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Archive: reliability

Spanish Grand Prix thoughts

10 May 2009 23:42

Categories: Report

It’s sad to say, but it’s true. The Spanish Grand Prix is now one of the most important events on the calendar since the emergence of Fernando Alonso. But the circuit that hosts it simply does not produce a good F1 race. I can’t remember the last time there was an exciting Spanish Grand Prix, and 2009 won’t exactly stick in the memory for long either. But while the on-track action left something to be desired, there were still a few interesting aspects of the grand prix, and there are a few talking points to be considered.

First of all there is the controversy surrounding the strategy of the two Brawn cars. According to Ross Brawn, Rubens Barrichello’s three-stop strategy was the optimal one. But the driver just couldn’t put in the laps. It’s strange because one of the things that leapt out at me while watching the live timing during the race was the fact that at one point he was lapping around a second faster than anyone else on the circuit.

Jenson Button was always going to be favourite for the win since he grabbed pole position in spectacular fashion on Saturday. But that all changed when Barrichello had an amazing start, and passed his team mate on the outside going into turn 1. Barrichello’s race unravelled during his third stint though, and it became clear that the strategy just wasn’t working for him. I wonder why it was expected to. No-one else opted for a three-stop strategy apart from Kazuki Nakajima way back in 13th place.

There is an excellent analysis of the Brawns’ strategy over at F1 Fanatic.

Putting that aside, you have to applaud Jenson Button for putting in the good lap times when it counted. Brawn were dominant in this race, and this circuit was always expected to suit their car. I sense that Brawn’s advantage will not be so large in Monaco, where I feel Red Bull will have the edge. It is certainly a circuit that Red Bull have tended to do well at in the past.

As for this race, the Red Bull team must have mixed emotions. Mark Webber pulled off the surprise of the race by managing to climb to third largely through pitstop strategy. In the end he was very close to Barrichello at the finish line, so he did a great job.

Sebastian Vettel was more disappointing. For the second race in a row, Vettel’s race has been ruined by being stuck behind a slower car. In Bahrain it was Hamilton, but just for the first stint. His luck worsened further in Spain when he was stuck behind Massa. It transpired that both drivers had identical strategies, so Vettel had no chance to “overtake him in the pitlane”.

Does the fact that this has happened two races in a row raise a question mark over Vettel’s abilities? I certainly find it disappointing that Vettel has been unable to overtake these drivers for two races in a row. It is true that both of these cars were kers-equipped, making it particularly difficult to overtake. But Button managed it in Bahrain. Perhaps Vettel needs to work on this aspect of his racing, and certainly he could do with starting a bit better because in both cases he qualified ahead only to get “kersed” (as Anthony Davidson put it during this weekend’s Chequered Flag podcast) at the start.

It must have been all the more bitter for Sebastian Vettel when it ended up that he was being held up for nothing. Felipe Massa’s fuel rig was seemingly faulty, and he didn’t get enough fuel in his car. The Brazilian had nothing to do but lift off and wait to be overtaken first be Vettel and then by Alonso.

At least Massa was running well in 3rd or 4th for the majority of the race. Räikkönen, hindered by his poor decision to stay in the garage at the end of Q1, never made much progress through the midfield and eventually had to retire with a hydraulics problem. Yet more reliability woes for the Scuderia. I find it difficult to imagine how Ferrari’s season can get worse in any more ways.

Congratulations to Fernando Alonso for driving a good home race and finishing 5th. His fans will be hoping that this is a sign of more to come from the Renault package, and I have no doubt that the team will be able to develop that car well, just as they did last season.

Toyota, who came close to winning in Bahrain, seemed well off the pace in Spain. Jarno Trulli wasn’t helped by his awful start, which left him in the midfield cluster which resulted in him going onto the grass and starting a collision that ended the race of four cars. Timo Glock also got bogged down at the start and never looked close to being that high up the order again.

BMW have improved a little, but not enough. Their car now looks radically different to the one that finished last in Bahrain. Two points for Nick Heidfeld is undoubtedly an improvement. But increasingly BMW’s decision to divert their focus from 2008 seems like the wrong one. Robert Kubica remains pointless.

It’s a similar story for Williams. Although we have become accustomed to seeing them stuck in the lower midfield over the past few years, they appeared to promise a lot during pre-season testing. Nico Rosberg must be disappointed to only be scoring a point in what was actually a pretty good race for him.

McLaren were expected to do badly here, and so it proved to be. Lewis Hamilton finished in 9th. That is not good. For the first few races, Hamilton impressed me with his ability to squeeze good results out of what is undoubtedly a poor car, including a fabulous fourth in Bahrain. He was unable to do that in Spain, and seemed pretty tetchy in the post-race interviews. Heikki Kovalainen retired with gearbox issues. Another one to add to McLaren’s reliability problems, but at least their list is not as long as Ferrari’s.

So another race passes, and Brawn look more dominant than they have done since Australia. But as I say, I have a feeling that Monaco will be a rather different matter, and I look forward to seeing how the teams perform there.

7 comments

The championship changes focus

20 April 2009 18:33

Categories: Opinion, Report

Brawn GP have had about a month in the spotlight. With their Lazarus-like rebirth, their fairytale Melbourne victory and the diffuser controversy, no-one has been able to stop talking about them. The dominance of their performance in Melbourne led many to suspect that Brawn would have at least the first few races completely wrapped up.

But already in Sepang there were signs that the Brawn supremacy was not quite as large as it had seemed. Although Jenson Button won the race, Rubens Barrichello rued his 4th place finish. Then in China Brawn had to make do with a 3-4 rather than the 1-2 they will have been aiming for.

It is easy to write this off as a temporary blip. The Red Bull is clearly an awesome car in the wet. We saw this also in Sepang, when Mark Webber absolutely flew once it started to rain. This has been a trait of Red Bull cars for a few years now, and it even continues in spite of the radical changes to the technical regulations this year.

Fuel-corrected qualifying times show that Brawn still had the advantage over one lap in the dry. But nonetheless, Red Bull’s pace must be giving Brawn cause for concern. The car is also nifty in the dry, as we saw in Melbourne where Sebastian Vettel was running in 2nd for almost the entire race until his crash with Robert Kubica.

What’s more, Red Bull are now hard at work creating a double diffuser which will probably be on the car come Monaco or Turkey. There is already a question mark over whether Brawn will have the resources to continue to develop the car. Red Bull have a big area that they still haven’t exploited, yet they are already in a position to win races.

So congratulations to Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber. What a transformation from last year’s damp squib. To think that there were rumours that Christian Horner was going to get the sack. Not any more!

Red Bull are among the most likeable teams, and Seb and Mark are two charismatic drivers. It has been noted before that this year’s press conferences are much better now that there are personable, chatty drivers finishing in the top three.

At the opposite end of the grid, an equally novel presence — Ferrari. Although the Scuderia can seek solace from the fact that Massa was running quite well until his retirement, the fact is that Ferrari are currently dogged by reliability problems and are not in a position to win races, never mind the championship. Now they have failed to score a point, though they have at least leapfrogged Force India. Nonetheless, this their worst start to the season since 1980. Ominously, that was the start of a 21 year long Championship drought for Ferrari.

Once again I must make the point that this makes McLaren look as though they are having a great season. Lewis Hamilton was racy in the first half of the race in China, no doubt using his kers to good effect. But later on he dropped off, constantly falling off track and spinning. This seems to be a return of his trait of poor tyre management.

In the end, the steadier Heikki Kovalainen leapfrogged him while he was off-track — the icing on the cake of a lacklustre race for Hamilton. 4th in the Constructors’ Championship is not quite the unmitigated disaster this season promised to be for McLaren. It seems as though the car is dire over one lap, but its race pace is not so bad.

One of the teams that McLaren has unexpectedly outshone so far is Renault. I feel deeply sorry for the way Alonso’s race unfolded. Renault opted for a bold and aggressive strategy by filling Alonso light. But this unravelled as the race was — unnecessarily, in my view — started behind the safety car.

This gave Alonso no chance to build up a gap as intended. Indeed, matters were compounded by the fact that Alonso took a pit stop at just the wrong time. This meant that effectively Alonso started the race from the back, rather than second as intended. The fact that Alonso made it back up to 9th by the end of the race is to be applauded.

Alonso’s team mate Nelsinho Piquet provided an excellent demonstration of just why he is not Formula 1 material. It is difficult to guess which F1 driver will get the sack first. There are two other prime candidates in my view.

First is Giancarlo Fisichella, who rumour has it is beginning to try the patience of the Force India team. Fisichella has been largely anonymous so far this season, apart from the moment where he forgot where his pit box was, to much embarrassment. In comparison, Adrian Sutil was running a highly credible 6th on merit when he aquaplaned off the circuit in Shanghai. Had he finished, it would have caused major embarrassment for Ferrari, who would have been the only team yet to score a point.

The third driver who must be hoping to improve soon is Sébastien Bourdais. I thought he should have been given another year to properly assess his abilities. The Frenchman promised he would be better on slicks. Well, now we have slicks — and he has failed to up his game.

He is being totally outclassed by this season’s only rookie, Sébastien Buemi. He showed moments of serious talent in Shanghai, including a bold overtaking move on Kimi Räikkönen. In the end, Buemi could not stop himself from having the occasional off, but he still managed to finish 8th.

Not many suspected that Buemi would be a star of F1 based on his GP2 performances. Mike Gascoyne (who, incidentally, was excellent on the BBC this weekend — could he be our Steve Matchett?) said something to this effect. I was first seriously impressed by Buemi after watching him in last year’s GP2 sprint race at Magny Cours. During that race he ploughed his way through the field, making Bruno Senna look a bit ordinary. That was also a wet race. Is Buemi therefore a wet weather specialist, not unlike his fellow Red Bull protégé Vettel?

Final word — what on earth happened to Toyota’s pace? And Williams for that matter. So much for the advantages of the double decker diffuser!

5 comments

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.

19 comments

2009 F1 season preview: Part 2

23 March 2009 17:10

Categories: Opinion

Continuing my look at how I think the teams line up going into the new season.

5. McLaren-Mercedes

There has been lots of speculation over McLaren’s position throughout the winter. In the past month or so it has emerged that McLaren appear to have major problems finding grip at the rear. The McLaren has scarcely been able to set a semi-respectable time all winter, and ended up doing loads of straight line testing with yellow paint smeared all over the car in an attempt to understand the airflow.

In the cynical world of F1, many observers pointed out that this could just be the ultimate form of sandbagging. James Allen alerted us to the theory that McLaren are simply approaching testing in a different way as a result of the new testing restrictions. Yet more (such as Mr C on Sidepodcast) suggest that it may be a publicity start.

I don’t buy any of it. Sandbagging is all very well, but they have to turn up the wick at some point to make sure that everything behaves as expected at full speed. And I doubt it’s a publicity stunt, because I can’t imagine that Vodafone are too pleased about having their logo smeared with yellow day-glo goo in quite a high-profile way.

It’s worth remembering that McLaren have produced a dud of a car before in recent years — the MP4-18, which was so bad it never raced, and its offspring the MP4-19. Mind you, these problems were largely down to reliability rather than aerodynamic issues. That year, McLaren still managed to win a race.

My guess is that if McLaren manage to find a fix for their aerodynamic problems, they will turn out to have a decent season. But it will have proved a distraction, having used up resources and time which could have been spent on improving the car rather than fixing it.

4. Brawn-Mercedes

Brawn have been the surprise of the off-season. After a troubled winter which saw the team put up for sale without warning, and a protracted rescue, the team looked set to have a poor season. Yet the Brawn has easily been the most impressive of the cars, setting blistering times during practice.

It could all be an attempt to attract attention and gain sponsors. But the team is still getting a nice amount of funding from Honda. Also, Mercedes said they wouldn’t supply an engine until funding was fully in place, so presumably it is in place. I’m sure Brawn wouldn’t say no to a bit of extra funding though.

In a way, it makes sense that the Brawn is a fast car. Let’s not forget that Honda basically gave up on 2008 in order to focus on 2009. Before the team was put up for sale, I thought Honda were going to be the team to watch in 2009. Expectations only dropped after the tumultuous events of the winter.

Of course, this is irrational because it is still the same car. Only the engine is different. While this would normally lead to reliability problems, the Brawn car has been surprisingly reliable during testing. Whether or not you think Brawn were running light during the test sessions, the reliability of the car cannot be denied. Indeed, it may be the fact that Brawn are actually in a better position. Judging by Jenson Button’s comments, the Mercedes engine has more grunt that Honda’s.

My gut feeling is that Brawn will be in contention to win a few races, particularly at the start of the season. They may not have the resources to develop the car as intensively as other teams throughout the season, so their performance may drop off later on in the season.

3. Toyota

Immediately after Toyota’s launch, I pooh-poohed their chances. But their testing form seems remarkably solid. The TF109 has been among the fastest cars, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Toyota win a race or two. But there is still something inside me that refuses to see them as genuine championship contenders.

2. BMW

This is an important year for BMW. For many, they unforgivably gave up on the championship battle last season. A certain Polish driver was particularly peeved. If BMW don’t perform really well this season, history will view their 2008 strategy as a mistake.

Fortunately for BMW, their pre-season form seems pretty solid. They have done nothing spectacular, but this is part of the BMW way. Last year they seemed in the doldrums going by their testing form, but they had no problems at all once the actual racing was under way. BMW are not a showy team, and it is their methodical and sober approach that makes them winners.

BMW seem poised to take advantage of the ability to use kers. The team has always seemed the most confident of everyone over their kers system. But could it be a disadvantage to their star driver Robert Kubica? The Pole is tall (and therefore heavy) for an F1 driver, and the added weight of kers is one particular area where BMW appear to have a weakness.

1. Ferrari

Ferrari were the first to launch their car, and at first I felt like Ferrari were going to have a moderate season. For some reason, the early testing form suggested that to me. Of course, the idea behind the early launch was to enable Ferrari to debug and perfect the car. So the car’s more recent performances has been pretty tasty.

If there is one thing that will be a cause for concern to the Scuderia it will be reliability. They seem to have been suffering from a few gremlins over the winter. This will be especially worrying since Ferrari’s reliability left a lot to be desired last year as well.

All-in-all, though, I can’t help feeling that Ferrari are going to be leading the way this season.

Comments closed

Honda can't even leave F1 properly

18 February 2009 18:58

Categories: News, Opinion

I truly feel deeply sorry for anyone who follows / followed the Honda F1 team. The team has been a walking joke for years. The events of the past few months have shown that Honda can’t even disappear from F1 without making a total hash-job of it.

It wasn’t always like this. Of course, the BAR team was always a bit of a loony show. Expertly (ahem!) led by a ski instructor, the team was a shambles. They couldn’t even get their livery done correctly.

But things took an upswing towards the middle of this decade. David Richards hauled the team up the grid and in 2004 BAR’s performances were consistent enough to earn it 2nd place in the Constructors’ Championship on merit. Then David Richards left.

He was replaced with Nick Fry, a smirking, over-confident fool who seemingly couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. At round 4 of the 2005 Formula 1 Championship, the team was caught out when an illegal second fuel tank was discovered. After that point, the team’s performance plummeted for some reason.

Since then, Honda have bought the team outright. You would have thought that would be a good thing. Oh no. Those clever people decided to bring in a motorbike designer, Shuhei Nakamoto, with minimal experience with designing cars, as technical director. He replaced the perfectly competent Geoff Willis, who now works at Red Bull Racing. After Nakamoto’s disastrous design was unveiled, Honda spent two years in P-nowhere. Can’t think why.

2009 was supposed to be better than this. They had brought in Ross Brawn specifically to make 2009 better than this. This was going to be Honda’s big comeback year! We could see what the man who masterminded every single one of Michael Schumacher’s World Championships could do. Then Honda pulled the plug on the entire F1 project mere months before lift off.

Now, fair enough. Honda can’t exactly help economic circumstances and if they need to make cutbacks (even just for cosmetic reasons) then that is just the reality they face. But have they managed to do it in a vaguely dignified way? Of course not. This is the Honda F1 team. They make a botch job of everything.

If anyone can make head or tail of all the contradictory news stories about Honda that have emerged over the past week or so, could you please explain all because I am at a complete loss. The deadline of the end of January has long been forgotten about. The management buyout was supposed to have been done and dusted by now.

Now, having seen off all of the other potential buyers with all the talk of a management buyout, something seems to have gone badly wrong. Rumour after rumour has emerged over the past week or so, and it seems as though the Honda team don’t have a clue what they are doing.

A week or so ago I read that, despite the fact that things had gone quiet on the Honda front, things were looking up for the team. Since then, there has been an explosion of peculiar rumours that suggests that all is not well.

First of all, it was rumoured that Bruno Senna had signed for the team, that Honda would continue to supply limited funding and that Bernie Ecclestone would provide further financial backing. But it turned out that Bernie can’t supply funding to Honda, even if he wanted to.

Then we were told that Honda had secured backing for the first four races of the season, mostly as a result of funds raised from Petrobras via Bruno Senna. But the four races thing sounded ominously similar to Super Aguri’s 2008 season.

Petrobras poured cold water on the suggestions pretty quickly, pointing out that not only are they not interested in Honda, but they don’t do driver sponsorships either. So the rumours were a load of hogwash all along.

But all was not lost!, we were told. Honda were in talks with a major company that could provide solid backing and had a reputable brand that was known worldwide. James Allen revealed that the company could be Virgin. Grandprix.com outlined why a deal with Virgin could make sense, because of the links between Richard Branson, Adrian Reynard and the Honda F1 team.

But then Pitpass phoned up Virgin, whose Brand Development and Corporate Affairs Director, Will Whitehorn, was very negative about the idea. And that it was Honda who approached Virgin, not the other way round.

Now Reuters have reported that the deal is possibly on. The BBC have since reported that a Honda spokesperson has now confirmed that talks with Virgin are under way.

In out, in out, shake it all about. Part of me wonders if Honda are deliberately spreading these rumours just to try and generate some interest in the team. To be scrabbling around like this with mere weeks until the beginning of the season is not good.

Then there are the engines. Soon after Honda announced their withdrawal, Ross Brawn practically said that an engine deal with Ferrari was a given, which was news to the Scuderia. Now apparently only Mercedes are interested, and that is only if they can be guaranteed that Honda have “bulletproof” backing. Which Honda clearly do not have.

Even if they do get it together by the start of the season, Honda’s prospects for the 2009 season are utterly doomed. Even if the car is fundamentally good, the late change of engine supplier is bound to result in reliability problems, as pointed out by James Allen. Honda will also arrive in Melbourne having had very little testing.

It is such a shame. 2009 was supposed to be Honda’s comeback year. They had literally given up on 2008 so that they could focus on 2009, and I was genuinely excited to see what they could come up with. Unfortunately, if there is one thing you can rely on in F1, it is that Nick Fry and his merry men are 100% guaranteed to cock it up. What a shame.

12 comments

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