http://twitter.com/Jamesallenonf1


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He revealed that ages ago, after the first week of testing. He said he was just as worried about his shoulder as his leg, but it was fine too.

Mark Webber's shoulder fracture isn't new 'news' at all. Mark Hughes mentioned it in Autosport over a month ago now: http://www.autosport.com/features/article.php/id/2018 (sub needed)



Has it hindered him in testing? No.

Some RBR news at last:

http://audio.crash.net/radioplayer.asp?radioURL=144204.wma

Summary of Horner: "Vettel Vettel Vettel!!!!!! Mark? Oh, he's just the guy who's warming the other car's seat, dont worry about him. Did I mention Vettel's a GP winner?"

Well, it is tripleM talking about Webber so nothing new there...

Thanks. I guess James Allen doesn't subscribe to Autosport

Interesting listen.
What I got from this was they are hoping to not suck utterly.
Just like BMW say they are targetting wins, Horner sais they are targeting p8-6

Its quite apparent listening to this though that what Marko said before is representative of Horners thoughts on SV/MW and not just the rantings of a loon.

Mark needs to do something masterful to survive this.
There is no ambiguity in this anymore RBR have thrown the bulk of their hopes and dreams into the SV camp.

I am stunned that he downplayed the impact of the Renault engine and lay the success of the ST3 and SV in SVs hands.

Considering SB was allso beating Mark and David by that time it suggests they dont think very highly of Mark as a driver.

P.S. this is not me just being negative, I am quite sober and quit happy atm

James Allen acting the gimp again... Honestly, he's acting like Webber has only informed the doctors now...

That's old news. Mark revealed that at the time of the RB5 launch.

I know.

I think James Allen has been lured into this story thanks to the GMM network. This story that Webber apparently 'revealed' his new injury was mentioned yesterday on a host of websites who can't be bothered to produce their own stories and instead use a 'feed' service to paraphrase all F1 news and pass it off as their own.

F1-Live use GMM and the story came out yesterday: http://en.f1-live.com/f1/en/headlines/news...321173832.shtml

GMM aggregate F1 news stories (and unreliable ones at that) and then resell them to news sites across the globe. Problem is, that most of the stories are badly translated and they often seem to deliberately miss vital information in to make them sound more exciting than they actually are.

Example: Alonso's plane crash incident. GMM 'accidentally' missed the word 'taxiing' from their news release and made the factual, but dull, story sound much more exciting then it actually was - Alonso's plane brushed a fence.

If you trace back many of F1's controversies (the kind that get fans all riled up), you'll probably find a GMM misquote at the root of it all.

They need to make money, but aren't journalists. They're sensationalist rubbish.

It still doesnt explain James Allen's comment properly. What difference does it make if he announced it at the time, a month ago, or today? He's still been getting treatment for it since the time it happened, so it is of no consequence really when he tells the public.

"you need strong shoulders to drive in F1" - really James? Thanks for that amazing piece of information. And you wonder why so many people are glad you're not on TV anymore...

In his defence, his comment were made on Twitter which allows for just 140 characters of text. It's also rather one-sided, so my reply to him will have fallen on deaf-ears.

Via AFCA in Ferrari topic -

Q: Will there be other title contenders apart from Ferrari and McLaren ?
Domenicali: ''Toyota, they've made a lot of progress, BMW Sauber and there's Red Bull who have a nice design of their car.''

http://www.crash.net/Formula+One/News/1443...be_victory.html

It is true that he should know more than the average forum patron, but IMO he is talking rubbish RE Red Bull. They are not going to challenge for the title this year, I don't mean to sound arrogant, but if they had a fast car, I would have noticed by now.

It's still interesting that he hyped them up though, maybe his best friend works there, or maybe he has more than a little passing interest in Vettel...

From Horner .....

“Testing has been vitally important. We had a good test in Barcelona, particularly with Sebastian Vettel, and I think we're in good shape. We've managed to cover the majority of our plan and the car has run reliably and competitively.

“There are no pace concerns at all. I think it's impossible to see what others are doing, because you don't know what fuel levels or car weights they're running. We know obviously what we've been doing, and I think we have made significant steps and did look very competitive throughout the final two days of the Barcelona test.”

He just listed other cars which will be in front of McLaren

When RBR ran with the flexy floor, the banning of that floor set them back quite a bit.
They don't have the capability to recover from forced removal of technology as quickly as the larger teams.
I have no doubt this is why we don't see them using a diffuser design like Williams and co.

Have to say I no longer give a @#$% and will spend this year cheering on RB in his final year of F1, wishing him all the success he can get his hands on.

Thanks for the text quote of the interview.

Sanjiro, I did not interpret that as being that negative to Mark. He certainly said Vettel is hugely talented - but he also said that Vettel would find qualifying against Mark tough. I also do not recall Mark ever being that quick in testing. So we'll see how both drivers go. I just hope KERS doesn't work this year.

Vettel is a potential dream for RBR though. He is multi-lingual, in quite a few languages, which is a marketing dream, and such things count a lot more than they used to. He's young too, he's a product of the RBR driver schemes and he is paid a lot less than MW. And I guess he's almost Austrian too.

And Sanjiro, RBR would be better off if the stewards rejected Honda's, and Toyota's, and William's rear aero tricks ... so if you are barracking for Rubens, well you are in fact barracking against MW!

I guess we'll be finding out shortly what the situation is - although I still think Melbourne is not the most revealing of tracks.

As an example, the truck IMO is quite bumpy. This year, the front wing is lower. Hence the effect of bumps will be greater - and cars that handle pitch better will perform better in Melbourne. I don't know if Toyota is all that strong over the kerbs still, so maybe Melbourne won't suit Toyota. Who knows which cars it will suit - but IMO the bumps will hide the later speed of the cars to some extent.

I dont see it quite like that.
If the protests are successful I would expect the ban to be introduced at a reasonable pace so the teams can make changes.
If its not then expect the other teams to adopt a similar solution within a race or 2.
I very much doubt the results of race one will be altered as no one is trying to deceive the FIA
(something that will get results taken from you)

As for the RB thing over MW, I dont expect RBR with Mark to be anywhere near the BF1 so RB coming in 1st or 6th will not alter Marks result.

I was never a huge RB fan and didnt subscribe to the theory that some how ALL his races were compromised by the need to see MS win. He was just not as good as MS.
Having said that he is a nice guy and I like the way he gets on with business.
Just as I didnt want to see DC go out the way he did (with hind sight he should have left after 07)
I would like to see RB go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

I agree. From what I've seen RB is a very nice guy, and being 2nd to schumacher in skill level is no disgrace.

Christ on a bike over the period of a month without seeing a race you have managed to talk yourself out of barracking for RedBull. I will be very interested to see your Sunday evening comments.

If I have to, I will bend over and take it like a man

The issue is not an FIA thing - its a stewards issue. While the Charlie Whiting and maybe Max said the rear aero treatment looked OK, the FIA have passed things before only for the Stewards at scrutineering to reject something. On another occassion, the FIA rejected something (Renault's TMD) only for the Stewards to pass it. And then Renault decided not to race it due to the FIA announced appeal against the Stewards.

It's Ferrari who is most vocally complaining - again.

So we don't know what will happen. But if the Stewards fail the device, then it would be a brave team that would race the technology.

As to teams using the technology (if it survives scutineering or a protest_ within a couple of weeks - several of the teams with it have said the technology is not easy to copy. Which is probably why that despite the technology having been revealed almost two months ago, no team has yet incorporated it into their announced designs. I reckon that is proof that its not a bolt on concept, but rather extends deep into the chassis aero concepts.

as to Rubens, IMO he was a lot slower than MS - so he was lucky to get runner ups in WDCs. Although MS would make anyone look bad, especially with Ross Brawn etc in his corner. Hopefully things are even at RBR though.

Just seen Mark on 10 News and he was pretty optimistic. The voiceover hyped it up a bit that it could be the best car he's driven and then his comments "kind of" went along with that. Saying it was one of the best winters he's had etc.

I do hope that RBR5 flys.

I guess we'll know a lot more after Q3, when they announce the fuel loads that were carried. As far as I know, they are still going to reveal the fuel loads.

Indeed we CAN wait til then. Yet I hopep that RBR5 will be at the front end...

There was not too much of differences in the fuel loads. Ofter Hamilton was just about one or two laps shorter or longer than the rest which was barely enough to run to the 1st...

Actually, I'd say it's Renault and their RBR engine customer who have been most vocal about it, with support from Ferrari. It was Flavio who kicked off, Symonds has had his fair share to say, and RBR this week have been pretty clear on what they think. Ferrari by comparison have kept their (public) comments reasonably tame so far.



Comments from the RBR team since testing completed seem to indicate they were running heavy through the entirety of their testing. I think they were implying that they think they were running heavier than others and that they're actually closer to the front than the testing results indicate.

I jolly well hope they're right, but fear they aren't. I'm expecting them to be a solid mid-field team, with regular top-10 results.

must be a great car then, considering the winter he's had.

Not an FIA isssue? Do the stewards write the rules then?

The teams should be able to go to the FIA and get the OK for anything they put on the car. Once OK'd that should be binding. The issue is that CW's word does not carry any weight, despite being the FIA representative.

That`s the FIA! Sadly ...

How can 3 random stewards (I`m sure they can look nice in a suit, but other than that they are utter tools with Donnely having the say as the man in the dark) decide on such complicated technical issues? I mean common guys ...
That`s rotten to the bone since forever!

These stewards will have a few words whispered in the ear and told how to adjudicate on this little affair. If people think Max & Bernie dont know the outcome already, then they are mad.

Yes but Max likes it this way - rules procedures etc - everything grey and shady so that 'the FIA' have room to manouvre...

Or they are just living in an innocent world where there is no such thing as spankings in your ass for pleasure.

Video of Webber's interview in Melbourne: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPL12NP3pUM

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/73876

I'm a little bit disappointed tbh this seems to be the stance taken by the team. I wouldve rathered they simply chase a rule clarification before trying the concept themselves, but this suggests to me they cant get it to work at all on their car, so they dont want anybody using it.

So far it seems the stance taken by Marko.
Why isn`t Horner saying this? Is he afraid? Last time I checked he was team principal ...

Maybe they're traveling and Marko was around to give quotes?

See a lot of Q&A`s on this site? Aren`t they travelling too?

That wa smy first thought, Horner could be 30,000 feet up in the air.

The thing is that they tried the concept and they were told by the FIA that it was illegal, so their stance is more than undertandable i think.

It depends on who they ask the questions to...

The likes of Marko and Haug are always ready to tell something to the German (speaking) press, Marko told a German source after probably being called by them...

How long ago was that?

Having seen a recent article suggest that implementing the loophole-exploiting designs on the RBR could be a problem due to the design of the RBR rear-end (specifically the suspension and thus gearbox layouts).

Pure speculation on my part: It may be that RBR were told it was illegal because it is illegal on their car, while it's legal on other cars. Remember, they have a very different rear-end.

They asked the FIA during the conception of their 2009 car.

Maybe RBR enquired about a double decker diffuser, were told it was illegal and only then embarked on their current design of rear end. Remember they asked about it last year already.

Unless we saw the design Red Bull showed to the FIA we can't really comment on its validity to the others.

On the diffuser row, Dietrich Mateschitz stated that both Red Bull and Renault discussed the legality of a similar aerodynamic concept with the FIA in March 2008 and “at that time there was a negative answer”

If there is any truth in this then that puts a whole new spin on things. Sam Michael and the like cannot argue that people are moaning because they didn't think of it first.