Hujan Diprediksi Guyur Sirkuit Yeongam

Seri ke-17 Grand Prix akan digelar di Sirkuit Yeongam, Korea Selatan, Minggu 24 Oktober 2010. Dari prakiraan cuaca di Mokpo, kota terdekat dengan Yeongam, hujan diprediksi akan turun pada hari balapan.

Namun seperti dilansir Motor Sport, Rabu 20 Oktober 2010, hujan tidak akan sekencang di GP Jepang, dua pekan lalu. Saat itu, sesi kualifikasi sampai harus ditunda sehari karena hujan dan angin menyapa Sirkuit Suzuka.

Cuaca di Mokpo sebelum GP berlangsung diprediksi akan dingin, berawan dan sedikit dingin. Hujan akan mencapai puncaknya pada Sabtu dan sehari kemudian hanya hujan ringan.

"Saya rasa kami akan mengalami akhir pekan yang menarik," kata bos tim Virgin, John Booth.

Di awal musim ini, Sirkuit Yeongam sempat diragukan kesiapannya untuk pagelaran F1. Ini terlihat dari pembangunan yang belum selesai dari masih kurangnya sponsor yang terlibat.

Namun, pihak FIA (Federasi Automobil Internasional) masih mempercayakan Korsel untuk jadi tuan rumah akhir pekan ini. Media lokal bahkan melansir kalau sudah terjual 60 ribu tiket.

"Jujur, kami belum sepenuhnya siap untuk debut F1 ini. Tapi kalau kami sukses tahun ini, situasinya bakal berubah tahun depan," kata Yoon Keun-Sang sebagai Direktur Humas penyelenggara.

Mark Webber jadi Sasaran Tembak Duo McLaren di Korea

Kubu McLaren menegaskan bahwa duet pembalapnya, Lewis Hamilton dan Jenson Button, tidak boleh finis di belakang pimpinan klasemen sementara Mark Webber (Red Bull) di GP Korea.

Itu satu-satunya cara menjaga peluang Hamilton dan Button di bursa juara tahun ini. Hamilton kini tertinggal 28 poin dari Webber, dan Button 31 poin dengan tersisa tiga GP.

McLaren kalah cepat dari Red Bull di dua balapan terakhir dan kepala bagian mesin Phil Prew menyebut tak ada cara lain bagi duo Silver Arrows itu. "Target kami kini sangat relaistis: masuk podium dan berada di depan Webber," katanya di ESPN.

"Kami butuh dua mobil yang bisa terus di depan sejak kualifikasi sampai balapan berakhir."

Karakter dua GP terakhir, Singapura dan Jepang tak cocok dengan McLaren. Tapi, Prew yakin timnya sangat kompetitif di GP anyar di Korea.

"Jujur, karakter sirkuit sangat berbeda dan merupakan kombinasi karakter beberapa sirkuit," lanjut Prew. "Ada banyak lintasan lurus, tapi langsung disambut dengan tikungan tajam."

"Tentu, ini sangat beda dengan Kanada yang tak cocok dengan mobil kami. Sektor 2 sedikit mirip Turki, dimana kami akan bisa tampil bagus. Dan sektor terakhir punya downforce tinggi, mungkin mirip dengan Hungaria," tutupnya.

Dengan posisi tertinggal sekarang, memang tak ada cara lain yang harus dilakukan kubu McLaren selain meminimalkan kesalahan dan tampil habis-habisan di tiga seri tersisa.

The Secret Life of Michael Schumacher

Nineteen years ago Michael Schumacher made his Formula One debut. Nineteen years of interviews - and seven world titles - later, there’s very little we don’t know about Schumacher. But after he agreed to partake in our Secret Life series, we managed to wrangle a few surprises out of the German legend. Samuel Beckett, skydiving and Italian culinary exploits are just some of his unexpected answers…

Q: Are you a ‘Plan-B’ kind of guy?
Michael Schumacher: No.

Q: Driving a Formula One car aside, what is your favourite buzz?
MS: At the moment it is skydiving.

Q: Who do you most look forward to seeing when you arrive in the paddock on a Thursday?
MS: The engineers.

Q: Who is your dream date?
MS: She is also my dream come true - Corinna.

Q: Which film has made you cry?
MS: Lately it was Slumdog Millionaire. Well, at least a little.

Q: What are you afraid of - and why?
MS: It was heights, but not anymore.

Q: What was the last book you read?
MS: Something from Samuel Beckett. I am very bad at remembering the titles of books and movies and stuff like that.

Q: What is your favourite way to relax?
MS: A glass of red wine and a cigar.

Q: Five things that you hate?
MS: I don’t really hate anything.

Q: Have you ever - or would you ever - dye your hair?
MS: Sure. Why not?

Q: What was the first CD that you bought?
MS: It was an LP - I think some hard rock, metal stuff.

Q: Do you have any tattoos or piercings?
MS: Only temporary ones.

Q: What did teachers say about you in your school report?
MS: Not nice things.

Q: Who were your childhood heroes?
MS: Hard to tell. I did not really have any.

Q: Do you have any guilty pleasures?
MS: Cigars? Poker? I don’t think I should feel guilty about it.

Q: Do you collect anything?
MS: Watches maybe. But not madly.

Q: What do you miss most about home when you are on the road?
MS: My family.

Q: What was your worst-ever buy?
MS: That changes with every fashion change.

Q: How do you take your coffee?
MS: With hot milk.

Q: Your ideal non-race Sunday morning?
MS: A long breakfast with my family.

Q: What was the first car or machine you drove?
MS: A Fiat 500 - well, actually I drove a lot of karts before that.

Q: What was the most embarrassing mistake you have made?
MS: Choose one.

Q: What is the best thing that you can cook?
MS: Italian pasta probably.

Q: When was the last time you were really furious?
MS: Really, really furious? In Spa, 1998 [when he crashed into the rear of David Coulthard’s McLaren while leading a very wet Belgian Grand Prix. Coulthard was a lap down and Schumacher blamed the Scot for the incident.]

McLaren: Korea win there for the taking

The layout of the Korea International Circuit will expose strengths and weaknesses in all three of the leading teams’ cars this weekend. That is the view of McLaren’s principal race engineer Philip Prew, suggesting a tough contest in prospect with Red Bull and Ferrari.

The Hermann Tilke-designed track contains a real mix of high- and medium-speed corners, plus three long straights, which could be particularly valuable to McLaren and their F-duct optimised MP4-25.

“If I had to say which car it favoured, I would say it’s actually quite a neutral circuit and there’s aspects of it which will favour every one of the top teams,” said Prew. “It just depends whether we can gain enough on the long straights and in the high-speed sectors to compensate for the strengths perhaps of the Red Bull in some of the flowing and long corners towards the end of the circuit.

“There are certainly areas where we will excel and some areas where I think the Red Bull will be very strong. I don’t think any of the top three cars will have it all their own way.”

Having walked the circuit on Wednesday morning with his fellow engineers, Prew said he was impressed with what he had seen and predicted several elements of its layout could play into McLaren’s hands.

“To be honest it’s a very good combination of quite a few different sorts of circuits,” he continued. “Obviously it has some long straights with big stops, which is not dissimilar to Canada, which I think will favour our car. Sector two is a bit more like Turkey, where we performed quite well. And then you come to the last sector, typically a high-downforce sector, a bit more like Hungary perhaps.”

The biggest unknown in Korea, according to Prew, is how the recently-laid track surface will evolve over the course of the weekend. Grip is expected to be pretty low initially, but then rise rapidly as the cars lay down rubber.

“In terms of how it develops and how the tyres interact with it, it is going to be guesswork,” admitted Prew. “It’s going to evolve very quickly through the first session and then I think we can expect it to improve all the way through qualifying and then the race. For ourselves that means we have to be careful about what set-up work we do and when we do the set-up work because a result could be influenced more by track evolution than necessarily the changes we make to the car.”

That means qualifying could well be even busier than usual, with the tops teams unlikely to be able to rely on an early banker lap in Q1 and Q2 to get them through to the next phase of the session.

“You need to be prepared that the track could be improving quickly and therefore a lap time set at the beginning of Q1 may not necessarily be sufficient by the time you get to the end of Q1,” said Prew. “And even in Q3 I think the desire to do your laps right at the end will be there.

“So I think track evolution will be the big player and we just have to do what we always do which is adapt the car to the conditions that we find. The fact is the conditions might change more quickly than normal here, but it’s what the guys do and what the drivers are used to doing.”

The good news for those whose qualifying session doesn’t go exactly to plan is that the Yeongam layout should lend itself to overtaking. It means Prew is confident a strong race result is possible, even if Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button don’t quite make it onto the front row of the grid.

“There’s three good straights, which actually give you an opportunity to catch up and then another opportunity to overtake, so in that aspect I think there’s some very good overtaking opportunities here, not just because of the braking points to make the overtaking, but the opportunity to gain on the first two straights and perhaps make the overtaking manoeuvre into Turn Four for example. I think we have strengths in that area on our car and I think the opening laps could be very interesting, even if we’re behind.”

McLaren have taken several mechanical and aero updates to Korea, including those they were unable to test properly at the last round in Japan. With a better understanding of the changes, Prew is confident they will yield results in Korea.

“We ran out of time in Suzuka to gain the confidence that it was a robust enough solution to take racing,” Prew said of the team’s latest rear wing and aero package. “A good clear session on Friday here will give us a lot more track time and we are optimistic that we can work through a programme to give us that confidence. Obviously our desire and hope is that we can race that with confidence and gain the performance out of it that we think there is available.”