Vettel “missing” Schumacher’s input on Ferrari move

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In the round-up: Sebastian Vettel says he regrets not being able to speak to Michael Schumacher about his move to Ferrari.

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'I wish I'd been able to talk to Schumi about Ferrari' (The Telegraph)

"He was always very helpful and honest about all the rest in Formula One; the business side of things, his experience, the lessons he learnt. That’s obviously the part I was missing."

Man runs on Shanghai track sparking F1 safety fears (The Guardian)

"He was finally grabbed by security staff and handed on to police for arrest – but not before apparently stating he wanted to try a car."

Fan on track prompts new GP security (Autosport)

"FIA race director Charlie Whiting requested to the clerk of the course that security be heightened and it is understood it has since been redoubled."

Plans for fifth engine in 2015 still work in progress (Adam Cooper's F1 Blog)

"Fernley is adamant that an extra engine should only be available for Friday running: 'The proposal was very clear, it was to ensure that the fans have good value on Fridays in terms of the amount of running they see.'"

McLaren target Q2 breakthrough (Sky)

"Q2 is more realistic. At the moment you’d say definitely, but who knows when tomorrow comes."

McLaren's improvement surpasses Fernando Alonso's expectations (ESPN)

"Definitely Q2 is the goal tomorrow and finishing the race even close to the points is a goal."

Red Bull are now third best team, says Ricciardo (Reuters)

"Today looked good but I don't want to jump to conclusions yet...I still think Mercedes for sure are quicker but Ferrari as well is at the moment a small step ahead."

Nico Rosberg Q&A: Mercedes more at home in cooler conditions (F1)

"My impression is that Ferrari is coming even closer here - so it will be a long night to prepare the car for qualifying."

Oops, UPS stuck a 'dick butt' meme on a fancy Ferrari (Mashable)

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Comment of the day

Instead of laying in to Renault and threatening to quit, Red Bull should follow the example set by their rivals, argues Sonics:

Last year six others teams had the same problem (not having Mercedes engine) and one other team (McLaren) felt it was the wrong engine for them. Let’s see how they worked on their problem:

1. Lotus switched to Mercedes getting the engine everyone thinks is the best at the moment and has already shown lot of progress. This is not dismissing their chassis development of course.
2. Ferrari made major restructuring (including booting whining Montezemolo, who even expected that at the beginning of 2014?) and worked hard to improve their engine and package. Now they already have a race win on pure performance and may challenge Mercedes’ dominance.
3. Sauber naturally also benefitted from Ferrari engine improvement.
4. Toro Rosso stuck with Renault but they keep their mouth shut and now they are even in front of Red Bull. This should be wake up call that Red Bull’s package isn’t as good as they think, and it’s possible that it’s really not working since they are beaten by ‘midfield team’ that has a second-tier crew. (Not to dismiss people in Toro Rosso, but Red Bull has the first pick for better drivers, mechanics, designers etc…)
5. Manor is still using the 2014 car and is cash-strapped. Realistically we don’t expect anything from them except that they can compete in all races for the rest of the season.
6. Caterham is dead
7. McLaren tried something new by switching to Honda. It may not be working well for them now, they know this, accept it, and are working hard to make it work. We don’t hear any whining and backstabbing between them and Honda.
Sonics (@Sonicslv)

From the forum

Snapshot

Pietro Fittipaldi, grandson of two-times world champion Emerson Fittipaldi, is among the 35 drivers on the packed grid for the first round of the European Formula Three championship which begins at Silverstone tomorrow.

Last year the championship was won by Esteban Ocon while Max Verstappen won the most races and gained a shock promotion to F1.

Macau Grand Prix winner Felix Rosenqvist has claimed pole position for all three of this weekend’s races but he faces serious competition from fellow top F3 talent Antonio Giovinazzi, plus exciting rookie talents including British Formula Four champion George Russell and Verstappen’s former karting rival Charles Leclerc.

Race one starts at 10:10am UK time so depending when the Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session is wrapped up by we may follow the opening race on F1 Fanatic Live. See below for a Spotters’ Guide to all 35 drivers:

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On this day in F1

Non-championship races for F1 cars were held at two separate venues on this day 60 years ago but both were won by one of the foremost cars of the time, Maserati’s 250F. Jean Behra triumphed in the Pau Grand Prix while Roy Salvadori clinched the Glover Trophy at Goodwood.

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Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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28 comments on “Vettel “missing” Schumacher’s input on Ferrari move”

  1. Has anybody checked if the man running on track was VDG? On top of that he claimed a car because he had a ticket so I’m pretty sure it was Giedo.

    1. @mumito I suppose this was a ploy by Bernie to give an impression that fans are fed up with the current state of F1 to the extent that they think they can drive the current F1 cars without any practice/experience!

    2. Ho Pin Tung?

  2. Andre Furtado
    11th April 2015, 0:23

    So tired of hearing red Bull cry and Complain about performance then say they are the 3rd best team then flip flop again and complain. I wish they would just shut up or quit.

    1. ColdFly F1 (@)
      11th April 2015, 2:10

      Different messages from different people in the team!
      Let’s just hope that the positive/constructive messages start prevailing.

    2. They are certainly locked out of heaven though. I have sympathy for them, I’ll stop having sympathy for them obviously once they win again.

    3. They should rename the team Red Bull Fighting Renault ;)

  3. COTD is spot on. Shut up and work, even the ever-whining ferrari come to the conclussion that whining wasn’t taking them nowhere, so they’ve rolled up their sleeves and worked not only harder, but also in a clever way, and now, i guess that Haas isn’t as worried as he may be a couple of months ago, and if Manor get’s his chassis some time in the near future, with the new ferrari engine they may fight for a couple of points! (as for Manor, if you think about it, they’re doing a looong pre-season with the races, and it may be of some utility in the developement of their ’15 car, and maybe for the 16 aswell)

    1. considering RBR managed wins last year yet no one else did besides Merc,
      now just 2 races in RBR are wining/moaning/complaining/threatening they cant keep up,
      why not sort their crap out in house? why go public with it?
      oh thats right we have the best of everything chassis/design/aero/cheating just this stupid motor is the problem,
      stand back and look who is complaining, those with most to loose Adrian Newly Christian Horner their pay packets are possible even higher than their drivers,
      if you spend an estimated 400 million then you expect a return, so the blame has to go someplace because its not us at fault we “A Newly C Horner” are the ones which gave you the wins before not Renault it had nothing to do with those wins right?
      time to wake-up someone is lagging behind, spending more time complaining than working,
      their attitude/mindset is reflecting on the team which is not good,
      other teams are making headway while they are making less progress,
      time to harden up Red Bull and pull finger me thinks.

      1. do you really think CH and AN spend more time complaining than working?

        1. i don’t know if they spend more time, but i’m sure t hey should be spending LESS time complaining, and invest that time better…

  4. I just can imagine how strange it must be for Vettel being in his dream team, but don’t having his “godfather of F1” there to support. I’m sure he would love to see Schumacher someday in the Ferrari’s garage… Well even I would love! And also Jules for development driver. Two fighters right now, I hope!

  5. Chris (@tophercheese21)
    11th April 2015, 1:19

    Laughed myself silly at the UPS meme article. XD

  6. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Vettel fan… But if I have one critism of him, it is this. As he’s progressed through F1, I believe he aligned himself too much as Shumacher’s fanboy. While this is certainly not a dire thing to do, I think that perhaps we’re not seeing everything that Vettel has to offer, however, with the tragic incident which has befallen Schumacher, maybe we can start to see Vettel come out from behind the shadows and become his own man.

    I think that Vettel is one of the nicest guys in F1, and while he is no saint, he is someone I’d happily sit down over a meal and have a good laugh with and now that he is forging out his own path, perhaps we’ll see some lengendary drives that we’ll be talking about for years to come.

    1. Don’t forget Vettel is a German and Schumacher is the face of F1 when he is still a boy. It’s the same way the previous generation drivers is a fanboy to Ayrton Senna.

    2. Even I’m a Vettel fan, but actually I dont mind his “Schumacher fanboyism” that much. Since he started his F1 career, he always said that Schumacher is his idol and then to race against him from 2010-2012, and being able to talk to him, have a nice relation with him, he gets emotional about Schumacher.

      I think most of us would be in Vettel’s shoes if we could have such a great relation with our idol and get emotional.

      We will definitely be watching more of Vettel in years to come by and we will be having races where we could talk about it afterwards. :)

    3. Hamilton shows himself as the bigger senna fanboy of them all. maybe both should try to be who they are more than trying to be like someone else. But in other hand, i don’t know if Vettel always talk about Schumacher, maybe the media picks up more of those statements because it’s a better click-bait than talking about themselves or about the car…

  7. Hamilton: “Which sector was not so good?”
    Bonnington: “Afraid I can’t give you that information Lewis, will discuss in the garage.”

    They can’t give driving advice. But, even telling which sector is bad is also banned? Not sure what the context of this message was. “Not so good” as compared to who? — Hamilton’s prior laps? or Rosberg’s sector time? or Ferrari drivers’?

    1. I don’t see why driving advise should be banned in practice anyway. It’s what practice is for! During a competitive session it makes sense, but it feels an unnecessary roadblock outside of qualifying and races.

    2. Yeah, very strange. I mean it’s practice and is not like his asking advice on how to take a corner. His simply asking on who of his sectors isn’t as good. Of course such questions mean compared to Rosberg since they can’t know how other cars perform but this ain’t a race where one driver is catching the other etc.
      It’s pointless really since his gonna go back to the pits and see the screen and see in which sector he is losing or have less advantage and then go back out again. Is not like that information is anything important. Such information only has value during a race where you can’t go check the screen in the pits.

  8. I don’t understand the point of them having radio restrictions during free practice. During race and qualifying sure, but in free practice he can pull into the pit, get out and talk about anything he wants.

    If the goal is to get as much track action as possible for the fans during practice sessions, why impose a restriction which can easily be got around and could potentially see less track time as a result?

    1. FIA didn’t think that far ahead, haha. I have more data real time in 17 year old GPL than the F1 drivers in a practice session ! @philipgb

  9. I am so excited for qualy and the race! Also… F1 Fanatic streaming Indycar practice live? in HD? Awesome moves!

  10. “7. McLaren tried something new by switching to Honda. It may not be working well for them now, they know this, accept it, and are working hard to make it work. We don’t hear any whining and backstabbing between them and Honda.”

    Sometimes, to make progress, you must take a step back, maybe even two. Mclaren cant be seen as whinging, because firstly, they are the exclusive works team, secondly, bad blood never comes good. As COTD says, they are working hard, Jenson was saying how quickly the engineers are fixing issues..but the problem is that there were too many of them to fix!

    I think they will make the podium before the end of the year.

    1. Sometimes, to make progress, you must take a step back, maybe even two. Mclaren cant be seen as whinging, because firstly, they are the exclusive works team, secondly, bad blood never comes good

      I agree. Red Bull is also works team and they still don’t understand this. I hope McLaren can compete at top level at the end of the year and show Red Bull how it’s done if they (RB) still whining all season.

      1. Red Bull also don’t understand that their whining against their supplier and their tendency to get all the credit for victory not only alienates their current engine supplier but also other suppliers.
        For examble if you were Honda and Red Bull came to you next year after splitting with Renault and ask for engines, would you really be willing to give engines to them? I wouldn’t.
        Seeing how they are treating Renault i wouldn’t want to partner with them even as a customer team because the moment anything goes wrong they will start blaming my company and ruining my company’s public image.

  11. LOL at the UPS article.

    I am not sure what the COTD is about. Truth is Renault messed the engine side big time. Williams and Lotus did not leave for nothing. If not for a sister team of RedBull Renault will be supplying their dead engine to one team.

    And really a driver can’t get feedback on his own sector information. It’s not driver coaching. Looks really messed.

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