Two days after winning in Spain, Williams is scrambling to put together the equipment it needs to contest next weekend’s Monaco grand prix.

Mere hours after Pastor Maldonado secured the once-great British team’s first victory since 2004, a huge fire broke out in the pits, leaving one team member still in a Barcelona hospital with burns.

“His family are in constant communication and he is in good spirits,” Williams said in a media statement.

The Oxfordshire based team is now making efforts to ensure it can race in Monte Carlo, having lost a lot of equipment in the fire.

Mercifully, however, Bruno Senna’s car appears to have survived, with the Finnish broadcaster MTV3 saying an initial inspection of the chassis showed no devastating damage.

Maldonado’s winning car was in parc ferme at the time of the incident.

“We had a lot of damage and lost a lot of equipment, including IT equipment,” chief operations engineer Mark Gillan said, according to the Daily Mail.

“Over the next couple of days we will be looking at where we are parts-wise.

“We will have everything we need to run operationally at Monaco, but we may be missing a few of the extras because obviously we don’t carry a complete set of spares for everything,” he said.

It is believed more than one rival team has offered to help Williams by loaning the Sir Frank Williams-led outfit any equipment it needs.

A McLaren spokesman confirmed the Woking based team has offered to help.

Germany’s Bild newspaper said Williams’ damage bill runs into the millions.

Team manager Dickie Stanford denied a rumour the fire was caused by a cigarette in the vicinity of Senna’s fuel tank while it was being emptied.

“We don’t know the cause, but we would never allow smoking in the pits,” he insisted.

Williams and F1′s governing FIA are investigating.

Jun.12 (GMM)  Lewis Hamilton cracked Red Bull’s run of qualifying dominance on Saturday by securing pole position for the Canadian grand prix.

But the McLaren driver was using a different tyre in the decisive Q3 segment — the fragile ‘option’ or softer compound, as opposed to the harder ‘prime’ fitted to the next-best Red Bulls of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel.

The three prior practice sessions at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve proved that Bridgestone’s products are struggling this weekend; particularly the option.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said earlier in Montreal that it had fallen apart “like cheese” in Canada, moving some to surmise that by qualifying with it on Saturday, McLaren is gambling on an early safety car.

9 of the previous 12 Canadian grands prix have seen the safety car appear.

“We would hope for an early-ish safety car, but I think the quickest way to run the race anyway is to start on the soft tyre, run a short (first) stint, and run on the prime for most of the race.

“If there’s a safety car it’s a very strong strategy,” team boss Martin Whitmarsh told the BBC after qualifying.

However, Vettel told reporters that he thinks Red Bull is beginning the race on the “right tyre”, because the softer one lasts only “a couple of laps”.

Hamilton acknowledged that the option “goes off quite quickly” but raised the high “possibility of a safety car”.

The 25-year-old Briton had to be delivered to parc ferme in an FIA car, after his engineer told him to stop on the circuit on the in-lap so there is enough fuel left in the tank for a mandatory fuel sample.

“The FIA don’t take kindly to you not having enough fuel to get into the pits at the end of the lap — they’ll be taking a look at that,” predicted BBC commentator Martin Brundle.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso is fourth ahead of the second McLaren of Jenson Button, while Vitantonio Liuzzi qualified sixth in what Brundle describes as a “career saving performance”.

Jun.9 (GMM)  Jenson Button has played down claims that McLaren’s risky gamble with its fuel loads was the reason for the near-disaster during the Turkish grand prix.

It has emerged that because Lewis Hamilton and teammate Button chased the Red Bulls so hard at Istanbul Park, the drivers were instructed throughout the race to conserve fuel.

Button’s race engineer at one point described the situation as “critical”, shortly after Hamilton had slowed down too much and triggered their wheel-to-wheel battle for the lead.

Afterwards, Hamilton lamented the poor communication and Button was accused of ignoring veiled team orders, sparking the rejoinder that McLaren could have avoided the entire situation by simply running a less aggressive fuel strategy.

But speaking to the Toronto media on Tuesday, 30-year-old Button said the team is right to run the cars as light on fuel as possible.

“If you’re running with two and a half extra kilos in the car, that’s one tenth a lap, which over the course of the race is five seconds.  So you try to be as close on fuel as possible,” he insisted.

It is believed that Hamilton’s winning car had just one litre of fuel left in the tank after he pulled into parc ferme, while Button’s MP4-25 contained only slightly more.

Apr.19 (GMM) Felipe Massa was not happy with his Ferrari teammate Fernando Alonso in the wake of Sunday’s Chinese grand prix.

With Alonso facing the prospect of queuing in the pitlane for service behind the sister Ferrari, he overtook the Brazilian on the pit entry road, forcing Massa to take avoiding action on the grass.

Stefano Domenicali said afterwards that he only saw the incident later in a video replay, but Italian reports say the team’s boss threw his hands into the air when he saw the pass on the pitwall live.

The Italian said it had been “just a racing incident”, and played down suggestions of “problems” between the Latin pair.

But Brazilian reports said Massa was visibly upset with Alonso as they emerged from their cars in parc ferme, and reportedly only raised his eyebrows before refusing to comment when asked if he thought the Spaniard’s move was rude.

And he told Brazil’s Globo: “Alonso put his car next to mine and, when I saw him, I knew that we could have an accident. So I thought about the team and it made me lose more than three places.

“Of course I’ll talk to him,” Massa, 28, added.

Alonso, now three places ahead of former title leader Massa in the drivers’ standings, played down the incident.

“If he was not my teammate, there wouldn’t be so much talk about it and for me it was a normal move and it definitely won’t compromise our relationship,” he said.

The FIA’s rule clarification about adjustable ride-height mechanisms has no impact on Red Bull, boss Christian Horner and designer Adrian Newey insist.
Race winner Sebastian Vettel (GER) Red Bull Racing RB6 Formula One World Championship, Rd 3, Malaysian Grand Prix, Race, Sepang,

Race winner Sebastian Vettel drives into parc ferme after winning the Malaysian GP

Following speculation that the ride-height of the RB6 car is somehow being altered between qualifying and the race, the governing body said last week that such a system would theoretically be a breach of the regulations.

But Horner says the FIA is “completely happy” with the car after detailed inspections, adding that it will be transported to China in an identical mechanical specification to the one raced to first and second places in Malaysia.

And Newey told Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport: “We have neither an illegal, automatic system, nor a legal one like Ferrari’s which allows an adjustment at the pitstops.”
Adrian Newey (GBR) Red Bull Racing Chief Technical Officer with with Sebastian Vettel (GER) Red Bull Racing RB6. Formula One World Championship, Rd 2, Australian Grand Prix, Preparations, Albert Park, Melbourne,

Adrian Newey examines the RB6 cockpit with Sebastian Vettel

However, it also emerges that while Horner said recently he would welcome an FIA rule-tweak to legalise a ride-height change between qualifying and the race, Red Bull actually voted against the proposal.

Auto Motor und Sport said a second team also vetoed the rule change.

But the reason for Red Bull’s veto reportedly has nothing to do with a secret system aboard the RB6, but instead the fact that its design is more efficient than its rivals with both high and low ride-heights.

The team’s German driver Sebastian Vettel told Sport Bild magazine: “It is always the case in formula one that the fastest cars are observed closely by the competition.

“There is always speculation and it’s actually a compliment, because it shows that we are feared,” the 22-year-old added.