FORMULA 1 - 2016

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Nasr staying patient with Sauber

Sauber driver Felipe Nasr has absolutely no qualms about the delay in the launch of the new C35, which is only expected to be available at the second Formula 1 test next month.

At this juncture, drivers are still operating an upgraded version of the C34, which clearly isn't ideal for all the relevant stakeholders. Nasr will not let that distract him from achieving the team's more immediate objectives though.

"It's not ideal, but we will have a little more time to work on the new car," Nasr told Motorsport.com this week.

What this does effectively mean though is that the turnaround time between second testing and the Australian Grand Prix will be shorter. Nasr has embraced that idea too though.

"I don't think that it will be a big problem, even though we have only four days to understand the car before going to Melbourne," added the Brazilian.

In addition, his expectations heading into that first Grand Prix of the season will not be higher than they need to be.

"There will be many innovations on the car, including the packaging of the Ferrari power unit. I do not expect the first steps to be easy; it will take a bit of time to optimise everything."

During the 2015 campaign Nasr showed promise, by recording a series of healthy points finishes. There is a solid foundation to build on.

"Last year we finished the season with the same car with which we began in Australia, except for a few changes. There weren't the resources to support a development programme.

"I think we have a lot of room for improvement for this year, and I hope we will make a big step forward."

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Awesome picture! My new background

That picture is GREAT! Thanks for posting!

In case you guys need more - Previously posted but here you go;

AYRTON SENNA WALLPAPER

The above wallpaper measures in at 1920px x 1080px and can be downloaded here.

The image of Ayrton Senna hammering it around Monaco above is 1600 x 1076 pixels in size, so if you’d like to use it as your wallpaper you can click it to load the full-size version.

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Renault: Red Bull pace will be 'painful' benchmark

Renault believes the pain of potentially being beaten by customer team Red Bull this year will actually be a positive in highlighting how much progress it needs to make.

The French car manufacturer is under no illusions about how long it is going to take it to get back to the front of F1, with chairman Carlos Ghosn laying out a three-year master plan to just become regular podium contenders.

Engine parity

However, Renault will be given an instant indicator of how much work it has to do on the chassis front, with Red Bull sticking with the French car manufacturer in 2016, even though its power units will be badged as TAG Heuer.

Nick Chester, Renault's chassis technical director, thinks it a tough ask for his team to be ahead of Red Bull on the aero front this year, but welcomes the fact there will be no hiding his own team's short comings.

"It gives us a chassis benchmark and that might be quite painful, but it is sort of good knowledge," Chester told Motorsport.com.

"We know Red Bull make a very good chassis. We will know the lap time difference and it will be a target.

"And, to be honest, we don't expect to be at their level this year. We need to start improving the team and building towards it."

Rebuilding phase

Although Lotus impressed last year by delivering strong results – including a podium in Belgium – despite a lack of budget, Chester is open that things may be a bit harder this time around.

"For this year we are realistic," he said. "We have got a lot of building up the team to do and we want to be reliable and show we can improve during the year.

"But we are not setting a championship target, nor a championship position. We just want to do a credible job and start to show that we can improve."

Mercedes and Ferrari gone

Chester is also convinced on one thing: that the front of the F1 field is going to be dominated by Mercedes and Ferrari in 2016.

He thinks that their growing rivalry will have pushed both to new heights for the new season, which will help them edge them clear of the opposition.

"I think both of those teams are going to move away from Williams," he said. "I don't know where Red Bull will be, but I would imagine around there.

"Force India will be trying to be in that fight, but whether they will or not I don't know. But I think the first two will probably be reasonably clear."

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Monza hits setback in bid to save F1 race

Fresh doubts have emerged about the future of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza after a meeting with race chiefs and Bernie Ecclestone failed to deliver the contract that had been hoped for.

Angelo Sticchi Damiani, the president of the Automobile Club of Italy, and Ivan Capelli, president of the Automobile Club of Milan, had been optimistic that new financial terms that had been prepared to save the race would be accepted when they met in London earlier this month.

But according to sources, the offer of 18 million Euro per year proved not to be the stumbling block, as instead Ecclestone expressed concern about the management situation of the Italian race track.

He had been alerted to the fact that there are questions about how locked in a supposed seven-million Euro investment over 10 years to improve facilities was, as well as the financial state of the SIAS company which looks after the Monza race track.

That situation has left him worried that he could commit to a fresh Italian GP contract and then planned upgrades would not happen.

Fresh talks

Ecclestone has asked for long-term guarantees about the running of the circuit, and has called a fresh meeting for later this month to try to move the situation forward.

The situation remains incredibly delicate, and Capelli has declined to comment on what needs to change over the next days to get the deal back on the table.

Imola or Mugello in frame?

What has become clear, however, is that Damiani is determined not to lose the Italian GP from the calendar, even if he cannot save Monza.

Having worked hard to get government legislation changed to allow extra funding from the ACI to help the race, he is not ready to accept defeat.

That is why the door has now opened on either Imola or Mugello being lined up if the Monza situation cannot be resolved quickly.

MIKA: If there isn't a Grand Prix at Monza in the future, I doubt the Italians will have any Grand Prix! Unthinkable? Well, we used to say that it was unthinkable that there would be no French GP.

At the end of the day I doubt that Ferrari would let the World Championship go without Monza. They probably have a secret veto on that also, and if they don’t, they should get one at the next round of commercial negotiations. CVC Capital Partners may not get it, but Formula 1 with modern Herman Tilke circuits and without the classic tracks, would be sacrilege. It would be like Tennis losing Wimbledon.

Nothing is unthinkable in the world of F1. Well, it’s pretty unthinkable that there could be a race at Imola. There’s no money there.

It’s pretty unthinkable at Mugello because Ferrari owns the track and it will never pay what F1 wants and would anyone hire the track and try to make an event work? It’s doubtful. Would anyone hire Monza? That too, highly doubtful. There’s just no money in it.

There’s always been talk of street races in Rome (How amazing would that be!), but that is like the London GP rumours, I believe it when I see it.

In any case, Formula E is killing Formula 1 at getting into cities and it will only get better for them because they are cheap (everything is alongside F1) and there are no noise issues.

F1 should have jumped on deals in New Jersey and Long Beach, but it didn’t.

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W07 hits the paint shop, your Toto Wolff Q&A & F1 engine revealed!

Rosanna has a sneak peak as the W07 hits the paint shop, we put your questions to team boss Toto Wolff and we go under the hood to reveal how a Mercedes F1 engine works.

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Mercedes split turbo design was 'bloody hard' to get right

Mercedes engine boss Andy Cowell suspects one of the main reasons rival manufacturers have not copied his power unit's split turbo design is because it is so difficult to get right.

Mercedes stole a march on its rivals with the introduction of the current V6 turbo engine regulations in 2014 and has won two dominant back-to-back titles since. A large part of the team's success has been attributed to its power unit, which was producing in excess of 900bhp in 2015 with more to come in 2016.

At the heart of the power unit is a novel split turbo design whereby the turbine and compressor are located at either end of the engine with a shaft running through the vee to connect them. The design has several benefits, including packaging of the power unit, a reduction in pipework and more distance between the hot turbine and the compressor, which also allows for a smaller intercooler.

The split turbo received a lot of media attention in 2014, but so far none of Mercedes' rivals have run similar designs. Asked if he thought it had been given too much attention by the press, Cowell said: "I don't think it was overplayed.

"Is it the silver bullet? I think it is something where there are a lot of positive contributions that go into make that decision, so it's not done for one reason, it's done for many reasons to make it something that we think is still attractive.

"I think the thing that goes against it is that it's bloody hard! In the whole debate there wasn't one big reason why we should do it, but there were a lot of medium-sized reasons why we should do it. On the contra side of the table there was the question of 'bloody hell, how are we going to do this?'

"That was the thousand pound gorilla. But there was nothing that said it couldn't be done, it was just that it hadn't been done. And that's quite fun, isn't it?"

Mercedes started work on its turbo hybrid three years before it was introduced, but Cowell admits his team had little in the way of expertise at that stage and even borrowed some ideas from Mercedes' truck department.

"There were not many of us who had worked on turbos back in 2011 when we started looking at the regulations. I think there were two people who had worked on turbos, and one of those had changed a turbo on his Subaru that had failed! It was a completely different technology and way of approaching it.

"Daimler with their truck engine division, and the turbo chargers involved in that, helped tremendously. There were several thermodynamic sizing areas where they helped and several reliability issues where they helped as well.

"Really it was a clean sheet start with lots of analysis and various architectures that could be used for the boosting and then we came up with this layout with the split assembly. There were a multitude of reasons why, but the one that made me smile the most was when people said 'where's the turbo?' because it's buried in among the internal combustion engine.

"All the bits are positioned exactly where the engine would like them to be positioned and exactly where the car would like them to be positioned. But there was an awful lot of analysis went into it -- 600 CFD simulations to get the primary design phase kicked off."

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Force India's 2015 B-spec a strong base for '16, Hulkenberg feels

Nico Hulkenberg believes Force India has a solid foundation on which to attack the new Formula 1 season after finally building a good all-round car.

The team's introduction of its B-spec car last year at the British Grand Prix proved tremendously successful, with Force India going on to secure a best finish of fifth in the F1 constructors' championship.

With the regulations remaining stable going, Hulkenberg feels there is no reason why Force India cannot continue with the vein of form it displayed during the second half of 2015.

"If you look at all the different tracks, the different tyre compounds, whatever, with the B-spec we are more or less in a position where we can score good points on every track on any day, and that is good," Hulkenberg told Autosport.

"We have built a really good solid foundation to put us in a good position, and now it is our job to keep working at it and to build on that.

"That is crucial if we are to straight away be competitive at the first race.

"Obviously it's really difficult to predict what we're capable of. Impossible.

"But that will be seen when we roll out the car for winter testing and the first races.

"Obviously we target on improving and to close the gap to the front, that is definitely what we are after, what we want and what everybody is pushing for.

"But it doesn't come to you. You have to go get it and find it, so that's our work now."

Hulkenberg knows the team cannot afford to let complacency set in either, and that it has to find further gains from elsewhere, believing they are possible.

"Of course, there is more that can be done and that has to be done," insisted Hulkenberg.

"Obviously we compete against the other teams every couple of weeks, and now we have seen there are more competitive cars out there.

"With regards to our car there is more room for improvement, and that is what we are doing, what we are working at.

"If it is mechanical grip, aero, that is Formula 1. You can never stand still. If you do, that is basically going backwards.

"So we are always working, looking for what we can improve, what we can do, what we have to do."

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INSIGHT: WHAT KIND OF DRIVER IS MANOR FORMULA 1 ROOKIE PASCAL WEHRLEIN?

Mercedes protégé Pascal Wehrlein will drive for Manor Racing in the 2016 Formula 1 season, it was announced this week.

So what do we know about him and what kind of driver is he?

Wehrlein, who won the 2015 DTM championship for the German marque, had been linked with a seat at the British team for some time after Manor secured a supply of 2016 Mercedes power units for the new season.

That deal is thought to be an important factor in the decision to hire Wehrlein as the squad is hoping to make progress with its up-to-date engines, as well as a new gearbox built by Williams, and it is understood that the team felt the 21-year-old would offer more performance potential than a better-funded driver.

That said there is likely to have been a financial offset against the €20m cost of engine supply from Mercedes. Force India considered a deal with Wehrlein but the discount on offer, thought to be around €4m a year, was not enough to tempt them to drop either of their more established stars.

Wehrlein scored two victories on his way to the DTM title last year as he became the youngest champion in the history of the series and has tested for the Mercedes F1 team and Force India in the past.

Speaking about his new deal, Werhlein said: “Manor Racing is a great place for me to start my Formula One racing career – I’m very pleased to be here. It’s a small and totally focused team and I soon hope to know everyone. Though it’s my first F1 season my aim is to help Stephen and the guys achieve their goals.

“It will be a tough challenge but I think we should be able to challenge for points along the way. It’s going to be good fun. A word for my racing family at Mercedes-Benz, and particularly for Toto, who have guided my career this far and made this opportunity possible. Thanks for the incredible support to help me achieve my dream; now it’s down to me to grab the moment and perform on track.”

Manor’s owner, Stephen Fitzpatrick, explained that his team is hoping to step up from the back of the grid in 2016 and join the midfield scrap that could feature F1’s newest team, Haas F1.

He said: “Pascal is a sharp driver with a very promising future; Manor Racing is excited to have him aboard. We’re a small team up for a big challenge this season, so we’ve chosen a driver with the talent and hunger to match our own on-track ambitions.

“Pascal has impressed in testing for Mercedes and Force India, together with commanding performances in DTM, culminating in the championship win last year. Manor Racing is perfectly placed to help Pascal make a big impact in his first season. We’re looking forward to it!”

Manor is still yet to confirm who will fill its second seat, the final spot on the grid for this season, with its 2015 drivers Will Stevens, Alexander Rossi in contention alongside GP2 race winner, Rio Haryanto.

Consistency key to DTM success

Wehrlein switched to the DTM after strong results in junior single seaters. He won the ADAC Formel Masters title in 2011 and was runner-up in the 2012 Formula 3 Euro Series.

The Mercedes C-Coupe he raced for his first seasons in DTM was a difficult car to drive in 2013 and 2014. But when Mercedes improved the car, although it was not the fastest in 2015, Wehrlein produced the results necessary to challenge for the championship.

Consistency was the most important factor in his title run as he scored 15 points finishes from 18 races to go along with his brace of victories. The DTM’s success ballast system makes it very difficult for one driver to dominate, as evidenced by the 13 different race winners in 2015.

Wehrlein’s two victories came at Moscow and Norisring – in the former he pressured and passed BMW’s Marco Wittmann to claim the win, while at Norisring he survived a difficult early phase on a damp track before moving up the order to win by 0.3s.

The most bizarre moment of Wehrlien’s 2015 season came in the second race at the Red Bull Ring when he was forced out as a result of Audi driver Timo Scheider hitting the German’s Mercedes teammate Robert Wickens after receiving a radio call to “push him out.” Wehrlein said after the race that Scheider had started a “war” in the series.

F1 preparation

JaonF1 technical advisor, Dominic Harlow, explained that the DTM is good preparation for F1 because the cars offer similar performance levels to F3, along with a field of top-quality drivers and F1-inspired team operations.

He said: “It’s very good preparation for F1. In terms of the cars, they reward quite similar things in a driver to F3 cars and you find that the F3 drivers adapt and prosper in the DTM car because it’s got a lot of downforce and it’s underpowered. It’s quite heavy but the power-to-weight and power-to-grip is similar to F3.

“There are also so grown-up circuits and there is a field of very professional drivers, which is definitely a rung up from F3.

“The teams’ working practices are all derived from F1 so operationally it’s almost identical. You have a good commercial grounding too, so the drivers do quite a lot of promotion and marketing so that doesn’t come as such a shock when they get to F1.

“The only thing lacking is the car development and technology. It’s probably only a little bit more advanced than GP2 in that respect.”

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MARCHIONNE: ALFA ROMEO CAPABLE OF MAKING THEIR OWN F1 CHASSIS

Alfa Romeo could return to Formula 1 with their own team rather than simply putting their name to an engine provided by Ferrari, FIAT Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne said on Friday.

“Alfa Romeo are capable of making their own F1 chassis, just as they are capable of making engines,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper in an interview, without specifying a timeframe.

Marchionne, who is also Ferrari president, first raised the possibility of Alfa returning as a competitor when he spoke to reporters at Ferrari’s Maranello factory in December.

He said then that it was important for the sporty FIAT Chrysler-owned marque to be active in Formula One beyond the small-scale branding that has already been seen on Ferrari’s race cars.

His comments followed reports last year that Red Bull and Ferrari had abortive discussions about a supply of engines for this season with Alfa Romeo branding.

Red Bull ultimately opted to continue with a Renault power unit that will carry the name of their luxury watchmaker sponsor TAG Heuer.

Asked by the Gazzetta whether there was any chance of Alfa competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours sportscar race, Marchionne replied: “I would much rather put them in Formula One.

“For Alfa Romeo to emphasise themselves as a sporting brand they can and should consider the possibility of returning to race in Formula One. How? Probably in collaboration with Ferrari,” he added.

Ferrari’s late founder Enzo Ferrari started out racing and managing a team for Alfa Romeo before setting up on his own in the late 1930s.

The first two Formula One world championships in 1950 and 1951 were won by Italian Giuseppe ‘Nino’ Farina and Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio in Alfa Romeo cars.

The Italian company supplied engines in the 1960s and 1970s and returned as a constructor in 1979 before again withdrawing at the end of 1985.

Ferrari are providing three rival teams — Sauber, Toro Rosso and newcomers Haas F1 — with engines this season in addition to their own factory outfit.

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FERRARI FROM THE SEVENTIES INSPIRES 2016 F1 LIVERY

Reports that Ferrari is adding a lot more white to the livery of its iconic red cars for 2016 appear to be on the mark.

La Repubblica has published what it purports to be official drafts of the livery of the new Formula 1 challenger from Maranello

The report said the all-white engine cover is “inspired by the historical 312T of 1975”, as driven to the world championship by Niki Lauda.

Ferrari is hoping its 2016 car is good enough to challenge Mercedes, despite the German team having dominated in the new turbo power unit era so far.

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WOLFF: FERRARI HAS TAKEN AN INTELLIGENT STEP IN COLLABORATION WITH HAAS

Mercedes is not ruling out making Manor its de-facto B- team, as Toto Wolff admits he has some concerns about the new close relationship forged between title rival Ferrari and the new American team Haas.

“We look at it with one eye laughing, one eye crying,” he told Auto Motor und Sport. “Ferrari has taken an intelligent step in collaboration with Haas, and it could well be that it has had a performance result. If that is true, they have done everything right.”

His comments indicate that rumours Mercedes is now contemplating emulating the Ferrari-Haas formula by teaming up with the newly Mercedes-powered Manor may be true.

Asked if Manor is already the B-team, Wolff insists: “No. But besides Pascal Wehrlein, they will also use one of our wind tunnels.”

As for whether a Mercedes-Manor alliance will now follow hot on the heels of Ferrari-Haas, he added: “You have to keep all the possibilities open.

“If within the rules it is possible to bring performance through cooperation between two teams then you have to explore it,” said Wolff.

“I am not entirely convinced that it is the right direction for Formula 1 to have the big teams using B-teams to try certain development directions.”

“But we have big rule changes coming for 2017 so it could be worth something in gold. But as a philosophy, as I said, I don’t think it’s right,” he added.

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MAGNUSSEN URGED TO IGNORE STRANGE WELCOME BY RENAULT TEAM BOSS

Frederic Vasseur, one of Renault’s new team bosses first public acts was to announce that he actually wanted new GP2 champion, Stoffel Vandoorne, to race this year in the team but admitted that instead they had to settle for Kevin Magnussen.

Frenchman Vasseur, who worked with Vandoorne at his GP2 team ART last year, said, “Vandoorne has a contract there (at McLaren) and they did not want to let him go.”

Some commentators have mused that Vasseur’s comments were an odd way to welcome Magnussen to Renault, but one pundit says the Dane should just brush it off.

“It’s a test of Kevin’s psyche,” Jason Watt, a Dane and former F3000 driver, told Ekstra Bladet newspaper, who urged Kevin Magnussen to brush off news that he was actually only Renault’s second choice for 2016.

“The reality is that he does need to be mentally strong. A comment like that would irritate Kevin, but he would be foolish to pursue it further,” he said.

“He just has to swallow it. It might just have been said to give Vandoorne a boost, as I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the words were spoken (by Vasseur) to the Belgian press,” Watt added.

2016 McLaren reserve and Belgian Vandoorne, 23, will race in the Japanese open wheeler series Super Formula this year, it was confirmed by Honda on Friday.

It also emerges that Esteban Ocon, Renault’s third driver who remains part of Mercedes’ development programme, will replace the Manor-bound Pascal Wehrlein in the German touring car championship DTM in 2016.

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VERSTAPPEN: IT ALL LOOKS EXCITING

Max Verstappen has been at Toro Rosso’s Faenza headquarters this week as the team prepares for the 2016 Formula 1 world championship season with Ferrari power.

He wrote on his website that teammate Carlos Sainz was also there, as he met for discussions with team management.

“(We talked) about our goals, the concept with the car, the progress and the new parts of the car. There was a lot to talk about and it all looks exciting,” said the young Dutchman.

Verstappen also had a seat fitting, and on Friday will move on to Red Bull’s UK facility to ‘drive’ the 2016 car in the simulator.

“The simulator is close to reality, so I’m curious but we will then have to wait to see how it goes on the actual circuit.

“It was an intense few months, in which I have prepared physically,” he said. “Hopefully we can score a lot of points.”

By ‘intense’, Verstappen may be referring to the undoubtedly busy scenes at Faenza following the eleventh-hour deal to switch from Renault to Ferrari power for 2016.

Reports in Italy suggest Toro Rosso will be ready to roll out the STR11 on the first day of Barcelona testing, but it will be in a blank interim livery.

A more official reveal will reportedly then take place on February 29, the day before the start of the final Barcelona test.

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EX-MERCEDES BOSS PRAISES MANOR FOR SIGNING WEHRLEIN

Manor has made a wise choice by signing up Pascal Wehrlein for his rookie Formula 1 season in 2016.

That is the view of Norbert Haug, a German broadcaster and the former Mercedes competition chief.

This week, the German marque announced that its new DTM champion Wehrlein is graduating to F1 for 2016, with Mercedes making a contribution to Manor’s budget.

But it was believed the amounts offered by other candidates including Rio Haryanto, Alexander Rossi and Will Stevens, who are all still in the running for the second seat, were considerably higher than Wehrlein’s purse.

“Pascal Wehrlein is a much better investment for Manor than a so-called pay driver who brings many more millions,” Haug told the German-language motorsport-magazin.com.

“Should he manage to score one or more championship points, that can be worth tens of millions in itself,” he added.

Haug also said the back of the grid will be a good place for Wehrlein to learn about F1 in a lower-pressure environment.

Could the next step after that be a move to the works Mercedes team?

“If Mercedes did not trust in Pascal’s potential to develop towards a place in the factory team, he would not have been supported as third driver and now as DTM champion into F1 with Manor,” Haug said.

“But to assume from that that one of the two race drivers (Lewis Hamilton or Nico Rosberg) will be replaced by Wehrlein would be wrong,” he added.

Wehrlein, 21, also does not hide that his ambitions lie further up the grid.

“Of course I want that,” he told Kolner Express tabloid, when asked about his desire to eventually race for Mercedes.

“But I think Mercedes in its current situation has the ambition to win all the races and championships, and therefore cannot afford to put a rookie in the car. So it’s very important for me right now to gain experience,” Wehrlein added.

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HARYANTO GIVEN DEADLINE EXTENSION BY MANOR

Indonesian driver Rio Haryanto admitted the race is on to secure the final place on this year’s Formula 1 grid.

The Mercedes-backed Pascal Wehrlein this week secured the first of the Manor seats, which according to Toto Wolff is a victory for talent over much bigger chequebooks.

“It is very pleasing to see young drivers earning their spot in formula one on merit and to see that talent is being rewarded by the system,” said Wolff.

But it is clear that Wehrlein’s teammate will effectively be the highest bidder, with Haryanto backed by the Indonesian government and Alexander Rossi and Will Stevens also substantially well funded.

Haryanto’s entourage appears to be promising the most, but the 23-year-old admitted that a deadline for the first downpayment has been missed.

“It (Manor) has given us another week to settle although in fact the deadline for us is actually overdue,” he is quoted by the Jakarta Post on Friday. “Manor still wants me to join.”

The report says the GP2 driver has almost $6 million from the state-owned oil company Pertamina, and a further $7.4 million from the government’s sports ministry.

“We hope more parties will jump in to support him financially because what we’ve got now is not yet enough,” said sports minister Imam Nahrawi after a meeting in Jakarta with a Manor official.

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NURBURGRING CIRCUIT CHIEF TO STEP DOWN

News emerged on Friday from the Nurburgring, the historic German circuit battling to keep its grand prix up and running.

The German grand prix is returning to the calendar in 2016, after an ownership crisis at the Nurburgring led to the country’s first absence from F1 in decades last year.

And now, Nurburgring circuit chief Carsten Schumacher is stepping down, reports by the Rhein-Zeitung newspaper and Sedwestrundfunk broadcaster said on Friday.

The news was confirmed by Nurburgring spokesman Uwe Baldes. Schumacher was running the track on behalf of its current Russian owners, who have reportedly ousted him for unknown reasons.

“Schumacher will retire as CEO after a successful restructuring in the next months,” the spokesman told the General-Anzeiger daily. “With his experience, he has driven a successful restructuring and was instrumental in setting the course for a positive future.”

A new chief executive has not been named.

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Grosjean unveils new helmet design

It is a new season, a new team and a new helmet for Romain Grosjean who has unveiled the design of his 2016 lid which carries a tribute to Jules Bianchi.

This year the Frenchman is taking on a new challenge having swapped Lotus for Haas F1.

His new team’s logo is prominently featured in the design of the helmet.

The new lid also carries a tribute to compatriot Jules Bianchi. The Manor driver died last year as a result of the head injuries he suffered at the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix.

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Bernie Ecclestone gives Monza organisers February deadline

Bernie Ecclestone has warned Monza officials that they have until the end of February to resolve the current problems which are stopping a deal from going ahead to extend the circuit's contract to host the Italian Grand Prix.

It was earlier reported that a change in the law - which allows private funding to pay the hosting fee - would pave the way for a deal to go ahead, but further political problems have delayed said deal and Ecclestone has issued a deadline of February 29 to resolve the problems.

"It's Italian. A lot of conversations at the moment and not much action," he told Reuters. "They said to me a few months ago 'everything is sorted out, we know exactly where we are and it's all agreed and no dramas.'

"And now I heard yesterday it's become very political...they'll get on with it. Or not."

It's believed the issue of funding has been resolved, with successful negotiations to reduce the hosting fee, but long-term management concerns have arisen which could threaten the event.

Ecclestone made clear that there's nothing he can do, urging officials to resolve the problems quickly.

"I don't know what's going to happen," he added. "Nothing we can do about it.

"The only people that can sort this out are the people that are currently involved in Italy. They can take as long as they like [to resolve it], provided it's by the end of this month."

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Vandoorne’s Super Formula switch confirmed

Stoffel Vandoorne will compete in the Japanese Super Formula championship this year, Honda has confirmed.

The McLaren development driver will race for the Honda-powered Docomo Dandelion team in the series, which features some of the fastest single-seater cars outside Formula One.

Vandoorne dominated last year’s GP2 championship and is considered one of the most promising junior F1 talents. He has 105 superlicence points – more than any driver bar Andre Lotterer – and finished runner-up in his first season of GP2 to Jolyon Palmer, who makes his F1 debut this year with Renault.

The Japanese Super Formula championship features eight races held over seven weekends, beginning at Suzuka on April 24th and ending with a double-header event at the same track in October. Honda-powered cars compete against Toyota in the championship but have only won one race in each of the last two seasons.

The Japanese manufacturer also confirmed junior driver Nobuharu Matsushita will spend a second season at GP2 team ART and former Japanese F3 racer Nirei Fukuzumi will be placed in GP3.

Yesterday Mercedes confirmed GP3 champion Esteban Ocon will move to the DTM series.

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Felix da Costa critical of F1's closed cockpit push

Former Red Bull reserve driver Antonio Felix da Costa has said Formula 1 is wrong to pursue closed cockpits as a future safety measure.

Following a push by the Grand Prix Drivers' Assosiaction, a closed cockpit of the 'halo' design is set to be added to F1 cars in 2017.

Having served as a Red Bull reserve in 2013 and 2014, Felix da Costa, who now races in Formula E and the DTM, has spoken against the introduction of closed cockpits to F1.

"Everything that F1 does in three, four or five years will be in every other open-wheel series," the Portuguese racer told Motorsport.com. "So I think that is the main idea, that F1 serves an example to the other championships.

"It's good that everything is much safer today, we have almost no deaths and that's a big deal. But as a driver I believe that there has to be an element of danger.

"I know it might not be fair to say, but it's a very dangerous sport and that's why there's only around 20 drivers in a category, rather than 100,000. And we have to keep it like that."

Felix da Costa has also lamented the fact that F1 appears set to get rid of an open-cockpit standard that has been around since the dawn of the category.

"Are [closed cockpits] safer? Yeah. But the end of the day, how long has F1 had open cockpits for?

"I would like to have lived in the 80s, 90s. Everything was much more simple, there was not that much politics. It was more just 'driver, car and let's go'."

Di Grassi in favour

Brazil's Lucas di Grassi, who raced for Virgin in F1 back in 2010 and currently sits second in the Formula E standings, has taken a different point of view, backing F1's closed cockpits efforts.

"Ideally, the cockpits will be as closed as they are in prototype racing," di Grassi told Motorsport.com.

"It's the best solution for aerodynamics and for the safety of the drivers."

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F1 nostalgia isn’t what it used to be – or is it?

Motorsport.com columnist and TV commentator David Addison asks if racing really was better back then, and why old F1 cars should race on.

The other night, for want of anything better to do, I started leafing through an old copy of Autocourse from 1978.

Apart from the usual feelings of nostalgia for drivers and teams long since gone from the sport, it makes you remember circuits as well, some now emasculated, some consigned to running club races.

And, inevitably, you start to wonder if Formula 1, if motor racing in general, was better back in the day, to use a current expression. Was it? Not really.

My recollection of 1980s Grands Prix, for example, was that quite a lot happened because of a lack of reliability more than wheel-to-wheel racing. Yes, there were exceptions like the French GP of 1979 – think Arnoux and Villeneuve – but was it any more exciting then than now?

What did create more interest, perhaps, was the way that different constructors designed cars. Unlike a modern windtunnel generation of car, these were designed by protractor, pencil and inspiration – hence you had different looking cars as designers attacked the problem of making a winning car.

And there were other quirks, like Brabham’s fan car and Tyrrell’s six-wheeler…

Historic F1 fills the void

Thankfully, those days haven’t gone forever. If you attended the Mexican or American Grands Prix this year, you will have seen a support race for Historic F1 cars.

In Europe, there is a fully FIA-blessed championship that goes to Zolder, Spa, Jarama, Silverstone, Brands Hatch, Donington, Zandvoort and the Nurburgring, all circuits that have a connection to the cars of the era.

The FIA Masters Historic Formula One Championship, to give its full title, is a series full of memories. Cars have to run in period liveries, and the beauty of the Cosworth DFV engine is that they are relatively easy to maintain. Grids are booming and the cars are going up in value.

Ah, but some may argue: old cars should be in museums for us to look at and preserve. Others may mock the idea of rich people driving old cars in a procession. Well, they are wrong!

Let them race again

For a start, these cars are driven hard. Have a look at an entry list for Historic F1 races and you will find names with interesting CVs, from modern F1 to 500cc motorcycle racing. Many have driven Historic F1 cars for years and know exactly how to make them fly and the racing can be as fierce as any category.

And as for keeping the cars in museums… Why? They were built to be raced, so let them race. I know that if they get damaged and then repaired they move away from their original state, but that would have been true if they had been rebuilt in period, wouldn’t it?

The Donington Musuem in the UK, for example, is a great place to go and look at static F1 cars and jog the memory banks. But where better to see them than on a circuit, being raced and raced hard?

It’s sad that as drivers of historic machinery evolve into collectors, many of their cars don’t get raced: they can only drive one at a time and hence many end up in collections and don’t appear in public as often as they did. Mind you, if you have the means to own a few F1 cars, it’s your call what you do with them.

Historic racing is booming

The same is true in historic sports car racing, as machinery with Le Mans pedigree are on track once again, be it from the 50s all the way to the recent past with the 1980s Group C era being a big draw.

Adding to the nostalgia of watching old cars battling once more is the industry that goes with it. Countless companies have been created to look after these old warhorses. A number of drivers now specialise in racing historic machinery and teaching the car’s owner how to drive better as well.

Historic racing is booming, policed by the FIA, and a visit to a round of the FIA Masters Historic Formula One Championship should be on everyone’s bucket list.

It’s history on the track, the colour, the smell, the noise, the drama. It’s exactly what it was like at the time.

Alternatively, if you feel that historic racing cars are boring or should be wrapped in cotton wool, well… you may be reading the wrong website.

Now, where’s my old John Player Special Lotus anorak?

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"F1 not as bad as people make out", says Heidfeld

Former grand prix driver Nick Heidfeld believes that Formula 1 is not in as bad a state as many observers suggest.

F1 has been surrounded by negativity since the advent of the V6 turbo era in 2014, with complaints ranging from the lack of engine sound, to single-team dominance and poor quality of racing.

While Heidfeld, who scored 13 podiums in an F1 career spanning 12 years, feels there are areas to be worked upon, he reckons the sport is in a better shape than many perceive.

“First of all, I think Formula 1 needs to get out of this negative spiral which it is in, which, for me, is not there for the right reason,’’ Heidfeld told Motorsport.com in an exclusive interview.

“Of course, you can always improve things, but F1 is not as bad as some people try to make out. It still has fantastic cars with fantastic drivers and good racing."

The German highlighted the sport's history, pointing out F1 has gone through many phases of dominance by one particular team, and that the current hegemony of Mercedes is no different.

“Since F1 has been there, there always been teams dominating. And you always try to make things exciting by putting the cars together,’’ he said.

“So you will always have a team which is better than the others.”

Having said that, Heidfeld believes the controversial Drag Reduction System (DRS) makes overtaking too simple and artificial.

“For me what I miss is the sound, and also that the overtaking is too artificial with the DRS,’’ he explained.

“At least we have some overtaking, but sometimes you have one car overtaking the other on a straight and even going back in-line in front of the other.

“It should be just on the last part of the circuit, sliding and then just overtaking. This is what is missing a bit, in my view."

More mechanical grip

In line with the opinion of his Mahindra Formula E teammate Bruno Senna, 38-year-old Heidfeld thinks F1 should give priority to mechanical grip so as to make it easier for drivers to follow another car.

“I think [mechanical grip] will always help racing. Especially since aerodynamic grip is lost when you follow another car in dirty air.

"So, to have mechanical grip and more grip from the tyres is the right way to go.

“It also increases safety, especially the tyre grip. If in a car where you generate more grip from the aero and you spin and go sidewards and backwards, you lose all that.

“If you’ve got big tyres, big grip from tyres, it’s safer and better for racing.”

Regrets over own career

Although Heidfeld was a respected figure in the paddock during his lengthy stint in F1, the German rued his inability to achieve the kind of results he had managed in his pre-F1 career.

"It was not fully satisfying,'' he said. "It was great to have a chance to be in F1 for so long.

"I enjoyed my time massively. It was great driving those cars and working with the teams.

“But as a sportsperson you want to win. My target when I came to Formula 1 was to win the championship, but in the end I don’t even have one victory.

“I regret that, of course, but I did the best I could and still enjoyed it.”

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Why Ecclestone gets last laugh over Jorda's '12-second' spat

Whether you love her or loathe her, there is one thing you have to say about Carmen Jorda: she's been good for the Formula 1 box office this week.

Before a wheel has turned on a 2016 grand prix car, our first driver spat of the year has already grabbed the headlines – and it is between two people who are unlikely to be getting behind the wheel of F1 machinery at all this year.

Marco Sorensen's public outburst against Jorda – and that infamous claim she was 12 seconds off him in the Lotus simulator – has attracted the kind of coverage that would often be reserved for the most ugliest of world championship head-to-heads.

Jorda's responses – and the voices from both camps in both the media and on Twitter – have served up an F1 soap opera, and enlivened a week where there been little else to talk about with F1 still yet to emerge from its winter hibernation.

Sure, GP2 and WSR race winner Sorensen's frustrations at seeing his own F1 career stall while that of Jorda – whose junior single seater achievements have been lacking – is still ongoing are fully understandable. But equally her presence at the team has not been at the expense of others.

Jorda and her bosses are well aware of her limitations, and are not deluded enough to think that given a fair crack at it she would be racing wheel-to-wheel with Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel.

That Dean Stoneman was able to win first time out in a GP3 car that she was regularly three to four seconds off the pace in, tells us plenty about where things stand.

But she does want an opportunity to further her racing career; has been willing to spend time working in the Lotus simulator and quite likes her involvement in marketing, promotion and corporate entertainment over grand prix weekends.

Whether or not she will even end up with an actual run in an F1 car remains to be seen (and will boil down to if there is financial backing there to support it), but who are we to deny someone their dreams simply because we don't like it?

And it certainly beats an office job.

Is it fair that Jorda's path to a role with Lotus and subsequently Renault has been eased by family backing and good looks (and come despite lack of results) – while other more talented rivals have been shunned away? Probably not.

But sometimes life isn't fair, and you can spend your time being bitter about it, or you can just get on and make the most of the opportunities you have.

Ultimately, Jorda's role in this week's soap opera has actually helped highlight that there are a world of highly talented drivers out there who don't get an opportunity.

And whether she deliberately intended to or not, the controversy surrounding her involvement with Lotus and now Renault only serves to further keep the spotlight on women in motorsport.

For if the role of women is being talked about regularly (whether positively or negatively), that can only help inspire the next generation of females to get involved – either on track or in the pitlane – and add further power to Susie Wolff's Dare To Be Different campaign.

Does it matter than Jorda is not going to be battling for F1 podiums in the future? Not really. How many Olympic athletes got inspired to show they could do things better than Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards or the 'Cool Runnings' Jamaican Bobsleigh Team who never reached anywhere near the peaks of success in their own careers?

I'm always a great believer that all publicity is good publicity, and at a time when F1 has been poor at marketing itself over the winter, we should at least relish the fact that Jorda has helped generate enough of a stir for F1 to remain in the headlines and social media at this quiet time.

As Oscar Wilde once said: "There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

It's the same for F1 too. Much better for fans to be fired up and empowered to join the arguments about who is right and wrong in this debate, than simply go off and follow another sport.

Jorda may not ever make it on to the F1 grid (new superlicence rules will all but ensure that), but as long as she is around the paddock she will never not be talked about.

And in dividing opinion at all levels of the sport, that's generates interest and will get even more people talking about grand prix racing. That's not such a bad thing.

It's no wonder then the sport's ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone is doing all he can to help her. He must have loved the fun of the last few days.

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An engineer's life: Paddy Lowe, Mercedes

These days, Paddy Lowe is the executive director (technical) of the championship-winning Mercedes F1 team. Back when Lowe was a school leaver planning his future, Formula One wasn't seen as much of a career option. How times have changed...

"At the time, for a graduate of Cambridge or any top university to go into Formula One was relatively unusual," Lowe recalls. "It certainly wouldn't have been on the career list of any careers office within school or university. Formula One wasn't on the radar, they would have just looked at me blankly. In fact, the only reason I wrote to a team was because a friend of mine said, 'why don't you go and work for a Formula One team?' And it never occurred to me, even though I had some interest in motorsport.

"It wasn't seen as a career, and that's now completely transformed. We have F1 in Schools so it's put on the kids' agenda even while they're at school. We've got Formula Student which is an international operation and they're doing some great work."

F1 has now become a desirable enough career that internships and graduate recruitment programmes are hotly contested. "The programmes are all a lot easier when you go into university and you don't have to start with 'what's Formula One?' and 'is Formula One a valid career?'," Lowe says. "That's already been done for you by [F1iS and Formula Student], so it's now an aspirational career for leading engineers. Not all of them obviously, but many of the top engineers on the top courses will see Formula One as the greatest thing that it is possible for them to get into, which is fantastic for us.

"It never occurred to me that people worked in the industry on engineering. And it was small - I was about the 100th employee within that time and Williams was one of the leading teams. You can imagine, within 100 you've got all the range of staff you need to run a team from engineering to all the logistics, travel, finance, everything. So there weren't so many engineers - probably somewhere between 10 and 20 engineers altogether."

Lowe's own career trajectory - from Williams to Mercedes, via two decades with McLaren - shows that F1 is both a viable and stimulating prospect for engineers. As the sport has expanded globally, so too have the teams expanded.

While less slick than the F1 we have today, the environment allowed for greater creativity, Lowe says. "Formula One had an image of a back-of-the-shed operation, and not incorrectly. Although there were some great engineers in the sport even then, we were [behind] in terms of what the rules allowed us to do relative to what technology was available in other far more mature and sophisticated and better funded industries, such as aerospace or automotive.

"We were right behind the curve and that created that very interesting period that came around then where we invented all sorts of technologies that we could put on the car, whether it's active suspension and traction control, power steering, power differentials, there were lots of things that were not covered in the rule book. Actually, once you got going with the capability and the resources, what we were able to put on the car without constraint... That came to a bit of a climax in 1993 when there was a move to get cars back to 'normal'."

That normality has changed the landscape, but the engineering challenge remains, Lowe says.

"We [now] have around 400 engineers. The range of disciplines that we cover is much, much wider with much more specialism. Instead of one guy trying to cover badly lots of different specialised areas, now we'll have an engineer who specialises in structural analysis, for instance. We really are now at the leading edge of application of the best technology and the rules are now the limit rather than it being the other way round. It means when we do see an opportunity in the rules, we're actually on to it very, very fast and the delivery is relatively simple compared to the difficulty of seeing the opportunity."

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Refreshed Gutierrez ready to lay Haas F1 foundations

Esteban Gutierrez says after a year as Ferrari's test driver and a winter of building up to his Haas F1 debut he is ready to start the ground work on the US squad's new F1 challenge.

At the end of 2014 the Mexican driver lost his place at Sauber and moved to Ferrari as third and reserve driver behind Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen last season. Having been announced as part of new F1 team Haas' driver line-up alongside Romain Grosjean, the 24-year-old has been preparing for the a new career path as he aims to help the team produce a competitive package ahead of its F1 debut in Australia next month.

“I feel very excited after a complete season as a reserve driver,” Gutierrez said. “I am full of energy, full of ideas and very hungry to race. The development of our car from the beginning will be crucial in order to start the season confident that we have done our job as a team to prepare in the best way possible.

“I spent my off-season together with my family in my home town of Monterrey. I also used that time to relax, but at the same time, I continue my physical preparation, as it's really the best moment of the year to get a good rhythm before all the traveling starts for the season.”

Gutierrez will make his debut in the Haas F1 car on the second day of the opening pre-season test, as Grosjean receives the honour of driving on the opening day, and hopes to collect as much data and lap telemetry so the team can produce solid base settings.

“We expect to run the car as many laps as possible,” he explained. “This will be our priority, as we need to be sure to sort all the possible issues we may have in order to fix them on time.

“It will be very interesting to develop our car setup through the tests in preparation ahead of the first race. I am sure we will have plenty of work to do. The most important thing will be to always stay together as a team in order to be very efficient with our progress.”