Calling race fans in Melbourne…

As promised there will be “An Evening with Joe” in Melbourne. The event will be take place at 7pm on Monday March 29 (the day after the Grand Prix) at the Albert Park Yachting and Angling Club, which is to be found at 129 Beaconsfield Parade in Albert Park. Entry will be by ticket only and the number of tickets is limited.

The plan is for the event to begin with a complimentary welcome drink at 7pm and this will be followed by an introductory chat, questions and answers and then afterwards a chance to talk informally on any subject you care to mention. If you want to head off to have dinner then feel free – but I will be available until 11pm. I hope it is a fun event.

To buy a ticket, click here.

Pictures of the new Red Bull RB6

The first pictures of the Red Bull-Renault RB6 are now available and the Adrian Newey-designed car appears to be a development of the RB5 which dominated the end of last year’s Grand Prix season, in the hands of Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. The car will start running today in Jerez and the team is hoping that there will be no glitches, having opted to miss the first of the three-day winter tests which took place in Valencia.

Photo (above) by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Newey is confident that progress will be made with the new car.

“For me, 2009 was a great year because, although we didn’t manage to win the championship, Red Bull Racing matured to the point where we were able to win races and challenge for a championship,” he says. “How that affects our season next year remains to be seen, but it has given a lot of people within the company confidence in their own ability.

“The main change in regulations for 2010 are much smaller than for 2009 – the only ones of significance are the ban on refuelling and the smaller front tyre. It may be that other people have made big strides over the winter, and so how we all start the season remains to be seen.”

The new Lotus run at Silverstone

Lotus F1 team is due to launch its 2010 challenger at the Royal Horticultural Hall in London on Friday, but the new car was run for the first time at Silverstone today. It featured a green and gold livery, harking back to the old days of Team Lotus, and sponsorship from Proton, the Tune Group and the Naza Corporation. Oddly enough, there was no signage at all from Tony Fernandes’s Air Asia.

The team logo (below) is also green and gold and it seems likely that this will be the livery for the season ahead, although this is yet to be confirmed.

The shakedown test was carried out by Fairuz Fauzy. He is the team’s reserve driver but is also expected to race in the Renault World Series, with a car in the same Lotus livery.

F1 as a means of social engineering

Bernie Ecclestone says that the Serbian government is behind the rather eccentric Stefan Grand Prix project. This will presumably make it rather more professional an organisation than it was when it was creating first impressions. If there is money there will be sensible people involved, although having bases in Germany and Serbia is going to make it tough to attract people from the UK – the same problem that plagued Toyota F1. Still, if the money is right there will be decent people involved, although the whole thing is so late in the day that it will be rather thrown together. There are so many details in running an F1 team.

The next question is how to secure an entry for the team. The FIA President Jean Todt has made it clear that the FIA grants the entries but if Stefan GP buys the Campos entry then all that really will be required will be an agreement for a name change from the other teams, which will happen if there is no reason for it not to happen. It is in everyone’s interest that there are as many teams as possible on the grid. The new teams get their own fund from the Formula One group and the other teams will all be taken care of for the time being as the top 10 share the money. In other words, all 13 will have funding from the rights holder to a lesser or greater extent. Getting hold of the Campos entry can be achieved in two ways: a deal can be struck directly between Campos and Stefan GP. This will help Campos to recoup some of the losses that have been accrued and may help to settle the outstanding bills with the suppliers. The second route is that Stefan can buy the design from Dallara, which would leave Campos without a car, even if it had an entry. The entry would then be worth nothing. Campos would have to settle for whatever was on offer. The real question therefore is whether the Campos route or the Dallara route is the most cost-effective. If Campos can get together a deal to save the day – with money from Tony Teixeira for example (money, rather than promises) then it can go ahead and Stefan will be in trouble. There is no proviso for a 14th team. It seems that USF1 will be there despite all the negative chat although the real test is not who turns up in Bahrain and in China (if they need to miss races) but rather who is still around when the teams head off to Singapore in the autumn.

There is also a question about the Serbian money. The news that the government will pay for the Formula 1 team came on the same day as a delegation from the International Monetary Fund arrived in Belgrade to review the way in which its loans are being used. This far Serbia has received €1.12billion of the promised $4.3bn. The money will only be paid over to the government if the IMF is happy that the reforms agreed are taking place. This involves massive cutting in government spending, wage freezes in the public sector and job cuts to make the administration more efficient by getting rid of layers and layers of civil servants. This is tough in an economy where unemployment is running at 18% and where the economy contracted four percent last year. One of the IMF conditions is that Serbia constrain the use of stimulus efforts to revive the economy. It is an interesting discussion as to whether the funding of an F1 programme would be seen as that or not. In recent years the government has spent around $900m in support of small and medium sized business.

After the horrors of the 1990s, the Balkans are recovering well. Serbia’s economic growth has averaged 6.5% a year since 2000. The economic downturn and the drop in the value of the local currency took the country to the brink of insolvency but the IMF stepped in and helped out. The country needs to be financially restructured. There is a huge trade deficit, there are low salaries, there have been huge hikes in the prices of essentials and the standard of living has suffered accordingly. If the government thinks that an F1 project will help power Serbia toward recovery by changing the international image of the country then all well and good.

The Force India VJM03

The Force India Formula One Team has launched the new VJM03, with which the team hopes to builds on the solid foundations established by its predecessor, which took pole for the Belgian GP. With driver consistency in Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi and the able support of Paul di Resta in the test and reserve driver role, this year the team is looking forward to a strong performance right from the start of the year.

“Our goal is to continue on the same path of performance improvement that we had at the end of 2009,” says chairman and team principal Dr Vijay Mallya. “I don’t think I am being over-proud when I say 2009 was an exceptional year for us. The bare statistics say it all: one podium, one pole position, one fastest lap, a further five top 10 starts and 13 points. We’ve learnt from our experiences and we’ve come out a better team: resilient, resourceful and now resurgent. I hope 2010 will see this great progress carrying forward. We’ve got one podium so far but I would hope that, this time next year, I’m talking about more points and more podiums. I’m confident we can get this, why not aim high?”

While the VJM03 is an evolution of last year’s strong car, it incorporates the package of rules changes introduced for this year, including the requirement for a larger fuel tank as a result of the refuelling ban and a switch to narrower front tyres.

Design director Mark Smith explains, “The VJM03 is definitely an evolution of the VJM02 in terms of the design philosophies we have developed at Force India over the last year. We are very happy with the direction, therefore we have opted to evolve the car rather than significantly revise.

“Obviously one of the major aspects we have had to contend with are regulation changes which have had a considerable impact on some aspects of the design of the car. The removal of refuelling from races increases the amount of fuel needed to be stored in the cars – almost twice the amount we ran in 2009. There is a compromise now: either make the car much longer or wider, or, as we have done, a combination of both. This of course has influenced the mechanical design solutions and also the aerodynamics, specifically with respects to the diffuser and bodywork.

“Even with the ban of double diffusers for 2011, we recognise that we still have to push as much as we possibly can in this area in 2010 as we have targets to meet and the double diffuser is a key development aspect of the car.”

Last year’s VJM02 was noticeably quicker on the low downforce circuits, however Mark is confident that this year the VJM03 will be strong across the board: “The VJM02 was a relatively low drag car that showed well on the low downforce tracks. As was demonstrated throughout 2009, that was a useful attribute but as we go into 2010 we have tried to maintain a high level of aerodynamic efficiency, but we recognise that our championship position will be enhanced by a general level of performance that is suited to all types of circuits. We have, we believe, quite an efficient car overall.”

Adrian Sutil is eagerly anticipating the start of the season, “2010 is a really important season and we are very optimistic about going well. I think this year it’s important to be consistent from the first race. I’d like to be in the midfield and be competitive from Bahrain. It’s the first time we have been completely on schedule so I feel this will be the first season when I can show from the beginning to the end what is possible with the car and what I can do. Of course we will have updates and performance packages from this point on but I hope we will be strong from the first practice session rather than compromising at the start.”

Meanwhile Tonio Liuzzi is also going to the season with a strong goal, “After one and a half years in a test role, I feel really prepared, both physically and mentally for a full race season. My objective is to be as strong and consistent as possible and give good feedback to the team to help them improve. For sure scoring points as many times as I can is going to be the key and you never know, perhaps we can get something more as well if everything comes together.”

The VJM03 will make its official testing debut on February 10 at the Jerez circuit in Spain. Tonio Liuzzi will be on driving duties for the first two days before Adrian Sutil takes over on February 12 for a further two days. Paul di Resta will step into the car on February 17 in Jerez.

Enter the President…

The most significant thing this week is not the unveiling of the Virgin (it sounds like some “bells and smells” Catholic festival), nor indeed the start of the Jerez test, but rather the reappearance of Jean Todt. The FIA President has been very quiet since his election in October and I am sure that this is a deliberate strategy in order to de-politicize the FIA in Formula 1 terms and to create some distance between his administration and that of Max Mosley, which had more baggage than an African bus. This week, however, he has popped up with an interview placed (deliberately I am sure) with the influential sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport. This sends out two messages to me: firstly, Todt is going to relying less on the British media, which is logical given his nationality; and secondly, he is gearing up to start making more of an impression, presumably this will ramp up between now and the start of the Formula 1 season in Bahrain, which he will be attending. I am told that we will see Jean at only three or events this year but he is going to be pushing ahead with his agenda for the sport – and for the world of the automobile.

The interview with Gazzetta covered all the ground one would expect to see covered with his thoughts about the Flavio Briatore situation being one of them. To a large extent this is not really a Todt problem. It was created by the Mosley administration and Todt has nothing to lose. He makes it quite clear in the interview that just because the court ruled against the FIA does not make Briatore any less guilty of what happened in Singapore in 2008. And quite right too. The sport can live without Briatore and his ethics (although I hesitate to use the two words in the same sentence). Todt pointed out that the evidence was clear and that it was so obvious that Pat Symonds even put out an apology to the world. A fair point. We don’t apologise for things we do not do. It is not in human nature. He also pointed out that only one member of the Council voted against the punishment decided. That was Bernie Ecclestone, Briatore’s longtime ally and a man who appreciated that Flavio had some interesting ideas about the way that F1 should be promoted. What Todt did not say was that the FIA took legal advice as to whether or not it could do what it did and if there is a problem now, it is probably between the federation and the people who gave it advice. Nor, for that matter, did he point out that the FIA was at a disadvantage because the lawyer used by Briatore – Philippe Ouakrat, Flavio’s sidekick Bruno Michel’s brother-in-law – had previously represented Mosley in his privacy actions in France and so knew many of the weaknesses that Mosley would have, having seen them from the inside in the previous legal action. One interesting point was that the court was sold on the concept that Mosley had it in for Briatore, which always seemed rather odd to F1 folk, because of the “get out of jail free” cards that had been handed to Renault over the years. And no-one in the court asked whether Mosley got his legal representation on the recommendation of Briatore. It would be interesting to know if that was the case. In any case, whatever happens with the appeal the FIA is not going to roll over and let Briatore anywhere near the sport again. The screen on the Renault pitwall that FB loved so much to look at during races says only one thing now: “Game Over”.

Todt was also trying to answer the suggestion that some ill-informed folk still make who think that Todt is somehow a Mosley puppet. Anyone who knows Todt knows that this is laughable. The message is clear Mosley is now history, at least in motorsport terms. He may still be on the TV and radio banging on about his ideas about privacy but the motor racing ship has sailed and Max is no longer the captain of the ship. The interview thus makes the point that budget caps are not going to happen and that the regulations will be used to keep down the costs, including such ideas as unique aerodynamic packages for an entire year. This will not be popular with the teams as they will want upgrades so that if anyone messes up there is some chance to recover, but no doubt that will be negotiated back to two or three upgrades. That is only sensible from the point of view of the F1 show. One does not want a situation in which the team that wins the first race wins everything.

Todt also says that he is only going to stay at the FIA for one term. I seem to recall Mosley saying that way back when. I am that Jean, who is 63, will not try to stay for 16 years (a la Max) but that he has other things he wishes to do in his twilight years. He says he will go in 2013. My bet would be 2017, because the FIA member clubs will want him to stay on for another term. These are people who like to be led and do not like to have great internal contests.

The other key point that Todt makes is that despite all the chat that is coming out of the Formula One offices about the wonders of Stefan GP, it is not down to the promoter to decide whether the Serbians will be given an entry. It is the role of the FIA. The FIA and the Formula One group are constantly niggling away at one another. One might use the expression “turf war” except that it is never open warfare, just gentle skirmishing. Who controls this? Who controls that? Who gives out passes? Who is allowed to do what? It is business as usual. Todt is laying down a gentle marker and saying: ‘These are the rules by which I play this game’ and the Formula One group will listen. There will no doubt be other forays and I am sure they will be dealt with in the same way.

For the moment Todt is still in the “softly softly, catchee monkey” phase. There is no need to go out with guns blazing. The next few months will, however, be more interesting as there need to be rules for 2013 laid down and formalised before the end of 2010. These will be a big change and there is bound to be some resistance from the teams. This is a question that is not just about rules but rather about some of the fundamentals of the sport. Todt and his folk believe – rightly in my opinion – that the sport must face up to realities and embrace the issue of the environment, but some of the teams may think that smaller fuel-efficient hybrid engines are just too wimpy for an alpha male kind of sport.

I use the above image without permission. It is a great image and I believe was commissioned by a publication called the F1 Opus, a vast 800 page, 30kg, half metre square publication, the Gulliver of the Coffee Table Book, designed to be a limited edition collectors item and costing an absurdly huge sum of money. It is for people with more money than sense (of which apparently there are a few around the sport). I am told that production of the Opus has recommenced recently after several years when it was stuck in the deep freeze because of money troubles. I was involved in the original publication and it was frustrating that this never appeared. The publisher is not popular with a number of my friends and I guess that if he wishes to complain about my using of the image and giving him free publicity then I will drop it – but I do not suppose that will really encourage me to mention the Opus in the future.

From Russia with interest…

I don’t know about you but I find Formula 1 to be a constant source of complete amazement to me. A while ago Renault F1 (a company that is owned by a Luxembourg investment whizz called Gerard Lopez – not to be confused with a large French car company that owns a small share of the team) announced that it had agreed a deal to run the Russian driver Vitaly Petrov in the second car this year. The rumours spoke of Petrov having a horse-choking wedge of cash supporting his candidature.

When it comes to Russia, of course, one does not ask questions about where the money comes from. I am sure there is plenty of legal business in Russia these days, but I would not put a penny into the place because of the crooks that are there and the corruption that exists in the legal system.

Anyway, Lopez seems like a smart man and if he agreed a deal with Petrov he must have had a decent idea that he would get the money that was being promised and that the cash was kosher. No sensible businessman does a high profile deal like that on the off chance. So he must have been confident that the cash is coming. Thus it makes little sense when one hears the heart-rending tale of Petrov’s dad going to a bank manager and asking for a loan for $15m.

What chance would you or I have if we went down to Barclays and asked for that? Even at an annual interest rate of 8%. Small wonder the bank wanted his house as collateral… And one can only boggle the brain about the size of the said residence.

If the reports from Russia are to be believed (and there is no reason to doubt them) Petrov is due to pay Renault F1 the sum of $7.5m on March 1 and another $7.5m on July 1. It seems that this money will come from “a St Petersburg Bank”, as Petrov’s father knows the chairman. One must assume that this is a private bank as the chairman of a public financial institution would hardly invest in a business that would sink $15m into a racing driver, just because his dad knew the chaiman…

One must also ask the question of how Petrov’s father has been able to get letters of support for his son from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and others. If I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him for support I fear that I might not get a reply.

Who knows what is going on? None of it makes any real sense. The rumours of Petrov’s money mentioned a deal with Sberbank. It is headquartered in Moscow not St Petersburg, but its chairman is German Gref, a former government minister, who worked with Putin between 2000 and 2007… but would he really agree such a mad loan? And would Lopez really accept such a deal?

Hey-ho. It’s a colourful world, isn’t it?

The future of Campos Meta 1

There have been endless rumours in recent days about the future of the much-trumpeted Campos Meta 1, Spain’s first Formula 1 team. The concept was clear. The team would be small and Spanish-based; the chassis would be built in Italy by Dallara Automobili in Varano de´Melegari; the engine would be built in Britain by Cosworth in Northampton; the gearbox by Xtrac Limited in Thatcham. The car would be a modern Formula 1 kit-car. The main budget would go on paying the three suppliers and the team would be small and compact. One day, when things were better established, the team would move to a new factory and build its own cars.

Thus the key was to kind a budget and for that Adrian Campos (above) did a deal with Enrique Rodríguez de Castro (below), the boss of a sports marketing company in Madrid, which did a range of different things and made money doing it.

In order to get the whole process off the ground it seems that the team also brought in an investor in Jose Ramon Carabante (below), a businessman who had been a sponsor of the basketball team CB Murcia and indeed the entire Spanish basketball league. He has decent fortune and a celebrated art collection.

The team signed up Bruno Senna, and it seems that this was designed to attract Brazilian sponsorship and to give the team a “name”. Senna is a Formula 1 novice, but the name is known throughout the world.

On paper therefore the package was sound and solid. At the time the entries were announced in fact it seemed the most sensible of all the projects, Dallara put together a team of engineers independent of his normal chassis building business and the word is that the deal was for the firm to be paid $19m per year to build the cars. According to the rumours the first payment was not met in full and since then Dallara has been pushing for its money, which is perfectly reasonable. It seems that Campos and Rodriguez are unable to find it.

There may well be a contract between the two parties, but there will come a point at which Dallara will need to cut its losses and either sell the cars to another organisation – which would finish off any dreams that Campos Meta 1 have of being in Formula 1 in 2010 and leave them with little option but to get what they could by selling the entry to the only person who is going to be bidding for it: Stefan GP. That will be worth nothing if the cars are no longer available.

Campos is rumoured to have been close to doing a deal with former A1GP boss Tony Teixeira, but obviously no money has arrived because otherwise there would not be a problem. Given Teixeira’s record with A1GP there is no reason to suggest that the money will ever arrive.

Interpreting the Formula 1 rules

One of the problems with making new rules in Formula 1 is that these are open to interpretation by the engineers of the different competing teams and they may not agree on what a rule means. They may see something that another team has done and realise that they should have done the same and that it will be a few months before they can copy such systems and become competitive – and so, in order to clear the air (on the one hand) and to muddy the waters on the other (to protect themselves from their own bosses) they argue that rival systems are illegal and protest them. The FIA then decides what is a legal interpretation and what is not legal and once that has been done, everyone builds suitable devices and all is well. It is a cyclical process but one which tends to upset the early months of an F1 season. One can argue perhaps that the rules should be better written but this is not always possible – and, in any case, a little diversity of thinking in no bad thing. A little controversy is not always a bad thing – it depends on the kind of controversy…

After the first test the engineers have now had a chance to look at the different interpretations of the current double diffuser rule and some are grumbling that they think others have pushed too far into “the grey areas”. This may need to be sorted out with some kind of a protest in Bahrain. It is a necessary evil, but not one that is necessarily bad for the sport.

Social networking in Formula 1…

On the right here you will see a thing that says “An Evening with Joe”. If you have not already read about it, I would like to explain what it is. This is a Friday evening and with the weekend ahead there is not going to be much Formula One news… A while ago (in December) I found myself facing a missed connection at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. I complained that it would be a dull evening and almost immediately I received a number of offers to meet for a drink. This amazed me. When I mentioned that I was surprised I was informed by my dear readers that I should not be surprised and that many of them would like to meet up for a drink and a chat about Formula 1. One even suggested I should make it a commercial enterprise. I thought about it, concluded it was a fun idea and this year I am intending to hold events at a number of Grands Prix and indeed any where where 100 fans can gather who would appreciate a drink or two and a chat about the sport. The very first event will be in London on Friday February 26. The venue will be the Engine Group at 60 Great Portland Street, not far from Oxford Circus, and tickets are limited. They are not sold out yet but they are moving along and things are looking promising. The plan is for the event to begin with a complimentary welcome drink at 7pm and this will be followed by an introductory chat, questions and answers and then afterwards a chance to talk informally on any subject you care to mention. If you want to head off to have dinner then feel free – but I will be available until 11pm. I hope it is a fun event. I think it will be and I’d love to hear more from the fans. You guys can listen to me talking on the Sidepodcasts that I do, but i would like to hear from you a little more.

And what better way to do that than in a convivial atmosphere…