The scene could be set for the most competitive season in F1 history, according to Pirelli’s Paul Hembery.
He is referring to the fact that six world champions – Kimi Raikkonen, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button and Michael Schumacher – will be on the Melbourne grid in March.

That is a quarter of the entire 24-car field.

“That is probably the highest level (of quality in F1) ever,” Hembery is quoted as saying by Finland’s Turun Sanomat, “particularly when you take into account that there are a lot of other very talented drivers who haven’t won a title.

“If the level of the cars and the performance levels (of the drivers) are just as high, there will be some astonishingly good races,” added the F1 tyre supplier’s motor sport director.

Hembery was coy, however, when asked specifically about Raikkonen, the returning 2007 champion.

“I have met him twice,” he said. “He is a quiet guy and, anyway, we strive to keep our distance. The drivers turn to us when they need something.”

He did not give anything away about Raikkonen’s first taste of life on Pirelli rubber, after the Finn’s Valencia test this week on demonstration tyres.

“We didn’t monitor it at all, it was Lotus’ thing alone,” he insisted.

“Of course I saw his comments and it will be a big difference for him now compared to what he has known before.

“But Kimi is one of the most extraordinary drivers the sport has seen so I think he will learn quickly.”

Pirelli motorsport boss Paul Hembery is satisfied that his company delivered on the mandate given to his organisation to spice up the sport with creative use of tyre technology and plans to be more aggressive going into 2012.

Hembery told Sky Sports, “We were asked to bring something a bit different to the sport for 2011. We were given the challenge of creating tyres that degraded, tyres that had a high wear rate, so that we could force some pit-stops. We feel that at the end of the season we had delivered very much that.”

“It’s funny because at the start of the season we were being criticised for being maybe too aggressive and at the end for being too conservative. In reality, a lot of that was to do with drivers and the teams getting used to the tyres and modifying the set-up to maximise what we gave them,” reflected the Pirelli director of motorsport.

Looking to this season Hembery said, “Going forward we have to be a little bit more aggressive going into 2012, we’ve changed three of the compounds we used last season, the soft, medium and the hard, and the peak performance between them will actually be a lot closer, which will lead onto improved strategy. That’s the plan anyway. We don’t know of course what the cars will be like; we’ll find that out in a few days time when we start up in Spain with our winter test programme.”

“The cars should have had a bit of a change with the blown diffusers going away and in-corner speed should be lower, but you never know. These guys that design these cars are the best in the world, they come up with some amazing ideas and maybe that’s not going to be true and we find that the cars are very similar to 2011. But our intention of course is to try and replicate what we did, try to make it quite aggressive and do our bit to make the racing quite exciting,” predicts Hembery.
Marbles

One of the early characteristics of the Pirelli tyres was the amount of marbles they generated as they wore down. This was addressed to a certain degree as the season progressed.

Hembery explained, “We did make some changes to make a slight improvement to that. You always get marbles, little bits of hot, molten rubber. What usually happens is that it builds up on the outside of the corners – where you have the rubber wear built-up under braking and it gets thrown off the tyre as you go around the corner.”

“We had at some races, Malaysia was probably the worst example, where rubber was building up on the straight part heading into the corner, that’s something that we’ve tried to make an improvement on, but that’s very hard to simulate when we’ve only got one test car going on its own so you don’t really create enough laps to evaluate that.”

“We’ll try to do something, but unfortunately if you want tyres that wear, the rubber’s got to go somewhere and all you can do is try to change the mechanism of that wear to make the bits that come off the tyres slightly smaller so that they don’t create such an effect. We will keep working on that, I’m not going to say we have a solution because we won’t know until we go racing again, but at the end of the day, we had the most overtaking in the history of the sport last year,” concluded Hembery.

Mercedes is the next team working on a copy of Lotus’ innovative ‘braking ride-height correction’ system ahead of the 2012 system.
Shortly after news broke that the former Renault team had devised a passive and therefore legal system to stabilise a car’s ride height under braking, reports emerged that Ferrari is “working on a similar system”.

The BBC said last week that it believed the Italian giant was “the only other team to have contacted the FIA” about the concept.

But Italian reports, including on the Italiaracing website and the daily La Gazzetta dello Sport, claim Mercedes GP is also working to “quickly copy” the Lotus idea.

Mercedes does not intend to take its new car, the W03, to the first official test at Jerez early next month, instead opting for additional factory time ahead of the second session at Barcelona.

It is also rumoured that Red Bull experimented with a Lotus-style braking system back in 2010 but abandoned it.

Pirelli will officially launch its 2012 season later this month, according to the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat.
The report said the Italian marque’s president Marco Tronchetti Provera will be present at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina circuit when this year’s tyres and markings are revealed on 25 January.

Less than two weeks later, the teams will begin official pre-season testing at Jerez.

 Ferrari is awaiting a clarification about Lotus’ reportedly radical braking system for its 2012 car, Stefano Domenicali has revealed.
It emerged this week that Lotus, formerly Renault, intends to run the system this season after debuting it during the young driver test late last year.

“I know that some teams and the FIA have exchanged letters,” Ferrari team principal Domenicali is quoted by the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat from the ‘Wrooom’ media event in the Italian Dolomites.

“We are now expecting a definitive answer as to whether it is acceptable or not. Of course, we look at devices that affect the car’s performance,” he added.

La Gazzetta dello Sport quotes Domenicali as confirming that the Lotus system relates to braking stability.

The Spanish news agency Europa Press suggested that the legality of the system is being questioned because its movement reportedly affects the aerodynamics of the car.

“We need to wait to see the reaction of the FIA,” added Domenicali.

Livio Oricchio, the correspondent for the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de S.Paulo, wrote from Ferrari’s Madonna di Campiglio event that the FIA “has just declared legal the height control system developed by Lotus”.

Lotus could set the trend with the first major innovation of the 2012 season.
Finland’s Turun Sanomat reports that Giorgio Piolo – arguably F1′s most respected technical illustrator – has revealed that Lotus’ new car features a radical braking system.

According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, the system is similar to the mass damper innovation pioneered by the Enstone based team (then Renault) some years ago.

The innovation was reportedly discovered during the young drivers’ test in Abu Dhabi.

Turun Sanomat explained that the driver-operated system involves adjustments to improve aerodynamic performance through the ride-height.

Lotus’ drivers in 2011 are Kimi Raikkonen, the returning 2007 world champion, and reigning GP2 champion Romain Grosjean.

 Mercedes is sure formula one engines will still sound good when the regulations change significantly in 2014.
The German marque, whose F1 engines are designed and built in Northamptonshire, is believed to be imminently ready to fire up its first 1.6 litre turbocharged V6.

But after the sound of F1 changed when the sport moved from normally-aspirated V10 to its current V8 engines in 2006, there have been fears the cars could sound comparatively tame when they are powered by turbo V6s in 2014.

Thomas Fuhr, managing director of Mercedes’ HighPerformanceEngines division, doesn’t think so.

“With the limit of 15,000 rpm, the engines will have a great sound,” he is quoted by Italy’s Tuttosport.

“With the six pipes going into the turbocharger I think the sound will be very nice,” added Fuhr.

Christian Horner insists he is not worried that pieces of a current-spec Red Bull front wing are currently sitting in the lounge rooms of fans — and possibly elsewhere.
After Mark Webber’s Monza crash, fans collected up the carbon fibre pieces of the mysterious and highly effective Adrian Newey-penned component.

“No problem. You can’t get any sensitive information from small pieces like that,” boss Horner is quoted by La Stampa newspaper after being shown newspaper photos of the wreckage in a Spanish spectator’s home.

It had been suggested that some of the other pieces had been delivered by ardent Ferrari fans to Ferrari’s Maranello headquarters, preceding the debut of a remarkably similar ‘flexing’ wing that is currently being tested by the famous team.

A Ferrari official is quoted as rubbishing the theory.

“If someone is able to understand from wreckage how something works, study it and put it into a design and build it and all of this in a month, that would not be formula one but something that does not exist,” he said.

Ferrari is still working to solve the ‘fluttering’ problem with Felipe Massa’s new 2012-style front wing.
The Red Bull-like wing – apparently designed to pass the aerodynamic load tests but still flex towards the track – was observed violently oscillating at high speed in India two weeks ago.

The Italian team said it had fixed the problem for Abu Dhabi but in the Friday practice sessions Massa’s wing was still ‘fluttering’ and sending up spectacular sparks when the extremities bottomed out.

“The reality is that we found something that was not correct in terms of the structure of that wing (in India) but apparently it seems that there is still a problem,” admitted team boss Stefano Domenicali.

But why isn’t the problem similarly affecting Fernando Alonso’s sister car?

“I have got engineers much more expert than me here that know that an effect on a wing can depend on a lot of issues, a lot of things,” said Domenicali.

“It depends on the setup of the car, depending on tyre pressure and so on. Maybe it is a combination of all these elements for our engineers to understand and react as it is not what we would like to see,” he added.

On the bright side, Massa said he was not aware of the problem until he saw the television replays.

And Ferrari is also happy to have encountered the problem now, before the crucial 2012 pre-season test period.

“We would have lost an entire week of testing,” an unnamed team member confided to Auto Motor und Sport.

Steve Nielsen, who left Renault in June, has re-emerged at Team Lotus.
Team boss Tony Fernandes revealed that he offered Nielsen, Renault’s long-serving sporting director, the same role at Team Lotus a year ago.

“I first met Steve in Singapore 2010 and offered him a job which he turned down, so I am delighted he has finally taken up the chance to join us,” he revealed.

Nielsen, who has worked with Mike Gascoyne at Tyrrell and Renault, will start his new job in December, replacing Dieter Gass who is returning to Germany ahead of Team Lotus’ rebirth as Caterham in 2012.

“Off track all the pieces are falling into place and we have now taken full control of our own destiny,” said Fernandes. “I think we can guarantee that we have a very bright future.”

Dust and tyres — that is why Sunday’s Indian grand prix was not a thriller.
Overall, formula one enjoyed its inaugural visit to the chaos and culture of New Delhi and the likeable new Buddh circuit, but the race itself was not a classic.

Italy’s Autosprint counted only 22 overtaking moves; way down on the 2011 average that has been powered by DRS and heavily-degrading Pirelli tyres.

The fact the Buddh tarmac was brand new and therefore ‘green’ did not help, nor did the tonnes of dust.

Another factor was what Pirelli chief Paul Hembery referred to as the “deliberately conservative” decision to bring hard tyres to the mainly unknown venue.

In short, they didn’t wear out quick enough.

“What was the reason for the show taking a backwards step in India? Simple: the tyres behaved normally, predictably,” wrote Brazilian journalist Livio Oricchio in O Estado de S.Paulo.

Agreed Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport: “The only one entertained was Vettel, who is dominating as Michael Schumacher once did.”

A point of interest throughout the Indian grand prix weekend was Ferrari’s “fluttering” front wing.
It is believed the Italian team, with a firm eye on 2012, is publicly experimenting with the sort of legal wing flexibility that is being mysteriously achieved by Red Bull.

At high speed at the Buddh circuit, a prototype version on Felipe Massa’s car was often seen wildly oscillating; a phenomenon referred to in the aviation industry as “flutter”.

“It does seem a bit exciting,” chuckled Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn after seeing the television images.

Given Ferrari’s good pace in India, some observers wondered if the wing movement might even be intentional.

Ferrari chief Stefano Domenicali played down that possibility.

“We will analyse the data now to see what causes this fluttering,” he is quoted by Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

An amused onlooker this weekend was Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s revered designer.

“I don’t think Ferrari had this effect in mind,” he said. “Somehow it doesn’t look quite right. But if we are being used as a model, we take it as a compliment.”

A mischievous rumour in the Buddh circuit paddock could help to explain the behaviour of Ferrari’s front wing this weekend.
The team set tongues wagging in India with another version of its 2012-style prototype wing.

At high speed, the behaviour of the wing has been described by observers as oscillating or – as per the aviation jargon – “fluttering”.

The wing was also flexing towards the track whilst obviously passing the aerodynamic load tests — a mysterious phenomenon first perfected by Red Bull.

Ferrari, competitive so far in India, may now be on the way to emulating the effect, less than two months after the Italian grand prix.

At Monza in September, Red Bull reportedly ‘lost’ an entire version of the dominant RB7′s front wing following Mark Webber’s crash.

According to Auto Motor Sport, some paddock figures “think the component ended up at Maranello”.

Ferrari’s front wing has been causing a stir in India.
The team has recently been experimenting at the front of its current car ahead of the 2012 season, but it was at the Buddh circuit that heads really began to turn.

A wing fitted to Felipe Massa’s car has been seen violently oscillating and flexing towards the ground at high speed, attracting the attention of FIA technical boss Jo Bauer.

“I can’t see how the FIA is going to be satisfied with this situation,” said BBC pit reporter Ted Kravitz during the radio coverage of Saturday morning’s practice session.

“It is the amount of flex, not the sparks, that will raise the suspicions of other teams.”

Mercedes has closed ranks following reports it is set to debut an F-duct style front wing innovation in 2012.
The team reportedly tested a prototype in a grand prix practice session this month, with Bild newspaper claiming it adds 8kph to the car’s top speed.

“I don’t want to comment on every idea,” said team boss Ross Brawn. “But we do need to take risks with the new car in order to move forwards.”

Michael Schumacher, meanwhile, denied the existence of a new wing.

Asked how the new component felt during recent testing, the German brusquely answered on Thursday: “Perfect.”

But he later added: “We didn’t use a different front wing, quite honestly. It was as good as before.”

McLaren technical boss Paddy Lowe, however, admitted this week that he has heard about Mercedes’ idea.

“There’s been quite a lot of coverage but we’re not feeling desperately excited. We’re not singling it out against many other things we’re constantly reviewing,” he said.