Hartley missing "full support" amid Albon linksRowland replaces Albon for final Valencia test day today.
Williams Formula 1 young driver Oliver Rowland will drive for the Nissan e.dams Formula E team alongside Sebastien Buemi on the final day of the 2018/19 pre-season test at Valencia.
Rowland will drive the car that 2018 Formula 2 title contender Alexander Albon was scheduled to drive at the Circuit Ricardo Tormo this week, before the news broke that he is closing on a ‘19 Toro Rosso F1 drive.
Rowland arrived at Valencia ahead of the second day of running on Wednesday, telling Motorsport.com that he was not going to drive that day, and he did not take to the track, with Buemi completing Nissan’s on-track running by himself for a second day in a row.
It is understood that Nissan is extremely frustrated with the Albon situation, which has developed just a week before FE teams must submit their 2018/19 driver line-ups to the FIA.
Asked by Motorsport.com about the recent developments ahead of the United States Grand Prix, Hartley insisted “nothing's changed” on his end.
“I guess I've said it already before, from my point of view I have a contract for next year and anything else is better to discuss with someone from Red Bull,” he said.
“Obviously my position in the team was already questioned after three races into the start of the season, which is a pretty shitty position to be in. But I feel like I'm stronger because of it, and for the rest I don't know.
“Definitely I've changed my attitude a bit, [became] more focused in a selfish way, managing my time and just keeping my mind on points that move the stopwatch.
“In an ideal world, you'd have full support, from a contractual point of view, and you'd just be able to focus on doing your job, but it's Formula 1, it's not always like that.”
sennafan68 wrote: ↑19 Oct 2018, 11:02What rumors were those Re Spec 3 not being raced or used ?? I really hope that is not the case. It needs track time. But if they cannot get it to run right then that would be a real shame
On the other hand, yesterday with Will Buxton he said nothing about it.The upgrade that Honda introduced in Russia caused Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley in Japan to push through to Q3. In the race, however, Toro Rosso fell behind, so the team is not yet sure if and when it wants to use the latest specification of the Honda engine.
"We did have a good qualification, but we did not get everything out of the race, so I do not know which engine we'll be using in Austin and the races after that," Gasly explains.
"We are still learning about its operation, Honda introduced that upgrade early and in an ideal world they had run more kilometers on the test bench, but I think it is still a good engine, so even more can be met. "
"The new spec 3 engine naturally offers us more chance of winning points, but the installation of a brand new engine will again be accompanied by extra grid penalties, which means that we are not completely out of it yet."
But he did; He explained the situation with the fia and the engine mapping and he said that all the issues have been fixed now that they know what the problem wasWouter wrote: ↑19 Oct 2018, 11:15
On the other hand, yesterday with Will Buxton he said nothing about it.
https://youtu.be/JDNau4GAiF8?t=1165
Didn't they take grid penalties in Sochi where it was ran in practice but not raced? They should be good to go with using the new spec 3 PU unless they need another new spec 3 for whatever reason.
Perhaps they feel that qualifying just ahead of Williams is worse than starting a few palaces back with fresh engines
......
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/only ... s/3197394/Only Gasly has Toro Rosso upgrade to trial in US.
Toro Rosso has one upgraded aerodynamic package available for Friday practice, which Pierre Gasly will trial ahead of Formula 1's United States Grand Prix.
The Red Bull junior team has a new front wing and revised floor, plus other small bodywork changes, after a long development process to rectify issues that arose when it tried to introduce its last upgrade in June.
It had targeted this weekend's US GP to introduce the latest package but only has one available, with Gasly due to run it in practice.
Teammate Brendon Hartley will not have the upgrades but said there had not been a call on whether they would be used by Gasly during the rest of the weekend.
"I think it's yet to be decided, to be honest," he said. Obviously they have to make sure it works, but it's a big one, there's a lot of new parts on the car.
"[We are] just trying to rectify all the issues we've had all year - if it works, it's exciting for the rest of the season."
Gasly confirmed that the team does not have any extra components, which means if it wants to persevere with the upgrade one driver will have to miss out.
Gasly still had upshifting problems, but they could do something about it.
