This enough effort for you Carlos?
VILLENEUVE CONFIRMS WICKENS, MONTEIRO FOR COLONI?By Andrew Van de BurgtJacques Villeneuve has announced that Robert Wickens will be one of its drivers this season. The Canadian brings major backing from Canadian utilities company Hydro-Québec, which has been supporting the young Canadian's successful career. The company is a government owned equity, and the funds that Wickens bring are rumoured to be somewhere in the region of $8 Million a year. The team launched the Villeneuve JVD-3 yesterday, which has been designed by Pascal Vasselon, who has returned to the team after leaving in 2012 for sports cars. Rumours are that Villeneuve is considering a switch to Mugen-Honda engines for the upcoming season. The JVD-3 has been designed with the Zytek GP Z-3 3.0 V10 in mind, but a deal can still be done. All that needs to be done is to redesign the rear end of the car to fit the engine. Villeneuve can afford to negotiate, as the Zytek engines are free, and should a deal with Mugen fail, the Zytek units will be there as a backup. "We're considering using Mugen units, that's all I can say at the moment," commented Villeneuve at the car launch.
Meanwhile, Esteban Gutiérrez and Tiago Monteiro are fighting it out for the second seat at Scuderia Coloni. While Monteiro might not be an obvious choice from a racing point of view, having last raced in open wheelers in 2006 for the MidlandF1 Team. Monteiro now races in the World Touring Car Championship, but the Portuguese has plenty of sponsors backing him. Gutiérrez has been in GP since its inaugural season, and has been with the team from the very beginning, but he seems to have caused some friction by calling the team "not good enough". Whether or not that's enough to convince Paolo Coloni to give the Mexican the sack is unknown, but he wouldn't mind some cash, though he'd probably have to sacrifice some talent.
Monteiro was the name on everyone's lips as this has now become another battle of the FIA and the RDA. Should Coloni sign Monteiro, it would mean alot not only for Coloni in financial terms, but for the RDA in publicity terms. The spectators at Algarve Portimao will finally have someone to cheer on, not to mention the RDA 'stealing' some more FIA treasure. But Coloni engineers will also be arguing that it would be wiser for Coloni to find a driver with experience. While Monteiro has indeed been in motorsport for some time now, Gutiérrez is well known amongst the team, and so would have no problem in the short term. However, technical director Jörg Zander has complained that Gutiérrez is, "a man who knows what the problem is, but wont say what it is." In other words, the Mexican's feedback is terrible, and Coloni might want to take the risk and hire Monteiro. We understand that Tiago has been talking with his current employers SEAT. If he stays at SEAT he will continue to earn around $4 Million a year, but should he move to Coloni, we'd expect that amount to rise to $6 Million a year. Bare in mind that 25% of that will be payed by the RDA.
One curious rumor we heard recently was that Takuma Sato has not actually signed his Mugen-Honda contract, although a deal has been announced by the team, and that Coloni may be trying to lure Takuma to their team. This would make little sense as Coloni would have to pay 75% of the $15 Million that Sato earns.
TESTS AT MAGNY-COURS AND SILVERSTONEThere were two Grand Prix tests last week with iSport and ART in action at Magny-Cours and Epsilon Euskadi, Chip Ganassi and Mugen-Honda running at Silverstone. iSport went to Magny-Cours with two of the new IS-2013 chassis and so Valtteri Bottas and Sebastian Buemi were able to work side by side in the new cars for the two-day test. Bottas ended up fastest but completed only 50 laps because of bad weather on the second day. He set a best lap of 1:13.442 on the first day of the test. Buemi did 70 laps to record a best of 1:13.855. ART stayed on for an extra day but the weather was bad on Friday. Grosjean did the first two days of the test in the new ART 03 and completed a promising 100 laps with a best of 1:13.610 before handing over to Giedo van der Garde on the final day. He did 78 laps of wet weather running and set a best lap of 1:22.012. The team also tested Robin Frijns all three days in the old ART 02 and completed 92 laps with a best of 1:15.421.
There was quite a bit of politics prior to the Silverstone test. RDA rules state that GP cars are not allowed to race on F1 tracks. Epsilon, Chip and Mugen argued that they weren't racing, but rather, testing. Eventually, the RDA allowed the test to go ahead, but Niki Lauda is looking at changing the rules a bit. At Silverstone, Epsilon Euskadi, Chip Ganassi and Mugen-Honda were testing with Dario Franchitti kicking off the action with three laps on the circuit. The following day, his teammate Scott Dixon joined him on track. Euskadi was also in action with two EE13 chassis and by the end of the two days of running Andy Soucek was third fastest, having set a best lap of 1:18.851 after 95 laps. Jolyon Palmer ran just the first of the two days, missing the second because his car needed a gearbox changed. The Brit's best lap was 1:19.544. Franchitti emerged the faster of the two Chip Ganassi drivers. He completed around 80 laps with a best time of 1:18.444 while Dixon did 50 laps in the new car to record a best of 1:18.810. Mugen-Honda ran Loic Duval on the first day of the test and Takuma Sato on the second. The French driver completed 45 laps with a best lap of 1:19.627 while the Japanese did only 20 laps with a best of 1:20.335.
THE SEASON AHEAD- 2013What can we expect this year in Grand Prix? Well, that is not an easy thing to predict. You can try to analyze winter testing times but this is a dangerous course of action. As Grand Prix becomes more and more of a media circus, and teams increasingly adopt the belief that any publicity is good publicity, the times set in testing prove nothing. Running cars underweight is illegal, but running a car extremely light on fuel is not, and fast lap times will always make a big splash in newspapers and other media. At the same time, other teams deliberately do not set fast laps in testing, hoping to lull the opposition into a false sense of security. This means that we will not really know what to expect until after the race at Brands Hatch. One thing that can be predicted, however, is that the racing is going to be closer this year. Lap times are expected to differ by 2 seconds, and Zytek have announced that its new V10 will be closer in power to the works engines of Peugeot, Renault, Mugen-Honda, Ford and Porsche. No team will have a works Zytek engine this season, after iSport decided to ditch its partner in favour of Renault, who became available after bailing out of Formula 1.
Ask the engineers what is most important to have a fast car in Grand Prix and they will say: engine, aerodynamics and driver. The really smart ones will say that, mechanical grip is going to be more important than brute horsepower, because horsepower is no good if you cannot transfer it to the road. This explains why there has been such intensive work on differentials and close-to-the-limit electronic systems in recent months. But the most important element in GP remains a very basic one. Pure horsepower. You can do well if you have it but you will not necessarily win. If you don't have it, you are not going to win. And so one must expect to see ART and iSport up at the front, once again. Expect Zytek to be much closer to the Peugeot engines, and, while saying that, the Renault ones. Porsche have been quite secretive about their GP program so far, with all of their testing being done privately at Lausitz.
ART had some early delays in the ART 03 development program but these have been overcome. The car has been tested considerably more than all the other new cars. Almost all of that testing has been done by Giedo van der Garde. The car should be reliable and if it is within half a second of pole position at a race, one must expect that van der Garde will win the race. He makes the difference and everyone in GP knows it, even if they don't want to admit it. It will be interesting to see what happens if the ART is not as competitive as it should be. If he doesn't win the championship this season, I can see him giving up ART at the end of the year and going to iSport, or, perhaps even Chip Ganassi. ART don't have a number one driver, or at least that's what they say. While upgrades were given at the same time last season, its worth noting that most attention was given to the Dutchman.
The number one status at iSport is another matter. Sebastian Buemi showed some moments of very real brilliance last year, but how he manages without his mentor Adam Carroll, is another factor altogether. Buemi will need to perform this season, but being outpaced by Valtteri Bottas during the test sessions isn't such a smart idea. If the Swiss doesn't buck up soon, iSport might just back the Finnish rookie wholeheartedly, and with Buemi's contract expiring at the end of the season, he might just be replaced by a certain van der Garde person.
It will be interesting to see how things develop along these lines at Mugen-Honda. Takuma Sato is supposed to be the number one driver but Loic Duval may be the more naturally talented of the two, and Taku will have to work to keep him down. Both men are tougher than they used to be, so it could be an interesting showdown. Certainly the MH team finds itself in an interesting situation. The potential is clearly there for the team to win races but when one looks realistically at the situation, there is not much logic in Mugen pushing themselves too hard this year.
At Chip Ganassi, Dario Franchitti is going to have to work hard to stay ahead of Scott Dixon. Dixon is eager to prove himself to Chip, and his performances during the second half of 2012 show that he probably has much more than that. One could say that he tried too hard early on, but eventually, he found the rhythm, culminating in a win in Adelaide, though it must be pointed out that nobody had actually raced on the track before. Franchitti is a good steady, confident, fast driver, and he has already made it clear that he wants the championship. Scott may be quicker in qualifying but there are not many to match Franchitti when it comes to racing.
At Epsilon Euskadi, Andy Soucek and Jolyon Palmer are ready for some success. They will become itchy and frustrated if the results are not better this year, or at least Soucek, who has been frustrated time after time with poor machinery. The Spaniard had actually gone on to attribute his feats in 2012 to the Porsche engine instead of the EE12 chassis, and if Epsilon want him, then this year better be an improvement. Jolyon Palmer may find the quick life of Grand Prix a bit too fast, and he might be running back to Formula 2 if things go badly for him. His father, Jonathan, should be able to give some sort of advice, for the better hopefully.
We will have to see what happens with Porsche. The team now claims that its chassis and engine is far superior to anybody elses, despite the fact that all their testing has been done in secret, with no published times. Last season's pole was a 1:16.777 courtesy of the late Adam Carroll, so if Porsche are telling the truth, then the P1 (funnily enough) should be somewhere in the late 1:13's. But pundits are suggesting it's all big talk. Porsche have only made 3 tests public, all at the same venue, although the team has used all configurations of the Lausitz for different components testing. If the German team has done more testing than it says, then they should have done as much miles as ART and DAMS (who have both done 9 tests at Magny-Cours and Charade). If they really have done only 3, then their on par with iSport and Mugen-Honda, but far less than Chip Ganassi, Epsilon Euskadi, Rapax, Coloni and even Stefan. Maybe they should just tell what's going on now, because failure in Britain, will be a big PR disaster, no matter what the truth.
Rapax seems a little stagnant at the moment but they do have customer Ford engines, which became available after Team Penske decided to run away after an embarrassing debut. Chip certainly kicked his American rival right in the arse. Pastor Maldonado would really appreciate it if he had a slightly better car, and a better teammate. Luca Filippi might just fit the bill, but as long as he scores a few points, he should be safe. Something Lucas di Grassi could never do.
Virgin will be worth watching. Any team with lots of money and Nick Wirth involved should not be overlooked. If you are looking for surprises I think Virgin is a good bet. The team needed a good kicking at the end of last year and, to its credit, it has made changes, even if they have had to be disguised so as not to dent too many egos. Whether these are the right changes is another question. Expect some good finishes if the cars are reliable, and watch out for Jérôme d'Ambrosio because in a good car he is going to be very fast.
I think Stefan will be worse than it has been now that they've lost Christian Klien. You have to admire the Serbian team's determination, but even in my wildest dreams, I cannot imagine more than a World Championship point on occasion. Jean Karl Vernay and Bertrand Baguette make for an inexperienced pair, and that wouldn't sound like a wise thing to do, considering Stefan themselves are lost in the woods, especially after their disqualification last season.
