McLaren racing director Eric Boullier resigns days before British Grand Prix

[...]

That McLaren have chosen their home race, the weekend of the British Grand Prix to accept Boullier’s resignation and make sweeping changes within the team, when it would attract the most attention, is indicative of the seriousness of their situation.

[...]

The former driver, Gil de Ferran, who won the Indy 500 in 2003, has been made sporting director. De Ferran never raced in F1 but was sporting director at BAR-Honda from 2005-2007, helped coach Alonso at last year’s Indy 500 and has been acting as an advisor to McLaren. He raced in the IndyCar and CART championships, wining two titles in the latter in 2000 and 2001. He ran his own team in the American Le Mans Series in 2008 and 2009 and is well respected within the sport.

The chief operating officer Simon Roberts has been made head of production, engineering and logistics and the new performance director Andrea Stella, who joined the team with Alonso from Ferrari, is now responsible for trackside operations.

The team's CEO Zak Brown said the reforms were inevitable. “The causes are systemic and structural, which require major change from within,” he said. “With today’s announcement, we start to address those issues head on and take the first step on our road to recovery.”

Brown, whose background is in marketing, insisted the changes were not a knee-jerk reaction, although the suddenness of the announcement suggested otherwise, but admitted the team had to adapt. “We are too slow to react,” he said. “We need to simplify things within the organisation. We need to operate like a race team, a much faster organisation, we are a bit too slow, we are bit too clunky.”

He cautioned, however, against any expectation of short-term improvement. “We are frustrated, massively frustrated,” he added. “I wish we could fix this overnight but it is going to take some time. We are not quitting, we are are not quitters and our shareholders are fully behind us. But I wouldn’t expect any miracles at Silverstone.”

[...]

Renault is hoping that modifications introduced at the British Grand Prix will improve the reliability of its turbo after Nico Hulkenberg suffered a spectacular failure in Austria.

The updates were planned after Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo experienced a similar issue in China, but have only now come on stream.

The turbo was not changed as part of Renault's recent major upgrade package, first seen in Montreal, so Hulkenberg's was of the same spec as the one that failed in Shanghai.

"It was not a new spec of turbo, it's a new engine but there was nothing different on that spec over previous spec," Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul told Motorsport.com.

"However, we have a little bit of a containing measure that will be introduced in Silverstone as planned, and was not available here.

"We know that we had that risk, after the failure we experienced on Daniel's car on Shanghai. This was the only problem that we've had since Shanghai.

"Nico's turbo is definitely dead, but the ICE and the other components should be OK."

Although Hulkenberg will have to take his third turbo of the season at Silverstone, Abiteboul says that the team is still in schedule.

"We were on a plan of using four engines, to keep on with the development pace, and in particular the introduction of the C-spec, so that does give us some latitude for this type of situation.

"But it is not a situation that is anyway acceptable, and we have to keep on working on that type of reliability.

"There's no penalty for the time being, we were anticipating penalties after the shut down, which is still the plan."

Abiteboul was satisfied with the performance of its new MGU-K in Austria, which was only used by the works cars.

"Packaging issues meant that McLaren opted for fresh versions of the old spec, while Red Bull is on the bubble for penalties with both drivers, and thus in no rush to make a change.

"No particular issue with it. Our car was lighter, so we could achieve a car to the limit, and also a better weight distribution, which is a double positive impact.

"So far the other two cars have preferred not to take that option, because it requires you to change some stuff on the installation side.

"Both teams have elected not to use it for the time being. It doesn't mean that they will not use it later in the season."

Abiteboul also downplayed the introduction of new qualifying modes in Austria, suggesting that Renault would not have made a fuss about the change had the media not been told about it by Christian Horner.

"The qualifying mode is something that we wouldn't have advertised if someone else hadn't mentioned it. It's a development that is not turning around the world, it's a small improvement, among the many we are doing.

"In normal conditions we would keep that for ourselves in terms of communication, we would not create expectations.

"That's another reason why it's also at some point stop that relationship, because we need to control our communication."

Robert Kubica has said the “next two to three months” will determine whether he will make a full return to Formula 1.

Kubica missed out on a seat at Williams to Sergey Sirotkin – the only driver yet to score a point in 2018 – this season and has been acting as their reserve and development driver instead.

After getting a taste of the 2018 cars with two FP1 sessions so far, Kubica is still eyeing a race seat for the 2019 campaign.

However, he is not overly confident about his chances and said that he finds himself in a “hard” situation.

“I don’t hide that for ten months returning to the grid has been a realistic goal,” Kubica told Poland’s Swiat Wyscigow.

“It’s not easy, and it’s hard for me to talk about my chances, because at some point I was rating them this year at 99.9 per cent. Some tell me I was very lucky!

“Now there are several teams who I have already talked to or I can talk to and everything will be played out over the next two to three months.

“If I put myself into the role of the team bosses, the decision to put me in the car is not easy and there are no guarantees.”

As for Williams’ ongoing woes with the uncompetitive FW41, Kubica is refusing to completely write off the Grove-based teams as the worst one on the grid.

“I think nobody was expecting Williams, which was a midfield team, to struggle so much,” he added.

“I think nobody was expecting Sauber being really the slowest, weakest team last year, fighting for midfield position or going into Q3.

“So you know things can change very quickly in Formula 1. So I think it is unfair to put a sticker on Williams that it is the weakest team.

“It is true that it is the weakest team in this period, but if we say about next year, who knows?”

European Formula 3 title challenger Dan Ticktum is a contender for a Toro Rosso Formula 1 drive next season as a replacement for Brendon Hartley.

Ticktum, the 2017 Macau Grand Prix winner, is currently second in Euro F3, one point behind championship leader Marcus Armstrong and is in the frame to partner Pierre Gasly at Red Bull’s junior team in 2019.

Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has identified McLaren Autosport BRDC Award winner Ticktum as its junior driver who would be ready for an F1 drive in 2019.

“At the end of the season, yes,” Marko told Motorsport.com.

“At the Norisring, someone drives into him from the back, he goes to the hospital, says he wants to go out again - and wins the race afterwards!

“He's fast. Crazy, but fast. It fits us. He is only one point behind and had two technical defects.

“We're looking for the fastest. If they're characters, it fits, but someone doesn't have to be this crazy for us.

“We have now normalised Ticktum to some extent.”

Hartley has been under pressure after a tricky start to 2018, with McLarenjunior Lando Norris approached as a possible mid-season replacement, but Marko said the plan is for Hartley to complete the season.

His future beyond that is uncertain, with Ticktum the best-placed alternative given his fellow Red Bull juniors are only at Formula Renault and Formula 4 level.

Red Bull kept faith in Ticktum despite his ban for 2016 for a crash under a safety car in an MSA Formula race at Silverstone the previous year, and made him a fully-fledged part of its junior programme for 2017.

His main obstacle to a 2019 F1 seat is obtaining a superlicence.

As Ticktum has not previously held one, he needs to meet the current FIA requirement of earning 40 superlicence points across the previous three seasons.

His MSA Formula campaign gave him two points, which will expire at the end of the season, but he did not gain any from his race-winning Formula Renault Eurocup season or bit-part GP3 effort in 2017.

Assuming Ticktum wins the Euro F3 title, he would end the season with only 30 points.

This would give Ticktum the 14 points required for an International A licence, which would allow him to take part in F1 testing, and the 25 points needed to apply for a free-practice only superlicence, but not a race licence.

No exceptions have been made since the points system was introduced in December 2014 after Max Verstappen’s leap from his debut F3 season to a Toro Rosso drive.

The FIA reviews its superlicence criteria each year so there could be changes that would make Ticktum eligible - for example making Macau, which is also the FIA F3 World Cup, a point-scoring event or offering more points for Euro F3 success.

Red Bull gave Ticktum experience of higher-downforce machinery earlier this season by handing him his Super Formula debut when Red Bull ‘athlete’ and Honda protege Nirei Fukuzumi had a clashing Formula 2 commitment.

Fukuzumi and fellow Honda protege Tadasuke Makino were candidates to take advantage of Toro Rosso’s use of Honda engines and step up to F1, but both drivers are struggling in F2 and will likely end the year with fewer superlicence points than Ticktum.

Marko said Red Bull will help Honda develop Japanese proteges but does not believe one will be ready for “at least the next two years”.

Toro Rosso has copied Ferrari's lead in introducing channelled wing mirrors on to its cars at the British Grand Prix.

With Toro Rosso pushing to improve its STR13 thanks to it being involved in an ultra-tight midfield battle, the mirrors show that the team is not leaving any stone unturned in its efforts.

The mirror idea is that by effectively opening up its face, a channel can be created through the mirror to help better manage airflow over the rest of the car. The air can then be directed to a specific place along the sidepod area.

Ordinarily the mirror is considered an interference and a source of drag rather than performance improvement – which is why teams have always tried to find ways to minimise their disturbance on the rest of the car.

Ferrari introduced the idea on its SF71H at the start of this season (see below), and has committed to the concept even though its mirrors are now mounted on the halo.

Mercedes changes

Toro Rosso was not the only team to trial a different mirror design, as Mercedes appeared with a double mirror in practice.

The extra structure fitted below the standard mirror could be a visibility test for a potential change of mirror design, or be about data gathering of tyre temperatures with lenses appearing to have been incorporated.

It is unclear if this bigger mirror housing is something that will only be run in practice, or will be carried forward into the rest of the weekend.

“This is going to take some time to fix,” said Brown at Silverstone.

“I think we are years away. I don’t know if that’s two or 10, or somewhere in between. Probably more like somewhere inbetween, but I don’t want to get into predictions.

Lowe apologises to Williams drivers after new rear wing causes spins

Williams has blamed the new rear wing it introduced this weekend for an aerodynamic problem which caused both drivers to spin during qualifying.

The team’s chief technical officer Paddy Lowe told media including RaceFans the team believes the new part is causing an aerodynamic stall when the drivers deactivate DRS. The car’s airflow does not reattach properly, which led to the spins.

[...]

He made his Grand Prix debut with Sauber in 2017, and now Antonio Giovinazzi is set to return to the cockpit of one of the Swiss team’s cars at the forthcoming German Grand Prix.

The Italian, 24, will take over Marcus Ericsson’s car for the opening practice session at Hockenheim on Friday, before handing it back to the Swede for Friday afternoon’s FP2.

Giovinazzi, who is Ferrari’s third driver, last drove F1 machinery back in May when he completed two days of testing at Barcelona following the Spanish Grand Prix, the first for Sauber and the second for Ferrari.

His last FP1 appearance, in Abu Dhabi last year, was one of seven practice appearances in 2017 for Haas, who like Sauber are powered by Ferrari.