Mika Salo: Kimi will win

It's always fun to go to Montreal because the whole town lives for the GP-weekend. This year there were also protests, but even that didn't bring down the atmosphere because the police kept the protestors out of the sight quite well. You could see riot-polices and helicopters here and there and we got in the middle of the protest a couple of times. However I have quite many old friends there, old Canadiens-players, with whom I spent a lot of time.


Montreal GP was quite boring until the tyre-factor surfaced once again. Anything can happen in races because nobody has any clue about when a tyre works and when it doesn't. Red Bull and Ferrari took a deliberate risk with the tyres, but when the tyre fails, it fails. The same will continue in the future races also, because nobody can say with assurance that the next race would go well, because to be honest nobody really hasn't got any clue.

Räikkönen had a bit difficult weekend in Montreal. Of course it didn't help when the car was a bit broken in quali. I know from my own experience that it's completely impossible to drive with a car if the differential lock in the rear breaks down, because a huge part of the drivability and balance of the car depends upon how the differential is working. Hence it was a good performance from Kimi when he could drive a time like that although the car wasn't working.

Grosjean was now a bit on top of the Lotus-drivers, but this was just one good race from him. Due to his performance quite many forgot what happened in Monaco, where he couldn't get more than 100 meters before crashing. Grosjean still screws up quite a lot.

Kimi still has his natural talent to drive a car, but he hasn't probably yet got completely on terms with the team so they would understand what Kimi really wants. I see that Kimi will win a race this season. Some day it turns around so that Kimi gets the car properly under his control and can also take advantage of the qualification. The problem is that due to his driving style it took 4 laps in Montreal before he got a good time, because he didn't get enough heat in the tyres during the warming lap. The tyres' best grip should be in the first lap. Hamilton again got his tyres to work immediately in quali with his ripping driving style.

When it comes to what Jacques Villeneuve said about Lotus-drivers, he has hardly spoken one word with Kimi about what the problem really is. He is a complete outsider. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinions, however the truth is completely different than what Villeneuve said.

We will see a victory from Kimi once the weekend falls in place. So far Kimi hasn't got one single even weekend. When that weekend comes, then the tune in everybody's bells will change. You can see that Kimi's and the team's relationship is really good. Although they have nothing but problems they still have a good spirit there. Unlike how many medias claim that they would already have a rift, the situation is completely the opposite. Kimi earns full respect in the team and Kimi respects his team.

Source: MTV3
Courtesy: Nicole

Alonso's Blog: Luck and bad luck balance out

In a few days, the European Grand Prix weekend gets underway. It’s the second race of the season held in Spain and it is an important one for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro and for me, as it presents another opportunity for me to race in front of my fans. To tell the truth, I’ve never been that lucky in this race since it’s been held on the Valencia street circuit, especially last year when, despite having a very competitive car, I finished down in eighth place. However, everyone remembers what happened with the appearance of the Safety Car and there’s no point going over it again. I always believe that luck and bad luck balance out by the end of the season and maybe this unwritten rule also applies to race tracks. If that’s the case, I would be more than happy if last year’s misfortune was paid back now! In fact, it seems that in general so far this season, luck has not come our way: in the race in Montreal, not one damned thing went right.

I know that our fans are eagerly awaiting our first win of the season and I can assure you that the same goes for us. At the last two races, we showed we were clearly capable of winning and, especially in Monaco, we came pretty close, although I believe that even in Canada I could have fought for it all the way to the end, given what we had seen in qualifying. Now we go to a track with reasonably similar characteristics to Montreal and there is no obvious reason why we should not be competitive here too. The 150º Italia will be pretty much in the same configuration seen at the last race and the major new element will be the race debut of the Pirelli Medium compound tyre, running alongside the Supersoft. Over the winter, I got the chance to test this tyre, but now it will be a completely different ball game, given that the difference in temperature compared to February and March will be of the order of 20 degrees and because the Valencia track characteristics definitely cannot be compared to those of Jerez and Barcelona, nor to the permanent track at Cheste, around twenty kilometres from the city centre. In Montreal, we were able to assess these tyres during the two free practice sessions on Friday, but it’s one thing to do a few laps on a track that is not necessarily that well adapted to this type of tyre and quite another to evaluate it in depth with an eye on qualifying and the race.

I feel special ties to the city of Valencia as it has become something of a symbolic place in the history of my relationship with Ferrari. It was in fact in Cheste that I made my first public appearance after having signed my first contract with Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, at the 2009 Ferrari Days event and it was also at this track that I had my first official drive of a Formula 1 Ferrari, on 3 February last year. Well, maybe that means it’s time to add another “first” to this story…And actually, I have already won the European Grand Prix twice before, when the race was run at the Nurburgring: as the saying goes, “never two without three…”

Source: Ferrari.com

Hamilton: I was on the ragged edge

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button push hard but have to settle for fifth and seventh on the Montreal grid

Lewis Hamilton insisted he was happy with his qualifying lap for the Canadian Grand Prix, despite the fact that the McLaren man was only able to secure fifth on the grid in Montreal.

Hamilton and team-mate Jenson Button was tipped to challenge Red Bull at the head of the field at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but instead found themselves out-qualified by both Red Bulls and the Ferraris of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa.

Despite being on the third row of the grid, Hamilton insisted he was happy with his lap in qualifying and was confident that the team would be closer to the outright pace in the race itself

“Personally, I was very happy with my lap: I don't think I've ever driven a car as hard in my life as I did this afternoon,” he said. “I was right on the ragged edge and I think I even touched the wall at one stage. But, even so, I managed only P5; that was all I could do. Nonetheless, I'm still hopeful that we'll bring further improvements to the car soon – it's just a matter of time.

“I hope our race pace will prove to be stronger tomorrow than our qualifying pace was today: we're losing a couple of tenths along the back straight, which hurt us in qualifying. We've got a long seventh gear – a bit too long for qualifying perhaps – but that should be good for overtaking and will be a help when I'm slipstreaming as it means I won't be on the limiter. That should enable me to challenge the guys in front of me, in fact.

“It's going to be a tough afternoon tomorrow, but it's always a long and unpredictable race here and we're definitely not out of the fight.”

Button starts two places further back in seventh place and admitted that was partly his own fault for overdriving in Q3 as he attempted to secure a place towards the head of the field.

“We didn't quite have the pace that we'd hoped for – and that's a little frustrating,” he said. “My last lap in Q3 was looking really good – but then I overdrove, started locking up and lost a bit of time. I was very close to pipping Nico [Rosberg] at the end, but I suppose starting sixth wouldn't have been a whole lot better than starting seventh. Also, in P7 I'm on the clean side of the grid for the start.

“Our race pace is always better than our qualifying pace, and this is a circuit where you can overtake, so we've got to hope we'll be able to make some progress through the field. Fortunately, our consistency on both the Soft and Supersoft tyres has looked pretty good.

“We'll do the best we can – I'm sure it'll be a fun race.”

Source: Crash.net

Vettel: It will be close on Sunday

Sebastian Vettel admits he's expecting a close fight in Montreal on Sunday where the weather could yet decide the outcome of the grand prix

Despite Red Bull admitting prior to the weekend that the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is "one of our two weakest circuits of the year", Vettel beat the Ferrari drivers to pole position.

The German put in a blistering 1:13.014 to edge Fernando Alonso by 0.185s.

But while Vettel's pole position advantage in previous races has been as much as almost a second over the best non-Red Bull driver, on Saturday there was less than a second between himself and the eighth-placed driver.

As such, the reigning World Champ concedes it won't be easy achieving his first Canadian GP victory, however, he's confident he has a car capable of doing so.

"I think we made up some ground from last year," Vettel said.

"We know this is not our strongest track, we love high-speed corners. But we had the fastest package today so we can be confident.

"The runs we had were very confident. Surely it is never easy and it will not be easy tomorrow, like in the last two races. We are ready to fight so we will see what happens tomorrow.

"At this stage everyone looks after themselves and in qualifying you know it is between you and your car. Tomorrow is a different ballpark.

"We have seen in the last two races in particular that it will be close, and we don't expect anything other than that. Tomorrow is a new day and a new adventure."

Vettel's team-mate Mark Webber finished in fourth place, 0.415s behind the reigning World Champion.

It is believed that the Aussie was running more downforce than Vettel as Red Bull sought to cover both set-ups should the forecast rain materialise on Sunday.

"We've gone for a set-up which covers both eventualities," team boss Christian Horner told the BBC.

"We didn't expect to get pole here, so it's a surprise to get it here at one of our weakest circuits. A fantastic performance from Seb."

Source: Planet-F1

Vettel recalls Canada ’sex club’ memory

Sebastian Vettel has revealed a few of his biggest memories of Canada after returning to Montreal for this weekend’s grand prix.

In 2007, then a teenager, he was in the pits when Robert Kubica crashed heavily in the BMW-Sauber, leading to his grand prix debut in the US a week later.

Four years on, German Vettel has won 15 of his 68 grands prix, sat on pole 20 times and is the youngest champion in F1 history, and in 2011 is back in Canada as the runaway title leader.

But the next chapter was a catering strike during his first-class flight from Switzerland this week, meaning he had to eat his own home-made sandwiches.

"I’m not a fan of airplane food," laughed Vettel.

To Blick newspaper, he recalls the eve of his last-minute debut in Kubica’s BMW in 2007.

"Yeah, the Sauber mechanics one night dragged me into one of these famous sex clubs (in Montreal)," revealed Vettel.

"When two girls got busy with each other right before my eyes, it was too much and I left!"

And he said that last year in Canada, someone stole his credit card.

"By the time I noticed and cancelled the card, the stranger had already had a $600 dinner with wine at my expense," laughed Vettel.

Source: Nextgen

Massa's Blog: Tackling the championship one race at a time

I just landed in Montreal a short while ago, having spent almost a week back at home in Sao Paolo and with just the one hour time difference between the two cities, there is no problem linked to jet lag, which is a good thing. It had been quite a while since I had been in Brazil, so I did not do much except stay at home, catching up with friends and family. As in the rest of the world, the Senna film has, not surprisingly, had a big impact here in Brazil and I went to the cinema to see it. I enjoyed it, because the director found images we had never seen before and the subject was well researched, covering not just all the highlights of Ayrton’s career, but also the political situations that developed around him. Even people with no interest in F1 have felt it was compelling viewing. Of course I also worked on my training and kept in touch with the guys back in the factory to see what developments are coming on the car. In the past, by the time you got to Canada, the shape of the championship was pretty much defined already, but now, as the calendar is so long, we cannot say anything is decided for sure yet. So, everyone in Maranello is working flat out in their respective areas to continue improving the car so that myself and Fernando can race competitively, as we showed we could in the last couple of races, even if in terms of points, I have gone through a bad patch. I hope that will come to an end in Canada.

Montreal is a place I enjoy coming to. To tell the truth, the circuit is not one of my favourites, but the city itself is great and the people are very welcoming and keen on Formula 1, with plenty of support for Ferrari among the fans. My results have not been that good here, the best being a fourth place in 2005. I also had a very good race in 2008, when I was fighting for a place on the podium until a refuelling problem at my pit stop. I then had to pass a lot of people coming through from the back of the pack to finish fifth at the flag. At the very least, I would hope to aim for my best ever Canadian GP result this weekend and to finish on the podium would be great. The track presents all sorts of interesting challenges and it is not very easy to set up the car, because the track surface evolves all through the weekend, starting off with virtually no grip at all on Friday morning. You need a car that works well over the kerbs, has good traction out of the slow turns, but this is actually a fast track, so you need good top speed too. That makes finding the best set-up and the right level of aerodynamic downforce a complex task for the drivers and the engineers. We will run quite low downforce to suit this circuit and to generate more speed and with the help of some updates on the aero front I expect we can be quite competitive. Further complicating the work is the fact that we can expect tyre degradation to be very high, so even though we have the same tyre compounds as in Monaco, don’t expect to see people attempting a one stop race this weekend.

As far as the championships are concerned, at Ferrari, we will never give up fighting. However, it is very clear that Sebastian (Vettel) is doing a great job, winning every race except one and even that time he finished second! He and his team are looking very strong, but we are tackling the championship one race at a time and everyone is still working very hard to make the car competitive so that we can continue fighting all the way to the end of the season. This coming weekend will be a very busy one for Ferrari on a global scale, because apart from the Grand Prix in Montreal, various factory supported private teams will be tackling the Le Mans 24 Hours in France in Ferrari 458 Italia and 430 GT cars. It shows just how much racing is at the very heart of everything that goes on in Maranello. Endurance racing is completely different to the sprint that is a Formula 1 race, with drivers having to race in the dark and cope with very different challenges. It’s something that I might consider one day when my Formula 1 career comes to an end and I hope all the Ferraris racing there have a successful weekend.

Source: Ferrari.com

Alonso's Blog: We want to make another step forward

After a brief cycle of races in Europe, here we are again on another long intercontinental voyage, this time heading West. The Montreal race is one of the most popular with the drivers and the teams: the city is very welcoming and the people are very interested in Formula 1, to the extent that the grandstands are already busy on Friday.

I arrived yesterday evening and this afternoon I popped down to the track to meet up with the team. I found that the boys were in good spirits, wanting to demonstrate here that Monte Carlo wasn’t a flash in the pan. There is promise that it can happen. Even though it has some very fast stretches, the Canadian track suits cars which can jump over the kerbs without losing too much balance and cars that have good traction on the exits of the slow corners. Those are both characteristics that are among the strong points of the 150° Italia.

Here aerodynamic efficiency, which is our Achilles Heel at the moment, is less important and so we think we can have more chance to fight for the top places. Brakes are another fundamental factor on this circuit: we will need to work hard during free practice to understand the correct level of cooling in order to avoid the risk of problems in the race.

In Montreal we will again have the two soft tyre compounds prepared by Pirelli: the Soft and the Supersoft. Last year this was one of the few races in which we saw more pit stops than the traditional one-stop because the degradation of the tyres is quite high. Even though the Pirellis are different to the Bridgestones, I don’t think we will see anyone manage to get to the end of the race with only one tyre change, as we saw in Monaco. As we have seen this year, it will be important to pick the right moment for the pit stop so as not to lose too much time compared to your direct rivals.

For the first time this year we will have two places where it will be possible to use the DRS on Sunday: the first is after the apex of Turn 10, the second on the pit straight. I’m interested to see what will happen: on paper whoever manages to pass in the first zone will then have a big advantage because they will be able to use the movable wing again on the main straight, even though they are ahead of the car they are battling.

Last year I managed to make the podium but we left Montreal with a definite sensation of having deserved more than our eventual third place. There were a couple of episodes that didn’t go well for us that prevented us from picking up the win that was within our reach. We also had the chance to win at Monaco ten days ago and it would have been good to have won there because wins have now eluded us for too long. It remains very difficult because I expect McLaren and Red Bull to be very strong but we must not count anything out.

The second third of the season is starting and the situation in the championship is far from favourable. It’s true that there are still many races to go but it’s clear that we must try to find a catalyst for this title chase in terms of points. We hope to start straightaway, on a track that carries the name of one of the drivers who is most loved by Ferrari’s tifosi: Gilles Villeneuve.

Source: ferrari.com

We were back to normal in Montreal

Posted by Fernando Alonso

I’ve been back in Switzerland since yesterday
morning already and I think that with the race having started at 12, lots of Formula 1 people made the most of it to get home quickly. A couple of days on from the race, the sense of disappointment that we missed out on a win that was within our grasp has been replaced with the awareness that we did actually get a great result. We have to look at it as a glass half full because, on the Thursday we would have been satisfied with the thought of a podium finish. We were competitive throughout the whole weekend, both in qualifying and the race, which is very positive. We were back to where we have been in practically all the other races, the one exception being Turkey, where for various reasons, everything about the Grand Prix went wrong, from every point of view. The normal situation is the one we have seen in Montreal, Monaco, Melbourne and Sakhir and all the other tracks where we fought for a podium finish. Maybe the results did not always match our potential, but I think the same can be said for all the top teams. In these first eight races of the season, all sorts of things happened – mistakes, reliability problems, bad luck – but we are still in the thick of the fight for both championships. The same can be said of McLaren and Red Bull, who have also missed out on points along the way.

The Montreal race was very spectacular and incident packed, not just because of the nature of the track, but also because of the different strategies chosen by the teams, as a function of the tyre performance. I think the spectators at the track and those watching on television really enjoyed it, but I can assure you that for the drivers and the teams, it was a difficult and stressful weekend, because it was never really clear how the tyres would react in the various situations that arose.

The next round is in Valencia in my home country. It will be nice to race in front of my fans and I would like to get on the podium again, given that Valencia is another circuit where I have never done so. We will have major updates on the F10 which I hope will allow us to up our performance level. Following on from that, we have further developments in the pipeline which should arrive for England and Germany: which is to say that the European Grand Prix is simply the ninth round of the championship, not a last ditch effort for Ferrari, which I heard some people saying. I don’t see how they can say that given that we have not even reached the halfway point of the season and that after Valencia there will still be ten Grands Prix to go. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now, this is a stage event and the final one of those stages will not come until November in Abu Dhabi. There is still a long way to go and things can change very quickly, going either one way or the other. People seem to have forgotten that last year, in the middle part of the season and in a car that was getting ever less competitive, Kimi was the driver who had scored the most points.

Source: Alonso's Blog - Ferrari.com

[Photos] Canadian GP - Sunday - Race

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[Photos] FP1 and FP2 in Canada

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