Transcript
Introduction [0:00]
- Hello everyone! This is Alianora La Canta and you're listening to La Canta Magnifico Blog Pod, December 2009 edition.
- This is the 2009 F1 season review edition of my (very) occasional podcast. Excerpts of this podcast will appear as part of the Sidepodcast 2009 Megamix at www.sidepodcast.com, which I would encourage you to listen to because a number of my fellow commenters will be contributing their views as well.
- I will be going through how 2009 went team-by-team, finishing with some observations on the even-worse-than-usual political situation, miscellaneous stuff and some conclusions.
Brawn
- F1, like every other field of endeavour, has a core body of established truths, shaping expectations, defining the reasonable. Beyond Rule One ("Be Nice To Bernie and Whoever Is President Of the FIA"), the main ones are: "Money Always Wins", "If You Want To Be Champion, Start With a Winning Car and Team", "Only Someone People Think Can Be Champion Can Become Champion" and "Teams That Change Too Much Never Prosper"). Someone forgot to pass the memo to Ross Brawn and his friends at Brackley.
- At the start of the year, Brawn was ex-Honda. The Japanese manufacturer's board had taken one look at its November sales figures and pummeled the panic button with all its considerable might. Among a raft of other measures, it decided to jettison its remaining F1 team. This was a setback. The type from which most teams die and the surviving ones struggle.
- Five committed managers, including Ross Brawn and Nick Fry, didn't care about the odds of success. Together, they organised a management buyout of the ex-Honda team, arranged for Mercedes to power its cars and inspired the staff to make the BGP001 as good as possible. How they managed to succeed as well as they did will probably remain one of the greatest secrets of F1 this decade. Only the most faithful of Honda believers imagined that a pearl such as the BGP001 could emerge from the pigsty of withdrawal and redundancy. Edd Straw, Autosport's F1 editor said, "If you're tempted to interpret... ...Brawn GP's astonishing testing form as a sign that low-budget independent teams can now embarrass the big guns, think again". Even Ross Brawn limited himself to "We feel we have a good car and we hope we'll be respectable".
- The testing should have clued us into reality. As soon as Jenson Button came back from his first run in the car, they knew that had something special. Kind to its tyres and - despite the new restrictive aero regime - beautifully quick, the Brawn car suited both Button and Barrichello as they swapped their impending P45s for an unexpected championship challenge.
- Initially Jenson very much had the upper hand on his highly experienced team-mate and won six of the first seven races. Granted, one of those races was Malaysia and a bit on the short side, but the only significant error he made in that phase of the season was at Monaco. Jubilant in victory at this most challenging of circuits, Jenson went down the pitlane, parked in parc fermé and started celebrating. There was just one problem. Monaco is quirky. One of its many quirks is that the top three drivers are supposed to park at the end of the straight by the Royal Box. So Jenson put his triathlon training to good use and ran down the main straight, grinning and waving, bringing a little showmanship to a finishing procedure usually noted for its ritualistic sameness.
- Soon, however, Rubens came back. His first few races had seen brilliance interspersed with strange errors, such as bad starts in Australia and pretty much going AWOL in Turkey. However, he scored an impressive number of points regardless and in the second half of the season, started taking victories. Indeed, the championship eventually boiled down to whether Rubens could wear down Jenson's lead enough in the last two rounds to take the driver's championship. By this stage, most people were paying little attention to the Constructor's title... ...because Brawn were virtually assured it by then, barring disaster. Getting four 1-2s (in Australia, Spain, Monaco and Italy) and multiple points every single race tends to help somewhat! Jenson took the championship in considerable style by attacking hard and overtaking plenty of people - and the victory celebrations were massive. I'm sure Edd Straw didn't mind being slightly wrong by this point...
- At the end of the year, a controlling stake in Brawn was purchased by Mercedes and the team renamed in their honour. As a result, Brawn are not only "respectable", they're proportionally the Best. F1. Team. Ever. One season, one Constructor's title. One Driver's title, One delighted team, One rejuevenated F1. 100% brilliant.
Red Bull
- This time last year, Red Bull was considered a midfielder with a young charger yet to prove himself in a big team and an experienced driver with a seriously broken leg. Despite this inauspicious start, it made an excellent account of itself in 2009.
- The RB5 was innovative. Lacking a double diffuser and KERS, it was able to completely re-vision the concept of rear aerodynamics, incorporating the first pushrod suspension for over 15 years and tighter packaging than had ever been seen on a F1 car before. This gave it a completely different array of strengths and weaknesses to everyone else - except Toro Rosso, which continued to use a Red Bull with a different engine supplier.
- Some people thought Sebastian Vettel's effervescent energy would wipe the floor with Mark Webber, while others held that Mark's qualifying pace and team knowledge would give him a massive edge. Instead, each proved to be the best thing that could have happened to the career of the other. They pushed each other to higher performances all season and both emerged with enhanced reputations. Sebastian was the first of the two to make their championship claim clear, by losing a podium in a collision with Robert Kubica in Australia, blaming himself for it even though some of the blame clearly belonged with Robert, and getting himself a 10-place grid penalty for it. However it was Mark who opened Red Bull's points account by coming 6th in Malaysia. Then Red Bull scored a perfect 18 in China, Mark following Sebastian home.
- The next few races were iffier, the low point being Monaco when Mark got 5th and Sebastian got too close to the St. Devote wall. Many have done it before and many will do it again, but that didn't cheer Sebastian up. The engine situation certainly didn't help either - by this point two of Sebastian's eight engines were shrapnel, another two had been used extensively and there were still 11 races to go. Mark also had engine worries later in the season, but he never had to engage in the engine juggling act to the extent that Sebastian did. That neither Red Bull driver got a penalty for using a ninth engine can be attributed to brilliant damage-limitation-orientated engine management in the second half of the season.
- Then the cold races came. Brawn, Red Bull's rival for the championship, had serious problems warming tyres up in cold conditions, which meant that Red Bull had a prime chance to catch up with the upstarts. Sebastian and Mark strolled to victory in Silverstone. Mark took his maiden win in Germany, which was particularly unexpected given that he'd received a drive-through penalty for his start-line antics. Sebastian followed him over the line, which combined with Brawn scoring fewer than half of Red Bull's points in those two races, meant that the championship battle was well and truly joined.
- Unfortunately, the remaining European races were marred with difficulties. Sebastian didn't finish in Hungary or Valencia, while Mark had a string of five non-points finishes in a row - two 9ths in Valencia and Belgium, followed by DNFs in Italy and Singapore. At least this time the latter DNF didn't involve any trams (though let's face it, total brake failure is bad enough)... Oh, and 17th in Japan didn't help Mark's cause either.
- By Brazil, Sebastian was Red Bull's only chance at a Driver's Championship and the Constructor's title looked virtually impossible. Not, in other words, the best race for Sebastian to have a lousy qualifying and spend the race struggling to fourth. Mark won the race, but the joy of Button and Brawn means many people probably didn't notice an excellent drive at the front. Red Bull finished the year in style, with a 1-2 in Abu Dhabi (this time with Sebastian in front). To nobody's surprise, both drivers were retained! 2010 looks very, very good for Red Bull.
McLaren
- When the year began for McLaren, it was with a new team principal in charge. Martin Whitmarsh had taken over the reins from Ron Dennis, following nearly 20 years as his faithful right-hand man. Nobody expected that transition to pose any problems and they were right. It was the transition to new regulations that stymied the Silver Arrows.
- The McLaren was a brilliantly bold concept, differing massively from all its rivals. However, it was beset with aerodynamic problems from the outset and even reigning champion Lewis Hamilton struggled for most of the first half of the season. The one time Lewis' car was right, his tongue was wrong. In Australia, Lewis nearly made the podium despite his recalcitrant car. He would have stayed there except that he claimed to the stewards that Jarno Trulli had passed him under the safety car. When the truth emerged - that Lewis had needlessly let Jarno through after the Toyota driver went off - Lewis was disqualified. Oops.
- The lowest ebb was Britain, where neither McLaren made it into the top 14. Even there, Lewis drew attention to himself, but this time the reason was good - in defiance of a sad no-doughnut rule, he pirouetted his car for the benefit of the fans who'd come to support him.
- Things got better though - McLaren eventually figured out what they were doing wrong with their aero and took steps to sort it out. Lewis ended up with two victories in Hungary and Singapore, victories that nobody would have dared predict in Britain. In fact Hungary and the following race in Valencia were McLaren's best races of the season, providing 27 points between them.
- Heikki Kovalainen seemed a bit... ...invisible during the season. He wasn't terrible, but he never quite got on top of the car. He never drew any attention to himself or his struggles either and some drives - Valencia's 4th place in particular - were quietly impressive. However, his total lack of podiums meant that he was removed from McLaren's line-up by season's end. Like many drivers at the time of recording, his future is unclear.
- Also unclear is what McLaren were thinking when they hired the new world champion to work with his predecesor. Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton could make an interesting duo for all the wrong reasons if McLaren isn't careful.
Ferrari
- Ferrari started the season resolving to make amends for losing out on the 2008 driver's championship. The attempt did not go well. In the beginning, its KERS was more of a hindrance than a help (who can forget Kimi escaping a heavily-smoking car after an aborted quali lap in Malaysia?), but the attempts to resolve it covered up more fundamental problems - the team had a quite different understanding of the regulations to the likes of Brawn. Worse, the gearbox casing hampered the introduction of the double diffuser when it was confirmed to be legal.
- Kimi Raikkonen was the better qualifier but sank without trace in too many races. Felipe Massa might have started lower more often than not, but he tended to rise through the ranks. Neither, however, were helped by tactical errors such as both drivers dropping out of qualifying early because Ferrari thought they'd done enough to get through (despite the blatantly obvious compression of the grid in 2009) and being brought in to take on wet tyres on a dry track. Occasionally, there were signs of panic, the most memorable being Felipe's somewhat frenzied call for a white visor on the re-start grid in Malaysia, which was ironic since it turned out he'd done all his driving for the day - and prompted his race enginner, Rob Smedley, giving the inspiration for Mrs. C's "Felipe Baby" song.
- Even so, it was Kimi who scored Ferrari's first three points of the season in Bahrain. Massa did the same in Spain and things were looking up. Both managed a podium in the first ten races, Kimi's in Monaco and Felipe's in Germany.
- Two things occurred within a fortnight of each other to completely derail Ferrari's season. Firstly, it stopped developing its car after Germany. Then, Massa's head came into sharp contact with a spring from Barrichello's car during Q2 in Hungary. Felipe had been the lead points-scorer up to that point and was very popular in Ferrari. Kimi, whose main strength is to stay strong whatever happens around him, claimed 2nd in the race, a much-needed fillip given what had just happened... ...and what was to come.
- Ferrari's third driver was Luca Badoer and he duly stepped up to the challenge of aiding Ferrari's progress in Valencia. Little was expected of him because he hadn't raced in F1 for nearly a decade, nor had he tested the 2009 Ferrari. So when Luca was last in both Valencia and Spa, nobody was surprised. What did surprise was the margin (he was 45 seconds behind penultimate-placed Kazuki Nakajima) and the sheer number of errors (especially since he finished every race he was in and didn't do any serious damage to his car). Not many drivers manage to get four pit lane speeding penalties on the same day (Friday in Valencia), nor is it common for them to crash into other cars in parc fermé (Adrian Sutil once again having reason to curse the Force India/Ferrari affinity). He was also the only driver on the 2009 grid never to qualify above 20th position (admittedly having only two attempts to do so) despite Spa's grid being somewhat topsy-turvy.
- There was no way someone performing that badly was going to get an invite to race car 3 at Monza... Luckily for Ferrari, it does have a certain charisma and magnetism which can be very powerful. So powerful that when Kimi couldn't shake Giancarlo Fisichella off his gearbox at Spa, Ferrari made Giancarlo an offer he couldn't refuse - and the offer was powerful enough that Vijay Mallya allowed Giancarlo to be released. It was an incredibly joyous day, and Giancarlo proved to be considerably faster and less error-prone than Luca. However, it wasn't enough to enable him to score points. Kimi scored a podium at Monza, came fourth in Japan but otherwise struggled as the effects of Ferrari's development stoppage struck hard. Ferrari was simply trying to get to the end of the year and was concentrating on the future.
- Fernando Alonso joins Felipe for 2010 after a scruffily-handled abandonment of Kimi. With Giancarlo as third driver and a clutch of other drivers signed to the Scuderia in one capacity or another, it's high time Ferrari sorted its car out if it wishes to have a happier 2010 than it did 2009.
Toyota
- The invisible team of F1 was slightly more visible this year. Not visible enough for some, though, because the Toyota board demanded its first F1 win at the start of the year or else.
- The Toyota released was remarkable for looking like it belonged to the same year as the other cars on the grid. It even had a double diffuser! The aero was a bit strange and the results slightly inconsistent, but nothing to stop the team from getting its promised first win, right?
- Three top-four positions and a pole for Jarno Trulli, along with a podium for Timo Glock, in the first four races seemed to underline Toyota's strength. Unfortunately most of Toyota's testing had been in Bahrain, leaving it with a hitherto-unknown weakness at European rounds... ...which still figure large in the F1 calender. Just to make it worse, the planned upgrade package in Spain made the car even slower and was never seen again. In Monaco, Toyota had the slowest car of all and several other rounds were nothing to write home about. However both drivers pressed on regardless and a steady stream of minor placings resulted.
- Once the F1 circus left Europe, performance improved again. Both Toyota drivers netted a 2nd place; Glock in Singapore and Trulli in Japan. However, the storm clouds were gathering and Toyota's maiden win looked unlikely to come in 2009. The writing was on the wall, clear for all to read. Perhaps this was why Jarno reacted so badly to miscalculating Adrian Sutil's position, leading to both drivers (plus an innocent Fernando Alonso) exiting the race, Jarno having an uncharacteristically energetic rant at Adrian and getting fined for being too busy ranting to leave the track. Not the PR boost Toyota required at this point...
- Having said that, Toyota was getting more positive PR by then from its super-sub, Kamui Kobayashi. He raced in the last two races of the season after Timo Glock had a dreadful crash in the chaotic Japanese GP qualifying, cracking two vertebrae in the process. This was a serious problem for Toyota's ambitions, since their third driver was a rookie with virtually no experience of the car. Little was expected of Kamui, but what he lacked in points-scoring he more than made up for in style. In both the Brazillian and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix, Kamui showed great skill in duels with Button. Less impressive was his collision with compatriot Kazuki Nakajima in Brazil, but the raw material for a good F1 racer is definitely there.
- Timo Glock is the only one of the three Toyota drivers who knows where he's going next season, with a ticket to Manor GP. Jarno and Kamui face more uncertain times, partly because the Toyota board decided after the season that F1 was no longer worthy of their attentions. It tried to sell the F1 team without success (though a bunch of Serbians called Stefan GP were rumoured to have bought the entry) and relinquished the entry to the FIA. This will cost Toyota a lot of money for breaking the Concorde Agreement - but does F1 really want a team that isn't interested in F1 and is only there because its presence has been compelled?
- In the end, poor strategy in Bahrain probably cost Toyota the vital win it needed to survive. This could be traced back to Toyota being the ultimate triumph of beauracracy over practicality, a philosophy that worked brilliantly for the road car division but is inappropriate for motorsport. It led to the team being invisible - and now vanished.
BMW Sauber
- BMW Sauber was planning on winning the title in 2009. In 2010 it isn't planning on defending its title and not just because it didn't get one...
- How did this about-turn happen? After all, BMW abandoned a good 2008 car mid-season against Robert Kubica's protests to pour resources into its 2009 challenger. The answer is simple - it went the wrong direction. Placing too much emphasis on KERS, to the point where it was the only team wanting to introduce the technology in 2009. The rest of the car was not particularly good and both drivers could frequently be heard to complain over the radios. With good reason.
- In the end, BMW only used its KERS for four races (and only once on Kubica's car). One of them was Malaysia, where Heidfeld's second place owed more to the weather conditions and the ability to endure with intermediate tyres than new technology. However, Bahrain was a terrible race for the BMW Sauber pair (netting the last two positions) and the season never really recovered. Nothing of note happened to BMW after Bahrain until June.
- FOTA and the FIA were busy fighting over budget caps and Concorde Agreements. However, BMW's board voted not to bother signing the Agreement, deciding that F1 on any timescale other than their own was unworthy of their efforts and finances. They doubted F1's effectiveness, environmental initiatives and leadership and put the team up for sale. It was almost bought by Qadbak, a mysterious group of Middle Eastern corporate interests headed by a convicted fraudster - 24 hours after the deadline for signing the Concorde Agreement passed. Qadbak hung around long enough to worry a lot of people before BMW sold the team (properly this time) to Peter Sauber, who founded the team and owned it until the end of 2005. The sale is subject to the team getting a place on the grid, and one hopes the FIA will see sense in this regard. After all, teams have left since BMW...
- Meanwhile, there was a season to get over and done with. Belgium proved to be a sweet spot for BMW Sauber, with Robert and Nick finishing 4th and 5th. Then Robert managed 2nd in Brazil. It was all too late however and Nick out-scored his Renault-bound team-mate.
- There is a beautiful irony in Peter Sauber returning to F1. When interviewed alongside Paul Stoddart for F1 Racing's December 2005 edition, Peter said he wouldn't return to the pitwall while Paul was adamant he would. Yet Peter got back to the pitwall first. Many, many people will be pleased to see his honest, respectful self back in the paddock. For one thing, he won't disappear if his timetable needs changing...
Williams
- Williams had been treading water for some time by the start of 2009. By the end they were treading water more comfortably.
- Hit by the credit crunch harder than any other team, the oldest privateer team in F1 had to do something brilliant to prevent a medium-term sinking into irrelevance and possible closure. Team leader Nico Rosberg was getting impatient at the lack of progress and Kazuki Nakajima needed a strong year to shake off the notion that only Toyota engines kept him in position.
- Williams had started its 2009 design early and had a double diffuser in launch spec. However, it was a car blessed with greater consistency than pace. As a result, there were no headline-grabbing results, but Nico was able to get minor points almost as he pleased. He was especially good at street circuits and a clear asset to the team. Unfortunately, 34.5 points wasn't enough to convince Nico to stay, so he went to Mercedes at the end of the year.
- Kazuki made Heikki Kovalainen look like an amateur when it came to on-track invisibility and worse still, didn't score a single point. Four retirements in the first six races may have knocked Kazuki's confidence, but F1 doesn't do second chances very often. Even with three new teams on the grid, it's difficult to see a F1 future for Kazuki.
- Williams, on the other hand, looks like having a good future. It's hung on through the expensive manufacturer years and is likely to be the best privateer team in 2010, especially with a line-up involving Rubens Barrichello (3rd in the championship this year) and Nico Hulkenburg (winner of nearly every junior series prize going).
Renault
- Ugh. Just... ...ugh. You don't want to know how bad Renault's season was - the next section starts in a minute or so...
- OK... ...you're still curious? Here are the ugly details: The R29 came out looking even worse than the previous version of the Renault paint job. The nose was wide and ugly. It also came bearing an engine that the FIA have allowed to be retuned, which made a nonsense of the whole "engine freeze" concept - an ugly bit of politics. Nobody could quite work out why Nelson Piquet Jr. was still on board, but it was hoped that Fernando Alonso could bring his best form to Renault and help lift them from the mess. It didn't work.
- Renault discovered early on that its KERS wasn't worth the time spent in development because it made the handling unpredictable. It's not much use having all that extra power if it stops the car going in the right direction. Furthermore, it was short on downforce and the team never really got on top of that particular problem. The double diffuser issue caught Renault by surprise too - they'd asked the wrong question to Charlie Whiting the previous year, assumed the double diffuser was illegal and then found their car was difficult to change to a double-diffuser version when they were proven wrong.
- Fernando tried hard, but couldn't get the machine he'd been lumbered with to work at most circuits. Three fifth places (in Australia, Spain and Italy) and a podium in Singapore were all that were possible. In fact, he was probably the only member of the Renault staff with any pleasant memories of Singapore 2009.
- The previous year, Fernando had won after Nelson crashed at Turn 17. Initially the FIA let it pass, possibly because Nelson had proved so adept at crashing that having yet another in the middle of a race wasn't so strange. Nelson proved to be a slow learner, crashing frequently in 2009 even though he was reminded frequently by Flavio that his job was on the line. He managed to outqualify Fernando once though... ...but by Hungary, Flavio had tired of him. No sooner had Nelson been sacked than he started whingeing. It turned out that his Singaporean crash was a deliberate Nelsinho Defence, with the result that Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds were dragged out of F1 with him for their roles in the shambles. A complete embarrassment to F1 and an incident that made a complete mockery of sporting values. The perpetrators received a lot of flak for their actions and rightly so.
- And just when Renault started getting struck by sponsor withdrawals as a result... ...replacement driver Romain Grosjean crashed at the newly-nicknamed "Piquet Corner". We didn't know whether to laugh, cry or facepalm...
- It has to be said that Romain was pretty quick, but he had one small problem - a near-magnetic attraction to run-off areas and walls. This meant his talent never shone particularly clearly and it could make his stint in F1 rather short.
- Bob Bell did a good job of stabilising the ship after the Nesinho Defence, but like Ferrari the team just wanted 2009 to be over. Unfortunately there are signs that the Renault board might want the F1 adventure to be over - an ugly end to a team that took two world championships and showed Michael Schumacher and Ferrari were not invulnerable.
Force India
- Force India should be very proud of their achievements in 2009. At the start of the year, its aim was to score a point in 2009 and get a podium at the inaugural Indian Grand Prix in 2011. By the end of 2009, it had 13 points and a podium, its best result since 2003 (when the Silverstone team was still called Jordan).
- Vijay Mallya had decided that the team needed more direct influence, sacked technical director Mike Gascoyne and arranged for a five-year multi-component partnership from Mercedes. Removing Mike seemed like a mistake because of his ability to fix technical problems - of which the VJM01 had many - but it was necessary because of the tension between him and Colin Kolles (who left the team at the end of 2009). However, the car had been designed and built in 109 days - less time than the Brawn - which did not seem particularly auspicious. Emphasis had been placed on under-car airflow and on reducing the enormous drag the VJM01 possessed. By Bahrain the car sported a double diffuser and, unlike most teams, every upgrade placed on the car was a significant improvement on before.
- Force India started the season much as they finished the 2008 season - occasionally showing fairly well when strategy allowed but generally managing to throw points away in the most frustrating ways possible. Both drivers could have scored in Australia, but Adrian Sutil's front wing got broken in the traditional first-corner pile-up and Giancarlo Fisichella forgot where his pit was (don't ask). Then Adrian could have scored in China if he hadn't spun off six laps from the end of the race (Nick Heidfeld, whose tyre got punctured by Adrian's debris, probably shared my frustration). The biggest problem though was Q1 - it took until Monaco for the duo to escape its clutches and it is very difficult to have a points-scoring race from 16th.
- Monaco was the race where both Giancarlo and Adrian managed to get into Q2. It was very nearly the site of Force India's first point as well, for Giancarlo was only denied 8th place because Sebastién Bourdais cut the Swimming Pool chicane twice and wasn't penalised. There is no doubt in my mind those chicane-cuts were purely because Le Seb was under extreme pressure, but that still left Force India searching. An upgrade package at Silverstone helped matters, when despite the two Force India drivers managing to crash in the pitlane at the end of Friday practise, Giancarlo still managed to string enough of a weekend together to come 10th. Then Adrian lost the possibility of major points in Germany to a collision with Kimi Raikkonen. The Force India/Ferrari affinity was not doing either party much good at this point!
- However, Force India's fortunes were soon to turn dramatically. There were three main reasons for this. In Valencia, the third and most significant of Force India's upgrade packages was installed on the car. This gave it the race it needed to bed in the developments before reaching the two lowest-downforce tracks on the calender. Finally, Giancarlo was on spectacular form. Whether this was due to knowing the car was faster, the rumours that Luca Badoer was about to be replaced or running over a rabbit in final practise at Spa is unknown. What is known is that he got the most unexpected pole of the season and might have won the Belgian Grand Prix had Raikkonen not passed him with the help of a Safety Car. As it was, Giancarlo came second and pundits spent quite some time scratching their heads as to how this was possible.
- Five days later, Giancarlo swapped teams to Ferrari and test driver Tonio Liuzzi got promoted in his place. Both Adrian and Tonio were looking good for a podium, but Tonio's driveshaft blew up and Adrian's final pitstop went even more badly wrong than Kimi's. The final few races were considerably quieter apart from Brazil, where Adrian qualified third and then got a very public lecture for daring to challenge Jarno Trulli.
- Adrian Sutil and Tonio Liuzzi ended up getting recalled for the 2010 season. It seems a smart move on the part of both Force India and the drivers concerned, given their respective performances. This is a team going places.
Toro Rosso
- Scuderia Toro Rosso had a very quiet 2009 season, aided and abetted by being the only team initially fielding a driver pairing without a previous podium between them and the only team on the 2009 grid worrying about simultaneously upgrading to constructor status in 2010.
- Sebastian Vettel, its star, had left to join sister team Red Bull, leaving Sebastién Olivier Bourdais and Sebastien Olivier Buemi as the Toro Rosso racers. Things might have gone better had Bourdais and the STR4 ever gelled. He scored a point in Australia and Monaco (the latter despite coming under extreme pressure from Giancarlo Fisichella), but often his performance would be lost in complaints about oversteer and his team-mate's increasing stature at the team. Buemi scored two points on his debut and managed another one in China, quickly demonstrating his prowess. However, Toro Rosso didn't score another point until Brazil due to their car-engine-driver combination being the slowest in F1. Since the field spread including Toro Rosso rarely exceeded two seconds in 2009, this was still no mean feat. However the team probably hoped for more.
- It had certainly hoped for more from Bourdais, who clearly knew he was on the way out when he retired from the Hungarian Grand Prix and hugged his race engineer in a way that clearly suggested that he did not expect to see him again. He was right - Le Seb was replaced during the summer break by Not Seb (more commonly known as Jaime Alguersuari). He looked good except when he was crashing. Unfortunately he tended to crash at all the worst moments for his own PR, notably bringing out the Safety Car in Japan immediately after complaining that Rubens Barrichello, of all people, was holding him up. One wonders how quickly he would have crashed if Rubens had not been in the vicinity to slow him down.
- Toro Rosso had the wisdom to recognise that inexperienced drivers will make mistakes and that there is some good raw material in its Sebastien-Jaime pairing. They will therefore be racing together in 2010 while everything else changes around them.
The New Teams
- Five new teams will be joining the ranks in 2010, subject to finances and the other obstacles every new team faces upon entry into F1. Naturally, all of them were quite busy in 2009.
- Virgin GP (neé Manor GP) will be my local team in 2010, based two train stations away from my house. They seem to be making good progress towards being on the grid in 2010. Having experienced F3 team owner John Booth as a boss and hiring talented Toyota pilot Timo Glock is also a good move. The plan to use only CFD in the car design is bold but risky and splitting efforts across three sites could cause logistical problems, but other than that it looks like a very strong new team.
- USF1, led by journalist and sometime Williams team manager Peter Windsor and Kevin Kalhoven, is supposed to be America's answer to Force India. In line with its counterpart, it is strongly rumoured to have at least one driver (José Maria Lopez) who is not from the United States. There have been worries about whether it will make it to the grid, but the team claims to have all the right equipment and have started a mass hiring spree - let's hope they're right.
- Campos GP is headed by Adrian Campos, is evaluating Spanish drivers and has already crash-tested a chassis. It will surely have a brace of cars on the grid, but they are developing very quietly so assessing their true strength at this stage is nearly impossible.
- Lotus (neé Litespeed) took BMW's spot on the team roster. Led by Mike Gascoyne, the team has located many of its resources in Malaysia while also having a base in Norfolk. That could be quite a management challenge. They've hired at least one driver without revealing who. The one driver whose identity is known is Alex Yoong... ...but please don't panic because he won't actually be driving the car. Instead he will head the team's driver development programme. This seems rather ambitious for a new team, but it does suggest that all its problems are small ones.
- Sauber (neé Sauber, previously known as BMW) took Toyota's spot on the team roster. The line-up will be familiar to anyone who watched F1 in 2005; the team boss is the quiet-but-savvy Peter Sauber, most of the staff have been at the Hinwil base since the year dot and it's even possible that previous Sauber drivers Nick Heidfeld and Giancarlo Fisichella could be reprising race roles for the team. This is one piece of history a lot of people are delighted to see return.
Yucky Politics
- You may be wondering why we are having so many new teams at a time in F1, when the last time multiple teams got into F1 simultaneously was Stewart (now Red Bull via Jaguar) and Lola (now a junior-team supplier via a two-day stint in F1) in 1997. The short answer? Yucky politics. The long answer will take some elaboration.
- Firstly, some background. Max Mosley had managed to annoy the teams and manufacturers for years, exhorting the teams to cut costs on one hand and making barrages of expensive regulation changes on the other. Things came to a head when the FIA released three regulation documents for the 2009 season in the first three months of 2009. The last of these, twelve days before the season was due to start, exchanged the points system for a combination of points and medals. Bernie mistakenly thought that this would encourage overtaking. He also mistakenly thought the teams had agreed. In the ensuing argument, the FIA and Bernie were forced to back down and take out the medals clause - but the FIA kept all the other changes in place.
- Bernie stuck his oar into race timings as well, insisting that Australia and Malaysia have races finishing at sunset. Australia got away with it... ...but Malaysia didn't. While the rain siled down and Kimi Raikkonen ate ice cream, there was plenty of time to ponder the wisdom of ignoring local advice to avoid holding races in the middle of a near-guaranteed monsoon...
- Things like these, alongside the economic downturn, meant that boards were looking at F1 in a new way. Matters came to a head in May, when Max Mosley attempted to introduce budget caps by giving teams taking a €30m budget a series of minor technical advantages. The big problem was that such a system would have mandated cheating, accusations of cheating and inadvertant mistakes as exchange rates and accounting methods shifted. However, the teams ignored this in favour of arguing that they were fed up of being told what they could and could not do. After a lot of arguing, a breakaway series was threatened. In the face of a united band of teams, the FIA was forced to back down, especially once the teams agreed a set of resource restrictions.
- Williams and Force India were obliged to break the unity and found themselves outside the team's union for a while, but have since returned to the fold (though Williams has still been spotted complaining). Max's attempts to use them as a wedge to split the other teams not only failed, but was part of the reason why the settlement with the F1 teams included a requirement for him to abandon the presidency in October. BMW refused to sign the Concorde Agreement and decided that the argument-fest was a worse investment than movie product placement - leaving the team in a bit of a mess.
- The one good thing about all the strong-arm tactics was that Max allowed 13 teams on the grid. There turned out to be a lot of takers, which were whittled down in a less-than-transparent manner. So opaque that N.Technology and Stefan Grand Prix sued the FIA in the French and EU courts respectively for having a hidden requirement to use Cosworth engines for the new teams. N. Technology lost its case but Stefan Grand Prix's continues. The lucky teams were Virgin GP, USF1 and Campos.
- Max still found time to be involved in incidents removing two of his enemies from F1. It's unclear how much involvement he had in McLaren's lying incident in Australia, but it may not be entirely coincidence that Ron left for the road car side of McLaren immediately afterwards. There was no coincidence whatsoever about Max's involvement in Flavio's removal from F1 - after the WMSC decided that Flavio Briatore had been a co-conspirator in the Nelsinho Defence, Max had no hesitation in giving Flavio a lifetime ban from motorsport. The case is currently being appealed in the French courts.
- Two candidates stood for election to replace the President. Jean Todt had the weight of the establishment behind him while Ari Vantenen was the people's choice. However the people don't get a vote in the FIA Presidential election and Ari's campaign was basically sunk by Max Mosley's negative campaigning. Ari was forced to fire back while Jean stayed quiet in the background and sailed to victory. Thankfully he's proved a much less biased President than initally feared and has yet to show a trace of power-drunkenness. If he keeps this up, he may yet become the best FIA President in its history.
- The annual circuit yowling match between Bernie and his victims... ...er, circuit organisers of choice continued. It took nearly all year for Bernie to arrange moves to Canada and Silverstone that were sufficiently renumerative to him. Donington's attempt to hold a Grand Prix ended when Simon Gillet couldn't get the money to fund his idea and the organiser went into administration.
Conclusions
- So another F1 year ends - a chaotic though very enjoyable season overall. Thank you for listening, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
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