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Archive: team orders

Bluffer's guide — Part 3: teams and drivers

15 June 2008 21:07

Categories: Bluffer's guide

At last, bluffer’s guide makes its return. For the past couple of months I’ve been too busy to continue the series, but now I have some more free time. Previous bluffer’s guides have looked at the rules and aspects of strategy. This guide will look at issues around teams and drivers: how they enter, why they enter and what their job is.

Entry requirements

At present there are ten constructors (the posh word for teams) in Formula 1. Each team enters two cars, meaning that 20 cars are entered into each event. There is nothing set in stone about these numbers. It is thought that according to the Concorde Agreement (which will be covered in a future bluffer’s guide) a minimum of 20 may enter. According to the FIA Sporting Regulations, a maximum of 24 cars may start a race.

Teams normally stick with the same two drivers throughout the season. However they may use up to four different drivers in one season, or more at the FIA’s approval.

In addition to the two race drivers, every team employs test drivers. These test drivers may be used during the Friday Practice sessions, although each team is still limited to running two cars. For this reason, teams tend to use their race drivers anyway.

A driver must be awarded an FIA Super License before he may compete in Formula 1. To achieve this, a driver must show consistent form in a lower category. Failing that, a driver may get a Super License with the unanimous approval of… whoever makes that decision — provided he has tested for at least 300km at racing speeds in a current car.

This is basically to prevent rubbish but rich drivers from paying loads of money to achieve his childhood dream of entering a Grand Prix. However, it hasn’t stopped the occasional bad egg from slipping through the net!

The decision to enter

Unlike some other sports, there is no promotion or relegation in F1. The decision to enter Formula 1 is essentially little more than a business decision. Once a team has met the FIA’s requirements, all a team has to do is be able to fund itself in order to keep going.

The huge costs involved in running an F1 team are enough to keep the list of potential entrants low. There is space for 12 teams in the Championship and only ten of them are taken. One of those teams is currently up for sale. There is little point in setting up a new team if you can easily buy an existing one.

This season began with 11 constructors. But when Super Aguri ran out of funding it had to pull out.

Similarly, drivers have few requirements to meet. They must have a Super License (as outlined in the section above). But apart from that, all they have to do to get a drive is basically to persuade a team to give them a drive.

This does not depend on talent alone, although that is of course a huge factor. Many drivers get a slot at a poorly-funded team by bringing sponsorship money. Such drivers are known as ‘pay drivers’ because they effectively pay for their drive at a team.

Some pay drivers have gone down in history as being notoriously awful. Ricardo Rosset had lots of cash as he was the heir to an underwear business. Fittingly enough, his performances in F1 were, indeed, pants.

The 2008 season is said to be the first year for a very long time (perhaps ever) when the grid did not contain any pay drivers. However, it is also thought that Nelsinho Piquet and Adrian Sutil bring substantial sponsorship moneys to their respective teams.

A team sport or an individual sport?

Formula 1 (along with most other forms of motor racing) is rather unique among sports because it is both a team sport and an individual sport. A good driver would be nowhere were it not for a team of hundreds working tirelessly to provide him with a good car. On the day of the race, an army of people analyse the race as it happens to try and come up with the best strategy for the conditions. And the efforts of the pit crew cannot go unnoticed, as they must be relied upon to ensure that pitstops are carried out smoothly.

In this sense, you can say that Formula 1 is a team sport, but one that places a huge amount of the responsibility on one individual. Once the driver is on the track, there is not much more the team can do to help him, and it is up to the driver not to make a mistake. For this reason, there are two championships in F1 — one for drivers and one for constructors.

Each team enters two drivers and these are often referred to as “team mates”. However, often there is nothing “matey” about the relationship between these two individuals. Indeed, they might hate each other because the one person they want to beat more than anyone else is their team mate, who is usually racing with equal equipment. Comparing team mates with each other is an important barometer of a driver’s skill, so it is usually in a driver’s interest to undermine his team mate.

However, pragmatically a driver has to remember that he is an employee of his team. If a team decides that it is in their best interests to help one driver more than another, they are within their rights to do this. This is known as “team orders” and is part of racing. (Team orders will be discussed in more detail in a future bluffer’s guide.)

Testing

Teams spend a lot of time testing their cars to make sure that their developments work properly before racing with them. Such tests must be held at an FIA-sanctioned circuit. Testing is limited to 30,000km per team per calendar year. This limit excludes promotional events and young driver training. A young driver is defined as a driver who has not competed in a Formula 1 event for 24 months or has not tested an F1 car for more than four days in the past 24 months.

Teams often employ test drivers whose specific job is to test the car. Often race drivers are used at test sessions in addition to test drivers. Some drivers become highly regarded for their ability to give feedback to their engineers and for their knowledge of how to set up a car. Examples of such drivers include Pedro de la Rosa, Alexander Wurz and Anthony Davidson. These drivers are all highly regarded as test drivers but struggle to get a race drive.

Car development

F1 teams do not just launch a car at the beginning of the season and race with it all year. Teams work throughout the year to improve their performance and developments are made to the cars several times per year as the teams see fit. In most cases, the car at the end of the season is completely different to the car that began the season. Check out Formula1.com’s excellent technical section to keep up with the main car developments throughout the year.

Logically, though, the largest leaps are made over the winter when there is no racing going on. Usually each car is an evolution of the previous year’s car. Sometimes cars are re-designed almost from the ground up each year. This used to happen fairly often, but is increasingly rare these days — unless a team hires a new chief aerodynamicist or some other radical team structural change.

Every time there is a major change to a chassis, its name changes. Usually the name changes in a predictable way for the start of each season. For instance, in 2007 Ferrari’s chassis was the F2007 and McLaren’s was the MP4-22. This year those teams’ chassis are the F2008 and the MP4-23 respectively.

Of course, there’s nothing to stop a team from using the same chassis for two years in a row (although this usually doesn’t happen because the pace of development is such that running a two year old chassis would be a serious disadvantage to any team) or from running two different chassis in one season — just as long, of course, as the chassis met the technical regulations. It is quite common for a team to use their old chassis for the first few races of the year if the development of the new car has been delayed for some reason. This happened to Toro Rosso this year, whose new STR3 was not used until the Monaco Grand Prix, six races into the season.

Liveries

Historically, teams ran traditional liveries with each nationality having a traditional colour. Britain, of course, had British Racing Green, and Italian cars ran in the deep scarlet colour (‘Rosso Corsa’) made so famous by Ferrari. Of course, with the introduction of sponsorship in the late 1960s, this was never going to last and now teams appear in whatever colours take their fancy. But is it true that F1 cars are “glorified cigarette packets”?

The arrival of sponsorship does not mean that the history has gone forever. McLaren (Mercedes) run with a predominantly silver livery and red car numbers, a reflection of the Silver Arrows’ history. BMW run with their corporate colours of navy blue, though the majority of the car is white, Germany’s traditional racing colour.

Honda and Toyota have also run in Japan’s traditional white and red (although today Honda runs in a white, green and blue ‘Earth’ car to highlight environmental concerns). When tobacco sponsorship was still allowed in F1, Honda cleverly used the Lucky Strike logo to double up as the traditional ‘red sun’. Ferrari, of course, are famous for running their traditional ‘Rosso Corsa’ colour. However, in recent years this shade has become lighter, more similar to the shade of red used in Marlboro packets (Phillip Morris still heavily fund Ferrari even though tobacco sponsorship technically does not exist in F1).

Ligier / Prost used blue until the team’s demise in 2002. When Jaguar briefly participated in F1 at the start of this decade, it ran in a deep green. However, it was slightly lighter than British Racing Green, apparently to make sponsor logos stand out better on television. The team that Jaguar bought, the (Ford-powered) Stewart team ran in white and blue, the American racing colours.

Of course, there is nothing in F1′s rules that dictates that teams should use traditional colours. These rules were relaxed in 1970. But clearly many F1 teams still value their heritage enough to run colour schemes that are inspired by history.

Some aspects of the livery are restricted though. The two cars of each team must look “substantially” similar at every event in a year. In 1999, the new BAR team (owned by British American Tobacco) wanted to advertise two of its cigarette brands, one on each car. However, the FIA would not be moved. BAR’s compromise was to advertise one brand along the left side of the car and a different brand on the right. The resulting livery was a real mess and widely derided. From 2000 onwards, BAR’s ditched the ‘dual livery’ scheme.

Each car must display the badge of the car make on the front of the car. The name and national flag of the driver should be displayed on the side (usually just behind the driver’s helmet on the engine cover). The car number should also be visible from the front and the side. However, many spectators complain that the numbers are so small that you cannot see them.

Nowadays, a different way of telling apart the two cars of each team is to look at the ‘T-cam’ (the onboard camera that appears on top of the rollover structure just above and behind the driver’s head). For the lead driver, this is a fluorescent red. For a team’s second driver, it is fluorescent yellow.

Of course, another way to tell drivers apart is to look at their helmets. Traditionally, drivers design their own helmets although these days they are covered in sponsor logos just like the cars are. A good helmet design can become as famous as a historic car livery. Just think of Ayrton Senna’s yellow helmet, Graham Hill’s deep blue helmet with white tabs around the top (an adaptation of a London Rowing Club design, and also used by Graham’s son Damon) or Jackie Stewart’s white helmet with a tartan band around the top.

Car numbers

A minor, but interesting, point is how car numbers are allocated. Car numbers are published by the FIA before the start of each season and remain the same all season.

The current World Champion always races with the number 1. His team mate is allocated number 2. In instances when the World Champion is not participating in the race, it is probable that the Constructors Champion would use the numbers 0 and 2.

Under the old system of allocating car numbers (which ran until 1995), this happened in 1993 and 1994 when Damon Hill ran with the number 0 for two years running. The first time was because of the retirement of Nigel Mansell and the second time was due to the retirement of Alain Prost.

After the numbers 1 (or 0) and 2 are allocated, the following numbers are allocated according to the finishing position in the previous year’s Constructors Championship. So, ignoring the Constructor bearing numbers 1 (or 0) and 2, the highest-scoring constructor will carry the numbers 3 and 4, the next highest-scoring will carry the numbers 5 and 6, and so on. The number 13 is skipped for unclear reasons, though it’s safe to assume that this is due to superstition.

Not all superstitious numbers are removed though. In 2005 Japanese driver Takuma Sato was allocated the number 4 which is an unlucky number in Japanese culture (ominously being closely associated with death). True enough, his season was riddled with bad luck and strange mistakes.

This season McLaren are racing with the numbers 22 and 23 because they were excluded from last year’s Constructors Championship. Super Aguri were allocated numbers 20 and 21. Although Super Aguri no longer participates in F1, McLaren’s numbers remain 22 and 23 for consistency throughout the season.

7 comments

Too many thoughts on Fuji

2 October 2007 23:15

Categories: Formula 1

Firstly — apologies for the lateness of my review of the Japanese Grand Prix. Another busy weekend spilled over into Monday, and is spilling over into Tuesday and Wednesday as well. (I am being very naughty by writing this post.)

There are so many talking points that it is difficult to know where to start.

I guess I should start by noting that it looks as though Lewis Hamilton will be this year’s World Champion. On the basis of his performance in treacherous conditions at Fuji, he fully deserves it. I still think that Fernando Alonso deserves to be World Champion more because I think he has been on balance the better driver. But it’s points that matter.

Hamilton’s drive at Fuji was solid and impressive. In a lot of ways it was a basic pole-to-flag drive for Hamilton. Besides a little run-in with Kubica, he had no real challenges to face. Not much impressive in that, dreadful conditions aside of course. This does not rank alongside, for instance, Senna at Donington in 1993, or even with Alonso at Hungaroring in 2006.

But Hamilton’s race showed firstly that he can drive in the wet. As his engineer noted at the end of the race, he has ticked the “driving in the wet” box that he so conspicuously failed to tick earlier this year at the Nürburgring. It also shows just how quickly he is learning. He made no obvious clangers at Nürburgring, but it was overall a pretty scrappy and unimpressive race. Fuji put that to bed.

It was exactly the opposite for Alonso. It is difficult to know exactly what was wrong with Alonso at Fuji. The conditions should have worked in his favour. Driving in the wet is a major strength of his, as last year’s Hungarian GP demonstrated. At Fuji, though, he was all over the place (certainly in comparison to Hamilton). Seemingly, Hamilton got pole with a heavier car as well.

For another reminder of how well Hamilton is doing, you just had to look from the back of Hamilton’s car on lap 45. Behind the safety car, Sebastian Vettel caused one of the most embarrassing crashes of the season. Mark Webber was running second for Red Bull, and he felt like he was in with a chance of winning. Sebastian Vettel was in third for the Red Bull sister car, Toro Rosso. It would be a historic finish for Red Bull, and for Toro Rosso who were on line for their first ever podium, and their first points of the season.

Then Vettel lost his concentration behind the safety car and slammed straight into the back of Webber. Both cars had to retire from the race. Vettel was distraught — crying in the garage upon his sheepish return to the pitlane. How does he explain to the boss what happened?

Webber was noticeably furious, and threw the steering wheel from his car as though he were an Olympic shot put competitor. ITV reported that early on in the race Webber had been sick in his helmet. Lesser men would give up when their stomachs empty themselves. That’s what separates us from Grand Prix racing drivers. The decision to continue was being paid off in the form of second place.

I bet while he was running in second he had forgotten all about the vomit in his helmet. Being slammed in the rear by a driver of his sister team was probably enough to make him sick all over again. Take a sip of water to calm yourself down. Oh no, you were sick into your straw.

Furious Webber stormed back to the pitlane and blasted Vettel in the strongest possible terms. It provided the funniest moment of the race. On live Saturday morning television, in the same slot where Pocoyo is normally shown, he blasted, voice noticeably trembling with rage:

It’s kids, isn’t it. It’s kids with not enough experience, and they just go and FUCK IT ALL UP!

Here it is on YouTube — enjoy it while you can, before FOM remove it.

Vettel has probably lost a lot of his reputation with that moment. Usually it would be forgiven as a rookie mistake, but the problem is that this year there is a rookie who you cannot envisage making that kind of mistake. More evidence of what a good job Hamilton is doing. (Having said that, I can’t think of Kovalainen dropping any similar clangers either.)

Someone else who lost a lot of reputation — as if he had any left to lose — was Ralf Schumacher. During qualifying 1 he was seemingly worried about not making the cut. For whatever reason he felt the need to take an ambitious move alongside a Spyker. Unfortunately, instead of going alongside the Spyker, he just went straight into it and damaged his car so badly that he wouldn’t have been able to go into Q2 anyway. To rub salt into the wound, he qualified for it. Yesterday, Ralf Schumacher was sacked left Toyota.

I suppose this is the thing about wet races. It makes some people look like complete idiots. It makes other people look like superheroes. So many drivers put in amazing performances at Fuji. I have already noted Hamilton, Webber and Vettel (before his boo-boo moment).

But Kimi Räikkönen was probably the most impressive driver on the track. He suffered badly from Ferrari’s strategic (and rule-breaking) blunder to start the race on intermediates while everyone else was on full wets. It was a nonsensical decision in the first place, and after just a few laps behind the safety car both Ferrari drivers had to pit in to change to full wets, relegating them to dead last.

Despite this, and in those crazy conditions as well, Räikkönen and Massa both managed to get themselves into potential podium positions. Räikkönen in particular had a stunning race, with a notable move on the outside of David Coulthard being the highlight. It really is the stuff that champions are made of. I hope Räikkönen’s career won’t finish as a case of “if only” as it has been so far.

Kudos also to Massa who was ahead of Räikkönen which is really inconvenient for Ferrari’s hopes in the Drivers’ Championship. And team orders don’t exist, especially from Ferrari. So it was time for a suspicious “splash n dash” to let Räikkönen ahead of Massa, who dropped straight back to 7th.

I suppose we shouldn’t be so cynical. It did let us see a truly amazing last-lap ding-dong battle between Massa and Kubica. There was an uncomfortably high amount of the run-off areas being used. I feel that Massa’s wide line through the run-off at the final corner is what gave him the edge over Kubica in the end, but they were both guilty of using the run-off areas. It provided some damn fun racing, but you can’t help feeling that they were both… cheating?

Ah yes cheating. What about that business with starting on intermediates when they were told to go on wets? Ferrari didn’t get the email apparently! Hah! Yeah right. All of the other teams and even the commentators knew the deal, but Ferrari didn’t. Likely story. Of course, FIArrari believed them.

I should also mention Jenson Button. After his torrid season in a shitbox Honda, he qualifying performance was truly encouraging and I was hoping that he could get a good result. Unfortunately he lost his front wing early on and had to get it replaced.

Rather alarmingly, though, he ran sans front wing for a few laps without any major drop-off in performance. An illustration of just how bad that Honda is — it can lose its front wing and you wouldn’t be able to tell from the times being set.

Liuzzi almost scored a point for Torro Rosso. It would have been scant consolation for Vettel’s lost podium, but it would have been something. Yup, it would have been, had he not passed Sutil under a yellow flag! Doh!

So instead, Adrian Sutil scored his first point, and Spyker’s first point as well. Just in time to impress their latest new owner (they must have had four owners in as many years!). In seriousness, Sutil is seriously impressing this season. A drive at a better team for 2009 surely beckons.

History also for Heikki Kovalainen, who took Renault’s first podium of the year, and his first podium of the career. Apparently it is also the first time two Finns have been on the podium, so a good day to remember for Finland.

A shockingly awful day for Japan though. On their home territory, all of the teams with Japanese links did awfully. I have already mentioned Schumacher and Button. Barrichello was 10th, Trulli finished dead last of the runners, both Williams-Toyotas and both Super Aguris failed to finish. Sakon Yamamoto was 12th. Who would be a Japanese F1 fan?

This is just a bit of what I have been thinking. I could go on and on and on about that race, but I have to stop somewhere. The championship looks like it’s nearly over, but I can’t wait for the Chinese Grand Prix. Luckily, we only have to wait a few days for it.

Update: As soon as I published this, I spotted this on Sidepodcast. It provides very convincing evidence that Hamilton could have caused the collision between Webber and Vettel. It also backs up Vettel’s post-race comments about how he was being put off by Hamilton. Commentators noted Hamilton’s erratic driving behind the safety car, and it does look a little bit like Hamilton was taking things rather over the line with his excessive start–stop driving.

You can only assume that he was deliberately trying to cause an accident, or rattle his opponents. (As Sidepodcast notes, it can’t have been warming brakes, because that involves abrupt changes in speed, not the gradual halt that Hamilton comes to.) What do you think? Watch quickly, before FOM take it down.

I have to say, well done to the person who took the footage. It’s better than anything the actual TV director took of the incident, and reveals a whole lot more of what was going on in the incident.

Update: The original video has, as predicted, been removed by FOM. For the benefit of the many visitors still reading this post, here is another copy of the video. This will probably get pulled down as well.

Via Telegraph Technology.

45 comments

Is there a witch hunt against McLaren?

11 September 2007 15:27

Categories: Formula 1

This has turned out to be McLaren’s annus horribilis when it should have been a year of celebration. After an unprecedented series of years in the doldrums on the track, McLaren have finally gone back to their winning ways. But off the track, it is difficult to imagine what else could have gone wrong.

It would have been bad enough had it just been the Stepneygate scandal from which McLaren (at the time) escaped any harsh punishment (probably rightly given the evidence there was at the time). But despite escaping punishment, the cloud of suspicion lingered, the media was not impressed and the tifosi were livid.

But there have also been rows over team orders and the status of the drivers which was kicked off by a deterioration in the relationship between Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. McLaren probably have the two best drivers in the world in their cars, but instead of being an unmitigated success it has turned out to be a disaster.

At Hungary the FIA stepped in to prevent McLaren from scoring constructors’ points due to what was essentially an issue between the two drivers. It was harsh to levy such a heavy penalty on McLaren due to something that the team itself was seemingly quite peripheral to.

Then at Monza the race stewards decided to fine the team $50,000 for running a lightweight gearbox at the Hungaroring. The race stewards say that the new gearbox should have been crash tested prior to being run. For their part, McLaren say they were open with the FIA at all times about the existence their new gearbox.

Even if the FIA were not made aware of the situation, you have to ask the question: what were the Italian stewards doing passing judgement on something that happened two races ago? There is a discussion on this over at BlogF1. This is the equivalent of a referee in a football match giving a footballer a yellow card for something he did three weeks ago.

This is not to say that the FIA should not have punished McLaren. But the race stewards are not the people to do it. And the scrutineers at Hungary were seemingly okay with the new gearbox. It all looks a bit fishy to me, particularly since it happened at the Italian Grand Prix. Italy is, of couse, the country where Ferrari almost rivals Catholicism as the biggest religion.

A similar thing happened last year at the Italian Grand Prix when Fernando Alonso was penalised for “blocking” a Ferrari that was a hundred metres behind him. The video of the entire lap is still available. Yes, that distant speck on the horizon is meant to be blocking Felipe Massa. The only people in the world who actually believe this are FIArrari.

But the FIA does not have to be in Italy to unfairly find in favour of Ferrari and against every single other team. Jackie Stewart rightly pointed this out today.

Now the whole Stepneygate saga is being opened up again, and the World Motor Sport Council is meeting on Thursday to discuss it. It will be a big day for Formula 1. Will the FIA cave into their pro-Ferrari instincts and award the Scuderia the Championship in the courtroom? Or will they act like the governing body of a sport and allow the Championship to be won and lost on the racetrack?

This series of events has prompted some to ask: are McLaren being picked on by the FIA this season? Craig has also taken a look at this. Many have mentioned the fact that FIA president Max Mosley has a pretty frosty relationship with Ron Dennis. The FIA deny that there is a witch hunt, but they would say that wouldn’t they?

For what it’s worth, I do not think that the FIA are deliberately singling out McLaren. At least, not beyond the extent we have come to expect from the FIA’s pro-Ferrari bias. But I think the adverse reaction to the original WMSC hearing in July has encouraged the FIA to punish McLaren heavily for the slightest wrongdoing.

The FIA are quite right to re-open the Stepneygate case if they think there is sufficient evidence. The integrity of the sport is important, and if McLaren are found to have benefited from Ferrari documents then they should face a heavy punishment.

But to me, it just does not stack up for the reasons I explained in my previous post on Stepneygate. The McLaren car had already been built by the time Mike Coughlan got his hands on the documents, and from then on basing developments on Ferrari blueprints would surely be like trying to piece together pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles.

But the whole saga became much more serious when drivers became involved. It is suggested that Fernando Alonso gained some insight into set-up data as a result of an email conversation with test driver Pedro de la Rosa, who is good buddies with Mike Coughlan.

This could prove crucial because beforehand McLaren had claimed that no employee was aware of the Ferrari information except for Mike Coughlan. If it transpires that de la Rosa and Alonso also knew, then there could be serious consequences.

A lot of people are asking themselves how the FIA could punish McLaren (if they are found guilty) without damaging the great story of this World Championship — particularly the emergence of the hugely exciting Lewis Hamilton. There is a nasty idea in my head that the FIA could end up punishing McLaren and punishing Alonso (because of the emails) but exonerating Hamilton. That way, Hamilton can win the World Championship while McLaren still get punished.

Yesterday Rory left a comment on this blog pointing out that the rumoured conversation between de la Rosa and Alonso was infact a fabrication. But that does not mean that the emails did not exist. They could have contained perfectly innocent information — or it could have been far worse than suggested by La Gazzetta dello Sport.

For the integrity of F1, and for the sake of this year’s fantastic World Championship, let us hope it is the former.

Update: See also Formula 1 Insight: Sport and Politics in Formula One.

7 comments

Lewis Hamilton’s arrogant streak

17 August 2007 10:51

Categories: Formula 1

Accuse me of taking part in the Lewis Hamilton backlash if you want. But regular readers will know that, while I have been impressed by a lot of his on-track action, I have been disdainful of the mad hype that has surrounded him.

There is something that happened over the weekend of the Hungarian Grand Prix that has put quite a different light on the previously angel-like Lewis Hamilton. Not only is there now a spotlight on his current conduct, but a different light is now cast on past events in his career.

As is now well-documented, the whole fallout in the McLaren team began when Lewis Hamilton broke team policy by selfishly leading the train in the fuel burn-off phase when it was Fernando Alonso’s turn to do so. So the whole situation was really Lewis Hamilton’s fault — not Fernando Alonso’s as most of the tabloids claimed.

With Hamilton having broken internal McLaren rules, the team tried to redress the balance to take away the advantage that Lewis Hamilton unfairly gained (and thereby remove the incentive for Hamilton to try anything like that again). What did Lewis Hamilton do? Did he take the blame, accept this slap on the wrists and move on? No. He actually indulged in an incredibly bad tempered rant against his own boss.

Lewis Hamilton: Don’t ever fucking do that to me again!
Ron Dennis: Don’t ever fucking speak to me like that again!
Lewis Hamilton: Go fucking swivel!

For what it’s worth, McLaren now claim that the exchange did not take place — and that the relationship between Hamilton and Alonso is on the mend. But it took them five days after the event to say so. It smells to me like a few sponsors have been having words with the team over the events of the Hungarian Grand Prix and have pressed them to spin a different light on the weekend.

So let us say that the reported conversation between Lewis Hamilton and Ron Dennis did indeed take place. It takes a certain type of individual to talk like that to any old boss in the first place.

But Ron Dennis is not even any old boss — not to Hamilton anyway. Lewis Hamilton has been a part of the McLaren family for around a decade now. McLaren took Hamilton under their wing when he was still very young. They have nurtured and looked after him. They have made sure that his career has followed a steady path. They have given him all kinds of opportunities that have never been available to any other Grand Prix driver in history. Yet, now that he has got into one of the McLaren F1 cars, Hamilton’s response has been, “Fuck you.”

Rumour has it that Lewis Hamilton was even the person who instigated the investigation into Alonso’s actions. This is what led to Alonso’s grid penalty and McLaren being stripped of their Constructors’ Championship points. If this is true, it is quite a shocking act of selfishness at the expense of the entire team.

I was interested in the fact that Eddie Irvine felt that Lewis Hamilton was being disrespectful. If there was any other driver in recent history who was likely to go against team instructions or swear at their boss, it would surely be “bad boy” Eddie Irvine. But even he thought that Lewis Hamilton crossed the line.

It is worth remembering how Ron Dennis first heard of Lewis Hamilton. It is quite a well-known story. Nine-year-old Lewis Hamilton just strode up to Ron Dennis and announced that one day he was going to drive for McLaren. I mean, what a cheeky little bastard! Correct, but cheeky. No doubt a lot of people find that quite cute. And, for whatever reason, Ron Dennis clearly took a shine to him. But on this evidence, Hamilton has an arrogant streak.

We saw a similar thing when Hamilton went to the media to whine that he wasn’t allowed to race at the Monaco Grand Prix. All along, McLaren were just using sensible and common precautions to prevent their two cars from crashing out. On this evidence, Hamilton is selfish and cannot see a race from the team’s point of view.

Then during the European Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton audaciously persuaded the trackside marshals to use a crane to lift his car, which was beached in the gravel trap, back onto the circuit so that he could continue racing. We have seen in the past Michael Schumacher being pushed back onto the track. This is an exploitation of a loophole in the rules. Perfectly legal, particularly since the loophole has steadfastly remained open.

But involving the use of a crane is an entirely different matter. In fact, it is probably illegal. But Hamilton pushed the rules to their very limits — perhaps beyond — and he got away with it.

On the one had, this is the sort of thing that World Champions are made of. A hefty dose of arrogance is sometimes what is required if you are to avoid becoming a goody-two-shoes Button or Barrichello.

But there is a point at which it becomes downright nasty viewing. Michael Schumacher went over the limit several times. Hamilton has already done it once or twice in his short career.

As Eddie Irvine said, Lewis Hamilton plays a brilliant game with the media, pushing his angel-like image. But for as long as his on-track actions continue in the way they are going, his interview performances will begin to look smarmy.

Lewis Hamilton sniffs an opportunity and jumps for it — no matter what the consequences. Just look at the fallout following the Hungarian Grand Prix for his outright disregard for his team mates and his boss. In short, he seems like the sort of person who you wouldn’t trust with your girlfriend.

At the beginning of the season, people were commenting on how much value for money McLaren and their sponsors were getting out of Hamilton. Now I wonder if Ron Dennis thinks that Hamilton is more trouble than it’s worth.

38 comments

Indianapolis won’t be missed — but it could have worked

16 July 2007 03:30

Categories: Current affairs, Entertainment, Formula 1, Sport, Television

Formula 1 is waving goodbye to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Or it would be, if it was still there to do so. We’ve already had our last trip there without even knowing about it. It’s like dumping someone by text message.

We tried our best, but in the end it just wouldn’t work out.

Formula 1′s relationship with Indianapolis is about as rocky as it gets — and that really is saying something in F1. In a way, it is amazing to think that, had Indianapolis been a venue next year, it would have been its tenth Formula 1 race. When people look back on the period, some might wonder if it was just a silly experiment that was doomed from the start.

On paper, it was a fantastic idea. One of the world’s most prestigious racing circuits (indeed, the self-styled “Racing Capital of the World”) plays host to the world’s greatest motor racing series.

Unfortunately, there was an elephant in the room. In fact, there wasn’t just one elephant in the room. There were several.

First of all, despite all of its chest-beating, and the reverential treatment which American motor racing fans give it, Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not a great circuit. I was in the room with my father when I heard the news about Indy being dropped. The radio reporter was waxing lyrical about how special the circuit is. My dad instantly spluttered, “No it’s not! It’s an oval!”

So a plan had to be hatched in order to stop Formula 1′s broadly European fan base from being sent into a coma by the prospect of F1 races happening on the oval. They also had to accommodate the fact that F1 drivers are used to racing through corners and, moreover, corners that go both left and right. So an actual circuit that had to be designed by means other than drawing around a protractor was built on the inside of the oval.

The circuit has broadly met with disapproval from those who dislike its ‘stop-start’ nature and “Mickey Mouse” corners. In sum, it was a botch job. You could never escape the fact that it was really an almost unwanted appendage to the oval.

This all stems from the fact that American motor racing culture is so different to European motor racing culture. So while Indianapolis is a Mecca for American petrolheads, Europeans are much more likely to worship the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

I have written about this in the past. In a nutshell, while we Europeans don’t “get” oval racing, Nascar and the like, Americans don’t “get” Formula 1.

It is quite appropriate that I should write about this in the week that David Beckham has moved LA Galaxy. At the moment, commentators are predicting that Americans will be attracted by the glamour, but they probably won’t understand why he is a good footballer. It is said that Americans will be expecting Beckham to score five or six goals a match, without even realising that he isn’t a forward.

Exactly the same is true of F1. I sense that Americans have a sneaking suspicion that Formula 1 is great. But they just don’t understand why it’s great. They expect lots of overtaking! They expect big crashes! But Formula 1 does not supply this enough, instead emphasising aspects like great driving, technical excellence and, er, turning right.

I remember reading an amusing comparison a few years ago. I think it was made by David Richards (correct me if I’m wrong). He said that Nascar is like a cheeseburger, while Formula 1 is like caviare. That sounds like a snobby thing to say, but it has a ring of truth to it.

In this sense, selling F1 to Americans is a little bit like flogging a dead horse.

The next problem was television. In one sense, the US Grand Prix was a dream for Formula 1, because it took place during prime time for Europe. It was a double-edged sword though (in the UK at least) as it meant that ITV had better things to do in prime time than watching cars going round and round on an oval a Mickey Mouse track. So the programme was shortened, with little post-race analysis.

Moreover, viewers had to endure for what felt like half the race a ticker that helpfully informed us that “Coronation Street follows the race”. This was despite the fact that the race was not eating into Coronation Street’s scheduled slot, which was exactly the same slot that it occupies every other Sunday.

Don’t forget that the race was coming from America, which meant that for a couple of years viewers had to endure pictures broadcast in the blurrier, fuzzier NTSC standard rather than the PAL standard which Europeans are used to. Not very good, particularly when we are trying to watch fast-moving cars. A bit more blur is the last thing we need.

The situation was so bad that Bernie Ecclestone, for the only time ever, allowed terrestrial broadcasters to transmit the superior F1 Digital + pictures (shot using FOM’s own equipment) in 2002. Following the closure of F1 Digital + at the end of that season, FOM has thankfully remained as the “host broadcaster” of the US Grand Prix in every subsequent year.

As the icing on the cake, it looked quite bad on the television because there were so many empty seats despite the fact that the US Grand Prix is one of the most highly attended of the year. But whenever the camera had a surplus grandstand situated on a part of the oval that is not used by F1 in the background of the shot, it looked pretty bad.

Then there is a matter of what actually happened on the race track. It is highly unfortunate that some of Formula 1′s very darkest moments have happened at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Canspice puts it succinctly: Formula 1 has consistently shat on Indianapolis.

First of all, there was the manufactured dead heat controversy of 2002. Michael Schumacher slowed down before the finishing line in what was perceived to be a return of the favour that Rubens Barrichello gave him at the Austrian Grand Prix of earlier that year.

What Schumacher forgot while he was cocooned in his cockpit and helmet was that two wrongs do not make a right. And while Barrichello was stripped of his deserved victory in Austria, the American fans were denied the right to see the rightful victor crossing the finish line first. In short, the whole race was pointless.

Amid a cacophony of boos and jeers, Michael Schumacher made up a lame excuse. He was bored of all that winning malarkey and had taken every record in the book. In search for a new challenge, he wanted to manufacture the closest finish to a race ever.

Nice try, Schumi. I know the stereotype is that Americans are not quite as intelligent as some on this side of the pond. But they are not, in fact, stupid. American race fans were taken for mugs that day.

But that was nothing compared to what was to come in 2005. Due in part to the unusual banked Turn 13 (unlucky for everyone in F1 — especially Ralf Schumacher), Michelin tyres were failing. And Turn 13 is one place were you do not want to be driving an unsafe racing car. It was yet another example of why the circuit was just not suitable for Formula 1.

But it was too late to do anything about the layout of the circuit now. At least, it was if your name is Jean Todt or Max Mosley — whose stance on making last-minute alterations to a circuit had completely changed since Barcelona 1994.

There was plenty of buck-passing, finger pointing and blame gaming. Everyone had their opinion as to who was at fault (you can see what I thought at the time by browsing through the archives of this blog). The problem was that all of the extended arms pointing fingers tangled up to make a massive web that the whole of F1 got stuck in.

As such, only six cars took to the grid and American fans were deprived of a proper race. It was hilarious in a sense — partly because it was a farce, and partly because it showed that even with only six cars on the entire track, Michael Schumacher still managed to crash into his team mate. But beyond that, it was more offensive than doing a poo on the dinner table.

Since then, F1 has been on its best behaviour — particularly in America. Almost. Because, despite all of the crap that Formula 1 has flung at Indianapolis, IMS boss Tony George seemed fairly keen to keep the race.

More keen than Bernie Ecclestone was at least. Over the past couple of years, Ecclestone has been lobbing several insults at America, along the lines that Formula 1 doesn’t need America (probably true, as it survived without for most of the 1990s, and never had the full attention of America before and after then either) and that F1 gets more viewers in Malta than in America (demonstrably false).

It is as though, having explosively crapped on the dinner table, Bernie Ecclestone wanted to do a little wee on the carpet just to top it off. Yet, Tony George wanted F1 to keep on visiting Indianapolis. Is he a masochist?

Not really. Because, despite all of the above (and there is a lot of it, as you can see!), Formula 1 had the potential to work at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway — particularly in recent years.

In fairness to the track, it is not actually all that bad. It had grown on me, particularly this year. This year’s race had some interesting overtaking battles on the infield, and this was improved by the tight “left–right–left” switchbacks. These corners do not look attractive and are apparently not fun to drive.

But they ensured that overtaking manoeuvres were prolonged. It was no longer a matter of sticking your car on the inside and breaking later — because your opponent has the inside line to the next corner.

Even though Americans just don’t “get” F1, it is still massively important to them. There were even hints last year that the state could subsidise the Grand Prix!

Also, the businesses of Indianapolis also love the Grand Prix. In fact, it is often their biggest weekend of the year. Amazing when you consider that it is the home of the Indianapolis 500, but there you go. Seemingly, F1 fans are big spenders. But that’s what happens when you’re used to caviare.

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