Skip to main content
#
 
 Motorsport 
Wednesday, September 21 2022
McLaren blames brake problems for slip to fifth; Wolff on bold Red Bull strategy gamble: F1 Pit Talk

McLaren is staring down the barrel of its second straight year of decline on the constructors championship table.

Having returned to third in the standings in 2020, its best finish in eight years, it slipped to fourth behind Ferrari last year and is now fifth behind Alpine with six races to run in 2022.

For a team that hoped to score regular podiums and even victories this season, it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

But the team is taking heart from how much worse things could have been. Its performance early in the season was dire thanks to a critical brake problem designed into the car, and the fact it’s a candidate for fourth at all is a strong turnaround.

Whether that’ll eb satisfying enough to contemplate if it can’t beat Alpine to fourth remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has responded to the news that Red Bull is planning on going it alone in building an engine for the 2026 power unit rules in the aftermath of the breakdown in negotiations with Porsche.

And Aston Martin says Sebastian Vettel is still pushing to end his final year on a high despite Aston Martin’s dire competitiveness this season, with the team stuck in second-last on the title table.

McLAREN STILL PAYING FOR POOR START TO THE SEASON

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl says his team’s slip backwards to fifth in the constructors standings can be traced back to the brake problems it discovered late in pre-season testing.

The British team had hoped to follow Ferrari into the frontrunning battle this year, having fought the Scuderia for third place in 2021, but it has fumbled the transition to the new regulations.

After 16 rounds last season it had already notched up five podiums, including a one-two in Italy, and was sitting on 240 points. This year it has just a solitary rostrum finish to its name and is languishing on a paltry 107 points.

Seidl says his team’s struggles can be traced directly back to a miscalculation it made in designing the cooling ducts for its front brakes, which left it with the slowest car at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix and took months to permanently solve.

“Of course it didn’t help, because in the end we had to use a lot of resources to fix the issue that you would have preferred to use straight away for performance development, especially in this period of the season,” Seidl said, per Autosport.

“[It] simply put us on the back foot in terms of starting performance of going into this era of Formula 1.

“We definitely haven’t been where we wanted to be.”

But Seidl said the team could take heart from how well it’s recovered since its disastrous first race.

Its battle with Alpine for fourth is still alive, with just 18 points splitting the two teams with six rounds remaining.

“I think the team showed a strong reaction throughout the season, coming back,” he said.

“We haven’t forgotten where we have been in Bahrain at the first race. We were pretty much at the back of the field.

“Considering that, looking at the progress we could make with the packages we also brought that worked, the correlation was good, which was actually a positive thing.

“But due to the difficult start, we have to accept that we are where we are right now … which is a good recovery compared to where we started the season.”

RED BULL ENGINE PROJECT ‘BOLD’ WITHOUT MANUFACTURER

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says Red Bull Racing is entertaining a “bold strategy” to go it alone in designing a power unit for the engine regulations coming into force in 2026.

Red Bull had hoped to partner Porsche on an engine project, but the joint venture fell apart earlier this month when the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement over how power would be shared internally.

But Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner said the energy drink brand’s plans to become an engine manufacturer weren’t reliant on the input of a traditional car brand and the Red Bull Powertrains project was going ahead regardless.

Wolff, who oversees both the F1 team in Brackley and its power unit operation in nearby Brixworth as head of Mercedes motorsport, said bringing chassis and engine in-house at Milton Keynes was an ambitious approach to secure the team’s competitiveness under the new rules.

“I think it’s a very bold strategy,” he said. “Being self-sufficient is clearly a scenario that Red Bull have always wanted to achieve — to have their own power unit, to not be dependent of any other [original equipment manufacturer].

“And here we go, that’s the strategy they have deployed, and we shall see what happens in 2026, 27 and 28. Clearly this is setting a direction.”

Wolff said it was a shame that Mercedes wouldn’t have the opportunity to battle with a fellow German auto giant in the new regulatory era.

“For me as a Mercedes person, it’s a shame that we can’t fight with Porsche. Porsche-Red Bull would have been a mega entry, a great brand.

“It would have been really great for Formula 1 and all of us overall if they would have joined forces for the attractiveness of the sport.”

Red Bull has hinted that it could renew ties with Honda specifically in the interests of sharing power unit technology, with rumours that the Japanese marque is considering a return on some level after 2026.

Porsche, meanwhile, left the door open to finding a different route into the sport, though there’s no other non-aligned team-engine package like the Red Bull project currently in Formula 1.

Sister Volkswagen brand Audi has confirmed it will join the sport in 2026 as an engine supplier. It’s expected to soon announce that it will buy a majority stake in Sauber, currently branded Alfa Romeo, before 2026.

‘MACHINE’ VETTEL WON’T CLOCK OFF BEFORE ABU DHABI

Aston Martin has praised Sebastian Vettel for his professional as he winds down his Formula 1 career.

Before the mid-season break the four-time champion announced his retirement after more than 15 years in the top category.

His last campaign coincides with a sharp downturn in Aston Martin’s fortunes, with the team declining from fourth in the standings in 2020 to second-last this year.

With just 20 points to his name so far, Vettel’s also on track to lodge the least competitive year of his entire career.

But his enthusiasm remains undimmed, and Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough says there’s been no sense of the German phoning in his final races.

“He is the ultimate professional really, so I’d say no to that,” he said. “Maybe he’s a little bit more relaxed in himself, but I wouldn’t see that in the engineering office and the way he drives the car.

“Sebastian is a bit of a machine really from a work side of things.”

Despite the disappointing results this season, McCullough praised Vettel for improving the team with his championship experience and methodical approach — qualities that had the team hoping to extend his contract into next season before he decided to retire.

“Sebastian has been great fun to work with for the last 18 months or so — very thoughtful, very strong on the engineering side,” he said. “He has brought a lot to the team in how we operate and how we look at things.

“A very inquisitive mind, great fun to be with but also understands lifting the team from a morale side of things really well.

“It’s been an utter pleasure with him, and I’m looking forward to the next final few races with them.”

FERRARI WANTS ENGINE ALLOWANCE INCREASE AMID PENALTY PROBLEMS

Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto says confusion over the grid at the Italian Grand Prix is a sign the FIA should consider raising the engine allowance for next season.

Nine of the 20 drivers served penalties for exceeding their quote of power unit parts in Monza. Only one driver, Charles Leclerc, started where he qualified.

It came just two rounds after a similar situation at the Belgian Grand Prix, where eight drivers copped engine penalties.

It took the FIA almost four hours to publish the provisional starting grid in Monza, which Binotto said was a sign the regulations — both sporting and technical — aren’t fit for purpose.

“The reason why it took so long is that there are certainly different interpretations and the regulation is not clear enough,” he said.

“That‘s something we need to address certainly for the future — I think not only how we decide the grid position based on the penalties, I think the amount of penalties we got as well is too many.

“Maybe the three PUs per driver is too little at that stage for what we have achieved.

“Maybe it needs to be reconsidered for the next seasons.”

Power units comprise seven different components. Each car is limited to three combustion engines, turbochargers, MGU-Hs and MGU-Ks; two batteries and control electronics; and eight exhaust systems.

The first breach of any of those limits incurs a 10-place grid penalty, with the second and subsequent breaches incurring five-place penalties.

Only five drivers have escaped penalties so far this season, those being the Aston Martin and Williams teammates as well as Daniel Ricciardo, though his McLaren stopped with a power unit problem at the end of the Italian Grand Prix.

But Ferrari has been particularly badly affected by engine problems this year after several catastrophic failures. Both drivers have exceeded their allocation of every element bar Sainz and his exhaust components.

The 2023 season could feature as many as 24 rounds, meaning each power unit will have to last at least eight race weekends. Some components needing to last 12 rounds to avoid penalties.

MERCEDES KEEPS ALL OPTIONS OPEN FOR 2023 CAR REDESIGN

George Russell says Mercedes is prepared to completely revolutionise its car next season if it thinks the current novel design can’t be improved.

Mercedes turned heads when it unveiled an ambitious no-sidepod design late in pre-season testing, but the W13 has proved difficult to master. Its best finish is a trio of second places, leaving the team third in the constructors standings and 174 points behind Red Bull Racing.

Team boss Toto Wolff, who has described the season as bouncing from “depression to exuberance”, has identified this month as a crucial window for decision-making about how much of the 2022 machine will continue in the 2023 design.

Speaking at the Italian Grand Prix, George Russell said Mercedes wasn’t ruling out wholesale changes to return itself to title contention next season.

“I think nothing’s off the table,” he said. “For sure we’ve got a pretty unique design with the sidepods. It’s not off the cards that we will continue with that design, but it is equally not off the cards that we will completely change philosophy.

“But ultimately whether we have the wide sidepods or the narrow sidepods isn’t the performance differentiator. There is more to it.”

Mercedes’s bigger problem has been the sensitivity of its floor, which needs to be run very low to achieve peak performance. At some circuits such a low ride height is impractical, leading to the swings in performance.

“I think we understand exactly why at circuits like Zandvoort and Budapest why we were competitive, and we understand why at circuits like [Monza] and Spa we were uncompetitive,” Russell said. “That doesn’t mean that we can solve the issues overnight.

“But we’ve got to keep on developing this car. Next year will sort of be an evolution of this, and I think now we do have a totally clear direction of how to develop the car.”

What exactly that direction is will only become clear once the W14 rolls out of the garage at pre-season testing.

HAMILTON DENIES UNIQUE WIN RECORD IS A PRIORITY

A side-effect of Mercedes’s winless ways is that Lewis Hamilton is facing the very real prospect of the first season of his car-racing career without a victory.

Hamilton made the full-time transition from karts to cars in 2002. His first year was spent in Formula Renault UK, in which he claimed three wins and finished third in the championship.

He’s won at least one race every year since.

Some years have been lean, like his single win in his first season with Mercedes 2013, while others have been bountiful, like his 11 victories in 2014 and 2018–20.

But despite taking six podiums this year, including a pair of second places, and despite teammate Russell starting the Hungarian Grand Prix from pole, victory has been agonisingly out of reach almost all year, and the difficult Mercedes W13 is threatening to end Hamilton’s enviable career run.

But Hamilton, who already has the record for most wins, poles and podiums and is tied with Michael Schumacher on a record seven championships, says losing his unusual benchmark isn’t on his mind — though he said he was sure he could keep it going.

“Honestly, it has zero importance to me,” he said. “I’m grateful that each year since 2007 we’ve had an opportunity to win, and I do believe that we’re going to have a chance this year. We’ve still got some races to go.

“That’s definitely a real big goal for us as a team, to get back to the front end and be fighting for the lead.”

But the Briton admitted he didn’t know when the win would come, with the car’s level of competitiveness proving somewhat unpredictable from circuit to circuit.

“I have no idea where our car is going to be great,” he said. “It was a surprise when we got in the car at Zandvoort and it felt so much better and completely different to the previous weekend.

“But I’m hoping, more often than not, it feels like Budapest and Zandvoort for the rest of the races.”

Mercedes is anticipating a stronger weekend at the slow-speed Singapore street circuit.

Posted by: AT 04:13 am   |  Permalink   |  Email
Social Media
email usour twitterour facebook page