it started testing last year. Kankkunen said: “It is great, great news that they’re coming back. They have good resources and I’m sure they will come back in the right way.” Toyota’s World Endurance racer Stephane Sarrazin, sometime WRC regular Sebastian Lindholm and French Toyota junior protege Eric…

WILLIAMS-MERCEDES FW37 The interesting thing is that we now have four works teams: McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. So Williams should be the leading customer team, which potentially means it’s fifth in line. I expect Williams to do better than fifth in the championship this year, but it shows the challenge it faces this year. The Mercedes customer engine is the same as the works one, but the team has little influence on the packaging and it’s all about how you use it best. Williams had a fantastic year in 2014 but, if all the works teams get it right this season, it will be behind them. So it’s all about making sure with the car that your objectives are set very clearly. That’s an area in which technical…

TORO ROSSO-RENAULT STR10 The team that was once Minardi had a car that was quick on occasions last year, but often failed to score the points it should have done. Toro Rosso has grown in terms of its facilities and personnel under technical director James Key, who used to work for me at Jordan. There’s a clear desire to move up the grid, as shown by setting a very ambitious target of fifth in the constructors’ championship. It’s not going to be easy. NOSE DESIGN Toro Rosso has read the regulations closely and its initial nose design follows the wording to the letter. I’m certain we will see some changes in this area before the start of the season, but there is very little room for visually different solutions. So…

A fresh look and two new drivers mean it’s all change at Sauber this year, but amid the usual launch-season optimism there’s no escaping the fact that this is a critical year for the Swiss team, and its very survival remains in the balance. Last year it failed to score a point, and slipped to 10th in the’ championship, losing out to Marussia. The backdrop to that poor performance was a financial squeeze, and at the end of last season the team held what amounted to an auction for its two 2015 seats. Out went Adrian Sutil, who had an ongoing contract but was on a salary, so represented a drain on resources. Gone too was Esteban Gutierrez as the team ended its relationship with the Mexican backers who had…

TOYOTA RACING SERIES HAMPTON DOWNS (NZ), JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 1 RD 3/5 MacLeod scores in Scottish weather SAM MACLEOD TOOK HIS FIRST Toyota Racing Series win with a commanding victory in the feature event at Hampton Downs, the historic New Zealand Motor Cup. The Edinburgh racer won the start from second on the grid, thanks partly to being on the drier side of a damp track, quickly pulled a gap and held it to the end, winning by 6.5 seconds from championship leader Lance Stroll of Canada. “Deciding on slicks was a close call,” MacLeod said. “But with two formation laps we got some heat in the tyres and I made a decent start. “It was good being in the lead but I made a mistake in the middle of the…

How TV should exploit F1 testing WHEN IS THE ABSOLUTE PEAK of fan interest in Formula 1? The start of the season opener? A title-deciding grand prix? It’s arguably neither. For the diehard fans most likely to interact with F1 teams and sponsors, or commit to pay-per-view F1 broadcasting, it’s surely the morning of day one of the first test of the season. The fervency of social media and the rush of traffic to autosport.com’s live coverage is ample evidence of the hunger for every possible snippet of information in those hours. Does that make it a spectacle worth televising? On paper, and on the evidence of every attempt at televised testing so far, no. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth another attempt by one of the F1 broadcasters…

FERRARI SF15-T Ferrari has made some big changes over the winter, from the top to the bottom. There’s been a big clear-out and, while it wasn’t necessarily the case that those who have left were bad, they perhaps weren’t in the ideal positions. The question is whether Ferrari’s new structure will be successful. Sebastian Vettel has joined, with Fernando Alonso moving on. It will be interesting to see how this changes things inside the team. Alonso is a fantastic driver on a Sunday, but he can be a bit political so there could be a very different atmosphere in the team. I suspect Ferrari will have a better season than last year, but I’m not seeing anything in this car to say that it’s a dramatic step forward. There’s nothing…

LOTUS-MERCEDES E23 Lotus had a terrible season last year, but it had very strong years in 2012 and ’13 and this car looks to be a step back in the right direction. Before last year a lot of people left and, while there were still good people at Enstone, it has clearly taken time to regroup. This appears to have been done effectively – the evidence of that is in the improved car this year. With the switch from Renault to Mercedes engines, there’s a good chance for Lotus to get itself back to the front of the battle of the nonworks teams. The battle for fourth, fifth and sixth in the constructors’ championship could be mighty and there’s every reason why Lotus could be in the thick of it.…

Vain hope, or realistic expectation? We won’t know for sure until the latest breed of Formula 1 cars turn their wheels in (true) anger at the first race of the new year in Australia in March. But, after a season of utter dominance by Mercedes, the hope among F1 fans around the world is that somebody, somewhere, somehow, can properly carry the fight to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in 2015. Recent disarray at Ferrari, too many unknowns at McLaren-Honda and undercooked Renault engines holding back a slick Red Bull team mean Williams could be that someone, especially if upgraded Mercedes power units (which will also motivate Williams’s new FW37) deliver the rumoured performance gains that are already keeping rivals awake at night. Williams was generally best of the rest…

Seldom in the modern Formula 1 pitlane have so many people stopped whatever vitally important tasks they were performing to do a double-take at the car that has just blasted past on its way out onto the track. That’s exactly what happened at Jerez during F1’s pre-season testing kick-off when a dizzying blur of unrecognisable white-and-black shot past. Having not caught sight of which garage it had emerged from, it took a split-second to work out what the imposter was. In the end, the Infiniti badges were the giveaway. This was the new, camouflaged Red Bull RB11. And it looked mighty. Having successfully kept the lid on not only its car design but its testing-livery concept in the build-up to Jerez, Red Bull certainly caused a stir when it unleashed…

OVERALL 59 ‘McLaren-groomed Magnussen set the bar high. Sainz’s job was to pick up where the Dane left off. And he did, competently’ OVERALL 58 ‘Max’s adaptation from karting to Formula Renault and F3 was remarkable. He’s also superb in fast corners with low downforce’ CARLOS SAINZ JR Had Sebastian Vettel not upped sticks and swapped Milton Keynes for Maranello, Carlos Sainz Jr would almost certainly not be a Formula 1 driver in 2015. The Spaniard’s hopes of landing a seat at Toro Rosso appeared dashed when Red Bull signed Max Verstappen to its B-team for this year. But in a whirlwind few weeks last October he became the energy-drinks firm’s first protege to win the Formula Renault 3.5 title, hot on the heels of Vettel’s departure for Ferrari that…

Maximising aerodynamic efficiency was the driving force behind the very unusual front-engine, front-wheel-drive concept of Nissan’s new GT-R LM NISMO World Endurance Championship contender. The Japanese manufacturer’s global motorsport boss Darren Cox claims that the mould-breaking design was a reaction to an LMP1 rulebook that tightly controls aerodynamics at the rear of the car, but offers much more freedom at the front. “The aero regs at the back of the car are so tight that there isn’t much you can do,” he said of Nissan’s first challenger for outright honours at the Le Mans 24 Hours since 1999. “If you look at the front of the car there are a lot of clever aerodynamics. “The whole concept of the car is about maximising aerodynamic efficiency by moving the centre of…

LEADING BRITISH SINGLEseater teams JTR, Fortec and Carlin shook down their Mygale-built MSA Formula cars last week. All three teams have responded positively to the championship’s new FIA F4-specification car after testing for the first time at Brands Hatch and Rockingham. The first batch of 15 cars was delivered to customers last month, with teams beginning to test with the French-built chassis and Ford EcoBoost engine. World karting champion Lando Norris and team-mates Colton Herta and Petru Florescu all sampled Carlin’s car, and its MSA Formula team manager Martin Knapman said first impressions were good. “Mygale has built a very good car,” said Knapman. “We spent three days at Rockingham ironing out any early handling issues the drivers may have had. The car, as you’d expect from a junior singleseater,…

What you think of the motorsport news of the past week Whoever works at the marketing and creative department at Red Bull is a genius. This team always knows how to stand out from the crowd, but its latest trick, the camouflage livery, is phenomenal. Apart from covering what needs to be covered, it’s a perfect comeback to all those disappointed comments regarding the dull, colourless cars. Red Bull is still like a cheeky boy mocking others – I can even imagine they decided to come up with this livery a few days ago. Brigitta Gyimesi, by email There is much justifiable complaint from the lesser Formula 1 teams about the cost of their power units and I would like to raise an argument in support of them. Surely the…