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Following last year?s defeat to Red Bull Racing, Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes need to really raise their game in F1 2011 if they are to avoid the ignominy of being embarrassingly beaten for a second successive campaign by a team that basically ?exists to sell cans of drink?, muses BBC F1 anchorman Jake Humphrey ? as he warns the sport?s traditional grandees that ?there are no excuses?.

Last season was one of the most enthralling, unpredictable and nail-biting in recent F1 memory, with a five-way title scrap ? and four drivers taking the fight right the way down to the Abu Dhabi finale ? edge-of-the-seat on-track action and twists-and-turns and enough off-track politics, scandal and fall-outs to keep Eastenders scriptwriters in business for the next decade.

There was some very public needle at Red Bull between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber ? with the team assuring that all has now settled down and that harmony has been restored, even if few honestly believe them ? and it will be fascinating to see how that relationship develops, or deteriorates, over the forthcoming campaign.

At McLaren, Lewis Hamilton could find himself with a challenge on his hands indeed should the switch to Pirelli tyres suit team-mate Jenson Button as well as many expect it to ? and as for Ferrari, well, Felipe Massa will simply be eager to prove that he is more than merely Fernando Alonso?s lapdog and convenient support act. And all the while as each of the three teams is endeavouring to gain the upper hand over the other two. Fans, Humphrey agrees, are in for a cracker.

?I think the biggest story is that of those three teams, the fizzy drinks company was the best last year,? he opined, speaking during a special pre-season BBC F1 ?Meet the Team? session at Television Centre. ?How are you going to feel if you?re Ferrari or McLaren and you exist to race, because really, Red Bull exist to sell cans of drink... I think that is really going to up the ante for both Ferrari and McLaren ? they need to come out firing on all cylinders. It can?t be another year where they say, ?well, we developed quicker than everybody else? ? it needs to be, ?look how quick we were out-of-the-box?. I think really, for Ferrari and McLaren, there are no excuses.

?McLaren have got the two British world champions ? the drivers they want ? and I think Jenson and Lewis has been a better experiment than they could ever have wished for. Lewis is learning loads from Jenson?s calmness under pressure, and Jenson is learning loads from Lewis suddenly finding three tenths in qualifying. Jenson needs to improve his qualifying performances, and I think McLaren will be there-or-thereabouts.

?At Ferrari, how do you co-exist alongside Fernando Alonso and beat him? I don?t have the answer to that, but I think Felipe Massa will be trying his damndest to make sure he can do that. If you don?t win the title at Ferrari, things are amiss because that?s the kind of pressure they?re under. I think the way they lost the drivers? title at the end of last year leaves a lot of pressure still on everybody in the team.

?Red Bull ? what pressure? The pressure?s off. You turn up in F1, and five years after forming Red Bull Racing you?ve won both titles, with the youngest-ever world champion. I would just light the blue-touch paper between Mark and Seb and say ?it worked last year, boys...go and have another little row, will you, at a few races?. What problems did it cause? They were both in the title hunt until the very end. It was perfect ? it inspired them both.

?I think Mark needs to go into a race with someone to fight against or something to push against to inspire him, and I think Sebastian loves that psychological battle. You could argue that he out-thought and out-drove at 23 years of age, a guy with vastly more experience than him, and that is a huge testament to his mental strength. All three of those teams have got a really exciting dynamic ? so bring it on, I say!?

Indeed, the curtain-raising Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir is now less than a month away, and tensions and expectations are rising. For a variety of reasons, the last two years in F1 have witnessed some of the greatest extremes of jubilation and despair, wholly unanticipated success and gut-wrenching failure and conflict and controversy in the sport?s six-decade history ? and with the arrival of Pirelli, the return of KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) and the introduction of the moveable rear wing, Humphrey suggests 2011 could just complete the hat-trick. And he is thrilled to be right at the heart of it with the BBC.

?I think there?s so much to look forward to,? enthused the 32-year-old. ?I remember when I got this job and Steve Rider ? who presented before me ? took me out for dinner and said ?you?re never going to have a season as good as the one we?ve just had?. Then we went and had Jenson Button and Brawn ? a brilliant story ? and last year we had five guys going for the title and the youngest-ever world champion, another brilliant story.

?This year, we?re going to have tyres that are going to be struggling because Pirelli naturally are going to be learning a lot ? and my point with that would be, let?s not have a go at them because it will make for brilliant racing, and I hope they don?t get negative publicity if the cars are making four or five stops in the first few races, which they may well be. I think it?s great for racing ? look what happened in Canada last year, it?s what we all want to see.

?I don?t know how I feel really about the KERS button and the moveable rear wing. When you look back on great overtaking manoeuvres, you don?t say, ?well, that wasn?t really a proper overtake because Senna?s tyres were shot? or ?that wasn?t really a great overtake because Mansell was carrying more speed because he missed the chicane at the previous corner? or something like that ? you just look at it and you go, ?bloody hell, F1 used to be exciting!?

?I think for people like my mum who just want to see exciting racing, with KERS and the wing, they?ll see great racing; if you?re a technical expert and you want to know how it?s working and why, then you?ll enjoy that; and if you?re a lover of drivers and you love a driver that makes the most of everything, you?ll love that. That?s exactly what Senna did ? he would love these tools at his disposal.

?I think it?s exciting, I think we?re in for another great season and our aim is to take people even more into the heart of it. I?m always being told off by the producer for going into a garage and touching the car, touching the nose, touching the seatbelts or whatever. We have a lot of meetings where they say ?you?ve got to stop doing that, or you?re going to be in trouble? ? but if you stop doing that, I think you lose the essence of what makes our coverage so good, which is that real accessibility.?

The F1 2011 World Championship campaign will rev into life in the desert kingdom of Bahrain on 13 March. The BBC will broadcast all of the action both on and off-track season-long via comprehensive coverage across TV, HD, radio, online, red button and mobile.

Labels: aposNo, Eurosport, excusesapos, Ferrari, Humphrey, McLaren, Yahoo

What are the significant visual changes to the MP4-26?

Tim Goss: "I think there are some novel features on the car - the long wheelbase and U-shaped sidepods are probably the most obvious examples. The thinking behind that is to feed as much good-quality air as possible to the rear-lower main plane and the floor of the car. We want to get the rear-end working as well as possible following the loss of performance caused by the banning of the double-diffuser.

"For 2011, KERS [hybrid] is now a single integrated unit that sits within the survival cell, beneath the fuel-tank. In 2009, it was housed in the sidepods. The hybrid's cooling intake sits directly below the main roll-hoop intake.

"And, once again, we've really pushed the car's cooling configuration: we've got a second air intake on the engine cover for gearbox and hydraulic cooling."

What have been your biggest challenges ahead of the 2011 season?

TG: "For me, there have been two: recovering the rear downforce we lost following the banning of the double-diffuser, and fully exploiting the Pirelli tyres. The tyres only last for around 10 laps, and making them last longer is quite a challenge. So we need to look closely at how we configure the set-up and suspension to make the tyres last."

Paddy Lowe: "Getting KERS [hybrid] back on the car was a big task. Collaborating with Mercedes GP to define the specification for Mercedes-Benz HighPerformanceEngines was very satisfying: there was great collaboration and co-operation between us. There can be lots of difficulties finding alignment between two teams, but I'm pleased with how we made it happen and very happy with the outcome."

TG: "The system was also more difficult to package because you've got to carry more fuel. That was the first challenge, but we got through that. There were a few difficult decisions concerning architecture around different aerodynamic concepts, but I think we ended up with a design layout we're happy with."

You've both stressed the team-effort that has characterised the development of this car - does the recent restructure of the technical management reflect that?

PL: "The restructure reflects Tim's increased role within the engineering department, but it's also been good to delegate the work around the next generation of senior engineers coming through in the company.

"For MP4-26, we've distributed the workload around five or six senior engineers in different specialist areas - and that's a structure that will continue under Tim's watch. I'm really proud of the depth of talent that we can draw upon at McLaren Racing, and there have been some great opportunities for some new players to contribute directly to the car at a high level.

TG: "And it's not just good for them; it's good for the company and good for the end-product. I think we're going to make better cars because we have wider access to the horsepower available within the design system. They're all good guys and all have good ideas - it's a cliche, but car design really is a team effort these days."

What are your immediate aspirations as you roll out MP4-26
TG: We set ourselves a very ambitious aerodynamic target for 2011. We always want to do more and we're always very critical about performance, but we feel we've done a good job. We've identified some areas where we can add performance to the car - over the next weeks, the task will be to get them on to the car and reliable by the first race. That's the big challenge."

Source: McLaren

Labels: McLaren, SkySports