The Formula 1 Blog

  The first official preseason testing for Formula1 2012 Championship is about to get started at Jerez with 11 teams present and Marussia being the bad student.

  The Spanish circuit officials have issues the running order for the event and only nine cars will be allowed to run for the first time, among the runners Mercedes GP will bring to the test the last year car and their main goal is to test the new Pirelli tyres.

  HRT F1 Team will also be present with the F111 and they want to give Pedro de la Rosa as much running time as possible in order get him fit by the time the season will start.

Official running order is as follows:

  This morning was a busy one for the Formula1 fans around the world, as they could watch online the Ferrari’s launch, and the most fortunate ones could go and see the brand new VJM05 being presented by Paul di Resta, Nico Hulkenberg and Jules Bianchi at Silverstone track.

Interviewed by The Sky Sports Paul said: “The momentum we had at the end of last year, hopefully we’ve managed to carry that over but I must say it is a fine piece of art. Hopefully when it gets to track it’ll be able to show what it’s capable of.”

Also about the car Gary Anderson the Autosport technical correspondent said the following: “I’m impressed and, including what I’ve seen of the Ferrari, this looks like the best overall package yet. The car looks very good in all areas. The exhausts are a bit non-commital, but that can change easily.”

Sahara Force India F1 Team has not released much info about the car but we will present to you any updates we might learn as quickly as they will become available but instead Force India was very kind with the pictures of the new car and here are some of the best shots on the new VJM05 challenger and the guys that will drive the new beast:

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  FIA Changed the rules a bit for 2012 and among the changes now it’s mandatory that the cars have to pass the crash tests before the pre-season which is scheduled to begin on February 7th. Having this new regulation in play  many have though that many of the smaller teams will adopt Mercedes strategy from 2011 and will not be present for the round of  testing with the new car but instead they would bring the 2011 season car the but Force India will not be among them, as Andrew Green their technical director said that all is ready at Force India informs Racer.com.

"We’re on schedule, that’s the good news, even that it’s been a little bit tougher this year, having to homologate the chassis prior to testing. So there was a little bit of extra planning involved to get that sorted. The chassis has been homologated since December. There were a lot of fingers crossed! You’re hoping everything does what all the analysis says it should have done. It’s always nice when you reel off the tests one by one without any dramas at all. It’s a real credit to everybody." said Andrew

Andrews added that he’s particularly pleased with the team’s achievements because they’ve been force to prolong the development of  2011 VJM04 due to Toro Rosso’s good shape from the end of the season and because the rival was getting closer to them.

Green added: "It was such a close 2011 season, fighting where we were fighting in those last few races," "We didn’t know which way it was going to go. We weren’t really anticipating such a strong response from Toro Rosso near the end of the season – they seemed to have a reasonable upgrade around Suzuka time. It’s quite unusual for a team to come up with such a huge change so late in the season”.

"So, the concentration was right until the last race in Brazil. You could say that, from that point on, it’s been 100-percent focus on the new car for us.”

Italian magazine Autosprint is linking Red Bull’s aerodynamics chief Peter Prodromou with a move to Mercedes GP.The dominant RB7′s creator Adrian Newey is not interested in switching camps for now, but 42-year-old Prodromou also worked closely alongside the talented Briton at McLaren. Also rumoured this week is that Ferrari’s new technical boss Pat Fry is working on moving two key engineers to the famous Italian team from his former employer McLaren. Finland’s Turun Sanomat and other newspapers even named Fry’s apparent targets: senior aerodynamicist Rupad Darekar and CFD expert Ioannis Veloudis. Sources at Ferrari neither confirmed nor denied the speculation. Much of the credit for Fernando Alonso’s Silverstone win has been credited to recent aerodynamic improvements. "Now with better aerodynamics and better understanding of the tyres, we will constantly improve," Alonso’s race engineer Andrea Stella said. Meanwhile, Italiaracing reports that Force India is in talks with Williams’ departing technical director Sam Michael.

Original article: MadeInMOTORSPORT.com

  This year is catchy were it come to online launches, Force India also did it and unveiled its new VJM04 yesterday, with the team becoming the second outfit to utilize a blade-style roll hoop design in 2011. The outfit opted to use its 2010 car during the first pre-season test at Valencia last week, but will give its new challenger a first run at the Jerez test that starts on Thursday.

As well as the roll hoop design, which is similar to that used on the Team Lotus car, the new car features undercut side pods and an intricate front-wing concept. Force India finished seventh in last year’s constructors’ world championship, and is hoping that the promotion of Paul di Resta as team-mate to Adrian Sutil will allow it to make solid progress. Here some good pictures with VJM04.

Info: Jonathan Noble, Photos: Force India

  Force India will announce their drivers at a news conference on Wednesday at the Glasgow headquarters of one of their sponsors. The name on everyone’s lips is Scot Paul di Resta who is 24 y.o.a. now and he already tested for the team and is believed to already had the contract signed. Adrian Sutil is the next driver and Nico Hulkenberg will be the test / reserve driver for the team. Vitantonio Liuzzi still has a contract for 2011 but the team is trying to negotiate a settlement with the driver since his performances last year were less then satisfactory.

  His manager Peter Collins told BBC Sport last week: "Tonio will be in F1 this year. Will he be racing? I don’t know. "I’ve no comment to make at this stage and it would be wrong for me to do so. "The position has been very clear for some time and it is best to let the team make any announcement." Force India refused to comment any further.

  Di Resta, who is a Mercedes protege and won the DTM German Touring Car Championship for the marque in 2010, impressed Force India while driving in Friday morning practice sessions, and the team have decided they have to give him a race seat. He would join English McLaren team-mates Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button as a British F1 driver in 2011.

  Di Resta, who is the cousin of triple IndyCar champion, and two-time Indy 500 winner, Dario Franchitti, raced against Hamilton and Red Bull’s world champion Sebastian Vettel in his junior career. Five years ago, Di Resta beat his then team-mate Vettel to the Formula Three Euroseries before moving to DTM in 2007.

  The Scot followed Vettel into F1 last season when he was signed as Force India’s reserve driver taking part in eight first practice sessions. Force India are now expected to employ former Williams driver Nico Hulkenberg in that role, although the German is also hoping for a similar role at Mercedes. Hulkenberg impressed in his rookie season for Williams last year but the team decided to replace him with Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado, who succeeded the German as GP2 champion and whose presence in the team is tied to a multi-year multi-million pound sponsorship from Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA.

Williams technical director Sam Michael is confident the team can overtake Force India and finish sixth in the constructors’ standings although no further developments are planned for the car this season.
Rubens Barrichello’s ninth place finish and a double DNF for the Force India drivers means that Williams is now only two points behind its main rivals in the standings with three races remaining.
“It’s always important to finish as high as possible in the constructors’ championship because it determines the income you receive from FOM for the following season,” said Michael.
“Sixth position is therefore what we are aiming to achieve in the final rounds. We have no further developments planned for the FW32 for the remainder of the season. We ran new front and rear brake ducts on the FW32s in Suzuka. These items were the last of our upgrade components that we will deliver this season. The new parts worked well so we ran them on both cars for the race.
“We will be doing straightline aero running at Kemble in order to test some components planned for 2011.”
Next up is the untried and untested Yeongam circuit in Korea after it received the green light from the FIA on Tuesday.
“We have done a simple lap time simulation based on a map of the circuit. This allows us to determine start wing levels and gear ratios.”

Source: ESPN F1 News

We may just be catching our first glimpses of the drivers at work, but like all topflight sportsmen, today’s Formula One heroes never really step off the treadmill. The winter provides a perfect opportunity to improve fitness. So whilst the engineers are slogging it out perfecting their 2010 cars back at the factory, the drivers are busy ensuring they’ll be fit enough to drive them.

Most teams rely on in-house physiotherapists to help devise training, and at Force India that duty falls to Balbir Singh, one time guru to multiple world champion Michael Schumacher. We caught up with Singh exclusively to learn more about his unique approach to fitness…