Posts tagged Michael Schumacher
What’s in store at Albert Park?
Mar 22nd
With the dramas of the ‘un-eventful’ season opener in Bahrain now yesterdays fish n chips wrapper, we look ahead to the AustralianGP which is now less 6 days away.
Melbourne has traditionally hosted the first round of the season so it will be interesting to see teams turning up to this track and for the first time having a clearer understanding of who the pace setters are heading into the weekend.
Lewis Hamilton has been quoted as saying that “The Red Bull is ridiculously faster than anyone else’s car,”
Downforce in Melbourne is very important with the most important corners being very slow speed yet at the same time there are large sweeping corners on the back straight taken at full throttle.
The reliabilty issues that plauged Sebastian during Bahrain will hopefully not be an issue in Melbourne. Sebastian dropped from a comfortable lead down to 4th place when a faulty spark plug caused issues for him and greatly reduced power. Sebastian will be using that same engine this weekend in Melbourne, however RedBull have made assurances the issue has been rectified and there is nothing wrong with the engine itself. Having siad that, the Renault engine is still down on power and was 10 km/h slower then the McLarens through the speed trap in Bahrain. With the speeds topping 300km/h at Albert Park, this hopefully won’t become an issue for RedBull.
The majority of the grid believe that the best two cars going into this weekend are the RedBulls of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Mark will be under a lot of pressure to perform infront of his home-crowd. He has not had good luck in past seasons in Melbourne however with the local press already touting 2010 as ‘being his year’ at Albert park, there may be much disapointment if he doesn’t atleast claim a podium this weekend and with such a car beneath him, there should be no excuses not to perform.
The weather in Melbourne is always un-predicatable. We have seen the temperature on the race in recent years vary from the low 20′s (celcius) to the low-mid 40 degree temperatures.
The forecast is for a mixed dry and wet weekend. Possible showers on Saturday for Quali and whilst Sunday will start out fine, strong winds could also bring rain in the late afternoon. Temps will be in the mid-high 20′s on Saturday and it will push into 30 degrees celcius for the Sunday, so not a relatively hot weekend.
Melbourne has a very large Italian community and one of the largest Ferrari fan bases we see at any GP outside of Italy.
Fernando Alonso is who many fans have come to cheer on and the Red and Yellow will be out in force cheering for this man.
Whilst Ferrari may not have the aero package the RedBull have, they do have reliability on their side and in a race like Melbounre which always claims casualaties and is always prone to safety car periods, reliabilty may win the day.
Most of the F1 teams are already in Melbourne, many of the dirvers flew in over this past weekend to adjust to the time-zone differnce and the change in timezone will put them in good stead for the malaysian GP the following weekend.
Albert Park is a street circuit only a few Kilometers from Melbournes CBD. The circuit is just over 5.3km’s in length and the lap record set in 2004 by Michael Schumacher of 1:24.125 still stands.
Michael has been a local crowd favourite at Albert Park ever since he won his first AustralianGP for Ferrari in 2000. There will be a very large legion of “schumi fans” out to see their man. We don’t expect him to break that lap record however, the MecredesGP team hasn’t had the pace of the Ferrari, RedBull or even the McLarens so far this season.
Lets go for a lap around Albert Park on-board with Michael Schumacher in 2004. This was his pole setting lap:
Valencia: Day1 Testing Wrap-up
Feb 2nd
It was a busy day on Monday in Valencia with many 2010 cars breaking cover for the first time and the drivers stepping into their 2010 title contenders for the first time.
It was the first time the world got to have a look at the 2010 Toro Rosso, Williams and Mercedes W01.
RedBull and Force India were not present, instead opting to further develop their cars, also none of the ‘new’ teams on the grid this year were present.
Michael Schumacher finally stepped into the W01 after much anticipating. He was on the pace and very quickly bettered his team mate, Nico Roseberg’s, times. Schumacher was lapping in the mid 1:13.5′s before breaking into the low 1:13′s and even a very high 1:12.
The nose on the Mercedes W01 is a radical slopped nose similar to last years RedBull’s nose and the new Torro Rosso STR5 is and even more radical looking variation of the design.
Mercedes were the only team on the day run both their drivers on the day.
When asked about how he enjoyed his first day at the wheel of the W01, Schumacher responded: “It was a perfect roll-out for the new car today,” Schumacher commented. “I felt totally comfortable and really had a feeling that everything was very natural. It felt just like at the very beginning of my career in 1991 – when on the first lap, I thought, ‘Wow, that was really fast!’ and then on the second lap I was just extremely excited!
Schumacher “I feel like a young boy again and really enjoyed myself out there. We did a good job today, just making a few control checks, and the most important thing was that the car ran reliably. With Nico and I covering 79 laps between us, it was a superb job by the team.”
The big news of the day however was Filipe Massa’s successful return to Formula1 at the wheel of the new F10. He was on the pace from start to finish on the day. Ferrari’s F10 is already to be proving a far better package then lasts years car. Massa topped the morning sessions in the mid 1:13.5′s but then bettered his morning times to record a 1:12.574 which was not beaten. Massa however did record more laps then any other driver.
It was a dream start to the new season for Ferrari who’s reputation took a battering last year due to a very poor performance during the season and the loss of Filipe due to injury and lack of good reserve driver talent.
When massa stepped out of his car after his dream run, he said he felt “zero fear” he went on to say he was “happy to be back after such a long time watching the race on television and sometimes on the track,” he also said he felt very physically fit and could have easily done many more laps then he did.
A surprise pace-setter of the day was Pedro De la Rosa who managed to set the second fastest time of the day int he BMW-Sauber. He edged out both Rosberg and Schumacher in the Mercedes and Paffet in the McLaren to finish just two-tenths of a second of Massa’s fastest lap of the day.
Without getting too carried away, it is very hard to judge teams true pace this year during the pre-season testing, due to the large fuel tanks. The discrepency that is now possible between fuel loads means some cars could be running extremely heavy to do long distance runs and other teams could be cheating by only putting a small number of laps worth of fuel in their cars to impress the time sheets.
Williams seemed to struggle a little bit, with Rubins bringing out the red flag for a short time while his car was stopped out on track, however he managed to do over 70 laps in the car and set respectable pace ahead of the Torro Rosso and Renault team.
Renault were the slowest team of the day with Robert Kubica only managed a best time of 1:15 flat, however they managed to put in some decent track time with 69 laps.
On Tuesday we will see Hamilton step into the McLaren for the first time, with Jensen button taking over on the final day.
The times at the end of day 1 are as follows:
1. Felipe Massa, Ferrari, 1:12.574, 102 Laps
2. Pedro de la Rosa, BMW Sauber, 1:12.784, 74 Laps
3. Michael Schumacher, Mercedes GP, 1:12.947, 40 Laps
4. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes GP, 1:13.543, 39 Laps
5. Gary Paffett, McLaren, 1:13.846, 86 Laps
6. Rubens Barrichello, Williams, 1:14.449, 75 Laps
7. Sebastien Buemi, Toro Rosso, 1:14.762, 18 Laps
8. Robert Kubica, Renault, 1:15.000, 69 Laps
Official Mercedes GP Petronas Launch
Jan 25th
The Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart was the location of the teams official 2010 Launch today. Ross Brawn, Norbert Haug, Nick Fry, Michael Schumacher and Nico Rosberg were all on stage to present the 2010 car’s livery, using a 2009 BrawnGP car. Nico and Michael sat on the car for PR photos, we will upload these official shots as they role in.
In the meantime we have photos of the car and the 2010 race suits for Michael and Nico which were taken from the live stream.
The cars livery is very similar to a mockup photo released by the team when the Petronas deal was announced
Vettel is a perfect fit for MercedesGP – No Bull
Nov 30th
Sebastian Vettel is hot property after becoming the runner up in this years F1 World championship. He is more then 10 years younger then his RedBull team mate, Mark Webber, and just like his idol, fellow German driver Michael Schumacher, Vettel has already made history as the youngest Formula One driver to ever win a Grand Prix after winning at the Italian GP in 2008.
He is also the youngest driver ever to be a runner up in the championship and of course the youngest driver ever to score pole position during quaili’. Predictions are, records will keep falling to Vettel in the future.
Vettel is constantly compared to Schumacher and with good reason. He has already smashed a number of records, not only is he the youngest driver ever to win a Grand Prix but when he was 19 years old he became the youngest driver to lead a race behind the wheel of the BMW Sauber.
Despite the expectations that he is the next Schumie, Vettel admits he is not feeling the pressure, instead he is focusing on one season at a time and just enjoying racing.
Vettel has a very bright future ahead of him. Ross Brawn and Norbert Haug are no doubt itching to get him to drive for MercedesGP and if it weren’t for his ironclad contract with RedBull that doesn’t expire until the end of the 2011 season, no doubt he would be signed for 2010 with the Silver Arrows.
For Mercedes however, having the best German on the grid driving for a German works team is something not only the top execs would want, but also Vettel himself.
But if Mercedes were to get desperate by the end of 2010 they might start looking at options and also be prepared to pay a hefty price to release Vettel from his contract early.
We could see Sebastian Vettel drive for the Silver Arrows as early as the beginning of the 2011, but really what is the rush? He is with a very successful team now. RedBull is coming off the back of a very strong season and Vettel is very well embedded into the team and can now focus on winning the championship.
No doubt he will be fighting for the title next year and if the team can be strong right from the beginning of the season rather then finding their form part way through, there is no reason why he can’t be the 2010 World Champion.
When asked after the Monza round this year who he thought would win the 2009 Championship, Vettel replied “I hope myself. I will fight to the last breath and minute.” It is this attitude that will see him remain in Formula1 for some time yet – hopefully winning multiple titles.
note: Sebastian Vettel will get to test the 2010 car for the first time next February. We will be following his progress in the lead up to round one very closely.
UBS Chinese Grand Prix