Daily Update Formula1 News

Jenson Button beat Sebastian Vettel and Rubens Barrichello to pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix with a stunning late lap.
The championship leader had appeared to be struggling to match his Brawn team-mate Barrichello's pace for most of the build-up, and fell as low as eighth as others completed their final runs in Q3.
But Button crossed the line to start his last lap just as the chequered flag fell, and proceeded to snatch pole away from Vettel (Red Bull) by 0.133 seconds.

Barrichello briefly held provisional pole before Button and Vettel improved, leaving the Brazilian third.
Felipe Massa showed Ferrari's best form of the year to take fourth after being fastest in morning practice and Q1.
That made up for his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen's disastrous session. The Finn had a poor first Q1 lap - 0.8s slower than team-mate Massa's session-topping effort - but still felt safe enough not to go for a second run. That proved complacent, for he was then pushed down to 16th and out of qualifying.
Mark Webber put the second Red Bull fifth on the grid, with late gains from Toyota's Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli pushing home crowd favourite down Fernando Alonso down to eighth for Renault.
Friday pace-setter Nico Rosberg was correct in his prediction that he would not challenge for pole. The Williams driver was only ninth, ahead of BMW's Robert Kubica.
Nelson Piquet had his best qualifying performance of the year and was on course for a top ten start until the final seconds of Q2, when other drivers' improvements edged the Renault drivers back to 12th, between Kazuki Nakajima (Williams) and Nick Heidfeld's repaired BMW Sauber.
McLaren fell back after its promising Bahrain weekend. Lewis Hamilton could only manage 14th, while Heikki Kovalainen fared worse still and was only quick enough for 18th position.
Sebastien Buemi again outperformed his Toro Rosso team-mate Sebastien Bourdais as they took 15th and 17th on the grid, and the Force Indias remained on the back row, Adrian Sutil half a second quicker than Giancarlo Fisichella this time.
Pos Driver Team Q1 Q2 Q3
1. Button Brawn-Mercedes (B) 1:20.707 1:20.192 1:20.527
2. Vettel Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:20.715 1:20.220 1:20.660
3. Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes (B) 1:20.808 1:19.954 1:20.762
4. Massa Ferrari (B) 1:20.484 1:20.149 1:20.934
5. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:20.689 1:20.007 1:21.049
6. Glock Toyota (B) 1:20.877 1:20.107 1:21.247
7. Trulli Toyota (B) 1:21.189 1:20.420 1:21.254
8. Alonso Renault (B) 1:21.186 1:20.509 1:21.392
9. Rosberg Williams-Toyota (B) 1:20.745 1:20.256 1:22.558
10. Kubica BMW-Sauber (B) 1:20.931 1:20.408 1:22.685
11. Nakajima Williams-Toyota (B) 1:20.818 1:20.531
12. Piquet Renault (B) 1:21.128 1:20.604
13. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (B) 1:21.095 1:20.676
14. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:20.991 1:20.805
15. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:21.033 1:21.067
16. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:21.291
17. Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:21.300
18. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:21.675
19. Sutil Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:21.742
20. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:22.204
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Red Bull Racing technical chief Adrian Newey hopes that his team's hunger and desire to succeed this year will help overcome the financial might of the manufacturers in the fight for world championship glory.
Although Newey concedes that Red Bull does not have the resources to match the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and BMW Sauber, he thinks other factors could come into play.
When asked if he felt Red Bull was a top team now, Newey responded: "It is a team that has been a top team for the last four races. As we all know motor racing is a fast changing business so the challenge now is trying to keep it there."

"I think from a resource side then we are clearly smaller than some of our rivals, but from a hunger and drive side of it then we are going to keep pushing, so what can I say?" said Newey in Spain on Friday. "History will tell in the future."
Newey thinks it is inevitable that the manufacturer teams will keep throwing money at improving their cars over the course of the season, but reckons that the self-belief his team has now after triumphing in Shanghai could be more important.
"I suppose one of the things about getting a bit of success is it gives the team confidence," said Newey. "Red Bull Technology, we did win a race last year obviously at Monza, but I think when the cars are in the same place as the design office, it gives people a bit more confidence. It is more immediate.
"It is a funny thing about winning races. When you are not winning then it looks an impossible task and you can feel sometimes a bit deflated that you can't seem to win a race. If you do win a race, you don't feel you are doing anything differently.
"You have suddenly won a race and it is the old saying - it gets the monkey off your back. From the people at Milton Keynes, who were at Jaguar and are now at Red Bull, we shed that monkey in a way that perhaps they feel it more than when we won the race at Monza last year."
Although Red Bull's title chances will become clearer after it introduces its double-decker diffuser design, potentially at the Monaco Grand Prix, Newey drew short of making any firm predictions that Red Bull could go all the way to winning the world title.
"It's too early to think about that to be perfectly honest," he said. "My attitude in this position is always let's just keep our head down and not worry about what everyone else is doing. We will concentrate on doing the best job we can and see where it takes us."
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Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima gave Williams Formula One Racing Team one-two in the second free practice session for the Spanish Grand Prix at Catalunya.
The team held on to its commanding position despite pace-setter Rosberg pulling off the road with a mechanical problem on his final lap of the afternoon.
Local hero Fernando Alonso buoyed the Barcelona crowd with third place, with Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button taking fourth and sixth for Brawn, split by Mark Webber's Red Bull.

Williams led the way for the majority of the session.
After the early flurry of quick times had ended with Renault's Nelson Piquet at the head of the field following a soft tyre run, Nakajima established himself in first place at the 25-minute mark.
He was briefly deposed by Sebastian Vettel's Red Bull, but only for a few minutes before returning to first place.
When Nakajima was finally beaten with a quarter of an hour remaining, it was his team-mate Rosberg who took the position with a time of 1m21.588s - 0.152s quicker than his Japanese team-mate.
Rosberg looked set to improve further on his last flying lap, only for the car to grind to a halt on the approach to Turn 10.
Alonso grabbed third late on, ahead of the Red Bulls and Brawns.
Following his initial strong form, Piquet had a difficult session. He slid through the gravel at Campsa and brushed the tyre wall, requiring assistance from the marshals to rejoin. Luckily his Renault was undamaged, but he paid a second visit to the gravel on his return to the track - this time spinning at Turn 3.
Despite these incidents, the Brazilian still ended the session in eighth.
Force India's Adrian Sutil missed the entire session due to a fuel cell problem, while Sebastien Buemi had to park his Toro Rosso with smoke coming from its brakes on its out-lap at the start of the afternoon, but was able to rejoin after repairs and take ninth ahead of Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari.
After its strong challenge for the top spot in the morning, Toyota appeared to run a more conservative programme this afternoon. Timo Glock and Jarno Trulli were slowest of those running in the session, but completed nearly 50 laps each.

Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Rosberg Williams-Toyota (B) 1:21.588 43
2. Nakajima Williams-Toyota (B) 1:21.740 + 0.152 40
3. Alonso Renault (B) 1:21.781 + 0.193 36
4. Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes (B) 1:21.843 + 0.255 39
5. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:22.027 + 0.439 37
6. Button Brawn-Mercedes (B) 1:22.052 + 0.464 35
7. Vettel Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:22.082 + 0.494 45
8. Piquet Renault (B) 1:22.349 + 0.761 26
9. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:22.571 + 0.983 17
10. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:22.599 + 1.011 40
11. Bourdais Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:22.615 + 1.027 30
12. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes (B) 1:22.670 + 1.082 32
13. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:22.809 + 1.221 31
14. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:22.876 + 1.288 29
15. Massa Ferrari (B) 1:22.878 + 1.290 35
16. Kubica BMW-Sauber (B) 1:22.948 + 1.360 40
17. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (B) 1:23.173 + 1.585 39
18. Glock Toyota (B) 1:23.360 + 1.772 46
19. Trulli Toyota (B) 1:23.623 + 2.035 47
20. Sutil Force India-Mercedes (B)
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BMW Sauber boss Mario Theissen has admitted that the team's version of the controversial double-decker diffuser will not be ready in time for this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.
The team has been working flat-out on the design, but has opted not to introduce it as part of its new aerodynamic package because it would not have been able to exploit its performance benefit.
Theissen insisted that no date has been set for the diffuser to be introduced, although it is understood that the Monaco Grand Prix is a possibility.

Despite this, the team will have an interim diffuser modification in Spain that is expected to improve its rear-end grip as part of its raft of modifications.
"The Barcelona-spec aero package has long been in development," said Theissen. "Therefore a double diffuser introduced at short notice wouldn't have brought us any benefit.
"There is no time limit set for when we will introduce the double diffuser in our car."
"We will have an substantial update in Barcelona, from the front to the rear wing, affecting also the sidepods, there will be improvements in every detail."
Theissen added that the team has had to re-evaluate its performance targets after claiming only one points finish in the opening four races of 2009.
This season, BMW's fourth as a full-blown constructor in F1, it had been expecting to fight for the championship.
"We moved our season targets that we set in winter aside," he said. "We cannot win races at the moment, therefore we shifted our targets.
"But we won't accept the current situation. We will speed up, we will have a look at where we will end up, but we certainly will not give up on this season."
Barcelona will be the first time that the team has introduced development parts this season, something that Theissen admitted may have been a mistake.
"The main reason we turned down the chance of updates during the first races was the testing restriction," said Theissen. "The other reason was the interference with the aero package on the car.
"This approach looks to be wrong at the moment, but let's wait and see after a couple more races.
"Our performance in Melbourne was fine and it even worked in Sepang, but then the other teams passed us. That was based on a strategy: we always planned not to bring updates in the fly-away races.
"Our first target for an update was always Barcelona and this will happen."
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