That’s what I’m talking about. My index finger is extended in honour.
Suzuka is a proper place to become a World Champion.
Archive: Red Bull Racing
Another grand prix, and another Sebastian Vettel victory. In terms of race results, it is now on a par with Michael Schumacher’s 1994 campaign. Five wins and a 2nd place from the first six races. It is difficult to get much more dominant than that.
For the 2010 World Champion, 2011 is looking much easier. Some drivers, like Kimi Räikkönen, lose their hunger after they become World Champion. Others are taken to a new level. When the best driver in the world becomes better, it’s truly scary.
But despite his World Champion status, some still argue that Sebastian Vettel somehow isn’t the best driver.
Mechanical advantage
After all, he has the best car — and that is indisputable. Who can say what Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button might be able to achieve in that awesome Red Bull?
On the other hand, Vettel has the upper-hand over Mark Webber. Vettel’s advantage was marginal last year. But this year he is much more dominant. Comparatively, Mark Webber is struggling in the supposedly all-conquering Red Bull.
Ah, they say. Red Bull favour Sebastian Vettel. Webber must have a different car, says his manager Flavio Briatore. “Each time something happens, it happens to Mark.” That glosses over the kers issues that Vettel has constantly suffered from, along with Webber.
For most of his career, Webber has had more than his fair share of bad luck. That has continued this year. It is nothing more malicious than that.
Question mark over wheel-to-wheel combat
“Oh! But Vettel can’t overtake!” Oh really? I have long found this argument spurious.
Partisan Brits may still fume at his accident with Button in Spa, but in low-grip conditions it can happen to anyone. It was just bad luck that Button happened to be there at the time. All drivers lose control from time to time.
Jibes about the number of wins Vettel has taken from pole are unimpressive too. It is hardly a revelation that it is easier to win a race from pole position than any other place on the grid. But Vettel the idea that all of Vettel’s wins have been plain sailing affairs from pole is just wrong.
Those three crucial passes on his out lap in Spain ought to have put this to bed once and for all. Sebastian Vettel can overtake.
Defensive driving under pressure
Vettel can also soak up the pressure. Also in Spain, Vettel had to fend off a hard-charging Lewis Hamilton. Martin Brundle noted in the post-race analysis that Vettel was modifying his line according to how close Hamilton was to passing. He knew when he needed to defend, and he knew when not to. A masterclass of efficient driving.
Making the most of a bad strategy
In Monaco, Vettel demonstrated that he could make a bad strategy — even a strategy cock-up — work well. The race threatened to unravel during his disastrous pitstop when he ended up on ‘prime’ soft tyres, when a second set of ‘option’ super-softs was apparently in order. Apparently a radio jam caused the confusion.
That could have been disaster for Vettel. But instead, the strategy was modified brilliantly, and it caught strategy masters Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso off guard.
Button went for a three-stop strategy that probably worked in the simulations. Alonso went for a two-stopper. But Vettel held out on a one-stop strategy. It is almost unthinkable with this year’s Pirelli tyres, but Vettel lasted a mind-boggling 56 laps on soft tyres.
Of course, the red flag helped matters. Theoretically, Vettel would have run out of grip sooner or later — certainly before Alonso, who would in turn lose grip before Button. We can never know if that would have been the case.
But I was keeping an eye on the timing screen as the battle was intensifying, and Vettel was normally the second fastest man on track at any one time. His lap times were holding up remarkably well. There was no sign that Alonso or Button were on the verge of actually getting past.
The reality is that Vettel came out on top. Even though the circumstances with the red flag were unusual, the bottom line is that Vettel’s radical emergency strategy paid off as well as it possibly could have. He won the race.
How does Vettel compare to his rivals?
What else has Vettel got to prove? Well, who are the rivals for the mantle of “most complete driver in F1″?
Jenson Button is reliable and smart. But he doesn’t always have the fire in his belly, and consequently his awesome drives are mixed with anonymous tours.
Lewis Hamilton certainly has the fire in his belly, and his talent is awesomely supreme. But his enthusiasm often gets the better of him and he is prone to making massive errors in the heat of the moment.
Fernando Alonso is normally cited as being the “most complete” driver. There is no doubt that he is a formidable talent. And despite not having the equipment to win the Championship in recent years, Alonso remains a joy to watch. His qualifying lap in Spain is just one example of how Alonso passionately drives out of his skin.
But he has also begun to make a few too many mistakes. His errors in 2010 — at China, Monaco, Silverstone and Spa — are well documented.
Alonso remains fearsomely awesome. Just look at his starts in Spain and Monaco to see just one instance where Alonso excels.
But I am beginning to wonder if Sebastian Vettel is now the closest F1 has to the “complete package”. Whether he is or not, his youth alone should be a cause for concern among his rivals. Vettel is currently showing up drivers with masses more experience than him.
If Vettel is still learning, and he is already trouncing the opposition, it boggles the mind to imagine just how good he might become.
There have been four grands prix in 2011 so far, and they have been widely hailed as a great success. There is no doubt that the races have been action-packed, with something always going on.
But I wasn’t feeling it quite as much as many others were. I thought the Chinese Grand Prix was okay. But the reaction of others left me perplexed. All kinds of platitudes were bandied about. “The best dry race in decades!” “The best since Japan 2005!” Really? I wasn’t feeling that at all.
But I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was leaving me cold about F1 in 2011. There have been a lot of changes for this season, which has led to a very different style of racing. But what was it about the new F1 that was leaving me less thrilled than others?
It took me some time to work it out. But once I hit on it, the worse it seemed — and it has left me feeling a bit pessimistic about the prospects for truly good racing in 2011.
A pain in DRS?
A lot of attention has been focused on the brand new drag reduction system. Results of the DRS have been patchy.
At some races — particularly Australia — the DRS has been just enough to allow a driver behind to catch up. At the opposite extreme, in Turkey it was obvious that the DRS zone was far too long, and drivers were making easy passes that were not pleasing to watch.
The core problem is that it gives one driver and advantage over another — a significant deviation from the purity of racing. Comparisons to turbo boosts in the 1980s are no good. It may be a button that drivers can press, but there the similarity ends.
Back then, all of the options were open to everyone. You could choose to have a turbo or not, and you could use it whenever you wanted. But to say who can use a device and when they can use it is not on.
To artificially give the trailing driver a speed advantage is taking us into Mario Kart territory. As a friend said to me, “It’s like they have allowed cheating”. It is fundamentally wrong and does not belong in any event that calls itself a sport.
I love the idea of moveable rear wings, but the implementation is all wrong. I don’t even understand why it can only be used in one part of the circuit. As Niki Lauda said, why is it the FIA’s job to say where drivers can pass each other?
Moreover, the hit and miss nature of the DRS zone is leading to different sorts of results in different races. The zones change size, and sometimes the FIA have got it wrong. They have even changed the position of the DRS activation point during a race weekend. What other word is there for this apart from ‘manipulation‘?
This may be a device designed to “fix” the “problems” with overtaking. Instead, we have come one step away from fixing the results.
F1 has sold its rubber soul
But I am more concerned about the situation with the new Pirelli tyres. While the DRS is widely criticised, people have been much kinder about the tyre situation. Indeed, one of the more popular refrains this year has been “thank you Pirelli”. But I am in no mood to thank them.
They are designed to degrade artificially quickly. This is a significant deviation from the concept of F1. Formula 1 is now no longer about the best drivers in the best cars. It’s about the best drivers in the best cars — with the worst tyres.
While technical regulations have always restricted cars (it is the “formula” in Formula 1, after all), the tradition has always been to maximise the performance to create the fastest car possible that adheres to the formula of the day. That is what brings us radical ideas like the double diffuser and the F-duct, that many F1 fans love to talk about.
With the tyres, Pirelli have deliberately made them perform badly. Come on, this is supposed to be elite motorsport.
Moreover, these dodgy tyres have now become the central issue of a grand prix weekend. I have long bemoaned the dominance of tyres in F1. If a car has better aerodynamics, you can see it. If an engine is faster, you can hear it. But the tyres? They are just black boxes that sit in the four corners.
But there is no getting away from it — tyres are hugely important to the performance of a car. What I don’t understand is why you would want to accentuate that.
Critics of F1 often complain that the drivers of the best cars always win. What these people misunderstand is that F1 is all about engineering excellence, just as much as it is about great driving.
But now we have now reached a stage where the deciding factor is neither the driver nor the car. It is now all about strategy — driven by deliberately dodgy tyres — above all else.
They are now so important that the situation is now threatening to make qualifying a complete non-event. After all those years spent tweaking the format of qualifying in the name of “the show”, you have to laugh when further changes totally break a format they finally got right.
The reason? Because you need as many fresh sets of tyres as possible to last the whole race. This means less track action on Saturday, as teams are fearful of using too many sets of tyres. What is this, Formula 1 bean counting, or Formula 1 motor racing?
Divergent strategies reduce real racing
In addition to spearing Saturday action, it is my view that the tyres situation is making Sundays less exciting too.
Take the experience of Mark Webber. He climbed from 18th on the grid to finish 3rd in China. You’d think if anyone would be excited about the wheel-to-wheel action in 2011, it would be him. Not so much.
After the race he told the BBC, “Sometimes the overtaking moves aren’t that genuine because the guys really have nothing to fight back with. It’s more tactical now, and a bit less racing.” During the BBC’s broadcast from Turkey, Martin Brundle revealed that Webber had told him privately that he got no satisfaction out of the progress through the field in China. James Allen further hinted at Webber’s distinct unhappiness at the situation.
Following Turkey, Jenson Button lay the blame for his poor result squarely on his strategy. Asked about what happens when his tyres go off, Button said, “You’re not racing any more. You’re trying your best to get the best out of the car, but you’re not racing anyone around you because you are a sitting duck… They just come past you and you can’t do anything.”
Overtaking has looked like it’s too easy this year, and it is not just because of DRS. The situation with the tyres means that drivers are dealing with such radically different levels of grip that the slower driver does not even bother to defend any more.
Many celebrated Lewis Hamilton’s pass on Sebastian Vettel for the lead of the Chinese Grand Prix. But for me, it killed the race as soon as it happened. I was hoping for Vettel to be able to defend, but he simply couldn’t. As it was, the pass was inevitable for laps in advance.
In the laps between Hamilton’s pitstop and his pass on Vettel, the McLaren driver was an average of 0.9s a lap faster than the Red Bull. (At one point he set a lap time 1.6 seconds up on Vettel.) To put this into perspective, during Q1 in China, a 0.9s gap to the fastest driver would have earned 18th on the grid.
Is it really exciting to watch a car that’s got an advantage of around one second a lap breeze on by? Not for me. This isn’t overtaking — it’s merely passing. It’s hardly Dijon 1979, is it? Today René Arnoux would flip his flap, press his boost button and head off into the distance on his superior tyres — race over.
The performance differences are huge, and it is all down to decisions that are made by computers far in advance. It is out of the driver’s hands. What is this, the Excel Grand Prix of Spreadsheet?
It is right that strategy plays a part in a race. But this year the balance has been tipped way over the edge, to the point where the driver’s influence on the outcome of the race has been severely diminished. You almost may as well hold the grand prix on a computer where all of the strategies have been put in.
To open up strategy options for this season without resorting to crap tyres that create crap pseudo-racing, they could simply have ditched the rule whereby drivers are forced to run on both compounds. This would have opened up the possibilities of running a 0, 1 or 2 stop strategy.
Instead, we are now seeing record-breaking levels of pitstops — upwards of 80 pitstops a race — for no good reason. This has taken away the emphasis from the on-track action, and has made huge amounts of the “racing” totally irrelevant.
It wasn’t broke, so why “fix” it?
The most disturbing thing about all the changes this season is the fact that there was very little wrong with Formula 1 in the first place. I didn’t complain that Formula 1 is dull. And while there was room for improvement, I have long bemoned the gimmicky thinking that has come about through efforts to “improve the show”. Now it is in danger of jumping the shark.
I love Formula 1 motor racing. I have done since the mid-1990s. There were lots of other people who claimed they also loved F1 — but at the same time complained about “processional races”. They said that F1 was too dull. Yet, for some reason, they still watched it anyway, and demanded changes. Huh?
I feel like the sport I love has been hijacked.
I also believe that the criticisms of the new format have been misunderstood by some insiders. It is not “too much overtaking” or “too much of a good thing”.
James Allen said, “it’s a bit like going into a sweet shop and eating half the stock, when you’ve only been used to getting a packet of Polos at best.” That’s not how I feel. It’s actually more like going into a nice restaurant expecting a good meal and being served a Big Mac instead.
Time to end the fixation with “the show”
Don’t get me wrong. I am still deriving satisfaction from Formula 1 this season. But the wheel-to-wheel action has become a lot more insipid this year, and bland passing has become so prevalent that overtaking has become devalued.
Kers is great for Formula 1. But the tyres situation, combined with DRS, is threatening to spoil the party. It wasn’t broke, but they fixed it anyway. But in “fixing” the racing, we have come just one step away from fixed races. The positioning of the DRS zone, determined by an FIA mandarin, could potentially make the difference between who wins and who loses.
Somewhere along the line, F1 has become so fixated on “the show” that it has forgotten about the race. There are now too many gimmicks and complications that deviate from the core concept that has served motorsport well for over a century: put a bunch of cars on a track and discover which is the fastest.
Of course, motorsport must always seek to entertain the audience. It wouldn’t exist otherwise. But you also need to remember why fans of motorsport tune in. Clue: it’s because they want to see a motor race. There are plenty of other places where you can be entertained by contrived or fictitious means.
But sport is supposed to be based on merit. It needs to be real.
When Renault’s James Allison said “We are an entertainment business,” it showed how wrong this whole approach is. We are dangerously striding towards WWE territory. If James Allison wants to work in an entertainment business, he can go to work in Hollywood. I want to watch a race.
The toxic focus on “the show” needs to stop.
This is a show:
This is a race:
Now, let’s go racing.
It’s time to eat humble pie. Before the season began I wrote a couple of posts outlining my pessimism for the prospects of Force India and their new driver Paul di Resta. I think it’s now fair to say that I was wrong on this!
The “midfield battle” for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship looks like being one of the tastiest of the year. Force India have shown themselves to be one of three strong contenders for this “best of the rest” position.
Each of the five teams above this sixth place battle have won at least one Championship in the previous five seasons. So the sixth place finisher can genuinely be proud of their achievement.
Although Williams have disappointingly — but quite comprehensively — dropped out of this battle (at least for the time being), each of Sauber, Toro Rosso and Force India have plenty of cause to be optimistic for the year ahead.
Sauber
Sauber’s success is as a result of a tasty mixture of a decent chassis, combined with two punchy drivers and a willingness to take strategic risks.
Who can fail to have been impressed by Sergio Pérez? In Australia he outsmarted everyone by managing to make the Pirelli tyres last much longer than everyone else. With a brave one stop strategy, Pérez took a hugely commendable seventh place. Never mind that the Saubers were disqualified due to a technical infringement. Pérez had put himself well and truly on the map.
His scrappy Chinese Grand Prix, in which he earned two drive-through penalties, demonstrated that he still has plenty to learn. I wouldn’t say he’s a star of the future in the Vettel mould. But as a Kobayashi-style midfield wunderkind, Pérez surely has a promising future ahead of him.
Meanwhile, Kamui Kobayashi has been his usual feisty self. He collects a handful of points at a time while wowing the crowds with his audacious overtaking moves.
With James Key in place at Sauber, the team has come a long way since the darkness of winter 2009-2010. And you can only see that situation improving over time.
Toro Rosso
Toro Rosso have perplexed many by opting to retain its two drivers Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari. Particularly when you consider that the talented Daniel Ricciardo is waiting in the wings, it is odd to offer Buemi a third season.
Neither Buemi nor Alguersuari have been particularly impressive so far. Retaining them goes against the supposed concept of Toro Rosso has a driver development team, the final link in the Red Bull Junior Team sausage factory before being rubber-stamped to drive a bona fide Adrian Newey machine.
However, it has to be said they have done a commendable job so far this season. Toro Rosso clearly have a car with promise, with its radical sidepods paying dividends. When you consider that Toro Rosso weren’t even designing their own chassis a few years ago, this is pretty impressive.
A strong qualifying in China underlined the potential of the car, even if they didn’t quite have the race pace to keep grasp of the top ten positions. I thought Toro Rosso would run out of steam. In fact, if anything, they are getting stronger.
Force India
But I thought Force India would be even further behind. I thought they were a spent force. They started the 2010 season in a strong position, but after losing technical staff throughout the season they slipped further and further down the grid. I struggled to see where an upswing would come from.
Well, wherever it has come from, it is there for sure. OK, so their points finishes in Australia were inherited as a result of Sauber’s disqualifications. And the Chinese Grand Prix failed to yield any points.
But what is striking about Force India’s first three races is the sheer consistency of their performances. A ninth place finish, two 10ths and two 11ths bode well. They look like being strong contenders to grab a few points in every race.
Most impressively of all, their faith in Paul di Resta has been generously rewarded. While I poo-pooed the idea of a DTM driver coming into F1, there is no denying that di Resta has done the business.
The greatest thing is that di Resta has achieved this with great maturity and consistency. He is certainly showing the relatively plain Adrian Sutil — now entering his fifth year in F1 — just how it is done.
Exciting battle in prospect
It is too early to say if Force India can continue to challenge for sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship. To my eyes, it seems as though Sauber have the upper hand here, although Force India can well expect to beat Toro Rosso.
What Force India can certainly take heart from is the fact that they definitely have not dropped out of the midfield. They are not being caught by, for instance, Lotus.
That is certainly a lot more than can be said for Williams, the team that narrowly beat Force India to sixth last year. That Force India have managed to avoid Williams’s fate is evidence enough that they are still a force to be reckoned with.
While it is by no means unheard of for pieces of bodywork to come off an F1 car from time to time, there has already been quite a lot of it this season. In fact, after one and a half race weekends, I can think of four big bodywork failures.
Firstly, there was Kamui Kobayashi’s engine cover detatching itself during practice in Australia. Sauber have since modified the bodywork.
During the Australian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton’s floor became loose.
Nick Heidfeld also had a substantial amount of damage to his car’s bodywork, and it’s not clear how it happened. There is apparently no TV footage of it, and to my knowledge there has been no real explanation of what actually happened to cause the damage.
Then this morning the qualifying session for the Malaysian Grand Prix was halted after Sébastien Buemi’s left sidepod flew off his car and settled on the racing line.
There is every chance that this is all a coincidence, but I do find it intriguing that so much bodywork has fallen off the F1 cars this season already, and the second race hasn’t even started yet.
Update: I have been reminded by The F1 Times on Twitter that two onboard cameras have also fallen off this season already. Felipe Massa’s came off in Practice 3 in Australia, while Sebastian Vettel’s detatched in Practice 3 in Malaysia.
Comments closed