In my review of the European Grand Prix, I didn’t mention Luca Badoer, who made his high-profile Ferrari début at the race. It was always going to be a tough ask, because the odds were so heavily stacked against him.

For one thing, he had to get used to the car, which he had never driven at racing speeds before. According to Ted Kravitz:

Evidently the Ferrari F60 is a very complicated car to operate. There are many buttons and dials to turn and twist: Kers harvest and usage settings, brake balance and bias levers, fuel and oil pumps, front flap adjusts and the usual revs, throttle and mixture settings.

I’m not sure if he is implying that the F60 is more difficult to get used to than other current F1 cars. But whatever, it is certainly new territory for Badoer who is used to driving cars in the relatively tranquil environment of the test session rather than the intense spotlight and razzmatazz of a grand prix weekend. To deal with all of this in the first time he’s properly driven the F60 — and in his first race for ten years at that — is undeniably a big ask.

Luca Badoer must have been as shocked as everyone else when it was announced that he was to race in Valencia. It is typical of Badoer’s luck. F1 has shat on this driver for his whole career. I would highly recommend his biography on F1 Rejects for a full overview.

He may not be F1 championship material. But he is the 1992 Formula 3000 champion, having beaten Rubens Barrichello, Olivier Panis and David Coulthard among others in the process. So he is no fool.

But in F1 he never got the proper chance to demonstrate his abilities, being stuck with back-of-the-grid teams Scuderia Italia, Minardi and Forti — and despite usually having the upper-hand over his team mates on the racetrack, politics often meant he found it difficult to move ahead in his career.

You might have thought that signing with Ferrari to become their test driver in 1998 would have seen an upswing in his fortunes. In a lot of ways, Badoer must be the unsung hero of Ferrari’s success since then. He is the test driver who has helped develop cars capable of winning Championship after Championship following a twenty year drought for Ferrari.

Normally a team’s test driver would be the first choice to step in if a driver needs replaced. Inexplicably, when Michael Schumacher broke his legs in 1999, Ferrari opted to look outside the team. They placed Mika Salo in the car, when most observers expected Badoer to get the nod. Subsequently, Badoer stayed on with Ferrari having been promised that he would be the reserve driver.

Since then, Ferrari has had a remarkable period of driver stability. Between 1999 and 2009, Ferrari changed drivers only three times (Irvine replaced by Barrichello, Barrichello replaced by Massa and Schumacher replaced by Räikkönen)! At no point did any driver have to be replaced at short notice. No space for Badoer ever emerged. One must imagine that after twelve years waiting, he would have given up believing.

Then Felipe Massa was injured at Hungary. In the year that there was a radical change in technical regulations which is said to be the biggest in 25 years. In the year that testing is banned. In the one year that Luca Badoer had never driven the Ferrari car. And when the next race was at a brand new circuit which he had never visited.

Of course Luca Badoer didn’t get the call. Michael Schumacher did instead, and the media could barely contain their excitement. Schumacher is a seven times World Champion, but still people openly wondered: is Schumacher up to the task? Can he get used to the new car? Is he fit enough? At 40, will he be too old? In the end, it turned out that Schumacher couldn’t do the job because of the injury he picked up while racing Superbikes in Germany.

So it was down to Badoer to shoulder the responsibility of making something out of the pickle that Ferrari found themselves in. Of course, the media won’t be lining up with the same excuses that were already being served up on Schumacher’s behalf before his comeback. This was despite the fact that there are actually quite legitimate reasons for Badoer to be off the pace. Badoer is not much younger than Schumacher, and is the oldest driver on the grid. But that is not an excuse apparently, despite the fact that it supposedly would have been for Schumacher.

Instead, the media has spent its time openly laughing at Luca Badoer, almost willing him to do badly. The schadenfreude soaked through the reports as the journalists gleefully reported Badoer’s four pitlane speeding offences on Friday, a symptom of the fact that the pitlane speed limit is substantially higher during test sessions and Badoer needed time to adjust to the new braking points required.

All I can say is, Badoer is not the one who parked his car at Rascasse, but never mind. Of course, the journalists were just taking it out on Badoer because he isn’t Princess Schumacher so they lost their “fairytale” story that is so desperately needed to sell a turgid circuit like Valencia.

I found the gulf in opinion between the journalists and the drivers very interesting. While the journalists were busy thinking up oh-so-witty nicknames like “Look-how Bad-you-are”, the drivers in contrast felt sorry for the situation that Badoer found himself in. Jarno Trulli described Badoer’s situation as “impossible”. Lewis Hamilton said that Badoer has “done a good job just to keep it on the track”, while Kovalainen shrugged: “I don’t know what else you could have expected.”

The split was also demonstrated on the Chequered Flag podcast. David Croft mocked, “even Yuji Ide had more promise” (which is totally untrue — Badoer has already achieved much more in his career than Ide could ever hope for). F1 Racing’s Bradley Lord said, “Badoer approached this race as a test — and he failed this one.” Ha-very-ha. Anthony Davidson had plead to his bloodthirsty journalist colleagues, “give him some space!”

David Coulthard summed up the situation nicely: “Who would be Luca Badoer? You wait 10 years for your chance to race for Ferrari and then, despite having no preparation whatsoever, you get slated for not being Michael Schumacher.”

In Checkpoint 10’s excellent analysis, it is shown that Badoer was not actually half as bad as the journalists would have you believe. His qualifying time was 103.4% of the fastest time, when the 107% rule used to eliminate drivers on a regular basis.

He struggled during the race. After a good start, he was obviously spooked by being surrounded by other cars on lap 1 and spun. He then panicked in the pitlane, seemingly allowing Romain Grosjean to overtake him before he crossed the white line. And he had a worryingly erratic second stint. But overall, Badoer showed improvement as the race progressed, and noticeably caught up with Räikkönen’s pace as the race progressed and Badoer became more comfortable.

In sum, yes, Badoer had a very disappointing weekend. But that is mostly because driving standards are so high these days. You don’t have to go far to find real joke drivers who definitely did not deserve to be racing and did a much worse job than Badoer.

I grew up watching people people who paid to get a race seat trundle around up to a dozen seconds per lap off the pace. Hell, you only have to go back a few years to encounter and Yuji Ide, who suffered the ignominy of being stripped of his super license. The last pay driver went when Sakon Yamamoto lost his seat. Driving standards all the way through the grid are very high compared with ten or even five years ago. This amplifies Badoer’s rustiness.

Badoer’s performance in Valencia is the sort of thing that would have been commonplace at the back of the grid in the mid-1990s. You might say that this is not the mid-1990s, but when you consider everything that is stacked against Luca Badoer — his age, his lack of experience, never having driven the F60 before, never having been to the Valencia Street Circuit before, and having to get used to the modern-day race weekend environment — I think he should be cut a bit more slack.

I feel very sorry for Badoer, who has had a very tough F1 career where he has been given the rough end of the stick at almost every turn. It looks likely that Badoer will be replaced come Monza, which would be fair enough if he doesn’t show a perceptible improvement in Spa.

But now Badoer will probably be remembered for these two difficult races where he was thrown in at the deep end, and everyone decided to point and laugh at this man (who, do not forget, is actually putting his life on the line when he goes out to race). I am not sure whether this is better than being remembered for breaking down in tears at his previous European Grand Prix, in 1999.

Practice coverage

This is another aspect of the BBC’s coverage which is a massive improvement on ITV’s offering. Last year, practice was just covered online, on some infrastructure which was clearly pretty shaky. This year, practice is covered on the red button. Even if you opt to watch it online (which I often do), the BBC’s stream is much, much more reliable and the picture quality is better than ITV’s.

Moreover, while ITV provided just the raw World Feed, with no commentary, the BBC broadcast it with the Radio 5 Live Sports Extra commentary. The Radio 5 Live team have been covering practice for a few years now, so it was logical to use their commentary for the television coverage to do it cost-effectively.

I must say, I think the coverage of practice is great. It shouldn’t be the most captivating of sessions. But the 5 Live team use it as a chance to flex their muscles, and they simply chat about whatever is going on in the world of F1 in general, at a fairly leisurely pace. It is like Test Match Special with fast cars, and I love it.

David Croft and Anthony Davidson are a great partnership for Friday Practice 1 and Saturday Practice. Meanwhile, Friday Practice 2 is normally covered by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. This is much more like a pub conversation, but I love the chemistry between the pair, and their chats about the political goings-on in F1 are unrivalled for their insight.

Radio 5 Live

As I have touched on already, Crofty and Davidson are a great partnership. Even though I like to listen to Jonathan Legard, I personally like David Croft a lot even if he is perhaps not ready for the main TV job yet in my view.

I first came across him when he read the sports news on Fi Glover’s Radio 5 Live programme back in 2001. Even back then he was an engaging broadcaster who had great chemistry with his colleagues. He clearly has a deep knowledge of a lot of sports. He never struck be back then as someone who was particularly a fan of F1, which makes the fact that he is so good at covering it all the more impressive. You can see he talent in the way he is also comfortable commentating on darts and boxing matches.

Meanwhile, Anthony Davidson is a complete revelation in the commentary box. It is no surprise this year of course — he was already impressive in his previous sporadic stints commentating on Radio 5 Live and ITV. Davidson will be hoping he is racing in F1 next year (especially since there are six extra seats), but once F1 is off the radar for him, he is surely an ideal candidate for the Brundle role. Who knows — perhaps one day it will be Croft and Davidson commentating on TV.

As for Holly Samos, I still can’t tell whether I like her or not. Sometimes she seems to be doing a great job, while at other times I would be expecting better. She’s been doing the job for a few years now though, so I think the listeners should be able to expect nothing but the best at all times by now.

Like I say, though, I have not been listening to the Radio 5 Live race commentary as much this year as I have done in previous years, so I am basing my opinions on a mixture of practice coverage and what I remember of last year.

But for me, it says a lot about the BBC that is has two very competent commentary teams — one for TV and one for radio — when ITV couldn’t even scrape together one.

The Chequered Flag Podcast

Radio 5 Live’s podcast is still pretty much a must-listen. But for me it has noticeably decreased in quality this year, I am guessing as a result of budget cuts. Last year the post-race podcast would consist of decent post-race chat between David Croft, Maurice Hamilton and another major F1 journalist like Jonathan Noble, and sometimes Holly Samos.

Now it feels like Croft and Davidson just switch on the dictaphone for twenty minutes when they get back to the hotel. It’s still good, but in a year when coverage has stepped up in almost every other way, this is a noticeable exception to the rule.

I’ve been a bit busy lately so I’ve been falling behind a bit on the posting front. I’ve not even got all of my 2008 season review posts out of the way, and before I knew it the 2009 season had begun in the form of testing at Barcelona! But there is plenty of time in the off-season for me to discuss these things. Here are just a handful of bits and bobs to bridge the gap until my next post here.

If you follow me on Twitter you may know that I have found myself bombarded with emails from PR companies who are trying to get me to include stuff in my blogs that I have absolutely no interest in. And sometimes the tone of the emails are slightly hectoring, which doesn’t exactly make me any more inclined to feature their “story”. Well, at long last, one of these pitches has actually appealed to me and I’ve decided to include it in this blog.

Unfortunately it requires me to embed some javascript and I don’t think WordPress lets you place javascript in the posts, so I’ve positioned it at the top of the sidebar for the time being. It is quite an amusing video though, showing that McLaren do have a sense of humour after all.

Okay, so it’s a Vodafone video rather than McLaren, but it comes just a couple of months after McLaren went viral with their humorous video previewing the Singapore Grand Prix. For a team with such a grey image, it’s good to see.

It looks like the BBC’s plans for next season are finally taking shape. David Coulthard’s involvement in next season’s coverage have been confirmed through a semi-official source. Yesterday Martin Brundle revealed for himself that he will be involved.

I have also heard that USP Content have retained the contract to produce coverage for BBC Radio 5 Live. That’s good news, because I think they’ve done a great job for the past few years. I often chose to listen to the Radio 5 Live commentary rather than James Allen, even enduring a two second delay between hearing something happen and seeing it (at least it meant I didn’t miss seeing something when it did happen!).

I’m looking forward to seeing what the television and radio teams can put together for next season. Personally, I’d love to hear Martin Brundle and David Coulthard making an appearance on the Chequered Flag podcast.

Rumour has it that the BBC will be announcing something to coincide with the Sports Personality of the Year award bash, where Lewis Hamilton is expected to win.

BMW have given us a taste of what 2009 will look like. I will probably post a more in-depth article about my thoughts on testing later on in the winter. But for the time being, all I will say is: yuk!

So another race, another clutch of dodgy stewards’ decisions. During the ITV broadcast today, Martin Brundle got it bang on: we are now watching a nanny state F1 where we are constantly paranoid about penalties. And that was even before the most ridiculous penalty of the lot — to Sébastien Bourdais — was doled out.

I’ll tackle these incidents in the order they happened on the track. The first was the incident that Lewis Hamilton got a drive-through penalty for. The Brit was judged to have forced cars off the racetrack.

Clive reckons that Hamilton is totally in the clear here. I’m afraid I have to disagree and I think Clive is being a bit disingenuous because he has chosen his screen-caps selectively.

If you watch the video you can clearly see that Kimi Räikkönen spends a lot of time going straight trying to avoid Hamilton when undoubtedly he would otherwise be turning into the corner. Indeed, at one point Räikkönen even moves slightly to his left, away from the apex of the corner, to avoid the out-of-control Hamilton. Arguably this set up a chain of events throughout the first corner as everyone tried to avoid each other.

Hamilton is right to point out, however, that he was not the only person to brake late. While he was by far the worst of the lot, Kovalainen was also too late on the brakes and arguably the Ferraris and a few other cars were as well.

And here is the thing. This is normal first corner stuff. We see this sort of thing several times a season. In fact, it is a surprise whenever all the cars make it cleanly through the first corner. While Hamilton unquestionably compromised the Ferraris and a few other cars, this is nothing we don’t see on a regular basis. For me, this is a complete racing incident; simply an occupational hazard of being in the first corner of a race.

It is not as though Hamilton gained any advantage from the whole scenario. If memory serves, when the whole thing shook out he ended up in 6th place. Hamilton had a shockingly poor start and he panicked. He paid the price, and that was penalty enough in my view.

What is interesting to me is that there is a far more obvious instance of someone barging another driver off the track in today’s race, when Robert Kubica was defending aggressively against Räikkönen. Now I thought that was good racing and I would not have liked Kubica to have got a penalty for that, but I think Kubica had a clearer intention to push someone off the circuit than Hamilton did.

Hamilton ended up nestled behind Massa who seemed to be struggling to keep the McLaren driver at bay. On lap 2 Massa overcooked it and left the door wide open for Hamilton who duly took advantage. However, the recovering Massa skipped over the chicane and tapped straight into Hamilton. The Brit was sent into a spin and had to rejoin at the back of the field while Massa went off into the distance.

This is a more difficult incident to judge because clearly Hamilton was disadvantaged from what was arguably an avoidable accident while Massa gained by cutting across the chicane. I don’t think Hamilton was completely blameless however. Even though Massa was out of shape coming into the entry to the chicane, Hamilton must have known that Massa would still be right there on the exit.

As such, Hamilton could have left more room for Massa. You can well say that Hamilton didn’t need to because he was ahead and Massa skipped the chicane. But for me, the pair were clearly racing. I think there must always be some leeway for a driver to come off the circuit if he finds himself in a pickle coming up the a chicane. I defended Hamilton for doing this in Belgium, so I will accept Massa’s right to cut the chicane as he did.

So Hamilton could have left more space for Massa, while Massa could have backed off a bit. Both could have avoided the accident, but neither chose to take the evasive action. For me, this is a 50–50 incident, the definitive racing incident.

However, given that it was 50–50 and Hamilton came out worse, I can see why the stewards may have wanted to penalise Massa. If I were a steward I may have felt that I needed to penalise Massa. But if I penalised Massa, I would probably have to penalise Hamilton for the first corner incident to balance it all out. I fear that this is what the stewards did.

What they should have done, though, is say, “racing is racing, let’s just carry on.” Seemingly, racing is no longer allowed in Formula 1.

As if we needed any more proof that there is something seriously wrong with the processes in Formula 1, then came the penalty for Bourdais. Now, I went to bed after the race had finished to catch a few more hours of sleep. When I woke up, the first thing I did was check BBCi to see if the stewards had penalised anyone. I had a bad feeling in my waters about it. It’s come to something when you can no longer trust the stewards to leave a reasonable race result the way it is.

When I saw that Bourdais had been penalised, I was disappointed, but I can’t say I was surprised. In fact, I kind of expected it. That shows just how bad the situation has become.

For my money, there is absolutely no way that you can say that Sébastien Bourdais was in the wrong in any way, shape or form whatsoever. He had come out of the pits minding his own business. Felipe Massa was the one who turned straight into him as if there was no-one there. Massa was the one who moved in the direction of Bourdais, who was ahead and racing for position.

From the one and only television angle we have seen so far, it looks as though Bourdais was on the kerb and he had nowhere else to go. Bourdais himself says, “I don’t know what I was supposed to do basically. I could have unrolled the red carpet and given him the corner. That is the only thing I could have done.” From the evidence we have seen so far, I have to agree with him.

Like the Hamilton first corner incident, this is something we see time and time again throughout the season, literally on a race-by-race basis. This is something that we see in almost every race, and it has become part of the sport to see who comes out in front when one person is exiting the pits and the other was on the racetrack.

The stewards’ explanation for penalising Bourdais is apparently that he “did not back off enough”. Why should Bourdais have backed off? He was racing for position. Presumably he was supposed to defer to the precious Ferrari. If ever you wanted clear evidence of a “red car rule” at play in F1, this is it.

For me, the Japanese Grand Prix is yet further proof that Formula 1 has become far too bogged down in penalties for the sport to remain credible. This is the “choose your own result” culture, where stewards and fans alike have begun nitpicking every little minor misdemeanour on the track in an attempt to justify their own favoured race result. Formula 1 is no longer a competition of racing. It is a competition of bureaucracy.

From what I have been reading on respected website Grandprix.com, the job of FIA steward has become a jolly for Max’s mates under Mosley’s leadership. It seems to be brimful of Mosley’s allies from the WMSC and those who voted for him in the General Assembly. The steward’s job is seen as a “perk”. There have even been instances where there have been stewards who have never even watched a grand prix motor race! And boy, can you tell.

The story of the latter half of this season has been bungled steward’s decision after bungled steward’s decision. This ranges from the Bus Stop controversy to the Rosberg incident in Singapore to today’s unmitigated mess. It is easy to construct conspiracy theories, but I think this is as much down to incompetence as anything else. But what else can you expect when the FIA has a thoroughly poisonous person as its President, filling the steward’s job with his chums no matter what their level of expertise is?

This nanny state F1 needs to be stopped. The powers that be are currently obsessing themselves with increasingly bizarre ideas such as the “Curse” / KERS system, standard engines and a spec series. Well if you ask me the cars aren’t the problem because the on-track action this year has been top-notch in my view.

The real problem with F1 is that we can no longer have confidence in a race result until several hours after the chequered flag. Any number of increasingly unpredictable penalties can be meted out for flimsy reasons. Max Mosley has filled the steward’s room with a bunch of bureaucrats who don’t like racing but love pretendy court cases. Mosley likes gets a thrill out of punishing people in the bedroom, and his cronies love to dish out the punishments at a grand prix. I imagine these people just get a massive kick out of going around the place thinking, “I changed that race result.” Well I am sick of it.

There needs to be a culture in F1 where we can sit back and let the drivers get on with it. Racing is racing. I am not saying get rid of all penalties. But the stewards need to seriously look and think to themselves, does this really merit a drive-through? Too often nowadays drivers are penalised for petty reasons, and the amount of penalties given out goes up and up all the time.

I was listening to the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast earlier today and they made a brilliant point. No-one came away from Dijon in 1979 saying that anyone should have been penalised. People just sat back and enjoyed the excellent racing. Today pathetic people would say, “oh he went off the race track”, “he caused an avoidable banging of the wheels”, “oh he got barged off”.

It does amaze me that the powers that be claim to be doing everything they can to encourage good racing and overtaking. But when any good racing ever does happen, a driver gets penalised for it! Okay, maybe drivers take risks every so often. But that is the point of overtaking! An overtaking move is supposed to be a risky manoeuvre! It wouldn’t be special and important otherwise. If drivers are penalised for taking risks, we might as well pack up, go home and give up on motor racing completely.

Punishments have a place in F1. But there should be much more of an arms-length approach. Drivers should be penalised only for egregious attempts to gain an advantage and for instances where there is a clear intention to pull off a dangerous manoeuvre. If we are talking about Schumacher in Jerez 1997 or Rascassegate, then throw the book at them. But Hamilton today? An honest mistake that was punished enough by natural events on the racetrack.

Unfortunately, Formula 1 has become a judged event, as open to interpretation and abuse as figure skating. It ought to be a sport where the winner is determined by what goes on on the racetrack, not in the stewards’ room. Sadly, those days are long gone and my patience with Formula 1 is wearing thinner by the race.

There could hardly be a greater contrast to last year’s race at Fuji. We had a stonking last-lap battle between Kubica and Massa where they were barging each other, banging wheels, cutting chicanes and using run-off areas all over the shop. And that was great fun racing and it was rightly left alone by the stewards. Today, a Formula 1 driver will get a drive-through penalty for as much as giving his rival an evil stare.

I want to bring attention to a podcast that I think somehow passes under the radar of many F1 fans. I certainly did not pay much attention to it until recently. But the editions I have heard have been A-grade stuff.

The Formula One Inside Line With Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips

Okay, so it’s not the catchiest title, but the podcast itself is excellent. I assume it is similar to The Guardian’s F1 podcast which was also fronted by Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips. For whatever reason the newspaper isn’t responsible for the podcast any more, but it lives on independently.

Maurice Hamilton and Ian Phillips are well-known voices to listeners of BBC Radio 5 Live’s coverage of Formula 1 races. I can tell you, ‘The Inside Line’ is not an exaggeration when it comes to this pair. They certainly know what’s what in the paddock.

The Canadian GP podcast contains everything I have come to expect from this podcast — an incisive review of the race’s major events, and an insider’s take on the paddock gossip. Here, the experience of Maurice Hamilton’s decades writing about F1 and Ian Phillip’s journalistic background combined with the insider knowledge attained in his role as Force India’s Director of Business Affairs comes into its own.

This podcast contains the clearest explanation of the simmering war between Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley I have heard yet. There is also an explanation that every team in the paddock and everyone else involved wants a Concorde Agreement except the FIA. And the threats of a breakaway are quite real. And Luca di Montezemolo did mean to say that Max Mosley should step down. Ian Phillips explains why very well, and I’d recommend you go and listen to the podcast for the full explanation.

Then Maurice Hamilton’s connections allows him to bring us the fact that Bernie Ecclestone and Luca di Montezemolo were spotted having lunch together in New York. It’s pretty clear now that something is happening, and the discussion in this podcast has made that more clear than anything else I have read in the past few weeks.

This isn’t the first time The Inside Line podcast has come up with the goods. Of course, this year’s Monaco Grand Prix will always be remembered for the rotten luck that Adrian Sutil encountered. Who better, therefore, than Ian Phillips to get literally the inside line on the race’s top story? And being stationed in the Force India garage meant that they got a good interview with Adrian Sutil as well.

That podcast also contained a pretty trenchant criticism of Max Mosley’s letter that was sent out in the run-up to the Monaco Grand Prix. To top it off, Ian Phillips had more information on the controversial press conference that was perceived to be rigged in Max Mosley’s favour, with Gerhard Berger reading out a prepared statement.

Clearly, the star of the show is Ian Phillips. But even when he was away, the podcast still came up with the goods. Because the person who stood in was no less a person than Mike Gascoyne, Force India’s Chief Technical Officer. He was surprisingly good in his analysis of the Turkish Grand Prix as well.

That weekend Maurice Hamilton got the credit for the “one car teams” theory that was beginning to emerge. That was because he repeated it on the Chequered Flag which is heard by more listeners. But listening to The Inside Line podcast, it’s clear that the theory actually originated with Mike Gascoyne.

If there is one problem with the Inside Line podcast is that it’s clearly recorded a bit too early for a full analysis of the race to take place. Often mechanical problems will be glossed over as it is still unclear why a driver retired. Some more time may be needed to allow the dust to settle. But there are probably time constraints as no doubt everyone involved in the podcast has other commitments to wrap up, flights to catch and so on.

However, by my reckoning there really is no better way of getting a feel of what’s really happening in the paddock than this podcast. It doesn’t have the same backing that the Chequered Flag gets from the BBC, so The Inside Line is not so well known. But it deserves to be heard by as many Formula 1 fans.