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Archive: Fuji Speedway

You can’t make an old dog forget dirty tricks

18 August 2010 23:34

Categories: *, Formula 1

The Hungarian Grand Prix lived up to its reputation for being a boring circuit in terms of overtaking, but always delivering action of some sort. Hungaroring may be dull as a spectacle, but there is never a shortage of talking points.

This year’s was provided by Michael Schumacher. His already infamous move to push Rubens Barrichello towards the pit wall while both were travelling at top speeds was one of the most vicious I have ever seen. I was yelling while it was happening.

I think I will forever vividly remember watching the onboard shot from Rubens Barrichello’s car live. I was cheering him on as he lined up to overtake Michael Schumacher. Then I was horrified when I realised what Schumacher was doing.

Not that it is much of a surprise. It is well known that Michael Schumacher is capable more than anyone else of pulling a dirty move out of his lowest drawer. His famous tainted legacy: Why does driver who is so good — a seven time World Champion no less — feel the need to pull off these extreme moves.

In a way, what he did to Barrichello in Hungary this year was worse than anything we have seen from him before. When he crashed into Damon Hill in 1994 it was to win the championship. When he crashed into Jacques Villeneuve in 1997 it was a last-ditch attempt to win the championship. When he parked his car at Rascasse in 2006 he was a championship contender. This? A futile fight for 10th position in a nothing year for him.

By now everyone knows that 2010 has not been the comeback Michael Schumacher was hoping for. In his recent interviews he has stated that he is only interested in winning championships. Scrapping away in the midfield is not interesting to him. He doesn’t like racing; he is only interested in winning.

I have always felt that his wheel-to-wheel abilities are actually quite poor. Schumacher’s speed cannot be in doubt — when he is out in front. But when he is on the back foot, he switches into panic mode. All of his most notorious moves have been snap decisions that he has made in a moment when he has suddenly been put under pressure. He is a quick driver. Unfortunately this means he often makes a move before he has engaged his brain.

This is what we have seen this year. Not just in Hungary, but also in Canada. He noticeably struggled in Montreal. He had a scrappy race and made a few panic moves, including a chop across Felipe Massa.

Unfortunately, an uncompetitive Michael Schumacher is no less ruthless. If anything, he is worse when he is on the back foot. Is it really the done thing to desperately try to push someone into the pit wall for the sake of one point?

One perspective is that this is good, hard racing. I also liked the viewpoint put forward by Axis of Oversteer — that this is the manifestation of genuine bad blood between two drivers. Schumacher and Barrichello have a lot of history, and it’s easy to imagine that this was all in the minds of both drivers.

But full credit to Rubens Barrichello for completing the move. He showed great bravery on the track, and immense integrity off the track. Barrichello’s behaviour after the race was exemplary. Meanwhile, Michael Schumacher complained that Barrichello is a whiner.

It is said that at Spa in 1998, Michael Schumacher stormed up to David Coulthard and accused him of “trying to fucking kill me”. I think Barrichello had cause to do a lot more than merely “whine”.

Michael Schumacher knows that in order to be successful you have to be ruthless, and at times aggressive. He is by no means the only aggressive driver on the grid. Mark Webber stands out. In fact, Webber was involved in quite a similar incident at Fuji in 2008 with Felipe Massa. But in this instance, Webber’s move across the track was made much earlier, much more gradually, and he did not push Massa nearly as far.

As such, Webber is respected as an aggressive driver, but also one who speaks about on-track safety with authority. As major player in the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association, Mark Webber has made it his business to care about safety. This is the beauty of Mark Webber — he pushes it, but he knows exactly where the limit is, then stops. The problem Schumacher has is that he doesn’t know where the line is drawn.

Michael Schumacher is a hugely successful driver that many look up to as a role model. I would hate to think that he finds these sorts of dangerous manoeuvres acceptable. I am surprised that he did not receive a disqualification. He should also have received at least a one race ban. I bet if, say, Vitaly Petrov tried the same thing, he’d be sitting out the next few races.

The next race is in Belgium — where Schumacher’s fans turn out in force. The race after that is Monza, where the fans have quite a few fond memories of Schumacher as well. I would hate to think it is the case, but you would almost think the powers-that-be had one eye on the purse strings and the PR value of having Schumacher continuing racing — even though he is a known danger.

5 comments

Twelve years of ITV-F1

13 November 2008 00:44

Categories: History, Opinion, Report

As well as David Coulthard’s career, the Brazilian Grand Prix brought down the curtain on another fixture of Formula 1 life. ITV broadcast their last grand prix before Formula 1 moves back to the BBC for 2009 onwards.

ITV’s first race was way back in 1997, the Australian Grand Prix. “Do not adjust your sets,” said anchor Jim Rosenthal. “This is Formula 1 on ITV.” My recollection is hazy. I was just 10 at the time. I had begun watching Formula 1 in 1995 or 1996, right at the tail end of the BBC’s F1 coverage.

Up until that point, Formula 1 was only ever shown on the BBC and in a lot of ways it was unthinkable for the sport to move over to commercial television. The first BBC Grand Prix was broadcast in 1976 — on a circuit that, albeit radically altered, is still used by F1 today: Fuji.

Their last grand prix was also in Japan, at Suzuka in 1996. For the occasion, they put together a package that really highlighted just how much of the history of Formula 1 — both good and bad — the BBC had brought to British homes over the years.

At the time, the downside of Formula 1 moving to ITV was obvious: the constant commercial breaks. This was a sad reality of Formula 1 coverage on ITV, and there was no use in complaining about it. For as long as F1 was on ITV, it was going to be interrupted by adverts.

That doesn’t make the pill any less bitter though. It has been estimated by Keith Collantine that over the course of its 206 grands prix, ITV took enough commercial breaks to miss 31 races’ worth of action — almost two entire seasons. The number of important events that ITV missed are almost too countless to mention. Lewis Hamilton’s gearbox failure in Brazil 2007, Michael Schumacher’s engine blowing in Suzuka 2006 and the infamous incident when ITV interrupted an intense battle between Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher in the final few laps at Imola 2005 are just a few examples from recent years.

Once, ITV even opted not to show the United States Grand Prix live on ITV1, shifting it to the digital-only ITV2. This was in the pre-Freeview era, at a time when digital television viewers were very much in a minority. The decision to leave F1 fans in the lurch like this was a real slap in the face. Thankfully, ITV never repeated this stunt with any other race, although a good few qualifying sessions have been shown on digital-only channels over the years.

The adverts were not the only issue people had with ITV’s coverage. The obsession with Lewis Hamilton was almost suffocating. Their previous fixation with Jenson Button was more muted, but more ridiculous since Button was not even a fraction as good as Hamilton.

Other elements of the ‘pre-race show’ were also criticised for their light nature. Cooking with Heikki Kovalainen, anyone? Then there were the countless tedious reports about “glamorous” events.

The commentary has been another focal point for criticism. James Allen is a good writer (I’m a big fan of his book about Michael Schumacher, The Edge of Greatness). He was also good as a pitlane reporter. However, his commentary grated with many, including me.

There is no doubt that it is a tough job, and some of the sheer vitriol that was written about James Allen by some people was not justified. But I never understood why ITV did not give another commentator (such a Ben Edwards) a chance given that the unpopularity of James Allen was so widespread.

Then there is Ted Kravitz, who is an excellent journalist. But too often he got over-excited in the heat of the moment and sometimes regressed into stating the obvious. He was never too far from saying something like, “They’re putting on some new tyres. And, is that?… YES, some fuel is going in as well.” It is fair to say that when Murray Walker retired, the quality of ITV’s coverage took a step backward.

ITV’s coverage was not all bad though. There is no doubt that Formula 1 coverage in the UK has come on leaps and bounds since ITV gained the rights in 1997. It is worth remembering that the BBC did not even show qualifying often until its last few years of coverage. In this respect, ITV has fewer blots on its copybook, although I don’t doubt that the BBC would have moved in a similar direction. After all, broadcasting in general has changed a lot over the past twelve years.

In its final moments, I felt that ITV were pretty open about the shortfalls of their coverage. Steve Rider wrapped up the highlights of the Brazilian Grand Prix saying, “no more awkward commercial breaks”. I can only imagine the embarrassment that the producers must have felt whenever something important happened during a commercial break.

James Allen has also responded to his critics, saying:

I was always pretty confident that when Murray decided to retire I would get the gig, but never anything less than utterly self-critical and seeking to improve with every race and every year, which I think I’ve done.

It’s a very difficult and high-pressure job, because with 20 cars there are 20 different points of focus…

Of course there are many people at home in their armchairs who think they could do it better and one of the challenges for me was that I replaced Murray just as the internet opened up to allow everyone to have their say in chat rooms and forums.

But I know from market research and viewer feedback that the pros massively outnumber the vocal minority of cons.

Despite the criticisms though, I think overall ITV and North One can be proud of what they have done over the past twelve seasons. Tomorrow I will look at some of my memories from ITV’s coverage over the years.

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Welcome to Formula None, where racing is illegal

12 October 2008 20:10

Categories: Opinion

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.

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