Translated Q&A with Vettel:

Q: The 2008 season has been incredible for your, did you expect that ?
Vettel: ''I wouldn't define it as incredible but it's certainly been very good. Whether I expected it ? Not really actually, especially since we started the season with a modified version of the 2007 car. But everyone in the team has made progress and the victory at Monza was a push that has continued till the end of the season.''

Q: Do you have a particular aim in 2009 or do you just think about improving day by day ?
Vettel: ''It will be an interesting year because of the technical changes and the changes in the regulations, and then it's particularly interesting for me going to a new team. So the aim is to give my utmost. A lot will obviously depend on the quality of the car and the work of the team.''

Q: In terms of driving is there an area you think you're the best in and one you think you still have to improve in ?
Vettel: ''The need to improve is always there, you can always learn something, but I don't think I have particular strong or weak points.''

Q: What kind of relationship do you have with Schumacher ? Has he given you some advice, has he been talking to you about Ferrari ?
Vettel: ''I've talked about it a few times. The media is obviously speculating about it because we're both German but I don't like hearing that I'm the new Schumacher. I'm the new Vettel ! We've talked about everything relating to motorsport: from karts to Ferrari.''

Q: What would you do if you were to choose between Ferrari and the German manufacturers Mercedes and BMW ?
Vettel: ''I would obviously choose Red Bull ! Joking aside, I will be driving for this team and I don't feel like thinking about anything else at the moment.''

Q: Are you friends with any particular driver ?
Vettel: ''There's a feeling with Kimi, we see each other occassionaly and we spare some time together given that we both live in Switzerland.''

Q: What are your hobbys ?
Vettel: ''I like a bit of everything, especially my training programme. I really enjoyed climbing Mount Fuji after the Japanese GP.''

Q: Do you talk a lot about being a racing driver with your family ?
Vettel: ''Not a lot.''

Q: Do you pray prior to a Grand Prix ?
Vettel: ''No.''

Q: In what way has your life changed after your win at Monza ?
Vettel: ''It hasn't changed. I'm still the same and live in the same way. Certainly, winning a GP gives a great deal of confidence in trying to win more races and win the title, which is the aim of each driver.''

Q: Were you a bit jealous at Hamilton in Brazil ? Perhaps thinking: 'One day it will be me celebrating this party' ?
Vettel: ''No, there was no jealousy. Lewis has done a great job, he's collected more points than the others and has won the championship on merit. At Interlagos I wasn't thinking about the title more than usual, simply because it's my everlasting objective.''

Q: Do you think the new regulations will change the pecking order in 2009 ? Perhaps someone having their say in the fight between Ferrari and McLaren ?
Vettel: ''A big change should have a clear effect on the starting grid and on the laptimes. But then at the end of the day the teams that have the greatest resources will prevail, I think they will always be the favourites.''

Vettel sounds like a humble young man No ego there.Thank you AFCA

I like the way he speaks, no whining or bad mouthing, simple words and yet no boring marketing formated stuff.

Indeed, hopefully he stays this way even when more success comes his way.

According to Buemi the RB5 (the STR4 in any case) will only be ready in March, there only being one testsession left for Webber and Vettel to get to know the new single seater prior to the first race of the season.

Why are they waiting so long when everyone else will have cars on track by mid-January? It's such a fundamental change in tire and aero rules, and KERS, why would you leave it till the last minute to figure everything out?

Money, the smart guys out there who intend to stay solvent are being vary wary before throwing spare cash at anything in the near future unless they are opportunistic purchases for the inevitable up turn, F1 is not one of the those opportunities and is merely the end product of excess.

We are probably only getting a 10th of the situation with the Teams and how they are or might be traveling money wise, at this point being in the game is the first and foremost concern, when you answer to a higher authority in tight times you do not want to give an excuse to bailout.

Oh there is money there but that money at the moment is better spent or kept for defensive business options rather then F1.

You are therefor saying the staff is on un-paid leave, which has not been reported in the press. If employees are still being employed, they'll be working harder than ever, in order to keep their jobs. Which is the opposite of what you are saying!

I suspect there is another reason why the RBR5 will be tested late. I presume the RBR4 hybrid car is a good match of its systems to the RBR5 car which is following it. Perhaps the RBR5 has an innovation in its packaging, that will benefit from being revealed later than other cars. Who knows, maybe Newey has thought of something? The RBR4 was a good car afterall - in STR/Ferrari form it performed very well, even winning a race last year. The engines will be equalized in 2009 - maybe an innovation is worth delaying development a bit. Hopefully though its not an MP4/19 issue ...

Webber confident of making F1 opener.
Sydney Morning Herald article

if thats the case, they cant afford to wait this long with no inseason testing,

No I am not saying anything at all about Redbull and or its situation, what I merely said was a supposition as to why we may be seeing very little activity on the car development fron aside from the reduction in testing agreements. Now this could all be just some tactical decisions being made.

What we dont know is how all of the teams are dealing with the news rules and the combination of other restrictions. So there will be a whole bunch of gameplans out there to get the best effect. While we see physically inactivity the simulation side the house may be frantic. I doubt any of the teams would want what they are doing right now common knowledge as the gameplan that works best this year could be a fairly new apporach and therefore an advantage. BMW gave a little of that with their heavy investment into fluid dynamic simulation which gave them some unique ways to achieving better aero packages.

Again another supposition.

It could be a combination of the two.

It could be Money

It could be secrecy

It could be just the way this game is being played this year, which is kind of boring for us.

Could it just be that the KERS system won't be ready till then?

I thought I read somewhere that they are relying on Renault for KERS, and Renault in turn are relying on Magneti Marelli who are also working with Ferrari's KERS...

On the brightside - if Redbull won't be running there 09 till the last test before the season starts then maybe Mark won't be so disadvantaged to Vettel then...

I thought that the restrictions on testing this year will hurt late players. Although I am not up to date on the new testing restrictions.

i wouldnt of thought mark would be too disadvantaged, but then f1 is all about tiny little details

Hm, how much test mileage could they possibly build up if they only start testing in March?

The decision about testing was made on December 12 at the World Motor Sport Meeting in Monaco. The decision being:

Which means IMO that the later a team tests its car, the further behind in testing it will be once the season starts. Since after the season starts, teams will only be able to test at the race track, before the race. Normally there is a gap between testing various solutions, and then interpreting them and then deciding what worked and making parts for the race car.

I imagine that race testing will be difficult to do in the foreign races - I am not even sure how much testing they will be permitted to do over race weekends, and how many testing resources they are allowed to bring to race weekends.

MM can talk all he wants about reducing the costs of F1 but thats all it is ...talk.

The constant rule changes play into the hands of the cashed up teams.

A long time ago F1 developed to the point where ideas are tested and every possible variation is refined and tested. No longer can one inspired idea make the difference, that idea needs to be polished to the nth degree or it will be out shone by a lesser idea that was refined and polished.

09 will see one of the biggest gaps from front to back of grid that we have seen for many years.

The only teams RBR can hope to beat will be Force India, Super Aguri and STR if Renault have a decent engine.

Fortunately we can look forward to a nice battle between MW and SV

P.S. on the weight thing... from what i understand the 08 cars had ~ 70kg to play with for MW so thats about 80-85 with SV.
The effect on MW will depend on the weight of their KERS (i have heard anything from 60-20kg)
If its 60kg then Mark has only 10kg ballast to play with and SV has 20 a 100% advantage
if its 20kg then Mark has 50kg ballast and SV has 60kg a 20% advantage.
what this would translate to on track is impossible to say but it will be more than nothing.
(i dont have exact numbers this was just to illustrate the effect)

Melbourne Park:
Yeah you're probably right. Hence i was wondering about the possible mileage at such a late start. I mean in specific. How many days of pre-season testing are there still possible? And how many cars may they use to gather data? Afaik one car can do about 500km on one day of testing if there are no problems whatsoever.

Webber on his recovery: ''I'm already working out on the hometrainer again, I swim a lot and on a soft underground, like a trampoline, I can hold fast to a bar with a hand, lift the left foot slightly and stand on my right leg. But I'm not yet allowed to exaggerate things, because otherwise the tumescences will come back.''

If everything goes according to plan then Webber can walk without crutches in the third week of January. ''The doctors say that I can only walk without them when the broken leg has reached 80 % of the strength of the healthy leg.''

''Things could have been a lot worse. I'm lucky it's my right leg, there's less strain on that one whilst driving. Back in 1999 Schumacher had a bigger problem because under braking you need a lot of strength in your left leg.''

The biggest challenge for the right foot is the sensitiveness when hitting the accelerator: ''The most important thing is that I get that feeling back. It's of no use to me when I can strain the right leg but don't have the feeling of the foot belonging to me. Therefore I do a lot of elastic tubing to strenghten the acrocontracture.''

''I want to be back in the car at the testsessions in early February.''

It's not true... If Minardi had put scuplted cutaway sidepods with radical tuned front and rear wing and 20 winglets on their 01 challenger (racing against a horde of primitive simpleton cars ) they would have had the most downforce by far, and it would have been a simple issue of getting the suspension right, increasing the HP of their in house Cosworths by 50+ bhp and they would have easily won the championship.

They just needed more clever engineers, able to get an optimal design right on the drawing board and build straight away with no development hours or testing.

So all teams that turn up with 2015 style aero against their second-rate teams with primitive aero should easily be able to take advantage.

Just as a team, insteading of racing no more than a tweaked Lotus-style design with merely slightly better performance (thought to be the pinnacle of technology at the time) such as Brabham to win the championship by a small margin, if Brabham instead turned up in 65 with a full downforce grounds effects car with wide slick advanced super-sticky tyres prepared from a nifty carbon composite construction allowing lighter weight and using some new nifty little turbocharger device attached to the exhaust and intake should have easily dominated the competition winning all the races.

WTF

I am stunned you wrote that, i really am.

In what way was i referring to a team being able to use something 10years ahead of the competition and being outshone by a refined out of date idea.

As for the big breakthroughs like Active suspension and the like, when was the last time a team had a truly special idea that elevated them above the competition.

Due to the way design and development happens now days it is beyond the realms of possibility that a team would design develop and implement something ground breaking (like in your examples turbochargers and carbon composite) without the other teams having similar designs (through talent or theft) and then it just comes down to the dollars spent in refinement.

I am not discounting the importance of good designers (good management is more important) just as I would not discount the importance of good drivers.

But no one designer/driver/good idea, is enough to make up for the budget disparity in F1 today.
Having said that, inept management and misguided ownership can piss millions up against the wall and simply produce Honda F1

macca's 3rd break pedal, but that was on there 97 car i think...

Red Bull RB5 to be unveiled next month

By Pablo Elizalde Monday, January 5th 2009, 15:47 GMT
Red Bull Racing's new car will make its track debut in February, the team have announced.
The RB5, powered by a Renault engine, will take to the Jerez circuit on 9 February.
Team principal Christian Horner believes the late debut will actually pay off as it will allow Red Bull to put more work on the car.
"Our strategic plan has always been to take full advantage of the later start to the 2009 season and we are using the time to ensure we have optimised the car as much as possible, within the regulation changes, to start on the grid in Melbourne," said Horner.

hmmmmm

exactly, bad excuse, this will only work if they plan not to introduce kers i think

Significant departure from kind of testing MS in his Ferrari clocked prior March 15.

as they are using Ferraris kers maybe thats part of the reason for the hold up

Rather, they're using Renault's KERS, which I don't think is 100% similar to Ferrari's system...

I reckon the known weight of the KERS will have influenced all sorts of construction issues. One should consider that the slick tyres have changed the balance this year to being more forwards. This is because there is more rubber forwards this year, compared to the tyre balance with grooved tyres. ,Therefor there will have to be some re-designing of the heavier parts of the car forward, if it is possible. KERS makes this task especially difficult, because KERS is located behind the driver, and it weighs extra. Reports indicate that Ferrari are water cooling their batteries too, which adds extra weight, and higher weight too which drastically changes the centre of gravity of the previously very low CoG of the top cars, whose CofG's were enhanced by using very high mass and lowly positioned tungsten ballast.

I just wonder what elements of the car could be moved forward - perhaps the radiators? Could the air pressure be moved forward, and the weight balance shifted back, would that work? Or does that make a slower package? Ferrari astounded other F1 teams who switched to the BS grooved tyres, that Ferrari's weight was far more forward than any of the Michelin teams had dreamed of. It appeared that the other BS teams also had not thought to put their weight so far forward either. But it appeared that the aero centre of effort of the Ferrari did not seem to match the weight balance centre of Ferrari. The drawings of the McLaren which Renault procured, showed both the weight and aero centres - but unfortunately whether those were the same or not was not published. But I presume it became quite public knowledge. However the slick tyre changes mean that all that knowledge is now gone - things have to start again now. BS were even talking of lowering the grip of the rear construction and compounds, in order to balance out the increase of the relative front contact patch compared to the rear contact patch of the slick tyres. So things even now may not be certain as to weight issues - issues which are all made more difficult by the extra weight in the rear of the car that KERS will enforce.

I imagine that this year other teams will follow McLaren's innovation of having the left side of the car different in shape and function to the right side. IMO whoever best manages to get some weight forward will utilize KERS best, and for the RBR5 this would be more important than with most teams because Webber weighs 75kg, although there is much less of an issue for Vettel, who is jockey like at just 62kg. Red Bull being late with the chassis might be a result of realizing some innovations with getting the weight forward. I hope so. This might be Newey's last chance for being innovative. He's done it before too - I am hoping he can do it again. Now doubt so too is Dietrich Mateschitz, who evidently is paying Newey a vast amount for a design based competitive advantage.

RBR is a much smaller team that McLaren or Ferrari. Therefor RBR's developmental pace cannot be its strength - more likely it is a weakness. In order to win, RBR needs to be innovative. Now's the time to provide innovation - with a new formula that is vastly different from the previous one. And this year Renault is assured of a top engine, due to the FIA permitting them to catch up, and restricting other teams from changing their engines further (which bemuses me about Toyota, who seem to have missed out on catching up). The best way to make a jump for a smaller team, is by introducing an innovation after everyone else has built their cars. That way the innovation will take some time to be copied - which would be made even more difficult for the other teams due to the severely restricted testing regulations. The circuit starts overseas for several races - so full testing will not be possible until the Euro season re- starts. Which will give an innovator a big jump if the innovation works.

RBR can enjoy the gap until February - the new Ferrari is a week away. Hopefully the RBR5 is a lot different - although its under the skin - where the weight is - that the difference will count IMO. Who knows, maybe Mark Webber will - for once - get lucky?

Dude, I seriously hope you didn't just jinx him... :\

I'd imagine if the CoG and CoP are too far out of alignment, the car would snap violently in medium speed corners as it transitions from being dependant on weight balance to air pressure balance.

True but isn't Magnetti Marelli involved with both Ferrari's and Renault's system? Supposedly there have been problems with Ferrari's KERS - quite possibly there maybe problems with Renault's as well.

There have been indeed.

So does this mean RBR will be using Renault engines again?

Yes. There is no reason not to.

There's likely to be a round of dismissals in Milton Keynes to cut personnel costs in these difficult times. Some salaries are likely to be going down as well.

Horner: ''Red Bull squarely supports the measures taken by the FIA and FOTA in order to cut the costs in 2009. In the current turbulent economic climate these measures will decisively contribute to lowering the costs in Formula 1. Unfortunately, an inevitable consequence of these regulations is that teams will have to become smaller.''

It's for instance likely that the testteam will be done away with, although no definite decision about this has yet been taken: ''We're talking to those that are part of the race- and testteam and have positions that are in danger. So far though we haven't dismissed anyone.''

So far I don't think the delay in the launch has hurt the team much. Yes for this years testing regs every test day is crucial so it's never a good thing to miss out on one or four. But for the other teams they haven't really had a "proper test", as it's been raining most of the time.

In my opinion a proper test means that you get 2-3 dry days in a row where the track can rubber in and you can simulate a GP weekend conditions. For the 4th day you might get some flawed data as the track will be more rubbered in then during the weekend (one of the reasons for leading to teams in the past saying "the car felt different that at the last test here"). But that forth day is still more ideal then having rain, rain, dry for a few hours and then rain again.

So if it's dry for the remaining tests, I think RBR will have gotten lucky in that sense. Whether RBR succeed this year will probably more about if the car is decent out of the box or not, rather then the date it was launched. And how reliable it can be to ensure good milage each day. If they are really unreliable from the start, it would seem they are doomed, as tests or no tests, it'd going to be hard to fix those type of problems once the season starts. A very high risk high reward season.

A late launch means they are behind in development, which they won't be able to recover from given the relative size of their budget.

Holden might be right I suspect. Because RBR are getting the engine and the KERS entirely from Renault. Who are testing it all for them, right now. And without logging up any valuable - and limited - RBR testing miles and testing engines. The batteries are the differentiator between those issues. So why not further develop hopefully some innovation.

09 changes do not bode well for small teams.
They dont bode well for small budgets

RBR launch delay could be tactical but as they have MW in the team it will HAVE to be a negative.
SO... its @#$% and not ready or its just not all in one piece or they cant work out what colour to paint it.

RBR in 09 < than Honda in 08

But I dont care as I will get to see MW go head to head with SV and one way or another the debate will be over

It's nice to be on the glass half full side of MW/RBR discussions for a change.

;))

Its always half full

problem is its a very small glass

If you looked in the winter testing topic, alot of people from every team were complaining of the rain and lack of laps. Even Bridgestone weren't happy about it (via main news page). So RBR missed 1 dry day. Not perfect situation but could be worse.

As for the development, I don't know how anyone can comment on it at this point. The car hasn't even hit the track. You could be the first launched car and have a multitude of problems to fix (in 06 RBR couldn't do more then 6 laps without Ferrari engine detonating). Or you could be the last launched car and have a solid stable base as soon as it hits the track. Don't know how you can say RB5 will fall into either of these categories at this stage. If we are going to speculate I am more worried about reliability then pace. If there is one set of rules in this era that Newey can excell in it's these. However Redbull's track record with new concept cars hasn't been very good in it's recent history. Maybe Willis can change that. Or maybe with these testing rules, if you have a car that has alot of problems, you will be stuck with them all season. I don't think missing one test would change that.

Looking forward to it, my money is on Seb to beat Mark, but who knows?

I am puzzled by the headline; is Mark concerned about his job? I am not sure that we see crack in his protective shield, but surely that is not something he would say if he was totally certain that he will have a job next year. If Buemi shines in 2009, Mark could be endangered species...

Or maybe he just senses that the car will be good (he said it looks "extremely good") and he wants to be a part of it. Or maybe he is scared Vettel will blow him away, who knows. I agree that at this stage in the season it's strange time to say that. Someone like Alonso would wait until the last minute to wait and see.

Webber on knowing what the new car is going to look like: ''Perhaps the RB5 will be the most beautiful car of 2009, which is something very difficult with this year's regulations.''

A word on KERS: ''The teams are developing in both directions (with and without KERS). But certainly anyone that decides to go to Melbourne with KERS shows great courage.''

Fuller than Button's though. 10 million fuller I'd reckon. If I'd been MW's manager, I'd have signed him to Honda.

It means nothing of the sort. It means they have decided that an extra few weeks of development from AN and his team is more valuable than a one test they have missed. This is not a last minute delay in the launch, it is a long planned decision by the team.

Whether it work is open to debate. I fear it will be a repeat of Newey's MP4-18 fiasco, but with no "MP4-17" to fall back on. :\