Despite a difficult winter for the Marussia team, Timo Glock is in a positive mood as he travels to Australia for the 2012 season.
The former Virgin squad struggled to get its new car through the FIA’s mandatory crash tests, which according to new rules meant the MR01 was grounded throughout the official pre-season period.

Indeed, the Russian website F1News quotes technical consultant Pat Symonds as saying the “last two months were the most difficult of my 20 years in formula one”.

Due to a testing loophole allowing some running on demonstration Pirelli tyres, the Cosworth-powered car finally made its debut over two days of ‘promotional filming’ early this week at Silverstone.

“The basis is definitely good; the first test miles were really good,” German Glock is quoted by the German-language Speed Week.

“The car did exactly what we expected from it. The data we recorded corresponded exactly to what we had calculated previously,” he added.

The report said Glock will travel to Australia on Friday, with his 30th birthday set to coincide exactly with the start of the new season.

Symonds added: “There is still much to be done, but it is a long term project and so I hope that we move forward step by step.”

 Marussia’s 2012 car will be on the Melbourne grid next weekend, after the MR01 finally passed a missing FIA crash test.
The former Virgin team’s Cosworth-powered car sat out the entire official pre-season period due to a new regulation in 2012 requiring single seaters to be fully homologated before they can even be tested.

The MR01 finally made its track debut on Monday and Tuesday, due to a loophole allowing limited running on demonstration Pirelli tyres for filming purposes even when the mandatory crash tests have not been passed.

But finally, late on Tuesday, Marussia announced that the crash tests have now all been passed.

“After a challenging few weeks for the team, we are pleased to have overcome the last hurdle of the final FIA observed crash test, which we passed today,” said technical consultant Pat Symonds.

“Whilst we have a lot of catching up to do, we take heart from the fact that everything is back on a more positive trajectory,” Renault’s former engineering director added.

Marussia’s 2012 car made its track debut on Monday, despite having failed to pass all the mandatory FIA crash tests.
But because the action at Silverstone is the team’s ‘filming and promotional’ pre-season running, rather than an official test, it was allowed by the governing body and rival teams.

Designed by former Renault man Pat Symonds, the MR01 – fitted on Monday with demonstration Pirelli tyres – does not feature a ‘step nose’, uniquely in common with technical partner McLaren’s 2012 solution.

“It has been a long and frustrating wait for everyone in the team but we can now get back on track and start working towards the first race of the season in Australia next weekend,” said team boss John Booth.

The car must now pass the missing FIA crash test before Melbourne, and Symonds sounds hopeful.

“The component in question has actually passed an ‘unobserved’ crash test but has been performing inconsistently in the observed tests,” he is quoted by Reuters.

Also for a filming day, HRT’s 2012 car is making its debut on Monday, at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Marussia Racing’s new MR01 finally made its first on-track appearance during a promotional ‘filming’ day at Silverstone, just a few miles from is Banbury base.

The Anglo-Russian team endured a torrid time in its attempts to get the car ready for the third and final group test at Barcelona last week, having skipped the opening session in Jerez to prepare the MR01 for early March, only to fail the mandatory FIA crash tests. Although both Timo Glock and rookie Charles Pic got some miles under their belts in Barcelona last month, it was at the wheel of the 2011-spec car, leaving them preciously short of time in the new machine ahead of its race debut in Melbourne next weekend.

The Silverstone shakedown, part of a promotional event ahead of the car’s departure for the Australian Grand Prix, will provide both team and driver with vital information on the new machine, which has been conceived after a ground-up re-evaluation of the way Marussia designs its racing cars. As such, the car is almost entirely new, with very few carry-over components from last year’s Marussia Virgin MVR-02.

The desire to make a clean break from the previous CFD-only creations presented the design team, led by technical consultant Pat Symonds, with the challenge of going back to basics to produce a solid mechanical package, whilst maintaining an eye towards achieving the incremental performance steps required to move the team forward.

The starting point for the design programme was a consideration of the people and resources available to the Banbury-based team. The former three-base operation has been consolidated into one site, the Marussia Technical Centre in Banbury, bringing the various elements of the business together to form ‘one team’. In particular, the design department and practices now benefit from far greater integration and collaboration. Furthermore, the aerodynamic department has been completely restructured and the aero methodology reinforced, blurring the boundaries between CFD and experimental work in the wind tunnel, as well as enhancing the fidelity of the team’s aero approach.

The technical partnership forged with McLaren Applied Technologies in July of last year has also been influential in the design process and the relationship is starting to yield benefit as the advanced facilities that the Marussia team has access to have been used to prove the correlation process with the MVR-02. It is however early in the relationship and the MR01 will become a beneficiary of the relationship in due course.

The key design priorities were to address previous aerodynamic deficiencies and, mechanically, achieve greater weight saving. At the same time, a lot of the detail of the car has been refined and the design team have been a little more adventurous than before, stepping closer to the engineering boundaries. The car can best be described as a significant evolution of its predecessors. The relationship with McLaren is also evident, as the MR01 is only the second car launched this season, after the Woking giant’s MP4-27, to eschew the stepped nose concept favoured by the rest of the field.

“We are very pleased to be running the new MR01 for the first time this morning,” team principal John Booth admitted, “It has been a long and frustrating wait for everyone in the team, but we can now get back on track – literally – and start working towards the first race of the season in Australia next weekend.

“Today is the first of two promotional events, so while the drivers will be able to get a feel for the car, they won’t be able to draw any real conclusions until we start running in anger in Melbourne. Nevertheless, this is an important day for us and we’ll enjoy every minute on track with the new car.”

Glock turned the first laps with the MR01, beginning his third season with the team and providing the all-important element of continuity required to keep moving the package forward. He is joined in 2012 by Frenchman Pic, who embarks on his rookie year in F1, having made the step up from GP2 to replace Belgium’s Jerome d’Ambrosio. Both drivers will get track time with the new car over the next two days, albeit running on demonstration tyres as opposed to the Pirelli P-Zeros that they will use once competition starts in Melbourne.

David Coulthard will not be driving a formula one car on the streets of 2012 US grand prix host city Austin this weekend.

The 13-time F1 race winner was slated to drive the Red Bull show car pending the approval of a city filming permit.

“Due to feasibility, a formal formula one show car demonstration that is open to the public will not be executed this week,” the energy drink company said in a statement.

Red Bull, whose F1 show car is already in the US, added that it is “excited about the upcoming US grand prix … and eager to drive awareness of the race and the sport in general to a broad audience”.

Hong Kong has taken its “first step” towards the formula one calendar.
That step was a F1 single seater demonstration put on by Red Bull in the Chinese city-state featuring Jaime Alguersuari.

Automobile association president Wesley Wan is quoted by AFP as admitting Hong Kong is interested in staging a proper grand prix “one day”.

“This is the first step in gaining the support of the people,” he told the South China Morning Post.

“My dream is that Hong Kong, like Singapore, Malaysia and China, will be a stop on the grand prix circuit,” added Wan.

He revealed that Hong Kong was singled out as a potential F1 venue prior to 1997.

“And as far as a street circuit is concerned, if Monte Carlo and Singapore can have it, why can’t Hong Kong?” he said.

Reports on Friday also said former F1 hosts Argentina, eyeing the renovation of the Velociudad circuit in Zarate, and Mexico, which was recently visited by Charlie Whiting, have been earmarked as potential future venues for grands prix.

The Mexican link is particularly interesting, given the involvement at Sauber this year of the world’s richest man Carlos Slim, who is already backing the Swiss team’s Mexican rookie Sergio Perez.

After sitting out Canada in the wake of his Monaco qualifying crash and hospitalisation, 21-year-old Perez said on Friday he hopes to return next weekend.

“I feel perfectly well and I’m very much looking forward to racing in Valencia,” he said.

Renault on Thursday confirmed reports that its 2011 car will be launched on the eve of the forthcoming pre-season group test at Valencia.

Most teams are planning to reveal their new cars shortly before the major session beginning on 1 February at Cheste, on the outskirts of the Spanish port city.

“The Lotus Renault GP R31 will be officially unveiled on 31 January in Valencia. More info to follow,” Renault confirmed on Thursday.

On the same day – a Monday – Sauber has booked the same Ricardo Tormo circuit to present its 2011 car the C30, including some maiden demonstration laps.

F1 drivers and engineers canvassed Karun Chandhok for his impression of this weekend’s new grand prix venue in Korea, the Indian has revealed.

Chandhok, 26, contested the first half of 2010 with the HRT team, and was later deployed by Red Bull to the new – then incomplete – Yeongam layout for a demonstration in an F1 car.

So, as the only driver in the world to have completed real laps in Korea, Chandhok revealed to Reuters that title contenders Mark Webber and Jenson Button have asked him about the circuit’s nuances.

“You’d expect people to be calling, really,” said Chandhok, who is not travelling to Korea this week.

The report said technical people from various teams, and his former teammate Bruno Senna, also asked Chandhok questions about his laps in Korea.

“To be fair, a lot of people have very good simulators and they have a lot of faith in their simulators and simulation software,” he explained.

“I think a lot of them tend to believe that more than anything else.”

But he said Australian Webber spoke to him about Korea.

“Obviously he was very curious to see what I thought about the place and what the circuit was like,” said Chandhok.

And a more recent discussion was with Button.

“We were chatting about this and that and he was quite curious about Korea,” added the Indian, revealing that the McLaren driver asked him about the camber of the corners.

“I think some of that stuff is not so apparent until you get there. So he had questions about that sort of stuff,” said Chandhok.

Bernie Ecclestone on Sunday sounded defiant amid reports Korea is not ready to welcome formula one.

Yeongam, about a four hour drive from Seoul, is scheduled to host its inaugural grand prix late next month.

Karun Chandhok did the first demonstration laps of the track on Saturday in a Red Bull, admitting that the venue is not yet complete.

Photos showed some buildings and grandstands are half built, fences missing, run-off areas unpaved and the track with only an initial layer of asphalt.

“How can a grand prix take place here?” wondered the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, captioning a photo of a construction worker carrying materials against the backdrop of a half-built building.

The newspaper said even a full supply of water and electricity is not yet present.

Additionally, many seats in the main grandstand are not installed, while parking lots are not ready to accommodate cars.

“There are problems,” admitted F1 chief executive Ecclestone, “but we assume that the race can take place.

“The circuit is definitely ready, but as for all the buildings, perhaps not,” admitted the Briton.

“So we may have to put up some tents,” Ecclestone joked.

Moscow has raced back into the running to host a Russian grand prix.

A few days ago, F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said Russia “has got to go on the calendar. We will do it the year after next in Sochi,” the Briton told the Independent.

Ecclestone said earlier this year that up to three Russian venues are under consideration but that there is a “big push” from the resort city Sochi.

But as reigning world champion Jenson Button and Russian driver Vitaly Petrov demonstrated F1 cars in the Russian capital at the weekend, reports emerged from Moscow that the government has decided to stage a grand prix in 2012.

Moscow official Vladimir Makarov said Hermann Tilke will devise an ultra-fast street circuit with the Kremlin in the background.

“A city like Moscow deserves its own grand prix,” said Derk Sauer, an official with the F1 demonstration organisers Bavaria City Racing.

“The contracts have not been signed yet, but a major step has been taken.”