Pre-Brazil analysis - Vettel intent on Interlagos success
Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel will be going for another little bit of history in Interlagos this weekend. He currently shares with Nigel Mansell, who achieved the feat in the 16-race 1992 season, the all-time record of 14 pole positions in a single season and is intent on going one better after matching the Englishman in Abu Dhabi.
The double champion said at Interlagos on Thursday that he is pleased his tyre failure in Abu Dhabi was not the result of driver error, but that the precise cause of it is still unknown.
"I think we will never find out 100 per cent what happened. But I think it’s important to understand I didn't do anything wrong,” he told reporters. “We will never find out what happened in the last race, but we didn't run over any debris. There wasn't anything I could have done differently. I don't like the word luck, but there wasn't anything I could have done differently to prevent the problem."Straight after the race I walked the track myself and I couldn't find anything. There were not any problems in Turn One. There were a lot of drivers using different lines. Pirelli haven’t found anything wrong in particular. And that was important.”
Vettel said that even though Red Bull had tried to recreate the situation in the subsequent young drivers test with Jean-Eric Vergne, no further conclusions could be drawn.
"I had no chance to catch the car due to sudden deflation and that was that,” he concluded. “We obviously tested and replicated what happened, without the same result, but we have worked hard with Pirelli to try and understand it. It’s difficult to have a clear answer."
The Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace was built on uneven ground and features several changes of elevation. It is unusual in running anti-clockwise, has 15 corners, 10 left and five right, and a mixture of fast straights, high-speed corners and slow hairpins. It’s a relatively high downforce track which tests engines but is easy on brakes, and is notoriously bumpy.“A great circuit and great atmosphere - the fans here are wild and it’s always a sell-out, so the atmosphere is always pretty special,” says race director Charlie Whiting. “There will be one DRS zone on the back straight. We think this will be enough, as the main straight usually gives a good enough opportunity to overtake anyway, so we don’t want to make it too easy.”
There have been only minor changes to the circuit this year but the plans for 2012 call for a new pit entry and a bigger run-off area in the final corner. “This is a big job that will require removing a couple of permanent grandstands,” Whiting says. “But we’ve had assurances from the city of Sao Paulo that they’ll support this project.”
Credit: Formula One Administration Ltd (www.formula1.com)
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