The Silly Season

The 2009 silly season was one of the best in recent memory. We had Button making what many regarded as a foolhardy move to McLaren, Alonso making his long-awaited jump to Ferrari, and rumours swirling of a certain Michael Schumacher making a full-time comeback with Mercedes after being unable to replace the injured Felipe Massa at Ferrari. Added with the expected arrival of three new teams, and thus six fresh seats, the prospect of who was heading where was almost as exciting as the action on track itself.


This year's silly season however has turned out to be something of a letdown. Continuity seems the name of the game, with Ferrari extending Massa's contract to 2012, Webber being retained for another season by Red Bull, and Mercedes showing no signs of giving up hope on Schumacher. Of course McLaren already had Button and Hamilton on contract, and Alonso, Rosberg and Vettel seem to be going nowhere soon either. Looking further down the field, Williams seem set to retain both Barrichello and Hulkenberg, Renault has Kubica firmly in its clutches, Toro Rosso have confirmed both Buemi and Alguersauri, and the Force India line-up looks unlikely to change too, despite impressive practice showings from Paul Di Resta.


So, that means the best seat up for grabs seems to be the one at Renault currently being occupied by Russian novice Vitaly Petrov. Whilst he has been very inconsistent, he has shown flashes of promise at Turkey, Germany and more notably at Hungary. Whether those performances will be sufficient to merit his retention by the French manufacturer is yet to be seen though, particularly with fierce competition from many more experienced pilots.


2007 champion Kimi Raikkonen was mooted at one point, but since then he's committed himself to at least one more year's rallying with Citroen. The other contenders for the seat appear to be Heikki Kovalainen, Timo Glock, and the current Mercedes third driver Nick Heidfeld, who coincidentally used to partner Kubica at the BMW works squad. The sad fact for Petrov is that you just can't help feeling all the aforementioned would more than likely do a better job than he is now. The Russian's only saving grace is he's only going to get better, whilst arguably the others have already peaked.

I'd personally like to see Heidfeld snaffle the drive, but equally Petrov does deserve to stay in F1. If he was to be ousted from Renault, his next likely port of call would be Sauber. Whilst the Swiss team's current pairing of De La Rosa and Kobayashi are doing a solid enough job at the moment, a driver who brings funding to the team would be valuable, particularly for a team with no title sponsor. At age 39, it's likely De La Rosa would be the one given the boot, particularly since he's been outpaced by his young Japanese teammate more often than not.


Petrov is far from the only well-heeled candidate out there however, for there are a multitude of up-and-coming racers in GP2. Pastor Maldonado is currently stamping his authority on this year's championship, but then Sergio Perez and Jules Bianchi would also be good bets, the latter already having signed some kind of long-term deal with Sauber's engine supplier Ferrari. Looking a stage further down the ladder, Esteban Gutierrez is dominating the GP3 field this year, and already has a Sauber testing deal in his pocket.


As for the new teams, in theory Lotus have both of their drivers under contract (although that won't stop either leaving should a better offer arise), as does Virgin Timo Glock. Lucas Di Grassi may have to make way for one of their test drivers Jerome D'Ambrosio or Luis Razia, again depending on how hungry Branson is for cash. As for Hispania, it's probably going to be a case of who's the highest bidder. Both Senna and Chandhok have acquitted themselves well this year, but that means little in the face of the Sakon Yamamotos of this world who have impressive bank accounts.


Looking further into the future, Ferrari and Red Bull appear to be the most fluid. Massa is under contract until 2012, but you can bet your bottom dollar Ferrari would usher in Webber or possibly Kubica if they saw fit for 2012. Indeed if the Ferrari seat was to go the way of the Aussie, that would free a coveted space at Red Bull. Dr. Helmut Marko has made no secret of the fact he'd like to see Sebastien Buemi, who Red Bull have backed since his Formula BMW days, nab the drive. Alternatively, Raikkonen could yet be lured back from the rallying scene if Red Bull remains the finest package on the grid.


Finally, there's the trifling matter of who will get the 13^th grid space after the shambolic attempt from USF1. Now hot favourites ART have pulled the plug the slot looks to go either to respected sportscar constructor Epsilon Euskadi, Stefan GP who unsuccessfully tried to claim the 13^th slot this year, or erstwhile GP2 team Durango in conjunction with none other than 1997 champion Jacques Villeneuve. The Canadian has been looking for an F1 reprieve for a couple of years now, and Schumacher's dismal return doesn't seem to have put him off at all. But with rumoured involvement from the stars of Crashgate Flavio Briatore, Pat Symonds, Nelson Piquet Jr. along with the son of Colonel Gaddafi, it will be interesting to see if the FIA will even touch them with a bargepole.


Epsilon Euskadi, with their wind tunnel supposedly already up and running seem the likely victor. As for their drivers, planned USF1 driver Jose Maria Lopez is certainly in with a shout, but so are the likes of Kazuki Nakajima, Anthony Davidson and Christian Klien if the team feels the need for an experienced runner. With the right talent, there's no reason why the Spanish outfit shouldn't be able to mix it with the other new teams straight from the off.

Hungarian Grand Prix 2010

If Adrian Newey was asked to sketch a circuit that would get the most out of his Red Bull RB6, it would look something like the Hungaroring. The antithesis of the today's typical Tilke-designed tracks, it features a raft of medium-speed corners with very few straights, perfect for a car with a copious amount of downforce but a fairly meagre Renault powerplant. Mark Webber was able to take full advantage of this fact to stroll to his fourth victory of the season, but only after teammate Sebastian Vettel shot himself in the foot having looking a sure-fire bet for the win.

The performance advantage the Austrian cars enjoyed on Saturday was enormous. While 1.2 seconds would normally be seen as a staggering margin to be languishing behind your rivals in qualifying, it was good enough to take 3^rd on the grid yesterday afternoon behind the Red Bulls. That's just what Fernando Alonso did, with Vettel on pole and Webber in 2^nd place simply out of reach for the Ferrari pilot. Felipe Massa joined his teammate on the second row, with Lewis Hamilton only managing 5^th place after bemoaning his car's lack of pace. Nico Rosberg was next for Mercedes, ahead of the two impressive Renaults of Vitaly Petrov and Robert Kubica, the former outqualifying his teammate for the very first time this year.

Due to the relatively little amount of other racing the Hungaroring sees compared with most other F1 circuits, starting on the dirty side of the grid is particularly disadvantageous at this circuit. Webber discovered this the hard way at the start of the race as he saw his teammate hook up a perfect start, with Alonso rocketing past him too. Petrov also took full advantage of his clean grid slot to move up to 5^th place at turn 1, even if Hamilton did quickly demote him back to 6^th a corner later. Meanwhile Vettel had wasted no time in stamping his authority on proceedings at the front escaping from the clutches of Alonso at a rate of almost a second per lap. However everything changed on lap 16 when the deployment of the Safety Car in response to the wayward front wing of Tonio Liuzzi threw a major spanner into the works for the German.

Unsurprisingly, almost the entire field scrambled for the pits, with the only notable exceptions of Webber and Barrichello. What followed with so many cars in the pits were scenes that wouldn't have seemed out of place in an episode of Chucklevision. First, Rosberg's right-rear went AWOL as the Mercedes left its pit box, sending said wheel hurtling down the pits where it was fortunate to cause minor bruising to just one unlucky mechanic. Meanwhile, a few pit boxes further down the way, Adrian Sutil and Kubica drove clean into each other, as the former attempted to enter his pit box and the latter leave. While Sutil was out on the spot, Kubica was slapped with a token 10-second stop-go penalty, just to add insult to the injury of now being last. The Pole soon called it a day after, with the offending parties of Mercedes and Renault both awarded $50,000 fines by the stewards.

Today I, and Vettel it seems, became aware of a rule that dictates that you cannot leave a gap of more than 10 car-lengths between yourself and the next car under Safety Car conditions. As Webber escaped at the front having not yet pitted, Vettel paid the ultimate price by serving a drive-through penalty that dropped him behind Alonso, but more crucially allowed the Aussie to build the gap required to pit with his lead intact.

The 25 laps between the restart and Webber's eventual pitstop were devastatingly fast – so much so that he still had 8 seconds in hand over the squabbling pair of Alonso and Vettel, who just couldn't find a way past the Spaniard. So, Webber's path was clear to romp to a thoroughly deserved chequered flag that propelled him back to first place in the driver's standings. Alonso continued Ferrari's mini-resurgence to take a creditable 2^nd, ahead of a livid Vettel who knew full well that he and he alone had squandered yet another pole position.

Massa took 4^th at the very place he suffered a horrific near-fatal accident one year prior after Hamilton suffered a gearbox failure soon after his pitstop. That also meant Petrov was promoted back to 5^th place where he stayed for the remainder in by far his best drive of the year at his 'home' race. The same can be said for his GP2 rival Nico Hulkenberg who had a fine drive to 6^th, ahead of Sauber's Pedro De La Rosa who added himself to this year's scoreboard with 7^th. Button trundled to a lacklustre 8^th place to top off a disastrous weekend for the McLaren team who lost the lead in both sets of standings, ahead of the other Sauber of Kobayashi in 9^th who had an outstanding run from the back row of the grid.

The final point for 10^th was fiercely contested between erstwhile Ferrari stablemates Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello. After leaving his pitstop very late, his Williams easily had the measure of Schumacher's Mercedes on fresh super-soft tyres. When Schuey made a small slip-up in the final corner with a few laps to go, it gave Barrichello the impetus he needed to make the pass. That he did, but not before being brusquely shoved towards, and very nearly into, the pit wall by the ruthless and unapologetic German, for which he rightly got a 10-place grid drop for next time out at Spa.

As F1's summer break gets underway, just 20 points separate the top 5 championship contenders. Vettel had a golden opportunity to be that man at the front, but hardly for the first time this year, his own error cost him dear. He who makes the least mistakes from here-on in is likely to be he who comes away with the silverware come the end of the year.