Dave's random mumblings…

It seems Ferrari have escaped further punishment for using banned team orders, so just the $100K fine and that’s it for being a little too blatant in manipulating the result of the race. No real surprise there.

Here is my original post and thoughts. To recap, Massa was told over the team radio: “Fernando is faster than you. Can you confirm you understand?”

The Brazilian responded by letting Alonso through in a move we can safely describe as “unsubtle”.

Immediately afterwards Massa’s race engineer added “Good lad. Just stick with it now. Sorry.”

The rules are clear; a team is not allowed to interfere with the race result. A couple of team principals were rather vocal about the damage to the sport’s credibility.

Ferrari principal Stefano Domenicali stated post-race that the team had only wanted to keep Massa aware of the latest race developments and that Ferrari didn’t give him explicit instructions to move over.

Explicit no, clear yes.

Domenicali continued “And because we have already seen in the past that certain situations could not give the best result for the team, that was the information that we wanted to give and we leave the drivers to understand and take notice of it in order to make sure that the team in terms of the result is the best,” he said.

The $100K fine was the maximum the stewards could give, any additional sanction (up to and including disqualification) would have to come from the World Motorsports Council (WMC).

The WMC met this morning and kept the slap on the wrist fine and imposed no further sanction. This was decided over the last few weeks in the politicking and back rooms deals that make F1 so interesting. Today was just a formality to close out the incident.

Generally I think the teams would like the ban on team orders to go away, they are almost impossible to police unless the team gets really dumb and flaunts them in the way Ferrari did in Germany. A little more subtlety and no one would be any the wiser.

Drivers work for the team; they are employees of Ferrari and will do what their employer tells them too. Ferrari wants to win races and championships. This put their top driver in the championship a better position.

Today Ferrari is 80 points behind Red Bull in the constructors’ championship. Alonso is 41 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ race. Felipe Massa is a further 32 points further back and there are 25 points available for a win.

Piquet Jr put his Renault into the wall in Singapore a couple of years ago on team orders, selling a pass by a faster team mate should be laughably easy in comparison and Ferrari deserved the fine for lack of imagination in the execution.

Last word to Eddie Jordan “What Ferrari did was they showed no respect to the public, they treated us all like muppets, they broke the rule.”

Spa is one of my favourite tracks, and along with Monza it’s certainly one of my favourite Grand Prix. Spa always throws up the unexpected, it’s a long track, has elevation changes, a couple of places that separate the men from the boys, and to be charitable we’ll call the weather “changeable”.

It’s very much a driver’s track, Eau Rouge is a classic and a well set up car can take it flat, it’s just up to the driver if it will actually happen. The TV does not show how steep the road into and out of the corner is, even in a road car the compression at the bottom is substantial, and in an F1 car at 180 it must be huge.

Eau Rouge before warm-up

I’ve thrashed a rental car around the circuit many years ago; it’s really an incredible place. At that time part of it was still a regular road for most of the year. The transition from full-time race track tarmac to part-time track/road was startling and not easy. That challenge has gone, but plenty still remain.

Every race I’ve been to at Spa the weather was always the centre of conversation, and this weekend was no different, practices were run in both the wet and the dry. Race day promised showers, and the forecasters were right.

The front of the grid was the usual mix of Ferraris, McLarens and Red Bulls. I missed morning practice, but the time sheets saw the same cars at the top. The question was could Red Bull make the best of their equipment, while not expected to be as dominant here as they were at the last two races at Hockenhem and the Hungaroring where they were the class of the field. Today Weber was on pole and Vettel third.

McLaren have been at their strongest on the fast circuits, and Spa today and Monza in a couple of weeks are the fastest two tracks of the year. The team certainly seemed confident and expected to do well and pick some points over these races.

The one thing TV will never be able to convey is the noise of 26 Grand Prix cars running together on the start grid and flat out on the opening lap. If you have heard it and it did not move you, I’ve no idea what to say. You can feel it in your chest; it’s an incredible thing to be exposed too.

At Spa I think the best place to a spectator is after La Source on the run down to Eau Rouge. You see the cars at their slowest and at about their fastest. The acceleration of an F1 car out of the hairpin is breathtaking and the speed carried through the fast corner at the bottom of the hill is astounding.

On-off showers marked the morning and after lunch it dried up for the start. Mark Weber missed his start; Lewis Hamilton came out of La Source on the first lap in front. Jenson Button was trying to make it a McLaren 1-2, but Vettel slammed the door hard. Weber came through fighting with Robert Kubica for 4^th.

After a couple of laps the rain started, never that hard. But for a 650 horsepower car on slicks it does not need to be much to cause problems. This was always a race where the team had a huge role to play on race day, making calls about the incoming weather, when to change rubber and actually performing the pit stops.

Alonso changed early, surprisingly into full wets. Cars were certainly struggling to get the power down out of the hairpin and a couple used all the run off available when they messed up their braking points.

As the track dried it was Hamilton comfortably ahead of Kubica and Weber, who were in a great battle and had opened up a little gap to Vettel trying to get around Button for fourth. A battle that was soon over when Vettel messed up his braking into Bus Stop and took out Jenson Button. Vettel was able to carry on, but lost a lot of time.

The rain came out again and most cars dived into the pits. Hamilton stayed out another lap and importantly Weber emerged from the pits ahead of Kubica. This time the rain was heavier and lasted until the end.

Heikki Kovalainen

Felipe Massa span his Ferrari into the wall after Radilion and brought out the safety car for three laps. The order stayed the same for the last few laps, Hamilton from Weber, from Kubica.

Hamilton and Weber had great days while the other three contenders for the drivers’ title either finished outside the points (Vettel) or failed to finish (Button and Massa). Once again Red Bull have not lived up to the promise of qualifying. Vettel made a huge error under braking and took out Button. Weber had pole and did not get the start right. There is still something not quite right with Red Bull, if they had cut out the errors they would be running away with both the drivers and manufacturers championships, but that’s not happening.

Monza in two weeks, I wont be there unfortunately, but I will go to more GPs. I’d forgotten how good race day could be, thanks to the boys in Silver for the invite.

This weekend is Monaco, yeah the track is tight and in reality it’s more of a money printing exercise by F1 with a noisy interlude on Sunday afternoon to give everyone an excuse to be there.

As a fan of F1 it’s a very special place, qualifying is important and the race to Saint Devote on the first lap is incredible to watch. It’s a wonderful challenge for the driver and any race fan should have it on their “to-do” list. Not quite as atmospheric as Monza or as entertaining as Spa, but it’s a unique race in a very special place.

As a mechanic it’s a pain in the arse. The tiny rabbit hutches in the pit lane were replaced a few years ago, but they used to be big enough to storing a few things while the cars were running and that’s about it. Nearly all the work on the cars actually takes place in a garage a significant distance from the track. Despite all the issues, it’s still an event everyone looks forward to.

There is a unique atmosphere and it’s a special place with lots of tradition to go along with the Casino, multi-million dollar yachts and the royal family. The only problem is I won’t be there.

No one was quite able to touch Red Bulls in qualifying this year. All five pole positions and 8 out of the 10 front row places so far have gone to Weber and Vettel. Control the front row, stay out of trouble and you’ve a huge advantage.

Their advantage over the rest of the field appeared to have widened still further with the installation of an effective and comprehensive upgrade package at the Circuit de Catalunya. The other teams are certainly playing catch up with regard to qualifying. The Red Bull race reliability has not been the best; Vettel had brake problems last weekend that cost him dearly. This is a circuit that’s incredibly hard on cars in general and brakes specifically.

Jenson Button had a poor race in Spain, he won at Monaco last year and said this week “I think the Monaco result is extremely tough to call, there are a lot of very competitive drivers so there is a good chance of a slightly unpredictable race.”

Lewis Hamilton was running a rather comfortable second to Webber in Spain when a tyre deflation caused him to crash on the penultimate lap. Hamilton also has the usual high hopes for Monaco.

Hamilton said “Qualifying will be more important than ever. While we’re still working hard to improve our qualifying pace, Monaco is a place where the input of the driver is more important than at any other track, so I’m pretty confident that we’ll be able to do a good job.”

McLaren has won fifteen times in Monaco, so far this year the car seems reliable, if they do well in qualifying and be consistent in the race there is the opportunity to make it 16 and either makes Buttons lead on the championship a little more secure or put Hamilton right back in the thick of the race.

It’s 9 years since Ferrari won here, however Alonso has won twice here. His Ferrari was second in Spain and he’s constantly been among the best qualifiers so far this year. Maybe it’s his weekend.

Monaco is always unpredictable, and that fact on top of the atmosphere, boats, parties and thong bikinis makes it a very fun race to watch. Nelson Piquet never won the race, he said “It’s like trying to cycle round your living room”, but added “a win here was worth two anywhere else”.

Maybe next year…

First day in Bahrain is in the books, as they are going for time I’m guessing everyone is running with low fuel and the car is set up accordingly. A quick look down the times from the two Friday sessions show a few things:

• Michael is not in the groove, a little rusty or underestimated the level of competition as he was beat by Nico Rosberg in both sessions by close to half a second.
• The top four cars in the second session were all powered by Mercedes and were almost 0.4 faster then the best of the rest.
• Did not catch anything obvious, but Ferrari did not improve as much as the other top teams in the second session. Working on race setup perhaps?
• There is nothing between Hamilton and Button in qualifying trim with less than 0.2 separating them in either session.
• Nico Hulkenberg could be the one of the next pretenders to the title, fast and the consistent improvement he shoed in the preseason seems to have carried on through to today. He comes rather hyped and delivered two performances that beat his teammate Barachello by about a second each time.
• The Lotus’s are about 5 seconds off the pace, the two Virgin cars a further two seconds back and the Hispanias somewhere far off in the distance in what is really first shakedown run.
• Vettel looked good and Weber had some issues in the second session, but was comprehensively beaten in the earlier run.
• Sauber found a lot of speed between the first and second session.

Top teams look like the predicable group, Mercedes, McLaren Red Bull and Ferrari with Sauber and Williams close behind.

Last word goes to Michael – “It’s not a problem. It’s just that for one lap I saw that Nico was four-tenths up and that is a bit too much for my standards. I’ve got to raise my game a bit and I’m sure I’m able to.”

The preseason is over and the teams are arriving in Bahrain for the first race of the season, the waiting and teasing is almost over and we’ll get to see who has what for real.

Based on testing times it looks a little like the F1 world has returned to business as usual with McLaren and Ferrari a little ahead of the rest. The rest are led by Red Bull and Mercedes, with Sauber, Williams and Force India looking very competitive.

With the rule changes reading anything into pre-season testing times is probably more pointless than usual. Speeds with full fuel load and tire wear have become more important than the headline grabbing fast lap times.

The two biggest driver stories are clearly Schumacher’s return and how long the pairing at McLaren will play nicely together.

Love or hate him, Schumacher’s return to the grid can only been good. It’s a huge story in the most interesting off season in many years.

The cars will be starting with a comparatively huge fuel load, somewhere around twice as much as was carried at any point last year, somewhere around 165 or 170kg of fuel at the start. This means car set up will become much more of a compromise and conserving tyres and brakes become more important.

Like the drivers teams will have to adjust. Pitstops times and race strategy will change to become more reactive to what’s going on around them. Teams will be looking at the track 20 or 25 seconds behind their driver in order to get out and have a clear track to make best use of the fresh rubber. Unlike last year it will be possible to hold a driver out for a few more laps in order to get that elusive space.

I like the twist in the rules that the top 10 qualifiers start on the same tyres they qualified on. Go for a soft compound in qualifying, get a good grid place then be forced into pitting earlier than perhaps you’d like.

How will this differ when you compare wide open Singapore with the twists of Monaco?

As I’ve said, this could be a fascinating year with four world champions, really quick drivers like Vettel and Weber who want to join that club, and potentially 6 or 7 teams capable of competing at the sharp end.

Come Sunday evening we will know a lot more, we’ll find out who has been holding something back during testing and who flattered to deceive. This will be fun to watch.

Despite the withdrawal of Toyota, Honda, BMW and Renault limiting their exposure within the sport, the cost of competing in Formula One remains very high. Other than Mercedes, Ferrari and perhaps Renault teams are wholly reliant on sponsorship. And competition for sponsors is fierce.

Lotus is partially owned by the Malaysian Government, who have stated that no public money will be going to the team beyond some breaks on facilities at Sepang in KL.

In the past many new teams have not made it through the season. There have been a number of reasons, but it’s typically come down to starting the season under financed and either hoping to find additional money as the year goes on, or they just underestimated the costs involved.

I understand at least one of the new teams is still looking for substantial part of their finance packages. With this in mind it seems unlikly that every team on the entry list will make the grid in Bahrain, let alone still be competing in Abu Dhabi in November. With that in mind, clearly there are some concerns about the health of the series remaining.

There is little doubt that F1 is being forced to undergo a fairly fundamental change away from the big spending manufacturers. Money is what makes F1 go around and so far the FIA’s attempts to keep costs in check have met with only limited success.

For the foreseeable future the series is going rely much more on independent teams. These are employers whose business is primarily motor racing, not selling fleets of cars. This is how F1 used to be from the early 70’s up until the mid 90s, when manufacturers began to take over the teams that in many cases they had been suppliers too.

I think some of the big teams are concerned that this shift may alter the prestige of F1, and in turn reduce the vast sums of money the sport generates.

This income depends primarily on F1 continuing to offer hard racing, be seen as the cutting edge of engineering all while retaining the glamour and overt ostentation that make the sport so appealing both on TV and in person.

However if the circus starts to suffer in any way then it’s possible that the top series in the world could loose it’s edge and in return and hurt the revenue that makes the whole thing special.

There are a couple of ways to look at Toyota (and BMW, and Honda) walking away for their investment in F1 and the potential of Renault joining them on the sideline.

In 2010 there will be two or three grandees of Mercedes GP (formerly Brawn), Ferrari and potentially Renault. Everyone else has engines supplied by an outside manufacturer.

First scenario is that it’s back to the 70’s where there were the grandees of Ferrari, Renault and Alfa alongside the garagistes that made up the rest of the grid. They used the proven formula of a DFV engine and a Hewland gear box married to an aluminium monocoque chassis with some form of inboard suspension. Ligier always liked to do things a little differently and ran Matra engines.

Williams and McLaren are the only garagistes left from the 70’s with the same names (and I get that a lot of teams can trace lineage back to that era), not coincidentally both followed the DFV formula and both had success with it.

In 1978 (picked at random) 46 drivers entered at least one race in the championship and Cosworth powered 39 of them. Fourteen different constructors and 21 different drivers scored points.

Scenario number two is there are two or three big teams and a bunch of cars with customer engines that are at a disadvantage of not having the latest power plants. Making F1 a two or three horse race with everyone making up the numbers.

Typically there have only been one or two teams that have been totally competitive in any year. During the 70’s and 80’s Ferrari had a lot of mediocre years despite having more resources than any of the garagistes.

2010 will be a fascinating year, it’s possible someone will run away with the championship, but it seems unlikely. The teams that understand and adapt to the changes the best will do well. It’s going to be interesting to see who that is going to be.

I don’t feel that a return to the big, varied grids of the 70’s would be a bad thing. While F1 is an engineering exercise, it’s supposed to be entertaining and giving creative people a reliable and competitive engine/transmission package and letting them innovate around that could throw up a number of surprises, and that keeps the racing interesting.

Jean Todt is taking over from Max Mosley as head of the FIA, I’m really not sure there will be much of a difference. Todt spent a lot of time separating himself from Mosley, especially after Mosley endorsed him prior to the FIA election.

Todt is a former WRC codriver and has successfully run teams in rally, F1, sports cars and cross country raids. His racing resume is not in question.

I do believe he’s as qualified as anyone for the position. I don’t think too many people will argue that part of it, based on history it’s claiming to be the candidate of consensus that’s a little difficult to understand.

He does not exactly have a history of working together for the best interest of everyone and creating harmony. As Ferrari and Peugeot boss he was known for being the only “Non” in the room when it was not in the best interest of his team, no matter what it meant in the bigger picture.

As a team manager went to the extent of taking the FIA through the courts because they banned group-B rally cars after a number of fatal accidents. Peugeot had invested heavily in the series and wanted the class to carry on; he felt Peugeot were being punished for the indiscretions of others as no one had died in one of his teams cars.

Todt is one of the true masters of talking for hours with out actually saying anything, he will running one of the most political organization in the world. It was once said (Nigel Robuck perhaps?) that when the FIA politics get going it makes the houses of parliament look like a kindergarten.

Interestingly Todt talked a lot about having commissioners run the various FIA world championships (WRC, F1, touring cars, endurance racing and so on) and the role of the FIA president would be confined to the strategic direction of the organization. I’m not sure how far he will actually be able to distance himself from F1. Under Max the president and F1 were closely connected, but the appointment of someone both Todt and the teams can work with to run the sport would be a good start to actually putting some space between himself and Max.

Max was the lawyer for the F1 constructors and drafted the first Concorde agreement that ended the so called FISA/FOCA was in the 80’s and stopped a breakaway F1 championship. He really was intimately linked to F1 over every other series. I do like the irony that the threat of another team run independent series was at the heart of his replacement of FIA boss.

As we loose a character in Max, the sport gets another of its grandees back. It could be good, it could go bad, but it won’t be dull.

Formula-1 is hardly a sport known for surprises and this year has thrown them up left right and center. Honda withdrew from the sport after investing untold millions of euros and sold the remains of the team to Ross Brawn, who promptly went out and won both the drivers and constructors championships less than a year later.

On reflection Hondas decision to quit looks like one of the worst calls in a business that has a rich history of poor decisions by the money people.

The engine decision came late and caused a huge compromise as the chassis and gearbox design were already complete and designed for a Honda engine. Weight distribution was not perfect and the deal for Mercedes engines was not done untill December, but after a couple of mediocre efforts the aero was better than anyone else, and by quite a margin.

The car ran for the first time three weeks before the opening race, then it won six out of the first seven grand prix.

Clearly having the very good Mercedes engine over the uncompetitive (but I understand lighter) Honda made a significant difference in how fast the car was, but there was also a huge step forward in how good the chassis and aero was.
Ross Brawn as chief engineer has won nine constructors championships with three teams (Benetton, Ferrari and now Brawn), but this is the first without Michael Schumacher.

He arrived at Honda too late to do much about the 2008 car, but in 2009 it was his show. I get the impression from friends that he lets the engineers and mechanics get on with what they are employed to do. He leads and directs the team, removes the roadblocks and does not micro manage. It was put to me that “(Ross Brawn) created an atmosphere where we could do our job, be creative and be judged on results, not adherence to the plan”.

This is similar style to Ron Dennis, he knows what’s going on and allows people to show what they can do. He’s clear what does not work, but incredibly supportive, loyal and allows his people to succeed.

Next year is going to be challenging, Alonso and Ferrari are expected to be very competitive after an off year. McLaren came a long way during the second half of the year and with the F1 silly season in full swing have been rumoured to be talking to Jenson Button about joining Lewis Hamilton in what could be a phenomenal package on a number of levels.

Brawn on the other hand have a lot going for them, a big name sponsor is close to being announced and Mercedes have indicated they want to buy into the team. I’m told that McLaren is not exactly delighted by that prospect, but have been told their position with Mercedes is secure.

Under new rules next year a supplier may supply up to three customer and one works team. This year McLaren were the works team, Brawn and Force India had the customer deals. If Mercedes were to buy into Brawn it would seem to make the proposed engine deal with Red Bull (Brawn’s main contender this year) rather unlikely.

Most team principles have engineering backgrounds, which works for supervising building a car and staying in the F1 technical arms race. However watching Adrian Newey take on John Barnard and Ross Brawn does not put bums on seats, people want to see Schumacher and Hill (Senna/Prost, Mansell/Piquet and so on) battle over a season.

Flav Briatore understood better than anyone that the money coming into the sport did not depend on the technical side of things. Flav was different, he did not understand the technical side, he employed people for that. He got that it was the product on the track and the personalities that led to the fans and TV contracts that gave the teams fat bank accounts.

Flav understood that having one of those drivers led to the backing to produce the best equipment. After his debut at Spa in ’91 it was clear the Michael Schumacher was going to be one of those drivers, and Flav wanted him in a Benneton no matter who he had to screw over to get him.

Michael Schumacher was poached from Jordan on the eve of the Italian GP. This came up in a conversation I was having with racing friends a couple of weeks ago in the UK. Flav replaced Roberto Moreno with Michael, with out actually mentioning it to his current driver.

The first Roberto knew about it was when a journalist called his hotel room in Italy to ask him what he thought about this. Roberto ended up driving a Jordan that weekend as he was about the only person available at such short notice that could do the job.

When people outside hear some of what goes on (industrial espionage, trying to fix races, tampering with drivers and so on) and while it’s been going on for a long time the sport does not look good. But now, as an outsider, it’s fun to watch.