Formula 1's Latest Rumours and Talk: McLaren-Honda Podiums, Red Bull, More
Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai is refusing to give up on his dream of seeing a McLaren on the Formula One podium in 2015.
The once-mighty team have just five points to their name after nine races, with Jenson Button's eighth place at Monaco by far their best result so far. But Arai is pinning his hopes on forthcoming performance upgrades—and more power could also be found if reliability issues are solved.
Red Bull are also experiencing difficulty with their power unit, and Daniel Ricciardo has said the Renault lump is having a significant impact on how the rest of the car behaves.
He revealed the RB11 has only been able to do one race in 2015 with an optimal downforce configuration as the team hunt for more straight-line speed.
Elsewhere, Max Verstappen has said he is a quicker and more confident driver after his huge crash at Monaco, Carlos Sainz Jr. backs the upcoming start procedure changes and Emerson Fittipaldi feels modern drivers should be allowed to speak their minds.
Read on for a full roundup of the top stories from the last few days.
Honda Still Chasing 2015 Podium Finish
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Honda still believe a podium finish with McLaren in 2015 is possible despite the team's woeful form so far.
Jenson Button's eighth-place in Monaco remains their best result of the season, and Fernando Alonso's weather-assisted 10th in Silverstone was their only other score. But Honda motorsport chief Yasuhisa Arai remains optimistic.
Asked if he still thought a top three finish could happen this year, he told Chris Medland of F1i:
"Yes. I hope so and I wish for it. I think it’s a realistic target. I think our power unit concept is good enough to get a podium.
Whether it will be soon or we will need more time, I don’t know, but our target has not changed. I think our direction is a very good direction and by changing some areas relating to the combustion we can get some more power.
"
F1 teams and those associated with them tend to present overwhelmingly positive outlooks when speaking publicly, but this seems to be taking that to the extreme.
Had Arai said it earlier in the season—after Bahrain or China, perhaps—it wouldn't have sounded too silly, but McLaren-Honda don't appear to have made any genuine progress relative to the competition since the second race of the year.
They still have the second-slowest package, and the power unit remains highly unreliable.
But maybe there's a minuscule chance Arai's hopes could become reality. On Tuesday, Eric Boullier told the official F1 website the car would be "seconds faster" if McLaren were able to run their optimal downforce levels.
He added that at least some of their horsepower deficit is down to being unable to run the unit at full power due to reliability concerns.
Though Honda only have seven tokens remaining to spend on performance enhancements, reliability fixes are free. If the stars align and every single upgrade Honda try works perfectly, maybe Alonso or Button could grab a podium at the end of the year.
Daniel Ricciardo Details Red Bull's Renault-Induced Compromises
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Daniel Ricciardo has said the poor Renault power unit in his RB11 is harming the performance of the car in every area.
Prior to 2014, Red Bulls typically had excellent cornering abilities that made up for any small power deficits to their rivals.
However, since the start of 2014, they have had so much less grunt than Mercedes (and now Ferrari) that they have been forced to run less downforce in order to attain sufficiently competitive straight-line speeds.
Last year it was noticeable, but in 2015 the team have fallen back even further—and Ricciardo said it's primarily down to the engine affecting the rest of the car. He is quoted by Autosport's Ben Anderson and Mitchell Adam, saying:
"This year we've struggled a bit more in braking, I don't think we've had as much feeling with the car under braking.
I would say we've got some of that back, so that's coming, and I think a lot of it's rear grip, to be honest.
I think it starts with traction, but [corner] entries, every driver will say the same—you can never have enough.
Even when I watch onboards of the Mercedes, they still have some slides here and there.
A lot of the stuff comes back I guess to compromising for loss of power.
In a debrief we'll complain the car is sliding and we can't get it to turn in here or there, and we're just not able to run as much downforce with the loss of power.
Maybe we feel the car isn't great in some areas, but I don't feel we're running it at its optimum level.
Monaco was really the first place we could bolt everything on it, and it was our most competitive race.
"
Monaco was indeed their most competitive race, but they were still a long way behind Mercedes.
Ricciardo was quickest of the Red Bulls in qualifying, his best lap 1.26 per cent slower than pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton. This compares very favourably with the gap at power-reliant Canada, where the quickest Red Bull, this time Daniil Kvyat's, was 2.27 per cent slower in qualifying.
But even that smaller Monaco gap represents almost a full second over a lap barely two miles long, and that can't just be down to the engine. A fair portion of the blame must lie with the chassis itself.
Qualifying data sourced from the official F1 website.
Emerson Fittipaldi Slams Conduct of Modern F1 Drivers
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Emerson Fittipaldi has slammed the way in which modern F1 drivers conduct themselves in public and when speaking to the press, branding them "robots" and devoid of personality.
Speaking in an interview with motorsport.com, Fittipaldi—a two-time world champion in the 1970s—didn't mince his own words. He said:
"I think communication is a big part of this. If there's one word they should be allowed, it is 'freedom'.
In the United States, everyone talks about 'freedom of speech'.
If you drive for Ferrari, for example, before the press conference you will be told 'you cannot say this' or 'you should not say that'. That's s--t!
Am I a robot? Or am I a personality? That's what is missing.
"
He went on to say the drivers should feel free to openly criticise their teams and added:
"Formula One, the PR guys, they should allow drivers to say more.
In my time, I had a 20-year commercial relationship with Philip Morris, and I knew exactly what to say, but I could say anything. It still allowed my personality to come though. I had freedom of speech, and that means everything.
Don't blame the drivers, because they're in a different environment from my time, but that should change. They cannot express themselves.
This is sport, and the atmosphere of sport should never be damaged by what the athletes are allowed to say.
"
The sight of a team member, hovering behind the driver with a recording device, ensuring everything said is within tightly set boundaries, is now common.
The drivers enthuse about the country and welcoming people wherever they go, "win together and lose together" and produce frustratingly bland responses to almost every question they are asked.
We get occasional glimpses of bad blood between drivers, but that's about it. The pit crew are perfect, team principals are flawless lords and whatever product their sponsor is trying to sell is the best thing since sliced bread.
But in that respect, is F1 different to any other professional sport?
Footballers seem to be reading off scripts in most of their interviews, and if one dares to publicly criticise his team-mates or manager, he'll probably be either dropped or sold.
Even individual sportsmen—such as top tennis players or elite golfers—are very careful to always come across as personable, gracious and polite. Rory McIlroy doesn't finish third in a tournament, walk off the course and say, "Well, I would have won, but my Nike clubs are awful and my caddie is an idiot."
Doing so would alienate those closest to him and upon whom he relies—and public criticism from an F1 driver would do the same. Even given the freedom to publicly take a verbal baseball bat to strategy calls, engineers, mechanics or their bosses, they wouldn't do it because they need those people on their side to succeed.
It'd be great to know what they're really thinking, but the drivers aren't just looking after public relations when they hold their tongues. They're looking after themselves.
Max Verstappen Says Monaco Crash Made Him a Better Driver
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Max Verstappen said his heavy crash at the Monaco Grand Prix boosted his confidence—as well as his speed on the track.
The young Dutchman slammed into the rear of Romain Grosjean before hitting the barriers hard at St Devote. It was his first major shunt in F1, but three races later, he feels it did him a world of good.
Speaking to Brazil's Globo (h/t grandprix.com), Verstappen said of the crash:
"I didn't have time to think very much. The only thing I thought was to get ready for a very big impact.
After the accident, I understood more about the car, and F1. I realised, for example, that the car is really safe and you can really give everything.
After Monaco I had a leap of performance because I could change my concept of the limit.
"
Mental strength is a huge part of being a racing driver—hesitation caused by fear or worry of the consequences of getting it wrong costs vital tenths; overcoming it can make the difference between a long career and a short one.
The growth of such a fear led to Mika Hakkinen calling it a day in 2001 while close to the height of his powers. BBC Sport quoted the Finn as saying, "I thought that it's not worth it any more to push your luck further."
Verstappen looked fearless earlier in the season, exhibiting no hesitation while making some beautiful overtaking moves. He was also very quick around Monaco in first practice, despite having never driven there before.
It's hard to believe we were watching a driver who was lacking a little confidence and shying away from the true limit.
Carlos Sainz Jr. Backs Start Changes but Adds Note of Caution
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Carlos Sainz Jr. has added his backing to the decision to force the drivers to have a greater input on their own starts—but warned the complexity of modern cars could make the switch problematic.
Motorsport.com reports that from the Belgian Grand Prix onward, team radio traffic on reconnaissance and formation laps will be limited to safety related messages. This will prevent teams assisting the drivers with preparations for the start procedure.
In addition, clutch bite points may not be altered from the time the car leaves the pit lane for the first time prior to the race start.
Sainz agrees in principle with the change and said, as quoted on the official F1 website:
"I know zero details about what they want to ban, but if they want the driver to play a bigger role when the lights go out in terms of managing torque maps and things like that then I think it’s a positive thing.
If it’s more and more driver dependant and the driver can make a difference with his feelings and his calls, it’s more than welcome.
"
But despite his relative inexperience, he still knows more than enough to spot a potential problem. He added, "At the moment we have so many parameters [on the car]. It would be very difficult for the driver to choose one of a hundred [in order] to know how to do the best start."
Getting a modern F1 car off the line is nothing like starting a road car, and the driver has little real input in what happens. Lewis Hamilton was recently quoted by Sky Sports, explaining:
"At the moment, we release the clutch but the performance is really dictated from the team. They will tell you whether to go up or down on torque modes and all those kind of things and sometimes they calculate it right, sometimes they don't. And then sometimes there are other problems, like the one I had [in Austria].
"
Lotus reserve driver Jolyon Palmer told the same outlet, "It's so automated now for a driver. You know exactly what you need to do with the clutch paddles, the throttle pedal—you're all just driving to targets."
An example of the sort of message that will be banned was heard before the start of the British Grand Prix. F1 Fanatic records a Mercedes engineer telling Hamilton on formation lap, "Go strat five, brake balance and b-mig for turn one. I’ll tell you when to do the bite point."
Now he and the rest of the field will have to do all that all alone—except the bite point, which will have been set earlier.
The upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix will be the last under the "old" rules; Belgium, at the end of August, will be the first chance to see if the new rules make any difference at all.
But whether it has the desired effect or not, it's a shame they can't just ditch all the modes, maps and settings, give the drivers a clutch and an accelerator pedal and let them have 100 percent control over what happens.
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