Button Wants Tyre Improvements

Jenson Button believes that Pirelli need to make the peak range of their tyres wider ahead of the 2013 season. The Brit was outspoken about issues surrounding the rubber throughout the season, insisting that the drop off point was too dramatic. The unpredictable start to 2012, seven winners in seven events, back up his claims [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Formula1Fancast/~3/sWMhuHwIlR8/button-wants-tyre-improvements

Willi Krakau Rudolf Krause Robert Kubica Kurt Kuhnke Masami Kuwashima

Mercedes 300SL/R by Gullwing America


Carrera Panamericana is a border-to-border sports car racing event that run between 1950 and 1954. During the third edition — in 1952 — the Mercedes-Benz 300SL of Kling and Hans Klenk scored an impressive victory, taking first and second place of the podium. Now, 60 years later, Gullwing America (GWA) pays tribute to this legendary win by unveiling of a specially designed 300SL/R.

The standard Mercedes 300SL model was powered by a 3.0 liter straight-six engine with 115 horsepower. In the R version, the engine was fitted only with carburetors and it delivered a total of 175 horsepower. GWA decided to scrap the base engine and and replace it with a 6.3-liter V-8 engine mated to a new transmission. GWA said nothing about the engine?s final output, but in its standard version, this V-8 engine delivers a total of 525 horsepower.

GWA?s 300SL/R also received a modified brake system with bigger calipers, a set of retro-inspired 19-inch Monoblock wheels, racing seats and a roll bar.

The model will be carried by a branded Mercedes-Benz transporter in a tour around the world.

Mercedes 300SL/R by Gullwing America originally appeared on topspeed.com on Wednesday, 5 December 2012 18:00 EST.

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Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/mercedes/1952-mercedes-300sl-r-by-gullwing-america-ar139367.html

Antônio Pizzonia Eric van de Poele Jacques Pollet Ben Pon Dennis Poore

Raikkonen in rude health

Kimi Raikkonen already had a bottle of beer in his hand by the time he joined his Lotus team for the now-traditional group photo following a grand prix victory.

Knowing Raikkonen's reputation, it will almost certainly not have been the last drink that passed his lips in Abu Dhabi on Sunday night as he celebrated his first win since returning to Formula 1 this year after two years in rallying.

"For sure we're going to have a good party today," the sport's most famous hedonist said on he podium, "and hopefully tomorrow, when we are feeling bad after a long night, we will remember how we feel."

How long will you celebrate for, he was asked.

"I have almost two weeks," he said. "As long as I manage to get myself to the next race I think the team is happy. I try to get home at some point."

The party is well deserved. Raikkonen's comeback year has had its ups and downs, but a win has looked a probability since the start of the season, and in many ways the big surprise has been that it has taken so long.

Raikkonen has been remarkably strong and consistent in races this season, but until Abu Dhabi his best chances of victory had been squandered by starting too far down the grid.

Raikkonen has now taken 37% of his career victories after starting from outside the top three on the grid. Photo: Getty

He is the first to admit that he has made too many mistakes in qualifying. Indeed, for the first half of the season he was generally being out-paced over one lap on Saturdays by his novice team-mate Romain Grosjean.

But in the second half of the season his qualifying pace has edged forward, the mistakes have dried up, and this weekend everything came together to produce the result the team and he undoubtedly deserve.

Out of the car, Raikkonen is about as uncommunicative as they come. He simply refuses to engage in the media game. That can be frustrating for journalists who are searching for insight from an undoubtedly great driver, but still there is no mystery about his true character.

The radio messages that caused such amusement during the race sum him up.

His poor race engineer was only doing his job when he informed him of the gap to Fernando Alonso's Ferrari behind him, and some may find it rude that Raikkonen would respond by asking him to "leave me alone, I know what I'm doing".

But that is Raikkonen all over. He's a no-nonsense character, and he just wants things the way he wants them. And if he is not comfortable in the spotlight, he was born to be in a Formula 1 car at the front of a grand prix.

"Kimi is a man of few words but he's all about racing," McLaren driver Jenson Button said, summing up the Finn's unique appeal.

"It's good to see him have a good race here and collect the victory. He does deserve it. He is back for the racing. That's what he loves and it's good to see that."

For all his impressive performance, Raikkonen owed his win to Lewis Hamilton's wretched fortune at McLaren.

Yet another failure - this one in a fuel pump on the McLaren's Mercedes engine - cost Hamilton another victory. It's the second time it has happened in five races and it is the story of his season.

Hamilton said on Sunday that he had "been at my best this year" and so it has looked, but he also made a pointed reference to McLaren's myriad problems throughout the season: "We have not done a good enough job to win this championship."

For the men who can win it, it was a weekend of wildly fluctuating fortunes.

Following Sebastian Vettel's exclusion from qualifying because not enough fuel had been put in his Red Bull to provide the requisite one-litre sample, it appeared that Alonso had a golden opportunity to close down some of the advantage the German had eked out with his four consecutive wins through Singapore, Japan, Korea and India.

But after a wildly topsy-turvy race and an impressive drive by Vettel, the German joined his Spanish rival on the podium.

All three podium finishers gave an object lesson in racing to the many drivers who crash-banged into each other behind them, including each of their team-mates, and while Vettel's drive quite rightly stood out, so too was a little luck involved.

Vettel damaged his front wing against Bruno Senna's Williams on the first lap, but was able to continue and overtake the rabbits at the back of the field.

Then, not for the first time in his career, he made a mistake behind the safety car, misjudging the pace of Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso as the Australian warmed his brakes, veering to avoid him, and finishing off the front wing against a marker board.

The mistake forced Red Bull to pit Vettel when they were not going to and the fresh tyres he fitted at the stop meant he had a grip advantage over the drivers he now had to pass.

Again, he sliced rapidly through the backmarkers - this time without incident - so that he was up to seventh by the time the pit-stop period started for those in front of him.

By the time the leaders had all stopped, Vettel was in second place, and suddenly it looked like he might have a chance of pulling off a sensational victory.

Raikkonen's Lotus team, for one, thought Vettel would not be stopping again, but Red Bull were concerned enough about tyre wear to want to play safe, and the 20 seconds he lost in his second pit stop were then wiped out by another safety car.

Fourth at the re-start, the fastest car in the field and on fresher tyres than Raikkonen, Alonso and Button ahead of him, it again looked like he might win.

In the end, though, Button's clever defence kept him behind long enough to ensure that although he could pass the McLaren, third was as far as he was going to go.

BBC F1 chief analyst Eddie Jordan said Vettel's ability to salvage a podium finish from a pit-lane start must feel like a "dagger in the heart for Ferrari" but if Alonso was disappointed you would not want to play poker with him.

He talked about his pride at finishing second in a race Ferrari had expected to deliver a fifth or sixth place - and as Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Alonso celebrated on the podium as if he had won the race.

For a while now, Alonso has been saying Red Bull's winning run would end, that eventually they would have some bad luck.

Well, in Abu Dhabi they had it, and still Alonso could gain only three points on Vettel, and it was noticeable that the tone of his remarks after the race shifted slightly.

In India two weeks ago, he said he was still "100% confident" of winning the title. After Abu Dhabi, though, he did not repeat that remark.

"Without the problem for Sebastian we were thinking we would exit Abu Dhabi with 20 points deficit or something and we are 10 (behind)," Alonso said. "In the end it was a good weekend for us.

"They will have the fastest car in the last two races. There is no magic part that will come for Austin or Brazil. But as I said a couple of races ago, they have the fastest car, we have the best team. So we see who wins."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/11/post_abu_dhabi.html

Riccardo Patrese Al Pease Roger Penske Cesare Perdisa Luis PerezSala

Bruno Senna: ?I have learned a lot and improved?

Having lost his Williams seat to Valtteri Bottas Bruno Senna says he?s happy with his 2012 season. Senna has scored points regularly this year, although he hasn?t been as fast over one lap as team mate Pastor Maldonado. ?Since the … Continue reading

Source: http://adamcooperf1.com/2012/11/28/bruno-senna-i-have-learned-a-lot-and-improved/

Timmy Mayer Francois Mazet Gastón Mazzacane Kenneth McAlpine Perry McCarthy

It?s tough at the bottom

The Marussia team is the 11th Formula 1 team. The new Concorde Agreement, which will come into effect in one form or another at the end of this month, provides for prize money for the top 10 teams. In the current agreement there is a provision for $10 million a year for the teams that [...]

Source: http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/its-tough-at-the-bottom/

Massimo Natili Brian Naylor Mike Nazaruk Tiff Needell Jac Nelleman

Singapore swing hands Vettel the initiative

Lewis Hamilton cut a remarkably phlegmatic figure after the Singapore Grand Prix, considering his retirement from what seemed a victory for the taking left his championship hopes in tatters.

The McLaren driver said all the right things after the race about not giving up, but the sad reality is that he is 52 points behind Ferrari's Fernando Alonso with only 150 still available.

To expect Hamilton to be able to make up more than a third of the points still remaining on a man who is driving one of the best seasons in Formula 1 history is ambitious in the extreme, although it's certainly going to be entertaining watching him try.

Hamilton's performance in Singapore confirmed two things about this season - McLaren are the team to beat with the consistently fastest car and the 2008 world champion is driving superlatively well.

Lewis Hamilton

A gear box failure caused McLaren driver Lewis Hamilton to retire from the Singapore Grand Prix. Photo: Getty 

His pole lap on Saturday was a sight to behold, all controlled aggression and commitment, brushing the walls, judging the balance between risk and reward to perfection to leave his rivals breathless.

Until that point, Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel had appeared to be evenly matched with Hamilton but when it mattered the German found his car's grip had mysteriously disappeared. Hamilton found plenty, though, to go more than half a second clear of anyone else.

It was, as McLaren sporting director Sam Michael put it, a "fantastic" lap and he followed it with a controlled performance in the race, taking only as much as he needed to out of the car and tyres, confident that he had pace in reserve if Vettel upped his pace behind him.

But then the oil started leaking out of his differential, he lost his seamless gearshifts, then third gear and finally all his gears, and he sadly coasted to a halt at Turn Five with more than half the race still remaining.

It was the latest in a series of disappointments for Hamilton this year, without which he would be right up with Alonso in the championship.

For nearly all of them he has been blameless. Only in his collision with Pastor Maldonado in Valencia could you perhaps lay any small fault at his door - of course the Williams man drove into him, but ex-drivers, including Ivan Capelli, have questioned whether Hamilton might have been wiser in the circumstances to leave him a bit more space.

Despite the series of McLaren-related incidents that have cost him his best chance of the title since 2008, Hamilton's mood upon getting back to the paddock was notably different from his subdued bearing after taking pole and victory in Italy two weeks ago.

In Monza, he was downbeat, almost monosyllabic, despite his crushing performance. Here, the speed was the same, but the disposition far sunnier.

It remains to be seen whether that was to do with him making up his mind about his future one way or the other.

But it would take a brave man who gave up the pace of the McLaren for the uncertain and unimpressive form of Mercedes, whatever the difference in remuneration, real or potential, there may be between the offers.

"I think it would have been a nice result for us but we still have more races to go," he said.

"We really couldn't afford today but it is what it is. The good thing is we have good pace. I have to go and win the next races."

On his and McLaren's current form, he could easily win all of them, but if the season continues in its topsy-turvy way, with wins shared about, it is difficult to see him making up so many points on Alonso.

Vettel, though, is a different matter. The low-downforce circuits of Spa and Monza behind them, the Red Bull is likely to be competitive everywhere.

Even if it is not as strong as the McLaren, it is certainly consistently quicker than the Ferrari and in that context a 29-point deficit following the victory he inherited from Hamilton in Singapore is eminently bridgeable.

As Red Bull team boss Christian Horner pointed out, Vettel "was 25 points down with two races to go in 2010, which indicates anything is possible for all the drivers. We need to keep taking points off Fernando, which ideally means getting a few more cars between us and him."

And there's the rub.

Alonso has not won since Germany in July. A potential win escaped him in Italy two weeks ago because of a mechanical problem in qualifying, but Ferrari's poor performance in Singapore, when he had been expecting to fight for pole and victory, was a wake-up call.

On the form of this weekend, Alonso does not look likely to win in normal circumstances unless Ferrari can bring some more speed to the car.

But what he does keep doing is finishing in the points.
In the 10 races since the Spanish Grand Prix in May, Alonso has retired only once - after being hit by the flying Lotus of Romain Grosjean in Belgium three weeks ago. Of the nine he has finished, seven of them resulted in a podium - including two wins - and the other two fifth places.

No-one else has consistency anything like that, and it is in that consistency that lies his best hope.

The concern for Alonso is that if both McLarens and Vettel finish races, those podiums will be hard to come by, and in those circumstances that gap would come down quickly indeed.

So well has he been driving this year that Alonso has to still be considered a narrow favourite for the title.

But while McLaren's weaknesses have made the championship a long-shot even for Hamilton, as Alonso leaves Singapore, he will be casting worried glances over his shoulder at Vettel.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/andrewbenson/2012/09/in_singapore_lewis_hamilton_cu.html

Christian Fittipaldi Emerson Fittipaldi Wilson Fittipaldi Theo Fitzau Pat Flaherty

Spy shots: 2014 Hyundai Genesis Caught Testing for the First Time

First details on a second generation Hyundai Genesis surfaced at the beginning of the year, but since then nothing else was reported. At least not until today when our spy photographers caught the 2014 Genesis testing for the first time somewhere on the streets of Europe. The prototype caught testing is heavily camouflaged, but we can still see that things with the next Genesis are looking pretty awesome.

The model — codenamed "DH" — will be built on an updated version of the current rear-wheel-drive chassis minus a few hundred pounds. Hyundai will also add a revised suspension for a sportier drive. Under the hood, we will see updated versions of the 3.8-liter V-6 and 5.0-liter V-8 engines combined with an 8-speed transmission. Hyundai is also preparing a 10-speed transmission for a later model year.

On the exterior the next Genesis will look a little bit more dramatic than the current Genesis sedan. Up front we will see a wide, hexagonal grille opening, featuring horizontal grille bars. The headlamps will also be redesigned and they will offer full LED units.

The second generation Genesis will be unveiled sometime in 2013, with sales to begin as a 2014 model year.


Spy shots: 2014 Hyundai Genesis Caught Testing for the First Time originally appeared on topspeed.com on Tuesday, 4 December 2012 14:00 EST.

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Source: http://www.topspeed.com/cars/car-news/spy-shots-2014-hyundai-genesis-caught-testing-for-the-first-time-ar139297.html

Gunther Seiffert Ayrton Senna† Bruno Senna Dorino Serafini Chico Serra