Jean-Eric Vergne will race formula one veteran Jean Alesi’s helmet design this weekend in Monaco.

It is Vergne’s tribute to his French countryman as former Ferrari and Sauber driver Alesi, 47, this weekend becomes the youngest ever rookie in the Indy 500.

Vergne, 22, had planned to watch Alesi from Indianapolis’ fabled stands, “but then came the news I was driving for Toro Rosso and of course that meant a clash with Monaco”.

Alesi starts the Indy 500 from 33rd and last, with the vastly-underpowered Lotus engine.

Romain Grosjean has admitted he didn’t try to keep his teammate Kimi Raikkonen behind him at the recent Bahrain grand prix.

In the wake of Lotus’ podium breakthrough, it was suggested Frenchman Grosjean was the victim of team orders.

Team figures, including boss Eric Boullier and 2007 world champion Raikkonen who finished the race second ahead of rookie Grosjean, denied the charge, even though team orders are fully legal.

But it emerged this week that, just before Grosjean was passed by Raikkonen, the French driver was told on the radio: “Kimi is faster than you.

“Do not hold him up,” the radio message, broadcasted for the first time by F1′s official website this week, ended.

Onboard footage of the move also showed Raikkonen briefly waving to his teammate as he completed the easy pass, ostensibly to thank him.

“I think that if I had closed the door on Kimi, or if we had fought, then I could have lost a wing,” Grosjean said this week.

“We knew that we could have a podium as a result and I didn’t want to make a mistake. I didn’t race at my best level,” he admitted to RMC.

Olivier Panis is happy with the early progress of French rookie Charles Pic’s 2012 season.

Panis, the 1996 Monaco grand prix winner and veteran of over 150 formula one races, now manages the career of 22-year-old Pic on behalf of the Lagardere group.

“I had the chance to talk with Ron Dennis on the grid,” the former Toyota racer and McLaren test driver Panis told RMC, “as he had come to see him (Pic).

“It shows that nobody is indifferent to what he is doing so far.”

Panis, 45, revealed that Pic is also spending “a lot of time” in McLaren’s driver simulator, thanks to the technical agreement between Marussia and McLaren.

“He is building an image slowly, which is positive. He has earned the respect of the paddock, and now we have to continue,” Panis added.

 Timo Glock is hoping McLaren’s driver simulator is accurate.
That’s because he is relying on that data in hoping his 2012 car – the new Cosworth-powered Marussia MR01 – is fast enough to beat F1′s 107 per cent qualifying cut-off.

If not, he and rookie teammate Charles Pic could be left out of Sunday’s season opening Australian grand prix.

Some promotional running on demo Pirelli tyres aside, the MR01 sat out the entire pre-season period because it twice failed to pass one of the FIA’s mandatory crash tests.

“As it (the testing) was on the demo tyres, I can’t say much. The feeling was very good, but it’s just a feeling,” said Glock.

In addition to the Silverstone shakedown, he has done three days at the wheel of the car in the virtual world, thanks to the former Virgin team’s technology deal with McLaren.

In the McLaren simulator, German Glock said the car was fast enough to qualify for races.

“But I’m cautious,” he said, “because we do not have much experience with the simulator.”

Meanwhile, HRT is pushing to get a final shipment of components to Melbourne in order to put together a second 2012 chassis.

“If there’s a flight delay, it could be we miss P1,” Pedro de la Rosa told the BBC.

 Toro Rosso has told its new drivers to push hard rather than fear a crash, Daniel Ricciardo revealed ahead of his first home grand prix in Australia.
The Red Bull rookie team has replaced Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi with Australian Ricciardo and newcomer Jean-Eric Vergne.

They are lined up as potential replacements for senior team Red Bull’s Mark Webber in 2013, but at the same time must fear succumbing to the same fate as their instantly-axed predecessors.

“We’re going to be on the edge,” Ricciardo insisted in Melbourne.

“They (his bosses) have said ‘if you make a mistake, it happens. At least we know you’re pushing it’.

“Obviously we’re not going out there trying to crash the car, but sometimes a team needs to see you go off – whether it’s a crash or you run across the grass – to know that you’re trying to find that limit.

“I’m not going to hold back,” he promised.

When ruling out Lewis Hamilton for Webber’s seat earlier this week, Christian Horner said Red Bull was more likely to look “inwardly than outwardly” should the team need to find a new teammate for Sebastian Vettel.

At the same time, Ricciardo feels the pressure to keep his place at Toro Rosso.

“It could be my one and only (year) if it’s not good enough so I’ve definitely got to step up and do as good as I can,” he said.

 Marussia needs to get the basics right before worrying about KERS, Timo Glock explained on the eve of the 2012 season.
The experienced German, and his rookie teammate Charles Pic, enter the new season with essentially no testing, after the former Virgin team struggled to push its new car – the MR01 – through the FIA’s mandatory crash tests.

Last year, the Cosworth-powered team was soundly beaten by its closest rival Team Lotus, who as well as changing its name to Caterham for 2012 has also added a Red Bull KERS system to its Renault-powered package.

“On the subject of KERS, it is of course a disadvantage not to have it,” Glock is quoted by the SID news agency.

“But we have said that our focus is right to first get rid of the four seconds of aerodynamic deficit, before we worry about the money and the manpower we need for five tenths with the KERS,” added Glock.

“We have to get the foundation right first,” said the almost 30-year-old.

 Daniel Ricciardo has admitted he will earn less than $500,000 in 2012.
And the Australian rookie also confirmed that, when he made his grand prix debut last year with HRT, his sponsor Red Bull paid him only for the race seat, not a salary.

“Yeah, it’s quite a strange journey to formula one because it’s so elite and when you get there it can turn around very quickly,” he told Australia’s Fox channel.

“(On) the road to getting there, you’re always climbing a ladder, but you don’t really see the rewards until you get well established,” the 22-year-old added.

Ricciardo told television host Eddie McGuire that Toro Rosso will pay him some money in 2012.

“A little bit,” he smiled. “Let’s say I can buy myself a pair of jeans now, but not a mansion.”

He confirmed he is earning “less than” half a million dollars.

Some of that has already been spent — on a set of dental braces.

“I figured, just to keep my feet on the ground, I won’t get too beautiful,” Ricciardo laughed to the Herald Sun. “So I’ve got a mouth full of beautiful metal instead.”

Mark Webber is yet to secure his place at Red Bull for the 2013 season.
Team boss Christian Horner said the Australian has a “spring in his step” after a strong winter following Sebastian Vettel’s dominance last year.

But as for the future, he said that will only be discussed “in the summer”.

“We’ve extended his contract on a year by year basis, I think that’s something that Mark and the team agreed was the right way forward,” Horner told Sky Sports.

“His motivation is high at the moment, he’s still delivering and undoubtedly will sit down later in the summer to discuss the future.”

The biggest threats to 35-year-old Webber’s place are rookie team Toro Rosso’s new signings, Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne.

Horner admitted the young duo is “being groomed for the future”.

But the real tension for Webber will be in the Red Bull garage, as another trouncing by Vettel could signal the end of his tenure.

“(Vettel is) probably one of the best, if not the best driver on the grid at the moment and that’s what Mark Webber’s got to come up against, unfortunately,” 1980 world champion Alan Jones told News Limited newspapers.

“This is why I think Mark’s really got to come out of the blocks flying, he’s got to come out firing.”

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.

Charles Pic’s situation leading into his rookie season in formula one is “sad and frustrating”.

That is the claim of his manager Olivier Panis, the 1996 Monaco grand prix winner and former Toyota racer and McLaren test driver.

His well-sponsored countryman Pic, 22, will debut in Melbourne this month alongside the experienced Timo Glock, having never turned a wheel in his 2012 car.

Ahead of next weekend’s season opener, the new Marussia is yet to pass all the FIA crash tests, which has left the former Virgin team grounded throughout February’s test period.

“It’s sad and frustrating,” admitted Panis, when asked about Pic’s situation.

“The beginning will be difficult for him,” he told RMC.

For F1′s backmarkers, including HRT who have also struggled through the winter, the tougher crash tests are just another hurdle, atop tackling the financial might of rival giants like Ferrari and Red Bull.

The sport’s chief executive Bernie Ecclestone is unapologetic.

“If we tried to make things less complicated, you will always find the guys at the top looking for that tenth of a second.

“That’s the difference between the winners and losers,” he told the Sun newspaper.

 Rubens Barrichello has finally confirmed reports he will race in America’s premier open wheeler Indycar series in 2012.
After 19 consecutive seasons in formula one, the 39-year-old Brazilian makes the switch with the backing of the sponsor BMC Brasil Maquinas.

AP news agency said Barrichello, a winner of 11 grands prix with Ferrari and Brawn, has signed a one-year contract with the KV team.

“I’m loving the idea I’m going to be a rookie,” he said. “That makes me young, and I’m loving that,” he said.

Barrichello, meanwhile, explained the apparent contradiction of heading into the Indy 500 and other similar events this year having earlier promised his wife he would never race at high speed on dangerous ovals.

“What happened is we were watching an oval race and there was a crash and she looked at me and said ‘You are never going to do that, right?’

“And I told her at the time, ‘Of course not, don’t worry’.”

He said he ultimately won Silvana’s backing, having initially considered skipping the five oval races.

But “I wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting at home and watching someone else driving my car,” explained Barrichello.

 Sebastien Buemi has revealed surprise and disappointment with Toro Rosso’s reaction, after the Italian team performed a clean sweep of its driver lineup for 2012.
The Swiss and his teammate Jaime Alguersuari were given their marching orders just before Christmas, leaving the aforementioned Spaniard without a role this season.

Buemi has at least kept his F1 career alive with the Red Bull reserve role, but the 23-year-old has expressed disappointment with comments made recently by his former team boss Franz Tost.

“Of course I would prefer to race for myself,” he told the Blick newspaper, “but maybe this new role is the opportunity of my life.”

At the same time, he takes issue with Austrian Tost, who is appointed to head Red Bull’s rookie team Toro Rosso.

He said recently: “We are talking about a double world championship-winning team (Red Bull), which means that drivers who get elevated there must have the ability to win races and championships.

“And it was from that perspective that second thoughts set in when it came to Sebastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari,” said Tost.

Buemi responded: “After we were put out, Alguersuari and I said not a single bad word about Toro Rosso, we were always loyal.

“So I am amazed that from the boss there comes suddenly such negative comments.”

 Jaime Alguersuari has told his fans he “will return” to formula one despite not having a seat on the 2012 grid.
Along with Sebastien Buemi, who moved to Red Bull’s reserve role, Spaniard Alguersuari was dumped by the energy drink company’s rookie team Toro Rosso.

A Barcelona native, the 21-year-old’s fans showed their support by displaying banners as the Circuit de Catalunya test began on Tuesday.

“I did nothing wrong, but I wasn’t killed either,” Alguersuari told the Italian magazine Autosprint. “I’m only 21 and I did my best with the equipment I had.”

One of the men who replaced Alguersuari, Daniel Ricciardo, backed Red Bull’s decision to make a clean-sweep of the Toro Rosso lineup for 2012.

“The only reason they kick you out is if you are not performing. And then you probably don’t deserve to be world champion,” the Australian is quoted by The Sun newspaper.

“That’s just the business we’re in.”

But Keke Rosberg, the 1982 world champion and Mercedes driver Nico’s father, criticised Red Bull for not giving Alguersuari a fair chance.

“They (Alguersuari and Buemi) had been there for three years and they (Red Bull) didn’t think they would go all the way to the top, so I understand if Red Bull wants to do something else.

“What I don’t understand is why the decision was made so late, when there was not anything else available for them.

“If someone says in June that they no longer need your services the following year, that’s fair. Then you have the time to find a new job.

“Buemi would probably have found something, if he’d have had more time,” added Rosberg.

 Toro Rosso’s new drivers look set to be given longer than just a single season to prove they can step up to the senior Red Bull team.
Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne have replaced the Faenza based team’s 2011 lineup and are tipped as likely contenders to oust the Australian veteran Mark Webber at Red Bull Racing next year.

But Franz Tost, Toro Rosso’s team principal, said a 2013 promotion for either Ricciardo or Vergne is unlikely.

“I have no idea. But I doubt it, as the level of Red Bull Racing is extremely high,” he told F1′s official website.

“So my guess is that they will have to wait a little more. So far Mark has not given any hint that he is thinking of retirement.”

Tost said Red Bull will only be looking for a driver with the ‘wow-effect’ to replace Webber, so 2013 could be too soon for Australian Ricciardo, or the French rookie Vergne.

“In general I would say that this wow-effect is not so easily manageable in a first season,” said the Austrian. “But it definitely has to be delivered in the second season.

“I don’t have a problem when a driver has a good race and at the next race he has a shunt — that’s part of the game. Both drivers will have a ‘crash period’ but that is part of their development phase,” he insisted.

“It was the same with Sebastian Vettel. But at some point they have to get their game together — and the question is who will be better at doing that? Let’s wait and see.”

Jean-Eric Vergne has predicted a good season ahead for Toro Rosso.
Along with Daniel Ricciardo, French rookie Vergne makes up the Red Bull junior team’s new driver lineup, following the ousting at the end of last season of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi.

Perhaps because their prize could be Mark Webber’s seat at the senior team in 2013, Ricciardo and Vergne set almost identical laptimes last week at Jerez as the new STR7 was tested for the first time.

And according to 21-year-old Vergne, the Ferrari powered car showed promising form overall.

“We hope to be one of the strongest teams in the middle of the classification,” he is quoted by the Italian website Tuttosport.

At the same time, Vergne is not getting carried away ahead of eight pre-season test days in Barcelona, starting next week.

“Barcelona could be different as Jerez was rather cold and the surface is very abrasive. I don’t think there’s much difference between the teams.”

Vergne is quoted by France’s L’Equipe: “What Jerez showed us I think is that we have a good basis.”