F.1 – Road to Montecarlo

Montecarlo is Montecarlo. Glamour, parties, atmosphere, yachts. It’s obviously an incredible and unique weekend, starting from the planning, with the first two free practice sessions from Thursday, coming back on track on Saturday and Sunday for the Gran Gala of the Grand Prix. Above all, the possibility to see the open wheels drive fast just closer to their fans. A truly unique event.

It will be a Gp focused on Mercedes, with an internal battle. In the last two years, Nico Rosberg has managed to be the first and, after the Spanish success, he will try to go on the positive way of successes, taking advantage of his feeling with the circuit of Monaco. Certainly, he cannot be much more outdistanced by Lewis Hamilton.

All the others remain an unknown, being far away for the incredible German power and I don’t expect miracles. Incidents can be always really close and compounds could help. Pirelli will bring special Supersoft, very performing, and Soft, which could favour those who have less grip and traction, such as Ferrari.

I hope that this long weekend, which will start today with a PR conference, will be the occasion to make things clearer on what the Strategy Group has suggested. In my opinion, these proposals don’t represent the right way, because Formula 1 problems about no spectacle and the economic and technical crisis are undertaken. All these proposals are focused on 2017, but firstly there’s need to overcome the 2016. There are too many unknown elements about Circus’ future and they’re unacceptable for all those teams ready to enter.

From the one side, we have Audi AD who declares: “F1 has to solve its problems by itself”, that’s to say: first of all, rules have to be clear and then we can enter. From the other side, there’s Renault, which is creating a lot of problems to two small regular teams, one of which is twice Wold Champion. The scene is certainly not the most solid ones. This is why these proposals seem to me not suitable to the actual situation. In the last years, there have been made choices in favour of safety. Now, there are proposals for 1000 hp engines and 4-5” more performing cars, including again supplies, going back to chronometric results of 6-7 years ago. It denies everything done so far. Moreover, we’ve a GP2, which in Spain has been faster than the last row of F1. This GP2 counts on 200 hp less and on budgets that are far away from those of Circus. Numbers that should make us think about.

For this reason, I hope there’ll be FIA and FOA interventions, in order to find serious and useful solutions to reach and pass 2016 with no problems, giving stability to the atmosphere.

Gian Carlo Minardi