This entry has taken me some time to figure out how to write. Something's been bugging me about recent F1, primarily since the Turkish Grand Prix. However, it was only when Duncan Stephen wrote his item on why he was finding 2011-spec F1 not to his taste that I figured out how to write my own objections to what's been going on. My first reaction to the piece was:

Hurrah! Somebody doesn't think that the current F1 is a) the bee's knees or b) only ruined by excess overtaking.

For me the proximate problem (i.e. the one that's directly causing me dissatisfaction with F1) is meaningless overtaking. In Turkey in particular, the method of generation of overtaking caused lots of zero-sum exchanges - lots of passes but most of them were never going to affect anything in a month of Sundays. They were just going to get re-passed later in the corner sequence or else in the DRS zone the following lap.

DRS foreshortens the process of passing even when it's producing a reasonable net increase of overtaking. This makes it less skilful and also less significant in the context of a race. Those comparing Turkey 2011 to Japan 2005 have forgotten, among other things, that many of the overtaking moves in the latter took laps to set up. Yes, it was normal for cars to be innately 1-2 seconds faster or slower than each other that year, making things difficult enough for complaints, but that still shows planning and skill were important.

If pressing buttons is the new hot skill for F1, why aren't all the F1 drivers being sent on evening typing courses? Why aren't fit typists with clean driving licences being considered for F1 testing roles over the heads of those who have toiled in F3 and GP2?

Besides all that, DRS should never have been experimented with in a race weekend. It should have been tested properly prior to use, and then implemented equally and effectively in all races.

Despite the emphasis on changes to the racing, qualifying has now become the be- and end-all of F1. The only reason it's not become the only non-accidental deciding factor is because many teams haven't worked out it's merely a question of getting your single lap per session faster than those around you. It's no longer possible to waste tyres doing two runs. If you're first into the first corner, DRS means you'll be able to pull out a big lead and protect your tyres as you will while everyone battles behind you. I felt like kicking Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button when they did their little duel at the start; by focusing on each other they lost time to Sebastian Vettel and wore out their tyres, which made it impossible for either to do anything about the race leader.

That's right, to get exciting racing for the lead in this system you need a team to qualify both its drivers right behind the lead one (without the pole-sitter's team-mate or any other team being in between) and then execute firm team orders on lap 1 to stop them from attempting to race each other. The "no. 2" would be tasked with staying 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place and then keeping a consistent pace to remain 1.1 seconds ahead of 4th place, preserving the invisible barrier. "Good" thing systematic team orders are permitted this year, else every race win would be unsalvageable.

If you're not a potential race winner, qualifying is still vital and still has to be done as a single-lap run for each of the three sessions. This would be one set of tyres for Q1 and Q2 and then a second set for whichever session is believed to be the final one. If you get through to Q3 when it wasn't expected, simply sit out the session to preserve your strategy. This is because if you can't look after your tyres, the best strategy is to have as many new ones as possible. If you can do that, it's irrelevant whether you can pass the people around you (with gimmicks or not) because you'll probably gain a pit stop on them - especially if your car is relatively kind to tyres like the Sauber is). Even if you don't, you'll gain considerable amounts of time and flexibility.

It's bizarre that the strategies dictated by fragile tyres and ease of DRS-based tactics mean that the act of passing - DRS-based or otherwise - is almost irrelevant to the results.

The trick is to evenly space out all tyre changes according to when your car will need them, which should be quite straightforward to determine based upon performance in the first stint. It doesn't even need anyone to bother doing a pre-race equation - it's simply a question of chucking tyres at a car when it needs them. Pit strategy outside the options a car may deny has now got so little relevance that the discretionary laps can be deployed whenever the team wishes. All the strategy divergence is down to two factors: a) due to the tyre philosophy being new, different cars treat them very differently and b) many teams do not appear to have figured out what's going on yet, so haven't even taken the obvious step of going single-lap each session up to this point.

So we now have the single-lap qualifying some people have called for. It's not improving the racing - it's taken it away. Duncan Stephen has called it "one step away from fixing the result". I wish I could be so reserved on the matter. As far as I can see, it is fixing the result to whoever happens to be the fastest one-run driver/car combination in qualifying, and for most of the top 10, stupidity and extreme tyre wear permitting, they are fixed in the positions in which they qualified.

KERS doesn't seem to do anything to help the sport - it just seems to be something tagged on to keep the stupider elements of the environmental movement a little more content. It's in F1 in a form that will never be utilised on the road (road KERS will be a very gentle addition for all accelerations, not a big boost done occasionally), delivering power in a way that makes overtaking more difficult (which may be protecting us from even worse problems with DRS) and with a lack of freedom which places it firmly in "gimmick" rather than the "feature" it is about to become in sportscar racing. That it's not facing a campaign for removal at this time shows just how much of a problem DRS presents.

One of the things which worries me - and I think it's one of the things that's made it difficult for me to blog - is that so many people don't seem to see the medium-sized picture let alone the big one. They see lots of passing, lots of energy, lots of confusion - and start cheering. They do not see that it's causing very predictable strategies, very predictable results and a very samey feel to races. Energy and confusion might have got many into the sport but if it had kept being those things at the expense of everything else - especially the surprise element - they'd have stopped watching within a season because there'd be nothing to grip them with. If I wanted to know the winner 24 hours before the race and the result of a race for most of the field on lap 15, I'd put on a season review DVD. At least then there'd be decent camera direction...

Sport is a form of entertainment. If done properly, it will be entertaining whether or not the "show" is considered (the "show" only affects how many people get entertained and the length of the entertaining). The decade-long trend towards considering "show" over "sport" is nearly complete. But F1 is not reality TV. Reality TV tropes do not necessarily work for sports such as F1, even with extreme tweaking. The cost is that F1 will soon be unable to be called the pinnacle of motor sport, on the grounds that it will not be a sport at all. The sport needs urgent attention in order to save it, to take away the worst of the gimmicks. That way it might be possible to see how to get the enjoyment of racing to run clear again.

Though I'll let the powers-that-be tweak the "show" enough to get a competent TV direction system and crew. The current one hasn't worked since FOM took over the job and 2011 is exposing their weaknesses so much. It's even more frustrating to be watching a predictable race when perfectly competent commentators, used to having at least vaguely usable images to commentate from, find themselves clueless to things you figured out 30 laps before because you, unlike them, could see the little ticker-tape running across the bottom of the screen...

Date: March 4 2010

Date: 29 April 2009

Warning! Long entry alert!

This time last year, I wrote about Renault's long-term driver strategy. It seems not a lot has changed since then. This is unfortunate, because it means that Renault still doesn't have a particularly good car (though it wasn't too bad at the end of last year), Alonso's still not getting the results he wants (though he won twice during the last phase of 2008) and Piquet Jr still hasn't surmounted the F1 learning curve.

In other words, it now has a confirmed driver problem in addition to the car problem it had when I started doing this series of entries in 2007. Piquet Jr poses a driver problem because he is too slow and Alonso poses one because he is too fast.

The first problem is the more pressing; word has it that Renault's board is fed up of Piquet Jr being slow and crash-prone (a three-nosecone strategy in China would have been forgiveable had decent performances elsewhere been provided, but with the possible exception of Bahrain, none have been forthcoming in 2009). Action may be underway; if the rumours are correct, Monaco would see a new face in the No. 8 Renault.

Alonso is a growing problem because he wants a championship-challenging car to match his championship-challenging talent. He's been at Renault for over a year and no such car appears forthcoming. They were caught on the hop on the subject of double diffusers - hardly unique, but then Flavio, the true lynchpin of the team, spent so long bemoaning the legitimate interpretation of the "diffuser three" that one wonders whether he had any faith in his own department's ability to fashion a good diffuser of its own. Precedent suggests he should; on items as diverse as traction control in 2001 and seamless shift gearboxes in 2007, the Renault department has been late to the party, but with a near-perfect interpretation of the concept. There is no reason to believe that double diffusers will be any different.

This development strategy should ensure that Renault returns to the top at some point. The question is whether Alonso will have the patience to be there when it happens. The persistent rumours that he will go to Ferrari remain, though after the troubles he had at McLaren, Fernando might be wary of a repeat. Then there's the small matter of Renault having two more points and considerably more reliability than Ferrari to consider.

Still, there's one more thing that could cause Alonso to move. The board's rumoured impatience with Piquet Jr could point to a need for results. This is understandable in the current climate, but if the board's schedule no longer matches the team management schedule, it may be possible that Renault leaves Renault. Should this happen, the team will have serious problems. Even the rumbles of doubt might make Alonso look at his options carefully - he's left Renault on the grounds of long-term instability before and he could do it again.

In that case, Flavio definitely needs one new face and possibly two. If Romain Grosjean's manager has had the intelligence to make him the reserve driver in contract as well as in effect, then he will have the rest of the season to prove he's better than Piquet Jr. If he has more talent than connections, then I can see that happening. The trouble is that I know little about him and junior records don't always indicate F1 success reliably. Sebastien Buemi has a much, much worse record in junior series than Sebastién Bourdais, but even the biggest Bourdais fan would not suggest that Bourdais was steamrollering his rookie team-mate in the way that their respective CVs suggested would happen.

Possible Alonso replacements are at once plentiful and non-existent. They're plentiful because Alonso is not going to walk mid-season whatever happens. This means that Renault can bring someone in during what is likely to be a transfer season of high movement. It's not even clear who will be available, except that Jenson Button cannot be selected due to his three-year contract with Brawn. Perhaps Flavio's frustration with the situation was what prompted him to compare Jenson with a milepost. All I can say is that Flavio's mileposts would be so fast that you'd hardly ever see any...

Somehow, I don't feel particularly worried about Renault's ability to get a good No. 1 driver, if only because at Renault's core is a group of engineers that really know their stuff. When people like Pat Symonds are on the team, it is certain to get through any track-related challenge in a reasonably useful state.

The "non-existent" element of replacements for Alonso comes from Flavio's perception of Fernando as Renault's talisman. Last time Fernando left, Flavio opened negotiations for him to return before the 2007 season even began, despite not being consulted over the original move. That's how much Fernando means to Flavio. Since it is Flavio who has the power at Renault, any driver in an Alonso-free situation will have to deal with the unseen, intangible presence of Fernando on top of whatever challenges 2010 presents Renault. As such, I can see whoever is picked to replace Fernando failing purely because the perceived No. 1 driver will be elsewhere. The best a replacement could hope to be, whatever their talent, is a No. 2. Poor Romain would probably end up as a No. 3 in this case.

If Alonso stays, then Grosjean will simply need to be better than Piquet Jr. If he's so much better as to threaten Fernando, then a swift transfer to Red Bull (swapping with the Flavio-managed Webber, perhaps?) would solve the problem in the short term - or if the situation is stable enough, a sale to whichever team looks most pleasing to Romain would be even better.

Renault's current driver line-up looks destined to fail. Getting a better driver strategy is largely dependent on Renault's management having the courage to back their F1 team even through a recession.

Date: April 29 2008

[ Mood: Rolling Eyes ]

[ Currently: Reading F1 Magazine (January 2002 edition) ]

Date: 29 April 2007


[ Mood: Huh? ]
[ Currently: Reading Survival Strategies for People on the Autistic Spectrum ]
<Article>

Warning! Long entry alert!

Renault's predicament has been surprising in its magnitude, if not necessarily in its occurence. It is currently fighting over minor points in races and sometimes scrabbling to get twelth in qualifying. And as Martin Brundle said in 2002, "Flavio [Briatore] doesn't really do twelfth, does he?"

It would be fair to say that this entry got inspired by Formula 1 Latest's blog entry on Renault. However, my response is too long to put in their comments box, so I thought it was fairer to put it here where people who like long monologues can enjoy it better.

Before the season started, the people who thought Renault were going to be in trouble mostly appeared to believe that the main reason was the drivers. Fernando Alonso has done a sterling job for Renault in the last two years, and continues to do a good job for McLaren. He was never going to be an easy act to follow, particularly bearing in mind that many doubted Giancarlo Fisichella was up to the task, and that Heikki Kovalainen was a rookie (even great drivers need some time to become world-beaters.

In fact, Flavio Briatore has really got himself into a pickle over his drivers this year. The plan was so obvious and so likely to work - keep on Fisichella to show Kovalainen the ropes and maintain continuity (he has a proven track record of both, and with all the personnel reshuffles and the tyre swap, a dip in form was likely even if Alonso was still there). Groom Kovalainen to be the team leader for 2008 (bearing in mind that Flavio thinks/thought he is/was the next Alonso) and put Nelson Piquet Jr. in as Heikki's second in 2008 (as the Alonso-after-next). This would produce a lovely conveyor belt of superstars to pay Flavio money and bring Renault long-term glory.

Two things have put spanners in the works. Fisi has done better than Flavio expected relative to Heikki. I'm sure Flavio thought they'd nearly equal each other by Bahrain, but Heikki's currently too busy working on his driving-mediocre-cars technique to worry about his catching-the-team-leader technique. Also, Heikki hasn't been able to display the level of team leadership required for him to take the No. 1 role for 2008.

This combination is especially awkward as Flavio still doesn't appear to have quite forgiven Fisi for the last two years and Nelson probably has a Heikki-like (and fairly common) clause that he be given the car should either of the current racers not be available.

As a result, the whole discussion of who may replace Fisi as team leader may be rather premature. Until Kovalainen demonstrates some team leadership skills or a point is reached when both Fisi and Heikki can be dismissed at the same time, Flavio cannot remove Fisi without giving himself the rather weak Heikki-Nelson line-up. If I were Flavio, I would be pleased that I could have a Fisi-Heikki pairing and get back to overseeing car improvements. Flavio probably wouldn't be so happy...

If Nelson's manager has been silly enough not to negotiate himself the reserve driver clause, then Webber is the most likely target. Button is probably so restrained by contractual bounds that even his and Flavio's combined will to change teams would not prevail against the CRB (though it might net Flavio some cash to try, as well as add pressure to Webber's salary negotiation). Bear in mind that he signed a 5-year Honda extension only at the end of 2004, so Button is stuck there until the end of 2009.

The Ferrari and McLaren drivers can be safely ignored - all four are (as far as I can tell) contracted beyond 2007, and only Alonso is anything other than delighted at the prospect. Even he is probably only temporarily irritated by the Hamilton hype and won't flounce off-stage like his predecessor Juan Pablo Montoya did.

Mark, on the other hand, is probably on a normal contract and could be bought out if necessary. He will also be keen not to repeat his mistake of disregarding Flavio's instructions twice in succession. Adrian Newey would be a factor against the move, but is Mark's loyalty to his chief designer stronger than his loyalty to his manager? So if it's not Fisi-Heikki next year, I think it will be Mark-Nelson. The former is more likely, however - though it will be gritted teeth on Flavio's part, it would be the more successful arrangement.

As for the cause of Renault's problems, I think what's wrong at Renault is the tyre compatibility. Renault have had the rearmost weight distribution since 2001, and switching to Bridgestone tyres caused a problem. This was because Bridgestones require a more forward weight distribution whilst maintaining broadly the same aerodynamics as 2006 (note Super Aguri's supremacy over Honda). The weight distribution had a lot of effects. Also remember Renault's budget is relatively small, which makes tackling two different research tracks at once difficult.

As a consequence, there ended up being compromises on both the distribution and the aero, which have proved a very bad combination. No amount of good driving can completely compensate for a mediocre car. In essence, Fisi's performance relative to Heikki is because Fisi is better at dealing with mediocre cars (he's been in this situation before - 2001-2003, anyone?), but that's not going to win Renault championships; car improvements are. And the car improvements necessary are too numerous for Renault to deal with. Which is why Renault are hovering around lower points-paying positions right now.