CVC appoints Directors to the Board of the Formula One Group

CVC, the controlling shareholder of the Formula One Group, today announces three appointments to the Board of the Formula One Group.

Luca di Montezemolo and Paul Walsh have been appointed as Non Executive Directors, with effect from 1st January 2015.

Luca di Montezemolo was previously Chairman of Ferrari, a position he held from 1991 until 2014. Mr di Montezemolo previously served as a Non Executive Director of the Formula One Group between 2012 and 2014 in his prior capacity as the representative of Ferrari.

Paul Walsh was formerly CEO of Diageo plc, the global leading drinks business, from 2000 to 2013. He is currently Chairman of Compass Group, as well as a Non Executive Director of FedEx Corporation and Unilever plc.

Bernie Ecclestone has been reappointed to the Board and will continue as CEO of the Formula One Group.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.

(source: f1.com)

Fry and Tombazis exit amid Ferrari restructure

New Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has announced a shake-up of the Italian squad’s management, designed to provide ‘a flat structure and clear assignment of responsibilities’. The changes include the departure of engineering director Pat Fry and chief designer Nikolas Tombazis.

Fry joined Ferrari from McLaren in mid-2010, becoming technical director (chassis) in 2011 and taking up his present position when fellow Englishman James Allison joined the team as technical director last year. Tombazis’ Ferrari career dates back to 1994 and he started his present stint in 2006.

Allison retains his current role, with Italian engineers Simone Resta and Mattia Binotto reporting to him as chief designer and power unit director respectively, the latter supported by chief designer power unit Lorenzo Sassi.

Allison will also direct track engineering activities on an interim basis, while the Scuderia’s Formula One activities will be managed by Massimo Rivola.

Ferrari subsequently announced that Hirohide Hamashima, charged with the team's tyre performance analysis, will also leave the Scuderia at the end of the year.

Hamashima, a former director of Bridgestone's tyre development, took up that role at Ferrari ahead of the 2012 season.

(source: f1.com)

McLaren: No fears of 2007 repeat with Alonso

McLaren Group chairman and CEO Ron Dennis insists there will be no recurrence of the acrimony and tension that drove a wedge between Fernando Alonso and the team in 2007.

With Alonso returning to McLaren seven years after that split, Dennis admitted questions over team harmony were inevitable, but said different approaches and a wider culture change would ensure past mistakes will not be repeated.

"I know the media will be looking for any kind of fracture in any part of the team's relationship, especially between Fernando and I, to immediately get a wedge in," Dennis reflected. "But I can tell you, they'll be wasting their time. 

"The reality is that in F1 seven weeks is a lifetime; seven years is just a huge amount of time. You continue to mature - I have mellowed quite a bit, and I'm much more inclusive. 

"If you go back to that period [2007], if you look at who struck the first blow, I would say Lewis [Hamilton] had his role to play in starting this process which then escalated. This one got away from me. Could I have engineered a way out of it? I could have probably done things better. You regret the mistakes you make in life.

"Of course when we [Dennis and Alonso] started to meet over the last few months, no question there was a bit of circling and discomfort, but there is a friendship that we have re-established. You would be very suspicious of it, or wouldn't think it had any grounds, but we are now focused on the future. 

"We have to succeed together, and we both agree that the core ingredient is to be happy, because the opposite is rubbish. So we will absolutely have our radar on and avoid anything that can escalate in our relationship. I don't anticipate any issues."

Alonso echoed Dennis's sentiments, saying that the disappointment of how the 2007 season evolved was a fundamental part of his desire to rejoin the team.

"I am happy with everything I have done apart from 2007," the Spaniard said of his F1 career. "I didn't achieve, didn't deliver, the best of myself.

"So now seven years later [I am] more mature - you learn things and understand things probably you didn't at 25 years old. Now I arrive to finish this job I started in 2007. This was the first priority to come back.

"I am sitting here, ready for this challenge with McLaren-Honda, because I see no problems at all."

(source: f1.com)

Gutierrez becomes Ferrari test driver

Esteban Gutierrez has been confirmed as Ferrari’s new test and reserve driver. Mexican Gutierrez has spent the past two F1 seasons racing for the Ferrari-powered Sauber team.

“It is an honour to become part of the Scuderia Ferrari family, a team with such an exceptional history,” commented Gutierrez, who lost his Sauber seat at the end of the 2014 season. “It is for me the beginning of a new path for my future and I’m going to do my utmost to contribute to the achievement of the targets set by the Scuderia.

“I want to thank everybody for their belief in my potential; this will bring a great opportunity for me to develop further and get to the top in the near future. With all my passion and dedication, I’m now looking forward to the start of this new venture.”

A former GP3 champion, Gutierrez made his F1 debut in 2013, scoring six points in his rookie season at Sauber, with whom he went on to endure a frustrating 2014 campaign as the Swiss squad failed to trouble the top ten with their uncompetitive C33 car.

“I am pleased to welcome Esteban Gutierrez,” added Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene. “We are pleased to be able to offer this opportunity to Esteban who, although young, has plenty of experience relating to the new generation of Formula One cars. I am sure that, with his experience, he will make an important contribution to the development work of the team in the simulator.

“Welcoming Esteban also means opening the gates of Ferrari to a driver from Mexico, a country where the Scuderia still has a lot of fans, just as was the case 50 years ago in the days of the Rodriguez brothers.”

Gutierrez’s compatriot Pedro Rodriguez made eight F1 starts for Ferrari between 1964 and ’69, while younger sibling Ricardo had five outings with the Scuderia between ’61 and ’62. 

(source: f1.com)

Onboard with Sebastian Vettel on his Ferrari debut

F1.COM: Alonso and McLaren - the first time around

Given his previous tenure at the team, many believed Fernando Alonso would never race for McLaren again. That all changed this week however, when the Spaniard agreed a move back to the Honda-powered team. As the parties prepare to reunite, we take a look back over Alonso's first spell with the former world champions...

"Sometimes in life things do not work out…"

With those words, issued in early November 2007, Fernando Alonso departed McLaren, his relationship with the team he'd supported as a boyhood Ayrton Senna fan eroded in barely 11 months.

It was all supposed to be so different. 

Alonso arrived in Woking with the world at his feet; a 25-year-old double world champion who'd not only ended Michael Schumacher's unprecedented run of titles, but also helped usher the legendary German into retirement. 

For McLaren, a team that had suffered the ignominy of seven title-free years despite their vast resources, the Spaniard was deemed the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle: not only did he possess a devastating ability behind the wheel, but two drivers' crowns had done nothing to quench his thirst for success. Alonso was convinced he'd made the right move at the right time, as was McLaren's meticulous team principal Ron Dennis, who was no doubt delighted when the world champion reported for work in Woking with a neatly-cropped new haircut…

A new F1 superpower had seemingly been forged, with shared goals and a similar desire for immediate success. What could possibly go wrong? The answer was nothing, at first. Testing revealed the Mercedes-powered MP4-22 to be everything Alonso had hoped for when he'd agreed to leave home-from-home Renault a year earlier - a car capable of challenging for the world title, even in the face of strong opposition from Ferrari. However, at the season-opener in Australia it became obvious that the reigning champion would have more than just the red cars to contend with in 2007.

Almost no one had expected Lewis Hamilton to be such a strong competitor in his maiden F1 campaign, but there he was in Melbourne, the GP2 champion and a driver that McLaren had nurtured from childhood, brazenly sweeping around the outside of his elder team mate into the first corner. 

It's too simplistic to suggest Hamilton's meteoric emergence (and the fanfare that accompanied it) was the sole reason for cracks appearing in the relationship between Alonso and McLaren over the 2007 season, but it certainly seemed to prevent the Spaniard - who had never faced such in-house rivalry - from settling at his new squad.

At first Alonso had the better of the exchanges, overhauling Hamilton in Australia and then leading him home for a one-two in Malaysia. But in Bahrain, where Dennis was pictured having an unusually public heart-to-heart with his star driver, he was outperformed by his rookie team mate. In two of the next three races he then made uncharacteristic errors as he was again bested by Hamilton, though he did win brilliantly at Monaco in between. 

By the season's halfway point Hamilton's rock-solid consistency allied to wins in Canada and the USA had given him a 14-point lead over his elder team mate and, with McLaren committed to providing both their drivers with an equal chance, a legitimate shot at the title.

On the back foot for arguably the first time in his F1 career, Alonso found himself increasingly at odds with McLaren. First there was the sudden swerve towards the pit lane at Indianapolis whilst running a close second to Hamilton. Alonso denied it, but many attributed the act to his annoyance at McLaren's refusal to make the marginally slower British racer move aside. Then there was the furore that unfolded during a notoriously bad tempered qualifying session in Hungary where Alonso was docked five grid places after being found guilty of blunting Hamilton's pole charge by loitering in McLaren's pit box.

Later it emerged that emails between the Spaniard and test driver Pedro de la Rosa had formed part of the evidence in the McLaren-Ferrari ‘spy scandal'; the controversy that ended up earning the Woking team an unprecedented $100 million fine.

Surprisingly, rather than going completely off the boil amid the growing rancour behind closed doors, Alonso's title charge intensified. Little by little the double world champion began to look more and more like the driver who had bettered Michael Schumacher the year before, winning with authority at the Nurburgring and Monza to close the points gap to Hamilton.

Ultimately both he and his team mate would lose out in the championship stakes to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, though Alonso's third place at the Interlagos season finale did at least enable him to finish level on points with Hamilton, albeit a position lower in the standings by virtue of count back. Outside of his maiden season with Minardi, it remains the only time in the Spaniard's F1 career that he has finished below a team mate over a full season.

In total, Alonso won four of his 17 races with McLaren, taking eight other podiums as well as two pole positions - a very decent return in a season in which dominance swung back and forth between Woking and Maranello. 

However, it was wholly unsurprising when, less than two weeks on from the final round in Brazil, McLaren and Alonso agreed to an amicable divorce. 

"We have had our ups and downs during the season, which has made it extra-challenging for all of us, and it is not a secret that I never really felt at home," the exiting Alonso candidly explained. 

"I know there have been suggestions of favouritism within the team and people say a lot of things in the heat of battle, but in the end I was always provided with an equal opportunity to win."

Seven years and a lot of water under the bridge later, winning remains Alonso's primary motivation, though he didn't do any in 2014, his fifth season with Ferrari. Despite several near misses, his tenure at the Scuderia also failed to yield any championships, meaning that he returns to McLaren with the same goal he had in 2007: winning that elusive third drivers' crown. 

Who knows, perhaps like his boyhood hero Senna, he'll achieve it in a McLaren-Honda...

(source: f1.com)

Dennis: Alonso-Button easily the best F1 driver line-up

McLaren now have - by some margin - the best driver line-up of any current Formula One team. That is according to Chairman and CEO Ron Dennis, following the British squad’s confirmation of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button for 2015.

Alonso’s return to McLaren was widely expected after his recent Ferrari departure, while Button has endured weeks of speculation over his future before finally being given the nod over his 2014 team mate at Woking, Kevin Magnussen.

“As a pair, [Jenson] and Fernando are supremely experienced,” said Dennis. “Fernando has started 234 Grands Prix, has converted 32 of those starts to victories, has stood on a Grand Prix podium 97 times, and has won the drivers’ world championship not once but twice. He is a class act.

“As for Jenson, at 34, he is every bit as fit as Fernando but even more experienced: he has started 266 Grands Prix, has won 15 of them, and has stood on a grand prix podium 50 times. He, too, is an ex-world champion, and is one of the smoothest and fastest guys out there.”

Button has been with McLaren since 2010, while Dennis and Alonso are no strangers either - they worked together during the Spaniard’s 2007 season at the team, during which he won four times and finished level on points with then rookie team mate Lewis Hamilton.

“To sum up, Fernando and Jenson have started a combined total of precisely 500 Grands Prix between them - a mighty aggregate - and have won 47 of them,” added Dennis. “I can safely say, therefore, that we now have by an order of magnitude the best driver line-up of any current Formula One team.”

The other teams fielding multiple race-winning driver line-ups for 2015 are Mercedes, with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and Ferrari, with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

(source: f1.com)