An obvious tension was evident at Mugello when Pirelli’s Paul Hembery was asked about Michael Schumacher.

The seven time world champion had slammed F1′s official supplier after Bahrain, arguing that the 2012 tyres degrade so quickly it makes driving a grand prix car as slow as a safety car.

“We haven’t spoken,” Briton Hembery is quoted by Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport. “I’ve just read something on the net about the tyres from his teammate Nico Rosberg which is very different.”

Asked if Schumacher’s criticism was irritating, he answered: “We built the tyres the way we were asked to.

“The FIA, Bernie Ecclestone, even the teams wanted it this way. The spokesman for the teams at the time was Ross Brawn, Schumacher’s team boss.

“There have been four different winners in the four races so far, which alone shows that we must have done something right,” Hembery insisted. “As a fan I would be thrilled.”

Asked if he can at least understand Schumacher’s frustration, he continued: “The four winners this year have not won by chance.

“They were absolutely the best drivers in those races and all of them were faster than their teammates.

“I can understand that Michael was frustrated at the last race. Among the four winners so far were two Germans, and then you had Kimi (Raikkonen), who in the fourth race of his comeback is on the podium.

“Racers are winners; they’re not happy unless they’re winning.”

Hembery denied that tyres have, in 2012, become more important than the cars or drivers.

“That’s a misconception,” he insisted. “The driver has a huge impact.

“Anyway I’m convinced that at Silverstone at the latest the teams will have the problem under control. Just as they did last year.”

Finally, he insisted that Pirelli is not going to make any knee-jerk reactions.

“If there are 23 drivers satisfied and only one dissatisfied, then I don’t think we need to change something,” Hembery is quoted by Bild newspaper.

Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, however, acknowledged a slight frustration.

“For the top teams it’s a bit frustrating,” he told La Stampa newspaper, “when it’s difficult to exploit all your potential.

“It’s like Real Madrid, Barcelona and AC Milan suddenly playing with the budget of Cesena.”

Pirelli test driver Lucas di Grassi has defended the F1 tyre supplier following Michael Schumacher’s criticism.

Schumacher attacked the Italian marque’s 2012 product after the Bahrain grand prix, complaining that the tyres wear so fast that drivers often have to take corners at half-pace like the safety car.

“In some ways he’s right,” Brazilian di Grassi, who along with Jaime Alguersuari tests tyres for Pirelli, is quoted by Globo.

“You can’t go at 100 per cent all the time because the current tyres are designed to highlight the strategy during the races.

“Drivers have to think more about what part of the race to make best use of the tyres,” said the former Virgin driver.

Di Grassi, 27, credited Pirelli for the exciting races seen so far in 2012.

“The championship is very balanced, which is good for everyone, especially the public,” he said.

“It’s partly because Pirelli has been able to use the data it collected last year and make good decisions for this year,” added di Grassi.

Also with a view contrary to Schumacher’s is the seven time world champion’s own teammate, Nico Rosberg.

“F1 has become more interesting,” said the Shanghai winner, “as everything has been shaken up — it’s much better than the same cars and drivers always driving away from the front,” he is quoted by German media.

“Due to the tyre situation, the races have been very varied, which is an extraordinary challenge but also very exciting. And we have to get used to it,” added Rosberg.

He does not agree with the seven time world champion, but Norbert Haug insists he can understand Michael Schumacher’s criticism of the current generation of Pirelli tyre.

Mercedes driver Schumacher slammed F1′s official supplier after last Sunday’s Bahrain grand prix, saying the 2012 tyres degrade so quickly that they are not good enough for the pinnacle of motor racing.

“We drive around like the safety car. It is not a satisfying situation,” he said.

Schumacher’s boss Haug, however, does not fully agree, insisting Pirelli has contributed to a “very great competition” in 2012 featuring “very good races”.

“Of course, for a driver, there is always a certain frustration when you think you could be going faster, but you are having to be careful,” Haug told German reporters including Sport1.

“That’s just the nature of the racer,” he added.

Haug said Schumacher’s comments also prove that Mercedes does not muzzle its drivers, who may freely express their personal opinions.

All this year’s title contenders know after four ‘flyaway’ races in 2012 is that they do not know what will happen in Spain next month.

“The only certainty is uncertainty,” read the German headline at Netzeitung.

With F1 generally regarded in the wider world as a sport with predictable results, this is an entirely new situation.

“The statistics show that it’s been nine years since there have been four different winners in the first four races,” said Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali.

Indeed, the famous Italian team as well as McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull have won the opening races of 2012, and also with potentially winning pace have been Lotus and Sauber.

“More than that,” continued Domenicali, “you have to go back 29 years to find the last time four different cars won.”

One explanation is that F1 has never been more competitive, with plenty of well-oiled teams and no fewer than six world champion drivers on the grid.

But Domenicali thinks Pirelli is the dominant factor.

And not everybody is happy about that. Michael Schumacher told Bild newspaper that this year’s tyres degrade so fast that rubber “flies from the rim” if he pushes too hard in a corner.

“We drive around like the safety car. It is not a satisfying situation,” the seven time world champion said.

Pirelli’s motor sport director Paul Hembery is unimpressed with the rebuke, insisting that the Italian marque is only trying to “make tyres that make the races exciting”.

“We cannot take individual drivers into consideration,” the Briton insisted.

“It would be dead easy for us to make tyres that don’t break down. Then the top ten would also be the top ten in the race.

“But no one wants to see boring processions,” Hembery claimed.

Agreed the Swiss headline at Blick: “Pirelli is sweeping away the boredom”.

Indeed, not even the other Mercedes driver, Shanghai winner Nico Rosberg, agrees with Schumacher.

“It’s total chaos. You don’t know who is going to be fast at the next track,” he is quoted by DPA agency. “Formula one has become almost unlike any other sport.

“Yes, you cannot drive any laps any more at full throttle. Often, it’s like driving on ice. But that’s a big and an interesting challenge,” said the German.

Undoubtedly exciting for the fans, but the teams are having to adapt quickly. Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport said on Sunday that Vettel’s victory could mean Red Bull resumes its dominant grip on F1.

Dr Helmut Marko doesn’t think so. “We don’t even know who our opponents are!” he exclaimed.

Formula one is likely to tweak the safety car rules for the 2012 season.
The team bosses got together in India last weekend to discuss forcing lapped drivers to pull ahead of the safety car and join the back of the queue.

When that rule was last in place, there were complaints that ‘cleaning up’ the string of cars behind the safety car took too long, according to Auto Motor und Sport.

But when the race finally resumed, there was no danger the slower cars could affect the contests at the head of the field.

“Both ways have their advantages and their disadvantages,” said Sauber team manager Beat Zehnder.

Fernando Alonso has blamed the British media for his image as a spoilt number 1 driver.

O Estado de S.Paulo correspondent Livio Oricchio asked the Spaniard if it is true that all is well inside his team so long as he does not share equal status with his teammate.

“That is a belief that was created in 2007,” said the Ferrari driver, referring to his ill-fated single season alongside Lewis Hamilton at McLaren.

“The reason was the contamination of the media, particularly the British.

“I have been in formula one for 11 years. For ten, I was the consummate professional,” he explained. “Engineers, mechanics and my teammates could not say a word against my professionalism.

“But in 2007, McLaren, the English press, week after week, contaminated our relationship, which was not bad. That is what led to this general impression about me.

“But nothing changes for me, my values stay the same. When I went onto the market, the offers I received were as great before and after 2007,” added Alonso.

Another perception is that Alonso, 30, is enjoying a position of privilege at Ferrari due to his links with main sponsor Santander, a Spanish bank.

“Good, no?” he laughed. “Everyone can talk and think what they like, it’s part of the sport — the media too, especially with the internet.”

F1′s next stop is Singapore, where Alonso won not only last year but also in 2008, when his Renault teammate Nelson Piquet deliberately crashed to bring out the safety car.

The Spaniard insists he still counts the victory among his best.

“There is something about the track that suits my driving style,” said Alonso. “I know it’s strange to you, but the victory of 2008 is just as special as the one of last year.”

Michael Schumacher is not as good as Sebastian Vettel or Nico Rosberg, but he’s still up to speed with Mark Webber.
That is the view of former ten time race winner Gerhard Berger, who until 1997 shared the circuits with F1′s only seven time world champion.

Der Spiegel quotes the Austrian as saying Schumacher, while once the fastest driver in the sport, no longer holds that mantle.

The case in point is qualifying, where Rosberg has utterly dominated Schumacher this year at Mercedes.

“In my opinion Rosberg is on the same level as Vettel; in the right car he could win races and titles,” said Berger.

“Schumacher can no longer beat them, but he is still as good as – for example – Mark Webber.”

Berger is therefore highly critical of the apparent place-swapping between Rosberg and Schumacher at Spa recently, with the younger German dropping behind to save fuel while Schumacher drove ahead on the 20th anniversary of his debut.

Norbert Haug denies Mercedes imposed team orders, also insisting that Schumacher “would not accept such gifts”.

But given the safety car period in Belgium, the German team’s claim about Rosberg running out of fuel has been ridiculed.

Former Sauber driver Karl Wendlinger told Servus TV: “Without the safety car you would have to believe that Rosberg would have run out of gas with ten laps to go.”

Added Ferrari engineer Dieter Gundel: “It is possible to make an error in calculating the fuel level before a race, but you then have to wonder why Mercedes made the error only with one car.”

Red Bull’s competition director Helmut Marko told the APA news agency that the development of Pirelli’s tyres this year will be crucial.

“There are going to be a lot more tyre pistops this year and when the safety car comes out at a bad time, the middle class teams could benefit,” he said.

The Austrian acknowledged that the teams and Bernie Ecclestone pushed for more tyre degradation to improve the show, but he said Pirelli has “not yet found the right balance”.

“From the middle of the season they will get it under control, so it should not be decisive for the entire year,” he added.

Fernando Alonso agrees that the Pirelli factor has perhaps been overstated recently.

“The best and fastest car will still win the title,” he is quoted by Autosprint.

“Strategy is going to be important, and a couple of times it will happen that maybe the fastest one has the wrong strategy.

“But over 19 races, the most important thing is to have a fast car,” added the Ferrari driver.

Last Sunday’s Abu Dhabi season finale was a significant moment in the history of the F1 safety car.

The first deployment of the sport’s permanent safety car was 250 grands prix ago, at Magny Cours in 1996.

“That was my company car,” recalled current safety car driver Bernd Maylander, referring to the C36 AMG used for that race in France.

According to Motorsport-Magazin.com, the car deployed for that debut race even featured Maylander’s personalised number plate ‘S-BM 300′.

Of the 250 races, the Mercedes safety car – spanning nine separate models and currently the gull-wing SLS AMG – was deployed 135 times.

Red Bull’s policy of driver equality ultimately helped Sebastian Vettel to win the 2010 drivers’ world championship.

In the days and weeks leading into the Abu Dhabi finale, numerous commentators chided the team’s reluctance to make points leader Mark Webber the de facto number 1, including by switching the finishing order in Brazil.

It would have meant Red Bull went into battle last weekend “with only one driver with a chance instead of two — and probably the wrong driver,” said Dr Helmut Marko.

And “It is always better to have two strings to one’s bow instead of one”, added the energy drink company’s motor sport consultant.

It has been suggested that the equality policy confused Ferrari when Red Bull split its two drivers’ race strategies after the early safety car in Abu Dhabi.

“Our policy of allowing the drivers to compete got us into the position where they (Ferrari) had to worry about two of our drivers and not just one,” said Adrian Newey, the designer of the RB6.

“It depended on whether they wanted to cover Mark for the championship or Sebastian for the championship,” he added. “In the end they chose to cover the wrong one.”

Niki Lauda, who was one of the strongest voices in favour of the use of team orders before Abu Dhabi, conceded on Monday that Red Bull actually made the right call — and an honourable one.

“‘Didi’ (Dietrich Mateschitz) said he would do it like the Olympic Games, but F1 is not the Olympics.

“It’s incredible how this team won in the end in the most correct way,” the triple world champion is quoted by Kleine Zeitung newspaper in Austria.

“For me, it’s unique in the 60 year history of the sport,” added Lauda.

“If there were only two, three politicians who acted like Mr Mateschitz, we would be in a better place,” he said.

Sebastian Vettel cried into his radio under the Abu Dhabi lights on Sunday as he crossed the finish line and became F1′s youngest ever world champion.

The 23-year-old German, now leading the standings for the very first time in his career, had entered the race as the underdog, behind Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber in points and dogged all weekend with suggestions he should move over and let his teammate past.

But Vettel won commandingly from pole position, while a crucial strategy mistake triggered by an early safety car, and an unmoveable Vitaly Petrov in a Renault, left Ferrari’s Alonso stranded in seventh place.

Spaniard Alonso let his emotions spill over as he gesticulated angrily at Russian Petrov after the chequered flag, but he later congratulated the new champion and said Petrov “drove very well” in defence.

Former long-time championship leader Webber, meanwhile, finished the race just eighth and the championship just third, and was emotional in his post-race interviews with the media.

Asked by the BBC if he will be back in 2011, he answered simply: “Yeah.”

The Formula 1 debut in South Korea on Sunday was the first in Yeongam water. Heavy rain made it impossible to drive safely, so it could really kick in until late.

Several safety car periods dominated the race, which in the course of Sebastian Vettel in the fight for the world title first developed very beneficial – until he was forced to retire shortly before the end of the race with a technical defect.

The victory won after a number of cases the stars of the track Fernando Alonso in Ferrari, which thus takes over in the World Cup standings lead. To second place Lewis Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes came in ahead of Felipe Massa in the second Ferrari.
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There were also points to Michael Schumacher at the Mercedes in fourth place ahead of Robert Kubica (Renault), Vitantonio Liuzzi (Force India), Rubens Barrichello (Williams), Kamui Kobayashi, Nick Heidfeld (both Sauber) and Nico Hulkenberg (Williams).

No points accumulated Jenson Button one in twelfth place, who must say goodbye to the title fight. The failure list was long and contained, inter alia, Adrian Sutil, Sebastian Vettel, Timo Glock, Sébastien Buemi, Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg.
Due to very wet conditions and persistent rain, the jury decided initially to postpone the start of ten minutes. During the shift, the decision was made to start the Grand Prix of South Korea behind the safety car. Hence the choice of tires was not an issue, for to be behind the safety car to be run in wet conditions with rain tires for heavy rain.

After three laps behind the safety car the race with the red flag has been lost – was on the line so much water that the driver was the dozen radio complained about conditions of impassable. At 16:05 local time, ie with a delay of 65 minutes, the race was again taken up behind the Safety Car. Once again, the conditions were, however, no approval of the race, why was first moved for minutes behind the safety car.

In the 18th Round – at 16:42 clock time – the race was finally released. For the top of the launch went smoothly without a position change. Further back, Kubica and Rosberg grabbed Hamilton, who came to the fourth forward. Button again went past Massa.

In the 19th Round, lost the lead in the standings Mark Webber on a curb in control of his car and crashed into the guardrail. Also for Nico Rosberg the race was over – he could not evade the more Australians and lost the fourth. The race director sent again the safety car on track

The order behind the safety car: Sebastian Vettel in front of Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Jenson Button, Michael Schumacher, Robert Kubica, Nico Hulkenberg, Rubens Barrichello and Adrian Sutil on the tenth. Timo Glock 13, Nick Heidfeld, 17, Sébastien Buemi 21st

In the 24th Round was the race to salvage the cars of Webber and Rosberg are released. This time everything went smoothly at the top. Behind Trulli collided and Senna, which cost the Italians the front wing and forced him to a repair stop. A few minutes later after a failed repair had Trulli off final.

In the 27th Nico Hulkenberg round overtook Renault driver Robert Kubica, Michael Schumacher, Jenson Button and McLaren-Mercedes and Lucas di Grassi retired after a spin with his Virgin.

In the 29th Button and Sutil came round to the pits – both switched to the intermediate tires. It was pitch Button, who was behind some competitors back to the pits. Sutil, however, turned a short time later – it was probably too early for the tire. While increased the pressure on Alonso Vettel, Hülkenberg came in the 31st Round of pit stops and also moved to the Intermediate.

In the 31 Round was the race for Sébastien Buemi went after he failed in an overtaking maneuver on Timo Glock crashed in UK. From Hamilton to third place, all drivers can use at the head of the opportunity and go to the pits – Alonso and Vettel at this stage were already in the pit lane entrance passed.

They both followed one lap later. During the stop at Vettel ran smoothly, there were on the right front wheel of the Ferrari driver is a problem, which the Spaniard fell behind Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren-Mercedes. The order behind the safety car: Vettel in front of Hamilton, Alonso, Massa, Schumacher, Barrichello, Petrov, Hulkenberg, Kobayashi and Kubica in tenth place. Button 12th ahead of Heidfeld and Sutil.

The race was 35th in the Round released. While Vettel was able to pull away again to verbremste Hamilton and slid off the track – by Alonso came back to second place ahead. Vettel has been placed increasingly under pressure from Alonso, who could take the Intermediates much faster than the German

The distances to 40 of 55 rounds: Vettel 2.3 seconds ahead of Alonso, Hamilton 4.2 to, 7.2 ahead of Massa, 14.6 to Schumacher, 16, 0 before Barrichello, 20.7 before Hulkenberg, 21.8 before Kubica, 24.2 before Liuzzi, 28.4 to Kobayashi in the tenth. Eleventh Heidfeld (29.5), Sutil 13th (31.2) ahead of Button (36.3).

In the 41th Round was the race for Vitaly Petrov went. The Russians lost in the chicane before the start and end control of his car and crashed at high speed into the side of the tire wall. It was the car damaged, the Formula 1 driver was unhurt but his car emerge.

Fernando Alonso was in the last dozen laps of the race considerably faster – but he was in the final sector have driven a new best time, although there were waved yellow flags. This could definitely still draw a punishment. Meanwhile Vetetl reported by radio a bad view – it was too dark. A racing demolition would bring him before that date and the full score.

But this idea was in the 46th Round unnecessary – Vettel difference lying with total engine failure in leadership! Fernando Alonso inherited the leadership – and with it the lead in the overall standings. In the 46th Round had run the race for Sutil, who collided with Kobayashi and thereby lost the tenth.

In the 52 Round Hülkenberg had again come into the pits to change tires, so lost eighth place, while Button turned. The situation was difficult for all riders, and the intermediates were partially hardly profile. Thus lost a place to Kubica and Barrichello. Also on the tenth Algersuari briefly slipped off the track – Hülkenberg took the chance and moved past the Spaniard to secure the final point.

More rain is headed to the already wet Yeongam venue.

With only 40 minutes to go before the scheduled race start at 3pm, plenty of earlier rain has soaked the new Korean layout and grid.

For the Hyundai support race, there was a crash on the first lap and the rest of the race took place behind the safety car as marshals struggled to clear the cars.

Fears about a safety car start for the grand prix eased along with the easing rain a couple of hours ago, but the radar is now showing more showers on the horizon.

“It feels like it is going to rain again before the race starts,” said a media source at Yeongam at 2.15pm.

F1′s governing body has delayed the start of Suzuka qualifying for a further 30 minutes.

“No surprise there,” said Lotus’ Mike Gascoyne on Twitter, after the safety car did another circuit inspection.

The FIA’s Charlie Whiting had already imposed a half-hour delay at 2pm, given the appalling track conditions.

“I imagine qualifying will be tomorrow morning.  That’s the likely scenario,” Mercedes’ Ross Brawn said on BBC television.

The FIA’s next announcement will be at 1450.

“Under these conditions there can be no qualifying,” said Alex Wurz, who is on the FIA’s stewards panel in Japan this weekend.