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Posts tagged with "testing"

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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February 2011 MiniNaBloPoMo

February 1, 2011
Filed under: Site by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

Now that various motorsport series are awakening from their winter slumber, I've decided it's a good time to challenge myself to another Mini National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo). I will be doing a blog entry every day through February, writing about testing, entry lists and whatever else takes my fancy in the world of motor sports.

 

The theme given by NaBloPoMo this month is CHARACTER, so there'll probably be some entries on this theme. I can't guarantee when or how many there will be, though.

 

I also plan on continuing to update the archive through the month, though such updates do not count towards NaBloPoMo; the rules clearly state that at least one entry I do each day this month must be new, but my old blog needs backing up to here...

 

Hope you enjoy the increase in writing here. If you feel like commenting, that would be splendid :) .

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The Ecology of the 4-Day Weekend

January 14, 2011
Filed under: Uncategorized by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

I really should write blog entries more often. I promised myself I'd write when Force India made its mind up who it was having, but I should have known from past experience that Vijay Mallya and his lieutenants have more patience than me!

 

One question I was asked in response to my previous entry on The Ecology of Wind Tunnels v Track Testing was from Robf1ction:

 

Could we scrap both and make the weekends 4 days long?

 

This struck me as an interesting thought, so I attempted to do some sums. From the previous entry, I dragged over the following:

 

  • 8.280 kg per night to travel to a hotel
  • 1.376 kg per component
  • 11854.683 components used per day.

To make a four-day weekend work, it will be necessary for the teams to stay a night longer at each race. Assuming that the example used for Spanish testing is a sensible average for distance between track and hotel, we can use the same 8.280 kg figure for each race - 45 is the maximum number of people a team can have in the paddock. There are 20 races in the 2011 schedule, so:

 

8.280 kg x 20 = 165.6 kg

 

The other two figures are to provide a component cost for the extra days. Since the fourth day is designed to substitute both wind tunnel and track testing, I will assume it will be run to the same sort of schedule as a test. This is done by multiplying the carbon cost of a component with the number of components used in a day and then multiply the result by the number of races/extra days:

 

1.376 kg x 11854.683 = 16312.044 kg or 16.312 tonnes

16312.044 * 20 = 326240.87616 kg or 326.241 tonnes.

 

Now 326.214 tonnes may sound a lot. However, the question was whether it would be worth doing this instead of track and wind tunnel testing. So let's grab the relevant figures and compare:

 

1 year of wind tunnel testing = 182.706 tonnes

4-day "local" track test = 16.341 tonnes

4-day "long-range" track test =  69.201 tonnes

 

All these figures are lower than the figure for the 4-day weekend. However, seeing the amount of each that could be fitted into the carbon needed to do 4-day weekends would indicate whether this represents a better path than the one robf1ction proposed or a mere illusion:

 

326.214 / 182.706 = 1.785 years (representing 24/7 running of one 60% tunnel, a 2-shift pattern on another and 7 days in a 100% tunnel - more than current limits but not as much as big teams used to do a decade ago)

 

326.214 / 16.341 = 19.963 "local" 4-day tests (this would nearly, but not quite, be one after every race. Would suit Ferrari, but probably not Sauber due to them having no suitably "local" track)

 

326.214 / 69.201 = 4.714 "long-range" 4-day tests. No contest, having 4-day weekends is better in terms of car mileage efficiency than carting cars to Spain for standalone testing. Unless it's Hispania, of course (being based in Spain, a test there would be "local" for them)

 

From a carbon perspective, a 4-day weekend scheme is better for F1 than testing abroad. Of that there is no question. It is about equal to a 4-day "local" testing method, except that mandating "local" testing would lead to large and intractable inequalities in the field due to varying access to a "local" circuit.

 

It is debatable whether the wind tunnel is more efficient than a 4-day weekend; a wind tunnel with no testing at all would be less use to a team than one under the current scheme (where straight-line testing can help triangulate the data). I'd go so far as to say it would struggle to be effective. If it could be made effective, it would be more ecologically sound than the 4-day weekend, but there is a compromise that would allow the best of both.

 

Right now, we are awaiting four "long-range" winter tests. What if these were replaced with 4-day weekends? Place a 4-day non-championship race in the winter to a) give the teams a little testing to sort out major issues b) stop everyone from getting too bored and c) let one of the Spanish circuits be moved to prevent race event fatigue in Spain.

 

Back-to-back races wouldn't have 4-day weekends because the 3 days left to travel between races would be asking for cargo or people not to be in place when everything gets going again and also risks people getting over-stressed from having to spend so much time in "work" mode without a proper break. There are 4 such weekends in 2011 (meaning 8 races wouldn't have a fourth day for testing).

 

It would be an extra 16 race weekend days but 16 test days would be lost, so the carbon used in components would be neutralised. A small amount of extra carbon would be used for the race:

 

Race fuel carbon usage: (62.5* - 16.221**) / 170 = 0.2722294 tonnes or 272.229 kg

Hotel carbon usage: 8.280 kg

Total: 272.229 + 8.280 = 380.509 kg

 

I would compare this to the amount of carbon used in the four winter tests and the alternative paths previously explored, but given that they were all in tonnes and this one's in kilogrammes, only pedants and mathematically-minded people are likely to care. I think we can live with the extra race producing a fraction of the carbon of a local test. It would certainly be more carbon-conserving than the modes of testing currently in use.

 

Thank you for the great idea, robf1ction. Hopefully one day the F1 team bosses will agree to this sort of thing and thank you too :)

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Racing For Ethics

December 2, 2010
Filed under: FIA by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments

Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:11 am

Warning! Very long entry alert!

This comment was originally triggered by F1 Fanatic's provocatively-titled The Genocide Grand Prix, though several events in the last few weeks have contributed towards the feeling that I need to write this entry.

The vexed relationship between sport and (proper) politics does not often crop up in relation to F1. Yet there is a growing feeling in the blogosphere that the relationship between the two should be higher up the agenda.

First there was the test in Barcelona earlier this month. I avoided commenting on it much at the time, partly because I don't trust testing results very much (for all that I smiled at Fisi being fourth on the first day, I wouldn't predict he'd be fourth in the Australian GP on that basis!) The second reason was because the main story of the weekend was one on which I wasn't sure how to report properly.

On the one side, the fact that a group of people had turned up wearing costume that could (and was) construed as racially insulting against Lewis Hamilton was seriously big news, especially since there were (then) no previously recorded instances of racially-based stupidity in Formula 1.

On the other hand, I didn't want to give these same people too much coverage in case it tacitly supported the predictable media publicity that these people received. This was uncharted territory for my blog as much as it was for the Formula 1 world.

Now, with the perspective lent by three weeks of considering other matters, it may be a good time to tackle the matter in its context.

For what it's worth, I think the people who were most in the spotlight were Carnaval celebrants who made a seriously stupid choice of outfits. Carnaval is a Spanish fiesta (with many parts of the world having an equivalent festival) that occurs just before Lent and drifts a week or more afterwards. Part of the celebration is that people dress up in costumes, which sometimes poke fun at other people, especially those that have recently been in the news. However, they are not meant to be insulting or make people upset. As such, choosing outfits that used skin colour as the basis of the fun-poking was an incredibly stupid move.

That move had far-reaching consequences. McLaren have since spent their testing more or less barricaded into their pit compound, with the gates opening for a select few; one might even wonder if the rumoured move into the fifth pit box (which is normally reserved for the fifth-placed team in the championship - the better-ranking pits are bigger and nicer) was facilitated by the authorities wishing to make it harder for undesirables to get to the McLaren pit should they get into the paddock against security.

The testing barricades are sensible while the initial risk of copycats fades away, but moving McLaren to the middle of the pit lane won't solve the problem in the long term. Better security might, but some racist acts are very difficult to police ahead of time. People yelling racial taunts, for instance, generally look like everyone else until they open their mouths. More likely more cynical reasons are in play for McLaren's possible move to the fifth pit box, such as subtle pressure from Ferrari not to let McLaren have the slight advantage given by the end pit, or the realisation that the Brand Centre could do with somewhere to park...

The press from the UK and Spain accused each other for fuelling the fire, giving further cause for concern for those who believed the standard of F1 journalism was decreasing.

The FIA has launched threats to take races away if there are any repeats of the Barcelona incident, to a background of denouncements of racist behaviour by the Spanish authorities and also by Fernando Alonso (link in German). They've also announced a program called "Racing Against Racism". Without any details, however, it is hard to judge whether they will be effective in preventing the spread of wrong-headed attitudes.

It would do well to start with the press. In the last 12 months, the team-mate fight at McLaren between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton has had several levels of complexity. The mainstream press in Britain and Spain has, by and large, chosen to ignore them. Instead, both countries' presses had increasingly shallow pieces pitching the fight as ever more adversarial (apart from some harsh press statements from both parties - possibly under pressure from these same press people - and some serious indiscipline at the Hungaroring, there was little evidence of tension between the pair - it was more Alonso v Ron Dennis than anything else).

As a consequence, Hamilton's initial popularity with Britain has faded (except among the casual spectator and the British press which sees casual spectators as walking pound signs). In Spain, he never was popular and he ended up seen as "Alonso's opponent" rather than "Lewis Hamilton". Alonso has been vilified in the British press and lionised by the Spanish press (though even the more obsessive Spanish F1 does not seem to suffer from saturation effect the way their British counterparts are - perhaps they are more used to it, since the Alonso obsession in the Spanish media dates back to 2003 and Alonso's arrival at Renault).

Granted, neither driver helped their cause with some unwise acts at times. But they're F1 drivers, not plaster saints, and a realistic portrayal of their actions would have allowed us to put them into perspective. A pity the press and perspective go together like oil and water these days...

The lack of perspective meant that we ended up with fans from both countries who had effectively been brought into the sport, learned to love one driver (of their own nationality) and been implicitly made to assume that to love one driver means that any driver who does not share some single key characteristic should - and anyone who poses a threat to that driver must be hated. For the casual viewer, in the absence of information about F1 customs regarding support, will simply copy the journalists, particularly the commentators, with modifications to fit the viewer's culture and background. Absent perspective from the press, the fans will be equally lacking in perspective when expressing their opinions. When they find that their nearby peers think the same way, group acts such as that seen in Barcelona become possible.

Lewis Hamilton's one-sided fans in the British press room have already caused some people to unsubscribe from F1 Racing and demand alternatives to ITV. La Marca are the most obvious Spanish equivalent for one-sided coverage. Apart from it having a specialism in sport, it can be regarded as what The Sun in Britain would be like if the libel laws were more lax. Frankly, any paper which is prepared to go to the extremes it did to fool its readers into believing Roldan Rodruigez had a better chance of a 2008 F1 seat than he did should not be taken very seriously. However, the sorts of things that have been printed about Lewis recently constitute dangerous manipulation of attitudes and would certainly fuel racist behaviour.

Spain's main sports before Alonso came to the fore were football and bull-fighting, both sports which tend to encourage support for one side against the other. In football, the home team (from the viewer's perspective) is supported against the away team and in bull fighting, the toreador is supported against the bull.

Formula 1 is much more complicated, with twenty-two "sides" to choose from (thirty-three if you count the teams). There are many shades of grey and a wide variety of hues, and F1 confounds any attempt to understand it in simpler terms. The many who watched motorcycling before F1 will have a reasonable feel for this, but by now a very large number of Spaniards watching the sport-cum-soap-opera would not the sort of background to balance out what the media were saying.

Nationalism can be a good thing because it encourages people to think beyond themselves and particularly beyond their immediate community. The downside of this affiliation is the same as the downside of all group affiliations everywhere. To join a group can be to lose your individual identity and in losing that identity, reduce everything to “Us” and “Them”. “Us” being whoever is in your group (with those worst affected struggling to sense where their individual, original thoughts end and their memories of what their group has said or implied it wants begin). “Them” is everyone else, considered inferior to “Us”. That sort of parochial attitude is the basis of all discrimination.

The moment there is an attempt to comprehend a global activity through nationalism or any other variety of parochialism, the true meaning of the activity is lost to discrimination of those elements that come from outside your country. When the group is challenged by another from outside the group, the "pack mentality" of the group means that the most obvious point(s) of difference is/are used to attack the outsider. The hope being to defeat that outsider. In Lewis Hamilton's case, that happened to be race. Any other obvious and irrelevant indicator of difference could have been used as well, because xenophobia (the technical word for parochialism) knows no bounds.

This is why excessive nationalism led to latent racism and why it eventually came out into the open.

This is only one of several directions membership of a group can take, which is just as well because otherwise we would have to ban all group activities. It does however make sense of the transfer some people make from nationalism to racism and other discriminatory activities, and also explains why F1 has this problem now, why it's surfaced in Spain (rather than Malaysia, China or some other nation with an emerging F1 supporter base) and how the perpetrators might not have been aware they were doing anything wrong, despite how obvious it was to many in the English-speaking world.

The "pick one side to support against the other" approach simply doesn't work for F1. It is, after all, a global enterprise. The question is, has anyone told the casual Spanish F1 viewers (and press) yet?

The British media do not have this excuse, which makes their behaviour less understandable. F1 Racing has, in a nice touch, acknowledged this in its March 2008 edition. Hopefully this will mark the beginning of more objective journalism from them and that other journalistic outputs will follow suit.

Perhaps Barcelona could have been put down as a one-off incident. However, it has been revealed that there were people behaving in a racist fashion at the China 2007 GP. The situation will need to be carefully watched, a role that the "Racing Against Racism" scheme could usefully perform.

Speaking of China, that leads to the second instance of politics and sport mixing in F1 this month. The Genocide Grand Prix deals with an issue that has been latent since 2004 (the ethics of staging the Chinese GP), but has come to the fore due to the Olympics and Paralympics being held in Beijing later this year.

From the moment China won the Olympics and Paralympics, the decision was criticised. China has a very poor reputation for human rights, possibly because the Chinese concept of human rights has been based on a completely different philosophical tradition to Western human rights, causing much tension between those attempting to establish universal human rights.

This is not the only reason for poor human rights in China - classic political stalling and inertia, combined with the pre-eminence given to strengthening the economy and the Chinese government not accepting the wisdom of certain measures contribute to a country with which the likes of Stephen Spielberg will not do business.

Bernie Ecclestone was never likely to be one who had that sort of ethical discomfort. His ethical system is the ethics of the Almighty Dollar, so when China told him they could afford the circuit, Bernie's rate ($22m in 2005, $27.5m in 2006 and increasing by similar amounts since) and would allow the race to take place, he took their money and made the race happen. Should it have been that easy, though?

Some people have argued that F1 should not go to any race where the governance makes immoral decisions. The trouble with that is that every country makes immoral decisions. Some discriminate according to race, some by social or economic status, some by health, some by place of residence, some by all the above. There are a few places that manage to contrive unique "excuses" for discriminatory practise as well. And that's just discussing the discrimination side of politics - political ethics is multi-dimensional and some countries which excel in some elements do very poorly in others.

In fact, even Bernie practises discrimination of a sort, favouring those who will pay him, directly or otherwise. However, he's a single-minded professional businessman and that sort of comes with the territory. Ethics requires some sort of consideration for the consequences of actions, and if your only criterion for measuring consequences is financial, then the discrimination-by-money is not a surprising thing to note.

Still, that does not get us out of the problem, for most of us have a code of ethics, and very few will share Bernie's extreme interpretation of capitalist ethics. So what to do about China?

Boycotting the race to show disapproval with its staging has been suggested. If only financial criteria are understood by the likes of Bernie and the people who run the event, then a lack of foreign capital going inwards would make China sit up. However many locals step in to fill the spaces in the grandstands, part of the reason China has a race is to attract foreign capital and thus strengthen its economy. Absent that capital and the purpose of holding the race is diminished. PR, which is another reason the Chinese have a GP, would also be adversely affected.

As it happens, I don't get a choice over whether I boycott attending the Chinese GP or not. The Chinese entry requirements make it quite clear that anyone with a mental disorder, sexually transmitted disease or infectious disease is forbidden from entering China altogether. No exceptions.

Infectious disease I can understand. No rational government wants to allow its citizens to be infected with diseases from outsiders (who would generally come into some sort of contact with the indigenous population during their stay). Sexually transmitted diseases are a rather odd restriction, which says something about how Chinese people with STDs are regarded in their home country. But mental disorders?!? Why are they not allowed?

Anyhow, I have Asperger's Syndrome, a neurological (brain wiring) condition at the “mild” end of the autism spectrum. Asperger's Syndrome is classified as a mental disorder. So despite being a peaceful, law-abiding individual who doesn't randomly explode into purple goo on touching foreign soil, I am forbidden from spectating at the Chinese GP itself. Let's just say I have yet to talk to anyone who sees this as a sensible restriction on the Chinese government's part...

There's the ethical element (discriminating people on the basis of their neurology is as wrong as discriminating them on the basis of race). There's the self-interest element (surely venues should want more spectators, not fewer). There's the financial element (as well as paying for a ticket, the extra foreign capital flowing into local restaurants, hotels and evening entertainment locales would surely boost the Chinese economy). There's the numbers argument (a rule that bars 1 in about 150 people from entering the country before they even make themselves known to the authorities would seem pretty strange).

Even if Bernie doesn't care either way (it was once rumoured that he would hold a Mediterranean GP at his Paul Ricard circuit with no spectators at all, surely the Chinese government should have seen sense and admitted people according to whether they posed a risk to China instead of whether they fit into some artificially-produced boxes.

In short, xenophobia affecting F1 is not just practised by a handful of easily-photographed individuals, but by a variety of sources, with consequences going some way beyond hurting the feelings of the athletes competing. Sport may be at its best when politics doesn't get involved, but politics is pervasive. Sport has to take measures to control its influence in ways that benefit sport.

One could joke that the Spanish authorities could prevent future Chinese mishaps by making racism a psychologically-certifiable condition, thus preventing anyone engaging in racist behaviour from being able to enter China in the first place. Since psychological conditions have a lot of stigma attached to them in the Western world, this would be a disproportionate reaction, though.

It also wouldn't stop such people from going to the other 18 F1 races, where people with mental disorders are permitted (in case you're wondering, even Malaysia and Singapore of the current F1 venues allow people with mental disorders to enter without additional impediment, though the USA won't allow people with mental disorders to participate in the Visa Waiver Programme).

More sensibly, Spain and all other countries hosting F1 races could team up to ban any known troublemaker (whether the trouble is racial or on some other universally-objectionable grounds) from any sporting event in those countries. If this could include non-F1 races as well, this would be even more effective, for there is no reason to believe the behaviour of a given individual will be more responsible in some sports than others. Neil Horan proved that when he made a nuisance of himself at the 2003 British GP and the and also at the 2004 Olympic marathon.

Such an international agreement would need to be supported by an information campaign explaining clearly and precisely what actions are considered unacceptable. Yes, the broad-brush version is on the race tickets themselves, but how many people actually read them, especially if they're in a language in which the ticket-holder is not fluent? That, and a reasonably strict and clear interpretation of the rules should prevent too many further problems in the long run.

Bernie and Alonso have since questioned the need for "Racing Against Racism" on the grounds of it being a one-off. I am 100% sure that the specific troublemakers at Barcelona won't repeat their error because it was originally made through ignorance. That won't stop deliberately racist people in future, though, and in the coming years there is a serious danger that they will appear on the tracks of Grand Prix racing.

While F1 continues to expand into new territories, those countries whose populations actually respond to F1's presence will continue to bring new problems and new expressions of old problems into F1. A flexible response is needed. Perhaps “Racing Against Racism” should have its scope widened and be re-named “Racing For Ethics?”
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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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