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Posts tagged with "Safety Car"

LMS Championship Permutations

August 30, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

The next race of the ILMC (Intercontinental Le Mans Cup) and LMS (Le Mans Series) championships is in Silverstone. The ILMC championship has three rounds to go and there's everything to play for, but in the LMS there are only two races left. As a result, some of the class championships in LMS are close to a resolution.

 

In this blog entry, I will attempt to summarise the championship situation in each class. This will serve the dual purposes of explaining what is needed for given competitors to win their class championships and giving a summary that will enable a newcomer to pick up what's where. 

 

LMP1

 

It's a tight championship at the moment:

 

Tinseau/Collard/Jousse (#16 Pescarolo) lead on 28 points (other points in this list relative)

Belicchi/Boullion (13 Rebellion) -3 points

Jani/Prost (#12 Rebellion) -3 points

Piccini/Cortes (#23 MIK Corse) -26 points 

 

In theory, everyone entered for the LMS can still win because there are more points on the table (30) than the leading drivers possess (28). However, some teams have withdrawn from Silverstone. These teams' drivers (Hope's and Quifel's Pla/Amarel) are too far away to catch up the gap in a single race and therefore are not included in the above list.

 

Incidentally, all of these cars are petrol entries - Hope was the sole hybrid entry and all the diesel entries are ILMC-only (they'll be in the race for ILMC things and can deny points to LMS entries by finishing ahead of them, but they don't compete for the LMS themselves). 

 

It is theoretically possible for Tinseau, Collard and Jousse (the Pescarolo trio) to take the title at Silverstone. However, if they win and get pole, they still need both Rebellions to finish in 9th place or below for that to happen. This is in a class with only 10 cars total, so really that's saying the Rebellion drivers need to retire or have a total disaster of a race if the title is to be settled in Silverstone. Tinseau, Collard and Jousse look good to get the title because they've been consistently slightly better than the Rebellions, but in Imola the tables were turned, so it would be foolish to bet on any of the three driver combinations taking the trophy. Better to enjoy the fight unfold and, most likely, continue into Portugal.

 

Silverstone is likely to be a low-scoring round for all 4 because the big points are likely to be taken by the diesel cars. This is bad news for Piccini and Cortes, who need to win in order to stay in the title hunt. It would take a bizarre set of circumstances for that to happen.   

 

Teams 

 

Rebellion has two cars in their team while the other contenders have only one. This puts Rebellion in a strong position for the team title because it is matching Pescarolo for points. All they need is to have one of their cars ahead of Pescarolo in both races. If it's #12 in one race and #13 in the other, the Rebellion will take the team title but Tinseau, Collard and Jousse will have the driver title. 

 

LMP2 

 

Drivers

 

The LMP2 class has been riven with conflict all year due to a cost-cutting formula running alongside the previous unrestricted spending regime. Hopefully the fact that 2012 will make the cost-cut method mandatory will reduce the arguing that has overshadowed a tightly-fought season.

 

Ojjeh/Kimber-Smith (#41 Greaves Motorsport) 35 points (other points relative)

Watts/Kane/Leventis (#42 Strakka Racing) -5

Kraihamer/Crem (#45 Boutsen Energy Racing) -10

Firth/Beche/Thriet (#46 TDS Racing) -12

Companc/Russo/Kaffer (#39 Pecom Racing) -13

Gates/Garoffel/Phillips (#43 RLR Motorsport) -18

Lombard (#41 Greaves Motorsport) -20 

Rosier/Basso (#44 Extreme Limite) -21

Frey/Meichtry (#40 Race Performance) -22 

Collins/Newton/Erdos (#36 RML) -27 

 

Half of the LMP2 field is likely to be out of the running for the title at the end of Silverstone. Collins, Newton and Erdos require 3rd to keep their chances going, while Frey and Meichtry "merely" need 7th and pole or 6th without pole to stay in. Silverstone is likely to be a low-scoring round due to the presence of the ILMC LMP2 entrants Signatech and OAK, even if the problem is not as pronounced for the LMP1s.

 

Rosier and Lombard need  8th place (or 7th and pole) to stay in. Gates, Garoffel and Phillips merely need to finish because there are only 11 cars and 11th yields 2 points.

 

It would take a pretty remarkable set of circumstances for Ojjeh and Kimber-Smith to win the title here. Even if they won and got pole, they'd need OAK and Signatech to share the podium with them and for Watts, Leventis and Kane to finish 8th or worse in class.

 

Lombard is a special case. He joined the #41 Greaves car in Imola, so short of his longer-standing team-mates getting injured before the race without making the car unraceable (which is virtually impossible), he cannot gain the title due to Ojjeh and Kimber-Smith scoring many points before his arrival. He'll definitely be able to contribute to the team title though.

 

Teams 

 

All the teams have only one car in LMP2, so the team fight is as above.

 

GTE-Pro 

 

Drivers

 

This is arguably the most complicated of the five championships to explain. There are two reasons for this.

 

Firstly, this is one of the series for which there are bonus points for making an engine last 15 or more hours. The 15 hours do not all need to be in a race but they do need to be in ACO-sanctioned events (which in practise means Sebring and Le Mans count towards engine timings). The other classes have them, but in LMP1 hardly anyone runs an engine long enough to get the bonus point, LMP2 has only had 2 cars get the bonus points so far and in GTE-Am, virtually everyone is going to get the same points at the same race because the cars are nearly all synchronised in terms of engine hours. The GTE-Pro drivers will all get an engine point barring mechanical failures, but some are due to get it in Silverstone and others in Portugal. The effect on the title fight is subtle. 

 

Secondly, GTE-Pro, and only GTE-Pro, has a "dropped score" system for this year. Originally, all scores were meant to count, but at the start of the first race at Paul Ricard, a "Safety" Car caused a crash that took out nearly all the Porsches... and affected hardly anyone else. In an attempt to make up for this huge mistake, the "dropped-score" rule was put in. For championship purposes, the Porsches could pretend Paul Ricard was just a bad dream. 

 

Currently, the GTE-Pro title chase stands thus:

Fisichella/Bruni (AF Corse #51) have 44 points (other points given are relative to this)
Melo/Vilander (AF Corse #71) -16 points
Simonsen/Farnbacher (Hankook #89) -17 points
Walker/Bell (JMW #66) -22 points
Lieb/Lietz (Farnbacher #77) -26 points
Goosens/Holzer (Prospeed #75) -27 points
Hancock/Dolan (JOTA #79) -30 points 

 

Granted, some of the gaps are larger than in either prototype class. However, the "dropped score" system means that there is still plenty of opportunity for a fightback, even without relying on retirements.

 

Fisichella and Bruni are due to get an engine point in Portugal and currently would drop their second-place-with-pole at Le Castellet - a rather hefty 14 points. The latter is why the championship is nowhere near a done deal. Had all scores counted, scoring more points than Melo and Vilander would have almost been sufficient to take the title (other people would also have needed to be not too far ahead) - and only once so far this season has that happened. For Silverstone to be guaranteed to count towards their score it would be necessary for Fisichella and Bruni to win. Sealing the title in Silverstone would take some major misfortune for their competitors.

 

Vilander, Melo, Simonsen and Farnbacher are their closest rivals. They are due to get their engine point in Portugal. Vilander and Melo would currently drop 1 point from Spa and Simonsen and Farnbacher would drop a non-score. To guarantee staying in the title chase, they all need seventh with pole or sixth without. For each race which any of the four has finished, they have been at least fourth.

 

Walker and Bell are due to get their engine point in Portugal and would drop a non-finish at Imola. They need third place to guarantee staying in the title chase.  They've been quite unlucky this year but also fast, so it is possible for this to happen.

 

Lieb and Lietz, the defending champions, are due to get their engine point in Portugal and would drop the non-finish in Le Castellet.  To guarantee staying in the title fight, they need to score second with pole and not need an engine change, which is a pretty tall order.

 

Goosens and Holzer are due to get their engine point in Portugal and would drop the non-score at Le Castellet. To guarantee remaining in the title chase, they need to come second, get pole and hope Fisichella and Bruni don't win.

 

Hancock and Dolan cling to the title chase by the skins of their teeth on account of getting their engine point at Silverstone. They also drop a non-finish at Le Castellet. They need to either get second and pole, or win and hope Fisichella and Bruni do not get pole, in order to stay in the title fight. 

 

Teams   

 

AF Corse 46 points - to drop 14 points at Le Castellet (other teams' points relative)

Hankook -21 points - to drop 0 points at Imola

JMW -24 points - to drop 0 points at Imola

Felbermayr -30 points -  to drop 0 points at Le Castellet

 

AF Corse are likely to win this one, simply because they have two cars in the LMS (compared to everyone else's one) as well as a points lead of which Red Bull in F1 would be jealous, proportionally speaking. Given that an AF Corse car has only retired once out of 6 LMS entries, it would be asking a lot for anyone to take the team title off them at this point.

 

GTE-Am

 

Drivers

 

Armindo/Narac (#67 IMSA) 41 points (other points relative) 

Cioci/Perrazini/Lemeret (#61 AF Corse) -2 points

Felbermayr Jr (#88 Felbermayr) -17 points

Christodolou/Quaife (#82 CRS) -23 points

 

This is the tightest class battle in the series. Unless Armindo and Narac win their class and get very lucky with opponents' results, the battle will go to Portugal. Felbermayr Jr needs to finish the race or get class pole to stay in the title fight in Portugal, while Christodolou and Quaife must get seventh with pole or sixth stay in the title fight.

 

Teams

 

All four teams have one car apiece, so the team battle is in the same state as the driver one.

 

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Changes to the 2011 F1 Sporting Regulations

March 6, 2011
Filed under: FIA by Alianora_La_Canta — 4 Comments

Contents

In Article 28, "Homologated parts" has been dropped from the title after being added in 2010. Seems quite odd, since I had expected there to be some homologated parts.

Article 16

The stewards have been granted wider-ranging powers under Article 16.2. Stewards may now issue post-race time penalties of any length for an incident under Article 16.2 c). Reprimands, exclusion from results and one-race suspension have also been included, though all three of these powers were already granted to the stewards under the International Sporting Code. The reprimands in particular were already commonly used. However, the one-race suspension has to be for the next event, which was not previously the case (before the suspension could be applied at any time, which was useful because it allowed time for teams to appeal against unfair uses of the power).

The only completely new power is the ability to issue post-race time penalties of any length. However, the new specifics of the suspension power worry me.

Article 20

A dramatic number of additions have been made to Article 20. In 2010, there was only one sentence: "The driver must drive the car alone and unaided". Now there are four paragraphs. Therefore the following actions have been formally banned:

- Actions that could hinder other drivers
- More than one blocking move per straight
- Leaving the circuit boundaries (defined as four wheels beyond the track edges, kerbs being outside the edges)
- Rejoining the track in a dangerous manner
- Rejoining the track having gained an advantage from leaving it
- Ignoring blue flags

Those of you who have been following F1 for a while will notice that all of those things were already prohibited. This is because they are in the International Sporting Code, with the exception of defining kerbs as not being part of the circuit (it's left to the interpretation of individual series). The additions strike me as pointless repetition.

Article 22

It has been decided that "chequered flag procedures must be respected" in testing. Technically speaking, testing isn't subject to the International Sporting Code, but red flag procedures already had to be respected. It's a sensible addition, but not one that's likely to change anything.

Article 23

There have been several changes of wording in Article 23.1 a) - "shall" has been changed to "will", the first "is" becomes the grammatically-improved "will be" and the second "is" also becomes "will be", which not only corrects the tense but also the number. Pedants everywhere will rejoice.

More importantly, Article 23.1 a) now says the "fast lane" in the pits cannot be more than 3.5 metres. In wider pit lanes, this will give the mechanics considerably more room in which to work.

Article 23.1 d) has a paragraph for the order in which cars should queue up out of the pits. They must queue up in the "fast lane" only, in the order they got there, and leave in the same order unless a car is delayed. It does not clearly answer the question of what happens if someone chooses to do a practise start.

The reference for the circumstances in which equipment can be left in the pit lane has been corrected in Article 23.1 h). It's permitted only if a car has to go to the pits between the pit lane closing and the start of the race.

An important change has been made to Article 23.1 j). Teams must provide a way of knowing when a car was released from a pit stop. This must be visible from the front of the car (implying that both the driver and the on-board camera must be able to spot this indicator). As a result, expect many fewer near-collisions in the pits and less work for the stewards to do when it comes to deciding who was wrong in the remaining cases.

Article 23.2 allows the pit lane to be closed for safety reasons. An example of when this might be done is if a car has broken down in such a way as to block the entire pit entry. Cars can still enter the pits, but only for essential and obvious repair work - perhaps to replace a puncture or a broken front wing. How that would work with the above example is unclear, but the power may still prove useful.

Article 25

Article 25.1 has been updated to indicate that the current tyre manufacturer (Pirelli) will be the sole supplier until the end of 2013.

Tyres will be considered used once they've left the pit lane according to article 25.4. Since that was already being applied in F1 on an informal basis, nothing will change, but codifying informal rules into demonstrable regulations is generally a good idea.

Articles 25.4 a) and b) have been reworded to give the FIA technical director responsibility for allocating tyres to drivers in practise sessions.

A paragraph has been inserted to deal with those situations whereby a race ends prematurely but some drivers haven't used both compounds of dry-weather tyre (assuming that driver also hasn't used a wet-weather tyre). Any driver in that situation will receive a 30-second time penalty, which is the equivalent of a stop/go penalty. Completing a normal-length race while only using one dry-weather compound (and no wet-weather ones) still means exclusion.

Article 26

Cars in Q3 will no longer be weighed during the session due to a modification to Article 26.1 a) 2). It's not clear any cars were ever weighed in the 10-minute version of Q3, but it's a good safeguard.

The reason cars in Q3 definitely won't be weighed is because Article 26.1 a) 5) makes it compulsory for all cars in Q3 to be weighed at the end of the session, either with the driver on board (as per Q1 and Q2 weighings) or separately (as per post-race weighing).

Article 28

Gearboxes must last five races instead of four due to a slight change in the wording of Article 28.6 a).

If a driver cannot start a race, does not have a substitute starting the race for them and the reason is not a penalty from the stewards, that driver is allowed to have a new gearbox next race, just the same as they would have done if they had started but failed to finish. Several parts of Article 28.6 have been modified to account for this, but it is Article 28.6 a) which rules the change in.

Dog rings on gearboxes may be changed if a gearbox changed is required during the first day of practise. This will give a little bit more flexibility to teams in the latter part of the season because they can use different gearboxes for the first day's running that are not part of the main sequence.

Article 28.6 f) will allow one additional change of gearbox outside the permissions granted without penalty. This is similar to the exemption granted for the first engine change in 2007 and could signal a transition to the "X gearboxes a season" system currently in use for engines.

Importantly, Article 28.7 has gone. Teams are now allowed to change their survival cell, wheels and crash structures whenever they like after the first race of the season, subject to normal crash testing if it's a survival cell or crash structure. Hopefully, this will prevent a repeat of the F-duct situation, where the inability to modify the monocoque meant teams were using any old hole anywhere in the cockpit for the devices, to the detriment of usability and potentially safety. Also, large differences in the handling of the wheel specifications should be easy to resolve - Ferrari got an advantage on other teams from having a particularly unusual wheel psuedo-fairing that could not inspire any improved efforts from elsewhere all season.

Article 29

Article 29.3 has had the indent removed for consistency reasons. No difference to anything on track, but much more pleasing to the eye.

Article 30

A new Article 30.3 has been inserted. Unnecessarily slow, erratic and dangerous driving is banned at all times. The International Sporting Code already bans all of the above, but this echoes and emphasises the wording used for the Article 40.5 regulation covering proper driving conduct behind the Safety Car.

More importantly, all driving between the pit exit and pit entry (defined by their respective Safety Car lines) must now be done in 145% of the fastest whole-lap time set in the first day of practise. In practise this will typically mean that nobody can do a lap in more than 150% of the time the fastest driver lapped. This appears to be designed to prevent people from trying to get severely damaged cars to the pits, doing particularly thoughtless mass blocking or doing really slow in- or out-laps (or really slow formation laps, for that matter). Laps in wet-weather running are also affected but the margin is so big that an honest lap that was too slow would indicate the session should be stopped for wet weather reasons. Note that if a slow lap is due to a problem on the main straight or in the pits (such as stalling), that delay wouldn't influence anything because of the pit straight being ignored.

Between 10 and 4 hours before the start of first and third practises, nobody from any of the teams may be at the circuit. Each team is allowed four individual exemptions per year (that is to say, four people can work overnight for one race each, or at one race a four-person squad could be present at night). It is difficult to work on a car with only four people, so all but the most urgent and straightforward all-night shifts for mechanics have now been banned. Finally people associated with teams can (usually) be assured of a half-decent night's sleep!

Article 34

Under Article 34.1, wheel fasteners may be attached and removed in parc fermé. Pitot tubes may be covered and uncovered in parc ferme but only if a change in the weather has been declared.

Article 35

The compulsory autograph signing session is now at a time and place determined by each individual promoter and does not have to happen on the first day of practise. Procedures will also be determined locally. It will be interesting to see what is done with the new freedoms.

Article 36

The 107% rule in qualifying can be found in Article 36.3. Drivers whose fastest qualifying lap is more than 107% off the fastest time set in Q1 will only be allowed to start at the discretion of the stewards and no appeals (either way) will be permitted. The stewards are at liberty to decide the order if multiple people miss the 107% benchmark and get re-admitted in the same race.

Article 38

Drivers on their formation lap will have to keep to the pit lane speed limit until they pass the pole position slot, according to Article 38.6. It's not entirely clear to me why - wasn't "greatly-reduced speed" precise enough?

An entire paragraph has been removed from Article 38.8. Cars delayed on leaving the grid may now overtake at any time prior to the pit entry in order to resume their original starting position.

Article 40

Article 40.5, which used to ban slow, erratic and dangerous driving behind the Safety Car, has been re-worded... ...but is still redundant in the face of the new Article 30.3 (and, technically speaking, the International Sporting Code that preceded both). The only difference is that behaviour that "could be deemed" dangerous is banned behind the Safety Car, while at other times only driving that is dangerous is banned.

Article 40.7 has had a couple of clauses reworded with no apparent change to their effects on the racing.

The phrase in Article 40.9 requiring the Safety Car formation to be kept as tight as possible after the Safety Car has left the scene has been deleted. This may be due to the massive pile-up in China.

Article 40.11 continues to have the clause whereby last-lap Safety Cars are not followed by green flags for the last few metres of the race.

The last two paragraphs of Article 40.14 have been modified to account for drivers being allowed to resume their previous positions on formation laps (and condensed into one paragraph in the process).

Article 42

The second paragraph of Article 42.6 has been modified to take into account the new permission to resume previous position on formation laps.

Conclusions

Most of the changes made this year are minor and repeating what already exists in the International Sporting Code. However, some important changes are hidden among them. Wider pit lanes will be nice but the mechanics will be happier with the fact that most of them won't have a single "all-nighter" all year.

Methods of identifying when a release was done should increase pit lane safety. Minimum lap speeds on track through all sessions could get interesting. However, the change I like the most this year is that the horrible homologated survival cell regulation has been thrown away.

Hopefully future years will feature less cosmetic alteration and more of the type of red-tape paring seen with the removal of certain homologated components.

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Analysis of the 2010 Sporting Regulations

November 29, 2010
Filed under: FIA by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

Date: December 16 2009

Mood: Optimistically thoughtful (S)=:)

Currently: Reading the 2010 F1 Sporting Regulations


The FIA recently issued a brand-new version of the 2010 regulations. As such, I will be comparing this version of the document with the previous version and highlighting the changes. The fact that the FIA has not highlighted some of the alterations is annoying, but I will do my best.

Contents and Preamble


There is now a section on homologated parts, appended to the "Spare Parts, Gearboxes and Engines" section (Article 28).

The organisation agreement, rule changes, driver contract recognition bureau and cost cap regulations appendices have been removed. The latter will have gone because the Concorde Agreement was signed by all parties after the last version of the regulations was released. The organisation agreement and rule changes appendices also obsolete due to the Concorde Agreement. The CRB chapter never had anything shown in it, so removing it was probably a size-reduction exercise with no implications on the way that side of F1 is run.

The preamble no longer refers to Article 4 of the Sporting Regulations, instead invoking the Concorde Agreement.

Article 1


We no longer know when the FIA can make changes to the Sporting Regulations, these now forming part of the secret Concorde Agreement. This is slightly worrisome because if the FIA pulls a stunt like releasing a new version of the regulations a week before the first race, we won't be able to call them out for it with confidence. We will have to rely on the teams to know for certain... ...and since they missed several regulation changes within that late-changing document due to concentrating on the attempt to impose medals, I don't have a huge amount of faith in that route.

The regulations are now "published on the date below" which, when you think about it, makes more sense than re-typing the date into the text every time, given that the date of publication appears on the footer of every single page of the regulatory documents.

Article 2


There are no longer any exemptions for cost-regulated teams for the simple reason that the budget cap no longer exists.

Article 6


Article 6.3 now contains a provision concerning Listed Parts. These are the components of a car that define a constructor in the eyes of the FIA. It is OK to outsource these components as long as they are not used by any other teams. All references to intellectual property rights have been removed, meaning that a third party could design and build every part of the car - provided that they only allowed one team to use those parts. The Red Bull Technology/Paul White Racing trick (used by Red Bull and Honda respectively to allow whole cars to be used by two different teams - in the former case, simultaneously) is no longer possible.

The regulation change which has received the most attention so far is the points change in Article 6.4. Positions 1-4 and 7th place have had their points allocation multiplied by 2.5 and other positions in the top 8 also receive more points than before in order to extend the points system down to 10th. 5th and 6th become less valuable relative to 2009 while 8th-10th become more valuable (in the latter two positions' case, that was the point). It will still be trickier to score points in 2010 than in 2009 (40% of any given race entry list scored points each race in 2009, but only 38.4% will in 2010), but with six more cars on the grid something had to be done and this is probably the closest thing possible. It doesn't really change the status quo much, except for historians who have yet another statistical wrinkle to resolve.

Article 9


A very minor modification to refer to the Concorde Agreement instead of the obsolete arrangements in the previous Sporting Regulations for organisers of races.

Article 11


The FIA still retains the right to select an observer and a steward's advisor. Logically, this suggests that the former drivers Jean Todt has recently talked about will simply replace Alan Donnelly (apart from the chairman's role, which will now be held by one of the voting stewards), not perform some new role in the stewarding process.

Article 12


There is confirmation that whoever is the steward chairman will now have a vote.

Article 13


According to Article 13.1, entries into the 2011 championship will be accepted between 30 June and 15 July. This leaves a two-week window, just right for causing chaos if there is a stupid political situation. That said, the last few championship windows have been a bit... ...fluid, so this may change nearer to the time. Entry will cost the same (€309,000) for the 2011 season as it did for 2010, unless it is amended by the Concorde Agreement.

References to the year have been changed to refer to the date in the footer, thus saving whichever admin assistant types up these regulations some work in future years. This is a good thing.

According to Article 13.5, the F1 Commision, not the FIA, will decide if a team brings the sport into disrepute. This is presumably to allow the FIA to keep at arm's length from the impact of $100m fines and the like. It also proves that Jean Todt is serious about reviving the F1 Commision that Max Mosely allowed to wither away.

Article 16


If a driver has a penalty involving the pit lane issued within the last five laps of the race, the penalty now differs according to whether a drive-through or stop/go penalty was indicated. If it was a drive-through, then only 20 seconds instead of the previous 25 will be added. In practise, this makes the penalty lighter than if it had been issued in the race - possibly impetus for the stewards to make quicker decisions. However, stop/go penalties will now be 30 seconds (the new drive-through penalty plus 10 seconds), which is 5 seconds longer than before. Expect stewards to make greater use of stop/go penalties for bad behaviour penalised late in the race in order to discourage teams from deliberately waylaying penalties by asking for "clarification" or similar - or just plain discouraging drivers from behaving worse as the race goes on and the cut-off point approaches.

Article 16.4 means drivers may only drive for two laps before taking pit-lane-related penalties, not three. It is also specifically defined as "crossing the Line twice" rather than the slightly vaguer definition of "laps" and the prohibition on taking penalties under the Safety Car has been altered to reflect this. I think communication is just about good enough between driver and pit for this to work. It will also reduce the mitigation a driver can do by waiting until the last possible moment to take a penalty. Someone may get caught out at the start of the year though while everyone adjusts their thinking.

Article 19


Substitute drivers will have to take the engine and tyres allocated to the previous driver. I was under the impression that this was required in 2009 as well (and not just in the case of mid-race-weekend substitutions as already written in the regulations), but having it codified is no bad thing...

Article 22


Instead of three one-day driver tests, there will be one three-day driver test (which was what happened in 2009 in practise because the teams tested together in three adjacent days). The addition of "a site approved by the FIA for Formula 1 cars" is superflous becuase circuit testing (other varieties are covered under different parts of the Article) can only happen on FIA F1-approved sites - Article 22.1 e) is clear on that score.

In-season testing has been restricted but more options have been granted. Teams can choose between six straight-line/constant-radius corner tests, 24 hours of full-scale wind tunnel testing or a combination thereof (with 4 hours of full-scale wind tunnel testing in a 24-hour period being equivalent to one day of straight-line/constant-radius corner testing). Note that in 2009 full-scale wind tunnel testing was strictly forbidden. This reduces the effect of upgrades and will mean teams must plan carefully. Those who upgraded effectively in 2009 will do so even more effectively in 2010.

Article 22.1 c) has a new exception to it, which I would like to call "the Badoer rule". If a substitute driver is needed by a team and that driver hasn't raced in the last two years, that driver may do one day of circuit testing for familiarisation purposes. This test must be done at a track not hosting a round of F1 (so Silverstone and Barcelona are out, Fiorano and Jerez are in), it has to happen in a 28-day period around the first time where the substitution occurs (14 days before, 14 days after). Failing to make the substitution after declaring the test will result in one day of in-season testing being taken away from next year's allocation (what the FIA proposes to do about teams who break this rule and then quit F1 is unknown). In the specific case of the 2009 Ferrari, I'm not sure it would have been much help, but for easier-to-handle cars, it could save a lot of problems for rookies who are summoned to F1 under difficult circumstances.

Article 23


According to Article 23.1 a), Work in the fast lane is apparently forbidden if other cars could be impeded. The number of occasions when this could be invoked are limited, for work is only permitted in the fast lane in the build-up to a race start for those starting from the pit lane. I'd love to know what eventuality the FIA were trying to prevent with this that wasn't already prevented by some other part of the regulations.

Article 23.1 b) has changed a lot. All garage allocations must be equal, which the backmarker teams will love and the frontrunning ones will not (because someone must lose positions for equality to be achieved). All pit areas will be within a team's garage area, which I thought was always the case... ...maybe the FIA is attempting to prevent some sort of outlandish pit lane design or something.

No powered lifting devices are permitted in the pit lanes during races any more. This could cause a major problem if a driver needs a front wing changing because the standard lifting gear used by teams previously depended on either being able to use the front wing as a leverage point or power. Anyone in a first-corner bash may need to be taken into the garages for a front wing change, or else spend considerably longer having the change completed using manual labour. I can also see the mechanics at the front of the car in pit stops needing to increase their fitness training in case such a situation happens.

A driver who chooses to start from the pit lane by electing not to leave the pits until the 15 minutes are up, as opposed to one required to start there, for example because of a post-qualifying change of monocoque, would appear to now be exempt from 23.1 e). I say "appear" because without that regulation, such a driver would no longer be required to start from the pits! I suspect this was not the intention of the regulation, so don't be surprised to see the next amendment of the regulations iron out this flaw.

The requirement to release a car from a pit stop only when safe to do so has been moved to 23.1 j). I have no idea why.

Article 25


There is now a reference to the tendering process the FIA uses to select single tyre manufacturers.

Heating elements are permitted, but only if they heat the outer surface of the tyres (probably to prevent the heaters taking the form of whole-tyre boxes or heaters between the wheel hub and tyre).

Article 25.4 is written in such a way that races re-started under Article 42.5 a), in common with races started under the Safety Car, require all drivers to be on extreme wet-weather tyres. This should hopefully result in fewer problems when re-starting races under monsoon conditions (though it still won't help if the situation is like Malaysia 2009).

Interestingly, Article 25.5 prevents teams from using tyres on simulators, except for acquiring aero drag, tyre rolling resistance and purely vertical forces. Wheel rim producers are allowed to use F1 tyres solely to check their products work. I'm not sure how much of an effect this will have in practise - how easy would it be to collect extra data while the permitted data is being collected? Even if the teams aren't trying to collect that data?

Article 27


Tyre heating blankets are now permitted. This will be a relief to those who worried that the cars won't heat up their tyres correctly, especially given the large quantities of fuel that will be in the cars in 2010.

Article 28


The reference to fuel loads being free for anyone starting from the pits has been removed because the refuelling ban means it would make no difference to fuel load where a car is positioned on the grid - they'll all have just enough to complete the race.

Article 28.4 will make sure every engine replacement beyond the permitted eight is penalised. This gets round a proposed (but not acted upon) plan for Sebastian Vettel to take only one engine penalty by using engines 9 and 10 on the same Saturday. However, the proposed method (putting the second penalty for the next race) means such a plan could still be done at the final race of the season without penalty if the driver and team in question are not on the grid the next season (since I assume that if either were, the entity in question could take the penalty on the first race of next season).

Article 28.7 represents a significant change. It is only possible to have one survival cell, roll structure, impact structure, front and rear wheel design in a given year. These components are mostly safety devices that will reduce the workload the crash test centres and FIA beuracracy will have to deal with, but it means that any true monocoque design will effectively be fixed at the start of the year. I wonder about the possibility of making the aerodynamic parts a shell around the survival cell (and thus modifiable), but weight concerns would probably militate against that. This would prevent at least part of the McLaren upgrade that made them so powerful in the second half of the 2009 season.

Safety and reliability changes are permitted to all the components listed above at any time, so it is possible that some will shamelessly exploit the loophole. Adding "clear" into the sentence probably doesn't help, given that "clear" itself has multiple interpretations depending on who is looking at the situation.

Article 29


The refuelling article has changed substantially, as you'd expect given that refuelling (and removing fuel) between cars leaving the pits on race day and the moment the chequered flag is waved has been banned. When there isn't a race on, fuel can only be added or removed at a stately 800ml/second and the engine must be stopped when this is happening.

Article 34


Article 34.1 now permits fluids to be replaced in parc fermé, provided their specfic gravity is 1.1 or less. This is primarily to enable fuel to be added between qualifying and the race, thus allowing all qualifying sessions to be done on qualifying levels of fuel.

It will be compulsory for all cars to be covered with a FIA-sealed (but presumably team-provided) protective sheet after qualifying. This is instead of attempting to shoehorn 26 cars into the FIA garage for overnight parc fermé accommodation. Removal of the sheet may occur up to five hours before the race at each team's discretion.

Article 36


The reference to engine penalties has been amended to take into account a change of position of where engine penalties are described in Article 28. This has no material effect on the starting grid procedure.

Article 38


Article 38.4 has acquired a comma. This makes it grammatically incorrect because the comma is followed by the word "or", but makes no difference in the effect of the regulation.

Under Article 38.8, it is now possible to overtake another car if it's delayed anywhere on the lap, not just when it's slow off the line. This could be useful if a car has a technical problem, but I doubt it will be used very often. The car thus delayed has until the first safety car line (which is immediately before the pit entrance) to fully regain position, otherwise the driver must start from the pits. This won't help people who stall unless they get going before everyone passes them. The line used to determine what constitutes "everyone passes them" (1 metre ahead of pole position unless otherwise specified by that particular circuit) is now used for Article 42.6 as well as Article 40.15.

Article 38.11, which required pit lane starts for anyone moving when the one second light prior to the start of formation lap comes on or loses position on the formation lap, has been deleted. The "loses position on the formation lap" situation is covered by the re-write of Article 38.8 (which now gives such drivers more leeway), but it would appear that a driver can still be moving at the 1-second mark and not be penalised. This does not strike me as a good idea because having cars moving during a part of the procedure has resulted in dangerous situations. Particularly when the green lights come on and there are cars trying to slow down when others are speeding up...

Article 40


Article 40.7 has been changed in the light of Nico Rosberg's delta time in Japan 2009 being obscured by a "fuel low" message. While teams appear to still be allowed to overrule the delta time message, they do so at their own risk; it is explicitly stated that drivers must drive faster than the time given by the ECU until the safety car line is crossed for the first time.

There are some wording changes in Article 40.7 to make it clearer what is meant by a safety car period. Since it is from the "Safety Car Deployed" signs until the first safety car line after the safety car is called in (i.e. what the safety car period has meant ever since it was introduced), this makes no difference to the racing.

Article 40.11 has been highlighted as a change in Article number because lapped cars will no longer be permitted to overtake the safety car in a safety car period.  

The message put out when it's time for the safety car period to end is being changed to "SAFETY CAR IN THIS LAP". Once the sign is out, the lead driver may drop more than ten car lengths behind the safety car. In effect, they will assume part of the safety car's job on the final lap of the safety car period, even before the safety car pits. Erratic acceleration and braking is also specifically banned on restarts, which will alter most drivers' methodology when it comes to restarting near the front of a race. There's a general ban on behaviour which could endanger other competitors or the restart as well.

Article 40.14 makes it possible to restart races under the safety car as well as begin races that way, with minor wording modifications made to reflect this. This has been done before (Nurburgring 2007 springs to mind), but now the formal conditions for such an event are listed in Article 42.5 a). Such situations will now be communicated through the timing monitors. This is especially important because Article 25.4 requires all such restarts to be conducted with everyone on extreme wet-weather tyres and timing monitors are much more reliable than e-mail for communication (ask Ferrari in Japan 2007).

Article 41


Following the mess that was the failed attempt to restart the Malaysia 2009 race, Article 41.2 no longer uses the grid as last seen on the timing screens to decide who starts where. Instead, the grid slots will be filled in order of cars arriving back to the grid. Yes, this will mean lapped cars in the middle of the pack and similar potentially-chaotic elements, but at least it won't take 10 minutes to figure out where everyone should be parked.

The safety car will take restarts from the front of the grid, not just position itself behind the red flag line (as it would for a standing-start course inspection). Work is permitted on cars once they reach thr grid. In practise, all this is likely to mean is that the red flag line is going to be taken out of the vocabulary needed to understand the regulations.

References to work permitted in the fast lane have been excised. Therefore, all work between a race suspension and restart must occur in the team's pit garage area or on the grid. This will reduce the risk of impediments to cars attempting to leave the pits.

Article 42


Lapped cars between the safety car and the leader will be waved off to complete a lap at the two-minute mark, as opposed to the previous vague "some point after the three-minute mark".

Under Article 42.5 a), wet weather is now a legitimate reason for a safety car restart, provided that the race director feels a formation lap under the safety car is insufficient to make the course safe for normal racing.

Article 42 has been modified to change all instances of "red flag line" with "grid".

Appendix 2


The team entry form no longer has lines across it. I hope nobody filling in that form has bad handwriting, or the forms could get tricky to read...

Changes to any element of the team appearing on the entry form must now be submitted to the FIA within 7 days of the changes being made, to give the FIA the right to refuse further participation in the championship should such changes breach the Concorde Agreement. This would appear to reduce flexibility in teams, but whether it actually does would depend on the contents of the Concorde Agreement.

The information is the same as last version of the document except that references to cost-cap regulations have been removed. Therefore, if a team changes its owner, address, contact information, directors, team principal, team manager, authorised representatives, engine supplier or drivers during the season, the FIA must be informed in case action needs to be taken. I can see this having some minor benefits (for example, the FIA need never worry about having a wrong number again!) but the lack of transparency over what the FIA could legitimately object to is causing me worry concerning potential abuse of the system - perhaps unwarranted worry, but some nonetheless.

Appendix 4


Note that, although this isn't a change, that the FIA is still permitting KERS engine fittings. I'd need to consult the technical regulations to see whether a KERS may be connected to said fittings.

Conclusions

 

These regulation modifications are mostly minor in nature. There are a couple of glaring errors in there, but they're the sort that will probably be corrected before too long. I particularly like the new safety car and restart regulations, but am slightly worried about the new entry form. Still, a generally positive document.

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2009 Season Review Podcast

November 28, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

I have completed a season review podcast for your listening pleasure. It's available to download for free at last.fm and consists of a team-by-team view of the events of the 2009 F1 season. The running time is 37:08, so it should keep you well-occupied.

 

Excerpts of this podcast appeared in the Sidepodcast 2009 Season Review Megamix, which is also recommended listening.

 

There is a transcript below:

 

La Canta Magnifico Blog Pod - December 2009 edition


Introduction - Brawn - Red Bull - McLaren - Ferrari - Toyota - BMW Sauber - Williams - Renault - Force India - Toro Rosso - The New Teams - Yucky Politics - Conclusions

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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WThe European GP Winklehock and Wet Weather

November 26, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

Date: July 22 2007

 

[ Mood: Razz ]
[ Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling Currently: Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling ]
Warning! Long post alert!

I am quite aware that many interesting things happened during the European Grand Prix. Lewis Hamilton appeared to have picked up some sort of jinx (very unlike him). How else do you explain skipping off the track on lap 2 (OK, maybe that was just because Turn 1 resembled Sheffield a couple of weeks ago...), swapped to the dry behind the Safety Car when conditions clearly indicated the opposite, did the second pit stop too late to avoid getting baulked by Fisichella for nearly a lap and then swapped to the rain tyres too early?

As the ITV commentators said, it would be inadvisable for Lewis to visit a casino on the way home. About the only right decision he made today was to keep his engine running when everyone else in Turn 1 gave up. Even then, that one smart decision was nearly enough to net him a point.

There was a neat tussle for the final podium spot between Mark Webber, David Coulthard and Alex Wurz. All three had got there against the expectations of their grid slots to some extent. In the case of the Red Bulls, reliability had for once been impeccable. David Coulthard had done particularly well out of the early chaos, which explained his rise from 20th position. Wurz had fought like a tiger, while Webber had simply driven a tidy race and benefited from Hamilton and Raikkonen's woes. Well done to all three for keeping us entertained.

Heidfeld was being controversial, which would normally be like saying the Spyker is really fast (more on that later). Besides crashing into his own team-mate at the start, he also managed to be involved in a collision with Ralf Schumacher, which is being investigated as I write. Personally, I think Ralf Schumacher shut the door a little too tightly, but Nick probably shouldn't have expected there to be a space round the last term.

That said, if Nick had won the race, it wouldn't have been as important to him as the birth of his second child, Joda, the previous night. Joda is a cool name, and best wishes for his future. Congratulations also to Nick Heidfeld and his family.

As a Spyker supporter, though, the thing I will remember most from this race is the flash of orange in the first sector of lap 2 going round what appeared to be a cruising red car. The red car was Raikkonen, and he was cruising because he'd missed the pit entry on the previous lap. Those dry tyres really weren't up to much.

The orange flash was Markus Winklehock. This was the same Markus Winklehock who 24 hours earlier, had been 1.5 seconds slower than his team-mate Adrian Sutil, who in turn was considerably slower than his non-Spyker-equipped rivals. The same guy, I might add, who got his race debut because two richer blokes were stuck in testing contracts. How we grinned and laughed at my house when we saw the brilliance and absurdity of the overtaking move - and that's even with Dad being a Ferrari fan!

A few seconds before this overtaking move, they had passed a large body of water. This body of water had, two minutes before, been a dampish piece of road called Turn 1. Now it resembled the roads around Sheffield and Chesterfield a couple of weeks before. This wannabe lake had been responsible for several cars falling off the track. Dry tyres just don't deal with wannabe lakes very well. Just ask Lewis Hamilton, who spent a good two-and-a-half minutes removing his car from the gravel trap. And that was with the help of several well-muscled marshalls pushing him.

Lewis Hamilton did at least have company at this point. Felipe Massa spun there, but neatly regained the track without beaching himself. Jenson Button, Nico Rosberg, both Toro Rossos and Adrian Sutil finished their races with tyres full of gravel. Although Adrian Sutil nearly clipped Hamilton's car (that would have changed the complexion of the race if it had happened!) but the winner of the "scariest crash" award was Vitantonio Liuzzi. He crashed last out of the five retirees. After he began the aquaplane, he nearly hit the Safety Car. For good measure, he also tapped a crane that had come to retrieve the other stricken cars from the gravel. Fortunately, the crash wasn't very heavy and everyone was fine.

Even so, a lot of people were struggling in the conditions. Giancarlo Fisichella found somewhere else to spin on lap 2 without getting into too many difficulties, and most drivers were very, very slow. Especially as much of the first sector was only navigable at a slow pace. Nick Heidfeld said on the team radio that "the conditions are undriveable", and he had a point. Especially with Lake 1 needing a bow wave to get through properly, and F1 cars having no bow wave worth mentioning.

Winklehock, on the other hand, was fine, because he was the only driver on the grid on wets. Why was this? Well, the Spyker staffers had looked around at the start of the formation lap and decided that the weather report stating that rain was due in 20 minutes (five minutes previously) might have been a little lengthy in their predictions. The people opening their umbrellas in the stands and getting wet hair in the pit lane were good clues. As a result, they split their strategy - Adrian Sutil did the conventional thing of using dry tyres, and Markus Winklehock pitted at the end of the formation lap for fuel and wet tyres.  

After this, Markus flew on the extreme wet tyres. He clearly can race well in those conditions, and that combined with being the only bloke on the right tyres meant that he was 33 seconds ahead of the beleaguered field by the end of lap 3. The last had indeed become the first.

Alas for Winklehock and Spyker, the race director decided he'd had enough of errant drivers colliding with his safety vehicles and of drivers going water-skiing at Turn 1. Firstly, he called the Safety Car. This neutralised the field... ...but most of the F1 cars could not keep up with the Safety Car. Even Winklehock was struggling to go as fast as the Mercedes SLR. A great advert for Mercedes, but not much use for F1 cars, which need to go at a certain speed to keep their tyre pressures up. Therefore, Charlie Whiting did the sensible (but unfortunate for Markus) thing and flew the red flag.

This led to the only error of the race for Markus and his crew, albeit an understandable one. A prediction appeared that there would be more rain five minutes after the race re-started. Markus left his extreme wet tyres on. I know Jarno Trulli joined him in the extreme wets, but the rain didn't return until lap 51. And then it was heavy drizzle...

When everyone got going again 20 minutes later, everything was back to normal. Everyone except Lewis Hamilton passed Markus Winklehock (when you're on the wrong tyres, you sure do know about it!), Markus retired ten laps later with broken hydraulics, and I wondered if I'd dreamed up the whole thing. But no - the ITV crew assured me after the race that what I thought I'd seen was indeed true. Big grins resulted, as I confirmed my notes about my new favourite rookie.

Forgive me for being a little overexcited at what on the face of it seems a pretty unremarkable result. But rest assured, it is a result that will long be remembered by Spyker supporters everywhere. And it will be a long time before the paddock forgets Markus Winklehock's debut.

I wonder if he'll get a drive later this season? If Spyker can afford it, I would strongly recommend that they take Markus on again for the next wet race...
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