F1 News
Date: 15/March/2012
Out of the limelight throughout winter testing, 2012 Formula One favourites Red Bull and McLaren continued to remain poker faced on the eve of this weekend’s Australian season opener.
Speaking on Thursday afternoon in Melbourne’s Albert Park circuit, Red Bull’s reigning champion Sebastian Vettel - chasing a third straight title - was first to plead for patience as the media tried to gauge who will set the pace.
The German said: “It was difficult to read testing one hundred per cent. It’s important to have a good feeling in the car. We were quite happy with that, but it’s unknown at this stage what is going to happen. It’s good to finally be here and only a couple of days before we really find out.”
But Vettel added that it may take several races for the full picture to emerge.
He explained: “This track [a temporary racetrack] is very different to a ‘normal’ track, such as Barcelona, where we were testing a couple of weeks ago. So, tomorrow [in practice] we will not know much more. You don’t know about fuel levels etc. Really, we have to wait until Saturday and then it’s the first couple of races that will show you a trend. Sooner than that is really not possible.”
Team-mate and local star Mark Webber felt a ‘good snapshot’ will be possible after the first two rounds.
The Australian said: “We had a pretty good winter so we need to see how it’s going to unravel this weekend and then Malaysia is just around the corner. So we have two big races where we’re going to get a really good snapshot of the performances of the cars.
“We feel like we’ve done pretty well but we have McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes - lots of good guys doing well. So it’s going to be very exciting and difficult to see who’s going to do the business.
“I think we’re all just looking forward to getting our helmets on and getting on with it. We’ve been talking about it for nine weeks now, about who’s doing what and we’re just sick of talking about it and want to get out there.”
2011 championship runner-up Jenson Button is hoping that he and the McLaren team can build on a better-than-usual winter.
The Englishman said: “The last couple of years have been a little bit tricky for us over the winter, but this winter everything seems to have gone to plan. It’s difficult to know where we stand, as everyone has said, but I’m happy with what we’ve done.”
One of the biggest stories heading into the new F1 season is the return of former champion Kimi Raikkonen, who forms part of an all-new driver line-up with Romain Grosjean at the Lotus team (previously Renault).
The black-and-gold Lotus has set promising winter lap times, including being fastest of all with Raikkonen in the third and final test, despite being missing one outing due to emergency chassis modifications.
Since leaving Ferrari at the end of 2009, the enigmatic Raikkonen spent time in the WRC before committing to a 2012 grand prix return. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Finn claimed he had rarely watched F1 during his sabbatical.
Raikkonen said: “I had other things to do than watch the races. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like the sport. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t be here. I always liked the sport and the racing but like I said, I was busy doing other stuff.
“I watched some races when I was home and it was on TV, but I didn’t try to go to the TV and watch it somewhere, like it was something I had to do. I’m happy to be back, like I said, otherwise I wouldn’t have come back.”
The main visual difference for the 2012 season will be the ‘ugly’ stepped-nose design created by the majority of teams to meet the latest regulations - although notably not McLaren. “Ours looks great,” smiled Button.
“Yeah, the noses look ugly for sure,” commented Webber. “That’s disappointing. Adrian [Newey)] always makes beautiful cars. I still think ours looks better than the McLaren, but the McLaren looks nice too and we’ll see which one gets the most champagne.
“It’s an ugly regulation but that’s the way most of the teams have gone.”
Free practice one and two for the Australian Grand Prix, the first of 20 rounds, will be held at Albert Park on Friday.
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