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Archive: grid penalty

Japanese Grand Prix ponderings

5 October 2009 22:03

Categories: Report

This won’t take long.

First of all, it is worth pointing out just how awesome Sebastian Vettel was at Suzuka. At this “drivers’ circuit” which suited the Red Bull car down to the ground, Vettel was untouchable.

An error meant that instead of the normal on board channel, the BBC broadcast the on board camera of Vettel only for a large part of the race. Although this meant being unable to see any other cars on board, it provided an opportunity to watch an up-and-coming master at work. I can tell you he was definitely pushing hard, and to my mind he almost lost his car at Degner 2 twice. And they are only the moments I saw.

Vettel’s awe-inspiring dominance was in stark contrast to the other three Red Bull drivers in a weekend that promised so much. Even the Toro Rosso, which has been at the back for almost all of the season, looked like it had awesome pace. Unfortunately, its two rookie drivers both made a bit of a hash of things multiple times each throughout the weekend, meaning the potential came to nothing.

Webber also had a tough weekend after a big crash in Saturday Practice which left him with no car to qualify with. Having started from the pitlane, he then suffered a litany of problems forcing him to pit three times in quick succession. As a result, the race ended with one Red Bull dominating, and the three others footing the result sheet.

Beyond that, there is not much to say about the race. Jarno Trulli did a good job, which he does once or twice a year. But it’s not the sort of thing that would impress me enough to hire him. Maybe the new Lotus team will think differently.

For my money, the best action of the race came from Heikki Kovalainen. Firstly, there was his tangle with Adrian Sutil which appears to have divided opinion. I think it was a racing incident — Sutil was probably too optimistic to go for it, but Kovalainen was probably too eager to close the door abruptly having left it wide open in the first place.

But if that was a bad move from Kovalainen, he more than made it up with his gutsy and opportunistic overtaking manoeuvre on Giancarlo Fisichella while they were both coming out of the pits. I let out a yelp and probably woke up half the street at that time of the morning, as I thought it was going to end up as a huge accident. In the end, it turned out well for Kovalainen and I was left impressed. It is the only ballsy thing I can ever remember him doing. But it’s probably too late to save his career at an established team.

It says a lot about the state of F1 at the moment that the biggest talking point of the weekend was the way penalties were dealt with. Eight drivers were penalised after qualifying. Most were for ignoring yellow flags after Sébastien Buemi’s accident, another was for blocking and others changed gearboxes and chassis.

This left the entire world scratching its head as to what the actual grid might be. Apparently several permutations were doing the rounds, while the FIA decided to sleep on it and published the grid just hours before the race began. Seemingly this is not a case of the Random Penalty Generator — it all seems above board, with the grid having been determined as it should be by the letter of the law. But clearly this is a system that fails the fans. We watch qualifying to find out what the starting grid will be, only to tune into the race finding that the stewards have changed it.

Then there is the case of the investigation into Nico Rosberg failing to observe the lap delta times under Safety Car conditions. It transpires that Rosberg was unable to know what his target time was because the message was overridden by a low fuel message from the standard ECU. Given that McLaren Electronic Systems designed the ECU, my first thought was that this was a particularly elaborate way of penalising McLaren for the incident.

In all seriousness though, this just sums up how Formula 1 has been swallowed up by an officious governing body more interested in rules than racing. The Safety Car rules have become so ridiculously complex in the past few years, mirroring the crisis that hit qualifying a few years ago when several formats were tried out in quick succession.

I suspected that Nico Rosberg knew he was guilty of driving too quickly under Safety Car conditions when he conducted an evasive interview on the BBC after the race. When questioned, he would only say that he didn’t gain an advantage. When asked if he was within the rules, he only said “I definitely did what I should do”.

As it transpires, he probably had good reason to be coy given that it seems as though he simply did not have the information that should have been displayed, even if it meant he technically broke the rules. In that light, it is fair to let Rosberg off on this instance, but he shouldn’t even have been in this position in the first place.

Now we are left with the tantalising prospect of Sebastian Vettel making a Räikkönen-esque comeback. James Allen says that a mental block has been passed, with Vettel now within 16 points of Button with two races to go. That is closer than Räikkönen was with two races to go in 2007.

It still seems like a long shot, but if the momentum is going anywhere it is not towards Button. All of a sudden, the pressure looks like it’s all on Jenson Button.

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Ruby on Rails!

25 August 2009 21:28

Categories: Report

This year’s European Grand Prix was not the best race we’ve seen so far this year — but at least it wasn’t the utter snoozer we had last year. There are at least a few interesting talking points.

First, of course, is the performance of Rubens Barrichello, which was truly masterful. For once, the most experienced driver in the history of F1 has shown that the statistic doesn’t just mean he’s old — it means he can do the business as well. It is his first win for five years, and who would begrudge him this one?

Brawn were forced to spend Friday experimenting with set-up in an attempt to get to the issues that have prevented them from being competitive since Turkey. Despite this, Barrichello put all the car’s troubles behind him and didn’t seem to put a foot wrong all weekend.

I heard someone say that an emotional Rubens is a quick Rubens. It appears as though Felipe Massa’s injury has had some kind of impact on Barrichello’s form, not least because Massa has apparently been giving Barrichello tips on which lines to take in Valencia.

Certainly, not all of the performance can be put down to an improvement in the car because Jenson Button was thoroughly outclassed. In fairness, Button’s race was immediately compromised by a disastrous first lap — fatal on a circuit like Valencia. Even so, the Championship leader was strangely off the pace compared with Barrichello.

Barrichello even seemed to have the upper hand before the race started, as he was heavy on fuel and could pit later. It was marginal though, and it took until the third stint for the advantage to finally be realised.

There is a slight debate over whether McLaren’s bungled pit stop handed Barrichello the lead on a plate, though most agree that Barrichello would have ended up ahead anyway. Who knows how he would have coped under pressure from Hamilton though if that pacey McLaren was closer to him.

Hamilton and McLaren must count this as a lost victory, not a good second place. After the race, Hamilton’s words said he wasn’t disappointed or upset about the team’s mistake. But for me, his tone of voice said it all. This wasn’t the relaxed and happy Hamilton that we saw after the race in Hungary, and I detected more than a bit of tension in his voice in the post-race interviews.

I think Hamilton thought he had the race in the bag. I remarked at one point during the first stint that it sounded like he was taking it easy. Soon afterwards, Martin Brundle said that Hamilton was nowhere near his limit. For much of his first stint he was lapping in the high 1:39s or low 1:40s. In both his second and third stints he ended up consistently lapping rather faster, in the mid 1:39s.

It’s strange, because Hamilton has traditionally been criticised for not being conservative enough. But this is one instance where I think if he had pushed harder he would have won. His lead was indeed fairly comfortable during the first stint, but I feel he could have pressed home his advantage further.

Kimi Räikkönen scored his second consecutive podium in a row, and it was another relatively bland yet quick performance. He was barely on the television and there was apparently nothing interesting about his race, apart from the fact that he finished third.

This is interesting bearing in mind all the silly season issues, particularly while a question mark remains over the future competitiveness of Felipe Massa. People constantly say they struggle to understand Räikkönen, and many speculated about how he’d react to having Michael Schumacher as a team mate. On the current evidence, you have to say that he appears to have reacted rather well to no longer having Massa as a team mate. Räikkönen’s oft-predicted move to rallying in 2010 seems less likely now.

Fernando Alonso was another one who had a relatively uneventful race. But he and the Spanish fans will take the three points over the lap one retirement he suffered last year in Valencia. Alonso still does what I expect him to do in mediocre machinery, but is not yet showing enough of his double World Champion class which we saw last year.

BMW Sauber will be relatively pleased with how their weekend unfolded. The upgrade seems to have worked, with the team having its best qualifying of the season and Robert Kubica scoring a point. They are no longer the underachieving tail-enders, though you would still expect more.

As for the other big-name underachievers, Toyota, they are scratching their head over the fact that they were actually quite quick during the race, but were neutered by a poor qualifying performance. This year’s Toyota has always been bad round twisty places (such as Monaco and sector three at Barcelona), but despite its supposed “street circuit” status, Valencia isn’t actually all that twisty.

True enough, Timo Glock set the fastest lap during the race. Pascal Vasselon says that all of Glock’s laps during the race were fast. Looking at the raw lap times it doesn’t seem that way, but Glock’s slow times in the early part of the race are said to be down to a heavy fuel load. All told, it must be pretty frustrating to be fast, yet finish a dismal 14th, ahead of just the three new drivers.

There is one big team I haven’t yet mentioned. Red Bull — could you get a much more disastrous race? Webber was off the pace all race, never looked like scoring a decent result and ended up finishing behind a BMW. Meanwhile, Vettel’s brand new Renault engine rasped its way into an escape road just a day after another one spewed all over half the circuit. That’s not good for Renault’s engine department, but more on that in a future article.

Vettel wondered aloud if he is a “killer” of his engines in his post-race interviews. He has now used up seven of his eight engines, and with Spa and Monza coming up he is almost certain to take a grid penalty at some point in the next few races. If his Championship chances weren’t severely dented already, this near-certain penalty surely hammers a sturdy nail into the coffin.

Red Bull’s capitulation this weekend means that yet again Jenson Button has got away with a dire weekend virtually unscathed. Despite only finishing 7th, his Championship lead decreased by just half a point. Yet again, Button looks as likely as ever to become World Champion despite not having any good results. In Turkey his lead was 26 points. But after four dire races, his lead has only been cut by less than a third of that amount.

Since his last win four races ago, there have been four different winners. The lack of any real challenger gives Button breathing space. And for the first time in a while, Barrichello has moved up into second place in the Championship, hammering home the fact that Red Bull have not quite done enough to prove they can win the Championship.

But Spa will be a very different race, and conventional wisdom suggests that it will suit Red Bull. But do they have enough in the tank? Webber needs to overcome a substantial 20.5 point deficit to Button.

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Melbourne talking points

30 March 2009 13:21

Categories: Opinion

What an exciting start to the season. I don’t suppose it’s the done thing to yelp at 7am on a Sunday morning and wake the neighbours up, but I think that’s what I did.

First of all, hats off to the Brawn team. They’ve been through a lot over the winter. Let’s face it, as the Honda team they’ve been through a lot in the past two years. Their 1-2 finish in Melbourne is a just reward for the effort they have put into this car, and for what they have had to put up with from the high-ups at Honda.

And good riddance to them. By now it is banal to point out that Honda must be kicking themselves. They poured all that money into the development of the car, and have given that car away to a private team that they are subsidising in return for nothing. It makes Honda look pretty stupid for giving away such a great car. To the distant observer, it must look as though Honda have the reverse-Midas touch. Which, in fairness, they do.

Jenson Button’s victory was fairly uneventful, but Rubens Barrichello’s route to 2nd was more interesting. The Brazilian had a terrible start when anti-stall kicked in, and then got involved in a first-corner accident which damaged his car on the front and on the rear. His front wing got damaged further during a botched attempt to overtake Kimi Räikkönen. After the race Barrichello noted that the Brawn must be a good car if he can crash it so much and still finish 2nd.

Barrichello was lucky to inherit 2nd, of course, when Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel took some silly pills and decided to crash each other out. That was a disappointing incident for me because I like both drivers and to see them both hit the self-destruct button like that was not what you’d like to see from two such promising drivers.

Most observers agree that blame must be shared fairly equally between the drivers. It was Vettel’s original mistake that allowed Kubica to get so close, but the Pole was far too optimistic trying to take Vettel the way he did. Vettel was most apologetic on the radio to his team, and to BMW’s Mario Theissen after the race (Vettel obviously had one eye on his future BMW contract). But I’m not sure if Vettel did much wrong during the move itself. Maybe he could have backed off, but why should he?

In the rush to make something out of the mess, both drivers ended up compounding their problems by simultaneously slamming into the wall. Kubica’s incident was quite scary in a way because two of his wheels came off. In fact, one of the tyres came very close to striking his head. The tyres were then left lying close to the racing line on the circuit, bringing back bad memories of Alonso’s accident at Interlagos in 2003. I found it surprising that the tethers failed to do their job in Kubica’s accident, and I should think the FIA are investigating.

Vettel caused his own danger by continuing trying to race with three wheels on his wagon. Well, the team told him to at least. Red Bull have been fined $50,000 for that, and quite right too.

Very definitely not right is the 10 place grid penalty handed out to Vettel for forcing Kubica off the track. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as much Kubica’s fault for being in that position in the first place. It’s yet more evidence that the FIA stewards are only interested in bureaucracy, and are not interested in allowing the drivers to race.

All-in-all, Vettel had a disappointing weekend. He had to pull over with mechanical problems on Friday morning, and went on to spin off in the afternoon. He put in a strong qualifying performance to clinch 3rd on the grid, but his incident with Kubica was another black mark. Now there is a debate over whether his apologising shows that he doesn’t have a Champion’s menatlity.

Lewis Hamilton has been somewhat overshadowed by the fairytale of Brawn. Expectations were low as a result of McLaren producing a dog of a car this year. But with the spotlight turned away, Hamilton put in an excellent drive to make his way up to 3rd. You’d say there was attrition to help him, but there weren’t really that many retirements. All things considered, given the expectations McLaren must be chuffed to be 2nd in the Constructors’ Championship and sitting on 6 points to Ferrari’s zero.

As for Ferrari, they had a disastrous start, made all the worse by the fact that they weren’t expected to have a particularly bad race. Kimi Räikkönen was supposed to come back with renewed vigour. But he clumsily clattered the wall in a way which was very reminiscent of his worst moments of 2008. Meanwhile, Massa fell foul of a mechanical failure, confirming that Ferrari do not yet have a reliable enough car.

Toyota showed flashes of promise. The way both Trulli and Glock came through the pack after starting from the pitlane bodes well for the race pace of the car. Jarno Trulli’s 25s penalty seems harsh and there is some controversy surrounding it. It is true that the punishment doesn’t really fit the crime, but it was all the stewards could do in the circumstances.

Toro Rosso must be absolutely delighted with the way the race went for them. It may be as a result firstly of the Kubica–Vettel crash and secondly Jarno Trulli’s penalty, but they have scored 3 points and were the only team except Brawn to have two points finishes. I reckon Toro Rosso will find it very difficult to score many more points, but this is an excellent start to their campaign. It is also worth noting that rookie Sébastien Buemi put his team-mate Sébastien Bourdais in the shade this weekend.

Williams failed to fulfil the promise shown during practice. Kazuki Nakajima spoiled his race by slamming into the wall early on. Meanwhile, Nico Rosberg’s strong performance was totally ruined by his inability to make the soft tyres work for him. That may be a problem with the Williams car, in which case the team may be doomed as a result of the greater difference between tyre compounds this season. Nevertheless, 6th place is not a bad result.

For what it’s worth, I like the greater difference between compounds, and the on-track events this weekend appears to indicate that the rule changes have worked in their attempt to spice up the action. But that’s for another post.

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