10. Timo Glock

Timo Glock has started to show real signs of improvement this year. While the Toyota team may have bizarrely liked to have criticised Glock for the car’s poor performance, the fact is that Glock put in some great performances in 2009. Particularly notable was his heroic performance in Singapore, where he finished in second position, climbing his way up from sixth on the grid. Despite still making the odd mistake, he generally impressed me more than Jarno Trulli.

9. Kimi Räikkönen

By now it is no secret that the Ferrari F60 was a difficult car to drive. Nor was is particularly fast. In this light, Räikkönen’s achievements seem rather better than the results may suggest. Strangely, he seemed to become better after Felipe Massa was sidelined. He scored four podium finishes in a row from Hungary onwards. This included a magnificent win in Belgium. It is always a joy to watch Räikkönen at Spa.

However, the same question marks surrounding his commitment and motivation continued to float around him. Sometimes his behaviour did little to dispel this notion. It is a shame that he won’t be racing in F1 in 2010, but you can’t help but wonder if he could have done a little more to make his mark this year.

8. Fernando Alonso

I am a great admirer of Fernando Alonso, but it was a difficult year to watch him. The Renault car was not up to Alonso’s capabilities, and as such I feel that Alonso spent much of this year going through the motions. This year was a year of him just waiting for a Ferrari contract to be signed.

At the start of the season, Alonso would collect a sixth place here, a fifth there… Although it didn’t set the world alight, it was admirable stuff considering that his team mates could not even think of touching a points position. There were some flashes of greatness — an early dominance of the Hungarian Grand Prix before it all fell apart after his first pit stop and a nifty third place at Singapore among them. I look forward to seeing him in a good car again.

7. Felipe Massa

Obviously Felipe Massa had a very difficult season for reasons outwith his control, what with him having to sit out the second half of the season after being injured in Hungary. But he looked good during the first half of the season, when the car wasn’t letting him down. He out performed his team mate, grabbed the fastest lap in Monaco, a good podium finish in Germany and possibly would have had another good result in China if his car hadn’t broken down.

6. Nico Rosberg

A solid year for Rosberg in my view. I was critical of him during the 2008 season, when he got involved in too many needless scrappy accidents. This year he looked more mature, and is ready to step up to the plate with a better car. He comprehensively outperformed Kazuki Nakajima. Although there were no podium finishes, he had a great run of very strong results, with eight consecutive points finishes in the middle of the season.

5. Rubens Barrichello

Rubens Barrichello had a brilliant year considering it was marginal whether or not he would even be in F1 this year. But the sport’s elder statesman showed why he is still entrusted with the world’s fastest cars. He took a while to get up to speed at the start of the year. This gave Jenson Button the vital momentum he needed in order to secure this year’s Drivers’ Championship. But Button would not have been in that position were it not for Barrichello’s set up data. You might not be able to teach an old dog new tricks, but you can certainly rely on him to bring you your pipe and slippers. He will be a great asset to Williams, although he is unproven in the role of team leader.

4. Mark Webber

At last, Mark Webber has had a decent season where he has been able to show his abilities without being hindered by bucketloads of bad luck. Even then, he was disadvantaged by the fact that he had a huge chunk of metal embedded in his leg as a result of the injuries he sustained while bicycling last winter. Given that Mark Webber is already quite large as drivers go, this extra weight was an enormous disadvantage. For a portion of the season he looked like a decent Championship contender. Even though a bad phase in the final third of the season put paid to this, Mark Webber took two wins and a handful of other great results too.

3. Sebastian Vettel

It is no secret that Sebastian Vettel is hugely talented. But he is also still young, and has a lot yet to prove if he is to truly deserve the mantle of “Future World Champion” which is often attached to him. He does still make too many mistakes. His lap 1 foul-up in Turkey is unforgettable, and his late tangle with Robert Kubica in Australia was avoidable. Meanwhile, Vettel has shown a worrying trait of failing to overtake drivers. That said, he is undoubtedly fast and generally had the upper hand over his team mate.

2. Lewis Hamilton

This has been a learning year for Lewis Hamilton, and I am sure he exits 2009 a much stronger driver than he entered it. McLaren started the season with a horrid car. The year also began in disaster when he was caught, in collusion with members of the McLaren team, lying to the FIA stewards. But he didn’t let any of that get the better of him. Instead, the McLaren team got on with the job of making the car better, and Hamilton was ready to take advantage as soon as the car was good enough to win races.

The most eyebrow-raising moment of his season was when he let a great result in Italy slip away when he pushed too hard unnecessarily on the final lap. Apart from that, I think the second half of the season was textbook from Lewis Hamilton. I am sure he will be extremely strong in 2010, particularly if McLaren produce as good a car as they ought to.

1. Jenson Button

But the best driver of the year for me has to be Jenson Button. His utter dominance at the start of the season meant that, no matter how much he went off the boil in the second half of the season, he was untouchable no matter which way you slice it.

The thing that impressed me the most about Jenson Button this year was the fact that when he needed to overtake someone he just did it. This is in stark contrast to his main rival for the Championship, Sebastian Vettel. Most of the season’s best overtaking moves have come from Jenson Button, meaning that not only was he the best driver — he was also the most entertaining one.

Happy new year to all readers of vee8!

Yes, yes, I know. This is a race that happened almost two weeks ago. Sorry. You should see the list of articles I still haven’t written yet but need to get round to!

In the intervening period I have received an email asking me what I think of Renault’s ban from the European Grand Prix. Now I have been accosted in the comments by Becken for failing to review the Hungarian Grand Prix. So I’d better do it then!

First of all, you have to give massive amounts of praise to McLaren for their stunning comeback. It was clear at the Nürburgring that this was a team very much on the comeback trail. At the time I said that they could be challenging for wins in the second half of the season. But I didn’t expect it to be so soon, or so emphatic when it happened.

I am not Lewis Hamilton’s biggest fan, but I was delighted to see him winning in Hungary. It is a testament to the huge amount of effort that the McLaren team has put into developing their car — what quite frankly looked like a hopeless task just a couple of months ago. The achievement is all the more incredible when you consider that testing is banned, removing a vital tool to track how the car is developing.

Hamilton’s run at the front was not down to luck. Nor was it with someone climbing all over his gearbox. Indeed, who could even have predicted that the second-placed car running 11.5s behind would be the Ferrari of Kimi Räikkönen? Are McLaren and Ferrari now once again the front-runners? It could be that kers has come of age.

At times, the grand prix had a very retro feel about it. This season has been all about a new order. But for the first phase of the race the leaders were Alonso and Hamilton, with Räikkönen in 4th. Three names we should be familiar with seeing at the front, but it was most bizarre to see it happening this year.

I can’t help but notice at the same time that the unusual stewards’ decisions have come back just as the old guard have returned to the front. During the first half of this season, the stewards were noticeably quiet (with the exception, of course, of Australia). Not now. Is there something about McLaren, Ferrari and Renault that makes the stewards just lose their minds?

As you might be able to tell, I am not very impressed with the decision to ban Renault from the European Grand Prix for Fernando Alonso’s wheel coming off. On one hand, you can understand why they did it. In the week which saw the awful death of Henry Surtees in a Formula Two race after he was hit by a wheel, and a day after Felipe Massa was hospitalised after driving into a piece of debris, seeing a wheel bouncing around the track was absolutely the last thing anyone wanted to see.

But the decision to ban the entire team from the next race feels like a complete overreaction, leading to the suspicion that it was a knee-jerk reaction. I could have understood a heavy fine, or some kind of suspended ban. But the FIA’s justification for the ban seems quite odd to me. They say that the Renault team “knowingly” released Alonso from his pit box with the wheel not securely in place. Seems a bit odd to me. Which would deliberately release their car in such a state?

Nonetheless, the fact is that the team apparently took no action after that. They neglected to inform Alonso — who thought he had a puncture — what the problem was. That seems pretty incompetent to me, if not downright negligent.

That is why I think a fine would be justified. But to ban them from the race, when we have seen countless instances of wheels falling off cars going unpunished (including a similar incident involving Alonso driving a Renault in Hungary in 2006!), is over the top in my view. That’s especially the case when you consider that the next race is in Valencia, where much of the crowd will be wanting to see Fernando Alonso in action. Sometimes you think Formula 1 likes to shoot itself in the foot.

Meanwhile, both of the teams that are battling for this season’s championship will be worried for different reasons. Brawn must now be worried about the drop in their car’s performance. There is no hiding behind explanations about the temperature. Jenson Button’s bewildered radio transmission, “How — HOW? — can this car be so BAD?” sums it up. Brawn have put something on their car to destabilise what was an awesome package.

It is not a complete disaster situation. Jenson Button finished 7th. But it now looks like Brawn are behind at least five teams: McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull, Williams and Toyota. Their journey is the opposite to McLaren’s, and their challenge will be all the more difficult with testing banned.

Button actually only lost four points of his lead, which is still 18.5 points. And that is the reason why Red Bull should be worried. Because if they are to have a hope of challenging for the Championship, they need to stay at the sharp end, and they can’t afford to have the third fastest car. They need to be at the front, collecting 18, 16, 15 points when they can. Their tally from Budapest was just six.

It must be remembered that Hungaroring is a rather unique circuit, and many of the following circuits are very different indeed. But if McLaren and Ferrari are able to leapfrog Red Bull in the long run, Red Bull need to rely on staying ahead of Williams, Toyota and Brawn if their championship battle is to come to anything.

In this sense, despite only scoring two points, Jenson Button now looks like even more of a shoe-in for the championship. I’m sure he doesn’t feel like it. I can’t wait to find out how the rest of the season unfolds.

The Formula 1 news has been dominated by political activity of late. I have struggled to bring myself to write about it, but today’s events seem like a good stage to provide an overview of where things stand.

This business with Ferrari taking the FIA to court over a veto is very interesting. Ostensibly the loss of the court case is bad news for Ferrari, but in fact their point has been proven. The court did confirm that Ferrari do have such a veto — just that they have failed to play their card correctly.

What this has conveniently done, though, is proved the point that the FIA simply are not to be trusted in this sort of situation. This technical veto — along with a host of financial and sporting perks — was given to Ferrari as a reward for jumping into bed with the FIA the last time the governing body’s power was put into question. GPWC (later GPMA) was an alliance of some of F1’s biggest names. It was essentially a bargaining tool for the teams not unlike today’s Fota. Ferrari was a major player in it — until the FIA lured them away with bribes. With Ferrari gone, GPMA was toothless and little was heard of it ever again.

This time, Ferrari aren’t for turning. The threat to the FIA’s power is therefore much greater this time round. So the FIA has preoccupied itself with looking for ways to either break up or undermine Fota. That is why they have this sudden obsession with new teams, even though there have been vacancies on the grid for over ten years. I seriously doubt we’d be hearing about how vital it is to attract new teams were it not for Fota. By doing whatever they can to bring in new teams, the FIA can ensure that there will no longer be unanimity among the teams.

After all, the FIA does not really have much else going for it. Participants, fans, media commentators and other onlookers have all completely lost faith in the FIA as it brings in ever-dafter regulations that lack any cohesion. For just one example, they will constantly bang on about cost cutting, then force teams to incur further costs by radically changing the regulations periodically.

Moreover, the FIA constantly fail to meet their own regulations, such as when earlier this year they attempted to change the sporting regulations within days of the season starting without first consulting the teams. Nor can the FIA administrate the sport in an even-handed way, as has been patently demonstrated by countless unfathomable stewards’ decisions over the past few seasons. The FIA is also wholly inadequate at formulating or policing the technical regulations, as is apparent with the completely botched introduction of kers and their inability to simply tell anyone if the double deck diffuser was legal.

Earlier this year Fota put forward a measured set of proposals that were based on actual market research which was conducted in an open and transparent manner. By contrast, Max Mosley just plucks new rules out of his freshly spanked arse. The FIA changes the regulations willy-nilly, out of the blue, for no apparent reason, without consulting anyone. The views of the teams, drivers, fans and the wider industry all count for nothing as far as the FIA is concerned.

This is the nub of the matter really. As has now become clear, the budget cap controversy was merely a conduit for a larger battle to begin — a battle over the governance of the sport. Do we want Formula 1 to continue to be driven into the ground by a frustrated politician who has no interest in consulting the people who really matter to the sport? Or would we prefer a future where fans and teams have a say, and where regulation changes can be measured and predictable? Well, I know whose side I’m on.

While people may scoff at the apparent arrogance of Ferrari’s recent statements, they do have a point. As readers will know, I am no Ferrari fan. But there is no doubt that this brand carries a lot of history, a lot of status, a lot of respect, a hell of a lot of fans and money by the bucket load. Arguably, the Ferrari brand is much more famous than the Formula 1 brand.

So Ferrari’s point about the calibre of the supposed new teams is bang on in my view. Make no mistake, the vast majority of these are teams that under normal circumstances would not be able to even consider entering F1, with an F1-standard car at an F1-standard budget. It is feasible only with the FIA promising to skew the rules in their favour — just as they skewed the rules in Ferrari’s favour back in 2005. This sort of crap has no place in a “sport” in the 21st century.

Privateer teams may be romantic, and I would love to see decent private teams to be able to compete at an F1 standard on merit, just as Brawn and Williams do today. But F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of motorsport. And though some of the proposed new teams are accomplished enough at certain levels, few if any could claim to be on the cusp of being at F1 standard in normal circumstances.

As Joe Saward put it, it beggars belief that Max Mosley would think that it would be worth trading names like Ferrari, Toyota, Renault, BMW and potentially Mercedes for names like Wirth Research, Epsilon Euskadi, RML, Formtech, Campos and so on. Ask Max Mosley’s precious “man in the pub” about any of the names from the first list, and their eyes will light up in recognition. Asking about names from the second list would elicit a nonplussed response.

A grid full of teams like this, and with none of the historic and famous names that mean so much to people, would be an empty F1 indeed. It could be a return to the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the grid was full of half-arsed operations which polluted the field and acted as mobile chicanes. The FIA went too far in its efforts to get rid of these teams in the mid-1990s. Now it seems happy enough to go too far back the other way.

Max Mosley’s case seems utterly weak. He should know that too, because the last time he threatened the teams by forcing them to enter at short notice, the list of “new teams” was similarly long. Of these teams, one — Prodrive — was given the nod. It never materialised because the FIA decided to forego the biggest opportunity to cut costs they could ever ask for by making customer cars illegal.

As before, these new teams look like paper tigers. Yet Max Mosley is hinging the future of the sport on them because he finds it more palatable than relinquishing any of his power.

For a change, the FIA handed out a sensible punishment. I think for what McLaren did, to be banned from any races would have been too much. At the same time, a three race suspended ban reflects the fact that McLaren really should not get caught doing this sort of thing again. I called for the FIA to deal with the situation in a fair manner, and I think they have done so. For once, the FIA made a sensible decision!

Where it starts to stink, though, is in the FIA’s justification for why the punishment was not too lenient. James Allen, among many others, noted how the departure of Ron Dennis appears to have paved the way for this relatively light sentence.

FIA president Max Mosley saw no need to labour the point on this matter and said he was satisfied that a real and lasting change had been made at McLaren with the departure of Dennis and the appointment of a new chairman, a captain of industry, Richard Lapthorne.

Mosley said, “In the end there were decisions taken by the people who are no longer involved. That being the case, it would have been unfair to go on with the matter.

“We think it’s entirely fair. They’ve demonstrated there’s a complete culture change and under those circumstances it’s better to put the whole thing behind us.

“Unless they do something similar, that’s the end of the matter.”

Mosley suggested that the decision to lie to the stewards in Melbourne and to continue the deceit in Malaysia was down to sporting director Dave Ryan and implied that the FIA felt Dennis had been involved. Although Whitmarsh told journalists in Malaysia that no-one more senior than Ryan had been involved in the matter and Dennis strenously denied that his decision to move away from the race team had anything to do with the case, the implication in Mosley’s words is that he feels he was involved.

This kind of sums up the relationship the FIA appears to have with McLaren and Ron Dennis. Even though there is no real evidence that Ron Dennis was remotely involved in the decision of Dave Ryan and Lewis Hamilton to lie to the stewards, Mosley had a hunch, and that’s enough apparently. But with Ron Dennis gone, there’s no need to “labour the point” any more, so there is no ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS fine this time round.

If you ask me, there is far more of a sense that Martin Whitmarsh knew more about this issue than he let on. And how Ron Dennis could have been so heavily involved is beyond me. He wasn’t even present at Sepang, so how on earth could he have manipulated the situation as it unfolded there?

As for a culture change, don’t get me started. It’s bad enough that the FIA have managed to delude themselves that they can somehow tell how much money all the teams will be spending from next year onwards. But now they are also apparently auditors of culture too! Do they have spies within McLaren keeping track of the culture all the time? And how the hell does a culture change so “completely” within one month anyway?

As if you needed further proof that the FIA were basically on a Ron Dennis witch-hunt for the past several years, Max Mosley added these choice words:

Martin Whitmarsh made a very good impression. He’s straightforward and wants to work with us. We’re all trying to do the same thing, which is make the championship successful. Martin fully understands that and we reacted accordingly.

In other words, Martin Whitmarsh is more likely to accede to the FIA’s bully-boy tactics, while Ron Dennis was more willing to stand up to the FIA. And I have to say that Ron Dennis seemed much more closely aligned to the fans than Max Mosley ever does. A bit of the sport died when Ron Dennis left. But the FIA are now rubbing their hands with glee.

I only hope that Fota turns out to have the will power to stand up to the FIA for the good of the sport. In the meantime, the FIA will do everything in their power to break the partnership down. They scored a major victory by finally getting rid of Ron Dennis.

This is no way to run a sport. When is Max Mosley going to be put up before the WMSC for bringing the sport into disrepute? Because he has brought it into disrepute a thousand times more than Ron Dennis ever did.

I know that not many people are thinking about this just now, especially as attention has turned to the diffuser debate. But I have only just found the time to write about it here. You may have seen me mention this elsewhere, including in the comments to this blog. But I haven’t yet included it as a separate post.

I first mentioned this in a comment to one of the posts below. Afterwards I decided to write a comment about it on James Allen’s blog. He then saw fit to use my comment as the foundation of a separate post which he called “Fresh insight into McLaren case“.

He had mentioned that the WMSC may find it difficult to prove that anyone other than Dave Ryan and Lewis Hamilton was involved in the decision to lie to the stewards at the Australian Grand Prix. But I remembered an interview that Martin Whitmarsh had with the BBC’s Ted Kravitz which I found very interesting. You can watch the video here, but it is only available to UK users. In case you can’t see it, I have transcribed the relevant part below:

…there’s some debate about whether it’s a 3rd place at the moment given that Trulli fell off and re-passed under the Safety Car…

[Ted Kravitz asks him to expand on this.]

…At the end, under the Safety Car, Trulli fell off onto the grass and Lewis had no choice but to go past him. He was not on the racing circuit. Trulli then re-took the place under the Safety Car, which ordinarily you wouldn’t do.

I know that the FIA are looking at it at the moment and doubtless we’ll have a ruling in due course.

For me, the interview is very misleading. It is “technically true”. But Martin Whitmarsh leaves the BBC’s viewers with the distinct impression that Jarno Trulli was in the wrong — that he had overtaken Lewis Hamilton of his own accord, not having been invited to do so. The key point is that the version of events relayed by Martin Whitmarsh to the BBC’s viewers is more or less identical to what we understand Dave Ryan and Lewis Hamilton told the stewards.

This means one of three things. One is that it is an entirely meaningless coincidence, though it would be quite a remarkable one. Second, both Dave Ryan and Martin Whitmarsh independently came up with the same cover story. This in itself would say something bad about the culture of McLaren.

The third possibility is that a version of events — the McLaren party line, as it were — was constructed very soon after the race. In this scenario, Martin Whitmarsh was in on it, and Dave Ryan has become the fall guy. If this is the case, McLaren are guilty as sin and the decision to scapegoat Dave Ryan is reprehensible.

A lot of journalists sensed that Martin Whitmarsh knew more than he was letting on. The BBC interview only adds to this impression. The interview throws the spotlight straight back onto Martin Whitmarsh. What did he know about the situation? Did he instruct Dave Ryan — who by all accounts I have heard is a well-respected person within the paddock — to lie to the stewards?

A lot of the conversation on James Allen’s blog has centred on Martin Whitmarsh’s use of the word “ordinarily” in the sentence, “Trulli then re-took the place under the Safety Car, which ordinarily you wouldn’t do.” I noted in my original comment, “Yeah, you wouldn’t do it… unless the guy in front pulled over!”

I was surprised that the BBC themselves hadn’t made more of the interview. Perhaps they had forgotten about it. I note with interest now that the Telegraph is reporting that the FIA have requested a copy of the interview from the BBC.

I must point out here that I sincerely hope that any further punishment the FIA hands out to McLaren is not too over-the-top. I should think a fine (considerably less than ONE HUNDRED MEELION DOLLARS) or the removal of Constructors’ Championship points for a few races would suffice. After all, what McLaren did may have been unsporting. But they did not do anything downright dangerous, like a certain man who drove a red car was fond of doing from time to time and never got more than a slap on the wrists for.