Q&A with McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton is on a roll after his excellent victory at Spa a fortnight ago. McLaren are expected to go well at Monza too and Hamilton, eager to win at the classic venue in an F1 car for the first time, is not about to disagree - even if Friday’s practice times might suggest Red Bull and Ferrari are going to push them all the way. With the MP4-25 seemingly quick with or without F-duct, Hamilton remains confident the team have plenty of available options…

Q: Lewis, how does it feel to drive on that famous Monza track this season?
Lewis Hamilton: It is so fast. It really takes a moment to adjust. As you just said, it is a very famous track. The fans love it to come here when you drive through this wonderful park and then suddenly you have one of the fastest tracks in the world before your very eyes - that is always quite an experience. It is one of the top races of the calendar and I am happy to be here.

Q: You come here on the back of your Spa victory two weeks ago. What do you think you can achieve here?
LH: Well, Spa and Monza are two amongst the four or five greatest circuits in the world - and it is one that I haven’t won so the desire to add this track to my tally is definitely there and I am working as hard as I can to win here.

Q: The two Red Bull drivers see you as the favourite to win here. Why are you so quick on these kinds of circuits?
LH: Ah, because maybe everyone else is slow! But let’s see what develops and let’s see how we do in qualifying. I’ve said this so many times before: Friday’s times give almost no indication of the actual times. It is a day of trying to get the car right.

Q: You were running the F-duct in the morning but not in the afternoon.
What works better?
LH: Actually it felt very similar. One version is quicker in the corners and one quicker on the straights so we will have to sort out what is better on high fuel and if there is one option that has more potential than the other. We have to look at the data and will decide tonight what we will do tomorrow. I think overall we are where we expected to be, even though there was a bit of a gap in the afternoon.

Q: But why is it that this year everybody seems to agree that McLaren is written all over this track?
LH: Ah, I always thought that Ferrari is written all over here… (smiles). But true, our fan base is picking up. My feeling tells me that it is something in the range of 70 to 30 percent when it comes to the attire of the fans, so red is still the prevailing colour.

Q: You have won the F1 drivers’ championship already, while Mark Webber has loads of experience. How do you rate these two different advantages?
LH: Most of the drivers on the F1 grid have at one stage of their career won a championship, so I would say that it is not much difference if it is the F1 championship, or European or British championship. When you win a championship the effort to get the title is very similar, so we have all experienced that.

Q: Would you say that this race on Sunday could effectively decide the title? Fernando Alonso indicated something in this direction…
LH: No, I don’t think that this goes for us. In reality there are still 150 points waiting to be allocated and that is only 32 points shy of what I have in the lead. So there is still everything open. It is still a long way to go and you have seen in the course of the season how things go up and down. I hope we’ve put the downs behind us and can concentrate on the ups from now on.

Q: Does being in the lead of the championship mean that you will change your approach at the six remaining races?
LH: No, why should I? You have to give your all at every moment of a race - and that’s what I will do.

Q: There have been questions asked regarding whether Sebastian Vettel is mature enough to win the title. What is you opinion?
LH: You can see without a doubt that he is extremely talented, he sits in a great car, is with a great team and I think that he has a good approach. He has clocked many pole positions so far and the difficult bit seems to turn those poles into wins. But that goes for everyone. Generally, when he’s on form he is fantastic. Sure, he had some troublesome races, but we all do once in a while and you always learn from these experiences. He is still so young and for sure he still has much to learn.

Q: It seems that he is going through the same progression that you went through back in 2007 when you made some mistakes and the same questions were being asked about you. How do you deal with people saying that you’re not mature enough to be a world champion? Does that play on your mind?
LH: I guess not. I cannot remember how I felt in 2007. I can just say that I expected to make mistakes. But hey, I was fighting for the world championship and I felt great. I would have never dreamed of being in such a situation in my first year in Formula One. I think it is completely different when it’s your first year than being here for a couple of years. Sure, you question yourself all the time and try to improve your very self as everything that you’re doing is commented on. But that is the name of the game.

Q: Would you agree with the freeing up of team orders?
LH: No, I like it just the way it is. The reason is that I would not want to be in that position. I am here to race and I have worked hard to get here. Of course you are always racing for the team but then you also want to win out of your own right - because you deserve to - and to have that denied by team orders would go against everything in my heart. So no, I would not agree.

Q: There have been rumours that in 2013 Formula One might move to turbo engines and ground effect. You are a GP2 champion, a series that used to run on ground effect. What’s your opinion on that?
LH: It is still very early stages to talk about that. I only can say that the changes will be done for the good of the sport, should they happen. I have only once driven a car with turbo engine - an old Ayrton Senna car - and that felt very good.

Source: Formula1.com

[Photos] Belgian GP - Race

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Jenson Button Q&A: Battling on after Spa's missed opportunity

Last weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix was a bittersweet affair for McLaren’s Jenson Button. Sweet because the MP4-25 was back in fine form for most of the weekend, but crushingly bitter because Button’s own hopes of a second-placed finish ended after Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel collided with him following a misjudged overtaking manoeuvre. Forced to watch team mate Lewis Hamilton clinch an outstanding victory and the standings lead as his own title hopes diminished didn’t help the Briton’s mood either. In an interview with his official website, Button reviews the Spa race and pledges to come back stronger at Monza…

Q: Let’s start with the inevitable - you’ve had several days to think about it, so what are your thoughts on the accident that took you out of the race?
Jenson Button: My thoughts haven’t really changed, to be honest. At the time, I was pretty confused by what Sebastian did. Now, I still think what he did was completely unnecessary - he didn’t need to pass me at that point, and I wasn’t making his life difficult, so his car shouldn’t have been on such a knife-edge when he hit me. What’s most frustrating is that I’ve lost out on a good handful of championship points at a time when neither Sebastian or Fernando (Alonso) were able to score. I know there are 150 points still up for grabs, but it doesn’t help to now be 35 points behind Lewis (Hamilton). On a more positive note, under the old points system, that would still only be about 15 points, so anything’s still possible. But at this point in the season, you’ve got to take every point you can - and the incident in Spa certainly didn’t help.

Q: Red Bull team principal Christian Horner claimed that you braked earlier than normal into the Bus Stop - is that right?
JB: No, absolutely not. Obviously, I’d lost the floor-plate of one of my front wing endplates - and that was affecting the car’s balance - but I didn’t brake any earlier for the Bus Stop on the lap of the crash. I’d had to crank more front wing in to help the handling, and that had made the back-end a bit more skittish, so I was just driving carefully. I knew I still had good straight-line speed, so I was concentrating on getting into the slower corners cleanly, so that I could maximise my traction at the exit and maintain the gap along the straights. But that’s just common sense when you’re racing. After the race, I actually checked the data with my race engineer, and it shows that I braked at exactly the same point on the lap before the collision. We even looked at the braking profile, and that also showed that, at the point of impact - about 1.5s after I’d started applying the brakes - I’d travelled exactly the same distance on both laps. So to suggest I’d braked earlier wouldn’t be accurate.

Q: If you’d been able to continue, the race was looking positive, wasn’t it?
JB: I was in second place. Okay, you could say it wasn’t a comfortable second because I had the slight issue with the endplate, which was slowing me down, but you look at the results and two cars that were running behind me before I retired both finished on the podium. So I think it’s realistic to say that I could have been on the podium on Sunday. And I knew I would have been strong in the closing laps of the race, too. We had a car that was working perfectly in the greasy conditions, and I think I would only have been stronger when the rain started to fall again. So it’s a missed opportunity.

Q: Nonetheless, the team’s performance at Spa must be encouraging for the future, surely?
JB: We were very pleased with our performance. We were on the pace for the whole weekend, and we had one of the fastest cars - probably the fastest car in mixed conditions, so that’s all very positive. While Spa wasn’t a personal highlight for me, I think Lewis’s win came at exactly the right time for the whole team - Hungary was probably the low point of our season, so to be able to bounce back so strongly will have given the team the assurance that we’re headed in the right direction for the rest of the championship. We know it won’t be easy, and that some circuits won’t favour our car as much as Spa, but we’re heading into the final six races in full-on battle mode. We know how to win and we want to keep winning.

Source: Formula1.com

Massa's Blog: Spa – more difficult than we expected

After the summer break, it was nice to be back “at work” racing at the fantastic Spa circuit and the weekend started in a nice way when nearly all the drivers attended a small party to celebrate my friend Rubens Barrichello’s three hundredth Grand Prix. To be honest, I don’t think I will ever match this statistic, as I reckon I will stop racing before that landmark figure. But I am pleased for him, as it is a very nice statistic, and it is a great achievement in a successful career.

Looking back a couple of days to the Belgian Grand Prix, I started sixth and finished fourth, so at a certain level, I could say that I had a good race. However, in terms of the result and in terms of the championship and the points total for Ferrari, it was not enough. Given the difficult conditions, with the weather changing several times during the race, this was a positive performance in difficult conditions. However it was not what I expected, or what the team had hoped for, given the fact that in Spa, the car was not as competitive as it had been in the two previous races in Hungary and Germany. This was probably another example of how, this year, the situation in terms of which teams are competitive, has been governed by the nature of the track. On Friday, we had looked very strong, while we were less so on Saturday and Sunday, so maybe our competitors did not show their full potential on the first day. This meant the whole weekend was more difficult than we expected. On Sunday, the changing conditions meant that just staying on the track was quite difficult and given how easy it was to make a mistake, I was pleased with my performance, even if I had a solitary race, never really being able to challenge those ahead, while I did not have much pressure from behind.

On Sunday I will be returning to the Hungaroring, for a Ferrari Racing Days event, where I will be doing some demonstration laps in a Formula 1 car, the 2008 model, which for obvious reasons definitely has some special memories for me. Today I am Maranello, where I had meetings with my engineers and also did a session on our simulator, in preparation for the next round, the team’s home Grand Prix at Monza. That will be a great event, racing in front of our tifosi, but the reality is that it will be a very important race, because after the less that satisfactory performance in Belgium, the championship is not looking so easy for us. We need to keep pushing for the last six races, trying to be back in the fight for wins or at least as many podiums as possible. For sure it won’t be easy.

Source: Ferrari.com

I made a good recovery at Spa – Mark Webber

A small mistake in his RB6's set-up cost Mark Webber the win at the Belgian Grand Prix on Sunday. But luck was on the Australian's side once again as he dug in and fought back to claim second place after slipping to seventh place. He talks us through his race...

Given my appalling start in Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix from pole position, I was very happy to finish second. At the exit of turn one I was back in seventh, so 18 points was a great haul in the circumstances.

As is so often the case at Spa-Francorchamps, the whole weekend was blighted by rain. Prior to the race, I'd done only a handful of laps in the dry, so there were still a lot of question marks regarding car set-up as we lined up on the grid. But it was the same for everyone.

As soon as I released the clutch at the start of the formation lap, I knew immediately that there was a problem. The car bogged down as I pulled away from the line, so I made some small adjustments to the settings to try to fix the situation, but it didn't work. When the lights went out, my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and cars streamed past me.

Luckily, the run to turn one is quite short at Spa and that limited the damage the others could inflict. As I've already said, I only dropped back to seventh; if the same thing were to happen at Monza in a couple of weeks time, the boxing gloves will have to come out because it's a really long run to turn one.

'My dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and cars streamed past me'

I still had to knuckle down and work my way back into contention, which was pretty enjoyable. The car was handling well and I had a good fight with Adrian Sutil on the run-up to Les Combes on the opening lap before pulling a nice move around the outside of Felipe Massa at Rivage for fifth. Then the first safety car came out after Rubens Barrichello and Fernando Alonso collided.

We all lost tyre temperature behind the safety car and that made it pretty difficult when the race went green two laps later because the car felt pretty loose.

I didn't gain any places at the restart and a small group of us were then held up by Jenson Button, which allowed Lewis Hamilton to get away.

Events came to a head on lap 17 when my team-mate Sebastian Vettel and Button collided. Button retired on the spot and Seb dropped to the back of the field, which promoted me to third place behind Hamilton and Robert Kubica. I tried to jump Robert in the pitlane – and the Red Bull Racing mechanics did a great job to turn me around in 3.6sec when I pitted on lap 22 – but it wasn't enough and I had to wait until the second round of pitstops to gain the position.

All the leaders pitted together for intermediate tyres when it started to rain three-quarters of the way through the race. The pitlane was very slippery and Kubica overshot his pitbox, which gave me my chance: the Red Bull mechanics did a fantastic job once again and second place was in the bag.

The race had a twist in the tail, however, when Alonso crashed on lap 37 and brought out another safety car.

At the restart, I was right with Hamilton, but I didn't have the legs to pass him up the hill to Les Combes – and I wasn't about to risk anything stupid because second position was a great result given the weather conditions and my messy start.

Source: Red Bull

[Video] Sebastian apologizes for detroying Jenson's race

Source: YouTube @TheGPUpdate

Interview with Lewis Hamilton after Belgian GP 2010

Source: keexx2

Schumi: Reasonably happy with Spa result

Michael Schumacher says 'seven' seems to be his number at Spa as he achieved a P7 on his debut in 1991 and a P7 on his return on Sunday

The Spa-Francorchamps circuit has many fond memories for Schumacher, starting with the very beginning on his Formula One career in 1991 when he shocked the world by qualifying in seventh place in his debut grand prix with Jordan.

Now, almost two decades later, it was another P7 for Schumacher in Belgium, although this time in a race, as the German came from 21st place on the grid to finish in the points on Sunday afternoon.

"I am reasonably happy with today's race, especially for the team," said the seven-time World Champion.

"Coming where Nico (Rosberg) and I started, I think we can all be pleased with the result, sixth and seventh places from 14th and 21st on the grid is not too bad, and it is important points for the Constructors' Championship.

"For some reason, the number seven is somehow connected with me in Spa, so there is a further special feeling here."

But, he concedes that "without the weather being even crazier, we could not have achieved more today in my view."

However, Schumacher's first race at Spa since coming back from retirement wasn't without incident, although most of those were between himself and his team-mate Rosberg.

"I 'met' Nico twice out on the track today," he said. "The first time, I had the better go in a nice racing duel and the second time was right after the re-start where I had to lift a little up into Eau Rouge due to the car in front which Nico used to fly past me.

"All in all, Spa turned out to be nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped for."

Source: Planet-F1

[Photos] Saturday in Belgium...

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