F1 News
Date: 13/April/2012
Its protest against the Mercedes rear wing rejected, Lotus F1 technical director James Allison said the British-based squad will ‘die like a man’ over the issue - and promptly look at the possibilities created by the ruling.
Discontent among some teams over the Mercedes F-duct style ‘system’ has been ongoing since before the start of the new season. Lotus finally made such opposition official on the eve of this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.
The Mercedes system uses movement of the DRS overtaking device in the rear wing to expose a small duct, which - when open to the airflow - pipes high pressure air to crucial parts of the front wing, increasing the top speed boost.
When DRS is not engaged the duct is covered and therefore inert. The main controversy has been over whether the system is a ‘driver operated aerodynamic device’.
The FIA dismissed the protest, with part of a lengthy explanation stating: “The Mercedes design is not activated by driver movement. It is a consequence of a change of position of the driver adjustable bodywork”.
The judgement also backed up earlier ‘clarification’ provided by the FIA to Mercedes, regarding the legality of the system.
Allison - whose design team were in the process of developing an innovative ‘reactive ride height’ system, only for it to be banned by the FIA before the start of the season - explained:
“It’s been no secret that our team has had some disagreements with what we saw Mercedes to be running. We thought there were strong arguments against such a thing. That’s been rumbling along gently in the background, as everyone knows.
“We made what we hoped were strong arguments both to Mercedes and to the FIA [before filing a protest] but didn’t prevail and so with some regret we decided it was worth bringing it before the stewards to settle the matter one way or the other.”
Asked for how Lotus will react to the FIA ruling, Allison replied: “Just die like a man! Get on with looking at what possibilities are open, having accepted that this is a perfectly OK system to put on the car.”
The difficulty rivals teams face is that they cannot simply ‘bolt on’ their own version of the Mercedes design due to the amount of modifications needed.
Designs chiefs from Ferrari and McLaren admitted they will already considering if they could and should incorporate such a system.
“We’ve been looking at it for a while,” said Fry. “We know what it’s worth in terms of lap time and now we need to weigh it up in terms of cost-performance and the effort needed. We also need to look at what is the ultimate potential of the device.”
McLaren’s Paddy Lowe agreed, adding that the device is only of real benefit during qualifying (when DRS use is unrestricted). In race situations, DRS can only be used at certain predetermined zone(s), and if a car is within one-second of the vehicle in front.
“In these days of really very limited capacity - whether that’s people or time in wind tunnels - to develop aerodynamics, you do have to carefully select where you put your effort to make the most profit in performance,” he said.
“This will fall into that camp. We have to decide how much we can get from it, how it ranks compared to other areas we may work on. It does have the immediate downside that it really is only a qualifying benefit as far as we can see, so immediately it has to earn quite a lot to make that worthwhile.”
Despite that warning, Mercedes driver Michael Schumacher was fastest in Friday practice for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Cracks appear in Rossi, Ducati relationship
MotoGP News
Date: 11/April/2012
Unless there is a sudden turnaround in fortunes, the dream Valentino Rossi-Ducati partnership could be heading for a messy divorce.
Having endured a humbling debut 2011 season at Ducati with remarkable humour, Rossi’s patience snapped after a miserable weekend on the ‘all new’ 2012 bike at the opening round in Qatar.
The first complete Ducati to be built with input from Rossi and his mechanics, and featuring the same kind of aluminium frame used on the Japanese bikes, hopes were high that the seven-time MotoGP champion would be back to winning ways in 2012.
Instead, Rossi performed even worse than last year at Losail, when he rode from ninth on the grid to seventh.
Twelfth and last of the manufacturer bikes in 2012 qualifying, Rossi finished just tenth in the race. The stopwatch was equally harsh - 16 seconds from victory last season, ballooning to 34 seconds.
Afterwards, a dejected Rossi told the Italian media:
"I'm not able to ride the bike as I like and I'm faster on old tyres than on new. I have no confidence, and I can't even get ahead of [team-mate] Hayden, who gave everything to finish 28 seconds behind the leader."
And then came the words that will have been most painful for Ducati.
"The problems with the bike haven't changed, and neither have my requests,” stated Rossi. “It's unrideable, and it doesn't make much difference what track we are on.”
Ducati is yet to react to Rossi’s stinging criticism.
Rossi, a winner of 79 premier-class grand prix races, finished seventh in the 2011 championship with just a single podium. The Doctor will be racing a Ferrari sportscar at Monza in Italy this weekend.
Date: 11/April/2012
Unless there is a sudden turnaround in fortunes, the dream Valentino Rossi-Ducati partnership could be heading for a messy divorce.
Having endured a humbling debut 2011 season at Ducati with remarkable humour, Rossi’s patience snapped after a miserable weekend on the ‘all new’ 2012 bike at the opening round in Qatar.
The first complete Ducati to be built with input from Rossi and his mechanics, and featuring the same kind of aluminium frame used on the Japanese bikes, hopes were high that the seven-time MotoGP champion would be back to winning ways in 2012.
Instead, Rossi performed even worse than last year at Losail, when he rode from ninth on the grid to seventh.
Twelfth and last of the manufacturer bikes in 2012 qualifying, Rossi finished just tenth in the race. The stopwatch was equally harsh - 16 seconds from victory last season, ballooning to 34 seconds.
Afterwards, a dejected Rossi told the Italian media:
"I'm not able to ride the bike as I like and I'm faster on old tyres than on new. I have no confidence, and I can't even get ahead of [team-mate] Hayden, who gave everything to finish 28 seconds behind the leader."
And then came the words that will have been most painful for Ducati.
"The problems with the bike haven't changed, and neither have my requests,” stated Rossi. “It's unrideable, and it doesn't make much difference what track we are on.”
Ducati is yet to react to Rossi’s stinging criticism.
Rossi, a winner of 79 premier-class grand prix races, finished seventh in the 2011 championship with just a single podium. The Doctor will be racing a Ferrari sportscar at Monza in Italy this weekend.
Edwards: We’re shovelling s**t uphill at times
MotoGP News
Date: 10/April/2012
Former double World Superbike champion Colin Edwards begins his tenth expletive ridden season of MotoGP with a brand new challenge at Qatar this weekend.
“I don’t know where the time had gone!” smiled Edwards. “It’s been great though, especially seeing the likes of Lorenzo and Casey [Stoner] grow up here in the paddock. I remember playing on the PlayStation with Casey when he was a kid.”
Texan Edwards is the biggest name to sign up for MotoGP’s new ‘Claiming Rule Team’ class for 2012, which will see budget Superbike-powered machines allowed onto the premier-class grid alongside the official manufacturer bikes.
“Does anyone know the Claiming Rules? I’m still trying to figure that out,” he joked, referring to the complicated and strangely named privateer class which will form nine of the 21 MotoGP entries this season.
Edwards will be racing a BMW-powered Suter chassis, run by Forward Racing, which is stepping up from the intermediate Moto2 World Championship.
The switch from an exotic Yamaha prototype to a small-scale project, still very rough around the edges, has been tough at times. Indeed, Edwards is still facing ’fundamental’ issues such as problems with the location of the engine mounting points on the S1000RR road-bike engine.
“In Texas we’d say it’s been like shovelling s**t uphill some times,” said Edwards. “That’s what it felt like in testing. We have fundamental issues that we need to sort.
“We’ll also be showing up to each race this year with no gearing, no suspension settings, no data. Nothing. We’ll be starting from scratch at every round. But we’ve just got to go step-by-step.”
Despite his often coarse comments, fan favourite Edwards - who has twelve MotoGP podiums to his name - is highly regarded for his development skills and admits he was the ideal candidate to lead the CRT revolution.
“If there’s one guy in this paddock who had to do it was me, with the experience and knowledge riding the Aprilia, Honda and Yamaha,” said the 38-year-old. “It’s going to be a long project, but if they do decide to make MotoGP all-CRT at some point in the future it will make things interesting.”
Edwards will start his first race as a CRT rider at Qatar on Sunday evening. It will also be his first grand prix since being injured in the tragic accident that claimed the life of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang last October.
Date: 10/April/2012
Former double World Superbike champion Colin Edwards begins his tenth expletive ridden season of MotoGP with a brand new challenge at Qatar this weekend.
“I don’t know where the time had gone!” smiled Edwards. “It’s been great though, especially seeing the likes of Lorenzo and Casey [Stoner] grow up here in the paddock. I remember playing on the PlayStation with Casey when he was a kid.”
Texan Edwards is the biggest name to sign up for MotoGP’s new ‘Claiming Rule Team’ class for 2012, which will see budget Superbike-powered machines allowed onto the premier-class grid alongside the official manufacturer bikes.
“Does anyone know the Claiming Rules? I’m still trying to figure that out,” he joked, referring to the complicated and strangely named privateer class which will form nine of the 21 MotoGP entries this season.
Edwards will be racing a BMW-powered Suter chassis, run by Forward Racing, which is stepping up from the intermediate Moto2 World Championship.
The switch from an exotic Yamaha prototype to a small-scale project, still very rough around the edges, has been tough at times. Indeed, Edwards is still facing ’fundamental’ issues such as problems with the location of the engine mounting points on the S1000RR road-bike engine.
“In Texas we’d say it’s been like shovelling s**t uphill some times,” said Edwards. “That’s what it felt like in testing. We have fundamental issues that we need to sort.
“We’ll also be showing up to each race this year with no gearing, no suspension settings, no data. Nothing. We’ll be starting from scratch at every round. But we’ve just got to go step-by-step.”
Despite his often coarse comments, fan favourite Edwards - who has twelve MotoGP podiums to his name - is highly regarded for his development skills and admits he was the ideal candidate to lead the CRT revolution.
“If there’s one guy in this paddock who had to do it was me, with the experience and knowledge riding the Aprilia, Honda and Yamaha,” said the 38-year-old. “It’s going to be a long project, but if they do decide to make MotoGP all-CRT at some point in the future it will make things interesting.”
Edwards will start his first race as a CRT rider at Qatar on Sunday evening. It will also be his first grand prix since being injured in the tragic accident that claimed the life of Marco Simoncelli at Sepang last October.
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