After the soul-crushing disappointment that was Bahrain, F1 responded to it's critics in the best possible way by providing a thriller of a race at a damp Albert Park circuit. It just goes to show that a track where overtaking is actually physically possible, combined with a splash of rain to mix up the strategies is all it takes to produce an entertaining spectacle - perhaps a sprinkler system should be installed at Bahrain...
Qualifying was utterly dominated by the Red Bull team, with Vettel and Webber locking out the front row for the Austrian team in that order, followed by Bahrain victor Alonso, a suprising pacey Jenson Button, Felipe Massa and the 2 Mercedes cars - Rosberg once again edging Schuey. Hamilton could only muster a lowly 11th on the grid, albeit an improvement on the previous year's race...
The whole field began the race on intermediate tyres as the lights turned green. Vettel led comfortably, but a superb getaway from Massa from 5th on the grid allowed him to slide underneath home hero Webber to snatch 2nd postition. Behind them, Alonso and Button got a little too close to each other round turn 1, resulting in the former being spun around and falling to the very tail of the pack, giving Schumacher a fair old knock for good measure which neccesitated him pitting for a new front wing. Kubica took advantage of the mayhem to jump from 9th on the grid to 4th, ahead of Rosberg, Button, Hamilton and Sutil. Soon after, the brand new Mercedes-Benz SLS Safety Car was deployed in the wake of a hefty midfield shunt between Kobayashi, Buemi and Hulkenberg. When it peeled back into the pits, Massa looked like passing Webber, but couldn't quite pull off the move. Meanwhile, Alonso and Schumacher were carving their ways back through the pack after their early contact.
As the rain began to ease, Button became the first person to gamble on a switch to slick tyres - a move that would prove to be inspired, even if it didn't seem like it when he understeered in an airport trolley-like manner into the kittylitter at turn 3... A couple of laps later however, the reigning champion began setting the pace, which resulted in the entire field bar the Red Bulls, Force Indias and Alguersauri resorting to slicks. The following lap Vettel pitted, but bizzarely Webber was left to hang in there with intermediates for another lap. He fell to 6th after finally making his switch, whilst Vettel resumed in the lead from Button, Kubica, Rosberg, Massa, Webber, Barrichello, Hamilton and Alonso who by this stage had made a fine recovery from 18th to 9th. Hamilton and Alonso soon made short work of Barrichello, but as more spots of rain began to appear, Massa lost some pace allowing Webber, Hamilton and Alonso to all close up to him. The Brit made his way to the head of this bunch after several swaps of position, before also reeling in Rosberg and him for 4th place.
All the while, Vettel was enjoying a comfortable lead before 'Luscious Liz' let him down for the second time in as many races, this time the brakes being responsible. Unlike last time however, the German was forced to retire on the spot. This handed Button the race lead on a silver platter, with his McLaren teammate hassling Kubica's Renault for what became 2nd place. Rosberg became under pressure from Webber for 4th place, with Alonso stuck behind his seemingly slower teammate in 7th. In the next few laps, Hamilton, Webber and Rosberg all opted to pit for fresh rubber, allowing Massa and Alonso into 3rd and 4th places. Hamilton and Webber began to close up to the Ferrari pairing, still on their first set of dry, and by now very worn tyres. Button now looked likely to cruise to a relatively easy victory, with Kubica now leading a tightly packed field of himself, Massa, Alonso, Hamilton, Webber and Rosberg. Soon after closing onto the back of his Alonso, Hamilton complained that his tyres had now grained, leaving him unable to make a move on his arch-rival. Then, on the penultimate lap, Webber decided to risk a bold move up the inside of the Briton at turn 13, which resulted in the pair of them in the gravel, losing several positions all the while.
No such worry for the sister McLaren however - Button took his 8th career win and his first for his new McLaren team, and perhaps more significantly scored an equaliser in the intra-team battle between himself and Hamilton. Kubica held on in second to sweep Renault's best result since the 2008 Brazilian Grand Prix, with Massa taking the final podium spot from Alonso. Rosberg followed in 5th, with Hamilton recovering from his late contact with Webber to take 6th. The Australian however also lost places to Liuzzi and Barrichello after pitting for a new nose to take a lowly 9th. Michael Schumacher endured a tricky afternoon, stuck behind Alguersauri for 20 laps to take just one solitary point for 10th. The Toro Rosso driver would wind up 11th, from countryman De La Rosa, with Kovalainen winning the unofficial 'Class B' race in 13th from Chandhok who registered his first finish. Their respective teammates both succumbed to mechanical maladies, Trulli before the race began and Senna just 4 laps in. Their rivals at Virgin admitted to having a fuel tank too small to finish the race, although neither Glock nor Di Grassi lasted long enough to illustrate this fact. They joined Sutil and Petrov in failing to finish, as well as all those who crashed early on.
Now, we look forward to Malaysia in a week's time, but it still remains to be seen whether Bahrain or Australia was the exception to the amount of excitement we'll get this season...
28 March 2010
20 March 2010
Post-mortem of Bahrain
Let's face it: the first race of the 2010 season was about as exciting as taking a piece of A0 size squared paper and numbering the squares. F1 has to address this dire lack of on-track action if the FIA aren't to be accused of mass-murder as the fans in the stands gradually die of boredom. The question is: How?
First off, the Sakhir Circuit, as with all facilities built in Asia and the Middle East in the past decade, just doesn't really do overtaking. F1's now-ubiquitous circuit designer Hermann Tilke seems to have it in that German mind of his that long straights mated with tight, technical sections of track breed overtaking. Yet, it's the more familar venues; the likes of Spa, Montréal, Melbourne and Interlagos that tend to provide us with the classics. Whilst there can be no denying that emerging markets in the East are key to the long-term future of F1, if Asiatic races continue to be as mind-numbingly dull as Bahrain was last weekend, then prospective economic saviours could well find themselves put off.
Another huge issue is, of course, aerodynamics. In way of good news, the teams have agreed to ban double-diffusers, which can be no bad thing since devices with aerodynamic benefit are intrinsically counter in nature to good racing - a slippery car creates a turbulent wake that makes overtaking extremely difficult (for the the benefit of those whose knowledge of the word 'aerodynamic' is limited to the song by Daft Punk). Trouble is though, said ban will only come into force at the start of 2011. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the teams this time last year were able to manically double their diffuser count, surely isn't the reverse possible now?
A certain M. Mosley, esq. would have you have believe that it was fuel strategies that gave the past 16 seasons that certain je ne sais quoi. With last weekend in mind, I finally see where he's coming from. A big problem with Bahrain was the 'big 8' all pitted within 2 laps of each other, which should have been foreseen given the finite life of a set of Bridgestone super-softs on which they all qualified. The fact of the matter was though that the harder medium compound tyre was more than enough to last the remaining 30 or so laps of the Sakhir Circuit, which meant the promised challenge of tyre-management never truly materialised. With that in mind, a simple solution would be to supply just 1, preferably the softer, compound at each race (and while we're at it, get shot of the nonsensical rule that requires drivers to start on the tyres they qualified on). This would open an array of strategic options - just the thing that nostalgic fans were salivating over in the off-season.
The more simple-minded may also say that later in the season, the new points system should be a catalyst for overtaking. 'Fraid not. These guys are racing drivers - they are constantly on the absolute limit, and the carrot of an extra 7 rather than 2 points for gunning for the win ain't gonna change that. Similarly, those who think bringing back KERS is the answer are completely and utterly wrong - allow me to explain. The reason we got the odd KERS-induced pass last year was because the cars from Woking and Maranello (and briefly the ones from Enstone and Hinwil too) had it, and the rest didn't. Give everyone the device, and it will take very little time for all the drivers to work out exactly best where to use the boost every lap. Then, come Sunday, everybody uses KERS in the same places every lap, and bugger all is achieved. And, for the record, I couldn't give a toss if the endangered Indonesian speckled manta-ray is saved because of the damn thing.
What might just work on the other hand, is a boost system that works on a per-race rather than per-lap basis: by giving every driver substantially less boosts than laps, it forces them to use their noggin as to when to administer their extra 60 horses. IndyCar was able to implement this exact thing last season off the back of a snoozefest of a race. Take note, Bernie.
First off, the Sakhir Circuit, as with all facilities built in Asia and the Middle East in the past decade, just doesn't really do overtaking. F1's now-ubiquitous circuit designer Hermann Tilke seems to have it in that German mind of his that long straights mated with tight, technical sections of track breed overtaking. Yet, it's the more familar venues; the likes of Spa, Montréal, Melbourne and Interlagos that tend to provide us with the classics. Whilst there can be no denying that emerging markets in the East are key to the long-term future of F1, if Asiatic races continue to be as mind-numbingly dull as Bahrain was last weekend, then prospective economic saviours could well find themselves put off.
Another huge issue is, of course, aerodynamics. In way of good news, the teams have agreed to ban double-diffusers, which can be no bad thing since devices with aerodynamic benefit are intrinsically counter in nature to good racing - a slippery car creates a turbulent wake that makes overtaking extremely difficult (for the the benefit of those whose knowledge of the word 'aerodynamic' is limited to the song by Daft Punk). Trouble is though, said ban will only come into force at the start of 2011. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but if the teams this time last year were able to manically double their diffuser count, surely isn't the reverse possible now?
A certain M. Mosley, esq. would have you have believe that it was fuel strategies that gave the past 16 seasons that certain je ne sais quoi. With last weekend in mind, I finally see where he's coming from. A big problem with Bahrain was the 'big 8' all pitted within 2 laps of each other, which should have been foreseen given the finite life of a set of Bridgestone super-softs on which they all qualified. The fact of the matter was though that the harder medium compound tyre was more than enough to last the remaining 30 or so laps of the Sakhir Circuit, which meant the promised challenge of tyre-management never truly materialised. With that in mind, a simple solution would be to supply just 1, preferably the softer, compound at each race (and while we're at it, get shot of the nonsensical rule that requires drivers to start on the tyres they qualified on). This would open an array of strategic options - just the thing that nostalgic fans were salivating over in the off-season.
The more simple-minded may also say that later in the season, the new points system should be a catalyst for overtaking. 'Fraid not. These guys are racing drivers - they are constantly on the absolute limit, and the carrot of an extra 7 rather than 2 points for gunning for the win ain't gonna change that. Similarly, those who think bringing back KERS is the answer are completely and utterly wrong - allow me to explain. The reason we got the odd KERS-induced pass last year was because the cars from Woking and Maranello (and briefly the ones from Enstone and Hinwil too) had it, and the rest didn't. Give everyone the device, and it will take very little time for all the drivers to work out exactly best where to use the boost every lap. Then, come Sunday, everybody uses KERS in the same places every lap, and bugger all is achieved. And, for the record, I couldn't give a toss if the endangered Indonesian speckled manta-ray is saved because of the damn thing.
What might just work on the other hand, is a boost system that works on a per-race rather than per-lap basis: by giving every driver substantially less boosts than laps, it forces them to use their noggin as to when to administer their extra 60 horses. IndyCar was able to implement this exact thing last season off the back of a snoozefest of a race. Take note, Bernie.
14 March 2010
Bahrain Grand Prix 2010
The anticipation leading up to this season has been bigger than ever, and understandably so: never before have so many questions been thrown up by off-season developments, in particular Jenson's decision to ditch his championship team in favour of challenging his fellow British champ Hamilton in his own team, and of course the return of arguably the greatest of all time - Herr Schumacher himself. But, put simply, the opening race of this most-hyped of seasons turned out to be even more processional than the purest of purists would like to have seen.
Qualifying made 3 things clear - 1. Red Bull and Ferrari seemed to be the cars to beat, 2. The new teams, and in particular Hispania, were hopelessly off the pace, although this was probably to be expected, and 3. The extended piece of track was utterly pointless, with the bumps rendering Button's McLaren a space hopper through turn 6. Going back to the new teams, I did feel in particular for Karun Chandhok, who endured a real baptism of fire in his debut grand prix weekend - he didn't so much as drive a small handful of laps all weekend through absolutely no fault of his own. At least teammate Bruno Senna (who looked eeriely like Ayrton through his visor) completed 18 laps of the race, but you can't help but feel its going to be a long year ahead for all the new boys. Hats off to Lotus (or should I say 1Malaysia Racing) for getting (almost) both cars to the finish line, which is more than can be said for Branson's boys, although the all-CFD design did prove itself as quick as, if more fragile than the green and yellow cars.
After a heated first qualifying session of the season with grid order being Vettel, Massa, Alonso, Hamilton, Rosberg, Webber, Schumacher & Button, I was looking forward to the first non-refuelling race since the year I was born. When the lights went out, Vettel stormed away from the line, with Alonso cleverly outwitting his Brazilian teammate to lead the assault on Vettel. Hamilton made a minor error which saw him spend his entire first stint stuck behind the slower Rosberg, while, Webber's Red Bull let go a huge ploom of smoke which precipitated the first piece of contact of the season, between fifth-row starters Kubica & Sutil. Webber dropped behind Schumacher, and the order would remain Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Rosberg, Hamilton, Schumacher, Webber, Button for the entire first stint.
At the stops, Webber came acropper of the '55m' rule to fall behind Button which is where he would stay the entire race, unable to make a pass on the reigning champion. His teammate on the other hand, appeared dominant until 'Luscious Liz' developed an apparent exhaust problem which saw him lose top speed, and consequently 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Alonso then simply strolled home 16 seconds clear of Massa to take an emphatic first win of the season, with Hamilton a distant third place. Vettel hung onto 4th ahead of the Mercedes cars of Rosberg and Schumacher (who endured a rather low-key return), Button and Webber. The point-scorers were completed by Force India's Liuzzi, who drove to an excellent 9th place, and veteran Rubens Barrichello who had a fairly steady run to claim the final point in his first outing for Williams. Behind them, it was Kubica & Sutil after recovering from their antics on lap 1, from Alguersauri, new-boy Hulkenberg (who had also suffered a spin early on) and the only new-team driver to finish - Kovalainen. Buemi and Trulli both suffered failures with 3 laps to go, joining Both Hispanias, Virgins, Saubers and Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov on the retirement list.
In 2 weeks time we head to Melbourne, which usually provides a cracking race. Let's hope at least that it's a tad more exciting than todays.
Qualifying made 3 things clear - 1. Red Bull and Ferrari seemed to be the cars to beat, 2. The new teams, and in particular Hispania, were hopelessly off the pace, although this was probably to be expected, and 3. The extended piece of track was utterly pointless, with the bumps rendering Button's McLaren a space hopper through turn 6. Going back to the new teams, I did feel in particular for Karun Chandhok, who endured a real baptism of fire in his debut grand prix weekend - he didn't so much as drive a small handful of laps all weekend through absolutely no fault of his own. At least teammate Bruno Senna (who looked eeriely like Ayrton through his visor) completed 18 laps of the race, but you can't help but feel its going to be a long year ahead for all the new boys. Hats off to Lotus (or should I say 1Malaysia Racing) for getting (almost) both cars to the finish line, which is more than can be said for Branson's boys, although the all-CFD design did prove itself as quick as, if more fragile than the green and yellow cars.
After a heated first qualifying session of the season with grid order being Vettel, Massa, Alonso, Hamilton, Rosberg, Webber, Schumacher & Button, I was looking forward to the first non-refuelling race since the year I was born. When the lights went out, Vettel stormed away from the line, with Alonso cleverly outwitting his Brazilian teammate to lead the assault on Vettel. Hamilton made a minor error which saw him spend his entire first stint stuck behind the slower Rosberg, while, Webber's Red Bull let go a huge ploom of smoke which precipitated the first piece of contact of the season, between fifth-row starters Kubica & Sutil. Webber dropped behind Schumacher, and the order would remain Vettel, Alonso, Massa, Rosberg, Hamilton, Schumacher, Webber, Button for the entire first stint.
At the stops, Webber came acropper of the '55m' rule to fall behind Button which is where he would stay the entire race, unable to make a pass on the reigning champion. His teammate on the other hand, appeared dominant until 'Luscious Liz' developed an apparent exhaust problem which saw him lose top speed, and consequently 1st, 2nd and 3rd places. Alonso then simply strolled home 16 seconds clear of Massa to take an emphatic first win of the season, with Hamilton a distant third place. Vettel hung onto 4th ahead of the Mercedes cars of Rosberg and Schumacher (who endured a rather low-key return), Button and Webber. The point-scorers were completed by Force India's Liuzzi, who drove to an excellent 9th place, and veteran Rubens Barrichello who had a fairly steady run to claim the final point in his first outing for Williams. Behind them, it was Kubica & Sutil after recovering from their antics on lap 1, from Alguersauri, new-boy Hulkenberg (who had also suffered a spin early on) and the only new-team driver to finish - Kovalainen. Buemi and Trulli both suffered failures with 3 laps to go, joining Both Hispanias, Virgins, Saubers and Russian rookie Vitaly Petrov on the retirement list.
In 2 weeks time we head to Melbourne, which usually provides a cracking race. Let's hope at least that it's a tad more exciting than todays.
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