Here’s your chance to see what the first three drivers had to say after the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix. While F1 is often a world of massive egos and petty bitching it is comforting to see the sport rally behind Jules Bianchi and show universal support and concern for his well being.
Like everyone else, we wish a full and speedy recovery for Jules.
Lewis Hamilton won a rain-affected Japanese Grand Prix yesterday, his third win on end and eighth for the year. But the day will be remembered more for its wet weather and the race-ending crash involving Jules Bianchi.
With heavy rain falling at the scheduled start time the race began behind the Safety Car. With no immediate sign of relief the cars were brought into pit lane on Lap 2 and the race was red flagged. Following a 25 minute delay the race restarted behind the Safety Car, which stayed out until Lap 9. Conditions had improved quite a lot and Rosberg was finally able to lead the field under green flag conditions from pole.
Jenson Button followed the Safety Car into the pits to take a risk by being the first driver to switch from full wets to intermediate tyres. That move paid immediate dividends as the inters proved to be the quicker tyre and all drivers came in for new rubber. This allowed Button to elevate himself up the field to P3 after starting eighth.
The race settled into a rhythm and the Mercedes AMG pair set off building a gap on the rest of the field. Hamilton had better race pace than Rosberg and after almost 20 laps behind his championship rival he was able to maintain grip on his tyres for longer and find his way into the lead.
Red Bull’s decision to sacrifice straight line pace during the sunny qualifying conditions was paying off as both Sebastian Vettel and Daniel Ricciardo were able to use their increased downforce and subsequent grip to manufacture some entertaining overtaking moves.
As the race passed Lap 40, the mark needed to be considered for full championship points, rain had been falling for a few minutes and Kevin Magnussen came in for extreme wet tyres. Although, most drivers who did come in for new tyres remained on inters.
Adrian Sutil crashed out at turn 7, which became the precursor for Bianchi’s incident. The race finished four laps later behind the Safety Car with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg heading the field. Ricciardo had moved into P3 ahead of Vettel on track by choosing not to pit for new tyres, but once the race was stopped and positions were taken from the previous full lap Vettel reinherited the final podium position.
Celebrations were understandably subdued on the podium as word of Bianchi’s injury filtered through the paddock. Our thoughts remain with the young Frenchman and the Marussia team. It’s the worst possible build up they could have imagined as F1 prepares for the inaugural Russian Grand Prix in Sochi next weekend.
Sebastian Vettel has dropped a bombshell by informing Red Bull Racing that he will be leaving the team at the end of this season. It’s expected this will be the first of a number of high profile moves in the Formula 1 driver market this coming off season.
Fernando Alonso is tipped to leave Ferrari for the new McLaren-Honda outfit and it is widely expected that Vettel will drive for Ferrari in 2015. At this stage neither of these movements have been confirmed.
Vettel is contracted with Red Bull for 2015 and is understood to have activated a special release clause to end the deal early.
Meanwhile, Red Bull has announced that current Toro Rosso driver Daniil Kvyat will be promoted to drive alongside Daniel Ricciardo with Red Bull next season (see statement below). Kvyat has impressed during his rookie season and on paper he is perhap the biggest winner following Vettel’s departure.
[Pic: Red Bull/Getty Images]
Victory at the Singapore Grand Prix makes it two wins in a row for Lewis Hamilton and with that he has put himself atop the drivers’ championship standings. No wonder he has such a smug look on his face.
At least Lewis has stopped pulling his hair out over the frustration of mechanical failures. Or has he?
You can see all that and more with our gallery of images below, some of which do literally contain the bright lights of Singapore.
It’s always good to read the post-race press conference, you get a chance to see the thoughts of the drivers without any spin. The transcript from the Singapore Grand Prix presser is available for you after the break.
Of course, there’s a lot of talk with race winner Lewis Hamilton, but it’s also interesting to hear Daniel Ricciardo discuss some issues he had during the race.
Lewis Hamilton has put himself back atop the drivers’ championship tree with a dominant win at the Singapore Grand Prix. It follows his victory in the last outing in Italy and is the 2008 world champion’s seventh win of the year.
Hamilton’s day started brilliantly when his teammate Nico Rosberg was wheeled off the grid before the parade lap with technical problems relating to his steering wheel and gear selection. Rosberg eventually started from pit lane but had a horrid race, unable to make any serious progress through the back markers, and retired after 13 laps with a faulty wiring loom. Hamilton’s maximum points haul in Singapore now gives him a 3 point lead in the championship with five races to go.
Fighting over the scraps in the wake of Lewis were the Red Bull pairing and Fernando Alonso. The order ended up with Sebastian Vettel in second, his best result for the year, followed by Daniel Ricciardo and Alonso. It’s the first time this season two Red Bull drivers have been on the podium.
Vettel enjoyed a brief moment in the sun leading the race with under 10 laps to go, but this only came about due to Hamilton’s tyre strategy and the fancied Briton was easily able to reclaim his lead on fresh rubber. Second was the best Vettel could hope for and despite losing the place to Alonso earlier in the race he was able to regain his position during the pit stop rounds under the customary safety car period, which came midway through the race to clean up debris on track after a kerfuffle between Adrian Sutil and Sergio Perez.
Ricciardo had to fight hard late following a long stint on increasingly fading tyres to save P3 from Alonso, but was able to prove his mettle again to add yet another trophy to his increasing stash.
Felipe Massa managed to avoid most everyone else to claim a seemingly untroubled P5 while the soon to be unemployed Jean-Eric Vergne reminded everyone he’s actually not that bad by employing an aggressive tyre strategy and rounding up a few drivers late in the race to charge to P6. This was despite incurring the wrath of the stewards for exceeding track limits.
The top 10 was rounded out by Perez, Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Hulkenberg and Kevin Magnussen. Hulkenberg’s points for Force India were enough to demote the once mighty McLaren down to sixth in the constructors’ standings.
Infiniti’s Director of Performance, aka Sebastian Vettel, has become the first Formula 1 driver to complete a flying lap of the Sochi Autodrom Grand Prix circuit.
Forget, for a moment, the debate over whether F1 should be going to Russia; the race will go on. So you may as well jump in the car with Seb and have a look around before the lights go out on 12 October.
Fellow Red Bull ambassador David Coulthard was with Sebastian in Sochi and had this to say: “There are several corners where you could do yourself some serious damage—they’re fast and it’s a street circuit with walls.”
It’s been said that Sebastian Vettel has suffered a fair amount of bad luck so far in the 2014 Formula 1 season. Perhaps that’s all about to change as his 360° spin during the Hungarian Grand Prix shows, captured here by a fan at the race. While there was a reasonable amount of talent required to avoid major contact with the pit wall, there was also a fair degree of good fortune.
[Source: WTF1]
Nico Rosberg’s charmed run has continued after he claimed pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix. On his last lap in Q3 Rosberg (1:22.715) snatched pole by a comfortable margin from Sebastian Vettel (1:23.201). Valtteri Bottas (1:23.354) once again has his Williams in the mix and qualified third.
The big story, though, was Lewis Hamilton suffering yet another mishap during qualifying. The 2008 world champion was fastest in all three practice sessions and went into Q1 with justified confidence. Alas, early in the session his car suffered a fuel leak which caused a fire. Making matters worse Mercedes has to build a up a new chassis forcing Lewis to start the race from pit lane.
For only the fourth time in 11 races Daniel Ricciardo (1:23.391) will start behind his Red Bull teammate. He will line up on the second row in P4 and said the lack of tyre temps after the rain shower prevented him from achieving a better qualifying result.
“The car feels pretty good this weekend,” said Ricciardo. “In Q1 and Q2 we were looking good, but when the rain came in Q3 we couldn’t get the temperature back in the tyres quick enough for one timed lap so I’m a bit disappointed not to be further up the grid.
“It would be good to be on the front row, but fourth isn’t a disaster. It’s hard to overtake around this circuit, so we need to aim to make as few stops tomorrow as possible.”
Fernando Alonso (1:23.909) and Felipe Massa (1:24.223) will share the third row. Jenson Button (1:24.294) will start alongside Jean-Eric Vergne (1:24.720). While Nico Hulkenberg (1:24.775) and Daniil Kyvat (1:24.706) round out the top 10.
Kyvat inherits P10 after Kevin Magnussen crashed out early in Q3. Light rain fell in between Q2 and Q3 and the wettest part of the track was Turn 1. On his first flying lap early in Q3 Magnussen misjudged the track and locked his brakes into Turn 1 before skidding into the tyre barriers at pace. He emerged unhurt but his car required signficant work and he will start from pit lane ahead of Lewis Hamilton.
Kimi Raikkonen made headlines too after he failed to progress to Q2, thanks to a last gasp effort from Marussia’s Jules Bianchi. The young Frenchman is signed to the Ferrari Driver Academy and is tipped to progress to the Scuderia when a place becomes available. Which presumably means Kimi needs to raise his game.
Only an outright disaster or car failure will prevent Rosberg from using his sixth pole position for the year to increase his championship lead over the luckless Lewis Hamilton. Indeed, on the tight Hungaroring layout Hamilton will just be happy if he can make the top 10 and claim a championship point.
Lewis Hamilton, winner of five grands prix so far in 2014, is contracted to Mercedes until the end of the 2015 Formula 1 season. Already, Mercedes has plans to replace him with Sebastian Vettel from 2016 and beyond. That’s what Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko is telling German media anyway.
Remember, Nico Rosberg is safely tucked away at Mercedes for some time, so they only have one seat up for grabs. Providing perfect fodder for the likes of us here at AUSmotive both Hamilton and Vettel have been kind enough to comment on the speculation. So let’s go with Lewis first.
“I’m not worried about it,” he said in the build up to this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix. “Another German driver? I’m not sure if that’s something Mercedes would like.
“At the moment I’m here until the end of next year, so it’s not going to be any time soon. But Mercedes are the best, so everyone is going to want to drive a Mercedes.
“I’ve shown an interest in sitting down and talking. We haven’t sat down yet, but the team know I’d like to push to continue, and they have made clear they would like to do the same.”
In words, at least, Lewis does seem quite relaxed and is displaying a mature attitude.
“You never know what’s going to happen in the future, but I can’t particularly see myself anywhere else,” he added. “If they happen to want someone else then I’m not going to whinge about it. There are places for everyone.”
And now for Sebastian’s thoughts.
“I think any offer is to be considered, but nothing has changed,” he said. “So I still don’t talk about these things. I don’t know which sources Helmut has or doesn’t have. But they seem to vary.”
Coincidentally, Vettel’s contract with Red Bull ends in 2015 as well, so he will need to secure himself a drive for 2016.
[Source: Autosport]
Taking any opportunity to get stuck into Sebastian Vettel is something most Australians like to indulge in. Until this year we’ve been used to seeing young Seb toy with our Mark as the young charge did as he pleased with the best car on the grid.
So far 2014 has been a nightmare for Vettel. In addition to having a relatively poor car, where poor equals not streets ahead of the competition, Sebastian has had to deal with the arrival of another pesky Australian. This time, though, Vettel is in the senior role and Daniel Ricciardo is playing the part of precocious upstart.
And isn’t our Daniel playing that role well! In the intra-team battle Ricciardo is currently dominating Vettel in much the same way the German dominated Mark Webber in previous years. Not only has Daniel chalked up his first grand prix win, he’s allowed some of the more biased Aussie F1 fans (erm, that would be us, and probably you too) to take their Vettel schadenfreude to new levels.
So when we saw this article on the BBC website titled “Sebastian Vettel says Formula 1 can be ‘very cruel'” we were ready to laugh and poke fun at Seb.
Yet, when you read Vettel’s full quote in context it doesn’t seem to be a whinge at all, rather a statement of fact:
It’s been a tough start, a rough season so far. F1 can be fantastic, as I have experience of, but it can be very cruel in retiring from problems. You rely on your car. It is part of the game.
Keep reading and the article is pretty level headed stuff from the four-time world champion. And then you stumble across these words which Vettel says he reminds himself of from time to time and you realise, hey, maybe he’s not such an arsehole after all:
I have one quote I very often read to myself, from a very good friend: ‘Forget the people around you now; remember the little boy who was racing in go-karts, what you were dreaming of and what he wanted to achieve one day and what was his goal. Race for him.’
[Source: BBC | Pic: Red Bull/Getty Images]
Nico Rosberg will start from pole position after a topsy turvy qualifying at the British Grand Prix. It’s the German’s fourth pole for the year and once again he was lucky to gain a big advantage over his key championship rival and teammate Lewis Hamilton.
Rain was present throughout all three qualifying sessions which meant the times were a bit all over the place. Both Ferrari drivers and both Williams drivers missed progression to Q2, which will add extra spice to the race as they try to charge past slower cars.
But it was the final session which held the main drama. All drivers except Sebastian Vettel set times in the early part of Q3 with the results seeing Lewis Hamilton (1:39.232) on provisional pole ahead of Rosberg.
Midway through the session rain became heavy in parts of the track and drivers sat it out in pit lane waiting as late as they dare before reemerging for a last gasp effort.
Hamilton and Rosberg crossed the line to start their final laps with moments to spare, the provisional pole sitter ahead of his teammate. Rosberg desperate to push for P1 was right on Hamilton’s tail. The first two sectors were slow for Rosberg, but he kept pushing. In the final sector he made up significant time and landed pole position (1:35.766) with a time more than three seconds faster than Hamilton’s who had aborted his final lap.
Other drivers to benefit from pushing right until the end were Vettel (1:37.386) and Jenson Button (1:38.200). Nico Hulkenberg (1:38.329) was the first of the late runners to show there was time to be made up in the final sector and briefly held provisional pole.
In the wash up Hamilton finished in P6 and looked bitterly disappointed with that outcome as he emerged from his car after quali.
Daniel Ricciardo was in P4 after the first round of laps early in the session but chose not to set another lap and he will line up from P8 on the grid. It’s fair to say Daniel was surprised at how much faster his opponents could go.
“I didn’t expect it to go quicker at the end of the session there, as the rain kept coming,” Ricciardo said. “We really thought the track wouldn’t get quicker, Vettel only went out as he didn’t have a time at that point. We have to learn from it I guess – I’m gobsmacked how much faster the circuit got, it must dry a lot quicker here than I thought. We’ll move forwards from there tomorrow.”
The final grid, which has been affected with a number of penalties, can be seen after the break along with the full text from the post-qualifying press conference.