2011 Season underway

A lot of change for the team since I last blogged.

Renault sold their remaining shares in the team to the majority shareholder Genii

Lotus have agreed a 7 year title sponsorship deal with the team, and Renault a multi-year engine supply deal - so we have become the Lotus Renault GP Team - running in the iconic Black and Gold colours of the early Lotus years! Which means a great deal to me personally. Seeing Bruno Senna in a black and gold Lotus, with that iconic helmet colour, looking so much like his uncle Ayrton, was very emotive.

Pre-season our driver Robert Kubica was injured in a rallying accident and is missing at least the start of the season, we have found a very good replacement in Nick Heidfeld. Best wishes to Robert on a full recovery!

It was last year's rookie, who is with us again this year, (the Russian Vitaly Petrov who achieved a 3rd place podium finish for us in the first race of the year in Australia, which was a huge boost for us. Vitaly was clearly delighted with his first ever podium (and the first for a Russian). He came to the factory to tell us about his race and the entire factory broke into spontaneous applause (which is unusual from a hardened bunch of F1 workers :-)

On the IT front things are going well, we continue to focus on Reliability and Performance of the applications we develop and the services/infrastructure we provide

I'm looking forward to a strong season!

Post Singapore 2010

Another disappointing race for us, as Mercedes pull further ahead, however fantastic driving by Kubica to recover 6 places in 9 laps after a puncture late in the race. Whilst we weren’t as competitive as we’d hoped, we are pleased with the job the whole team did.

First flyaway race for a while, so lots of setup issues for the IT side, loose cables on the pitwall and engineers desk and then heat issues for the servers throughout the weekend (even on Sunday!). We experienced more than double the IT issues we had in Monza. The remaining 4 flyaway races of the year should see us return to the lower levels of faults (I hope!).

Jake Humphrey posted a behind the scenes look on his blog which is well worth watching (UK only)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/jakehumphrey/2010/09/what_its_like_being_an_f1_pres.html

Pre Monza

Monza is one of my favourite tracks (behind Spa), but it probably doesn’t suite our car this year, so we may struggle behind the top 3 teams. From an IT point of view, a really untroubled setup and no major issues – but then it is the 14th race of the year and things should be settled.

We'll see what Saturday brings, but unlike Spa, we're not likely to see a Renault on the podium

Post FOTA Shutdown and Pre Monza

It’s been a while, what can I say, my enthusiasm for blogging has been re-ignited, so here goes (thanks to Andreas and his son for the push)

This year has been tough in many ways. The relentless pace of development has taken a toll on the team. I could see tiredness creeping in, the good news is that a two week break enforced by FOTA means we head to Monza refreshed and ready for the final push of the season. Especially after a fantastic podium for the team at Spa (and Vitaly scored points too!). The shutdown is really important for us in IT too, we undertake a number of important upgrades and maintenance we simply couldn’t do during the season

On the IT side, we continue to focus our efforts for the track on statistical and strategy applications, saving engineers days (literally) of work – automation is one of the main drivers of my IT Strategy. We had quite a few upgrades for Spa, but with the shutdown, just a few small upgrades for Monza – here’s hoping the final races bring us our main target – finish 4th in the constructors championship – now that would be a huge turn around in our fortunes and well worth celebrating!

Crashgate

I’ve avoided making any comment on the scandal surrounding Nelson Piquet Jnr’s deliberate crash at the Singapore 08 Grand Prix. Despite believing it’s NOT all over, I thought I would give an insider’s view

I have worked with Pat Symonds for over 12 years, so immediately I heard of Piquet’s allegations, I dismissed them as the ramblings of a bitter ex-employee. My trust in Pat was unequivocal, based on my experience of how he operates. Ever since the fire that engulfed Jos Verstappen’s car in the 1994 German GP, I believe Pat has done everything he can to ensure we operate within the technical regulations. I remember a race where we placed 6th and the 5 cars in front of us had illegal planks at the end of the race, Pat explained in his debrief that he had deliberately run our cars higher, despite the performance loss, to ensure we did not contravene the rules (I was furious the other 5 got away with it). Other than the double championship wins of 2005 and 2006, I was most proud of witnessing Pat collecting his life time achievement award at the 2005 Autosport awards (BTW what a travesty it was for the MP4-20 to get car of the year, the R25 was clearly a superior car!!!)

Through it all, despite the very real risk that I and my 500 colleagues would lose our jobs, it is Pat that I most feel sorry for (and am most disappointed in)

As for our former team principle, I never knew the man, have no idea what he is capable of, and as he continues to protest his innocence, I’ll wait until a suitable future occasion to comment further

As for our former driver who displayed a real lack of talent and a real lack of morals and scruples, I hope never to see him in an F1 car again (despite rumours that at least 1 of the new teams is going to sign him for the 2010 season)

So what was like to be on the inside as your team is accused of one of the most serious incidents of cheating in Formula 1’s history? It was a nightmare!! We were instructed not to comment publically (or privately) in order to give the team the best chance of defending themselves at the WMSC hearing of the 21st September. Whilst the result is a boost to the team’s chance of surviving (permanent exclusion from F1 suspended for 2 seasons), the blanket ban on communication seems to have hurt our relationship with some of our sponsors, and destabilised the workforce. The media had a field day with all the leaked information (I was incredulous at the overreaction in Simon Barnes article in The Times on the 17th September where he accused us of “The worst act of cheating in the history of sport” and he’s a journalist usually worth reading!) Edward Gorman, The Times Motor Racing Correspondent agreed in an article the following day, although Matthew Syed, The Times Sports Journalist of the Year, gave me some comfort and a bit of balance to the debate. Once again F1 (and my team specifically) were in the press for all the wrong reasons. How do we put this behind us and restore our credibility? I honestly don’t know – what I do know is that we do not have a culture within the team which encourages or allows cheating, and the actions of the individuals concerned should be put behind us and we move on to a new era.

Silverstone - the home of British Motor Racing

It’s been a while, far too long! Much has changed since winter testing ended. We believed we would be quick – we aren’t – we thought it would improve – it hasn’t!

Now we have the FISA vs FOCA wars all over again with the FIA and FOTA destroying the sport millions of fans love. Ultimately both want the same thing but can’t agree the way to get there.

I spent today at Silverstone for the “final” Friday practise at Silverstone. I still get a buzz out of being at the track. Ultimately all our hard work is about that car and it’s still cool to see it in action

Most of my year has been spent working to strict deadlines and budget, kinda frustrating really.

Snow snow and an improving car

The story of the past fortnight is one of snow and ice. 2 days at home because I couldn’t get out of my driveway. The car looked bad a few weeks ago in Portugal, but a much better picture in Jerez last week – who knows how it will go in Aus (not me!!)