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Archive: Timo Glock

What might have been for Timo Glock

2 April 2011 12:27

Categories: *, Formula 1

I wonder what Timo Glock is thinking just now. Following an impressive early career, and after showing flashes of talent at Toyota for two years, Glock faced a difficult decision prior to the 2010 season.

Renault or Virgin? Once upon a time it was a tough choice

His first option was to take a risk and sign for Renault, whose future was on the line. At the time it was said that Glock was considering driving for Renault, Robert Kubica was seeking assurances about the team’s future. Renault were beginning to phase out their involvement in running an F1 team.

His other option was to sign for a new team, Virgin, but one that was not likely to have the plug pulled on its future so soon. Glock chose this option.

Virgin’s struggles

No doubt, with the information he had at his disposal at the time, Timo Glock had a difficult decision to make. But today, he must feel sick about his choice.

He is making increasingly frustrated noises about Virgin’s lack of progress. He first complained that Virgin had lost ground to the teams it was targeting, such as Toro Rosso. Then he began to question whether Virgin was even capable of qualifying for races following the reinstatement of the 107% rule.

Judging by Virgin’s performance in Australia, these fears were well founded. And what’s more, they risk slipping back even further.

Threatened even by Hispania

For Malaysia, Hispania will be looking to race with their 2011-spec front wing. Their new front wing failed a crash test, apparently by a minuscule margin. So they used a 2010 front wing in Australia. But if they can fit the new wing for Malaysia, the hot word is that Hispania could be faster than Virgin.

That would be seriously embarrassing for Virgin. The team has staked its reputation on Nick Wirth’s idea that a competitive car can be designed without the use of a wind tunnel. They just about got away with it last year. But this year, with Virgin’s lack of progress, a serious question mark is beginning to hang over the CFD-only method.

Over the winter, the Hispania team has become something of a laughing stock. Struggling for cash, the team has done the bare minimum of running. It did no testing. Before attempting to qualify in Australia, they had only completed the merest figleaf of an installation lap.

They then failed to qualify for the race. It was worryingly reminiscent of what Arrows did in 2002 in its final few races before it had to close down, when the drivers deliberately failed to qualify in order to avoid the costs of racing while still meeting their contractual requirements.

However, a recent article by James Allen suggests that the future for Hispania may be more promising than Australia’s performance indicated.

While Virgin struggle, Renault are flying

That article also says that Glock “looked a haunted man” following the Australian Grand Prix. It’s easy to imagine why, when you consider again the choice he faced before 2010.

The team he apparently walked away from, Renault, is on the up and up. While Renault themselves may have more or less pulled out entirely, the team now has solid backing from Genii Capital, a group that appears to mean business in F1. The team also has major, prominent backing from Proton, who are using the team to promote their Group Lotus activities.

The Renault car itself is in great shape too. Its innovative exhaust system is one of the most talked-about car developments of the winter. And Vitaly Petrov’s solid run to third place in Australia sent a strong signal that, while Renault may not exactly be title contenders, they are certainly out to give the front runners a real run for their money.

So, the situation could hardly have gone worse for Timo Glock. He had a difficult decision to make, but as things stand it has turned out to be unambiguously the wrong one. It could cost his career dearly. To be pottering around in a car that may not even be fast enough to qualify does not befit a driver of Timo Glock’s stature.

With Virgin worrying about 107% while Petrov stands on the podium, it is easy to see why Glock would look haunted.

3 comments

Singasnore — What makes a good F1 race?

28 September 2010 23:19

Categories: *, Formula 1, Newspapers, Television

What do viewers at home love about F1? It is great wheel-to-wheel racing? Lots of overtaking? Strategy calls? Or the venues? Looking at the polarised reactions to this past weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix got me wondering.

A few of the journalists were pretty effusive about the race. Will Buxton was particularly euphoric:

Epic race. One of the best of the season. Wow.

I saw that this drew a few hoots of derision, including from me! Because from the comments made by other fans watching at home was that… well… it was a bit dull really.

It wasn’t a stinker by any means. There was some good action and a fair few talking points. But large stretches of the race were rather processional. Hardly epic.

The epic race without the racing

Will Buxton justified his comments:

No sarcasm. Epic race. ALO VET lap trading, WEB early stop and brill drive, HAM / WEB moment, GLO driving arse off. KUB amazing.

There is some truth in what he says. While Webber and Kubica provided some entertainment, this was only because they were out of phase with the surrounding cars strategy-wise, so were not on an equal footing with the drivers they were battling with.

As for the battle at the front, the problem was that Alonso’s victory was never truly in doubt. He commanded the track all weekend, and always even looked like he might have a bit extra left in the tank too.

During the first phase of the race, Vettel drifted back to 3.5s behind Alonso. After the pitstops, the gap eventually grew to over 2s before slowly decreasing again. Vettel did get mighty close to the end of the race, but this was typical Alonso driving conservatively.

Renault engineers always talked about how conservative Alonso was as a driver. They never had to tell him to turn the engine down; he had already done it.

So it was in Singapore. Alonso had done just enough to establish himself as the certain winner of the Singapore Grand Prix and had the whole situation under control.

It may have looked good on the timing screens. I did indeed get excited when purple sectors were being set and Vettel started to decrease the gap. But the “lap battle” was partly down to the street circuit becoming cleaner and faster towards the end of the race.

I’m sure they were playing with each other, but neither looked to be pushing particularly hard. Alonso was always in control, and Vettel never looked interested in truly pressurising.

At the start of the race, Vettel had ceded the first corner, setting the tone for his race. It did not look like he was particularly interested in winning — a suspicion confirmed by Vettel’s comments that passing Alonso would have been too risky. And why bother? Alonso is the ultimate defensive driver, as his amazing battle with Michael Schumacher at the 2005 San Marino Grand Prix demonstrated.

The bottom line is that if you hold a race on a street circuit with one overtaking spot — two at a push — then the racing isn’t epic. There might be stuff surrounding the racing — strategy, crashes, pretty buildings… But not much overtaking.

Interesting, yes. Epic, no. The ingredients simply weren’t there.

Epic racing or epic facilities?

There is a trend for certain venues to be talked up a lot by the F1 circus, no matter how good the racing is. I particularly remember Valencia Street Circuit — which has served up three of the most turgid grands prix seen in the last decade — was universally praised by the teams as being a great venue for grand prix racing.

Scratch the surface of the headlines, though, and you see that they are not so interested in the racing itself. Ron Dennis said that the 2008 European Grand Prix at Valencia was so great that it made him “ashamed to be English”. But it left most others ashamed to be F1 fans, it was so bereft of racing.

Of course, Ron Dennis was thinking about the facilities. Facilities are apparently the only thing that matter in F1 these days. Never mind what the viewers at home make of the track. As long as the venue is equipped with a shiny silver throne for the McLaren chief to do his golden business in, who cares about the people at home?

Similarly, the journalists have clear favourite places to visit and places they can’t stand. China? Don’t talk to them about it. And spare a thought for poor, poor Magny-Cours. It was so awful — not because of the circuit, of course, but because it was in the middle of nowhere, as the journalists never missed the chance to remind us!

Meanwhile, Melbourne is always the “great place for a race” — is that code for a booze-up? And Singapore is now “epic”.

Never mind the fact that the Marina Bay Street Circuit is not great for overtaking. Never mind that the 2008 race needed a manufactured crash to pep it up, and that the 2009 race was voted the fourth worst of the season by F1 Fanatic readers.

TV coverage demonstrates skewed priorities

The scenario was not helped by some rather lacklustre television coverage from FOM this weekend. It looked to me like the director was more used to directing pop music videos than motorsport.

Coverage at night races is always dominated by shots of the lit-up buildings and the scenery surrounding the circuit. It feels more like the Singapore Grand Prix is more like an advert for Singapore than a motor race. Who was going to bed last weekend without seeing that flashing “Your Singapore” banner in their sleep?

When it comes to races like this, Bernie Ecclestone’s priorities are clear. Why else would the bland coverage of last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix have won an FIA award for best coverage of the season? Much of the race action was missed. Anyone not paying full attention would have thought that the race was won by a hotel that looks like a giant flashing lady-toy, so fixated were the cameras on anything but the cars.

Those in the inner circle in F1 should remember that the fans at home are looking for epic racing — not epic Holywood movies, epic nightlife or epic superloos.

8 comments

F1 2010 mid-season rankings — part 1

17 July 2010 17:10

Categories: Formula 1

I can hardly believe we are already more than halfway through the Formula 1 season. It has gone by so quickly. Normally I look at the performances of the drivers at the halfway point. But this year I haven’t felt as able to keep on top of everything, so instead I will look at the constructors.

12. Hispania

Of the three new teams, Hispania have probably had the hardest job after taking over the Campos entry at the eleventh hour after it hit severe financial difficulties. Although their car is probably the slowest, it does not have the poorest reliability record, and as such the team currently sits ahead of Virgin in the Constructors’ Championship. Hispania have also acted quickly to sort out the problems with the Dallara chassis, and have hired big name designer Geoff Willis to sort out the mess for next season.

However, recent musical chairs involving their drivers have left a sour taste in the mouth. Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok are both well-liked drivers who have done an admirable job in hugely difficult circumstances, even though you might say neither is a potential future World Champion. Sakon Yamamoto is not liked very much, and is not terribly good as demonstrated in his previous two stints in F1. But the team appear to be desperate to get him into the car nevertheless. The process has been handled appallingly.

11. Virgin

On the track, Virgin is probably the least exciting of the new teams. Their reliability record is poor, and the speed is not particularly impressive, even if they occasionally manage to beat a Lotus every once in a while.

On the plus side, their controversial approach to design the car without the use of a wind tunnel has proved the doubters wrong, as the car has not been disastrously off the pace.

Both drivers have shown flashes of brilliance. But you sense that Timo Glock in particular would be capable of more if only he had decent equipment.

10. Lotus

Lotus have very quickly established themselves as the fastest of the new teams. But it has not all been plain sailing for them, and their reliability record needs improvement. I also wonder how much better they would be doing if they had two better race drivers than Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, although the experienced line-up is probably ideal in a development sense.

The next target for Lotus is to start beating the established teams on a regular basis. But with Williams and Sauber both having made significant improvements recently, it is difficult to see how they can make much headway beyond battling with Toro Rosso. Whatever, next year will be important for Lotus — anything below ninth in the 2011 Constructors’ Championship would surely be a disappointment. But that just shows how far they have come already.

9. Williams

Although they have begun to make strides up the grid in the past few races, the fact remains that this has been another disastrous year for Williams. They have spent much of the season battling at the wrong end of the grid, counting Sauber and Toro Rosso among their rivals.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that when you hear the likes of Patrick Head and Sam Michael try to explain the team’s performance over the past few years, they seem to be at a loss, except for vaguely talking about money being an issue. Williams lack answers.

Rubens Barrichello has been doing more or less the sort of job you would expect him to do. Meanwhile, promising rookie Nico Hülkenberg has not shown as much promise as you might have hoped. This has been coupled with a heavy dose of bad luck. I hope the second half of the season is better for Hülkenberg, of whom I am a fan.

8. Toro Rosso

I am finding it difficult to draw any firm conclusions about Toro Rosso yet. They have had some very poor showings indeed. But on the plus side, you must remember that this is their first year as a ‘proper’ constructor, designing their own chassis. On this basis, this season must be regarded as a success, even if they have not always been as quick as they may have liked.

Both Jaime Alguersuari and Sébastien Buemi are continuing to improve. Alguersuari has shown some real flashes of brilliance, and has impressed me a lot this season — particularly in a couple of battles with Michael Schumacher!

But with a more anonymous season, Buemi has been keeping his nose clean and has picked up the majority of the team’s points haul so far. That is mainly due to his assured performance at Canada, where he did well standing his ground as he briefly led the race as the pitstop phase was shaking itself out.

7. Sauber

After a promising winter testing season, the start of the actual season itself was deeply embarrassing for Sauber as they totally failed to convert pre-season promise into real race results. The car was not only frightfully slow, but it was also horrendously unreliable, making Sauber easily the worst of the established teams.

A question mark also hung over the choice of drivers, probably the riskiest on the grid. The decision to opt for Pedro de la Rosa, who had not raced since 2006, was bizarre — and I am a fan of de la Rosa! Meanwhile, Kamui Kobayashi was a man whose entire reputation was built on two races in odd circumstances.

The good news is that Sauber have turned the corner. de la Rosa is not making a fool of himself, and only needs more luck now in order to start scoring points. Meanwhile, Kobayashi looks set to become a points-scoring regular now. His performance in Valencia was absolutely superb, and he backed this up with another solid performance at Silverstone.

Sauber have also acted quickly to improve the car, making the decision to hire James Key early on as the car’s deficiencies became clear. The improvements he has made since joining the team can be seen vividly in the results.

2 comments

The state of the new teams (part 1)

3 March 2010 21:00

Categories: Formula 1

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Ferrari have raised eyebrows by choosing to speak the truth about the new teams in Formula 1:

This is the outcome: two teams will limp into the start of the championship, a third is being pushed into the ring by an invisible hand – you can be sure it is not the hand of Adam Smith – and, as for the fourth, well, you would do better to call on Missing Persons to locate it.

This week, that fourth team — USF1 — finally threw in the towel, after weeks (indeed, months) of speculation. And this evening they have been officially removed from the entry list. But I’ll discuss USF1 in further detail later.

However, this news once again shines the spotlight on the new teams, and the FIA’s process for selecting them. Right from the beginning there was controversy surrounding some of the choices. There is also the fact that new entrants were seemingly forced to use Cosworth engines.

It is worth remembering that there were at least two highly credible entries that were rejected by the FIA, to the surprise of many. David Richards and his Prodrive operation has been looking at entering F1 for years, and indeed had a slot on the 2008 grid until the future of customer cars was thrown into doubt. Lola were another highly credible entry with the ability to field a strong car.

So, what’s going on with the new teams? In this short series of articles I will take a brief look at the five main protagonists — Lotus and Virgin (the good side of the process), USF1 and Campos (the bad side) and Stefan (the ugly side).

The good side of the process

The Lotus position: last?

Lotus driver Jarno Trulli openly admits that the team expects to turn up at Bahrain four seconds off the pace. And yesterday Heikki Kovalainen back-pedalled from comments attributed to him that this year’s Lotus is worse than the Minardi he tested in 2003. The Finn claims the comments have been taken out of context.

Nonetheless, for my money the Lotus team has good long-term prospects. The jury is out on Mike Gascoyne’s abilities as a technical director. He is well regarded and appears to do a good job, but critics point out that he has never produced a World Championship-winning car.

Lotus are at pains to point out that they have had just five months to create this F1 car. That is nowhere near long enough to produce a competitive package. In the long term, they could be headed for a respectable role in the midfield.

The driver line-up of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen is unadventurous, but at least it is credible. Trulli and Kovalainen have both won just one race each, and neither is particularly convincing during the race. But at least they are two established and experienced drivers.

Virgin’s CFD gamble

Virgin — the Richard Branson-backed F1 entry of Manor which has been highly successful in lower formulae — has taken a gamble by exclusively using CFD to design the car, without ever having put the car in a wind tunnel. The car has been blighted by several reliability issues, while typically lapping five or six seconds off the pace. If testing form is anything to go by, there is little for the team to be optimistic about.

On the plus side, they have a credible driver pairing in the former Toyota driver Timo Glock and experienced GP2 racer Lucas di Grassi. Perhaps more important, given the current climate, is the fact that the team appears to have been highly successful in attracting sponsorship. I guess sponsors are magnetically attracted to the golden Virgin brand.

Lotus and Virgin are the two teams that are described by Ferrari as “limping” into the start of the championship. That is the best side of the new teams. The other two new teams, Campos and USF1, have both teetered on the brink of collapse. But that is for the next article…

2 comments

2009 driver rankings: top ten

31 December 2009 20:39

Categories: *, Opinion, Report

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!

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