MotorsTV UK Official Blog

Hi to everyone from Le Mans which is turning out to be pretty good so far!  We had a good couple of days of practice and qualifying sessions and thought we’d be starting just behind the Risi Ferrari, but since they were pushed to the back of the grid for a technical infraction, we’ve been bumped up to the number one spot in the GT2 class.  Our sister car is just behind us, as Jan (Magnussen) got a pretty good lap in.  The two Corvettes and the two Ferraris were the only four to get under the four-minute a lap barrier – which is about 3 seconds a lap quicker than last year’s qualifying times..

It’s always special to get pole position here because the competition is so high from so many great teams and drivers.  It’s never nice getting it from another team’s misfortune though and I’d have loved to beat the Ferrari in a straight fight on the track, but we can save that for Saturday and Sunday. 

It seems that the two Corvettes and the two Ferraris that were originally at the front are very close on speed, and it’s going to be a very tight and intense race.  The Porsches are only a tiny bit behind on speed and they’ve got fantastic driver line ups with very good teams so I know they’ll be challenging right from the start.   The BMW is a very new car but they should be strong – both team and drivers – so can’t be discounted.

As always here in qualifying, it was a bit of a banzai run.  The guys sent me out with great tyres and good position on the track. I felt that if only we could get a clean lap and I could get it all together, the time would be there.  I made a small mistake coming out of Dunlop chicane – I got on the Astroturf and it spun the rear tyres up. I was concentrating on the chicanes and I got through those cleanly, and then I stumbled upon a GT1 car in the second chicane. I pushed like crazy for the rest of the lap, and in the Porsche Curves I was really holding on…one small slip and it could have all gone horribly wrong! The Ford chicane was still a little damp, so I had to hold my breath and wing it.

It looks like Saturday and Sunday’s race is going to be a fantastic battle between us and Ferrari and Porsche.  This event is massively important to the team and to GM and has really been our focus for the year.  Bring it on.

Team dynamics were on display in Formula One last weekend, with Williams engineers pointing fingers in pit lane and a despondent Felipe Massa looking side-lined at Ferrari.

The most interesting to watch in my opinion was Mercedes-GP with Schumacher and Rosberg, both new to the team, with reputations to build or maintain and no benchmark on the car.

At the start of the year Rosberg seemed to be doing a better job but Schumacher has a very successful formula that has worked well for him in the past and I’m sure he’s trying to get back to that. There’s a fair chance that, whether it’s the way the car’s set up or the particular engineer he’s working with, Schumacher’s set-up might not be working the same as it has in the past, but he’ll get there. It takes time to get the set-up working in the direction you’re aiming for and then hone in on what makes a car extremely successful.

What you aim to achieve is something that can be competitive at all circuits and in all situations and to do that sometimes you’re better off starting with a clean sheet. It’s frustrating, but it’s also very rewarding and something I’m quite experienced at after six developmental years in V8s (1998 at SBR, 2001 at HRT, 2005 at FPR, 2007 at Britek, 2009 at SBR again and now 2010 with BJR).

The first thing you look at when you move to a new team is obviously the car’s pace and how it responds to changes; basically whether it’s in the window and responding as it should. After that there are a lot of other factors that you need to get right to win races that aren’t so obvious but can all lose you a race. Things like accuracy and efficiency in the team and decision-making all play a large factor over a race season.

I’ve been lucky that the majority of teams I’ve stepped into have been happy to go in the direction that I want to take them, although it seems from the outside that Rosberg is not happy with Schumacher’s new direction.

I would say to Rosberg that he should try and make it work for him because ideally a team wants the cars set up similarly; that’s when they’re most successful. If he can’t make the Schumacher set-up work for him, he needs to find some compromise because otherwise the team may decide to find two drivers that are better suited.

I do have some sympathy with him because in 2001 I had a similar situation when I joined HRT. My team-mate Mark Skaife had been there for three years and was extremely successful after developing the car to suit him. Even though I had some success very early in the season, winning at Clipsal, I struggled to get that car set-up to work for me at many of the other venues over the next six rounds.

After several rounds trying to drive the car the way it was I finally managed to convince the team I needed something different and the parts turned up on the Saturday morning of the Bathurst 1000, just before the shoot-out. I did a 2:08.763 in the warm-up that morning, a new lap record. The time was more than a second faster than anyone else and I didn’t seem to have the same issues wanting to go my own way anymore! In fact Skaifey actually went in the same direction the year after, when he won the championship.

I moved on to FPR after that for yet another developmental year and got the team’s first pole position at Winton in 2006. V8 Supercars is racing at the North Victorian circuit again this weekend and I feel in a much better position at BJR than I was in any other developmental year I’ve had.

The good thing about going to Winton is that when you go to a track where you know what to expect it’s much easier to develop the car. We saw a lot of that at Queensland Raceway because we weren’t second-guessing some of the issues, like track surface or bumps. I would expect this track to suit us better than any other so hopefully fans won’t be waiting the full year before results start to come in.

This year has got off to a slow start, mainly due to the work I had planned to get done over the winter starting much later than I had anticipated. Last year, was not a stellar debut for the new car, just one win and a whole raft of dnfs. Even when I did finish I was typically nursing some slight issue such as spring and damper coming apart (twice), floor and battery coming adrift and so on, Indeed, the car seemed to be inventing new ways to fail each outing.

Obviously, most of these issues were down to poor preparation (my fault), but coming off the back of three successive championship victories it was tough going. Eventually, we ended up with a major oil pickup problem which proved impossible to fix and I gave up and raced the Darvi for the last two meetings – and very uncharacteristically, it also suffered from problems.

So, I was hoping for a better start to this year. Over the winter, I was unable to get the car into the garage for various logistical reasons and took the view that I would start racing when the car was ready, rather than the other way around. In 750 Formula we only count our 10 best results from 14 rounds, so missing the odd one isn’t too much of a disadvantage.

The engine was stripped and sent for a rebuild, meanwhile I set about the oil system to find an air leak. Much cutting, cleaning and inspecting later I found a tiny crack which was enough of an air leak to have caused the oil pickup problem. The engine came back and was reunited with the sump and installed back in the car. At the same time a fixed a number of the niggles that had made using the car more troublesome than it needed to be.

One issue we suffered from last year was inconsistent handling. The car was typically fairly well balanced, but, on occasion, would develop massive mid corner understeer, which was not ideal. We spent some time looking at damper angles and rocker ratios and eventually decided to replace the front springs and dampers and go testing. A reasonable morning at Mallory led us to think that we were close to where we needed to be, but with a lesser mid corner understeer issue and no oil pressure problems, albeit we did have a fuel pickup problem.

One fuel pump later and we set off for Brands with a reasonable expectation of a good weekend, at least weather wise if nothing else. Qualifying didn’t really go to plan when I was flagged to report to the pits to repair loose bodywork. Having failed to convince the ‘scrutes’ that  it’s always like that (which it is) I dejectedly headed for the paddock, although I only lost a couple of laps. The result was lining up 7th for the first race and 8th for the second.

On the grid, red lights on, then off and a blinding start – only to get boxed into the middle of the grid going into Paddock. I ended up 5th following a couple of overtaking manoeuvres on the first lap, which turned into third when Bill Rutter span on the exit of Druids and second when Dave Robson span at the same place a couple of laps later. Sadly, a flying Nathaniel Cooper got ahead and started reeling in leader Roger Rowe, only for the two of them to dead heat with exactly the same race time at the end of the race. I have no idea how they split the two of them, but Roger was given the win (just as well, as Lisa and I were having dinner with the Rowes and the Hills on Saturday evening). I was thrilled with a good third – not a bad first result of the season and much better than I expected after qualifying. Better still, my 2009 lap record survived, albeit by three hundredths of a second from Nat’s fastest lap – well he was stuck in third gear…… hmm.

Sunday dawned wet and windy, but had calmed down to a lovely sunny day by the time we went to race. A better start this time, coupled with Dave Robson holding everyone up at Druids when the engine died, resulted in 8th to 2nd by Graham Hill bend. I was able to close in on leader Roger Rowe, but before I had a chance to go for glory, Nat struck again and passed me into Paddock where he appeared to think that braking was for wimps! So, slightly humbled I resumed my chase and managed to catch Roger, after Nat passed him for the lead. I managed to scramble past and held second to the flag, albeit some 4.5 seconds down on Nathaniel who was flying and took a very well deserved maiden win – the first of many I expect.

All in  all a better weekend than I was expecting but still blighted by mid corner understeer and also lack of confidence to attack the corners. The last five laps were all within a couple of tenths of each other – so the car is more consistent, but it doesn’t really encourage me to really push. Not enough feedback, although when the car does let go, it is all very controllable – just difficult to know when that will happen.

So the next step is to make some bits and go testing again……. And then back to Brands Hatch for the next race towards the end of June.  More anon.

Hello from cloudy Istanbul!

It’s 8:30 on Thursday night and I’m writing this blog from a boat on the Bosphorus Strait on the way back to Rally HQ from tonight’s ceremonial start.

Scott and I arrived in Turkey on Sunday night and it’s been a busy few days. Most of Monday was spent down in the service park getting a feel for the area and new location. We’ve had a lot of early starts since we’ve been here, getting up at 5am on Tuesday and Wednesday morning to do recces where we’ve found the stages to be really fast and wide. The new location for this year’s rally in Turkey has meant there’s been extra pressure – we’ve had to make new pace notes and needed to concentrate harder than usual making a lot of long days.

Unfortunately we’ve not seen much Turkish sun since we’ve been here and it’s been mostly cloudy and cold during the day – much like home in Cumbria! It’s a nice change from Jordan though where it was over 30 degrees and made the temperatures inside the cars unbearably hot. I think we’re all quite happy that Rally Jordan is over now as it was a really brutal round, even in the press conference today Kimi Raikonnen, Danni Sordo and myself all agreed how tough Jordan is in the championship.

This morning we had shakedown and it went pretty well. Saturday looks as if it’s going to be a really tough day though – the challenge of changing from tarmac to gravel means I’ll have to alter my driving techniques and react more quickly.

This afternoon has been something totally different as all the crews got on a boat with their cars to take us to the ceremonial start. The boat trip took about an hour from Rally HQ in Pendik to where the ceremonial start was taking place in Sultanahmet Square and when we arrived there was a huge buzz from thousands of Turkish fans. Some really important Turkish ministers turned up tonight too, it’s great to see how much support we have out here.

Istanbul is a really special city as it straddles two continents – it was quite cool to be in Asia this morning, travel to Europe for the ceremonial start this afternoon and now I’m heading back to Asia again! We’ve just had a really nice dinner onboard the ferry and we’ve just seen some belly dancing so it’s been an interesting day.

I’ve got a bit more work to do tonight before I head to bed to get a good night sleep in preparation for the first stage at 9am. I’m keen to get some more points for the team whilst we’re out here and I’m just really looking forward to getting started now.

MW

Hi there Motors TV viewers!

I’m Tom Hornsby, one of the site’s new editorial team who have recently taken over the running of the .co.uk connection. We’ve been working hard over the last month or two updating 2009 info, implementing new features and generally giving the whole domain a mini revamp.

You may also have noticed that the news content has changed. That’s because we’re concentrating on bringing you all the info that might not be given the time of day on other dedicated motorsport websites to tie in neatly with our 2009 programme line-up. That’s why there’s no F1 content here because unless you’ve been living under rock for the past six months, you’ll know that a certain other broadcaster got those rights.

Anyway, this blog is just the latest addition to what we hope will bring the drivers of your favourite championships a little bit closer to the fans. For starters, we’ve got British F3 drivers aplenty so look out for the stars of the world’s best domestic single-seater category airing their un-PRed views here in the not too distant future.

Also, we’re calling all budding scribes to help out with feature articles. So, if you’ve got a good story idea, it’s relevant, won’t get us sued and fancy your name up in lights then why not get in touch. What’s the worst that can happen?

And remember, there’s always the forum for you to air your opinions, frustrations and thoughts.

Here’s to a good 2009; credit crunch, climate change and all.

TH