The Mole is busy again this week, looking at the state of the British F1 industry and where it is under threat. He also looks at some possible F1 team owners of the future. You can read about it here.

It seems like a never-ending story. Lotus Cars has agreed another motor racing sponsorship to add to the fleet of cars that will be seen in black and gold this season. At the moment the car company is supporting the Lotus F1 team, a variety of IndyCars, teams in GP2 and GP3, various open-wheelers in Germany, at least one LMP2 car in the WEC and now (in addition to Uncle Tom Cobbley and all) the Alex Job Racing team in the American Le Mans Series. The team will use the Evora GTE. Alex Job Racing is one of the most successful teams in Gt racing in the US and has won ALMS GT series championships in 2004, 2003, 2002; it has twice won the GT class in the Le Mans 24 Hours and has won Sebring no fewer than seven times, the first being back in 1995.

The important question is whether all this sponsorship will result on customers buying Lotus road cars, which is the purpose of the company.

McLaren has signed up teenager Tom Blomqvist, son of 1984 World Rally Champion Stig Blomqvist, to join its Driver Development Programme. He has made outstanding progress since graduating from karting in 2009, becoming the youngest driver ever to win the Formula Renault UK Championship and then moved up to run competitively in Formula 3 in 2011.

As part of the McLaren Driver Development Programme, Blomqvist will benefit from a wealth of personalised guidance in the off-track skills demanded by his craft, as well as building on his racing performances as he climbs the motorsport ladder.

“I’m thrilled to get this opportunity with Vodafone McLaren Mercedes,” the youngster said. “The competition gets fiercer every time you step up a category, and having this level of support will really improve my strength and confidence.”

Nico Hulkenberg set the fastest time on the second day of the Barcelona test with a best of 1m22.608s, after a mammoth 112 laps of the track in his Force India.

“We started the day with some aero work – trying some constant speed runs and collecting more data,” he said. “Then, the rest of the day was spent working on the balance of the car and trying out all four tyre compounds. I did some short runs, long runs and just got a feel for the tyre characteristics and how the car reacts to them. Once again the car has been very drivable all day and our baseline set-up has proved to be a good starting point for running all the different compounds.”

Hulkenberg was just faster than Sergio Perez in the Sauber. The Mexican completed 85 laps during the test and ended up nearly three tenths ahead of Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull.

“We lost a bit of track time because of the exhaust problem,” said Perez, “but I am happy with how things went, we have gathered plenty of information to go through now and I believe we are working in the right direction.”

The World Champion was doing race preparation work and so did a 104 laps in the course of the day, but it was not without problems.

The team’s head of race engineering Ian Morgan explained that it was so cold on the morning that the team had problems with pit stop practice, “simply because the equipment was freezing up as we tried to use it”. Vettel did have a problem later in the morning but the team declined to talk about it.

“We had a little bit of a problem, it was small,” said Vettel. “With testing you stop whenever there’s a issue, take a look and see what’s what and that always takes up a bit of time. But nevertheless, in the afternoon I was quite happy. We got a lot of laps done, more than 100, so we got through most of the programme.”

Fernando Alonso was just a couple of tenths slower than Vettel, and did 87 laps. The team said that he was doing “development and data acquisition”, which did not tell anyone a lot.

Daniel Ricciardo did only 49 laps in the Toro Rosso, but managed a best of 1m23.639s.

“The afternoon did not go to plan,” the Australian said, “but the morning was positive and we did all the runs we had planned for the first part of the day.”

The team did not give full details of the problems, but said that one of them was a driveshaft.

Ricciardo’s time was slightly faster than Lewis Hamilton’s McLaren. Lewis did 121 laps and set a time of 1m23.806s. The focus for the morning was on data gathering and set-up evaluation before the team carried out a race-distance simulation in the afternoon.

“To have completed more than 1000km in the past two days is incredibly encouraging – the whole team should feel proud,” said Hamilton. “The car behaves really well in the high-speed corners – I think the baseline of our car is higher than it was last year – and it’s better overall at high-speed. We don’t know the fuel-loads of the other cars, so it’s still hard to determine the pecking order. We didn’t bring any upgrades here, but our understanding of the car has developed since the test in Jerez. We’re learning more about how the tyres work, how the temperatures behave and how to balance the car using set-up. It’s been an extremely productive few days.”

Nico Rosberg was next in the new Mercedes and completed 82 laps for a best time of 1m24.555s.

“It was good to get into proper testing today,” he said. “Early in the morning, it was a bit too cold on the track to collect some decent information, however later we were able to get into our planned work. In the afternoon session, unfortunately we had a transmission oil leak which meant that I wasn’t able to complete any further running. That doesn’t affect my positive feelings about our test programme, and things like that can happen in the early stages of running a new car.”

Rosberg was two-tenths ahead of Williams test driver Valtteri Bottas, who completed 117 laps with a best of 1m25.738s.

“I really enjoyed today,” the Finn said. “The FW34 again showed good reliability, as we completed 117 laps while doing some interesting tests with the car set-up.”

Vitaly Petrov has his first runs withe the Caterham team and clocked 69 laps, as he got used to the car. His best was a 1m26.605s,

“We got through most of what we had planned,” said the Russian. “This morning we had a couple of issues with the seating position and the brakes, but you expect that from a new car and they were little things that we were able to fix quickly. In the afternoon we put in a few more long runs and that’ll give us a lot of data to work on tonight and I think tomorrow it will be more of the same. Physically I feel really good. It’s obviously been a while since I’ve been in a car, but I’ve kept up my fitness levels and I enjoyed myself on track, so it’s a good first day back. One thing I have noticed is that this car behaves a little differently from my previous experience and I think I may have to adjust my driving style to get the best out of it – I’ve been quite aggressive before, but I think this car responds better to smoother inputs, so that’s something I can work on, and work with the engineers on.”

Charles Pic continued to bash around in the old Marussia Virgin, covering 109 laps with a best of 1m27.343s.

You have to smile at the optimism of the people trying to sell tickets to the Bahrain Grand Prix. I am not convinced that thousands of international visitors are going to be swarming into the country after what has happened there in the last 12 months. I have made my feelings on this matter very clear.

I have been asked many times if I intend to go there if there is a race. I have said ‘Wait and see’, but there comes a time at which decisions must be made. One has to book flights and hotels. I have no doubt that whatever happens with the international visitors, the grandstands will be filled with happy-looking, flag-waving Bahrainis. I know if I worked for the Ministry of Information I would make sure that happened.

The problem is how does one know that all these people are going to be peace-loving citizens?

The government says that the race would not be happening if it were not safe and the urgency to hold a race has got nothing to do with the fact that the country’s tourist industry is dying on its feet because of the troubles. They blame the foreign media for this, without explaining why it is in anyone’s interest in the West to make up bad stories about Bahrain.

The F1 circus is setting itself up to be seen as a pro-government group and thus all those involved are going to be perceived by extremists as being against them. We have already seen both sides in the conflict attacking foreigners. My feeling is that because the opposition have been hemmed in by the authorities and have not been able to express their discontent there is likely to a radicalisation of their methods in the future. We all have to drive backwards and forwards through the areas where there has been much protest.

I admit that I am looking at worst case scenarios, and I will be very happy if nothing happens, but I think that one needs to weigh up the risks and benefits before making such a decision. Now we just have to hope that nothing goes wrong.

Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni, the man who wrote the report that damned the government’s activities and recommended massive changes, said that the race should go ahead and he is both independent and an expert in these matters. So while I still feel that it is bad for F1′s image to be there and will be a disaster if things go wrong, I am going to go. I feel very strongly that it is actually my duty to be there and to see for myself. And to do my job. Boycotting the race might be a gesture, but a journalist does not become the story, he merely reports it. If things do go wrong and Formula 1 finds itself in a mess then I think that those responsible for the decisions should resign their positions. In any case, there will be little confidence left in their judgement. They are taking a risk that they do not NEED to take, and they should be held accountable for their decisions.

The work being done for the Formula 1 movie “Rush” is pushing ahead at Blackbushe Airport, where much of the filming will be done this summer. The film crews have already constructed a double-sided pit garage set, with a straight on either side, in order to simulate different race tracks, one is likely to be Monza, where Niki Lauda made his famous comeback just a month after his fiery crash at the Nurburgring. It is also likely to be used for Fuji, where Lauda and James Hunt fought out the World Championship decider. The pits look very similar to the facilities at both places at that time. There is also some metal barrier that has been installed to simulate the crash scene, complete with a suitable impact. In addition the vehicles that will be used in the movie paddock are now coming together with a German ambulance having arrived, in addition to the JPS Team Lotus transporter from that era.

The double-sides garages can be used to represent various 1970s tracks. © Five Lights

The JPS Lotus transporter. © Five Lights

German fire engine. © Five Lights

Pre-twisted barrier at the crash site. © Five Lights

General Motors and PSA Peugeot Citroën are in talks to form an alliance to build cars in Europe. If the idea goes ahead it would result in the two companies jointly developing vehicles and then selling them under their own brands. This could be similar to the links between Renault-Nissan and Fiat-Chrysler, but the stories that have appeared in The Financial Times say that it would not be merger and that no equity would be involved. Both firms are struggling in Europe with strong competition and considerable over-capacity and both have recently announced significant losses for 2011. There is not much overlap at the moment with Peugeot factories in France and GM’s in Germany. While a full merger might make a little more sense the Peugeot company does not wish to be swallowed up by the industry giant. Nonetheless such a deal would have effects on the strategies of both companies in Europe, and in motorsport.

Lotus F1 Team has decided not to run for the rest of the second test at Barcelona. The test was due to cover four days, ending on Friday, but the team ran into trouble this morning with the new E20-02 chassis. The team made plans to fly the original chassis (E20-01) out from England to continue work tomorrow but the decision has been taken to cancel the test to make sure that everything is in order.

“We ran a series of simulations at the factory based on the data provided by our brief running on track today,” said technical director James Allison. “As a result, we were able to identify an area which requires some additional work. It will be more productive for us to carry out these modifications to both chassis at Enstone, rather than send E20-01 out to this week’s test. We’ll put the right measures in place and we will be able to fix the problem before next week.”

The team says that this is a setback.

“Not running this week has been a tough decision to take,” said Eric Boullier, “but we feel that our choice is the right one. On the positive side, we have quickly identified the issue with the chassis and our design office has already devised a solution. We will be present at next week’s test in Barcelona. We draw faith from the fact that the E20 was quick out of the box in Jerez and showed its reliability there. We have a lot of work ahead of us over the next week, but everyone at Enstone is ready for this challenge.”

Sebastian Vettel set the pace on the first day of the second official winter test, which takes place this week in Barcelona. The German lapped the circuit in 1m23.265s, completing a total of 79 laps.

“It’s clear that the cars have less grip than last year, but we try to come back from that slowly,” said the World Champion. “It’s difficult to judge where we are compared with the others right now. It’s all based on feeling and the feeling I have inside the car at the moment is fine. I think we had a good day today, with no trouble. We had a long lunch break when we made some changes, but not because anything broke down. All in all, it was a good day.”

The team will now start doing race simulations and with the whole race team present the focus is on getting things sorted out so that the crew is ready for the first race meeting.

Vettel’s time was nearly two-tenths of a second ahead of the Force India of Nico Hülkenberg, who did 97 laps.

“I’m pleased with how things went today,” Hulkenberg said. “It was only my second day in the car and I’m still bedding in and getting used to things, but after each run I felt a bit more comfortable. We started with some aero runs and more data gathering this morning, and then moved to longer runs in the afternoon. The car feels consistent and the drivability is good.”

The Force India was was just a tenth ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the new McLaren. The British driver did 114 laps in the course of the day. It began with data collection, including aero work on newer rubber before his engineers began a more comprehensive programme of tyre and set-up evaluation. The focus in the afternoon turned to longer run.

“With more than 500km under our belt, this was an extremely productive day,” said team manager David Redding. “The car ran reliably and without problem all day and Lewis was happy with the car. Given the cooler temperatures we experienced today, we’re optimistic that we’re headed in the right direction with our tyre and set-up work for the start of the season.”

Hamilton’s time was just faster than the Toro Rosso of Daniel Ricciardo, who completed 76 laps. The team worked on evaluating several set-up configurations with various fuel loads. The day was cut short with a technical problem that stopped the car out on track and with only one hour of the day remaining.

There was then a gap back to Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari, which clocked a 1m24.100s in the course of 75 laps. The team said that the Spaniard was continuing with “the tasks of development and data acquisition relating to the behaviour of the new car”. This was a tenth faster than Michael Schumacher in the new Mercedes, which completed just 51 laps.

“My initial feelings with our new car are certainly good,” said Schumacher. “I’m happy with the different evaluations that we have done over the last week, but obviously with the rule changes, we won’t know more until later. It’s certainly an improvement and we have worked hard on the areas we had defined last year. The aerodynamics figures look good so I’m not worried about the shape of the nose! Even though we had the hydraulic problem today, I’m pleased with all the mileage we have achieved so far with the new car.”

Seventh fastest was Sauber’s Sergio Perez, who did only 66 laps and set a best of 1m24.219s. The team was rather vague about the problems in the morning, but had a broken rear anti-roll bar in the afternoon

There was then a big gap back to Bruno Senna, who did 97 laps but recorded only a 1m25.711s. The team said that it was “working successfully through a detailed aero correlation test programme in the morning before moving on to car set-up optimisation”. Valtteri Bottas takes over tomorrow.

Senna’s time was three-tenths ahead of Heikki Kovalainen’s Caterham, which had a troubled time and did just 31 laps,

“That obviously wasn’t how we wanted day one here to go, but that’s what testing is for – pushing everything to the limit to make sure we get rid of the problems before we get to the first race,” said The Finn. “It’s hard to learn a lot from limited laps, but I’m back in the car on Friday and I’m sure we’ll be able to push on with the program between now and then and make sure we get as much as we can out of the next three days on track.”

The problem was a rear track rod failure.

Lotus F1 Team had a bad day with Romain Grosjean stopping after just seven laps in a brand new chassis. The team concluded that there was a serious problem and the cra was sent back to the UK. The original E20 will now be flown out to Jerez for the test tomorrow.

“We completed a few aero runs and then started timed runs, but I was very quickly aware that the car wasn’t responding as it should,” said Grosjean. “It’s not ideal to lose track time, but fortunately we will have the chassis which ran perfectly in Jerez so I should get some good track time tomorrow.

Charles Pic rounded off the runners with 121 laps in the 2011 Marussia Virgin, setting a best lap of 1m28.026s, but getting plenty of mileage under his belt.

There is a conundrum that I have been struggling with in recent weeks. It is as follows: HRT is a Spanish Formula 1 team (in principle). It has finally decided to set up a base in Madrid, and is cobbling together a headquarters in the middle of tennis complex. Its cars are being built in Germany and it will take considerable time and money before a suitable facility will be ready in Madrid. It will take even longer to fill this with experienced F1 engineers. It is a big challenge.

In the meantime, 350km to the north of Madrid, close to the French border and much nearer to the centre of Europe than Madrid, there is a full scale F1 factory sitting unused – and a Spaniard who has vast experience in running F1 teams successfully.

Spain has an unusual political structure. It is a constitutional monarchy with government by an elected parliament, although this has devolved much of its power to regional governments that are responsible for social services, education, health, development, culture and in some cases even policing. This means that government spending is largely at regional level, although the so-called “autonomous communities” have no jurisdiction over the law, foreign policy, defence or monetary issues. They do, however, have the right to spend their money to aid economic development in their region. The Basque regional government under Juan José Ibarretxe was keen to increase the region’s independence from Spain, and invested heavily back in the early Noughties to create a stronger regional economy. This was made easier in 2008 when the central government agreed to let the Basque region control its own research and development and innovation budgets. Other regional development had been seen with the opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was designed to increase regional tourism, and even with a motor race on the streets around the city, which proved to be very popular while it lasted.

The region was the pioneer is establishing Spanish technology parks, with the aim of combining international companies with universities and research and development facilities, and create high value jobs and new industries. It was into this environment that Catalan Joan Villadelprat strode some years ago, looking to turn his Epsilon Euskadi team into Spain’s first proper Formula 1 team, working with the local government and the Mondragon University to create a high profile centre of excellence. It was a good plan. Grants, subsidies and loans helped to pay for a state-of-the-art F1-standard factory in the Parque Tecnológico de Álava Miñano in Vitoria. The team built a Le Mans sports car and had plans for F1, but the political scene changed and things began to go wrong.

In the regional elections of 2009 Ibarretxe’s Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) won the most seats in the Basque Parliament, but he was ousted by a wildly unlikely alliance between the conservative Partido Popular and the Socialist Party, who are arch-rivals at national level. They agreed to to work together to stop the region pushing for too much independence from Spain. Villadelprat’s revenues began to dry up, despite being involved in Basque projects such as the Hiriko city car. A year ago the new Basque government under socialist Patxi López decided not to put any further money into Epsilon Euskadi. With little income, a loss of €7.8 million over three years, and loans of €38.8 million, the organisation was in trouble. Villadelprat tried to negotiate a moratorium on loans and some additional government money, but they did not want to know. He tried to find backing from the Middle East but that too failed and the company was put into administration.

The Commercial Court in Vitoria is now sorting out the mess and has raised questions in recent days about the legality of Villadelprat selling the organisation racing team to Epic Racing Santander in April last year for €200,000 when the division was valued at €1.1 million. Epic was headed by Mark Payne, who was previously Epsilon Euskadi’s financial director.

While this is being unravelled the Epsilon factory is completely wasted. Formula 1 teams may need good staff and location is important, but they also need a place from which to work and the better the facility, the easier the job is, as long as there is money to pay people and suppliers. The Basque government is in no position to be greedy and ask too much money for what is otherwise a fairly worthless asset, which might – with the right funding – become something of great value for the region.

HRT’s policy to set up in Madrid makes no real sense, given that the Epsilon factory has everything that they need, and programmes that could be revived to train young Spanish engineers. The HRT management might be ultimately sensible and hand the management of the whole thing over to Villadelprat, who knows how to run successful racing teams and is Spanish (albeit a Catalan).

The only conclusion that one can draw from all this is that either HRT cannot afford it (which would be worrying) or a factory in the Basque country is not considered to be Spanish enough for the owners (which is bonkers). Yes, Spaniards have a right to be Catalan-Spaniards, Valencians, Basques, or whatever, but they are all supposed to be Spaniards.

Bankers are not generally unintelligent people, nor are they without contacts when it comes to raising money. Nor for that matter do they much care about things other than money-making.

So there is the mystery. What are these people doing?