Indian Grand Prix 2012 - Preview

On paper, it seems as if it’s all over. Those that subscribe to that particular viewpoint should nonetheless remember that in F1, anything can happen – and often does. Sebastian Vettel may be on a roll reminiscent of his dominant campaign of last year, but with four races standing between him and a third title it’s not quite a foregone conclusion just yet.

The Buddh International Circuit near New Delhi in India plays host to what could prove another pivotal round in this year’s title encounter. The difference between India and some of the other Asian nations that are relatively new to the F1 calendar – namely China, Korea and Bahrain – is that there is something of a budding motorsport culture (helped no doubt by a representative among the drivers in Narain Karthikeyan) to be found and thus plenty of eager fans on hand to fill the grandstands. Combined with a track layout that ranks among one of Hermann Tilke’s more acclaimed designs and India could yet transpire to be a ‘must-have’ fixture on the F1 calendar.

The track itself is not dissimilar in character to Korea, in that the opening section featuring two long straights and slow corners is juxtaposed against a highly technical section of medium speed sweepers that demand solid front downforce. The two DRS zones are to be found along the start/finish straight and the lengthier back straight, which should make both the first corner and the turn 4 hairpin prime passing places, whilst the hard and soft compound Pirelli tyres will be on offer to the teams.

Despite my perhaps optimistic opening paragraph, Red Bull and their number one driver have to be regarded as favourites to take honours this weekend. It seems as if Vettel has finally been able to get the RB8 exactly to his liking courtesy of the raft of updates applied during the Asian flyaways that have made the Milton Keynes-built car the undoubted class of the field. Perhaps the German’s stiffest opposition will once again come from in-house, with teammate Mark Webber seemingly back on the sort of form that carried him to victory at Silverstone all those months ago following his unexpected Korea pole position.

Ferrari appeared to have at least the race pace to challenge the Red Bulls at Korea, but their lacklustre qualifying form as of late has served to all but rule out the Prancing Horse from challenging for wins. With a gap of just six points between himself and Vettel, Fernando Alonso is still the master of his own destiny to a certain extent. The team have reportedly now overcome the wind-tunnel calibration gremlins that proved so detrimental to the team’s early progress, although it remains to be seen whether that will translate into any extra performance on-track this weekend.

In the sister car, Felipe Massa was able to follow up his eye-catching run to second place at Suzuka with another potential podium-clinching performance at Korea, the Brazilian dutifully crossing the line in fourth place in the interests of his teammate’s title bid in spite of looking to have the pace to challenge Webber ahead. With a one-year extension to his contract in his pocket, Massa appears to have turned the proverbial corner and could yet prove a useful ally in Alonso’s battle against Vettel.

Assessing the progress of McLaren during the last two races has been difficult. For Lewis Hamilton, nothing seems to have gone his way since gearbox failure denied him a likely victory at Singapore. A suspension problem prevented the former champion from finishing any higher than fifth at Suzuka, whilst an early rear roll-bar failure would consign Hamilton to just a single point at Korea. Button meanwhile found himself engaged in a fruitless chase of Kamui Kobayashi at Suzuka before being wiped out by the Japanese driver on lap one a week later at Korea.

The evidence during qualifying and the early part of the race at Korea however suggests that the McLaren is still very much at least a podium contender, so expect Hamilton and Button to aim to be in the mix for the fight for pole position. If Red Bull assert their superiority once again at India, then a close battle between Woking and Maranello for best-of-the-rest honours could be on the cards once again. That won’t be enough however to keep alive the fading ember that is Hamilton’s title hopes.

Another driver still entertaining remote hopes of title success is Lotus’s Kimi Raikkonen, who lies third in the title chase despite his dearth of wins in 2012. Those hopes were largely riding on the new ‘Coanda effect’ exhaust system that was implemented on the Finn’s car at Korea, which was a qualified success even if it didn’t propel the E20 to the heights it scaled earlier in the year. Romain Grosjean meanwhile was driving somewhat within himself at Korea following his first lap misdemeanour with Webber a week prior; the Frenchman will be hoping for a boost this weekend now his car is also blessed with the new exhaust system.

The hard tyres on offer this weekend should play into the hands of Sauber, who often perform well on the hardest compound, so another giant-killing performance from Sergio Perez is by no means out the question. Force India will be looking to keep up the form Nico Hulkenberg demonstrated at Korea, whilst Toro Rosso could potentially make use of the long straights along which their cars often excel to make it four points-scoring outings on the trot. Mercedes and Williams on the other hand look to have work to do before getting themselves firmly back in the hunt for points.

Qualifying Prediction

1. Vettel, 2. Hamilton, 3. Webber, 4. Alonso, 5. Massa, 6. Raikkonen, 7. Button, 8. Grosjean, 9. Hulkenberg, 10. Rosberg

Race Prediction

1. Vettel, 2. Hamilton, 3. Alonso, 4. Webber, 5. Raikkonen, 6. Perez, 7. Grosjean, 8. Hulkenberg, 9. Di Resta, 10. Ricciardo

It’s hard to see exactly what can stand in the way of a fourth straight Vettel victory at India, with the possible exceptions of rain and alternator failure. With neither of those looking likely, it will be up to Hamilton to keep the reigning champion honest, with Alonso doing the best he can with limited machinery to snatch another podium ahead of Webber and Raikkonen. Perez will make decisive progress late in the race thanks to another tyre management masterclass to take sixth, ahead of Grosjean, the two Force Indias and Ricciardo. No sign of either Button or Massa – two tight hairpins for the pack to negotiate on lap one will inevitably lead to some contact… right?

Wasted Talent

In recent weeks, yet more pieces of the driver market puzzle have fallen into place. We now know that Felipe Massa will remain with Ferrari for one more year before (probably) having to give way to a certain Herr Vettel, Nico Hulkenberg is set to make a sideways step from Force India to Sauber and that the latest Telmex protegé, Esteban Gutierrez, is tipped to join him.

What’s caught my attention, however, are not the drivers who have secured seats, but moreover the drivers that have not, or are unlikely to. I can’t think of an era in Formula One when more talent has been left to fester on the sidelines, and with more young drivers seemingly on the cusp of making their Grand Prix debut the situation looks only as if it will detierorate next season.

Here is a list of all the drivers currently under the age of 30 that have lost their F1 seat in the past three years: Nelson Piquet Jr., Kazuki Nakajima, Lucas di Grassi, Karun Chandhok, Adrian Sutil, Sebastien Buemi, Jaime Alguersauri, and Jerome D’Ambrosio. By the end of the year, we may also be able to add Kamui Kobayashi, Vitaly Petrov and Bruno Senna to that worryingly long list.

All of the aforementioned that raced in GP2, with the exception of Nakajima, were race winners and in some cases title contenders, whilst Sutil and Alguersauri were given their F1 chances on the virtue of their impressive Formula Three CVs. That means none of them are bad drivers, or didn’t deserve their F1 grid slot, yet now all have been consigned, at least for now, to the scrapheap of F1 talent with little prospect of reprieve.

So why is this the case? And can anything be done to rectify it? You may argue that I’m getting somewhat sentimental here; that the F1 driver market is a simple exercise in supply-and-demand economics. It goes without saying that in this post-manufacturer era, in which the smaller teams are now so reliant upon their drivers to bring sponsorship, the turnaround of drivers is going to be higher.

We shouldn’t forget nonetheless that F1 is, foremostly, a sport, and as such talent ought to come before sponsorship dollars. Opting for one driver over another simply due to monetary concerns can often be a false economy, particularly given the wider sponsorship opportunities open to teams that are able to secure big results as well as the extra prize money available for finishing higher in the constructors' standings.

Part of the issue is that talent isn’t being given chance to develop sufficiently, partly because of the pressures brought to bear by sponsors. Gutierrez, assuming he gets his Sauber seat next year, is a good example. The young Mexican is clearly talented, as evidenced by his success in GP3 and GP2. But, there have been too many errors in a year he was touted as being among the GP2 title favourites; as such he placed third in the championship this season.

Many drivers have of course secured F1 seats with lesser results than Esteban, but he’s only 21 years old – barely old enough to order a beer in America. He’s only had two full tests in an F1 car, at the 2010 and 2011 Young Drivers Tests at Abu Dhabi, and could surely benefit from some Friday sessions next season alongside a third campaign of GP2 before being let loose on an F1 race seat.

Sauber are known to have concerns about his inexperience, but Telmex ultimately make up a sizeable chunk of the Swiss outfit’s budget and thus their desire to see Gutierrez take a race drive cannot be ignored. And if Telmex’s wish does indeed come true, that’s one less space on the grid available for a Kobayashi, an Alguersauri or a Sutil.

Red Bull is perhaps the biggest offender in this category. Perhaps neither Buemi nor Alguersauri set the world on fire during their tenure at Toro Rosso, but they too were rushed through the junior formulae as if the energy drink giant believed that drivers were somehow past it by age 25. Buemi had just one full season of GP2, in which he was only sixth in the championship, whilst Alguersauri was parachuted into Sebastien Bourdais’s seat in mid-2009 with just half a season of World Series by Renault under his belt.

Admittedly, some drivers, chiefly Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen, prove it’s possible to adapt to F1 machinery with very limited experience in the lower categories. But just because they managed it doesn’t mean we should expect every up-and-coming driver to. Indeed, how many team principals these days would have given a then 21-year old Button a second chance after his terrible 2001 season in which he was totally outclassed by Giancarlo Fisichella at Benetton?

Button didn’t go on to win his first race until 2006, by which time he was age 26. Gerhard Berger was 27 when he finally took his first win, Rubens Barrichello was 28, Mika Hakkinen was 29 and Nigel Mansell was 32. Every driver takes a different amount of time to develop, so why are some F1 teams giving their drivers so little time to prove themselves?

Every team is, understandably, desperate for the next Lewis Hamilton or the next Sebastian Vettel, a driver who within a season proves he is championship material. What we shouldn’t forget though is that both of these drivers made their debuts before the era of no in-season testing, meaning both were able to rack up considerable mileage before their first F1 races – neither was quite the completely inexperienced rookie they were portrayed to be.

Perhaps the answer is therefore some kind of return to in-season testing, but only for young drivers. The best way to do this, keeping the need to minimise costs firmly in mind, would be to introduce an extra one-hour session over the course of a Grand Prix weekend designated specifically for reserve drivers. For this to work as intended, a rule would be required that stipulates reserve drivers must be under a certain age (26, let’s say) and with a season or less of F1 race experience.

Going back to the Sauber scenario, everyone’s a winner: the team can evaulate Gutierrez more accurately before handing him a race seat, Gutierrez himself will be likely to make fewer mistakes in his debut season having accumulated plenty of mileage in an F1 car beforehand, Telmex get to see their man in action every weekend, a more experienced driver such as Kobayashi gets an extra season to prove his worth, and fans get to see a larger variety of drivers on track whilst being able to make accurate comparisons between the race drivers and the reserves.

Had such a system been put in place three years ago, perhaps we would still see some of the talents mentioned earlier in this article with a race seat. Perhaps a couple of them may have even made that big breakthrough that would assured them of a permament drive. We’ll never know, of course, but it's not too late to prevent the next generation of drivers from suffering a similar fate.

Korean Grand Prix 2012 - Report

Sebastian Vettel seized the championship lead with a third successive victory in another sublime performance at Korea. Taking command of the race at the very first corner, Vettel out-dragged pole-sitting teammate Mark Webber at the start and lead every lap thereafter en route to a comfortable fourth win of the season. The Australian hung on to make it the first Red Bull one-two of the year, with Fernando Alonso completing the podium.

Red Bull once again proved the class of qualifying on Saturday, but to the surprise of most onlookers it was Webber who would line up ahead of his reigning champion teammate. Hamilton was the closest challenger to the Adrian Newey-designed cars, lining up third, ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, Lotus’s Kimi Raikkonen and the second Ferrari of Felipe Massa. Yellow flags in Q2 prevented Button from progressing to the final part of qualifying, meaning the Brit would line up in a lowly eleventh place.

As the lights went out on Sunday, it was Vettel who made the superior getaway of the two Red Bull drivers, darting up the inside at the first corner and holding his ground along the back straight to take the lead. Alonso made the same move on Hamilton to stake an early claim to third place, whilst Massa found his way past former Ferrari teammate Raikkonen to take fifth.

Meanwhile, there was incident behind as Button sought to make up ground from his grid slot. The McLaren driver was running three abreast with Sergio Perez’s Sauber to the left and Nico Rosberg’s Mercedes to the right when the second of Sauber of Kamui Kobayashi out-braked himself just behind. The Japanese driver subsequently ricocheted between the cars of Rosberg and Button on the approach to the turn 3 hairpin, putting both out of the race.

Back at the front, Vettel began to press home his advantage, opening up a four-second lead over Webber during the first stint. The first spate of pit-stops passed without incident as the leaders all switched from super-soft to soft compound tyres, at which point Webber began to drop into the clutches of Alonso. At the same time, Hamilton was suffering from tyre graining, later diagnosed as a rear roll-bar failure, and began to come under pressure from former title rival Massa.

Whilst Webber was able to stabilise the gap to the chasing Ferrari, Hamilton was forced to concede fourth place to Massa on lap 21 as the Brazilian made the inevitable move at turn 3. Raikkonen tried to follow suit on lap 24, but Hamilton saved his KERS for the following straight and retaliated against the Lotus driver at the very next turn – the Finn would be stuck behind the McLaren for another two laps until Hamilton made a premature second stop.

Vettel by this stage now had a cushion of eight seconds over Webber, but was instructed by his team during the final stint after his second pit-stop to take it easy and preserve the tyres. Webber was able to close the gap somewhat as a result, but in the end nobody was in a position to deny Vettel a 25^th career victory. The reigning champion, in addition to taking the championship lead, now surpasses Juan Manuel Fangio’s win total and draws level with both Jim Clark and Niki Lauda.

It was ultimately close but no cigar for Webber, who stood on the podium for the first time since his win at Silverstone, with Alonso unable to take the fight to the Red Bulls and forced to settle for third place. Massa appeared to have the pace to overhaul Alonso at one stage, but was told to keep his distance by the team in the interests of his teammate’s title bid. Still, it was another astute performance from the Brazilian and an extension to his Ferrari contact now appears imminent.

Raikkonen moved back into a distant fifth position (where he would ultimately finish) after Hamilton’s second stop, but more tyre woes for the Brit meant that Romain Grosjean and Nico Hulkenberg were able to catch and initiate a three-way battle for sixth. On lap 40, Grosjean was able to draw alongside Hamilton down the back straight with the help of DRS, but ran wide at turn 3. This gave Hulkenberg the opportunity to pass as the trio came down the following straight.

Moving to the outside, the Force India driver swept past Grosjean and out-braked the ailing Hamilton sufficiently to move around the outside of turn 4 and snatch sixth place. Hamilton pitted for a third time at the end of lap 42, allowing Grosjean to move into seventh place. The McLaren driver resumed in tenth place behind the Toro Rosso pair of Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniel Ricciardo, who was struggling with a brake problem in the final stint and allowed teammate Vergne past to safeguard eighth place for the team.

Hamilton meanwhile looked to have the pace to overhaul both of the Red Bull-backed youngsters, but would be foiled by a stray piece of astroturf that got caught on the McLaren’s sidepod. Whilst Vergne and Ricciardo (who started down in 21^st after a five-place gearbox penalty) took eighth and ninth places in an excellent day for Toro Rosso, Hamilton only just defended tenth place from Perez at the chequered flag; the Brit’s title ambitions now look to hang by a thread.

Perez, along with the second Force India of Paul Di Resta, failed to make much ground by starting on the soft tyre and ended up just outside the points in eleventh and twelfth ahead of Michael Schumacher, whose Mercedes suffered from particularly lacklustre race pace. The two Williams cars were also off the pace, Pastor Maldonado and Bruno Senna rounding out the top fifteen.

Next to finish was the Caterham duo, Vitaly Petrov out-finishing teammate Heikki Kovalainen on this occasion, ahead of the Marussias of Timo Glock and Charles Pic as well as Narain Karthikeyan’s HRT. Joining Button and Rosberg in retirement would be the perceived perpetrator of the incident that ended their races, Kobayashi, who served a drive-through penalty before retiring to preserve the car early on. HRT meanwhile opted to retire the car of Pedro de la Rosa due to a sticking throttle.

A hat-trick of wins for Vettel may look like the championship is all but decided with just four races to go, but if this 2012 season has taught us anything, it’s that the dominance of a particular car can vanish at a moment’s notice – McLaren have come off the back of two difficult races after looking unbeatable just after the summer break. Just six points separate Vettel and Alonso with 100 left to play for: it’s far from over just yet.