The oddest element of the 2012 season so far is that the unlikeliest of candidates could now be genuine title contenders.

Before the Spanish grand prix weekend, Pastor Maldonado was a commonly derided ‘pay driver’ with 500-1 odds of winning in Barcelona, and just a single point to his name in 2011.

Now, he is F1′s newest pole-getter and race victor, and genuinely regarded as a potential contender for the world championship.

And Dr Helmut Marko, the reigning world champion Red Bull’s motor racing manager, said: “If the Williams really has traction that good, then Maldonado will run rings around everyone in Monte Carlo,” he is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.

Maldonado travelled straight from Spain to Caracus, where he was being quizzed by the local media as to his chances of a back-to-back victory repeat in Monaco next weekend.

“I think it’s going to be a great opportunity for us to be strong again,” he said.

Jaime Alguersuari has told Spanish publications he is “absolute certain” he will be on the 2013 grid.

“This is the best year of my life,” he told Mundo Deportivo, referring to 2012, the year after his young F1 career stalled when he was dropped by backer Red Bull.

“I’m only 22,” said Spaniard Alguersuari, who is now Pirelli’s main test driver and a co-commentator for British radio. “I’m in the prime of my life.

“It is increasingly clear that what happened with Toro Rosso was not a sporting decision. It was an internal decision and I don’t want to go deeper.”

He sounded confident about the future.

“It is 100 per cent that I will return in 2013. After being with Pirelli I will have very important knowledge. I knew that this transitionary step was necessary and I’m very happy,” said Alguersuari.

“If I had gone (to be test driver) with a team, with all due respect, I’d have no options now.

“I am developing a product (Pirelli) that nobody understands but that is vital for formula one — to know the tyres and to understand them. I’m in the right place,” he is quoted by La Vanguardia newspaper.

“I chose to be with Pirelli because I knew it would be the most important (element) in formula one.

“I know where I am and I know where I’ll be next year,” he insisted.

Montreal has been warned to spend around $15 million on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve or risk losing the Canadian grand prix.

La Presse reports that Bernie Ecclestone has said only a major redevelopment of the circuit will lead to talks about a new contract beyond 2014.

The report said that, in light of the F1 chief executive’s warning, Montreal mayor Gerald Tremblay has appealed to higher levels of government for the necessary money.

“Negotiations are underway between the three levels of government and the bodies of formula one”, the report said.

Race promoter Francois Dumontier told RDS: “It’s premature to talk about this.

“There are still two years to go on the current contract. We have started talking, but that it’s out now I find excessive. Honestly, I don’t know where it’s come from.”

He added: “Given that the permanent installations of the circuit, including the control tower and the garages, are nearly 25 years old, it is likely that their repair is an important element in the negotiations for an extension to the current agreement.

“But it seems to me to be premature to talk specific sums.”

McLaren looks set to run a higher nose this weekend in Spain.

Last week, at the very end of the Mugello test, test driver Oliver Turvey debuted a new front wing that featured a conspicuously higher nose tip.

McLaren, the early 2012 frontrunner but having struggled recently in Bahrain, was the only notable team this year to ignore the new design trend for ugly ‘stepped’ front noses, introduced as arguably the best solution to new nose-height safety regulations.

The MP4-27′s new nose does not feature a step element, but the tip is notably higher than its predecessor.

“Nowadays it is quite a critical part of the car, you’re looking to find very small improvements,” team boss Martin Whitmarsh said on Wednesday.

As for whether the new nose will be seen in Barcelona, he confirmed: “You may well see it again, yes.

“There’s a reasonable chance you’ll see it on Sunday.”

 Caterham’s team boss insists Vitaly Petrov is just as good as the experienced grand prix winner he replaced.
Just ahead of the 2012 season, Malaysian entrepreneur Tony Fernandes decided to oust former Monaco grand prix winner Jarno Trulli with Russian Petrov, the well-sponsored Russian and former Renault driver.

“I think he (Petrov) is as good a driver as Trulli, but he obviously brings a Russian commercial element,” Fernandes told the US cable news channel CNN.

“It gives us the ability to exploit commercial opportunities in Russia. We’ve watched Petrov very closely. He brings in sponsorship. He’s competent enough to be a second driver,” he added.

Fernandes, who also heads the Malaysian airline AirAsia and the English premier league club Queens Park Rangers, said Caterham is once again targeting tenth place in the constructors’ championship for 2012.

“We want to get into the midfield,” he confirmed. “We said it’s going to take us two years, we want to be tenth then we want to be racing.

“And looking at the times right now, we’re there or thereabouts. Maybe half a second, a second away from the midfield pack.”

 Vitaly Petrov has hit out again at his ‘pay-driver’ label, insisting even the highest paid driver on the grid has a similar arrangement with his team.
“I see no difference between myself and Alonso,” said the Russian, who has moved his lucrative backing from Renault (now Lotus) to the Caterham team for 2012.

His new appointment is controversial, given he has ousted the experienced veteran and former Monaco winner Jarno Trulli, who was the last Italian in F1.

Comparing himself with Alonso, Petrov told La Stampa newspaper: “Everyone knows that he is funded by the money from (Ferrari sponsor) Banco Santander.

“Anyway, you only get to F1 because of talent.”

And Petrov, 27, insists he does not feel sorry for Trulli.

“Life is hard,” the Italian newspaper quotes him as saying.

He admitted that having friends in F1 is impossible, whilst making some comments that will also not endear him to the sport’s Italian followers.

Asked to explain the rare absence of Italians on the grid, Petrov criticised the country’s junior categories and added: “Your drivers lack the passion.”

And as for Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo’s complaints about the dramatic role being played by aerodynamics in F1 at present, he answered: “When you’re not winning, it’s easy to complain.”

Petrov, however, lived in Italy in his past, revealing that his favourite elements of Italian life are “the food and the girls”.

But on the latter, he does not expect to be wheel-to-wheel with the opposite sex any time soon.

“They do not have the physical ability and also are not prepared for the high speeds. But everything in life is possible,” said Petrov.

 Luca di Montezemolo insists heads will not roll, as Ferrari looks set to race into the 2012 season without the chance of a podium.
The famous team wrote off last year’s championship early to focus on 2012 with an aggressive project, with new British technical chief Pat Fry in the spotlight.

But also feeling the pressure is team boss Stefano Domenicali, who said at the weekend that he has “the support of president Montezemolo”.

“I am not the one who designs the car: my task is to give my people everything they need in terms of organisation and structure,” said the Italian.

But Montezemolo denied that Ferrari will react in arguably typical fashion by making sweeping changes.

“I’ve always given my staff time and trust,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport. “We have not even begun and already you’re putting the people in doubt?

“Let’s not have that talk,” insisted the Ferrari president.

He admitted the F2012 has untapped potential.

“There are too few tests and unfortunately they are in public. But I would still wait before drawing conclusions about the title fight.

“According to the drivers, the F2012 has some negative elements, but also some positive. The problems have been identified and I hope they can be fixed quickly,” he added.

 Pedro de la Rosa has admitted he senses a little too much pessimism from the Ferrari camp.
Amid talk the famous team’s new F2012 car is a flop and needs to be substantially redesigned, the La Gazzetta dello Sport daily wondered recently: “Let’s hope it’s just pre-tactics.”

De la Rosa, the veteran Spanish driver for HRT, thinks there is an element of truth to that.

“They are better than people think,” he told Cadena Ser radio.

“On the other hand I know that there are teams that are stronger, but I wouldn’t rule out the podium — I assure you,” the 41-year-old insisted.

“What happens is you try to remove the pressure that is on you. As for me, I see Ferrari in a better shape than the sort of negative feeling that exists here in Spain.

“I think they have their problems like everyone else, but their car is faster than it seems.”

It was Pat Fry, Ferrari’s new technical director, who announced recently that the F2012 is not currently a podium contender.

“This is not something that goes through my head,” Felipe Massa admitted to reporters in Sao Paulo this week.

“It is true we tested a type of exhaust and realised it was not the right thing. But last year everyone was 90 per cent sure we would fight for the title and then we did not.

“I won’t hide that we are not 100 per cent satisfied with what we did in the three test sessions in Spain.

“But we have a very strong team and I have lots of faith in their capacity to be able to develop the chassis during the season,” he added.

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.

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 They are famously close on a personal level, but for the sake of his sport Bernie Ecclestone wants to see Sebastian Vettel suffer in 2012.
The Red Bull driver has won the past two championships on the trot, including last season when the title battle was over long before the finale.

“It wasn’t good. The only person that would say no to that would be Sebastian, but I think everybody else would agree with it,” F1 chief executive Ecclestone told reporters on Thursday.

He had just announced a new connectivity deal for F1 with Indian multinational Tata’s communications subsidiary.

The aim is to modernise F1 in that area because, as the 81-year-old puts it, he is “getting old” and was “asleep” to the world’s new digital era.

But more immediately important to Ecclestone is a better show in 2012.

“I’m surprised we survived with (the TV ratings) we got right at the end,” said the Briton, referring again to Vettel’s dominance. “We need to see everybody else wake up.”

Another element he hopes is in place this year is a fully-firing Lewis Hamilton, but Ecclestone admitted the 2008 world champion might have to farewell McLaren.

“I think if he doesn’t perform this year, he’ll be looking maybe to move on, and the team may also be looking for him to move on,” he said.

And yet another golden egg for Ecclestone would be a winning Michael Schumacher, but he admitted the seven time world champion might need to sit at the wheel of a Red Bull for that to happen.

“I don’t think Sebastian would mind,” he said.

“I’m not saying I don’t want Mark (Webber) around, I’m just saying it would be nice to see him (Schumacher) in the car where you know that if he doesn’t win it’s his fault, not the car.”

Less important, Ecclestone argues, is the rare absence in F1 of a single Italian driver.

“If Ferrari is winning,” he insisted, “it doesn’t make any difference.”

Indeed, there are bigger fish on the F1 supremo’s plate: the thorny issue of Bahrain’s return in 2012, and a looming fight with the teams over the next Concorde Agreement.

On Bahrain, he joked: “Pity I’m not going to be there myself but don’t worry. No, I shall be there, don’t worry.”

As for the teams wanting a bigger share of F1′s revenue pie, Ecclestone answered: “I think they are right. If they don’t ask they are not going to get (it), are they?”

But when asked to rate their chances of success, the Briton replied typically: “Slim to none.”

AUSTIN, Texas — February 13, 2012— Circuit of The Americas is the newest member of the Green Sports Alliance, a non-profit organization made up of more than 40 professional and collegiate sports teams and nearly 90 sports venues with a mission to help sports teams, venues and leagues enhance their environmental performance. Circuit of The Americas will be the first Formula One™ racing facility to become a member of the Alliance.
“Circuit of The Americas and the City of Austin have taken a bold stand with their sustainability plan for the sports and entertainment complex,” said Martin Tull, executive director of the Green Sports Alliance. “We welcome Circuit of The Americas into the Alliance and look forward to working with them.”
The Green Sports Alliance is a unique coalition of sports teams and venues, professional sport leagues, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other environmental and green building experts.
“I applaud the Circuit’s commitment to setting a standard for sustainability in North American motorsports,” said Lucia Athens, chief sustainability officer for the City of Austin. “Joining forces with the Green Sports Alliance will increase their green horsepower and put Austin on the map yet again for its leadership and innovation. The Green Sports Alliance has been providing expert technical assistance to many of the sports leagues, and can now assist motorsports in achieving greener results.”
Members in the Green Sports Alliance share best practices to improve the environmental performance of their venues, saving millions of dollars through energy and water conservation, waste reduction, recycling and composting. By tracking environmental performance, sports facilities learn how they compare to their counterparts and how to maximize sustainability efforts. Alliance members have reported reductions as high as 30 percent in energy usage, 60 percent in natural gas use and more than 20 percent in water use.
“We are excited to be collaborating with the best minds in sustainable facility management,” said Edgar Farrera, sustainability director at Circuit of The Americas. “We look forward to developing new approaches to environmentally sustainable operations at our facility and sharing what we learn with organizations and companies around the world.”
About the Green Sports Alliance
The Green Sports Alliance is a non-profit organization with a mission to help sports teams, venues and leagues enhance their environmental performance. Less than a year since its public launch, the Alliance is made up of representatives from over 40 teams from 13 leagues and 90 sports venues, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Protection Agency, Bonneville Environmental Foundation and many other organizations.
Its second annual conference, the Green Sports Alliance Summit, will be held on Sept. 5-7, 2012 and will bring together hundreds of facility operators, team executives, league officials,
environmental experts and corporate partners to discuss innovations in environmental performance.
For more information about the Green Sports Alliance visit: www.greensportsalliance.org.
About Circuit of The Americas
Circuit of The Americas will be a world-class destination for performance, education and business. It will be the first purpose-built Grand Prix facility in the United States designed for any and all classes of racing, from motor power to human power, and be the U.S. home to the 2012 FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX™ Nov. 16-18 and V8 SUPERCARS.
The Circuit of The Americas’ master plan features a variety of permanent structures designed for business, education, entertainment and race use. Its signature element will be a 3.4-mile circuit track with capacity for 120,000 fans. Other support buildings will include a medical facility, a conference center, a banquet hall as well as an expansive outdoor live music space. Future proposed amenities include a driving/riding experience, a motorsports driving club, kart track, grand plaza event center and tower, and a trackside recreational vehicle park.

 450 workers are pushing to enable Austin’s new Circuit of the Americas to be ready for the US grand prix later this year.
After the Texas project’s earlier hiccups, the rooves and walls of the paddock and medical buildings, media centre and main grandstand are now taking shape.

Another recent setback, however, was 2 inches of rain in the last ten days.

“We’ve got a lot of dry weather we know is going to be coming, and are hoping to be gaining some time,” said a contractor spokesman.

He revealed that the first layer of track asphalt will be poured around April “so we can get other elements, the tire barriers (and) the FIA fence going on”, he told the local Austin American Statesman.

The report said construction is scheduled to be essentially completed two months before the November 18 race.

Lotus team owner Gerard Lopez insists he is delighted with Kimi Raikkonen, despite earlier negotiations to secure the Finn’s services having foundered.
After a two year break to drive rallies and in Nascar, the 2007 world champion is back in formula one this year with the former Renault team.

“We had some contact with Kimi in 2010,” revealed Lopez, according to Finland’s Turun Sanomat newspaper.

Reports in 2010 linked Raikkonen with the Enstone based team, but the talks apparently soured after becoming public knowledge.

“I think (in 2010) he was still enjoying the challenge of rallying, giving the impression that he wanted to do it and F1 at the same time,” said Lopez.

He also hinted that 32-year-old Raikkonen considered money as a crucial element in the 2010 talks.

“This time everything was different,” he said. “I can assure you that Kimi came back because he wanted to race and that money was a side issue.”

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel, meanwhile, joked on Thursday when he was asked if he had seen his friend Raikkonen at Jerez after the Finn’s two days of running.

“I haven’t. I think he went straight to the bar,” Vettel laughed to the MTV3 broadcaster.