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Formula 1
COOPER: Glass Half Full For Horner, Red Bull
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner is upbeat despite Sebastian Vettel’s early retirement from the European GP...
Sebastian Vettel (Left) talks with team boss Christian Horner (Right) as he prepares to get out on the track. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo could be forgiven for basking in the moment when he met his team for a regular Maranello post race debrief on Wednesday.
Montezemolo was in Valencia for qualifying, and he made his presence felt in the garage, making sure that the TV camera was watching when he gave Fernando Alonso what appeared to be a papal blessing as he sat in the car. Shortly afterward, there was turmoil in the camp as Fernando failed to make it out of Q2, albeit by the slenderest of margins. For once the boss looked like he wished the cameras were not around.
It’s well known that Montezemolo’s presence usually leads to jitters in the Ferrari camp, which is why we rarely see him, especially when there’s a title in the balance and the pressure is on. He was noticeable by his absence on Sunday when Alonso and the team turned it around with an amazing win.
Montezemolo congratulated all concerned on Wednesday, but wisely he also sounded a note of caution.
“I am worried and all of us should be,” he said. “Yes, I am worried, because I expect three very tough races at Silverstone, Hockenheim and Budapest, and because we have seen that Red Bull is very strong, having had four tenths in hand over everyone in qualifying and in the race it was flying away, at least until the safety car. If we want to achieve our goals then we must make a step forward.”
He is right to be worried, and so should everyone else with any ideas about winning races, let alone the World Championship, this year. After a shaky start to the season, Red Bull Racing is firmly back on track, and while Sebastian Vettel suffered a crushing retirement in Valencia on Sunday, the dark blue cars have looked ominously fast lately.
Lest we forget, three races ago in Monaco, Mark Webber qualified on pole and won the race, while Vettel had something of a difficult weekend.
Then in Montreal, Vettel took pole by 0.303s, and led until he ran out of tire in the closing laps.
In Valencia, the team brought a massive new upgrade package which seemed to work immediately. On a weekend when thousandths counted, Seb ultimately took pole by 0.324s. He built up a 20-second lead in the race, lost it to a safety car, and then suffered a broken alternator – a part supplied to the team as part of the Renault engine package. Meanwhile, from 19th on the grid, Mark Webber fought his way through to fourth by the flag.
No one expects the season to now turn into a repeat of 2010 or 2011, but clearly Red Bull and Vettel have the speed at the moment. They might not get the tire strategy right every time from now on in, but it certainly helps to start at the front more often than not.
“It was frustrating because Sebastian was in fantastic form,” said team principal Christian Horner as he analyzed the European GP. “He pulled out a huge lead prior to the safety car. He had a pit stop in hand, and he was covering the pace of (Romain) Grosjean behind, who had managed to get past (Lewis) Hamilton, and really had the race completely under control.
“During the safety car period, it became obvious that we had a problem that we had to manage, but soon after the restart, unfortunately an alternator [failure] caused Sebastian to retire. It was enormously frustrating, after being in such a strong and commanding position.
“You immediately start to see voltage dropping, because obviously the battery isn’t being replenished. We could see it, Sebastian could see it on his dashboard. The comfort that we must take out of Seb’s performance is that he was in a class of his own. He was in complete control, he had tremendous pace, and we leave Valencia knowing we have a quick car. Mark obviously demonstrated that with his recovery from 19th on the grid to fourth on the road.”
Vettel’s opening stint was awesome. He was four seconds ahead of Hamilton after just two laps, and after main threat Grosjean finally got by the McLaren, Vettel continued to pull away.
Even Horner admits he was surprised by that speed: “In reality, yes. We had a strategy going into the race, we had a target lap that we wanted to get to, and Sebastian knew he needed to look after his tires to make that. And he made it comfortably, and even exceeded it.
“Even when Grosjean got into clear air, he was still dropping back; it looked to be about half a second a lap between the cars at that stage. So Sebastian had built up over a 20 second lead, which was more than a pit stop, prior to the safety car coming out. So it was frustrating to see a race like that slip away when you’ve got yourself into such a great position.”
Vettel’s initial displeasure was obvious. He had calmed down by the time he got back to the pits, but suggestions from both the driver and Red Bull’s Helmut Marko that the safety car was put out to rein him in were frankly silly. The track was littered with debris from the Toro Rosso of Marko’s protégé Jean-Eric Vergne, including broken chunks of wheel.
Horner said Vettel eventually saw the positives.
“Obviously, he gets out of the car and he’s just retired from a commanding lead in a Grand Prix,” Horner said. “But he waved to the crowd on the way back, he came over to the pit wall, he just wanted to re-assure everybody that we had a quick car.
“I think he took solace in his performance. He’d done everything right, the car was running very quickly. It’s one of those things. It’s a long championship. Fernando (Alonso) has done a tremendous job, he’s scored in every single race, but statistics say that he’s going to have one bad weekend in 20.
“It will hopefully balance itself out a bit over the course of a season. For sure, it was disappointing to retire from a lead like that. Others had difficult days, as well; obviously Hamilton didn’t finish.”
Meanwhile, remarkably Webber is now second in the championship, showing just how important consistency is. The Aussie’s qualifying session was ruined by brake problems in FP3 followed by hydraulic issues and thus no DRS in the afternoon, and that double whammy was worrisome for the team. But he had plenty of new tires left for the race, and he made the most of them.
“We effectively ran Mark’s race in reverse, so we started on the hard,” Horner said. “He had two new sets of option tires available to him. We wanted to make use of those in the back end of the race. He was unlucky not to get (Michael) Schumacher at the stop, and then he really made use of those tires as others ran into trouble. Given a few more laps, we were looking like a Montreal situation.”
Horner is generally a glass half full guy, and McLaren’s problems created one interesting stat you might have missed.
“We’ve extended out lead in the constructors’ championship by a further eight points,” he said. “We leave Valencia with a positive weekend on the while, despite not achieving the maximum points that we deserved.”
So now we move on to Silverstone, a track with wide open spaces which will be sure to provide a spectacular race, wet or dry. And there’s a good chance that it will indeed be wet.
“I think the car is pretty strong in most conditions now, so we’ll just keep pushing and keep trying to get performance to the car,” said Horner. “And hopefully we can be strong in Silverstone. Fernando was tremendously quick there last year, certainly in the second half of the race, so it will be an interesting weekend. We’re not even halfway through the championship yet, but it feels like we’ve done an awful lot of racing up to this point.
“We see form fluctuate from circuit to circuit, but we’ve had three poles in the last three races. That’s encouraging. Tire degradation looked very low, we were able to match that of our nearest rivals. On that side, it’s been positive.
“Obviously, it’s very disappointing to have a DNF, I think probably the first mechanical retirement we’ve had since Korea 2010. So that’s disappointing, but together with Renault I’m sure we’ll learn from it, and hopefully we won’t see a repeat.”
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
Montezemolo was in Valencia for qualifying, and he made his presence felt in the garage, making sure that the TV camera was watching when he gave Fernando Alonso what appeared to be a papal blessing as he sat in the car. Shortly afterward, there was turmoil in the camp as Fernando failed to make it out of Q2, albeit by the slenderest of margins. For once the boss looked like he wished the cameras were not around.
It’s well known that Montezemolo’s presence usually leads to jitters in the Ferrari camp, which is why we rarely see him, especially when there’s a title in the balance and the pressure is on. He was noticeable by his absence on Sunday when Alonso and the team turned it around with an amazing win.
Montezemolo congratulated all concerned on Wednesday, but wisely he also sounded a note of caution.
“I am worried and all of us should be,” he said. “Yes, I am worried, because I expect three very tough races at Silverstone, Hockenheim and Budapest, and because we have seen that Red Bull is very strong, having had four tenths in hand over everyone in qualifying and in the race it was flying away, at least until the safety car. If we want to achieve our goals then we must make a step forward.”
He is right to be worried, and so should everyone else with any ideas about winning races, let alone the World Championship, this year. After a shaky start to the season, Red Bull Racing is firmly back on track, and while Sebastian Vettel suffered a crushing retirement in Valencia on Sunday, the dark blue cars have looked ominously fast lately.
Lest we forget, three races ago in Monaco, Mark Webber qualified on pole and won the race, while Vettel had something of a difficult weekend.
Then in Montreal, Vettel took pole by 0.303s, and led until he ran out of tire in the closing laps.
In Valencia, the team brought a massive new upgrade package which seemed to work immediately. On a weekend when thousandths counted, Seb ultimately took pole by 0.324s. He built up a 20-second lead in the race, lost it to a safety car, and then suffered a broken alternator – a part supplied to the team as part of the Renault engine package. Meanwhile, from 19th on the grid, Mark Webber fought his way through to fourth by the flag.
No one expects the season to now turn into a repeat of 2010 or 2011, but clearly Red Bull and Vettel have the speed at the moment. They might not get the tire strategy right every time from now on in, but it certainly helps to start at the front more often than not.
“It was frustrating because Sebastian was in fantastic form,” said team principal Christian Horner as he analyzed the European GP. “He pulled out a huge lead prior to the safety car. He had a pit stop in hand, and he was covering the pace of (Romain) Grosjean behind, who had managed to get past (Lewis) Hamilton, and really had the race completely under control.
“During the safety car period, it became obvious that we had a problem that we had to manage, but soon after the restart, unfortunately an alternator [failure] caused Sebastian to retire. It was enormously frustrating, after being in such a strong and commanding position.
“You immediately start to see voltage dropping, because obviously the battery isn’t being replenished. We could see it, Sebastian could see it on his dashboard. The comfort that we must take out of Seb’s performance is that he was in a class of his own. He was in complete control, he had tremendous pace, and we leave Valencia knowing we have a quick car. Mark obviously demonstrated that with his recovery from 19th on the grid to fourth on the road.”
Vettel’s opening stint was awesome. He was four seconds ahead of Hamilton after just two laps, and after main threat Grosjean finally got by the McLaren, Vettel continued to pull away.
Even Horner admits he was surprised by that speed: “In reality, yes. We had a strategy going into the race, we had a target lap that we wanted to get to, and Sebastian knew he needed to look after his tires to make that. And he made it comfortably, and even exceeded it.
“Even when Grosjean got into clear air, he was still dropping back; it looked to be about half a second a lap between the cars at that stage. So Sebastian had built up over a 20 second lead, which was more than a pit stop, prior to the safety car coming out. So it was frustrating to see a race like that slip away when you’ve got yourself into such a great position.”
Vettel’s initial displeasure was obvious. He had calmed down by the time he got back to the pits, but suggestions from both the driver and Red Bull’s Helmut Marko that the safety car was put out to rein him in were frankly silly. The track was littered with debris from the Toro Rosso of Marko’s protégé Jean-Eric Vergne, including broken chunks of wheel.
Horner said Vettel eventually saw the positives.
“Obviously, he gets out of the car and he’s just retired from a commanding lead in a Grand Prix,” Horner said. “But he waved to the crowd on the way back, he came over to the pit wall, he just wanted to re-assure everybody that we had a quick car.
“I think he took solace in his performance. He’d done everything right, the car was running very quickly. It’s one of those things. It’s a long championship. Fernando (Alonso) has done a tremendous job, he’s scored in every single race, but statistics say that he’s going to have one bad weekend in 20.
“It will hopefully balance itself out a bit over the course of a season. For sure, it was disappointing to retire from a lead like that. Others had difficult days, as well; obviously Hamilton didn’t finish.”
Meanwhile, remarkably Webber is now second in the championship, showing just how important consistency is. The Aussie’s qualifying session was ruined by brake problems in FP3 followed by hydraulic issues and thus no DRS in the afternoon, and that double whammy was worrisome for the team. But he had plenty of new tires left for the race, and he made the most of them.
“We effectively ran Mark’s race in reverse, so we started on the hard,” Horner said. “He had two new sets of option tires available to him. We wanted to make use of those in the back end of the race. He was unlucky not to get (Michael) Schumacher at the stop, and then he really made use of those tires as others ran into trouble. Given a few more laps, we were looking like a Montreal situation.”
Horner is generally a glass half full guy, and McLaren’s problems created one interesting stat you might have missed.
“We’ve extended out lead in the constructors’ championship by a further eight points,” he said. “We leave Valencia with a positive weekend on the while, despite not achieving the maximum points that we deserved.”
So now we move on to Silverstone, a track with wide open spaces which will be sure to provide a spectacular race, wet or dry. And there’s a good chance that it will indeed be wet.
“I think the car is pretty strong in most conditions now, so we’ll just keep pushing and keep trying to get performance to the car,” said Horner. “And hopefully we can be strong in Silverstone. Fernando was tremendously quick there last year, certainly in the second half of the race, so it will be an interesting weekend. We’re not even halfway through the championship yet, but it feels like we’ve done an awful lot of racing up to this point.
“We see form fluctuate from circuit to circuit, but we’ve had three poles in the last three races. That’s encouraging. Tire degradation looked very low, we were able to match that of our nearest rivals. On that side, it’s been positive.
“Obviously, it’s very disappointing to have a DNF, I think probably the first mechanical retirement we’ve had since Korea 2010. So that’s disappointing, but together with Renault I’m sure we’ll learn from it, and hopefully we won’t see a repeat.”
Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.
The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEED.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or SPEED
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