Mark Webber will get the first run in the new Red Bull RB8 when the champion team begins testing at Jerez on February 7. Reigning drivers’ champion Sebastian Vettel will wait until 9 February before he tries the 2012 machine for the first time, as Webber has been granted the first two days of the four-day test in Spain
Josef Albisser Pierluigi Aldrovanti Alejandro Aleman Eduardo Aleman Jaime Alguesuari
Pirelli has promised Formula 1 fans that it will deliver even more exciting racing in 2012 thanks to a more aggressive approach with its tyre compounds. At a season launch media event in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday, Pirelli revealed that it was closing up the gap between compounds for the season ahead to ensure that drivers and teams faced a challenging time at race weekends.
Juan Bolart Gerhard Boll Jacques Bolle Pierre Bolle Maurice Bolwerk
The first pre-season tests of the 2012 Formula 1 season will start in Jerez, Spain on February 7, but the recently rebranded Marussia F1 Team will not be there. Delays in the production of the new car make it impossible for the team to have their 2012 challenger ready until the final pre-season test in [...]
Source: http://www.f1zone.net/news/glock-still-optimistic-for-2012-despite-delays/11733/
John Anderson Kent Andersson George Andrews Luigi Anelli Marcel Ankone
Story from www.indycar.com
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Gustavo Yacaman has options, which certainly beats the alternative for the 2012 racing season.
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Source: http://www.motorsportforums.com/indycar-news/150337-yacaman-weighs-options-2012-a.html
Silvano Bertarelli Albert Bertholet Guy Bertin Franco Bertoni Juan Bertran
The major leap forward which Honda's MotoGP bike has taken in the past two seasons has come in two distinct areas, the chassis and the electronics. Much of the work of sorting out the RC212V's chassis was done during the 2010 season, when the factory tried out five different chassis variations and several different swingarms, before getting the bike right early in the 2011 season. Parallel to the chassis, Honda spent two years improving their MotoGP bike's electronics, after poaching two of Yamaha's key staff to work on HRC's electronics package. The resulting machine, in the hands of Casey Stoner, proved unbeatable throughout the 2011 season.
Luigi Anelli Marcel Ankone Hans Georg Anscheidt Alessandro Antonello Haruchika Aoki
Caterham technical chief Mike Gascoyne says it’s time for the team to take another step forward this year after finishing as best of the ‘new’ teams in 2011. On Wednesday, the team unveiled its 2012 challenger, the car with which it is hoping to fight in the midfield after finishing in tenth position in the championship last year
Ellis Boyce Helmut Bradl Stefan Bradl Umberto Braga Stefan Brägger
Bruno Senna says his family has given its full blessing to his tie-up with Williams this year, despite his uncle Ayrton losing his life with the team back in 1994. Williams ended months of speculation about the identity of its second driver on Tuesday when it announced that Senna will line-up alongside Pastor Maldonado for 2012
Gilbert Argo Manuel Arias Ken Armstrong Reg Armstrong Arciso Artesiani
There is good news and bad news for MotoGP fans. The bad news is that the MotoGP schedule has been changed – again. The good news is that the season now starts a day earlier, as the Qatar MotoGP round will once again be spread over four days instead of three, and start on Thursday, April 5th, 2012.
The decision sees the race following the same schedule as in 2011. Last year, the race was switched from a three-day to a four-day format to avoid the problems with the track becoming slippery late at night, which had caused several big crashes during testing in 2010. Having an extra day of practice makes it easier to fit all three classes into the period between sunset and the time the temperature starts to approach the dew point. Riders have repeatedly complained of the track becoming treacherous from incipient dew forming on patches of the track between 11pm and midnight. Spreading practice over four days means that all of the riding gets done before 11pm.
Roger Beaumont Leandro Beccheroni Hans Becker Alex Bedford Günter Beer
Lotus, HVM Racing (the Lotus IndyCar test team) and Simona De Silvestro declared themselves very happy having completed a successful shakedown of the new 2012 Lotus powered Dallara DW12 IndyCar on Thursday. De Silvestro was the first driver of the Lotus powered teams to sample and test the new engine.
The team will continue with more in-depth testing of the John Judd developed Lotus 2.2 litre, twin-turbo V6 engine on Friday at Palm Beach International Raceway in Florida.
After two full days and 300 plus miles of testing over the weekend in West Palm Beach, the Lotus test team then moved on to Florida’s Sebring circuit for additional testing on Monday and Tuesday, in total completing 870 trouble free miles over the combined sessions.
Simona De Silvestro confirmed the initial test miles run so far had been very positive for the new Lotus engine, “I think it was really a good four days, we ran a lot of miles, we did a lot of laps, I’ve never spent so much time in a race car! We started tweaking on the race car just to see what it liked, it was a really positive test and to be part of the first laps on the Lotus engine. I learned so many things right there, these guys have been really open and showed me everything and we worked really well together which was really cool. I can’t wait to get back in the car again.”
IndyCar’s other engine manufacturers, Honda and Chevrolet have been testing their new engines for a couple of months already so Lotus and the teams that will be using their engines this year (HVM Racing, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing and Bryan Herta Autosport) will be working closely together, pooling and sharing information to speed-up engine development.
“We’re very satisfied with the way everything went,” said team HVM Team Manager Vince Kremer. “I feel like we made good solid strides. Simona put some solid laps in and the engine ran flawlessly. We exceeded what our original parameters were and we’re looking forward to the next test in a few days. I can’t emphasize enough how well the collaboration with the three teams and the engine supplier went.”
Olivier Picquenot, Lotus’s IndyCar Manager also considered that initial on track engine testing had gone extremely well so far, ”This was the most successful test I have ever participated in, we achieved more than I expected. The quality of the engine is perfect. We’re very pleased from a technical aspect on behalf of Lotus and Judd. I would like to thank Simona for her fantastic job during the 4 days. She was smiling all the time and was very good at giving feedback to the engineers to progress in our development. Hopefully the rest of the tests will be as successful.”
De Silvestro will drive the car again in February, fellow Lotus drivers Alex Tagliani and Oriol Servia will share driving responsibilities with the Swiss driver in the upcoming scheduled tests.
Test photo’s to follow.
Franco Battaini Gerhard Bauer Manfred Baumann Alvaro Bautista Lenfranco Baviera
Any good looking examples?
Source: http://www.motorsportforums.com/chitchat/150322-shooting-brakes.html
Dennis Boulom Christian Bourgeois Philippe Bouzanne Ellis Boyce Helmut Bradl