It is too early to name a frontrunner for a seat at Red Bull’s premier team.

That is the claim of Franz Tost, the boss of the energy drink company’s junior team Toro Rosso.

Following the ousting of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi, the Faenza based outfit has two new Red Bull youngsters to groom in 2012.

Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne are therefore at the front of the queue to potentially replace Mark Webber at the senior team, even though Red Bull chiefs have appeared to indicate that Australian Webber is staying put for now.

So when asked by Austria’s Laola1 whether Ricciardo or Vergne are winning the race to Red Bull Racing so far, Tost insisted: “We have no thoughts about that.

“The important thing is that they continue to develop in every area.”

So far, Frenchman Vergne has four points compared with Ricciardo’s two.

“Jean-Eric is willing to take more risks,” Tost admitted, “while Daniel has a grasp of the car overall with his extra experience.”

In a bit of good humour or championship finale-needle, or both, Fernando Alonso’s title rivals could not hide their grins in Abu Dhabi.

Lewis Hamilton admitted that he and Mark Webber noticed on Thursday that the Ferrari driver was sporting smooth and shiny legs in the Yas Marina paddock.

“I’m surprised how Fernando was able to take the pain of having his legs waxed,” smiled Hamilton, who at McLaren in 2007 clashed memorably with his former teammate.

“Mark pointed it out and was asking how far it goes up,” he added.

“I was like, ‘Wow, they’re shiny’,” said Hamilton.

He admitted that Alonso, who is a keen cyclist, took the jibes in good humour.

“He has shown over the years how solid he is mentally. He just doesn’t care. You ask him questions about (the team orders in) Germany and he isn’t bothered,” said Hamilton.

Indeed, Alonso confirmed that he is not bothered that some colleagues and commentators are suggesting that he needs to win the title by more than 7 points if the achievement is not to be tarnished by his controversial victory at Hockenheim.

“I think winning by 7, or one or 25 points is the least important thing in my mind right now,” the Spaniard said on Thursday.

“Our only picture at the moment is winning the race or finishing second, that is the target and I think that is what we can achieve,” added Alonso.

And the Ferrari driver also insisted he is not worrying about whether Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber will be swapping places on the last lap to prevent him from winning the title.

“I don’t think I will lose even one second of my energy thinking about what is going to happen on Sunday afternoon,” he insisted.

Sebastian Vettel says thinking about a team strategy this weekend is his third priority at best for the Abu Dhabi season finale.

If – as he did in Brazil last weekend – the German wins on Sunday ahead of his teammate Mark Webber, it will be Fernando Alonso who is crowned world champion.

With ‘team orders’ illegal and ruled out by his employer Dietrich Mateschitz, whether Vettel will voluntarily move over to help Webber win the title is therefore “hotly debated” at present, the 23-year-old admitted.

“Without joking, I am not thinking about it now,” he told Bild newspaper whilst travelling by plane to Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.

“My first goal is pole position, my second is winning the race. And if necessary I can analyse the situation and decide very quickly,” added Vettel.

The marketing professor at the top Spanish business school IESE thinks Mateschitz’s approach to the 2010 season finale is very clever.

Red Bull car designer Adrian Newey is the latest to weigh in on the debate, insisting that both drivers will have a free run to the title this weekend but hoping that one might be “magnanimous” enough to help the other.

“If they lose the championship, they have not betrayed the values that convey the brand, so Red Bull still wins. They cannot lose,” marketing professor Jose Luis Nueno told El Pais newspaper.

Another global marketing expert, Josep Franch of the ESADE business school in Barcelona, asked rhetorically: “Is if profitable for Red Bull to fail to win in order to defend their ideals?”

Answered Miquel Altarriba, of the Universitat Ramon Llull: “I do not think Red Bull will betray its identity.”

“If they lose with this strategy, it will not work out badly for them,” he thinks.

Fernando Alonso on Thursday insisted he would accept not winning in Brazil this weekend so long as he finishes ahead of his championship rivals.

With two races left to run, the Spaniard is 11 points clear of Red Bull’s Mark Webber, meaning that both Alonso and Ferrari will be happy if local hero and Interlagos specialist Felipe Massa wins on Sunday.

“He (Massa) will want to show his fans what he can do so I expect him to be very much up for the fight,” said team boss Stefano Domenicali this week.

“He will be very quick, which is exactly what we need right now to reach our goals,” added the Italian.

Alonso told reporters on Thursday that the important thing for him in Brazil is a strong result ahead of his title rivals, not necessarily the race win itself.

“I think the best thing for us will be to have Felipe winning the race because he takes 25 points from everybody else,” he said.

With six and possibly just five races to go in 2010, the psychological games are now well and truly in play by the main players.

After the Belgian GP on Sunday, McLaren’s Martin Whitmarsh denounced Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel as a “crash kid” for his “junior formula” crash into Jenson Button.

But fingers were also pointing in the other direction.

“Button braked early, Seb wanted to avoid him and lost it on a bump,” Whitmarsh’s Red Bull counterpart Christian Horner is quoted by Auto Motor und Sport.

Helmut Marko described Button as driving “so slow” at the time of the incident, but the reigning world champion hit back by insisting he “certainly didn’t brake any earlier than usual”.

Marko added: “He (Vettel) could not just sit behind Jenson.  He was so slow that Sebastian was losing one second per lap to Hamilton.”

Horner also said Hamilton was the “luckiest man in Belgium” for managing to drive out of a gravel trap prior to winning the race.

“Sometimes you ride your luck and he’s had a bit of that this year,” said the Briton.

It is also increasingly rumoured that the world championship could be curtailed to just 18 races, with South Korea only now laying the asphalt for the track surface.

Now 41 points behind the championship lead, a five-race run to the season finale would be a blow for Fernando Alonso.

“Our intention is to race in Korea,” he told Spanish reporters on Sunday.  “I have no information to the contrary so we should be there.”

Mark Webber has revealed that he and the Red Bull team have “cleared the air” in the wake of the Silverstone front wing saga.

After reacting angrily to losing the newest specification wing to his teammate Sebastian Vettel before qualifying, the Australian declared on the radio after winning the race that it was “not bad for a number two driver”.

But in a written statement, the 33-year-old says he now accepts that Red Bull’s reasons for the wing switch were sound.

And Webber said his obvious “disappointment” at the British grand prix was due to Vettel receiving the wing “for reasons which were not clearly explained” at the time.

“Obviously I can see why a team may at certain points have to favour a driver with more points in the championship, if there are only enough resources to fully support one of us,” he said.

“We’ve already debriefed the race weekend at the factory and have cleared the air.”

Webber said he acknowledged that some of his comments at Silverstone were “said in the heat of the moment which, with hindsight goggles on, probably shouldn’t have been said”.

“Formula one is a highly charged and fiercely competitive arena where emotions and adrenalin do run high from time to time like in many sports and my comment on the radio after the race was an example of Australian sarcasm either at its best or worst depending on how you choose to take it,” he added.

And he insists that his relationship with team boss Christian Horner is intact.

“We’re friends and have a strong mutual respect which continues and extends to other activities, such as our GP3 team and interest in finding and nurturing young racing talent,” said Webber.

“The respect within the team extends to the drivers. I know I have a very good driver as a teammate and I wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Seb and I are not enemies, we’re just two drivers that are pushing hard and want to do the best for ourselves and the team, it’s as simple as that.”

Mercedes is winning the race as the team with the fastest pitstops in 2010.

An analysis by Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport shows the Brackley based team has performed the fastest race pitstop at the last four grands prix of the season.

Interestingly, Michael Schumacher was turned around the fastest of the entire F1 field in China, Spain and Monaco, while his teammate Nico Rosberg only received the quickest service in Malaysia.

The Red Bull pit crew, meanwhile, did the fastest pitstops at the opening Bahrain and Australian grands prix, with both Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber benefitting equally from the quick service.

The speed of the tyre-changing pit crews is more significant this year than in the recent past due to the ban on refuelling.

(GMM)

Apr.30 (GMM)  Drivers’ and constructors’ championship leaders McLaren are also winning the race as F1′s most reliable team.

The British outfit, whose Jenson Button leads the drivers’ table by 10 points over Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg, completed every single lap with both MP4-25 cars at the initial Bahrain, Australian, Malaysian and Chinese grands prix.

In second place, a 100 per cent record for Ferrari was tarnished only by Fernando Alonso’s engine failure in the closing stages in Malaysia.

Red Bull is third with a 92.4 per cent finishing record in 2010, despite the RB6 appearing to have suffered from several reliability glitches so far.

In fact, Sebastian Vettel’s wheel nut problem in Melbourne was the team’s only DNF, while teammate Mark Webber has completed all four races within the top 9.

Similarly, only one Mercedes car – Michael Schumacher’s in China – has failed to reach the chequered flag, but the German team is fourth in the list with a 89.2 per cent record due the stoppage occurring early in the race.

Williams’ single DNF culminates in a 86 per cent reliability record because Nico Hulkenberg was taken out on the first lap in Australia.

Renault is sixth of the ten teams with 75.1 per cent, for while Robert Kubica has finished every race with the R30, rookie Vitaly Petrov’s first race finish was in China.

In Bahrain the Russian damaged the suspension by hitting a kerb too hard, in Melbourne he spun into the gravel, and in Malaysia he had to stop with a gearbox problem.

Impressively, the new team Lotus also has a 75 per cent finishing record, even though Jarno Trulli was not actually a classified finisher at Sepang because he was ten laps behind.

And in Melbourne, the Italian’s T127 was not even on the grid due to a pre-race hydraulics problem.

Toro Rosso’s Jaime Alguersuari has finished all the races, but teammate Sebastien Buemi was taken out on the first lap in both Australia and China — first by Kamui Kobayashi and then Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Force India is now increasingly mentioned as a serious F1 competitor, but its reliability record so far in 2010 is just 65.9 per cent.

Liuzzi crashed in China and had a throttle problem in Malaysia, while Adrian Sutil had a Ferrari engine problem in Melbourne.

HRT’s F1 career started badly with only one car crossing the line in the opening two races.

But the Dallara-built cars of Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok both finished in Malaysia and China, giving the Spanish team a 65.2pc finishing record.

Virgin and Sauber are at the bottom of the pile, with Virgin achieving a mere 33.8pc reliability record with only Lucas di Grassi able to cross the line in Malaysia by aggressively saving fuel.

Sauber is last, with only Pedro de la Rosa recording a race finish in Melbourne for a reliability record of just 25.5 per cent.

“We’ve suffered too many reliability issues on both the chassis side and with our engines,” team founder Peter Sauber said on Thursday.

“That’s very unusual — we’ve always been one of the best teams in this respect over the years.

“We’ve closely analysed all the chassis-related problems and already put measures into effect.  Our engine partner Ferrari is doing the same,” he added.

After a late night of celebrating their coveted victory in “The Great American Race”, yesterday, Jamie McMurray and his team handed over their No. 1 Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Boats Chevrolet to be inducted into the attraction’s Gatorade Victory Lane. The winning car will be on display until next February when it will be returned to the team prior to the 53rd annual Daytona 500.

Winning the most prestigious race on the NASCAR circuit finally started to sink in Monday morning for 2010 Daytona 500 champion Jamie McMurray, who celebrated with his Earnhardt Ganassi Racing team during the Daytona 500 Champion’s Breakfast at Daytona 500 Experience.

“It’s kind of sinking in,” McMurray said. “Every time we do something it’s a little more real. Whether it’s getting the jackets or the ring or just everything that’s a part of this, it’s just really, really exciting.”

Winning crew chief Kevin “Bono” Manion was enjoying the surreal experience.

“Everything’s been in fast forward,” Manion said. “Pictures, media center, inspecting the car, pushing the car to the trailer to come over here and then a couple hours of sleep for some of us. It’s just been so exciting.

“(On) rain delays you stay over but winning the race and you have to stay over and have breakfast — that’s pretty cool.”

Also enjoying the festivities was co-owner Chip Ganassi, who is one of only two owners to win both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500.

“Jamie showed me a text from (last year’s Daytona 500 champion) Matt Kenseth where he said, ‘You’ll never want this day to end.’ I agree completely. I don’t want this day to end.

“You have a complete flashback of your entire racing career — thinking about the possibility of something like this happening. You’re always shooting for that and you’re always trying for that. It’s just so reflective right now. Every sacrifice you made and every tough meeting I’ve had with a crew chief or a driver – the ups and downs of this business. It all seems worth it now.”

McMurray, who also unveiled the logo for 53rd annual Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 20th, is now on a whirlwind media tour making appearances on Late Show with David Letterman and Live with Regis and Kelly in New York City as well as making stops in San Francisco and Los Angeles before Sunday’s race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif.

Despite his hectic upcoming schedule, McMurray knows the memory he’s going to take away from all of this.

“The thing that I’m going to remember is getting out of the car and running up and grabbing the flag and then running back down and seeing the Daytona (painted) in the infield (grass) and seeing ‘Daytona 500’. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that. That’s the memory I have burned in my head right now of the 500; that’s something I’ll never forget.”