The Grand Prix at Yas Marina: the final showdown in Abu Dhabi

To call this race the final showdown in a cliff-hanger of a season would be to underestimate the tension in the warm air of Abu Dhabi tonight. The greatest strain will be felt in the Ferrari garage where a big helping of luck is needed if Fernando Alonso is going to become World Champion on Sunday. Despite his amazing strength of character and heroic late-season run of success he cannot be viewed as the favourite for the title. The series of wins and podiums that have put him in the lead of the championship perhaps obscures the simple fact that the Red Bull cars are comfortably the fastest this season, with an advantage of the same magnitude as that which the Brawn team enjoyed at the start of last year, but in this case without any sign of their rivals catching up and matching their speed.

Ferrari, just like McLaren, will be hoping that their final development push will have given them more pace. But there will be nobody in any garage tonight who thinks that the two Red Bull drivers will fail to secure the first two positions on the grid tomorrow. But they will still be hoping. Perhaps Alonso will put together a single perfect lap and split the two Red Bulls? Or if he is third it could be that he will launch well and muscle past one of them at the start? Either way, so long as it is Vettel on pole, Fernando and Ferrari have a chance to control the race and Red Bull will be unable to exercise a team decision to favour Webber. Then, you might argue, even if the two Red Bulls are lying first and second, there is no certainty that Vettel would let Webber past even if that is what his team expect of him. A third place for Alonso might be enough if Vettel has sufficient dislike for Webber to refuse to forego victory for the sake of a team-mate who he feels behaved outrageously and robbed him of a win in Turkey. And perhaps it might rain. In which case a chaotic race would reduce the chance of a simple lockout of the first two spots by the Red Bull team. And, in spite of the high track and air temperatures in Abu Dhabi, tyre temperature issues were haunting the teams today. So Ferrari must have some small hope that, if they can manage this issue better than Red Bull: an appropriate pit stop strategy might allow a less compromised out lap and get Fernando ahead of whichever of the Bulls is immediately in front of him during the race.

Against this must be weighed the reality of the situation. Even with a fast and well-balanced Ferrari in the hands of a confident and inspired Alonso, the Red Bulls are odds-on favourites to dominate a dry qualifying session. A determined Lewis Hamilton with a faster McLaren this weekend would be more likely to qualify ahead of the Ferrari than ahead of the Red Bulls as well. Robert Kubica might step up again and have a great qualifying run, which again could push Alonso down the grid but would be unlikely to trouble either Vettel or Webber. What a situation. I am aware of the various permutations of the points of course but, as I prefer the simple logic of a championship table based purely on results, I will not discuss all the possibilities here. Suffice to say that, although he leads the World championship on points, Alonso faces another steeply uphill task to beat two rivals who enjoy the benefit of a much faster car in qualifying at least. If he can win the race it is mission accomplished. To do so he has to beat two top drivers in faster cars….

Another outbreak of Red Bull unreliability is another straw at which Ferrari can clutch. Sebastian Vettel would be well ahead in the championship if his car had not been so fragile earlier in the year, and Mark Webber’s own mistakes have prevented him from clinching the title already. But while Ferrari say that they are going into the last race with their emotions in check to avoid mistakes, it may be significant that the team made a pit-stop error in the last race. The problem with Massa’s loose wheel is ominous, as was the occurrence that stranded him on the track today. Whether it was literally running out of fuel, or some issue with the fuel feed, the Scuderia must be crossing their fingers and hoping that no similar problem hits Alonso’s car.

I find that I have little support when I promote the ‘medals’ system of scoring the World Championship. But the interesting thing is that on this occasion it has produced an equally tense situation in the last race. Both Hamilton and Button are out of contention already under this hypothetical scoring system. If Webber wins, Alonso cannot equal the four second place finishes of the Australian so Mark will be champion. If Vettel wins, Fernando would be champion so long as he is second or third. If none of the three contenders win, Alonso would be champion as he has more victories already. So, under this system (see: Medal-System Championship) both Red Bull drivers have to go for victory. A purer situation, and no less tense than the one that is real.

Motor racing is a nerve-wracking game. This race will test the three contenders to the maximum degree. I only leave Lewis out of my reckoning because his is only a mathematical chance of gaining the necessary points on Sunday. Whatever he does he must rely on disaster striking all three of his rivals. A very unlikely possibility.

I had one of the most unpleasant road trips of my life yesterday. Unexpected snow on the Col de Balme and the Forclaz left me struggling to keep a grip-less BMW 3 series on the road. Hard compound summer tyres have virtually no grip in this situation. Getting up the mountains was tough, but coming back down them was lethally dangerous without winter tyres. The dynamic stability control had to be switched off as it was fighting me, and the ABS was equally unhelpful and could not be disabled without delving into the electrics and pulling the fuse. Which is hard to do as you skate sideways downhill unable to slow the car much or at all. On one occasion I had to take a full line through a blind corner and simply hope that nobody was coming the other way. I seemed to have even less grip than Jensen Button’s McLaren has enjoyed recently (and Jensen must be wondering why his own car has plumbed such depths of poor set-up just at the time his team-mate has needed a clear run in the races). Later, torrential night-time rain on the Belgian motorways, with the spray hanging in the air between the trees which line them, was an illustration of the appalling visibility the F1 drivers experience when it is wet. And some say that rain is forecast in Abu Dhabi this Sunday. I thought that my drive from the Alps to the Eurotunnel was a bit too much of an adventure for one day. Three men will start this weekend anticipating that their long journey around the Yas Marina will be even more testing. On Sunday evening one of them will have the consolation of knowing that it was well worth the danger and the stress.

Ciao

PS: I had intended to post some thoughts on the technical aspects of this season’s cars. But how could I do that on the eve of such a dramatic weekend? Next time. Oh, and did I forget to say that I had the pleasure of watching the first Grand Prix of the year in the media room of a top McLaren executive? I was shocked by the raw hatred of Alonso that was expressed during the race (although the spontaneous outburst was immediately and rather unconvincingly withdrawn). So Ferrari are racing a Red Bull team intent on winning because they are tough competitors and a McLaren team perhaps intent on spoiling their slim chance of victory out of sheer malice.

The 2010 Championship has two races left

There is something special about F1 racing. I saw my first F1 race in 1956 and it is undeniable that the sport has changed  immensely since then. Some of the changes have been technological of course, and for setting the development of the current cars in motion I would credit four inspired pioneers. The Cooper brothers, working in their little factory in Surbiton were not the first to build rear engined cars but they developed a basic approach to the configuration that has remained unchanged to this day, and were the first to see the full benefits of a rearward weight distribution. Jim Hall, the genius behind the Chaparral cars, first suggested the significance of downforce, which is now the biggest single contribution to the almost unbelievable performance of the current machines. Colin Chapman’s team at Lotus also have to be given an honourable mention for making the first effective application of underbody aerodynamics. The first venturi car was so unreliable, because of other weaknesses, that few of the rival F1 teams saw it as a breakthrough concept. But after Mario Andretti strolled to the championship the following season the writing was quite clearly on the wall. Currently it seems inconceivable that anyone would attempt to utilise anything but a rear-engine layout. Downforce is pursued almost blindly to improve performance. And the underbody configuration of the car is the main focus of both the designers and the FIA rule makers.

At the start of this season I was driving back to the UK from the French Alps. I caught and overtook a large truck as I headed South West out of Geneva. The huge rig was pure white with no major sign-writing or logos. And yet it was so imposing, and had such a palpable presence, that it seemed clear that this was no mere haulage machine. Looking in my mirror as we swept past I saw a small red badge. It was the Sauber transporter, and the scale and expensive nature of this transporter speaks of the other huge change in F1 over the last 50 years: it is now awash with money. Bernie Ecclestone has been the inspired impresario who seized the moment as spectator sports went global thanks to the development of satellite communication and the world TV networking it made possible. The Sauber truck displayed no major sponsorship at the start of the year, but in every other way it epitomised the wealth of the modern sport. There was a time when half the Grand Prix field arrived on open trailers, converted second-hand coaches, or inside large vans. But that was long ago.

The sheer strength of this sport, now grown into an industry, can be judged by the arrival of four new teams this season despite the tremendous economic crisis that has pushed the whole world to the brink of recession. Moto GP was seen as an appealing commercial model by those FOTA members who wanted to break away from the FIA and Formula One to run their own “super series”. This year Moto GP has seen significantly shrinking grids and even the most arrogant of the top F1 teams must thank their lucky stars that they were persuaded by Max Mosley to remain inside the big tent.

The race engineer rides with the driver
What a season it has been. I thought that last year would have been hard to beat for excitement but this season is moving towards an amazing finish. I suppose that if there was any problem last year it was that Jensen Button won six races early on. From then on it was simply the agony of tension that remained as he and Brawn failed to clinch the big prize until the penultimate race. It is almost impossible to lose a world championship after six victories and the possibility really only occurs because of the wretched points system. Nonetheless Button was nearly undone by Brawn F1’s slow pace of development in mid season , triggered by the lack of big-money sponsorship during the year, which was in stark contrast to the massive funding that Honda had poured into the development of the design before the season started. He also suffered some bad luck now and then, but I think it was significant that his main rival was his team-mate. Rubens Barrichello was engineered by Jock Clear, and it has always seemed to me that Clear is not only a very clever race engineer but also one who is prepared to fully engage in a contest with his opposite number on the other side of the garage. It also seems significant to me that Michael Schumacher has struggled this season to match the pace of Nico Rosberg who has been engineered by Clear. I am certain that one of the reasons that Button chose to leave Brawn just as it became Mercedes was that he felt he had been let down by the team in the latter half of last year. Whether that move out of the frying pan was to a better or a worse place remains to be seen…

They primary moral of this observation is that, being harnessed together like the team of a tandem bicycle, the driver has a tremendous dependence on his race engineer, and mistakes or misjudgements by the latter will cost more time than any driver can regain. Some engineers will inevitably be less inspired than others and nothing can alter this. However, if there is any significant gap between the abilities of the two team race engineers it should have minimal affect on the relative performance of the two team cars if all data is shared and all decisions are discussed openly.  But if the race engineers begin to identify with their drivers rather than with the team things can turn ugly. Uglier still if the team should choose to manipulate (or “control” as Ron Dennis used to say) the drivers through choice of engineer or secret orders given to them.

Secrecy and suspicion can weaken teams
This is an explosive issue for only one reason. Many teams have chosen not to impose any reasonable discipline or logic in the way they handle their drivers as they attempt to win the world drivers’ championship. The drivers’ crown is the only worthwhile goal for the top teams as all the big sponsorship flows from this gold ribbon. In spite of what Eddie Jordan says, it is only the tail-enders who struggle for manufacturers points in an attempt to maximise their income. Having two drivers race each other in a serious way is always going to risk manufacturers points, and as Williams proved during the Piquet v Mansell era it can lose you drivers’ championships as well. Come to think of it McLaren demonstrated the same thing only three years ago. Red Bull may be about to give us another vivid demonstration of this truth.

Back in the day things were always clear within F1 teams. There would be a number one driver. The number two, unless capricious fortune placed him in a much better points position towards the end of the season, was expected to follow the leader as closely as possible without compromising his race. Thus Giles Villeneuve would dutifully follow Jody Scheckter and Francois Cevert would follow Jackie Stewart. This understanding maximised the team result and avoided risking lives and machines. Nowadays F1 is as potentially dangerous as ever, but luck, circuit design, and car construction has protected the sport from serious injuries for many years. But allowing two closely matched drivers compete flat-out in the same machinery remains a recipe for disaster. It can do nothing but reduce the chances of winning anything.

Now clearly something sometimes has to be done, but because of ill-considered rules, shallow PR concerns, and perhaps the destructive presence of the gambling industry, it now has to be done in an underhand way and remain a secret. Perhaps the team could manipulate things: tyre pressures (as Alonso said McLaren were using to slow him), strategy (as Ron Dennis even admitted on TV that the team was using to stop their drivers racing), or simply inequality of engineering leading to good or bad set-up, to keep the unacknowledged number two behind the secretly chosen team leader?

What is more damaging is that even if this is not being done, the drivers themselves may suspect that it is. Thus first Webber and more recently Vettel have accused their team of deliberately sabotaging them. Button has stepped from his car recently saying that he was “wondering” why he had been told to adopt the tactics during the race that seemed to have cost him places. And Button has also been left incredulous that his car has been set up so badly and been so much slower than Hamilton’s. Whether or not there is any truth behind the drivers’ suspicions, neither Button nor Vettel are happy at the moment with the teams they are contracted to for next year. And Vettel must still be upset by the events in Hungary. I am sure that his own team must have told him to open up the gap to Webber just before the safety car came in. The strategy was designed to maximise Webber’s chance of jumping Alonso but the resulting drive-through penalty cost Sebastien yet another win.

Although everyone now starts with full-distance fuel the timing of the tyre stops remains tactically significant and only one team car can pit on any given lap if they are running close together. Thus there is no way a team can give an unequivocal “equal opportunity” (to use the McLaren team’s phrase) to both drivers. It is madness to allow the relationships within the team to fester and sour. The very least that I would expect as a team manager would be an agreement that, if one car caught the other the faster car would be let through. An understanding as to who is regarded as the lead driver might not produce the fireworks that we enjoy, but it would serve the best interests of both the team and the drivers themselves.

Team mates can race each other to destruction
It took several races where Alonso, for one reason or another, ended up stuck behind Massa for the situation at Ferrari to boil over. Alonso’s robust move on Massa in the pit lane signalled his refusal to endure this ambiguous situation any longer. Explicit team orders were eventually applied at the Hockenheimring, but only after Alonso had tried to overtake Massa earlier and the resulting wheel banging as Massa defended had almost taken both cars out. The two Ferraris have touched heavily in at least four races this year, and Alonso has been lucky that none of these incidents cost him a finish.

I have every sympathy for Felipe Massa. Using the medals system that I favour he won the World Championship two years ago. But he is not yet as fast as he was before his accident. From the pressure he put on Kimi Raikkonen before his injury I would have expected him to be only a couple of tenths adrift of Alonso. But this season he has usually been much slower. The decision to allow the faster Ferrari to overtake was correct, especially in light of the earlier wheel banging, but Rob Smedley made the team decision obvious to the world in his radio call to Felipe. His lack of diplomacy cost the team a substantial fine and I see no way that Rob can remain with the Scuderia next year. Fine engineer though he is I think he will probably leave with Fernando.

The McLarens have also collided. When team orders were given to Button to allow Hamilton to retake the place he had lost in Turkey,  the two cars touched very dangerously at the first corner as Lewis dived aggressively inside Jensen. Given that Button was responding to team orders there was no reason for Lewis to have made this lunge, unless he wanted to make it look like a genuine overtaking manoeuvre rather than a team-controlled switch, but he slid into Button who did well to avoid an accident and to keep quiet about it after the race.

But of course the most dramatic and notorious intra-team incident was the clash between the two Red Bulls. This was preceded by an exchange on the radio in which hints were dropped but no orders given to Webber, who had been caught by Vettel who was himself fending off a hard-charging Hamilton. Vettel had a clear run on Webber who was slow out of the previous corner. Webber moved to the right to block Sebastian, who then darted to the left. Mark then moved back to the left even as his team-mate’s front wheels entered the gap. Sebastian held his nerve to thread through the smallest of gaps but even then Mark did not give any more room. Seb reacted by trying to push Webber to the right as soon as he was three-quarters of the way past, and as Webber simply refused to budge they made contact. In the circumstances the majority of young drivers would have done exactly what Vettel did. In the heat of the moment and after being squeezed so robustly a move to push the culprit back across the track is almost a reflex for most. But only a very small subset of drivers would have done what Webber did and continued to hold the squeeze on such a fast straight. That says it all for me; and Webber was immensely lucky to survive to the finish after the collision. It is a robustness of style that is perhaps more common among ‘hard’ Australian sportsmen than among others. It was the way the late Ayrton Senna raced of course.

Webber showed an equal stubbornness when he collided with Hamilton in Singapore. Lewis was blameless in that incident, but again Mark survived with his championship hopes still alive. With a comfortable championship lead he had nothing to gain by taking a risk; his was the error of judgement, but again he was the lucky one. At least he wasn’t racing a team-mate that time. But the tension and stress within Red Bull must be intense. The self-destructive atmosphere that has been allowed to build up within the team is perhaps reflected by events in Korea. Webber made an unexpected unforced error, perhaps in his desperation to keep in touch with Vettel. When he then allowed his car to spin back across the track without any attempt to lock the brakes I was immediately suspicious. Frankly, when you are having an accident in front of the pack you do everything you can to avoid swinging back onto the racing line. But I dismissed my suspicions until they were voiced by Gerhard Berger on German TV. Gerhard said he thought that Mark deliberately allowed his car to spin back onto the racing line in the knowledge that two of his closest rivals were close behind him. This was exactly what had I had thought as the accident happened. If it is true his luck ran out this time and it was a non-contender who was speared into retirement.

This weekend’s race should be every bit as tense as the last few. What a season. My next posting will be concerned with the technical issues. And the results from Brazil where I have to remind myself that only one man stands a chance of securing this year’s title. A man who seemed to have no chance all a couple of months ago: Fernando Alonso.

To get a pre-race flavour of Sao Paulo see my previous postings:
October 31, 2008
October 20, 2007

And to see how the World Championship looks using the “medals” system (which I much prefer) look here: Brian Jordan
It is interesting to observe that the only way the ‘medal-system’ table differs from the current points situation is that Jensen is already out of contention for the top spot, and that if any other contender for the crown is to displace Fernando they will have to win races to do so. I find this so much more satisfactory than the points table on a philosophical level, and every bit as exciting as the Grand Prix season enters its last laps………Ciao

Hello world!

Well I have no idea whether my loyal reader will ever find me again but this is entirely my own fault for posting nothing at all for over one year. My old website became impossible to edit as it was under a sustained spam attack. Hopefully this WordPress blogsite will prove more robust. This has been a classic Formula One season and is heading for a cliff-hanger of a finish. I’m sure that I will soon find something to say….

The Renault Conspiracy brings down Flavio Briatore and Pat Symonds

As I begin to write this the members of the World Motorsport Council are already hearing the case against the Renault Formula One team in Paris. By the time I finish writing they may well have reached their decision. Such is the pace of life, and most of the gentlemen of the press type much faster than I ever could. But this is no time for defeatism: I will press on.

Two years ago when stories began to leak from Maranello that Nigel Stepney was suspected of theft and sabotage I felt that they could not be true. I thought that the affair must be some sort of histrionic tiff within the team and mainly hot air. I made no comment until the police raid on McLaren’s chief designer not only took me by surprise, but threw a new light on the earlier rumours I had ignored.

Another lost scoop
Several months ago I was told by a friend, who is a key figure in the Ferrari design department, that he was "sure” that Nelsinho Piquet’s crash in Singapore had been deliberate. I have known this man for 35 years and have always trusted him completely, and have been given countless insights into very secret matters which I am honour bound to keep private. But this talk of Renault deliberately organising a safety-car period to open up the opportunity of winning the race seemed like wild fantasy. Rather than taking it seriously I filed it away alongside other conspiracy-theory nonsense. I wondered if it merely reflected a growing atmosphere of paranoia that might have taken root in Maranello as a result of the difficulty of a season in which other teams had ignored what had seemed to be perfectly clear technical regulations, and had then defeated the challenge to their cars at the FIA’s International Court of Appeal. But I was wrong.

I still don’t know what evidence had led Ferrari people to this conclusion about Singapore. It must have been very solid to have created such certainty. But either not solid enough for the team itself to have complained to the FIA or obtained by them in a way that they could not make public…..

But now this is not a scoop. It is history. Nelsinho was increasingly worn down by his relationship with Flavio Briatore, who was both his team boss and his manager. I suspect that Nelsinho had been subjected to what can best be called ‘bullying’ from a man who is unaccustomed to being constrained by the norms of behaviour and courtesy that most ordinary mortals accept as a given.

Nelsinho told his father about the events in Singapore. Nelson Piquet approached Charlie Whiting ‘off the record’ to find out how Nelsinho would be treated if the facts became known. Whiting told him that the FIA could not react to mere rumour but would only investigate if they received evidence. I am sure that Whiting would have told Piquet that his son would be given immunity if he made a statement of what he knew. If any other evidence came to light and an FIA investigation was triggered Nelsinho would be certain to suffer penalties if he remained silent.

As the first half of this season unfolded Nelsinho seemed to be a haunted young man. Gone was the appropriate self-confidence of a young charger who had come into F1 after a very impressive run through the junior categories. There was also a press campaign against Nelsinho, asking when he would be dropped from the team. The question was being asked by the journalists who were close to the FOTA teams and supported their threat to start a breakaway series. Flavio Briatore was going to be the commercial director of the FOTA championship.

When Nelsinho was dropped by Renault, but still presumably paying a percentage to Flav’s management company, his prospects of another F1 drive were poor. Worse still his super-licence was at risk should the Singapore conspiracy become known. He made a statement to the FIA. His account of events has not been challenged by Renault, and we now simply wait for the WMC to rule on penalties.

A little bit of spin
It has been widely reported that Flavio and Pat Symmonds have left Renault to escape sanctions from the FIA. This is nonsense and it has to be said very clearly, so that everyone can understand, that the FIA has no power to impose any direct punishment on these two individuals. The FIA is not a Court of Law and can only punish those who hold FIA licences. Drivers hold licences, marshals and race officials hold licences, and the teams themselves hold licences. Team principals, designers, engineers, and mechanics do not.

Briatore and Symmonds have left Renault because the team know them to be guilty of organising this offence. It is the team that must be punished and they have ejected the individuals responsible to show that they have taken appropriate action to avoid any future misdemeanour’s. They hope to mitigate the punishment by being open about this.

The punishment
It has been widely assumed that Renault is going to leave F1 at the end of this season. Briatore was said to be searching desperately for an engine contract to allow the team to continue. Whether this is true or not the WMC must impose an appropriate and proportionate penalty. It is totally dishonest for anyone to suggest that they should be motivated by any concern about Renault’s future in F1.

McLaren was fined a huge amount of money for sporting-corruption which had probably involved costly espionage. The sum was related to the market value of the material that was stolen from Ferrari. The WMC also took into consideration the fact that the team had denied everything and resisted the investigation throughout. Ron Dennis had behaved like an idiotic gangster in front of the hearings and had lied quite blatantly to the FIA president in an effort to avoid an enquiry. A single figure took the drop although most McLaren managers were probably aware of the offence. Dennis remained unrepentantly at the helm of the team until another infraction at the start of this season finally forced his departure.

Renault has admitted the offence and cleaned its house before the enquiry. The penalty will have to reflect the commercial gain that the team had won. I would expect the fine to equal the prize money gained from the win in Singapore and from the boosted end of season championship position gained as a result. That is simple economic justice. An additional penalty should be imposed as part of sporting justice and to indicate the seriousness of the crime. I would find it hard to accept that these should add up to anything like the total penalties that were correctly given to McLaren in 2007.

The drivers
There is no evidence whatsoever that Fernando Alonso knew of the plan. Contrary to speculation, the light-fuel strategy would not have surprised him either. Renault was in the habit of starting Fernando on very little fuel in 2008. They were aware that, until Singapore, they did not have a car that could run at the front. I think it was Pat Symmonds’ habit to run Fernando light for three reasons. Firstly, Fernando himself is fiercely competitive and proud. He would rather show a great turn of speed than plod towards a midfield position. Next, Renault had to be kept on board. Their not-so-young Turk had to be convinced of the value of the race team. As he knew nothing about the sport he was most likely to be convinced by the sight of one of the cars running at the front or running fast at the back even if the podium was not finally reached. Finally, however hopeless this strategy seemed (and many times it dropped Fernando behind Nelsinho, who was always started on heavy fuel), there was always a chance that a lucky safety-car period would allow a brief glory-run to bring the car home at the front. Race after race the team waited for this lucky event. They came to Singapore with a transformed car capable of finishing near the front. When engine failure consigned Alonso to the tail end of the grid they would have been even more desperate for a good result. Start light again and pray for a safety car at the right moment was their usual approach. But this time why not make sure of that stroke of luck?

There was no need for Alonso to be told and his happy acknowledgement of the lucky timing of the safety car after the race spoke to me of his innocence.

As for Piquet it is enough to say that he was pressured by his boss until he reached breaking point. I had expected him to do well in F1. Before joining Renault he had seemed aloof to the point of arrogance, but I think now that this was a mask worn by a shy young man. He suffered the customary difficulty experienced by all Renault number two drivers. By the middle of last season he was scared of Briatore’s moods and tantrums and quite desperate to please. Finally he provided evidence against his team, and openly acknowledged his own part in the plot.

Nelsinho deserves the immunity he has been granted. Just as Alonso deserved the immunity he was given in 2007 when he was the only person within McLaren to provide evidence of the flow of stolen data, after the FIA wrote to all the team members requesting everyone to co-operate with the investigation. The drivers were the only team members who could receive sanctions from the FIA but Fernando was the only driver to reply honestly. Nelsinho has looked increasingly unsettled since last season. Like Alonso within McLaren he must have feared that the truth he knew would become public and destroy him. Like Fernando he finally took the only course open to him: honesty.

Flavio Briatore
Flav is a businessman, but he came to motorsport from the world of fashion. This is a business where exaggerated personality and behaviour is perhaps the norm. He has never understood the technical aspects of the sport but has run his team as a business and has been very successful at doing just that. He speaks a very broken form of English and makes an effort to be outrageous and entertaining. Lack of clarity perhaps, but never a lack of words or an absence snappy quotes. This was a man who enjoyed life in the limelight. I have never met Flav but I have often referred to him as a clown, although he probably saw himself as half clown-entertainer and half Machiavellian ring-master. I saw no malice in the man. I was impressed when he managed to quit smoking after years of blatant disregard for the smoking ban that has long existed in the pits and pit-lane.

Flavio stopped smoking because he was concerned for his health after a cancer scare. It was probably as a result of this that his weight ballooned over the last three years. He has always been an effective but a difficult boss. He had the habit of employing two people for every key job and then letting them fight it out among themselves for supremacy. This must have made many of his staff uneasy much of the time. Perhaps it was something he learned from reading ‘The Art of War’ or some such work currently fashionable in management circles.

Anyway, without cigarettes and with health worries Flavio entered the economic downturn also lacking any certainty that Renault would continue to support his team. Probably they were demanding results. All this stress led to bullying of junior staff, and who more junior in Flav’s eyes than young Nelsinho? In Singapore the team expected to do well before the engine blew. The pressure led to the temptation to help their luck along. And that led to a sporting deceit that almost everyone in motorsport finds almost impossible to believe.

I think that the most telling story about Flav is one that I have told before. When Benetton were investigated for using launch-control, during the period when it was banned, the team was visited by the FIA while Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne were on holiday. Launch software existed in the cars. Like almost all the teams Benetton were still developing the system in testing as they were correctly confident that it would be an important technology in the future. I have been assured that it was never activated in the races.

Flav probably did not understand any of the technical issues but began horse-trading. He said that the team would never use the system again and reached an agreement with the FIA. Leaks of this meeting as well as tensions within the team led to the conclusion that the system had been used in races. Briatore’s approximate English and loquaciousness had scored this own-goal. The slur still lingers over the team’s first championship win and Byrne in particular is bitter about this. I am certain that Benetton was innocent of any wrong-doing but Flav talked himself into a hole even as he thought he was talking himself out of a corner. But this time he seems to have done more than simply talk his way to trouble.

Pat Symonds
It is hard for me to say anything about Pat. I knew him and worked with him 30 years ago. I liked him and enjoyed working with him although we were never close friends. He was certainly ambitious and projected this by being very protective of his image. As the design-engineer he would sit in his directors’ chair and never actually work on the car. That was the mechanic’s job. As the development driver I would help the mechanic myself and Pat’s refusal to compromise the dignity of his position was something of a puzzle to me. This was not Monaco but Snetterton on a cold winter morning, after all. There were only the three of us there and a lot of work to get through. Whatever this said about Pat, he did well, and followed his predecessor from Royale Racing into Formula One.

At Silverstone this summer I bumped into Pat in the paddock, very nearly literally. Pat seemed to be in a world of his own, looking drawn and stressed as he hurried into the Renault hospitality unit. We have not met for several years but I was surprised that he failed to speak to me, or even notice me standing there. On television Flavio has had the same rather haunted look for some time. I think that the breakaway series was the only possible escape. When that failed both these men knew that the sword which they had hung above themselves in Singapore was suspended by the merest thread. It showed in their faces and in their behaviour.

I regret to say that this whole plan was probably Pat Symmonds’ idea. Flavio Briatore would have applied the direct pressure to bring young Piquet on board just as Ron Dennis seems likely to have pressured Lewis Hamilton into withholding information in 2007 and dishonesty early this year. I just wish that none of these things had happened. But life goes on.
Ciao

How things stand at Ferrari: after Spa and before Monza

We are all creatures of habit. Writing had become a habit of mine over the last couple of years, though blogging itself is rather a self-indulgence and might be viewed as a rather bad habit. Anyway, I almost managed to kick the addiction but the sheer interest and excitement of this year’s races has drawn me back. I hope that everyone who reads this blog feels the same way about this fascinating season.

The real problem is deciding where to begin. So much has happened since my last commentary that I find that I want to comment on many issues and there cannot be a central theme to this posting: which is something I always used to strive towards. So here goes. I will comment on each issue as it occurs to me, but today I have time to discuss only one team and its drivers.

The Ferrari Renaissance
Most of the British journalists seem to have rather underplayed the way that Ferrari has bounced back from its uncompetitive start to the season, but this really is the big technical story of the last three races, eclipsing even McLaren’s return to winning form. Over the last three races Kimi Raikkonen has never been off the podium and has scored comfortably more points than the next most successful driver in these three events. Who is Lewis Hamilton.

Heikki Kovalainen lies third in this recent battle, albeit having scored only half the points that Kimi has in the last three races. It is obvious that the teams that are threatening to dominate the final races are the two big guns who started the season by building cars that complied with rules that were later re-interpreted to their disadvantage. You may think that it a rather arbitrary choice to look at these three races in isolation. But I think that Hamilton’s unexpected win in Hungary, and Raikkonen’s equally fine drive into second place marked a sea-change in the pecking order.

McLaren and Ferrari have been working flat out to catch up with the teams that got the jump on them at the start of the year. Both teams have more than adequate budgets, and a wealth of engineering talent. The fact is that it took until the Hungarian weekend for these experienced outfits to catch up. McLaren had introduced more interim modifications in the earlier races than had Ferrari, who spent more time gathering data before deciding what direction to take, but both bounced back to the sharp end of the field at the same moment.

The nightmare sensitivity of the tyre temperatures is still a challenge for everyone, and can produce surprises race by race. McLaren are back to race winning form but are still struggling with the issue as we saw at Spa. Brawn are on a frustrating knife edge with the tyres. Toyota bounce from the front to the back of the grid depending on the way their car responds to the track and the temperature on the day, BMW yo-yo in the same way, and Force India amazed us all at Spa as their car hit the sweet spot and ran right at the front. But Ferrari seem to have achieved a more consistently fast set-up than anyone else and my feeling is that Raikkonen will be a major force in all the remaining races.

The Development Path
How has this been achieved? Obviously if I had been told what had been done it would be impossible for me to leak the information. But I can say that way back before the Silverstone race there was a robust debate within the design department of the Scuderia. When Bridgestone introduced slicks for this season they did so in a simple way. The same moulds were used to produce the slicks as had been used with the grooved tyres. Because of the different ratio of grooves to width the area of rubber that was in contact with the road grew by a greater percentage at the front than at the rear, and few. if any, teams realised how significant this would be. The grip of the tyre is determined by the compound of the rubber. It is not affected by the width. The wider the tyre the greater the cooling of the tread and this will only give more grip if this is exploited by running a softer compound. Thus the front tyres have more cooling this year than last, and it is now even more of a problem to bring them up into the working temperature range. Tyre temperature is proportional to the work done. The only way of increasing the total work shared by the two front tyres is to move the car’s centre of mass forwards. Nothing else will have the same affect.

Adjustment of the centre of gravity has become routine in F1 by moving ballast weight forwards or backwards within the wheelbase (or even beyond it by mounting ballast on the front wing, despite secondary disadvantages). This year the additional weight of KERS has meant that teams running the system, which offers a real performance advantage, have less ballast is available for c of g adjustment. The additional weight of the KERS components also moves the centre of mass rearwards. A double disadvantage. So tyre changes have made it imperative to move weight further forwards and the scale of the required change is hard for anyone to achieve and even harder for teams that run KERS.

This is why the drivers now struggle to shed weight rather like jockeys. Even though the driver’s weight is well forward of the centre of gravity, the lighter he is the more ballast that can be placed even nearer the front of the chassis. A small but important contribution that must have changed the dietary habits of many people.

As I said in an earlier discussion of these issues, the most elegant way to shift the c of g is to re-position the sprung elements of the car relative to the wheels. Basically, if you can move the front and rear wheels backwards by several millimetres you will then have a centre of mass that is nearer the front. This seems simple but involves a total re-design of the suspension components and then a re-working of the aerodynamic elements as the wheels are now in a different relative position and they have a big affect on the flow. Effectively you will have to design a new car, which is a much bigger task than the usuall progressive mid-season development. Ferrari was unable to move the rear wheels further to the rear because they had no more angularity left in the driveshaft constant velocity joints. McLaren was probably in the same situation which is why they referred to Hamilton’s winning car in Hungary as a “short-wheelbase” chassis. Unable to move the rear wheels backwards they had been forced to move the fronts only, resulting in a shortened overall wheelbase. It seems that they were reluctant to run this set-up at Spa, and their performance was disappointing in Belgium as they were presumably failing to work the front tyres hard enough. Though do bear in mind that it is inconceivable that the full engineering story will be revealed to the press by any of the teams. Anyway, Ferrari needed to shift weight forwards and had experimented with c of g position at earlier events when they knew that they were uncompetitive and might as well treat the weekends as test sessions.

The next big issue is stability. Basic instability not only prevents a driver from driving the car at its theoretical limit (which no driver can actually exceed, and the best simply approach more closely than the others), but it also results in him stepping from the car complaining bitterly not simply about “lack of grip” but about the car “not working at all” or being “completely impossible”. Kubica has been saying this sort of thing about the BMW fairly frequently. Ferrari don’t just rely on feedback from frustrated drivers, but have a stability-program which is run by their computers from the data logged at the circuits. The stability level that this program computes has proved to be a very good match with the pace of the cars in race stints, though the drivers can sometimes set surprisingly good single-lap times even when the stability-program numbers are poor. Stability in this sense means that the c of g position with regard to the tyre dimensions (as discussed above) must be correct and the centre of total downforce must be very close to the same point. If this can be achieved the car can be tuned to whatever mechanical balance the driver prefers by small adjustments to relative roll stiffness front to rear, and into aerodynamic balance by small changes to the wing settings. When on the move the driver will find that the car will respond in the corners to every small steering input and throttle adjustment. And as Jack Brabham said about driving racing cars many decades ago: “It’s all about balance”.

So within the Scuderia there were two points of view. Factions if you like. There was the group who argued that the crucial thing was to achieve stability by matching the optimum and real c of g positions and trimming the centre of downforce into the same place. Then there was the argument coming mainly from the aerodynamicists themselves that the push should be directed at gaining the raw downforce that the newly liberated interpretation of the bodywork rules had made possible. Bear in mind that, despite what you hear on TV about the teams struggling to claw back a little of the 20% reduction in downforce that the new Overtaking Working Group inspired regulations had achieved, the abandonment of the simple single-panel underbody rules has made possible an even greater increase in downforce. From the evidence of the pace of the cars at Spa it is possible that they are already generating more downforce than last year and overtaking is consequently no easier at all.

The development of any racing car is all about compromise. Just as the drivers strive for balance on the track the design team has to strike its own balance between conflicting requirements. However fiercely opposed were the proponents of the two different approaches to development, back in those dark days when the red cars were mired in mid-field and worse, the correct compromise position must have been reached. Now from within the team comes the confident assertion that “We’ve had the fastest car for the last three races”. Certainly as early as Silverstone no less a team than Red Bull were paying very close attention to the new parts that were appearing on the Ferraris. It even strikes me that if Kimi’s final run in Q3 had not been started late by a mere 8 seconds (probably because he had to be held for a gap in the traffic) he would have been able to run a second lap as had been planned, and would probably have started at the front of the grid. With a little more good fortune this win could have been even easier.

The Ferrari Drivers
For almost a year I have found it hard to know what to say about Kimi. In his first year with Ferrari he was clearly faster than Felipe and hung on with superb determination to win the World Championship. Last year he no longer seemed to have the upper hand within the team and it was Felipe who made a run at the championship, only being thwarted by the crazy points system. Raikkonen didn’t really look convincing after Singapore and this year he has struggled with an uncompetitive car which made his own performance difficult to assess. From within the team I heard doubts. And also the view that it was difficult to believe that someone could binge-drink at the reported levels of Kimi’s partying and still be competitive in an F1 car (even if he was Finnish). I didn’t pass on any of this negativity at the time because I was so pleased when Kimi won his first championship in 2008 and want him to do well. I also felt that many of his poorer races had been destroyed by a single piece of bad luck, much the way Button has been suffering recently.

The word now from within the team is that Kimi has driven really well in the last three races. This is not simply a journalist or a pundit talking: this sort of praise does not come lightly from within an F1 team. Whether because the car feels so much better, or because he has a better rapport with his new engineer, Kimi seems to be back at the very top of his game. With any luck he will continue to score more points than anyone else for the rest of the season, and I think that Ferrari are expecting further wins.

Looking towards next season it is far from clear what is going to happen. I never even ask people whether Alonso is going to join the team. Even if they knew the answer they would be duty bound to deny any knowledge. Putting pressure on friends to give answers on subjects that they are forbidden to discuss makes everyone uncomfortable and is a good way to force people to avoid you. To me it certainly seems that Ferrari have at least three drivers for two race seats in 2010. The rumour of Fernando’s arrival at Maranello is persistent and convincing. After Massa’s accident it seems obvious that the team would want Kimi in the second car. But could it be that Kimi actually wants to retire at the end of this year? I have no idea, but it is a plausible hypothesis, and his pleasure in the sport would have been at a low ebb after the struggles in the latter half of last year and the first half of this season. Before Felipe’s accident you would have to say that it was more likely that the younger man would have wanted to stay on alongside Fernando, should he arrive. But now things are different. Kimi is driving superbly and enjoying himself in the car again. My suspicion is that he has yet to decide what he wants to do next year and his decision may not be made until well after Monza.

Luca Badoer
Luca is a charming man, an excellent driver, and has made a tremendous contribution to Ferrari’s success over the years. How many miles must he have driven around Fiorano testing new developments as well as shaking down the race cars before each race? I used to think that he had the best job in the world. He probably did until the teams introduced the testing ban that meant that people like Luca never again drove the cars around a circuit. Naturally, he would always have wanted to race one of the cars. It seems a cruel irony that Luca got his opportunity when he was least prepared for the challenge. I felt for him as he struggled around Valencia and Spa and I hope that he will look back on this experience with satisfaction. He is one of the handful of men who have had the opportunity to race an F1 car for Ferrari. He should focus an this rather than be overwhelmed with disappointment that he struggled so badly.

There is one bright side to this story. Luca might still have been contributing to the team by bringing his long experience of development driving to the races. My sources have denied that any such thing went on. But I was particularly struck by the speed-trap data from Spa. Badoer’s car was very fast indeed. Could it be that Luca was running Monza levels of downforce last weekend in what was in effect another test session? I like to think that this was not so much Luca struggling and failing to perform in two races, but rather his last contribution to the team as a test driver. Perhaps the Scuderia go forward to Monza in better shape than would have been possible without the efforts of their senior test-driver?

Whatever the truth of this Badoer was the best available driver to step into the breach at short notice when Schumacher had to withdraw. The problem mid-season is that you cannot simply pop a driver into the vacant seat who will not be on your payroll for the following year. To do so simply reveals your operating procedures and gives an insight into the technology of your car to someone who will take the information to another team at the end of the season. Luca would have been prepared to step aside again as soon as another driver was available.

Giancarlo Fisichella
And Giancarlo is that very man. Fisichella is still a very quick driver as his second place at Spa demonstrated. I am sure that he has always wanted to drive for Ferrari just as many Italians longed to see the Commendatore’s long-standing refusal to risk having another Italian killed in one of his cars come to an end. I suspect that Giancarlo was resigned to losing his Force India seat at the end of this year and would have jumped at the chance of ending his career with five races with Ferrari. The test-driver contract for 2010 means that he will not be taking Ferrari’s secrets away to another team, and there is a chance that he may have a race seat if Kimi does choose to retire. Imagine the atmosphere at Monza as he makes his début with the team.

Michael Schumacher
Now on to darker subjects. I was really disappointed that Michael was unable to race the Ferrari. If I was disappointed Michael himself must have been heartbroken. The team lost a great opportunity, Raikkonen lost the certain improvement that Michael’s input would have brought to the team, and we all lost the opportunity to see history being made. If Michael had been able to rejoin the team he would have done whatever they required, whether driving as Kimi’s rear-gunner to boost the Finn up the drivers’ table, or simply to gain as many points as he could for the constructor. Absolute competitiveness after such a lay-off was not a given, but I think Michael might have been able to run right at the front by the end of the season. Watching him cope with an unknown track like Singapore would have been fascinating.

I speak to Michael whenever I get the opportunity and it says something for his style that he is always receptive and polite. But I think I pushed the limit of his tolerance the last time I saw him at the Ferrari Finals day at Mugello last year. I said that I thought he should not be racing motorcycles and I got the impression that he was weary hearing this. When I said it was dangerous he said “Life is dangerous”. It was a fair point as far as it goes, but how much I wish he had listened to all the voices urging caution. And how much he must wish himself that he had stopped before suffering the neck injury that made his return to Ferrari impossible. All you can say about this is that Michael’s motorcycle injury could have been much worse.

Felipe Massa
I have studiously avoided using the word ‘tragedy’ with regard to Michaels’ situation. I have to reserve that for Massa’s accident and its aftermath. I still do not think that many people have understood how seriously he was injured in that freak accident in Hungary. I must be blunt. I think that it is very unlikely that Felipe will race in Formula One again. We should all be hoping for him to recover fully enough to enjoy a completely normal life. To expect his return to Ferrari is probably not reasonable.

Felipe was hit by a two kilogram spring shed from Barrichello’s Brawn. This was the ‘heave’ spring; which means the vertical ride spring. It was coiled over one of the damper-like inerters. Bumping over a runoff area the inerter failed catastrophically. The heavy spinning elements blew the casing apart and the coil-over spring was released as well as other heavy pieces of debris. This was unprecedented. A damper would have merely blown its seals. I understand that at least one other team had destroyed their inerters at this point of the track. So long as this component is liable to fail in this way it should perhaps be contained in some way. Or care will have to be taken that the runoffs do not have any dangerously big bumps.

That really is all for now. I will have to discuss the other teams some other time.

Ciao

Hungarian GP – Massa seriously injured after Brawn suspension failure sheds coil spring into his path

Yesterday’s close call in Hungary
I am lucky not to have to write to any deadline at all. If I was a newspaperman my increasingly intermittent observations would have led to my dismissal by an impatient editor. The media has to churn out words. I have the luxury of being able to wait. But sometimes events force the pace. I had hoped to hold the final version of this blog until after the Hungarian Grand Prix and also after the announcement of the FOTA capitulation and the signing of the Concorde Agreement by the teams. As I write this, Felipe Massa is in hospital in Budapest after emergency surgery. His head injury is of the sort that killed my old hero Mark Donahue and nearly took the life of Mika Hakkinen. There is no point in looking away from events like this. They are a consequence of the sport.

We should all be hoping that things go well for Felipe and that he makes a full recovery. But I do not think he will be back in the cockpit in the near future. He has a skull fracture above his left eye. This would have been caused by the impact with the component from Barrichello’s Brawn. In the in-car replay this cylindrical object seems to be bouncing down the track like a piece of featherweight carbon-fibre. In reality it must have had enough mass to deform the crash helmet and cause this injury. Stop action viewing of the replay shows it very clearly to have been a helical coil spring. Felipe is literally a passenger after he is hit. There is no steering input, no gearchanging, and his hands are simply holding the wheel loosely as he travels in a dead straight line towards the impact with the barrier. The front wheels are locking slightly as he travels across the last tarmac run-off but there is no sign of the rears locking up. This suggests that a semi-conscious Felipe was probably pushing both pedals in a disorganised state. An operating driver would have everything locked up at this stage.

Felipe’s impact with the barrier was massive. It is almost unbelievable for motor-racing folk of my generation to see the intact state of the modern carbon chassis after this sort of accident. Thirty years ago the car would have been destroyed and the driver would have had to be given life-support by the medical team while the marshals cut the chassis apart to release him. Even the best modern road-car would have collapsed. As it was the cockpit remained intact and the cheap but superbly effective triple-layer tethered-tyre barrier did the job. The car penetrated the barrier by about a metre and a half and thus reduced the maximum deceleration enormously. In spite of this the impact was so severe it tripped the on-board g-meter. This sends an emergency signal to the medical car which would have set off even before the marshals recognised the need for a doctor.

A second concussive injury is a bad thing. Felipe was wearing a HANS device (made mandatory by the FIA) which restricts forward head movement and is designed to protect against fractures to the base of the skull where it sits upon the neck vertebrae. This impact was so severe that Felipe has suffered just such a fracture in spite of the superb barrier and the invaluable protection from the HANS. Once again viewing the replay in stop-action shows that his head certainly moves forwards dangerously, probably because of seat-belt stretch as the HANS appears to be close to the rear of the helmet throughout, and does also contact the tyre wall before the car rebounds. This basal fracture in particular, quite apart from the fracture above his left eye, is the reason his condition was worsening when he reached hospital and the reason why he needed immediate lifesaving surgery. It took me six weeks or so to recover fully from the simple concussion I suffered skiing last December. Felipe has suffered two successive severe concussions and at least one dangerous skull fracture.

Yesterday the BBC TV commentary team reacted poorly to this incident. The severity of the accident was immediately apparent but was glossed over. The belief that Felipe had suffered a blow to the chin but was perfectly OK was foolish. The tragic accident that killed poor Henry Surtees in the F2 race at Brands Hatch last week was similar in that a wheel, that broke its restraining tether after another car had crashed, hit Henry on the helmet. Almost certainly severely injured and completely incapacitated already, he then continued into the barriers himself. That these two similar accidents came close to each other was pure coincidence.

Enormous safety advances have been introduced by the FIA but motor racing remains dangerous. All barriers should be as safe as possible because cars can become unguided if the driver is incapacitated or there is a severe mechanical failure. So accidents do not always follow the more predictable trajectories that result from loss of control in a corner. Helmets have to be superb, the straps of the HANS as short as the driver can tolerate, and the seat belts as tight as possible. We should know these things already and most of us do. Never forget that when you travel as fast as this in any vehicle things can always end badly and sometimes will. Open cockpit cars will always leave the driver’s head vulnerable to these very rare accidents.

It is such a cliché to say this, but it is true. My heart goes out to John Surtees and his family after the loss of their son, to Max Mosley and his family who also lost their son recently, and to the Massa family as they wait and hope for Felipe to make a full recovery. A seriously injured child is every parent’s nightmare and the loss of a child the greatest of tragedies. Neither Surtees nor Mosley is a young man and this can only make the whole thing feel even more devastating.

Max won his battle with FOTA regardless of what you read in the papers
Anybody who has read my blogs over the last two seasons will see that I have struggled to be objective and calm in even the most trying of circumstances, even if the (possibly) criminal Ron Dennis may think that I failed. But things almost reached boiling point in Formula One politics and the time for temperance is over. Max Mosley had to endure even more provocation than mere observers such as myself but has given us all an outstanding example of how to act gracefully under pressure. At the same time he has used straight talk and his humorous wit to get back at the cowardly folk who lie to the world through the medium of the press release. Max is more worldly in the ways of the law than I, so I will follow him to the brink of what can be done without being forced to defend oneself in court.

Firstly, the whole FIA versus FOTA confrontation was down to personalities and monstrous egos. Somebody close to the action told me it was like the shoot out in the OK coral: either Luca de Montezemolo or Max Mosley would be the last man standing. This cinematic fiction was Luca’s motive, which probably explains how we got to where we are now. We all know what the press said happened in the final gunfight (and they were told what to say by Matt Bishop, I suspect), but what is the truth?

Fact, fiction, and pure fantasy: the latest episode
The facts of the agreement between FOTA (as represented by Montezemolo) and the FIA (represented by its elected president Mosley) are that FOTA agreed to abandon its empty threat to run in a new series, agreed to the budget cap with a short delay until full implementation, accepted the rules proposed (and that had already been agreed) for next year, agreed to allow the new teams to have access to crucial aerodynamic data from the big-budget teams, said that they would remain in F1 until 2012, and acknowledged that they recognised that the FIA was the sole governing body of world motorsport and of Formula One. So Max is putting his smoking gun back into its holster and Luca is lying bleeding in the sand as the harmonica music swells and (in my mind) the inimitable Sergio Leone pans his camera around in a full circle for the final scene. The bullet hole is right in the centre of Luca’s head.

Max fired the fatal shot and FOTA lay dead on the sand
What was the killer move that won this fight? The day before the meeting between Luca and Max the president of the FIA announced that he would retire and not seek re-election in October unless there was a failure to reach an agreement with the FOTA teams. An agreement was reached and Mosley therefore told the World motorsport Council of the FIA the next day that he would stand down. In an almost unbelievable move FOTA issued a press release after the WMSC meeting that was a complete untruth. It stated that Max was retiring as part of the deal rather than the fact that he was retiring because FOTA had backed down and agreed a deal.

I sense but cannot be certain that this tactic of spinning a blatant lie to the press may have been the work of McLaren’s chief of PR Matt Bishop. It is immensely disappointing that the press, and of course the internet, ran with this complete falsehood. They did this either because it fitted their own agenda (think Ed Gorman and The Times) or because they are too lazy or intellectually inadequate to see the real story (almost everyone else). Max forced the FOTA ‘rebels’ into an agreement by threatening to stay on. Fact.

Heroes and villains in a Dickensian drama
That the FOTA threat of a breakaway failed is no surprise at all. They would either have had to register a new series with the FIA or been forced to run at non affiliated tracks. Here in the UK I can only think of a few stock car ovals and an even smaller number of unlicensed kart tracks. But perhaps these peripheral and generally squalid venues would have suited the image of the bankrupt motor manufacturers? A serious top-level race series would have required huge funding and, to put it bluntly, the big motor manufacturers are all bankrupt because of the economic situation. The breakaway threat was made just before the Speedcar series went bust and A1GP’s financial meltdown became public. Ferrari, by the way, has been keeping A1GP on the track for the last few races after they ran out of money to pay their contracted technical personnel.

FOTA were running with what the Chinese would call a “paper tiger”. The dishonest press release was launched to disguise the fact that they were unable to announce their independent series on Thursday as they had said they would, but had actually signed up for another three years within Formula One which is what they said they would not do.

Which of the lunatics wanted to run the asylum?
Before the final shoot-out Mosley spoke of the “loonies” in FOTA who were making it well nigh impossible to reach an agreement. Who did he mean?

Obviously Flavio Briatore springs to mind. But for years I have seen him as an entertaining clown in these affairs. An effective team boss, he has little knowledge of the technical aspects of the sport. A wealthy and successful entrepreneur, he sees Bernie Ecclestone as a man in his own mould and thinks that he could do better. Certainly he would give his own team more of the commercial income. But Flav specialises in making wild and ridiculous statements about what should be done in F1. I think his background in the fashion world leads him to believe his role is to entertain rather that to make sense. He leaves that to the boffins he employs. Not the main plotter I would say…

Toyota’s John Howett is, I think, simply an apparatchik of this huge enterprise: too blinkered and not intelligent enough to know what is going on. Come to think of it, was he not a manager of the Toyota World Rally Team when they were excluded for a year for one of the most blatant cases of cheating that has ever been discovered in motorsport? He may have a sense of grievance as a result but lacks the brains to be the top pirate.

The biggest of the black hats
Now to Ferrari. Having once again strolled around the Silverstone paddock thanks to the generosity of friends within the Scuderia it pains me to point to Luca de Montezemolo. I have never warmed to a man who I have been told is a bully. Mosley has described Luca’s role within Fiat and Ferrari as that of a “bella figura”. I do speak English so I might suggest that this means that he is a mere figurehead. I don’t speak Italian and have very limited French, but the expression is usually applied to leading ladies. And such. Which probably tells you something of Max’s opinion of Luca. What is Luca doing in the huge Fiat organisation anyway, and could there be a similar character within Luchino Visconti’s wonderfully operatic anti-fascist movie “The Damned”? What I do remember is the way that Michael Schumacher went out of his way to avoid Luca’s desperate attempts to get himself photographed with his German driver after Michael’s last race in Brazil. The principle plotter I would suggest. And the biggest loser in the end.

Now FOTA is supporting a quisling candidate in the FIA presidential election. But I think this tactic is doomed too.

Things to come
Massa’s accident has led me to change the content of this blog. I will make another posting sooner rather than later to discuss a few of the sporting issues during the mid-season. I want to make a few observations on the nature of the technical issues and some of the things that occurred to me on my annual visit to the F1 paddock in Silverstone.

Meanwhile the race in Hungary is only hours away. Red Bull look tremendously strong. Button is out of position as the scramble to change the suspect components in the rear suspension that had failed in Ruben’s car forced him to do only one run at a heavier than planned weight. But he may make progress if he can lap quickly after everyone else stops, and so long as nobody in front of him delays him badly in the first stint. Ferrari have little chance after Kimi made a big mistake on a qualifying lap which was potentially pretty fast He is back down the grid but on low fuel which is a very weak position, though both he and the McLarens can expect to make good progress as KERS propels them past several of the cars in front, which must be Jensen’s big worry. As well as the security of his own rear suspension…..

Ciao

The Turkish GP – how the season looks so far

These days I am able to watch the BBC coverage of practice and the race whether I am in the French Alps or back at home base in the UK. The new team at the BBC have delivered outstanding comment and coverage of the season so far and I feel that they have managed to find an almost perfect balance between popular entertainment and serious reporting. The downside of all this excellence is that I find that there is less and less for me to add. Unless I have something straight from the (generally prancing) horse’s mouth, most of the issues that I used to write about have already been covered by one or other of the broadcast team. So this blogsite has become very much more an occasional commentary on the scene, and this contribution is simply a series of notes on what I see as the core issues of the season so far.

Diffuser difficulties are not simply secret but hidden in the dark
After the WMC ruling that the rear underbodies could be perforated and yet remain within the wording of the rules (which say “impermeable”), the season really started all over again for the teams that had complied with what was generally accepted to be the intention of the bodywork rules. The minority view had prevailed and everyone else has been forced to re-package the rear ends of their cars to allow additional venting to be fitted above the existing diffusers. Although all the big players have now introduced these aero features none of them has yet produced anything like the definitive package that they are aiming for.

The underbody panels are always given a matt-black finish and the purpose of this is to make it difficult to see exactly what the layout is within the diffuser area in particular. For this reason it is hard to spot the big changes that have been made as McLaren, Renault, Red Bull and Ferrari battle to take advantage of the huge liberalisation of the rules that was mandated by the appeal hearing in Paris. It is frustrating not to be able to see what exactly is going on in this all-important technical fightback, but there is one thing that is quite obvious. Nobody at all has managed to open up the central area of the diffuser exit to match the layout of the Brawn machines.

To gain the amount of space that Brawn have found here probably requires a completely new gearbox and certainly a difficult redesign of the central crash structure. Whether the limitations of both time and money will allow anyone to introduce an equally elegant solution much before the end of the season is a moot point. But I will continue to stare into the dark whenever there is a rear-end shot of the cars in an effort to see exactly what the chasing teams are doing to catch up.

Overtaking in 2009
Meanwhile the BBC team has made the comment that this year’s cars seem able to follow each other through fast corners only a little more closely than before. Apart from the fact that some circuits (like Barcelona for example) seem to be configured in a way that makes overtaking as unlikely as it is at Monaco, there is a very important point that seems to have been missed. The diffusers are the most important element in the management of the underbody flow, and the underbody flow is the most powerful downforce generator on the cars.

The new-style diffusers allow the generation of much more downforce that the Overtaking Working Group intended for 2009, and they greatly increase the upwash behind the cars and the vortices that trail on either side of this stream. This increases the adverse affect on the following cars’ aero grip, thus making it impossible to follow closely in fast corners, and reduces the slipstream tow that can aid a following car on the straights. The abandonment of the principal of impermeable surfaces in the diffuser area has more than undone the changes that were introduced to make overtaking easier.

If the cars are presently able to follow each any more closely than was possible last season, it is purely as a result of the changes to the front wings. At the rear the affect of the raised and narrowed wing is more than offset by the increased power of the venturi flow that the new diffusers make possible.

The political posturing
A feature of 21st century life is that we live in such a distracting media environment that we are bombarded with information whether we like it or not. I could certainly live without a blow by blow account of everything that is being said or not said in the meetings between the FOTA teams and the FIA. But you have to laugh at the basic situation.

On the one side is the governing body of motorsport trying to reduce the cost of Formula One. Their intention is to reduce the basic budget required to put a car on the grid to the relative levels that existed before the major car manufacturers became involved. Their motive is to keep most of the manufacturers’ teams in the sport by making it possible for them to compete on an equal budget, and to set this budget at a level that makes it economically possible for smaller businesses to field cars on a sound commercial basis. Whatever happens the economy will force change: everybody is going to have less money, commercial revenues are certain to fall, and we are on the brink of a domino cascade of team withdrawals from the sport which already has empty slots on the grid.

Apparently united in their opposition to the proposed reduction of budgets to sensible levels are the teams that stand almost to a man on the brink of a financial abyss. None of them trust each other on any level and they can never agree about anything except their desire to write the rules themselves in a way that gives them an edge over their rivals. The fact that three teams interpreted the FIA rules in a way that would obviously disadvantage everyone else at the start of this year can not have improved the likelihood of any genuine solidarity within FOTA. The most charitable interpretation of the members of FOTA and their motives is that as competitors they could only be united in a push for better revenues. Why then do they seem to be arguing that they should be allowed to spend, and therefore lose, as much money as possible?

The big motor-manufacturer backed teams are facing a recession of such magnitude that they will not be able to justify their present levels of F1 involvement. Before they are forced to leave the sport they each believe that they can win, so long as they can spend all their remaining money in one last push for glory. Yet if we look at Toyota as a model of where this thinking takes you, there has been poor correlation between its huge budget and its success on the track.

Toyota, BMW, Renault, and Mercedes all want to use the last of their resources to win the drivers’ or manufacturers’ championships. Then they would withdraw from the sport until world economic conditions might allow them to return. Meanwhile the privateer teams are on the verge of extinction themselves, largely because of the strain of having to compete as best they can in this war of financial attrition. Looking around the paddock at the conspicuous wealth of the team facilities it is hard to accept this reality. But the hard fact is that F1 could fail quite suddenly and completely when the big teams follow Honda out of the sport, unless it is by then an attractive proposition for newcomers who simply want to race at the top level on a realistic budget.

This new drama has produced a new cast of heroes and villains. I trust that I am not alone in feeling that a fresh figure has stepped forward to replace Ron Dennis. Toyota’s John Howett bears more than a passing physical resemblance to Ron, in particular the way he talks from the side of his mouth. His tactic of trying to stop any of the other team bosses even discussing the FIA budget-cap proposal was a breathtaking own-goal from a man who possibly knows that his team will be gone before next season starts whatever happens, and is simply trying to save face for his Japanese masters. Meanwhile Luca di Montezemolo is presumably using all of his bullying style to herd FOTA towards endless confrontation. Ferrari is traditionally a race team first and foremost, but it has so transformed itself into a global brand that perhaps Luca sees no good reason to reduce costs when it has such a secure revenue stream. But he is probably wrong to be so confident.

McLaren’s new leader, Martin Whitmarsh, is at least making conciliatory noises, but the heroes of the hour must be the Williams team. As Sir Frank said so succinctly, they are a formula 1 race team and they have therefore broken ranks with FOTA and made an unconditional entry for next year. With large numbers of new teams applying for an entry in 2010 it is hard to see what the bulk of the FOTA members are trying to achieve. Unless, like Toyota, they have to stop racing anyway and hope to blame somebody else for their departure. But don’t lose any sleep at all over this storm in a motor-home. Almost all the big players will be back next year (thankful for the imposition of capped budgets) and any gaps will be filled by interesting newcomers. Let the journalists get excited about all this but don’t let it spoil the races.

This week’s winners and losers
There has been a tremendous ebb and flow of fortunes so far this season, and the race in Turkey will show us who is rising and who is sinking this weekend. Brawn will most likely remain on top. They still have the only fully optimised new-style diffuser and this will give them a big advantage. Besides which the whole package is neat, well balanced, and reliable. One thing that Ross must have brought from Benetton and Ferrari is Rory Byrne’s strong belief that you have to take risks to gain an edge at this level. I think that Brawn swept away the corporate conservatism that Honda was imposing on the team and encouraged the designers to risk an altogether more innovative approach. Because of the consequences that flowed from it I am sorry that they produced their diffuser. But this was not cheating. It was at the very limit of what they would have believed might be accepted. It was a gamble, but it was accepted by the FIA and they are reaping the reward. The Brawn team are also enjoying the benefit of having had Honda’s huge budget to develop the car coupled with the possibly more drivable Mercedes engine. Søren had a perfect crystal ball when he predicted this success at the start of the season. At the time I was completely unaware of the nature of the radical diffuser layout and the huge aero advantage that it gave. I could only explain the pre-season speed of the Brawn by assuming that they were running underweight.

There seems no end to McLaren’s pain. Their car is still too slow and I think that they have a big problem in gaining space for a new-style diffuser at the rear of the car. It is going to be a very long haul for them this season and the traumas that resulted in Dennis leaving the race team must have been an unwanted distraction.

But what on earth explains Toyota’s fall to the tail end of the field in Monaco? They have their trick diffuser, they were near the pace of the Brawns when the season began, and they have slumped like BMW. But BMW seem to have produced yet another knife-edge car, and are struggling to get consistency from race to race just as they did last year. Having started with an old-school diffuser layout they have an excuse for not running at the front but Toyota would seem to have none. I have a hunch that Toyota must have been told to remove something from their car that we have not heard about. Whatever it was it must have been giving them quite a performance gain….

Williams continue to disappoint themselves with good speed somehow never translating into good results. They seem overdue for a good finish but things will be getting harder for them at every race as the “compliant-diffuser seven” progressively develop their new aero freedom.

However, the team that really is on the move up the field is Ferrari. The team thought that they had a good package before testing began. They found that they could not compete with the perforated-diffuser teams at the start of the season, and were behind the Red Bulls, but poor reliability and all sorts of errors made things look worse than they really were. The turnaround has been very impressive and they have a lot of development still to exploit. It will be very interesting to see how much speed the cars have in Turkey after they ran so strongly at the low-energy circuit in Monaco. I feel that they could be right up at the front in another race or two.

The team that seems to have lost the most is Red Bull, and they are the ones who least deserve to struggle like this. They were way ahead of the other “impermeable-diffuser” cars when the season started. They seemed to have good underbody downforce with their old layout which must have been very well thought out. The potential advantages of the “perforated” system are so clear that they had to develop a new rear end, and they set about what was a particularly difficult spacial re-design. At Monaco at least it was not working well. It looked as if they would have been at least as fast with the old car. Certainly we should all watch the team closely from first practice tomorrow to see if they have the same trouble at the very high-energy circuit of Istanbul. Every one of the seven teams that made the failed protest against the perforated-diffusers can feel aggrieved by the way this compromised their seasons and wrecked their budgets, but Red Bull must be the most upset. Their pace at Monaco with their re-configured car must have been a big disappointment and a worry.

The drivers championship
Jenson Button must be as dissatisfied with the points system as I am. Based on finishing positions he would have a commanding lead in the drivers’ championship with Sebastien Vettel well behind him in second place. Rubens Barrichello on the other hand must be relieved to have a points system with such a small differential between first and second places. Without safety car interventions Jenson would have had easier runs in several races while Rubens would not have done as well as he did. Jenson may be the man who is winning but Rubens seems to be having a lot of luck. The only thing that may bring this to an end is Rubens desperation to beat Jenson. It now rages just as fiercely as his desire to beat Michael Schumacher during his Ferrari days. That led him to try odd set-ups and unconventional strategies. More often than not these moves dropped him even further behind Michael in the races. But do not imagine that there will be any peace between the Brawn garages.

Button has already won the same number of races this season as the last two world champions in their winning years. But he must worry that last year Felipe Massa won the most races and still lost on points, and it was only a lucky break at the last race that prevented the same thing happening to Kimi Räikkönen in 2007.

Ciao