Thursday Edition – Page 1

Officials Gazette – Thursday Edition 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix

WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE The 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix offers all motorsport enthusiasts around the world the opportunity to dream. Who will win? Who will be fastest? Who has the best car? Who can get the most out of their team at the first round? What will the new lap record be? Who will win the championship?

The teams have endured an extremely busy off season since we congratulated Nico Rosberg in Abu Dhabi on November 27th. Only five points separated winning and losing. Who knew he would leave and make way for Valtteri Bottas or that Felipe Massa would be back for another year. The only predictable thing about Formula 1 is change, and so for 2017 change is massive. Drivers have moved, the cars are bigger, the drivers are stronger, the tyres are wider and 900 plus officials are back at Albert Park to do it all again.

Summer in Melbourne has been hot; but heavy rains earlier this week have reminded all Melbournians that change is here. The Gazette Team are back to tell you all about the changes, official’s activities, the motorsport news, bits and pieces and other news from around the Albert Park circuit this week. Back are: Michael Shaw from Sydney, Ron Searle from Houston Texas, Richard McLean from Melbourne and Lynne Huntting; the eternal gazette flame who brings us all together, from San Francisco California.

Lynne will have the famous “Press” sign on her hat, but don’t fret if you don’t get to chat with Lynne because you can also speak with Michael and Ron and tell them about your story as they come around and photograph your sector/area. Send me all your feedback and thoughts including photos and information from your sector or team throughout the event via email or phone to Richard rich.mac@bigpond.net.au or 0499 201 000.

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Officials Gazette – Thursday Edition 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME

Teams & Drivers After taking out the 2016 F1 World Championship, Nico Rosberg decided that he’d had enough and retired from the sport. This caused a ripple effect throughout a number of teams as drivers shuffled about filling in the holes as each moved on. Valtteri Bottas has taken the vacant Mercedes-AMG seat, while Felipe Massa has come out of an extremely short retirement and returned to Williams. Meanwhile, with the demise of Manor over the off season, both Pascal Wehrlein and Estaban Ocon have found new homes at Sauber and Force India respectively. Following this thread, Ocon had replaced Nico Hulkenburg who moved to Renault, while Kevin Magnussen has left Renault and headed to Haas, which has left Esteban Gutierrez without a seat. Gutierrez has found a place in Formula E, at least. To complete the picture, Bottas’ has been replaced by rookie Lance Stroll, though Lance hasn’t done the team any favours during testing with a few offs. Other than that, Stoffel Vandoorne has moved in at McLaren, taking over Jenson Button’s place as Button takes a sabbatical (he’s retired unless Fernando Alonso decides he’s had enough). On the team side, there haven’t been too many changes. Toro Rosso have changed from year old Ferrari engines to current Renaults and also taken the opportunity to finally update their paint scheme to a significantly lighter blue. Meanwhile at McLaren, there are a number of back room changes. Ron Dennis has been ousted, replaced by Zak Brown. Zak has a number of motorsport-related interests including the Motorsport Network which recently purchased Autosport magazine. This has also meant a return of orange to the team, with a multi-hued orange and black machine being launched. Sadly testing has not been kind to McLaren, with numerous issues plaguing the car and Fernando Alonso being quoted as saying “There is no reliability and there is no power. We are 30km/h down on the straight, every straight.” McLaren will return to form, just don’t expect it at Albert Park. The most colourful difference has come from an unlikely source - Force India. Just a couple of weeks away from the start of the season, they announced a new sponsor and a new colour – pink. Pink isn’t new to F1, with Brabham running a partially pink car in 1992 and Onyx, Pacific and Jaguar running pink highlights at various times. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari have all showed strongly during the 8 days of testing in February and March, while the midfield battle between Williams, Force India, Haas and Renault will be hard fought and season-long.

Cars 2017 brings the most significant rule changes for the car bodies in recent history. The cars are returning to two metres wide (up from 1.8m), the wings are wider and the tyres are wider. The aim is to increase grip and increase speed. And it’s worked. Lap times are much faster during testing, including the fastest lap ever recorded at the Barcelona circuit. The tyres are around 25% wider, though Pirelli have also made the tyres harder. The result is that the tyres should last longer and also be more resilient when pushed, allowing drivers to run harder over more of the race. The rear wing is lower and wider, the front wing is now the width of the 2016 cars and the rear diffuser is taller, all of which combine to produce significantly more downforce and therefore higher cornering speeds. The trade off is that the top speeds will be down a little and overtaking is expected to be tougher as well, especially because of drivers being able to brake later. The engines are little changed, though now teams are limited to 4 per season per car, but both Ferrari and Renault have put significant effort into updating theirs to catch up with Mercedes. The tokens that limited development have been removed, which means the manufacturers are now able to do whatever they need to do to find more speed. On top of these changes, there will now be standing starts even if when it’s been raining. Previously, the race would start under Safety Car but now there’ll still be a period of SC running but then the cars will line up on the grid for a standing start.

Sport/F1 And finally the big change. While we won’t see a lot of difference here at Albert Park, Formula 1 has changed hands. Bernie Ecclestone is no longer in charge, and now Liberty Media are running the show. Liberty Media also own, for example, the Atlanta Braves baseball team. What this means for the sport is unknown but Liberty are interested in making big changes to improve the racing and how we watch it. As a first step, they’ve opened up the rules around videos being taken by the teams. Because of this, they all went wild during the test days posting videos on social media as much as they could. How all of this will alter the make up of the races and grid, we’ll find out over the next few days but don’t be surprised if there’s a Ferrari on pole.

Officials Gazette – Thursday Edition 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix

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PARKLANDS TO RACELANDS

FEB 2017

Officials Gazette – Thursday Edition 2017 Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix

ROAD CLOSURES ON SUNDAY - BEWARE Officials BEWARE: Race 5 of the Gatorade Triathlon Series will run on Sunday 26th March concurrently with the main race day of the Grand Prix. The triathlon

event includes a closure of Beaconsfield Parade from 6.00am to 11.30am. Albert Road and Canterbury Road (managed by VicRoads) will remain open to through traffic on Saturday and Sunday to minimise delays on the road network.

This may particularly affect those who come from the Western suburbs and may use the Westgate Bridge, Todd Road and Beaconsfield Parade to get to Fitzroy

Street and the Village Green. Be prepared and allow enough time to work around it.

EXTRA TYRES

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