Despite not collecting a single point in Melbourne, the Williams team will travel from Australia to Malaysia in upbeat mood.
The famous British outfit’s slide from its race and title-winning days hit rock bottom in 2011, scoring just five points all season and only finishing ahead of the three struggling new teams in the constructors’ championship.

But Oxfordshire based Williams has restructured for the 2012 season and is now led technically by former McLaren chief designer Mike Coughlan, and in Australia the newly Renault-powered FW34 qualified comfortably in Q3.

In the race, Pastor Maldonado was pushing Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso for fifth place when he crashed heavily on the very last lap.

If he had made it round to the chequered flag, Williams would have scored more points in one hit than it managed all last season.

“The car was considerably better than anything I have seen in recent years,” said team chairman Adam Parr.

Referring to Maldonado’s crash, the team’s new driver mentor Alex Wurz told Austrian ORF television: “Of course nobody is happy.

“The bad news is that we have to leave with no points, but the team has made a huge leap forwards.”

Jaime Alguersuari, the former Toro Rosso driver turned radio co-commentator, called Williams’ step compared to 2011 “giant”.

“No doubt about it, Williams are the big surprise,” the Spaniard told Mundo Deportivo when asked about the new field of 2012.

“Last year their car was really, really, really bad, and so they have taken an exceptional leap.”

 Two teams are in danger of sitting out Sunday’s Australian grand prix.
“The idea, here, is to qualify for the race,” Marussia’s Timo Glock told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper from Melbourne.

The hurdle that the struggling former Virgin team – as well as HRT – must get over, is the 107 per cent rule in Q1.

It is an even higher hurdle than last year, because Pirelli has made its harder tyres softer in 2012 — meaning the difference between the tyres being used by the quickest cars and the slowest cars in Q1 will be smaller.

More bad news is that Red Bull has brought new parts to Australia that could make qualifying-specialist Sebastian Vettel even faster on Saturday.

“If that’s true then the qualifying test for us – with zero kilometres under our belts – is almost impossible,” admitted Glock.

At HRT, the situation is arguably worse — especially for Pedro de la Rosa, who was little more than a spectator on Friday as the Spanish team built up his Cosworth-powered car at the eleventh hour.

“Keep smiling, be patient,” he is quoted by Auto Motor Und Sport, when asked what his mantra is in Melbourne.

“We need to think more in the medium term. We are experiencing the birth of a new racing team.

“For us, this year is not just about getting the new car up and running — over the next months, we are taking the whole team to Madrid.

“At the moment we are still operating from Madrid, Valencia and Munich,” he explained.

The Spanish team’s new boss Luis Perez Sala agreed that qualifying at Albert Park is a big ask.

“For us it has been almost a success just to be here in Melbourne because it has been very tough,” he said on Friday.

As for the 107 per cent rule, “It will be difficult for us,” said the former Minardi driver.

“I’m not thinking now about the speed of the car, I’m just trying to get all the things done that we need to do as best as possible to get into (practice) tomorrow.”

He said HRT will try again next weekend, in Malaysia.

“I would like them (the team) to relax a bit and we will see. Malaysia? Shanghai? Whatever.”

Jaime Alguersuari has revealed he has heard bad news about Robert Kubica’s condition.
With official news about the injured Pole scarce, one of his friends said last week Kubica is close to returning to a normal life, raising hopes he might soon be back in formula one.

But former Toro Rosso driver Alguersuari has heard something very different.

“I think Robert is and was a fantastic driver, fast and complete. I am sure that he could have been a world champion without a doubt,” he said this week when he was revealed as a co-commentator for British radio in 2012.

“At the moment the latest information I have about him is not very good,” the Spaniard admitted. “He can not drink using his hand — I mean he cannot take a glass and drink, so it doesn’t look too good.”

Kubica, formerly with BMW and Renault, crashed during a minor Italian rally early last year, forcing a metal barrier through the car.

Alguersuari revealed that Kubica’s co-driver, Jakub Gerber, initially saw such horrific injuries that he “thought he (Kubica) was dead”.

More than a year on, “I think his injury is worse than expected,” the 21-year-old continued.

“Of course I would like him to come back, because without a doubt he deserves to be in F1.”

HRT team members had their fingers crossed this week that the 2012 car would pass the FIA’s mandatory crash tests.
Most of the Spanish team’s rivals have already begun testing their new single seaters, but at Jerez Pedro de la Rosa had to be content with the outdated 2011 machine.

“If it (the new car) passes (the FIA tests), we will have the car at the next test in Barcelona,” said the Spanish driver.

“It is very important that we pass the tests even though we know it’s not easy given that some top teams failed at the first attempt.

“We need every mile,” de la Rosa was quoted in Spanish reports.

But bad news about two of the crash tests emerged late on Thursday, meaning de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan will not get their hands on the 2012 car at the forthcoming Barcelona test.

New rules in 2012 mean teams cannot test their new cars until they are fully homologated by the FIA.

Bruno Senna’s stock fell in Korea, mere weeks before Renault is due to decide its driver lineup for 2012.
The Brazilian, who replaced Nick Heidfeld five races ago, had a horror weekend in Korea, qualifying seven places behind Vitaly Petrov and finishing just in front of a Lotus.

With three races to go this season, the team’s fifth place in the constructors’ championship is probably safe, given the 23 point advantage over Force India.

But looking ahead to 2012, with Petrov, Romain Grosjean, Rubens Barrichello and of course Robert Kubica all also in the running for the seats, Senna’s Korean performance was bad news for the 28-year-old.

In his five races since replacing Heidfeld, he has scored points (2) only at Monza.

And “Bruno’s 13th position (in Korea) doesn’t pay justice to the pace of the car”, said Renault engineer Ricardo Penteado in Korea.

An unnamed team official, meanwhile, told Germany’s Speed Week publication: “We need to analyse why Bruno Senna did not come up to speed.”

Organisers of the historic Italian grand prix are worried plans to take formula one to Rome will leave historic Monza without a race.

Both the Italian capital and Bernie Ecclestone insist the plans for a street race in the EUR district are no threat to Monza, but officials of the high speed Autodromo Nazionale are not so confident.

“Amid a globalisation of grands prix, each country will inevitably be allowed to stage only one” and “since Rome is the capital, I’m afraid we’d lose the grand prix forever,” Monza boss Enrico Ferrari told Bloomberg.

The Rome city council is due to meet this month to consider how to proceed with its F1 bid.

“Rome is known around the world for its history and landmarks, but we need an event that projects an image of Rome that’s not just about museums,” said city mayor Gianni Alemanno.

“We want to project a modern image and formula one would help us do that.”

F1 chief executive Ecclestone insists there is no deal yet.

“We haven’t got a contract yet for the event,” said the Briton.  “As soon as they get that, yes, yes, we can have a race, then let’s see if we can make it happen.”

Ecclestone said a deal with Rome would not necessarily be bad news for Monza.

“We have two events at the moment in Spain,” he explained.  “Let’s wait and see.  It’s still early days.”

Monza mayor Marco Mariani admitted he is worried.

“Politically speaking, Rome is far stronger than us,” he said.

Fernando Alonso on Saturday night qualified third for the Abu Dhabi grand prix, but on the pitwall Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was pumping the air in celebration.

If the Spaniard can just hold position on Sunday, he will win the 2010 world championship.

“We are in a strong position,” he confirmed.

Mark Webber is the big loser of the floodlit qualifying session, only doing enough to qualify fifth and apparently heading for just third in the drivers’ championship.

He positively leapt from his RB6 in parc ferme, got weighed in a hurry and headed straight out for his television interviews, managing to avoid all of his rivals.

“I’m not rapt of course but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet,” said the downbeat Australian.

Despite Sebastian Vettel being on pole position, the session is bad news overall for Red Bull. If the German goes on to win, he will lose the championship by 5 points.

“We got pole but no one else read the script,” said the team on Twitter.

As it stands, Vettel will not be able to deploy a voluntary team strategy during the race, because a couple of McLarens will be in the way — not to mention Alonso.

“I need to do a better job tomorrow,” Webber acknowledged.

Sebastian Vettel has rebuked his teammate’s suggestion that the time is nearing for Red Bull to choose a number 1 driver.

Mark Webber, just 3 points off the championship lead with six races to go, is 28 points clear of Vettel in the drivers’ standings.

After finishing second at Spa two weeks ago, the Australian suggested that Red Bull might be wise to favour him if the team wants to win the 2010 title.

But German Vettel, 23, hit back at that plan in an email interview with the Associated Press published on Thursday.

“For a driver this makes no sense — you don’t give up trying to win the championship until it’s mathematically impossible,” he said.

“For the team it makes no sense to favour one if that means penalising the other because you need both drivers scoring maximum points to win the constructors’ championship,” added Vettel.

“With two drivers close in the championship it is too dangerous to choose.”

The bad news for Vettel is that even Dr Helmut Marko, who is thought to get along with the young German more than with Webber, can see that it is in Red Bull’s interests to eventually back the driver with the best championship prospects.

“After Monza we will sit down all together and assess our championship chances,” the team consultant is quoted by Kleine Zeitung newspaper.