Attempting to discuss things about Monaco has proved a frustrating experience. I am accustomed to being in discussions and even arguments about contentious bits of the race. I am not accustomed to major events happening in a race with seemingly only me noticing. 

Firstly, the crash that caused the red flag. It has been established that it was a complicated mess, but what sparked it? I've seen blame put on several people, primarily Adrian Sutil. What none of those blaming Adrian seem to have noticed was that he took damage in a collision three laps earlier with Kamui Kobayashi. This is clearly demonstrated in Adrian suddenly falling into the clutches of the midfield pack that was in process of being lapped.

He was one second than usual on lap 65 (the lap of the pass - note that all lap numbers on the graph are transposed by one lap), became 3 seconds slower than usual on lap 66 (the lap after Kamui passed him) and 4 seconds slower than usual on laps 67 and 68. On laps 69 and 70, Adrian is 20 seconds a lap slower than usual - but both include pit stop time for replacing tyres. This indicates progressive damage. Given that Kobayashi hit the right rear tyre and it was this tyre that ended up in need of a replacement, it is perfectly reasonable to consider that a weakness in the tyre (underinflation from a slow puncture would be most likely) contributed to Adrian's crash.

I cannot begrudge Kamui his 5th because he was overdue one, but I do not feel that this exempts him from having his race properly analysed.

Secondly, the whole raft of complaints about being able to change tyres/wings/springs on the grid and Pastor Maldonado's removal from the results by Lewis Hamilton. While I see a point to the complaints about the Lewis/Pastor crash in particular, all three debates have missed the most important point - that Article 18 of the General Prescriptions prevented the restart from happening in the first place.

Article 18 of the General Prescriptions (link in PDF) has three cases concerning red flags. Initially I'd thought this was in the International Sporting Code, but it appears this particular rulebook also applies to every international racing series (Article 1). Article 18 describes mid-race stoppages using Cases A, Case B and Case C. These will be familiar to those who recall the contents of 2003-era F1 Sporting Regulations documents. For the people who haven't done so, the cases refer to when the red flag is flown and determine what happens thereafter.

Case A is for when the red flag flies within the first 2 laps. Basically, the race is treated as if it never began.

Case B is for when the red flag flies between 2 laps and 75%. The race is restarted on a 10-minute procedure when possible and the running resumes from the lap where it ended.

Case C is for when the red flag flies between 75% and the end of the race. The race result is called then and there. No restart is attempted even if it would be easy to do so. The race is deemed to have finished when the red flag flies, though there is a countback rule.

72 laps out of 78 is 92.307% of the race, which is considerably more than 75%. Clearly this is a Case C situation.

The inclusion of the General Prescriptions in the list of regulations applicable to F1 on the FIA's website means that the document must be taken seriously. Nonetheless, the General Prescriptions is overruled by the F1 Sporting Regulatoins and the International Sporting Code if there are contradictory clauses.

However, no such clauses exist in either document on the question of Case C restarts. There is nothing in either the International Sporting Code or the F1 Sporting Regulations that allows for a red flag beyond the 75% mark to be interpreted as anything other than the end of the race.

Even Article 41 of the F1 Sporting Regulations (the regulation most often cited as justifying the restart) doesn't do that because Article 18 of the General Prescriptions says the race ends when the red flag is flown in Case C situations. Article 41 doesn't mention anything about the definition of a red flag or end-of-race signal changing. Therefore a Case C situation falls under Article 43 (the regulations for finishing). The lack of mention of Cases A, B and C in the F1 Sporting Regulations (they was removed in 2005) does not suffice to negate the power of General Prescriptions Article 18. Article 1 of the General Prescriptions specifically says that precedence only applies in the case of contradictory regulations.

So a lot of the arguments of yesterday should have been null and void. There should have been no argument over tyre or wing changes because there shouldn't have been any laps in which to use them. Pastor and Lewis shouldn't have crashed because there shouldn't have been any time for them to crash in.

Pity the powers-that-be didn't care about their own regulations - again. Double pity that even people like Ted Kravitz (in BBC TV's coverage of the race (iPlayer link; expires 5 June 2011)) and Joe Saward presented Article 41 as if it was the only relevant item, even though it proved not to be especially relevant. When none of the people at the circuit appear to care, how can anyone else be expected to do so (other than stubborn people like me)?

Warning! Long entry alert!

I spent quite a lot of the weekend attempting to find out information about Giancarlo Fisichella's latest adventure. Considering that it was an international sportscar race (link in Italian), this proved surprisingly difficult.

The race was the 6 Ore di Vallelunga (link in Italian), an endurance race slightly longer than a typical Le Mans Series race (because there is no maximum distance) for GT2 and lower. GT2 is the level Giancarlo races at in sportscars and the race is an independent one, so initially my reaction to him being on the entry list was excitement. Especially since, at fewer than 80 miles from Fisico's home district, it would definitely be his home race.

Then I spotted a slight problem. Coverage.

Sportscar racing is challenging to follow at the best of times. Pit stop counts that sometimes enter double figures, safety cars that pick up whoever happens to be convenient, high entry counts leading to multiple simultaneous incidents... At least the multiple classes would be a minimal complication this time. Usually Giancarlo races in ACO-sanctioned events these days, where GT2 is the slowest class, but in Vallelunga GT2 is the fastest permitted class. So winning the class would surely require a race win.*

Usually the way round all this confusion is to load up a live timing screen. By necessity more complex than any single-seater enthusiasts use for F1, the versions supplied by LMS, ALMS and the 24H Le Mans official websites all offer reasonable means to follow what's happening (when they load and update correctly). The Vallelunga organisers... ...didn't.

There was some news available on the official site, but as far as I could tell (with admittedly limited Italian language skills) there was no live timing. Or broadcasting. Which brought me to the second problem.

To a certain extent, it's possible to follow a sportscar race even without live timing if you have a decent commentary team. Having established there was no official version, my next port of call was Radio Le Mans. Having a commentary team I'd grown to enjoy in the past season (covering four different rulesets and three different continents) explain the complexities of this race (under a fifth ruleset) in my native language would be helpful. Alas, they appear to have gone on a well-deserved off-season break from commentating.

Bereft of alternative ideas, I asked my friends for help.  At the Fisichella Forum suggested half-a-dozen possible sites that could be used. One of them worked, and I looked forward to attempting to understand the race using the likely-sounding Italia-Racing.it (and secretly hoping everyone stopped for ice creams mid-race, since I'd just covered that topic in class!).

On Sunday morning, I duly tuned in... ...and heard "although no-one understood, we-were-holding-back-the-flood..." While I usually like that particular Take That song, I didn't think it was a good sign that I was hearing it 3 minutes before the start. Ah well, maybe it's one of those stations that thinks starting and ending 30 seconds the show either side of the flags is slick and efficient use of time.

The Shakira song that followed made me worried.

The Elvis song that started as the race was due to start made me very worried. "Suspicious Mind(s)", even...

By the end of the next song, I was ready to panic. I'd been checking my social networking services while listening to the radio and seen a photo proving the race had started during the song. It was some Italian pop track, but I was past caring who'd sung it as it was now at least 5 minutes into the race. The way the presenter was talking made it clear I shouldn't expect the station to be covering any racing today. Even if a station called Italia-Racing might be expected to do so.

I'd previously checked through the other 5 links I'd been offered and found that they didn't work or were Internet TV sites requiring registration. Checking against the official site, I noticed something buried deep in the qualifying report (link in Italian) - official broadcast rights were with Sky and they were showing it next week (or possibly the week after - by that stage I couldn't be bothered to get the calender out).

The next hour was spent rambling through every Italian internet radio station I could remember or research in case anyone was unofficially broadcasting the race. Highlights included a lovely club cover of Queen's "You Don't Fool Me". But all the synths in the world weren't going to tell me how Giancarlo was doing in his home race...

After scanning through my social networking, blog and fora contacts (and finding a few photos of practise), I concluded that nobody else I knew had any further information on the race. By this point, I elected to take out my frustration in a game of Worms.

An hour later, logging back in hope more than expectation, I searched on Twitter and found Laura Bonetti tweeting about the race in progress! I knew she was at the track, but I'd assumed that her lack of tweets since the start meant that she was concentrating 100% on what was in front of her. I was pleased to be wrong and even more pleased when I read Giancarlo's car was in the lead. That must have been an exciting couple of hours...

So that, eventually, proved to be my one source of live information - a spectator who was generous enough to spend a little time not looking at the cars in order to post little updates. There's a certain excited tension about following a race via short occasional messages - you start imagining everything that could have happened, refresh, decide nothing's happened, refresh a few minutes later... ...and find that everyone's lined up behind a safety car because of someone else going off.

I probably should have seen an omen in that particular tweet. Just over hour prior to the chequered flag, it started raining. Nearly everyone stayed on slicks. It was on this awkward combination that Giancarlo went off-track. Vallelunga doesn't feature the acres of tarmac run-off that adorn the average Tilke-drome, so it ended Giancarlo's race. The classified position of 7th does not show that he and his team-mates  Perrazzini and Cioci had led the majority of the way without much trouble from opponents.

AF Corse still won the race with a different car (the #10 - they'd sent 4 to the race), followed by the pole-sitting #7 Kessell Racing and the #26 Porsche, which was a GT3.

The race was an interesting and sounded quite exciting, but would have been better with a little more... ...something. A bit like my viewing experience of it, really. Hopefully when the organisers turn this event into a 4-race series the coverage will improve.

* - Just don't tell the LMP1 teams at the LMS at Hungary this year that. The fastest of them was beaten by 5 ostensibly slower LMP2s...

[ Currently: Reading F1 Racing (August 2010 edition) ]
The WMSC made several decisions on Wednesday. Easily the most controversial of these was the one against Ferrari concerning team orders.

F1 Fanatic pointed out that using only a fine to penalise Ferrari effectively said that a point is worth $14,285. This values the 400 points I estimate are necessary for the constructor's championship at $5.714 million - well below the budget of even the most shoe-stringed of teams. Sakon Yamamoto probably brings more money to Hispania than that...

According to the FIA's version of events, Ferrari stood accused of two charges - the commission of team orders (Article 39.1, Sporting Regulations) and bringing the sport into disrepute (Article 151c). For those penalties, the full range of penalties from reprimand to exclusion is available.

Ferrari attempted to defend itself on the first of those charges by saying that the now-infamous phrase "Fernando is faster than you" was a factual statement. The analysis I conducted at the time indicates otherwise. Rob Smedley is a talented enough engineer that he would have seen this for himself using the information the FIA sends to every position on the pitwall. That the WMSC appear to have accepted Ferrri's incorrect statement without contest shows that the FIA did not do the most basic analysis of the situation. Given that, how can it expect anyone to take its viewpoint on the race seriously?

It is also impossible to take seriously the suggestion that it is safer to let another driver through than to hold station, unless Alonso's temper has increased to the point that it poses a safety risk!

So the only part of Ferrari's factual response that had any legitimacy was the distinction between team strategy and team orders. While technically any codified team strategy must constitute team orders, things would get very silly very quickly if a prosecution was formed on that basis...

However, team strategies are not supposed to be based upon giving inaccurate information. It is legal, albeit rather foolish, to do so. What is not legal is requiring another driver to obey the dictates of a strategy, especially if inaccurate information was involved. Codifying an order such that the literal transmission is only a trigger phrase or implied concept still leaves the order as an order. If any bad consequences would have attached to Felipe had he held his ground, then the order was an order whatever wrapping was placed upon it by Ferrari. I'm sure Nelson Piquet Jr. had the "discretion" to not do the Defence at Singapore and not have his contract renewed at the end of 2008.

Even Ferrari, in its legal response, included the "or even an indication of what the team might like the driver to do" when it might have stuck to "that is not the same as giving a driver information". That implies to me that even under Ferrari's viewpoint, the order was meant to indicate a response that should be followed... ...ooh look, we have an implied team order!

"Interference with the race result" is obvious. Without the incident, Massa would have beaten Alonso, barring a significant mistake. With it, Alonso beat Massa. Simply because Ferrari got the same points (and thus gained no direct benefit as a team) does not mean that no interference occurred. Quite why Ferrari didn't work out that one for itself is a mystery - I expected it to defend itself, but not to regard the charge as baffling in any way.

Ferrari also appears to believe that Article 151c cannot be applied without an offence elsewhere in the regulations being committed. This is foolish. While vaguely-worded regulations like it are open to power abuse, the fact that it is a regulation of equal standing to the other 200 or so regulations in the International Sporting Code means it can certainly be used as a standalone charge.

In summary, Ferrari does not appear to have even understood the regulations it is charged with breaching, let alone defended itself well. It should have been easy to get a guilty verdict and a significant additional penalty.

Apparently not.

I will look at the FIA's response in detail next blog entry. For now, my conclusion is that Ferrari left an open goal and the FIA still didn't score.