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Posts tagged with "Webber"

Re-Analysing The Championship Duel

December 2, 2010
Filed under: Uncategorized by Alianora_La_Canta — 0 Comments
Warning! Long entry alert!

This entry was inspired by a question asked by Lonny at F1 Insight. He wondered if Felipe Massa would have been champion if his engine failures and pit lane problem in Singapore had been taken into account, irrespective of the stewarding against Hamilton. As promised, I decided to do the maths.

I started doing a reply and then realised that it was much too long to work as a comment.

The analysis is formatted with the cumulative points after each race title. The original one is given first, then the modified one. A corrected analysis of Singapore changed the results towards the end; while the original is left in for historical purposes, the latter number should be taken as the more accurate final points count. Hamilton's score is always given before Massa's.

The first number by each driver underneath the race titles is the number of points actually scored in that race. After that, there is a modifier to take into account the effects of mechanical failures, pit-stop gremlins, bad stewarding and the effects of all these on drivers who would otherwise have finished in a position affecting their points scores. An explanation of all modifiers is given in brackets.

I calculate the following fortune-correction for Massa and Hamilton:

Australia (10-0 becomes 10-2)

Hamilton 10 + 0 (easy victory)

Massa 0 + 2 (engine failure while in 7th)

Malaysia (14-0 becomes 16-2)

Hamilton 4 + 2 (lost 15 seconds in botched McLaren pit stop)

Massa 0 + 0 (spun off on his own accord)

Bahrain (14-10 becomes 16-12)

Hamilton 0 + 0 (he clouted Alonso himself)

Massa 10 + 0 (easy victory)

Spain (20-18 becomes 22-20)

Hamilton 6 + 0 (uneventful third)

Massa 8 + 0 (uneventful second)

Turkey (28-28 becomes 30-30)

Hamilton 8 + 0 (uneventful second)

Massa 10 + 0 (easy victory)

Monaco (38-34 becomes 40-36)

Hamilton 10 + 0 (non-controversial victory, apart from the crash that he was lucky to drive away from)

Massa 6 + 0 (equally non-controversial second or third, as Nick subsequently corrected me)

Canada (38-38 becomes 40-41)

Hamilton 0 + 0 (he crashed of his own accord)

Massa 4 + 1 (lost a pitstop worth of time due to not being fuelable in first stop, a drama missed due to Hamilton's collision, but Raikkonen would have been ahead of him were it not for being hit by Hamilton. Net gain of one point.)

France (38-48 becomes 40-49)

Hamilton 0 + 0 (the chicane-cut rule may be woolly, but none of the known official interpretations permit the first-lap chicane-cut Hamilton did)

Massa 10 - 2 (would have been second but for Raikkonen's exhaust problem)

Britain (48-48 becomes 50-49)

Hamilton 10 + 0 (he won without controversy)

Massa 0 + 0 (he did all his own spins)

Germany (58-54 becomes 60-55)

Hamilton 10 + 0 (he won despite a tactical error)

Massa 6 + 0 (uneventful third)

Hungary (62-54 becomes 63-65)

Hamilton 4 - 1 (would have lost a position if Massa's engine had held. The potential win was lost by his own error)

Massa 0 + 10 (lost victory due to an engine failure)

Europe (70-64 becomes 71-73)

Hamilton 8 + 2 (would have gained Massa's place had a correct penalty been awarded)

Massa 10 - 2 (would have lost a pitstop had he been penalised correctly for unsafe release)

Belgium (76-74 becomes 83-81)

Hamilton 6 + 4 (controversial chicane-cut; on strict interpretation no modification should occur, but on the wording of the interpretations used both before and after the incident, Hamilton had given the place back and waited until Raikkonen erred before going through)

Massa 10 - 2 (would have lost the win if Hamilton had been adjudged by convention accurately instead of a misinterpretation of a post-dated interpretation)

Italy (78-77 becomes 83-84)

Hamilton 2 - 2 (should have been penalised for a chicane-cut against Heidfeld)

Massa 3 + 0 (uneventful sixth)

Singapore (84-77 becomes 91-85 or 91-87)

Hamilton 6 + 2 (Rosberg only finished ahead due to a slow penalty issue)

Massa 0 + 1 [3]
Original analysis comment:(he should have come out about ten seconds ahead of Raikkonen, but Raikkonen himself was sixteenth after all that. Giving Massa ten seconds more only promoted him to tenth, which would have become eighth after Trulli's retirement and Fisichella's performance fading)

Updated analysis comment(he should have come out one stoppage period ahead of Sutil. This would have promoted him to eighth, which makes him sixth after Trulli and Fisichella are taken into account)

Japan (84-79 becomes 93-85 or 93-87)

Hamilton 0 + 2 (the Massa/Bourdais thing wouldn't have been enough in itself to promote him any places as he was too far behind. The collection of penalisable incidents would have raised him one position, but he needed three more to gain a place. However, he should not have been hit by Massa in the first place and did nothing to earn the penalty issued to him from that incident. 43 seconds lost there. This gives him a net position of 7th, just behind Bourdais)

Massa 2 - 2 (should have received the penalty Bourdais got for the crash between them. Also should have been penalised for causing an avoidable collision in addition to one for a chicane-skip and another one for using a sterile area to pass Webber)

China (94-87 becomes 103-93 or 103-95)

Hamilton 10 + 0 (easy victory)

Massa 8 + 0 (technically receiving the position back from Raikkonen is against the Regulations, but convention says that in this situation it's OK. If I am to say Hamilton should not have been penalised for Spa, then I should also say that Massa was correctly unpenalised for this irrespective of my feelings about team orders)

Brazil (98-97 becomes 107-103 or 107-105)

Hamilton 4 + 0 (uneventful fifth from the perspective of this analysis)

Massa 10 + 0 (easy win)

The conclusion is that the gap was three [one if the updated score is used] points smaller than it would have been with all reliability issues, stewarding mishaps and so on taken into account. It remains in Hamilton's favour.
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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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Renault and Long-Term Driver Strategy Two Years On

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

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.

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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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Renault and Long-Term Driver Strategy

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

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.

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