F1′s governing body has played down claims Sebastian Vettel faces a penalty for his behaviour during the Malaysian grand prix.

After the race, the reigning world champion dismissed HRT’s Narain Karthikeyan as an “idiot” following their on-track collision.

On-board footage subsequently proved that Red Bull driver Vettel, 24, twice showed his Indian driver a ‘middle finger’ salute.

Reports in Germany suggested the behaviour was a breach of the stricter code of conduct under FIA president Jean Todt, with the German theoretically facing anything from a warning to the revocation of his superlicense.

“My understanding is these matters are dealt with by stewards at each grand prix,” an FIA spokesman told us. “I am not aware of any other action being contemplated.”

Karthikeyan, who was penalised after the clash, told the Hindustan Times newspaper that the stewards favoured world champion Vettel’s explanation.

“They (the stewards) didn’t care about what I had to say because Mr Vettel told them god knows what when he went and talked to them,” he said.

But Red Bull team boss Christian Horner defended Vettel, telling the Mirror that it is “Karthikeyan’s responsibility to get out of the way for the leaders”.

Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg, meanwhile, partly excused Vettel’s outbursts.

“I think Vettel was just emotional at that point of time. At the end of the day, he is just human and sometimes you get emotional,” the German is quoted by the Times of India.

Former driver Adrian Sutil goes even further.

“I can understand him (Vettel),” he told Die Welt newspaper in Germany. “I was often angry when I was lapping people, when they make no room for you while they are fighting for places that have almost no significance.

“Karthikeyan ended up influencing not only Vettel’s race, but also Jenson Button’s. They (backmarkers) have to understand that as well.”

Adrian Sutil has admitted that discovering Lewis Hamilton was not a friend was one of life’s “disappointments”.

Since their F3 days as teammates, Sutil and Hamilton have been arguably the closest pair of friends in the formula one paddock.

That changed, however, when the German driver was charged with assaulting Lotus team executive Eric Lux, and Hamilton was summoned as a witness to the Shanghai nightclub incident.

But Briton Hamilton declined to appear and also changed his mobile phone number without informing Sutil.

Sutil and his father reacted by calling the McLaren driver “pathetic” and a “coward”.

When asked about his former close friend, Sutil told Die Welt newspaper: “Basically I only had a problem with one person, which was Mr Lux.

“He has offered me his hand and said that for him, the issue is finished.

“What Lewis Hamilton does is not decisive for my ambitions to get back to formula one. Just as with defeats, you have to deal with disappointments, it’s as simple as that.

“I think no one should expect to find any friends in the paddock — and I don’t look for them there either. I have enough friends outside of F1,” added Sutil.

The FIA could sanction F1′s reigning back-to-back world champion for his behaviour during the recent Malaysian grand prix.

Before calling backmarker Narain Karthikeyan a “gherkin” and “idiot” in the wake of their collision, Sebastian Vettel was captured by his on-board camera twice displaying his middle-finger to the Indian driver.

“I think he’s highly frustrated because he’s having a tough season,” Karthikeyan told the Deccan Chronicle on Wednesday.

“It’s completely unprofessional to blame me for the incident. The derogatory remark only goes to show him in bad light.

“Just because he has a good car, he can’t call others an idiot,” Karthikeyan continued.

“I have won races in all the previous single-seater championships I have participated in so I don’t need a certificate from Vettel.”

Reports in Germany, including in the Kolner Express, Bild and Die Welt newspapers, claim that Red Bull driver’s behaviour may have breached the new stricter code of conduct introduced by FIA president Jean Todt.

The FIA has been contacted for comment.

“He has breached the code of conduct,” former F1 driver Marc Surer told Germany’s Sky television. “You sign it when you get the license and then you have to behave correspondingly.

“Any behaviour that hurts other people or the sport is an offense,” added the Swiss.

Asked what the penalties might be, Surer explained: “Anything from a warning to a license revocation. In this case I think it was quite understandable and there will be a mild punishment, if there is anything.”

Hans-Joachim Stuck, however, is slightly less forgiving.

“When you’re overtaking, misunderstandings can occur. I think Vettel needs to learn this.

“With him, the curve was always upwards and now it’s not the case, and he needs to deal with that,” the German legend told the DAPD news agency.

As for Vettel’s description of Karthikeyan as a “gherkin”, Stuck insisted: “It’s better than ‘asshole’.”

Vettel’s attack, however, was sustained, with Kleine Zeitung newspaper now quoting the Red Bull driver as having said: “Maybe formula one is not the place to learn how to drive.”

Stuck responded: “If Sebastian had left more space, it would not have happened. It happens sometimes so it’s a racing incident.

“He (Karthikeyan) didn’t do it on purpose and it always takes two.”

The HRT driver hit back by calling Vettel a “bully”, and even David Coulthard – a Red Bull team consultant – defended Karthikeyan.

“He can’t make his car invisible,” the Scot is quoted as saying by the Mirror.

Also defending Karthikeyan was Force India driver Nico Hulkenberg, who told the Indian press this week: “From what I saw, it was not Narain’s fault.

“So I don’t really understand why he (Vettel) said all that.”

Hukenberg’s Force India teammate Paul di Resta added: “Narain is entitled to do as much on the track in comparison with someone like Vettel.

“Both are F1 drivers and are there to represent their teams.”

 Championship leader Jenson Button has admitted he is impressed with Sauber.
Button’s McLaren team is the dominant force of 2012 so far, ahead of Red Bull.

But not far behind the leading pack, the Briton argues, is the former BMW outfit from Hinwil, Switzerland.

“They have definitely impressed me,” Button is quoted by Die Welt newspaper. “They are very, very fast.”

Team boss Peter Sauber agrees: “We went into the season with great expectations. Now we know that we have a fast car.”

 Ferrari has fallen over by being too ambitious with the design of its 2012 car.
That is the assessment of Marc Surer, a former formula one driver from Switzerland who is now a pundit for German television Sky and the Die Welt newspaper.

He referred to Ferrari’s decision mid last year to abandon the 2011 car in order to restructure technically and philosophically and produce the radical F2012.

But the new car has proved unreliable and uncompetitive in testing, leading some analysts to predict Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa will this weekend be beaten by not only Red Bull and McLaren, but also Mercedes, Lotus and possibly even Sauber, Force India and Toro Rosso.

“They wanted to build an aggressive car, but they have changed too much,” Surer said.

“Now they have realised that it doesn’t work and are having to back-track with parts.

“For them, it’s a serious crisis. They’ll be lucky if they finish fourth”, he added, referring to the constructors’ championship.

Alonso, however, sounded confident in Melbourne on Thursday.

“In winter testing, we see some teams that are quite quick and then when we arrive at the race they are not quick anymore.

“Maybe we didn’t reach targets that were very optimistic but that doesn’t mean we are slower than the other cars,” he warned.

The precise pecking-order is clouded, but one thing is clear: 2012 looks set to be a highly competitive season in formula one.
“There are a lot of cars out there that look competitive,” said McLaren’s Jenson Button, on the day Williams’ Pastor Maldonado set the quickest time in the midst of the second group test in Barcelona.

Earlier this week, Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg was the pacesetter, causing Mercedes’ Norbert Haug to tell Bild newspaper: “That’s great.”

“I didn’t expect that,” agreed world champion Sebastian Vettel.

Hulkenberg smiled: “‘Test champion’ gives me nothing. But I am in good shape.”

Vettel continued to Kleine Zeitung newspaper: “This year everything is closer together”, he said, after his teammate Mark Webber admitted there is “no question” Red Bull needs to keep working on the pace of its new RB8.

According to Die Welt newspaper, Vettel continued: “Most of the competitors are difficult to assess. It’s the same old game.”

He is referring to unknown fuel levels, tyre age and differing approaches and programmes — and teams’ deliberate sandbagging or ‘show-run’ efforts.

“I never paid too much attention to direct comparisons on headline laptimes,” insisted David Coulthard, “but on the longer runs you can start to build a picture.”

Williams engineer Mark Gillan told Auto Motor und Sport: “It seems as though the entire field has moved much closer together. It will be a tough fight.”

An early assessment of the pecking order might have Red Bull and McLaren at the front, and Mercedes and Lotus possibly ready to join the fight.

“It looks like Red Bull are fairly stable,” Coulthard agreed to Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency, “(and) McLaren and Mercedes maybe closer than they were.

“Ferrari is a bit of an unknown but I wouldn’t write them off. Let’s be patient, another three weeks of tweaking and then we’ll find out,” said the former McLaren and Red Bull driver.

 Paddock insiders already have a name for Mercedes’ new front wing innovation — ‘W-duct’.
We have reported that the German marque has already tested the F-duct style concept at the front of its newly-launched W03 car.

The Finnish broadcaster MTV3, describing the system as ‘W-duct’, has provided some detail as to how it works.

When the car is being driven in a straight line, air flows into the tip of the silver car’s nose and is dispersed in a W-like pattern across the length of the front wing.

But when the car is cornering, the air flows more predominantly to one side or the other, improving the balance and handling.

Unlike the driver-operated rear wing F-duct, which was banned for 2011, Mercedes’ system is entirely passive and requires no moving parts, and is therefore legal.

Meanwhile, team boss Ross Brawn on Tuesday defended Mercedes’ strategy of employing numerous technical bosses, including Aldo Costa, Bob Bell and Geoff Willis.

“How it works is a mystery to me,” Red Bull’s Dr Helmut Marko told Die Welt newspaper, “but Mercedes must know what they’re doing.”

 Bernie Ecclestone has admitted that formula one destroyed his long marriage.
The F1 chief executive was married to Slavica, the mother of his two daughters, for almost 25 years until 2009.

“I have worked very, very hard for formula one and probably so intensively that it destroyed my marriage,” Ecclestone, to turn 81 on Friday, told Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

“I’m too busy and I enjoy what I do,” he explained. “Most of the time I work from nine to six, and even then in the evenings, seven days a week.

“She (Slavica) was not happy about it. I tortured her with my work for 25 years and now she travels around the world like there’s no tomorrow. She’s trying to catch up,” said Ecclestone.

Asked if he ever goes on holiday, the diminutive Briton answered: “Very rarely, and not for long anyway. Ten days off was the most I’ve done in 50 years. I don’t need to rest.”

Jenson Button has travelled to Japan as the only driver apart from Sebastian Vettel still mathematically able to clinch the 2011 title.
But the Briton, who wears Japanese characters on his helmet and whose girlfriend is the model Jessica Michibata, told Die Welt newspaper that he knows German Vettel is the sure winner.

“There is no need to build sandcastles in the sky and kid ourselves,” said Button. “It’s really been clear for quite some time that Sebastian has earned the title. He’s been so strong all season.”

Even if Vettel cannot secure the tenth place he needs for the championship at Suzuka, McLaren’s Button would have to win in order to stay in the fight for Korea.

“On paper, I think it (Suzuka) will suit the Red Bulls, particularly in the high speed sweeps,” 31-year-old Button admitted, “but we showed at Spa that we also have a car that’s very effective in high speed corners.”

Timo Glock has denied he might throw in the towel, also playing down suggestions his patience with Virgin is running low.
Updates to the German’s MVR-02 car failed to work properly in Turkey, and he then did not even make the grid due to a gearbox failure that could not be fixed in time.

“Every weekend we seem to start at the beginning,” Glock was quoted as saying in Istanbul by Die Welt newspaper.

“I somehow have the feeling that we could save all the test driving and just have a coffee instead,” he added.

But in an interview with Sport1, Glock denied that his ‘coffee’ comment was a stark criticism of the struggling team.

“It had nothing to do with the team,” he insisted.

“I had told a journalist that it was difficult to understand why we had so many problems with the deterioration with the tyres, but the issue looked very different for the actual race,” said Glock.

“I was commenting generally on the tyre situation, but it was neither a criticism of the team or of Pirelli. I read the (coffee) comment but it was never explained what I meant.

“That’s why I was surprised that it was portrayed so clumsily,” explained Glock.

However, he does not hide the fact that he is disappointed, after joining the start-up team following Toyota’s withdrawal from formula one.

“I knew it would be a difficult first year but we all hoped to make a big step forward and we didn’t quite make it. We need to ask ourselves and understand why we are not on par with Lotus,” said Glock.

As for whether he has considered throwing in the towel, the 29-year-old insisted: “No, never. We must keep going together as a team.

“It’s going to be difficult but we have to do all we can to come forward. That’s the only goal we can have at the moment.”

Virgin will attempt to get to the bottom of its problems with the Turkey upgrade during a straightline test at the Idiada facility in Spain this weekend.

Jarno Trulli’s losing streak in qualifying is the first time he has been outpaced four times on the trot.
The Italian is a veteran of approaching 250 races and until very recently was hailed as arguably the best driver in formula one over a single flying lap.

But in 2011 at Team Lotus, Heikki Kovalainen has outqualified him in every qualifying session so far — a feat not even managed by Trulli’s former Renault teammate Fernando Alonso.

Faced with the ignominious “first” by Finland’s Turun Sanomat newspaper, the 36-year-old hit back: “But this is also the first time in my career I have had a succession of technical problems in qualifying.”

Lotus confirmed that the moveable rear wing ‘DRS’ system on Trulli’s T128 was not working properly on Saturday.

Another palpably disillusioned driver in Turkey is Timo Glock, who after suffering at the back with Virgin was desperately awaiting an expected 1.5 second per lap boost with this weekend’s upgrade.

But the new parts, particularly the Red Bull-style exhaust, did not work and Glock ultimately ended up slower than his teammate Jerome d’Ambrosio who is still driving the old car.

“Every weekend we seem to start at the beginning,” the German is quoted by Die Welt newspaper.

“I somehow have the feeling that we could save all the test driving and just have a coffee instead.”

A race cockpit vacancy might soon open up at Toro Rosso.

The Faenza based team is owned by Dietrich Mateschitz and billed as Red Bull’s junior driver outfit, currently fielding youngsters Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari.

The pair have been confirmed for the 2011 season, but there was earlier some confusion as to whether both Buemi and Alguersuari will ultimately line up on next year’s grid.

The Toro Rosso lineup is now once again the subject of speculation, after the leading driver of Red Bull’s current crop of up-and-comers – Australian Daniel Ricciardo – so impressed with his pace in the RB6 in Abu Dhabi last week.

The 21-year-old’s programme for 2011 has not yet been decided, but neither Ricciardo nor his boss Dr Helmut Marko are ruling out a move into formula one.

“We pushed Bernoldi, Klien, Liuzzi and Speed without a breakthrough,” Marko said in Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.

“Daniel Ricciardo is the next top talent.  A new Vettel?  I don’t know,” he added.

Next year, Ricciardo – Red Bull’s F1 reserve in 2010 and second in the Renault World Series – might have a chance to prove himself.

When asked to assess the progress of Buemi and Alguersuari in 2010, Toro Rosso team boss Franz Tost hinted that Swiss Buemi, 22, has now had enough time to prove whether he belongs in F1.

“At the beginning of the season he scored points and had a really good level of performance.  But at the end of the season he struggled a bit,” Tost is quoted by redbull.com.

On the other hand, Tost said Spaniard Alguersuari has improved “step by step” and “is on the correct path”.

When asked about driver continuity for 2011, Tost continued: “Well, you never know what will happen in formula one.  Our main priority is building a successful car.

“Regarding drivers and continuity, we will see,” added the Austrian.

Sebastian Vettel’s championship bonus tallies a cool EUR 3 million, according to the German newspaper Bild.

It emerged after Red Bull won the 2010 constructors’ championship that the team is paying its entire staff – more than 500 people – a healthy monetary bonus.

Reports said the bonus is 10,000 British pounds each.

But Bild claims that only basic employees are receiving the EUR 12,000, with higher-paid engineers all getting up to 50,000.

The newspaper said the bonuses are costing Red Bull millions, “and champion Vettel is getting three of them”.

Bild said Red Bull Racing’s total championship windfall under the prize-money clauses of the Concorde Agreement is a whopping EUR 73 million, payable in four instalments.

Team owner Dietrich Mateschitz told Die Welt newspaper that formula one team budgets currently range between “probably 100 and 500 million euros”.

“Our budget is roughly in the lower mid-range,” said the billionaire.

Gerd Noack has denied reports that Michael Schumacher played a financial role in supporting Sebastian Vettel’s early career.

Since Vettel secured the 2010 title, the German media has published photos of the German as a boy together with Schumacher, who in the mid 90s was winning titles with Benetton and switching to Ferrari.

“I must clarify a tale,” said Noack, the chairman of the Kerpen kart track who is credited for discovering and supporting the young Vettel, as well as Schumacher years earlier.

“It is often said that Michael was not only a good friend but also a financial supporter of Vettel.  That’s not true,” he wrote in Die Welt newspaper.

“Yes, we asked him for his help, but from Michael’s side it never came.  He was probably too busy with his own career to think about the younger guys,” added Noack.

He said it was a struggle to keep Vettel’s racing afloat in the early days.

“When I think of his first contract with Red Bull, I laugh — it was four digits,” revealed Noack.

“But a start was made so that a big talent would not be lost under the wheels, while the big car makers were blind.  I know of one F1 team boss who for years wanted me to believe that Vettel would come to nothing,” he added.

“Now he is world champion.”

It will be “difficult” for Sebastian Vettel to defend his title in 2011 because Fernando Alonso is F1′s best driver.

That is the view of 63-year-old Brazilian Emerson Fittipaldi, who like Spaniard Alonso is a double world champion.

When asked by Germany’s Die Welt newspaper if German youngster Vettel will win again in 2011, he answered: “It is possible, but it will certainly be very difficult.

“Ferrari will be improving their car for 2011 to make up the little missing piece from this season.

“And Fernando Alonso is currently the most complete driver,” insisted Fittipaldi.

“He has so much experience and as much ambition, and he doesn’t like to lose,” he said.

Fittipaldi also thinks Michael Schumacher will be back to full strength in 2011.

“Before the race in Sao Paulo I had breakfast with (Mercedes bosses) Ross Brawn and Norbert Haug and they assured me that the next car will better meet Michael’s style.”

“I believe in Michael Schumacher,” he admitted.

“I remember having a talk with Ayrton Senna when Michael was at Benetton. Ayrton found it extremely hard to race against him. That, you do not lose. I won my last major race when I was 49.”