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Archive: German Grand Prix

Yet another McLaren controversy

3 April 2009 15:44

Categories: Opinion

The story surrounding Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification from the Australian Grand Prix has moved quickly without me having had a chance to write about it yet. There are so many aspects to this story.

First of all, it’s worth looking at the role of the FIA stewards here, and the process behind how stewards make their decisions. Up until this week, I had assumed that the stewards — or at least someone at the FIA — monitored all radio communications as a matter of course. Presumably this is how the radio transmissions between the McLaren team and Lewis Hamilton were discovered. So fair enough.

But to me, it beggars belief that the stewards do not listen to any radio conversations that may have occurred during contentious situations. Moreover, the fact that the FIA did not clock the fact that Hamilton had told different stories to the media and the stewards earlier demonstrates that they don’t really have a clue how to minimise these sorts of situations which are damaging to F1.

It seems as though the entire world, except for those in the stewards’ room up the ivory tower, filled with Max’s mates who run caravan clubs and have never watched a grand prix before — knew that Hamilton deliberately slowed down to let Trulli past. The entire stewarding process needs reform, and not just the tinkering that the FIA does to try and placate the fans.

Race Control also have a potential role that could sort out this kind of situation with the minimum of fuss. They could have simply clarified the situation while the cars were on the track, rather than constantly altering the results behind closed doors. But as Keith points out, they seemingly can’t be bothered — or are deliberately ducking the responsibility.

Now onto McLaren’s role, and if the FIA seem incompetent, McLaren seem to have gone completely loopy. It is not often I feel sorry for Lewis Hamilton, but I have to say I feel awful for him right now.

If I was a driver, I think McLaren would be the last team I would want to drive for. Let us face facts. Despite their puffed-up prestige, McLaren have not been a very successful team over the past decade or so. After a few close calls at the start of the decade, McLaren went into a deep slump in 2003 and 2004 when they produced a car that was so unreliable it never raced, then followed that up with a car that was not particularly fast and was still unreliable.

It took them until 2007 to find their old form again, and it should have been a dream year for them. They had the World Champion in one car, and the hottest rookie F1 had seen in over a decade in the other. But the situation with the drivers was completely mismanaged, and Fernando Alonso had catastrophically lost trust in the team by the end of the season. Things came to a head in Hungary that year with the controversial incident in the pitlane, at which point we can safely say the relationship ended between McLaren and the best F1 driver since Schumacher.

That was nothing compared to Stepneygate. While you can question to what extent McLaren as an organisation, rather than Mike Coughlan and one or two other individuals, was culpable for that, it did reveal that McLaren as a team was not as well-managed as Ron Dennis liked to think — or liked us to believe he thought. The icing of the cake was when McLaren promised that they hadn’t used any of the knowledge attained from Ferrari’s dossier — only to issue a mea culpa when it was discovered that three elements of the car were inspired by the document.

All the while, what should have been a dream 2007 became a complete nightmare. What should have been a Drivers’ Championship (and McLaren had two drivers that were perfectly capable of winning it) and an easy Constructors’ Championship ended in disgrace and disqualification.

To an extent, McLaren put the terrible events of 2007 behind them to successfully gain the Drivers Championship in 2008. But the season was not without its problems.

At times, McLaren seemed to be conspiring against their own driver. Thanks to their inflexible strategies, which are generated by a computer in Woking, they almost threw away the German Grand Prix which should have been an easy victory. Tyre blunders at Monza completely put paid to Hamilton’s chances to win in Italy.

Meanwhile, throughout the season McLaren appeared to develop a paranoia over penalties handed out by the FIA. A siege mentality appeared to develop inside McLaren.

Matters cannot have been helped by last year’s Spa controversy. Indeed, Martin Whitmarsh even referred to Spa in his statement today, which suggests that as an organisation, McLaren continues to be badly affected by the events surrounding that weekend.

For me, McLaren’s actions in Australia demonstrate that they continue to be jittery when it comes to the FIA. As pointed out by a journalist during Lewis Hamilton’s press conference today, McLaren did nothing wrong on the track. The only thing they did wrong was lie to the stewards.

So, why lie to the stewards? Dave Ryan is a highly experienced person. He has been an employee of McLaren since 1974. He was Team Manager from 1990, and became Sporting Director last year. He is highly experienced, and by all accounts he is a good person.

But in Australia had made a humongous error of judgement when he withheld the truth from the stewards, and apparently advised Lewis Hamilton to do the same. Why on earth he thought this was a good idea, when he knew that the radio conversations will have been recorded, will surely remain a mystery. I would be surprised if Mr Ryan himself knows why he did it. It seems as though the siege mentality is still getting the better of McLaren, and Ryan lost the ability to think rationally. Emotions got the better of the team when it came to discussing the situation with the stewards.

Dave Ryan has been sent home in disgrace, suspended from work by the company he has loyally served for 35 years, apparently sighted in tears as he left the circuit during Friday Practice 1. Another McLaren employee’s career appears to have been left in tatters.

Like I say, I feel awfully sorry for Lewis Hamilton today. He is getting a lot of stick from the media at the moment. But he did nothing wrong. Indeed, he erred on the side of caution when he went on the radio to inform the team that he had passed Trulli while the Toyota driver was off the circuit. That is perfectly legal.

But McLaren were caught out not having the knowledge of the rulebook, which they really should have. They misinformed Hamilton. When they realised their mistake they created a convoluted way to rectify the situation, and failed to properly cover their tracks. Reminds me of Hungary 2007.

None of this is Hamilton’s fault. He may have lied to the stewards, but Dave Ryan must take the blame for this for badly briefing him. In that situation, I wouldn’t doubt someone as experienced as Dave Ryan.

The McLaren team is now a complete shambles. Now a perennially under-achieving team, it stumbles from one crisis to the next. You just never know when McLaren are going to put their foot in it again, but it will happen sooner or later.

If I was Lewis Hamilton, I would start seriously considering moving to another team. McLaren is constantly finding controversy. It is clear that the team doesn’t know the rules as well as it should. The team’s strategies are inflexible and often plain wrong. And most of all, they have produced a terrible car — not for the first time this decade.

Vodafone and McLaren’s other sponsors must be thinking the same. McLaren are coming across in the media as serial cheats and liars, and it can be doing no good whatsoever for “Vodafone McLaren Mercedes” to constantly be in the news for the wrong reasons.

Speaking of which, I wonder what Mercedes thinks of all this. For years they have shown a lot of patience in McLaren, despite the fact that the team has not always produced the results. This year Mercedes is trying out life as a supplier of engines to teams other than McLaren. The fact that Brawn could bolt a Mercedes into their car at short notice and cruise to victory standing on their head in Melbourne will have come as a revelation. Perhaps it is the Brawn, not the McLaren, which should have the silver livery.

McLaren need to sort themselves out, and fast. Everyone concerned — drivers, sponsors, engine suppliers — must be dreading what on earth is coming round the corner from this shambolic team.

11 comments

End-of-season driver rankings: Top 5

22 December 2008 00:19

Categories: Opinion

The rest of the rankings came fairly easily to me. Perhaps that is because the spotlight is not on the lower positions so much. It doesn’t seem to matter so much whether I place Kazuki Nakajima 15th or 16th.

But the top five is really, really tough to get right. I keep on changing my mind, juggling the positions even as I write this post. Really, the number 1 position could be justified for all of these drivers. To put one of them fifth feels just wrong. But that is what I have to do.

5. Sebastian Vettel (11; 12)

I was very tempted to place Vettel higher than this, perhaps even in 2nd place. In the end, I think the young German still has more to prove before he can be that high. But there can be little doubt that Vettel will climb up these rankings next year.

In many ways, Sebastian Vettel’s first full season is just as impressive as Lewis Hamilton’s. After all, the Toro Rosso, while clearly a handy car in the right circumstances, is no McLaren. Mind you, it was an inauspicious start to the season, which saw him retire from four races on the trot, mostly as a result of accidents. But when the new Toro Rosso chassis started racing, things started to improve. Before long the car was well and truly in the groove, and Vettel rose to the occasion and performed magnificently on occasion.

The highlight was, of course, his unbelievable victory at the Italian Grand Prix. When he grabbed pole position in torrential conditions, it was a clear signal of his talent. But he floored the world by almost flawlessly taking practically a pole-to-flag victory in conditions that were far from easy.

Monza was a high watermark for the promising youngster, and it has to be said there were a few occasions where he didn’t shine nearly so brightly. But consistency will come with experience, and it is surely a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’, Sebastian Vettel finds himself in with a shout of winning the Championship one day. Whether he will achieve that in next year’s Red Bull car is debatable, but there is no doubt that they have a major star on their hands.

4. Felipe Massa (5; 5)

I can scarcely believe that I have had to place a title contender in 4th position. What makes this all the more flabbergasting is the fact that Massa has undoubtedly raised his game, stepped up to the plate and shown that he is capable of performing at the sharp end of the grid more or less throughout the season. Few drivers can have improved their reputation so much in such a short period of time.

After a rather shaky start to the season that raised questions about the Brazilian’s ability to drive without traction control, Massa withstood the pressure and ultimately passed the test as convincingly as he could have.

Strong results at Bahrain, Spain and Turkey were perhaps not expected, but they did little to dissolve the widespread scepticism about his driving abilities. What impressed were his good drives at Monaco, France and Canada, where he pulled off one of the most amazing overtaking manoeuvres I have ever seen — an audacious double-move on Rubens Barrichello and Heikki Kovalainen.

The British Grand Prix was a major disappointment, with a decidedly sluggish pace at the back of the field complemented with no fewer than six spins. This cast doubts on Massa’s abilities in the wet, not helped by another mediocre result in damp Monza. However, in fairness, it appears as though the Ferrari was a particularly poor car for rainy conditions, as Räikkönen wasn’t exactly a star in the wet this year either. Aside from those wet races, Massa’s only other poor results came as a result of Ferrari foul-ups in Hungary and Singapore that cost him a sackful of points.

Massa was a true star of this season. He may not have had a perfect season, but no-one can really say that. His behaviour after the Brazilian Grand Prix was worth a championship in itself, and it is a shame that I am unable to place him higher than 4th.

3. Lewis Hamilton (3; 3)

Well, Lewis Hamilton did it. He won the Drivers’ Championship in only his second year, becoming the youngest ever World Champion. I wouldn’t doubt he deserved it. Overall, Hamilton did a great job this season, and a much more mature, conservative, restrained approach eventually helped deliver the goods — even though it almost looked like it was too conservative until the final corner!

However, a flawless year it was not. A number of lapses in concentration cost Hamilton dearly a few times during the season. There was the infamous crash with Fernando Alonso in Bahrain, when Hamilton got spooked as a result of being in the midfield. He was the main protagonist in the pitlane pile-up in Montreal, when he lost concentration and failed to notice a red light — an almost unforgivable error. Meanwhile, a highly erratic performance at Fuji raised question marks about the Brit’s ability to stay cool under pressure.

However, ultimately Hamilton was able to come up with the goods, and for that you have to take your hat off to him. A particularly strong point of the season was a dominant couple of races at Silverstone and Hockenheim. His drive at the British Grand Prix was among the most dominant I have seen since I started watching F1 in the mid-1990s. Meanwhile, his fightback from a compromised position in Germany as a result of a terrible strategy decision by McLaren was, dare I say it, Schumacher-esque. I wouldn’t say Hamilton is the rounded driver that Schumacher was, but with time that could well come.

2. Robert Kubica (1; 9)

Other drivers may have attracted spectators’ attention with glitzier, showier performances. Hamilton, Alonso and Vettel all shone in flamboyant ways. But Robert Kubica arguably did the most solid job of all the drivers in the entire grid.

Most of the other drivers on the grid also had a tendency to make mistakes. 2008 will be remembered for a lot of things, but flawless drives will not be one of them. However, Robert Kubica made very few mistakes throughout the season. Indeed, I cannot think of any real driver errors by Kubica, except for a spin in treacherous conditions at Silverstone.

In the process, he took a stunning — if slightly lucky — win at Montreal. And despite the fact that the BMW Sauber car clearly fell behind other cars in terms of development as the season went on, the Pole continued to punch above his weight. Most notably, Kubica started the Japanese Grand Prix extremely strongly until Fernando Alonso in the superior Renault car took him during the first round of pitstops.

Of course, at the end of the season the challenge of contending for the Championship proved too much for the Kubica-BMW combination. Fingers will always be pointed at the team’s decision to stop development of the car in order to focus on the 2009 effort. Only time will tell whether that was the right decision or not. But in the meantime, Kubica had a clutch of extremely strong results, but just one win. And even though he was always near the top, he never felt like a real Championship contender.

1. Fernando Alonso (8; 2)

I have long believed that Fernando Alonso is the best driver on the grid since Michael Schumacher retired. Beforehand, I may have been in a minority. People would have been more likely to cite Kimi Räikkönen or, latterly, Lewis Hamilton. However, I believe that the events of 2008 vindicate my belief, despite the fact that in terms of results 2008 was actually comparatively poor for the Spaniard.

The Renault car was clearly pretty poor when the season began. And as it became clear that Renault’s engine was falling behind in terms of development, things became even worse. It was difficult to see where improvement was going to come, and Alonso hit a mid-season slump. This was encapsulated by the fact that his team mate Nelsinho Piquet managed to grab an excellent 2nd place at Hockenheim. At that point, Alonso’s best result had been 4th at an attrition-hit Australian GP.

However, that very race was the turning point of Alonso’s season. From then on, he never finished lower than 4th, with the exception of the European Grand Prix at Valencia where Kazuki Nakajima put paid to his race before he had even completed a lap. In the last eight races of the season, Alonso scored more points than anyone else.

The Renault resurgence was completed with back-to-back wins in Singapore and Fuji. The Singapore victory did have an element of luck to it, but was no less remarkable for it. This was a sign that Renault and Alonso were back on the map. When it was followed up by a fluke-free victory in Fuji, we knew it was for real.

Alonso’s resurgence can partly be put down to Renault’s turnaround. Amazingly, Alonso seems to have avoided Renault’s worst season of recent years, 2007. Dare I say it, Renault are perhaps six tenths faster than last season. But even though the car has improved, Alonso has almost always retained his authority over his team mate Nelsinho Piquet. Alonso beat his “junior” team mate in all 18 qualifying sessions. No other driver on the grid can say that.

What a travesty that Alonso has missed out on the World Championship for two seasons in a row. The new regulations will mix things up a lot, but who is to say that Renault will be particularly disadvantaged? I think Alonso is overdue another title.

7 comments

End-of-season driver rankings: #11-6

14 December 2008 19:37

Categories: Opinion

Better late than never. I have finally got the chance to tap out the final part of my end-of-season driver rankings, although I am currently being distracted by the live web stream of the Race of Champions. Hopefully I’ll stay coherent enough for this section of my rankings to make sense. So here goes.

As before, the first number in brackets refers to their position in my mid-season rankings, and the second number is their position in last year’s end-of-season ranking.

11. Heikki Kovalainen (9; 6)

I have found myself becoming increasingly disillusioned with Heikki Kovalainen. Not so long ago he looked like a star of the future. Now I think Kovalainen simply does not know how to win a race. His one and only victory came in Hungary — but he did not deserve it, having inherited P1 as a result of Felipe Massa’s engine expiry.

Kovalainen may well complain that the McLaren team has focussed all of its efforts on Lewis Hamilton, particularly when it came to fuel loads in qualifying. That is true. But even taking this into account, I can’t help feeling that Kovalainen has been a major disappointment this season. In what was arguably the fastest car on the grid, Kovalainen finished just 7th in the Drivers Championship, behind both Ferraris, both BMWs and a Reanult. You can’t lie all of that at the door of having one or two laps extra fuel on board during qualifying.

Most of all, I feel that Kovalainen simply does not have that extra drive that it takes to win a race. I struggle to think of many moments during the season when I was particularly impressed with him. Indeed, I can think of a number of blunders — among them the moment during the Australian GP when he gifted Fernando Alonso a position by accidentally hitting the pitlane speed limiter at the start of the main straight. And he was totally hoodwinked by better drivers at least twice during the season. Double-overtakes initiated by Massa in Canada and Heidfeld at Silverstone particularly stick in my mind.

10. Jarno Trulli (7; 17)

This time last year I had almost totally written off Jarno Trulli. Having achieved little throughout his F1 career, he appeared consigned to midfield anonymity, with his greatest legacy to the sport remaining the dreaded Trulli Train.

However, I have to say that I have been quite impressed with Trulli this season. He appears to have made a mini-resurgence. Although he will never be able to count himself among the very best drivers on the grid, he has scored a number of impressive results this season.

A lot of this may be down to the improved Toyota car. But even so, I think there have been a number of times this season when Trulli has excelled, particularly when he finished 3rd at the French Grand Prix.

9. Mark Webber (4; 10)

The first half of the season in particular was a very strong one for Mark Webber. The Australian has been hit by far more than his fair share of bad luck throughout his career, but at the start of this season, with a competitive Red Bull car underneath him, it finally looked like things were going his way. From Malaysia through to Monaco, Webber scored five points finishes in a row, a career record.

Unfortunately, mid-way through the season his Renault-powered Red Bull car lost much of its advantage and the second half of the season returned far less, with just a handful of 8th place finishes. At least he can say he totally outclassed his team mate David Coulthard this season.

8. Timo Glock (16; -)

After a slightly underwhelming start to the season, Timo Glock finally began to fulfil his promise more towards the end. The first sign of life came with a 4th place finish in Canada, a very strong result at a tricky circuit.

A huge crash at Hockenheim was a worrying moment, but from then on Glock has finished in the points more often than he hasn’t. A second place at Hungary, immediately after the German GP, was a particular high point. And his 4th place finish at Singapore is certainly not to be sniffed at either.

Glock appears this high on my list mostly as a result of the second half of his season. After his abortive first shot at F1 at the struggling Jordan team way back in 2004 — when, to be frank, he wasn’t ready — Glock has had a second spell as a rookie. Now the 2007 GP2 Champion looks set to have a creditable career in motor racing’s top flight.

7. Kimi Räikkönen (2; 1)

Kimi Räikkönen’s oddly scruffy season has been widely-commented on. The season started off reasonably strongly, with four podiums in the first five races, including two wins. From that point onwards, though, it all came unstuck thanks to a combination of horrendously bad luck and unusually unfocused driving.

The first warning sign came with a dire performance during the Monaco Grand Prix, culminating in a hugely unpopular crash into Adrian Sutil. Then came a run of bad luck. He was taken out of the Canadian Grand Prix after Lewis Hamilton crashed into him in the pitlane. Then an unusual exhaust failure put paid to his hopes for a win in France. In the following race in Britain, his Ferrari struggled in the wet conditions. At Valencia he left the pitlane with the fuel hose still attached. As if that wasn’t enough, his engine blew a few laps later.

Amid this run of bad luck, the Finn lacked focus, appearing to lose his motivation. The only stand-out performance was in Belgium, and he even ended that race by crashing. A number of needless mistakes ensured that World Champion was in no shape to defend his title.

6. Nick Heidfeld (6; 4)

Unquestionably, Nick Heidfeld struggled this season in comparison to his BMW team mate. The German did particularly poorly in qualifying, with the finger of blame pointed at the difficult of getting heat into the tyres. To Heidfeld’s immense credit, he worked hard on fixing this problem and things very much began to look up in the second half of the season.

Even so, when you look at Heidfeld’s results, even at the start of the season they are extremely impressive. Four 2nd place finishes and a clutch of strong points finishes ensured that Heidfeld finished a creditable 6th in the Drivers’ Championship. The only reason Heidfeld’s season felt underwhelming was because his team mate was even better…

2 comments

Honda's withdrawal in context

8 December 2008 00:01

Categories: Opinion

I had planned on my next post being the second part of my driver rankings. Unfortunately, real life events have intervened. In the meantime, events have overtaken me as Formula 1 was hit by a huge news story on Friday — Honda’s sudden withdrawal from the sport.

Now, normally such an announcement wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. Ever since I started watching Formula 1 in the mid-1990s, I have watched teams and manufacturers come and go on a regular basis.

I saw Renault withdraw from the sport as engine supplier to Williams and Benetton in 1997, only to return as a fully-fledged constructor when they bought the Benetton team just a few years later in 2000. Ford came to the party when they bought the Stewart team in 1999, only to leave the sport entirely a few years later in 2004. Peugeot left the sport in a huff at their own lack of success in 2000, having only joined the circus in 1994.

I learnt quickly, therefore, that manufacturers’ interest in F1 is almost always transient. For every Mercedes that appears fully committed, there are a handful of Renaults and Hondas who will enter and exit the sport according to the wind direction.

Honda’s announcement was shocking partly because of its suddenness. The speed with which the decision was taken is made clear when you read James Allen’s account. There is also the fact that at the start of this year Honda owned not one but two F1 teams. Now they have dramatically trimmed right back to zero, and will not even offer an engine supply to any teams next season.

There is also the fact that Honda were massive spenders in F1. This appeared to signify a magnificent commitment to the sport, despite the relative lack of success. But the flipside of this is that it made Honda an absolute laughing stock within the sport.

The huge amount of money the Honda F1 team spent also made it more vulnerable to the red pen of the bosses. No other manufacturer will save as much money by axing their F1 team. It may be true that Honda’s withdrawal is for political reasons, as former BAR-Honda driver Jacques Villeneuve posits. But it is Honda’s huge costs, coupled with the utter lack of success, that made it vulnerable to such political manoeuvring.

As such, the withdrawal of Honda is not such a shock when you think about it, even though I wouldn’t have predicted it. Moreover, Honda is not a fixture of Formula 1 like Ferrari, or even Mercedes. The current incarnation of the Honda F1 project only got the nod in 1998, and even then it was quickly reigned in to become a mere engine supply deal with BAR. Honda bought the team when tobacco sponsorship left the sport just a few years ago. Despite having run a team in the 1960s, and the huge success of the corporation as an engine supplier in the 1980s, an F1 institution it is not.

What makes people worried, though, is the economic climate in which this news has come. Whereas Ford found a buyer for Jaguar Racing easily enough in Red Bull in 2003, buyers for Honda will be thin on the ground due to the lack of credit that will be available to interested parties.

Next season’s Formula 1 calendar has already lost two races — Canada and France — and China and both German circuits currently in use have recently warned that they may not hold races for much longer. Again, it all comes down to money, with circuit owners being unable or unwilling to pay Bernie Ecclestone’s fast-increasing costs of staging a grand prix at the same time as attendances are tumbling.

Meanwhile, car sales are in freefall on a global scale, with a number of large car manufacturers seemingly in serious financial danger unless drastic action is taken. In the backdrop of these events, participation in motorsports looks like an extravagance. Even if the old “win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mantra holds true in normal times, right now western consumers are tightening their belts meaning that any increase in sales may be too small to be justifiable.

As such, Honda’s withdrawal is seen as just another sign that Formula 1 faces a crisis. We have a slimmed-down calendar that relies increasingly on flyaway races away from the sport’s European heartland to help pay CVC’s bills, and no races in the vitally important North American market for the first time in five decades.

Now there is a slimmed-down grid of just 18 cars — a number that is getting smaller. When you consider that the 2008 season was originally destined to contain 24 entries, F1 has essentially lost a quarter of its teams in a matter of months. Formula 1 is beginning to look like a shadow of its former self.

Now the question everyone is asking is, “who is next?” Initially the finger pointed at Toyota. Many pointed out that Toyota are only really in F1 because Honda were there. Toyota are also, like Honda, huge spenders with little to show for it.

But Toyota quickly put the lid on the speculation by issuing a statement that appeared to affirm their commitment to F1 — although, as James Allen pointed out, the word “currently” in front of “committed” looks like a carefully worded way to give them an easy exit should things take a turn for the worse. After all, if Honda’s decision was so sudden, why would a decision from Toyota not be?

BMW and Mercedes-Benz have both also affirmed their commitment to F1. But one manufacturer has spoken with a deafening silence.

I always suspected that the first manufacturer to go would be Renault. Its CEO, Carlos Ghosn, is said to be sceptical of motorsport participation, and there has been a question mark over the team’s future ever since he joined Renault in 2005. Besides which, Renault’s history in F1 has shown that it will come and go as it pleases.

Even though some news websites have reported that Renault is committed to F1, I have seen no quotes which the other manufacturers have been happy enough to provide. Was the media palmed off with a stock answer from a Renault spokesperson?

Meanwhile, rumours circulate around Red Bull. Dietrich Mateschitz recently re-bought Gerhard Berger’s 50% stake in Toro Rosso, but many think he did this so that he could sell it more easily. But with billions to play with and no car sales to drop off a cliff, I see little reason why he would pull the plug on both teams.

Williams has been perceived to be in a vulnerable position for a few years now. It is the last brave privateer team that is in it not to sell cars and not to sell drinks, but purely for the love of racing. It has been hit hard, but it doesn’t have to be seen to be reducing costs for political reasons like the manufacturers have to. Ironically, Williams may be safer than some of the manufacturers now.

We will just have to wait and see. It’s clear that Formula 1 is currently undergoing a massive change. Could the ground be being laid for a return to a privateer era? If so, you won’t find me complaining too much, no matter how painful the current events are in the medium-term.

5 comments

End-of-season driver rankings: #22-12

30 November 2008 21:46

Categories: Opinion, Report

Well, the season is well and truly over, and we have now had over two weeks to digest the happenings. It is high time I gave the season a thorough review, starting with my opinion on all of the drivers.

First off, I should point out that I think the standard of driving was exceptionally high in the 2008 Formula 1 season. It was the first time in history that all of the teams on the grid kept the same drivers all season.

Even Nelsinho Piquet, who was almost universally derided early on in the season, has clung on to his seat and will even continue to race for Renault next season. Indeed, I think that almost all of the 2008 season’s drivers deserve to remain in F1, with the possible exception of David Coulthard who has retired anyway.

So it is a tough job to rank all of the drivers, and inevitably I have had to make some tough choices that will no doubt surprise some. Without further ado, here is the first part of my driver rankings.

The first number in brackets denotes a driver’s placing in my mid-season rankings. The second number denotes his placing in last year’s rankings.

22. Anthony Davidson (20; 23)

Poor Anthony Davidson has never really had a proper chance to demonstrate his talents as a race driver, always being lumbered with inferior machinery. But at the same time, he has had a handful of chances to prove why he should be given a better chance, and he has never taken them. He was not demonstrably better than his Super Aguri team mate Takuma Sato, and I struggle to see why he should expect to get a race seat with a better team, particularly with so many youngsters waiting in the wings.

21. Takuma Sato (19; 14)

Like Davidson, Takuma Sato had little opportunity to show what he is made of this season. However, I place him above the Brit because I maintain that Sato is a better driver than Davidson, a subject I covered in this post.

20. Giancarlo Fisichella (22; 16)

I have to say that I’m now struggling to see why Fisichella deserves to stay in F1. I always thought that Force India were wrong to hire him, and I can’t say I’ve seen anything this season that’s made me eat humble pie. On the contrary, his ridiculously dangerous driving into the first corner in Turkey would have seen a less well-respected driver receive a ban. Yuji Ide lost his super license for less.

In fairness, it can’t be easy to shine in what is undoubtedly the worst car on the grid. But he rarely showed what he is made of. Perhaps most worryingly, his best results all came at the start of the season. Fisichella began to look more and more jaded as the season wore on.

Fisichella’s one and only main achievement of the season is to make it into Q2 for the Italian Grand Prix. He qualified an impressive 12th, but he has the weather to thank for that as much as anything else.

19. Adrian Sutil (17; 15)

As with his Force India team mate, I’m struggling to see why Adrian Sutil should remain in Formula 1. Some people say he is supremely talented. And while it’s true that it’s difficult to show your talent in the dogs that Sutil has driven during his two years in Formula 1, the fact is that he shows no signs of moving up the ladder.

His showing in Monaco was highly impressive, whether or not he deserved to be as high up as 5th position (having overtaken some cars under yellows). That is the reason I have placed him above Fisichella. But besides that, Sutil has remained anonymous, and I doubt whether he truly deserves a third year in F1 when there are drivers that we know are talented and are being wasted as test drivers.

18. David Coulthard (14; 11)

DC had a tough final season, as it seemed as though he simply couldn’t stop crashing. It was a blunder-heavy season for DC, and there is no question that a number of his crashes were of his own making. It’s sad to say it, but his rustiness this season makes it look like he stayed in F1 just a season too long.

The season was not without its highs though, and the podium finish in Canada was a flash of the talented driver we came to know over the previous decade or so. You can question whether or not he deserved that podium, but there is no question that he totally outshone his team mate Mark Webber during that weekend, albeit not across the rest of the season.

17. Nelsinho Piquet (18; -)

There is no escaping the fact that Nelsinho Piquet failed to consistently meet the standard expected of him. Whether that is because he has to live up to his father’s name (literally), or we have heightened expectations of what a rookie can achieve after Hamilton, or Piquet is simply just crap, is something we can only find out after another season.

That is why I agree with Renault’s decision to keep Piquet on for one more season. For while he had a number of rather embarrassing blunders scattered throughout the season, he did manage to impress on occasion. The 2nd place in Germany, although slightly lucky, showed that he has the maturity not to throw away a good result when the opportunity arises. Meanwhile, his 4th place finish in Japan was almost forgotten under the celebrations of Alonso’s victory. By no means was Piquet’s season a washout, which is why he deserves another year.

16. Jenson Button (15; 7)

Last year I was impressed by Button’s ability to grab a few decent results in that dog of a Honda car, compared with Barrichello’s slightly heel-dragging demeanour. This year, the roles have been reversed. Button finished in the points just once all season in what was an otherwise depressingly anonymous season for the Brit.

15. Kazuki Nakajima (12; 21)

Nakajima impressed many this season with his ability to quietly collect the points on a fairly consistent basis. While his team mate Nico Rosberg is flashier, he is also more accident-prone.

That is not to say that Nakajima has kept his nose clean all season. But for a significant portion of the season, the pair were separated by only 1 or 0 points. Considering Rosberg is supposed to be one of the hottest drivers around, while Nakajima is meant to be another crap Japanese driver who is only there to pay for the engines, that’s not bad going at all. Sure, Rosberg finished a good eight points ahead in the end, but whether he deserved quite as many points as he got in Singapore is highly doubtful.

14. Nico Rosberg (13; 8)

Nico Rosberg had an okay season. He did lose a worryingly high number of front wings. But he also gained a couple of podiums, which is not exactly to be sniffed at.

But next season will be a make or break year for Rosberg. Mediocre machinery or not, the fact is that observers are still in the dark as to whether or not Rosberg is genuinely talented enough to ever be a regular front-runner. After three seasons, Rosberg needs to start showing why he deserves a 4th and a 5th season, because his record as it stands isn’t quite enough in my view.

13. Sébastien Bourdais (21; -)

In retrospect, my mid-season verdict on Sébastien Bourdais is extremely harsh. There is no question that during the first half of the season he failed to meet up to expectations. That was despite an extremely strong showing at the Australian Grand Prix where he was set to finish in 4th position.

The second half of his season was significantly stronger. The only reason he didn’t get the results was because of a barrage of bad luck. You couldn’t help but feel sorry for the Frenchman as he choked back the tears recounting the final lap of the Belgian Grand Prix, where he was set to finish 4th, only to struggle with grip on dry tyres in wet conditions. And we can only speculate as to what he could have achieved in Italy had his engine not stalled. This man deserves another year in F1, if only so that we can see for real what he is capable of.

12. Rubens Barrichello (10; 20)

What an improvement Barrichello has made on the 2007 season. Last year, Barry was beginning to look past it. This season, despite driving one of the very worst cars on the grid, it has looked like the Brazilian has had a renewed vigour.

A podium finish in very tough conditions in Silverstone that made mincemeat of his compatriot title contender, Felipe Massa, is testament to that. What a shame that the Honda 8 ball doesn’t appear to have noticed this! In my book, the most experienced driver in F1 history deserves to become even more experienced.

My top 11 drivers of the season will be published later this week.

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