First Impressions of Abu Dhabi

The F1 world has descended upon Abu Dhabi and the glorious new Yas Marina circuit complex. It is bloody impressive. Not only is the paddock incredible, but there’s a hotel spanning the track, a marina, the world’s largest shopping mall, a Ferrari theme park and a media centre that just defied belief.

But, for my part, I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m in the middle of a Star Wars film and that I’ve accidentally been flown to Tattoine and am currently walking around Mos Eisley spaceport.

Jokes aside, it’s a stupendously impressive venue. And, as I said, the media centre takes the buscuit. Normally we strain our necks and eyes to see what’s going on via a bunch of small TV sets. But not in Abu Dhabi. Oh no. The media centre here is set out like mission control at NASA, with bloody great cinema screens at the front of the room.
Epic.

The downsides? I feel like crap and am clearlyoming down with an end of season cold which isn’t helped by the sub zero air con. The 40 minute round journey to the media accreditation centre that was stupidly put at the airport and nowhere near the track, requiring a £60 cab ride. But that’s about it.

Roll on the racing. This place rocks.

Donington’s last act of desperation

Donington Park’s hopes of hosting the British Grand Prix from 2010 rest now upon the success of a bond scheme, announced today by Donington Ventures Leisure Limited.

Following the company’s failure to assure Bernie Ecclestone of its ability to host the event by the October 3rd deadline laid down by the F1 supremo, Donington and DVLL boss Simon Gillett are now in breach of contract and have just 14 days to pull themselves out of the mud and back into favour.

Their announcement today of the launch of a bond scheme to raise the outstanding £135 million of the £145 million they need to complete track redevelopment is thus the last throw of the dice in a game of chance that the circuit now appears to have little chance of winning.

“Donington Holdings Plc, the parent company of Donington Ventures Leisure Limited that operates the Donington Park motor racing circuit, has launched an offering of £135,000,000 aggregate principal amount of first priority senior secured notes due 2016,” said a statement from the circuit.

“The Notes are expected to be issued at a discount to the principal amount thereof. Purchasers of Notes will also be able to subscribe for warrants for no additional consideration.

“The offering of the Notes and the Warrants is being made solely by means of a confidential offering memorandum.

“The net proceeds of the offering of Notes, together with a concurrent offering of preference shares, will be used in large part to fund the redevelopment of Donington Park in preparation for the hosting of the Formula One British Grand Prix in 2010.”

But here’s the question. If Donington has thus far managed to only raise £10 million, and has missed deadline after deadline to the point which Bernie has told them they are in breach of contract, who in their right minds would take on the risk of shelling out such a huge sum, without any guarantee that the British Grand Prix will even now be hosted at Donington? Just as the BMW Sauber team lost its residual value by not signing up to the Concorde Agreement, so Donington’s failure to assure Bernie that it will be ready in time would appear to have lost the circuit any guarantees it could give to potential investors over the security of their investment.

Bernie has now gone on the record to say that the 17-year deal to host the British GP could now, and in all likelihood has already been, offered to Silverstone. The BRDC is likely to want to play hardball over cost, but at the end of the day has at least put in place a plan for the future which appears both affordable and achievable in the timeframe.

With less than two weeks to find their £135 million, Donington’s days as host of the British GP appear to be numbered, for even if the money can be found, the chances of track alterations being made in time for 2010 look bleak.

What a bloody mess.

Rosberg’s Lost his Lid

Nico Rosberg appears to have lost his helmet on arrival in Brazil… or has he?

Is this a big marketing spoof, or has Nico’s helmet really been stolen? His twitter feed says it was accidentally left in the hotel lobby and has gone walkies… so if this is a marketing ploy it’s not going to please the race organisers or local government to essentially point out that the crime rate in Brazil is so astonishingly high. Which kind of begs the question of whether it is real… It was only back in Monza that the GP2 paddock got broken into and Andi Zuber had BOTH his race helmets nicked, while Luca Filippi had his overalls half inched. So it’s not out of the realms of possibility in Europe, let alone Sao Paulo.

Nico does have a good poker face though, I’ve known him long enough to know that… genuinely there I times when I still can’t tell if he’s pulling my leg. Real or not, here’s his plea.

How will the Japanese GP grid look?

Good morning from Suzuka, where we still have absolutely no bloody idea how today’s grid will look.

That’s right, the FIA don’t know, we don’t know, you don’t know. It’s all a bit crazy to be honest, but so was yesterday’s qualifying session.

The original grid has been hit with five-place penalties for Alonso, Button, Barrichello and Sutil for setting their fastest Q2 sector times under yellow flags (tut-tut), and Buemi also got a penalty for impeding other drivers on their qualifying laps after he stacked it at the end of Q2. Liuzzi has a five-place grid penalty for a changed gearbox (which after qualifying 19th means he’ll be starting in Fuji), and so will Kovalainen but McLaren are waiting for all the other nonsense to be resolved before announcing it. Oh, and Glock will probably be replaced by Kobayashi after the German’s monster shunt yesterday. Adam and I went to pay him a visit in hospital last night but he’d already been released, which was excellent news.

All of which means that we in the media centre have been trying to figure out our own grids. We’ve all come up with different versions, which I think shows just how confused and idiotic the whole system is at the moment. I mean, it’s our jobs to know about this stuff, right? And yet if we don’t get it, how on earth is anyone else supposed to?

Anyway, I have applied the penalties in the order in which they were handed out. As such, this is how I think the grid will look… and I open myself freely for being completely, and blindingly wrong with every position.

1. Sebastian Vettel
2. Jarno Trulli
3. Lewis Hamilton
4. Nick Heidfeld
5. Kimi Raikkonen
6. Rubens Barrichello
7. Adrian Sutil
8. Nico Rosberg
9. Jenson Button
10. Robert Kubica
11. Heikki Kovalainen
12. Sebastien Buemi
13. Jaime Alguersuari
14. Giancarlo Fisichella
15. Kazuki Nakajima
16. Fernando Alonso
17. Romain Grosjean
18. Vitantonio Liuzzi
19. Kamui Kobayashi
Pit Lane: Mark Webber

Of course, and as we know, the FIA can be a law unto itself with these kind of things, so expect to see a completely loopy grid for this afternoon’s race because when all of the penalties have been applied to the letter, we’ll probably end up with Alain Prost on pole… on the wrong side of the grid.

In the meantime, and given that we’re talking about grids, here’s a bit of early 90s random banjo dance music… courtesy of “The Grid”, with their timeless classic “Swamp Thing”.

Back in the world of Blog

Good afternoon from Suzuka. It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, so apologies for that… lots of exciting things happening in the Buxton household coupled with keeping on top of GPWeek and other clients meant I haven’t had nearly as much time to jump online and blog away as I’d have hoped.

We’re now in Suzuka and it is raining so there’s not a lot happening out on track. Having spent a few days in Tokyo (my first time in the city) I have come to the conclusion that the Japanese are a bit bonkers in a rather beautiful way. My colleague Adam, who showed me around Tokyo, was stuck on a flight out to Japan with a bunch of mad Japanese fans who all went a bit doolally when they realised Jenson and Kimi was on their flight. He told me that all they did was shout at the drivers.

Apparently shouting is a favourite pastime out here.

Can you tell we’re all a bit bored during this session? Just seen Tonio taking photos in the pitlane. I’m going to grab a coffee.

Summerton Talking to USF1

Jonathan Summerton is in negotiations with the USF1 Team to join it in its inaugural year of F1 in 2010.

The 21 year old American, whose podium at the weekend has moved him up to second position in the Indy Lights Championship, has raced against a number of current F1 racers and testers and fared well against such opposition as Romain Grosjean, Sebastien Buemi, Kamui Kobayashi and Kazuki Nakajima.

In an exclusive interview with GPWeek, Summerton is introduced as a leading contender for the USF1 drive next season, and confirmed he was in negotiations with the team.

“I have been in touch with Peter and Ken quite a lot and it’s definitely somewhere I’d love to be,” he says in this week’s GPWeek Magazine. “Hopefully everything comes together with the team and the driver. It would be a dream come true making it to Formula 1 and being able to show that it can be done without a budget, to say the least. The last four years have been a hard push at times to even find a ride and luckily each year I’ve been able to find something. To be able to make it to the pinnacle of motorsport, to be able to race against all those guys I raced against in Formula 3 EuroSeries, and to do it with an American team, too, would be great.”

To read the interview go to www.gpweek.com now and turn to page 28.

Piquet out – and very, very pissed off

Nelson Piquet has been let go by the Renault F1 Team. The announcement has come not from the team however, but from Piquet himself in a press release of incredible honesty and candour.

It is rare in this day and age for a driver to be so outspoken. I’ve had good friends who could and possibly should have been so forthrite. The manner in which guys like Scott Speed and Tonio Luizzi were treated by Toro Rosso has always demanded more attention in my eyes. And so it is really quite refreshing to see a driver stand up for himself and his reputation after suffering at the hands of politics and a disadvantage not entirely of his making.

Yes, to some, this release will feel whiney and will be seen as a list of excuses for a driver who never quite lived up to expectations. But I’ve known Nelson for a long time. I’ve seen him take Lewis Hamilton to the wire in a spec series. I’ve seen him get inside Hamilton’s head, way more than Alonso ever managed. I’ve seen Nelson at his highest, and over the last few seasons I’ve seen him get beaten down weekend after weekend.

I’ll reprint his release in full for you here so you can make up your own minds on it… but I think there are many in this sport who will be glad that he’s said what he has, and given us a valuable insight into what it has been like to live his life within the Renault F1 team over the past two and a half years.

One hopes Romain Grosjean is given a fairer crack of the whip.

Nelson Piquet Press Release

I have received notice from the Renault F1 team of its intention to stop me from driving for them in the current F1 season. I want to say thanks to the small group who supported me and that I worked together at Renault F1, although it is obviously with great disappointment that I receive such news. But, at the same time, I feel a sense of relief for the end of the worst period of my career, and the possibility that I can now move on and put my career back on the right track and try to recover my reputation of a fast, winning driver. I am a team player and there are dozens of people I have worked with in my career who would vouch for my character and talent, except unfortunately the person that has had the most influence on my career in Formula 1.

I started racing at the age of eight and have broken record after record. I won every championship I raced in go-karts. I was South American F3 champion, winning 14 races and getting 17 pole positions. In 2003 I went to England, with my own team, to compete in the British F3 championship. I was champion there as well, winning 12 races and getting 13 pole positions. In fact I was the youngest ever champion. I raced GP2 in 2005 and 2006, winning five races and scoring six pole positions. I had a great season in my second year, only missing out on the championship to Lewis Hamilton due to technical mistakes of our team, which I take as my own as well, including running out of fuel during a race. I set the record in GP2 for the first driver to have a perfect weekend, scoring the maximum points available, in Hungary 2006. No-one matched that until July 2009 when Nico Hulkenberg did in at Nurburgring.

The path to F1 was always going to be tricky, and my father and I therefore signed a management contract with Flavio Briatore, who we believed was an excellent option with all the necessary contacts and management skills. Unfortunately, that was when the black period of my career started. I spent one year as a test driver, where I only did a handful of tests, and the next year started as a race driver with Renault. After the opening part of the season, some strange situations began to happen. As a beginner in F1, I could only expect from my team a lot of support and preparation to help me in getting up to the task. Instead, I was relegated as “someone who drives the other car” with no attention at all. In addition, on numerous occasions, fifteen minutes before qualifying and races, my manager and team boss (Briatore) would threaten me, telling me if I didn’t get a good result, he had another driver ready to put in my place. I have never needed threats before to get results. In 2008 I scored 19 points, finished once on the podium in second place, having the best debut year of a Brazilian driver in F1.

For the 2009 season Briatore, again acting both as my manager and team boss of Renault F1, promised me everything would be different, that I would get the attention I deserved but had never received, and that I would get “at least equal treatment” inside the team. He made me sign a performance-based contract, requiring me to score 40% of Fernando Alonso’s points by mid-way through the season. Despite driving with Fernando, two-time world champion and a really excellent driver, I was confident that, if I had the same conditions, I would easily attain the 40% of points required by the contract.

Unfortunately, the promises didn’t turn into reality again. With the new car I completed 2002km of testing compared to Fernando’s 3839km. Only three days of my testing was in dry weather – only one of Fernando’s was wet. I was only testing with a heavy car, hard tyres, mostly on the first day (when the track is slow and reliability is poor), or when the weather was bad. Fernando was driving a light car with soft tyres in the dry, fine conditions. I never had a chance to be prepared for the qualifying system we use. In Formula 1 today, the difference between 1st and 15th position is sometimes less than a second. It means that 0.2 or 0.3s can make you gain eight positions.

In addition to that, car development is now happening on a race-to-race basis due to the in season testing ban. Of the first nine races that I ran this year, in four of them Fernando had a significant car upgrade that I did not have. I was informed by the engineers at Renault that in those races I had a car that was between 0.5 and 0.8s a lap slower than my teammate. If I look at Germany (where I out-qualified my teammate despite that), if I had that advantage in qualifying I would be fifth and not tenth. If we had that difference in the race, I would have finished ahead of my teammate, which I did in Silverstone, despite him having upgrades that I did not have.

I believe without doubt in my talent and my performance. I didn’t get this far by getting bad results. Anyone who knows my history knows that the results I am having in F1 do not match my CV and my ability. The conditions I have had to deal with during the last two years have been very strange to say the least – there are incidents that I can hardly believe occurred myself. If I now need to give explanations, I am certain it is because of the unfair situation I have been in the past two years. I always believed that having a manager was being a part of a team and having a partner. A manager is supposed to encourage you, support you, and provide you with opportunities. In my case it was the opposite. Flavio Briatore was my executioner.

Being under pressure is not new to me. I have had criticism throughout my career, and have also had a lot of expectations put on me due to my name. Up until now I always met those expectations – surpassed them even. I have never before felt the need to defend myself or fight back from rumours and criticism because I knew the truth and I just wanted to concentrate on racing – I didn’t ever let it affect me. Fortunately, I can now say to those people who supported me through my career that I’m back on the good tracks and considering the options for a new start in my F1 career in a fair and positive way.

Schumacher WILL replace Massa

Schuey's back baby! c/o Sutton Images

It’s official.

The most succesful, and arguably the best, F1 driver of all time is set to make a remarkable comeback to Formula 1, two and a half years after hanging up his helmet.

“The most important thing first: thanks God, all news concerning Felipe are positive. I wish him all the best again,” he said on his official website.

“I was meeting this afternoon with Stefano Domenicali and Luca di Montezemolo and together we decided that I will prepare myself to take the place of Felipe. Though it is true that the chapter Formula 1 has been closed for me since long and completely, it is also true that for loyalty reasons to the team I cannot ignore that unfortunate situation. But as the competitor I am I also very much look forward to facing this challenge.”

The decision to place Schumacher into the vacant seat left after Felipe Massa’ horrendous freak accident in Hungary, can not have been a difficult one for Domenicali and di Montezemolo to make. Between them, it’s been 15 years since either of Ferrari’s test drivers competed in F1. Add into the mix a competitive Ferrari, a need for a positive piece of PR and the need to stick a rocket up Kimi Raikkonen’s backside and it’s a brilliant placement.

Odds on Bernie’s pretty stoked too. Valencia was set to be a low-turnout event anyway, and with Alonso’s Renault team barred from competition, it had looked like the next race would be a bit of a non-event fanwise. But now? Oh now I’d say it’ll be a sell out.

As will Spa, and that most glorious of homecomings at Monza.

In other news BMW said they were pulling out of F1. I’ll deal with that more tomorrow.

Having spoken to a number of people in the know over the weekend, I left Hungary feeling that no matter how bonkers it sounded, Michael Schumacher would be making his F1 comeback in Valencia. And now I just can’t wait to get to Spain.

Bring it on.

Henry Surtees – The duality of motorsport

Sunday began under clear blue skies. A day to be spent at the races, for once actually taking part rather than sitting in a media centre, bent over a laptop drinking luke warm coffee.

I’d been invited down to the Daytona kart track in Milton Keynes, England, for an endurance event put on by Race Drivers Inc, a young company which has been established to act as a racing drivers’ club without all the stuffiness. Say the words “racing drivers’ club” in Britain and your first thought is a swanky clubhouse at Silverstone and a bunch of rules and regulations that are as antiquated as a large number of the members.

But this new club had been set up to be a meeting place for racers at all levels. It’s a club where the more experienced can advise the youngsters, be it on racing lines for their upcoming race at Snetterton, or about the pitfalls of sponsor functions. They’ve got PR advisors, fitness coaching, and the whole thing’s just intended to be a chilled out way for racers to get together and share the wealth of knowledge that they’ve accrued.

The club’s organiser, Barry Scott, greeted me on arrival with a huge grin and the news that I was being placed in a group with GT3 driver Chris Dymond, Formula Renault hotshoe Alice Powell, and my old mate, GP2 racer Karun Chandhok.

The sun shone intermittently between torrential rain showers and we stood under the tarpaulin drinking tea and eating mars bars, willing on our team-mates to overcome the constantly changing conditions. Chris and I both got drive-through penalties thanks to over-officiating, but a result of fifth wasn’t considered bad. Alice took the best lap of the day, too. Watch out for her… she’s nifty!

It had been a really great day and a chance to meet a lot of young, hungry and enthusiastic British racing drivers. We joked that the music they were playing over the speakers was older than most of the competitors… and it was. Alice was born in 1993!

We said our goodbyes after meeting some new friends and made our way back to our homes. My phone rang and it was Karun. He asked if I’d seen the news. I had literally only just heard myself. Small snippets were filtering through from Brands Hatch about an accident involving Henry Surtees. And it wasn’t looking good.

I can’t say I knew Henry well. I met him only once in passing when I went to interview his father in the Silverstone paddock last season at a BTCC race, when Henry was racing in Formula Renault. But from everything I’ve heard about him, he seemed like a genuinely lovely guy.

Having spent the day with so many talented and hopeful young drivers, Henry’s death really hit home. We often forget that little warning on the back of our paddock passes… the one that says “Motorsport is Dangerous.” We overlook the duality of the sport and that for all of the beauty and wonder it often creates, it can also be so indiscriminately savage.

Henry was only 18 years of age and was well known to a number of the racers I’d spent Sunday with. His loss is sure to hit them and his rivals in the still-young F2 series hard.

It is, however, perhaps in Mario Andretti’s famous words following the death of his team-mate Ronnie Peterson that they may find solace.

“Unfortunately, motor racing is also this.”

Article taken from this week’s issue of GPWeek. Click the blogroll to read the full issue.

Webber on Pole… strewth!

Mark Webber’s first F1 pole position has been met with riotous approval in his native Australia as his many fans leapt from their sofas in shock and celebration.

Here we share a private moment of celebration with Aussie soap god Harold Bishop.