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Archive: intermediates

Time to simplify the tyre rules

18 July 2011 22:35

Categories: Formula 1

I have not yet had the chance to write about the British Grand Prix, but I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it. In comparison to many races this season, which have left me cold, I felt like I had seen a proper race.

The DRS was present, but I didn’t feel like it ruined the race too much. But what was vitally different was that the race began in the wet. So, is it a case of rain making racing more exciting once again? No, because the best action came towards the end of the race, when the circuit was at its driest.

Instead, the British Grand Prix provided further evidence that the tyre rules are ruining F1. Because all the drivers started on intermediate tyres, no-one was forced to use both dry compounds. As such, all of the drivers were on a level playing field at all times during the race. They were all using the tyres they genuinely thought was the best at the time, rather than being deliberately hobbled.

No-one had silly advantages of several seconds per lap, as we saw in China. The result was tense, close and hugely exciting racing.

If Pirelli are going to persist in developing deliberately dodgy tyres, surely it is time to scrap the rule that forces drivers to use the worst compound. It is clear that you don’t need this ridiculous rule in order to create great racing. Moreover, the rule very probably inhibits truly exciting racing.

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Stories behind colourful Pirelli tyres

23 March 2011 22:29

Categories: *, Formula 1

To help the fans distinguish between the six different types of tyres being used in Formula 1 in 2011, Pirelli have introduced an innovative colour code. According to Pirelli, the colours “reflect the unique personality of each tyre”.

Here is your handy guide to each of the tyre colours, and the personalities that define the compounds.

Super-soft – magenta

The excitable super-soft tyre is extremely grippy but goes off the boil quickly. Magenta sums up this tyre’s eye-catching speed.

Soft – lilac

The predictable soft tyre is attractively speedy but will fade away quickly, a characteristic it shares with the colour lilac. Ideal for short stints and qualifying runs.

Medium – pink

The no-nonsense medium tyre is dependably durable without too much of a compromise in speed. This is somehow just like the colour pink.

Hard – light red

The bashful hard tyre takes a while to show its true colours, but once it gets comfortable it doesn’t disappoint. Like a demure lady-friend, its accents glow light red.

Intermediate – fuchsia

Ideal in damp conditions, the intermediate tyres can surprisingly excel in either dry or wet weather, just like the fuchsia flower.

Wet – purple

If you have a real downpour on your hands, it is time to use the wet tyres. Rain is sometimes signified by the colour purple on the radar in a weather forecast.

Pirelli have put a lot of hard work into this colour-coded approach to Formula 1 tyres, and I’m sure you’ll agree that fans will not be left scratching their heads in the slightest.

All six Pirelli tyres

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The state of play after Sepang

7 April 2009 21:23

Categories: Opinion

For my thoughts on the issues surrounding the suspension of the Malaysian Grand Prix, see my post on F1 Fanatic: Unravelling the mayhem in Malaysia.

Here is a quick look at some of the stand-out talking points as I see them.

First of all, the “Brawn supremacy” is not quite as extreme as it seemed in Melbourne. Most observers posited that Brawn had extra pace in the bag in Australia. That may have been the case, but it seemed to almost evaporate in Malaysia.

The Achilles’ heel of the car appears to be its starts. After Rubens Barrichello’s anti-stall kicked in at the start in Australia, Jenson Button suffered from a sluggish getaway in Sepang. We have also seen a number of slow getaways from pitstops. Presumably this is a consequence of the late change of engine supplier. It could be important for Brawn because until the first set of pitstops Jenson Button had to make do with 3rd place when he seemed to have a car capable of winning.

In such a situation it helps for the boss of your team to be a renowned master tactician. After the race, Barrichello bemoaned “strange tyre choices” that thwarted his race. But Button banging in a couple of scintillating laps in clean air just before his pitstop to allow him to leapfrog to the front was pure Brawn. It was very reminiscent of the Schumacher days.

Schumacher himself wasn’t performing so well on the Ferrari pit wall. Rumour has it that he was the person who made the decision to put Kimi Räikkönen on wet tyres while the circuit was still bone dry. By the time the rain came, the furious Finn was on the radio: “my tyres are completely destroyed!!”

To rub salt in the wounds, it seems as though the Ferrari car is generally underperforming. They don’t seem to be in as bad a position as McLaren, but they are not much better. Now the teams to watch are Brawn, Toyota, Red Bull and maybe Williams. Ferrari need to improve and quick.

It would take a heart of stone not to be amused by the fact that Ferrari are currently bottom of the Constructors’ Championship, behind even Force India. Given that McLaren are supposed to be the team in the doldrums, it’s amazing that Ferrari have fouled up the start of this season so badly.

If McLaren hadn’t gone into self-destruct mode, they would have 6 (or 7) points and be lying 3rd in the Constructors’ Championship! Putting aside the unsavoury events in the stewards’ office, you have to pay tribute to Lewis Hamilton’s ability to get on with the job. By all accounts, the McLaren car is a shithouse, but the World Champion is doing a creditable job with it, especially when you consider the storm that currently surrounds him.

Hamilton had a spirited battle with Mark Webber. The Australian’s Red Bull was clearly superior in the wet (and it was such a joy to watch too!), but Hamilton was able to use kers to great effect, providing a good spectacle for the viewers for a lap or two. That is one good side of the introduction of kers, but the effect would be neutralised if all the cars were to run it.

Toyota are looking like major contenders now. I have to say I am beginning to feel like a massive pillock for writing them off back in January. Glock was another driver who benefited from an excellent strategy in Sepang, and it has to be said he did a great job ploughing through the field, maximising his advantage as one of the only drivers on intermediate tyres. I haven’t taken much notice of Glock before, but maybe it’s time to start paying attention.

Nick Heidfeld also had a good strategy, pitting just once. He spent more time on the racetrack, meaning that he finished the race in 2nd place. He didn’t actually have all that good a race though. He fell off the island while under pressure from Sebastian Vettel and allowed Hamilton through in the process too. After that he was in 11th place. In a way, though, that makes his progression all the way back up to 2nd all the more commendable.

More ominously, for a BMW supporter like me, Robert Kubica had to retire after just one lap with engine trouble. BMW may be 3rd in the Constructors’ Championship, but it is quite a distant 3rd. The first two races have not brought much cheer for BMW. Fingers crossed it is just a blip and the team will get it together.

Williams were promising, and it was notable that Nico Rosberg led the race for a considerable portion — on merit. It looks as though, if ever Williams have a chance to become front-runners again, it is this year. I sense that their drivers don’t have the talent to feel the heat at the sharp end of the field though. Looking at the lap chart, it is clear that Rosberg suffered more than most when the rain came down.

All-in-all, despite the curtailment of the race, I think the Malaysian Grand Prix was an absolute cracker. Brawn’s advantage appears to be slipping away, and the teams snapping at their heels are not the usual suspects. This is what we endure years of Ferrari dominance for.

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The WMSC's decisions

17 March 2009 15:01

Categories: News, Opinion

Today the World Motor Sport Council met to make its decisions and already F1′s bloggers and Twitter users have been voicing their opinions. Here are some of my more in-depth thoughts.

Points

The points system for 2009 has been amended, and the result is a compromise between Bernie Ecclestone’s controversial ‘medals’ proposal and the current points system. Basically, the current 10-8-6-5-4-3-2-1 system will remain in tact, but the Drivers’ Championship will be awarded to the driver with the most wins.

I have long been in favour of a radical change to the points system, and I am quite receptive to a “medals-style” system. But many other fans were not so keen.

This compromise solution isn’t one that I have seen suggested before. But on the face of it, it seems like a fair enough compromise. I would still prefer a more radical change to the points system, rather than having the championship automatically going to the driver who has had the most wins. But this could have been much, much worse.

Testing

From now on, teams will be allowed three young driver training tests between the end of the championship and the end of the year. I believe that such tests were unlimited before (correct me if I’m wrong). This represents yet another barrier to the young drivers that Max Mosley purports to be helping.

Straight-line testing is also facing further restrictions. Between 1 January 2009 and the end of the championship, teams will be allowed only eight days of straight-line or constant-radius testing. As pointed out by @sidepodcast on Twitter, this could leave McLaren in trouble given the amount of straight-line testing they have already done this year.

I’m not opposed to limits on straight-line testing. It seems fair to limit it just as other testing is restricted. However, applying this retrospectively does seem to be rather underhanded, and is especially unfair on those teams that took advantage of straight line testing a lot over the winter. Is it yet another FIA anti-McLaren conspiracy? Don those tin foil hats! Say what you like about Max and Bernie, but they sure know how to stir up a fuss!

Qualifying fuel loads

The weights of all cars after qualifying will now be published. This will give the geeks (like me) a lot of interesting data to analyse on a Saturday evening. But I’m not sure how this will improve the show. Personally, the suspense surrounding a driver’s fuel load is the only good thing about having race fuel loads during qualifying. I quite like not knowing when the leaders are going to take a pitstop.

People talk about F1′s script writers. Well now we will have a “spoiler” long before the race has even begun. This is a shame.

I assume this is a response to those who lament the fact that qualifying no longer shows who the fastest driver is. But the real solution to this would be to get rid of the ridiculous race fuel load idea altogether. It has never worked, and it adds nothing to the show.

Tyres

Just a small one this. Wets are now officially “intermediates” and extreme wets are “wets”. This seems rather uncontroversial to me, because I normally refer to inters and extreme wets. Since inters became such good all-round wet weather tyres, this problem has existed, and it’s good that the FIA has tried to inject a rare bit of clarity into the regulations.

Media

Drivers will now have to make themselves more available to sign autographs. And there will be no running away in a fug of embarrassment after a poor performances. All drivers must make themselves available to the media for interview after the race or after they have retired.

Senior team personnel will also have to make themselves available to TV crews. Fota had proposed a similar idea anyway, and it’s a good idea to ensure that the fans get more out of the sport.

Changes to the 2009 Technical Regulations

You what? Yes, apparently the FIA have changed the 2009 Technical Regulations, details of which will be published later today. Haven’t they left it a bit late?…

The batshit-crazy zone

Mind your step. This is where we enter the realms of nonsense. It wouldn’t be the FIA without a nice dose of nonsense, and they certainly haven’t disappointed this time round.

From 2010 onwards there will be a budget cap of £30 million per season. But it’s a voluntary budget cap. So to give teams an incentive to stick to the magic limit, the FIA will allow these teams to have more technical freedoms. Essentially, there will be not one but two sets of Technical Regulations. Maybe from 2010 onwards the sport will become known as “Formulae Ones”, “Two Formula Ones”, “Formula One.1 and Formula One.2″.

In all seriousness, I think this is a recipe for disaster. For one thing, the FIA reckons it will be able to work out when “the cost-capped cars have neither an advantage nor a disadvantage when compared to cars running to the existing rules.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I quite like the idea that in F1 some cars are better than others. It’s called competition. It’s what sport is made of. And too often motorsports go down the route of trying to equalise performance between the cars by restricting the best cars. Then that series goes down the pan (hello, BTCC). That’s because people watch motorsport for the competition between teams and drivers. The moment you try to neutralise that, you start to alienate the core audience.

Besides, it’s all very well to do what they do in Touring Cars and add extra ballast to race-winning cars. But it’s a different thing altogether to try and work out how to manipulate cars when they are being run to separate sets of regulations. The FIA can’t even create one decent set of unambiguous technical regulations, never mind two of them, and with the aim of having the two types of cars performing equally!

For me, this just stinks. The FIA would be able to penalise cars for very little good reason, other than something vague about equalising performance. Decisions would probably be made in smoke-filled rooms, obscured from the fans’ view.

Believe it or not, F1 just got even more political.

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Lewis Hamilton: A deserving champion

4 November 2008 01:19

Categories: Opinion, Report

This is the first of a series of posts rounding up my final thoughts on the season.

You probably don’t need to be told that Lewis Hamilton is the 2008 Formula 1 World Drivers’ Champion. At the age of 23 years and 300 days, he eclipses Fernando Alonso to become the youngest ever World Champion. He has done so in just his second season.

No matter how well-protected Lewis Hamilton has been by the McLaren team, you don’t achieve that sort of thing by luck. Hamilton is lucky in that he has always been in a great car. It is unprecedented for such a strong team to offer a race drive to a rookie. As such, the statistics flatter him.

However, it is highly questionable that this year’s McLaren MP4-23 was the best car in the field. Ferrari did, after all, win the Constructors’ Championship. Certainly, the McLaren car put in some dominant performances, most notably at Silverstone and Hockenheim. But in both races Hamilton truly overshadowed his team mate, Heikki Kovalainen.

The Finn finished a distant 7th in the Championship, a massive 43 points behind Hamilton. No other inter-team battle has been so comprehensive in its outcome — not even in Renault. Whether the gulf was caused by Hamilton’s superiority or Kovalainen’s inferiority is a matter of interpretation. I suspect it was both.

Kovalainen will point to the fact that he was always put on the more unfavourable strategy, giving him a heavy car during qualifying. This makes his pole position in Silverstone all the more special. But Kovalainen had only one race win which, let us be clear, was a fluke.

Other drivers on the grid have been more flawless. Fernando Alonso, Robert Kubica and Sebastian Vettel spring to mind. But impressive though those drivers have been, the spotlight does not shine so intensely in the midfield. Nor were any of those drivers regularly in contention for wins like Hamilton and Massa were.

In the end, the Championship battle rightly came down to a showdown between Felipe Massa and Lewis Hamilton. Both drivers have made their fair share of mistakes. While Massa had a few spins throughout the season (Malaysia, Britain), Hamilton had a couple of unforgivable crashes (Bahrain, Canada).

Both drivers have also had some bad luck. Ferrari’s pitlane blunder in Singapore cost Massa a sure win and was completely out of Massa’s control. Meanwhile, Hamilton found himself at the rough edge of a suspiciously high number of stewards’ decisions.

It would have been unfortunate if Massa had won the Championship for that reason alone. There is enough anger surrounding the stewards’ decisions this year that had Massa won the Championship many people would regrettably have viewed it as a tainted win. As Clive says, just like Räikkönen’s triumph last year, Hamilton’s Championship victory is the best for international relations.

In the end, I think across the year Hamilton has shown that he deserves to become World Champion. He demonstrated that 2007 was no fluke. Mind you, in a lot of ways Hamilton’s 2008 season was a great deal worse than 2007. It was certainly less consistent. Hamilton never looked even close to equalling his staggering run of nine consecutive podiums achieved in 2008. The problem with 2007 was that Hamilton’s season completely collapsed right at the end. This year the foul-ups were interspersed all across the season — and they weren’t as severe for the most part.

This is key to why Hamilton has won this year when the title eluded him last year. He could afford the odd blow here and there as long as he didn’t let the whole thing unravel at the end. His approach towards the final two races was a world away from the immature hot-head that went to China and Brazil last year. ‘Discipline’ was the keyword emanating from the McLaren camp.

Hamilton’s Championship victory was calculated. The McLaren team’s preparations were so meticulous that it all came down to a confident weather call. Hamilton did not lash out at Vettel once the German had overtaken him, as the Hamilton of old may have done. Instead, he waited for the rain to come and spoil Glock’s final lap.

It was a calculated gamble, and it almost didn’t pay off. But McLaren and Lewis Hamilton knew exactly what they were doing. What a contrast to last year’s bungle which saw McLaren leave it too long to change Hamilton’s tyres in China and Hamilton being too eager to needlessly make up positions in Brazil.

Even though Hamilton’s performance in Fuji this year caused some raised eyebrows, that looks like it was a one off. The overall picture of Lewis Hamilton this season is one that has learned from the mistakes of last year. He has reined in the impatient streak and has learnt not to needlessly go for the win.

For me, it would have been a shame for Hamilton to have lost out on the Championship for a second time, having come so agonisingly close twice. Massa showed that he has what it takes to be a Championship contender. But Hamilton has now done it twice. And even though he couldn’t make it stick in 2007, it would have been cruel to let all of his effort and now obvious talent go unrewarded for a second year.

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