A bit busy, then. I stand by my opinion that this Schumacher chap isn’t all that [...]]]> Ever wondered how hectic the start of a Grand Prix must be for the men in the midfield? Here’s a bit of on-board footage from Sunday’s race in Valencia, as seen by an old bloke in a Mercedes:

A bit busy, then. I stand by my opinion that this Schumacher chap isn’t all that bad.

It’s a testament to the strength of modern-day Formula 1 machines that Mark Webber got out of that with nothing more than a scratched arm, and a wave of Lady Luck’s fair hand [...]]]> For the benefit of those who’ve just returned from a weekend break on Jupiter, here’s an Australian chap having a bad Sunday afternoon:

It’s a testament to the strength of modern-day Formula 1 machines that Mark Webber got out of that with nothing more than a scratched arm, and a wave of Lady Luck’s fair hand that kept the Red Bull away from anything solid while it was up in the air.

Run into the back of somebody on your daily commute and your insurance company will hold you responsible. Run into the back of Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus on the streets of Valencia and it’s a different affair. The overtaking driver is responsible for ensuring that his move is completed safely and successfully, and it’s difficult to argue in favour of this pass meeting those criteria, but sometimes the driver ahead has a part to play. So it was in this case.

Our old friend Cakey was defending his place, as is his right.  Usually a Red Bull encounters a Lotus only when lapping backmarkers, but after a bad start and an early pitstop Webber was down the pack, and this battle was for position.  In doing so, he made a series of small but noticeable darts across the racetrack, not especially visible from the on-board shots in the above video but far more apparent from the external head-on shot.  The unwritten rule states that the defending driver can change his line once.  Heikki did it at least twice.

That’s not a sensible move at the best of times, but became a dangerous one because of the closing speed of the Red Bull.  Lotus are doing a fine job in their first season, but their car is nevertheless several seconds per lap slower than the frontrunners.  Webber came galloping up to the back of Kovalainen at an enormous lick, and it seemed that neither driver was quite prepared for how quickly the two cars came to occupy the same space.  The onus here lies with Webber to avoid Kovalainen no matter what Heikki’s doing ahead, and in Heikki’s defence there was always plenty of track to the side of the Lotus for Mark to aim at, but Webber can be forgiven for failing to anticipate how great the closing speed would be.

That’s especially true when you consider that Kovalainen had applied the brakes ready for the upcoming tight right-hander.  It’s been suggested elsewhere that Webber missed his braking point.  Red Bull’s telemetry is said to indicate that on the previous lap, he didn’t hit the brakes until 80 metres beyond the point of impact – on that lap, he made the corner with no trouble.  It wasn’t that Webber missed his braking point, simply that the correct braking point for a Red Bull was that much further down the track than the correct braking point for a Lotus.

None of that means they shouldn’t keep racing.  David Coulthard would have you believe that Kovalainen should have jumped out of the way, that the new teams should limit themselves to racing each other.  This is a nonsense, of course – I forget which energy drink firm has Coulthard as an ambassador, but perhaps you can fill in that particular blank yourself.  There is no Class A and Class B, no reason for the new teams not to mingle with the established outfits and no grounds for suggesting that Kovalainen should have done anything other than defend his position.  What wouldn’t go amiss, though, is a little more awareness of the speed differential we’re dealing with, and that goes equally for the man coming through the pack.

Shall we have [...]]]> There are reasons why nothing has been posted for a little while, all of them rather too mundane to detain you with here.  Time that might otherwise have been spent doing this had to be spent doing something else instead.  There is, of course, a quick and easy fix: match my current salary.

Shall we have a little refresher?

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Remember that Mercedes concept livery?  Here’s the real deal, or as real as a deal can be when it’s painted on last year’s Brawn:

Elegant, classy, understated and yet still distinctive and recognisable.  You may feel differently, of course, and while that’s fine, you may wish to consider this: what if you’re completely wrong?

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USF1 have announced their first driver for 2010.  You may recall that the stated aim was to promote US talent in all areas of the sport, including driving, and if so you won’t be at all surprised to learn the name of the good ol’ boy they’ve signed.

Jose Maria Lopez.

Lopez comes from Argentina, which as far as my atlas can tell is somewhere in the extreme south of the USA.  His record in the junior classes is alright but not exceptional (winner of the now-defunct Formula Renault V6 Eurocup in 2003, solid in F3000 and GP2 thereafter but only a single race win to his credit), and while he’s gone on to great things in the competitive touring car series held in his home country, he ended up there because Renault didn’t see enough in him to employ him further after his stint on their Young Driver Programme.  With no recent single-seater running and a start-up team supporting him, Lopez could find himself settling in for a rather long 2010.

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Staying with USF1, they’re about to demonstrate that they’ve really been building a racing car all this time.  Their first F1 machine, Type 1, is scheduled to turn a wheel in anger for the first time at Barber Motorsports Park at some point in February, before joining in the final European tests prior to the season opener in Bahrain on March 14th.  The car is yet to break cover and the team have kept something of a low profile, leading to increasing doubts over their participation, but at least they have some kind of plan in place.

The same cannot be said for another of this season’s new teams, Campos Meta, who have been very clear in saying that their car isn’t finished yet and might not run at all prior to Bahrain.  Their being in Bahrain is apparently certain, but the heat of a desert nation is not the ideal place to give a car its first shakedown.  In fact, the first race isn’t the ideal place to do it regardless of location.  Bruno Senna remains contracted and ready to drive, his teammate may not be known until the eve of the first race, and the team continue to actively seek investors.

Lotus will have their car ready for launch on February 12th and running at Jerez 5 days later, while Virgin aim to give their machine a shakedown in the first week of February prior to joining the established teams at Jerez on February 10th

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Red Bull and Force India have taken the decision to skip the first test of the winter in Valencia next week, citing a desire to spend more time working on the design of their cars.  Dark mutterings have inevitably followed, but it should be remembered that Red Bull did exactly the same thing in 2009.

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With refuelling banned for 2010, the Sporting Working Group have voted to introduce a rule stating that the top 10 qualifiers must start the race using the same set of tyres they qualified on.  This has yet to be ratified by the F1 Commission or World Motor Sport Council but looks certain to be added to the 2010 rulebook.

The objective is to maintain some kind of strategic element, giving teams the choice between qualifying well on a soft tyre that might not be ideal for the start of the race or sacrificing grid position for a good race tyre.  Whether the idea has any bearing on the tyre choices made by the teams will depend largely upon the compounds that Bridgestone provide.  If there’s little appreciable difference between the softer and harder options, there won’t be a decision to take.

Also awaiting ratification is an amendment to the existing points system.  The SWG meeting resulted in a proposed scoring system of 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1, with points being issued down to 10th place.  The aim here is to encourage drivers to push for victory by increasing the points weighting for the winner, while also ensuring that drivers and teams finishing lower down the order still have something to race for by extending the points-scoring threshold down to 10th place.

There was a time, not at all long ago, when points were awarded to the top 6 drivers, 10-6-4-3-2-1.  When that points system was introduced in 1991 there were 31 cars entered each weekend.  Only 26 could start the race, 20 of those would end up with nothing to show for their efforts, and as a result a point was a precious and valuable thing.  That system was weighted more heavily towards the winner than the proposed 2010 system too – assuming the same drivers finish 1-2, it’ll take 4 races this year for the leader to build up an advantage greater than the points available for a race win, a race more than under the 1991-2002 system.

There’s not necessarily anything wrong with the new system.  It’s just that the old one was better.  Am I wrong?  Let me know.

In the port area of Valencia, on the eastern coast of Spain, the local streets join up with some purpose-built stretches of asphalt to create a racing circuit, home to the European Grand Prix.  Travel far enough up the coastline, stopping to pass border control on the way, and you’ll arrive in Monaco:

Bernie Ecclestone sold the Valencia race to all involved as being the Monaco of eastern Spain, full of beautiful people bringing their yachts into Valencia’s harbour, paying their mooring fees and brightening the place up while the drivers provided the high-speed background.  You can see what he meant:

It is a little known fact that the Tip Top Bar in Monaco is in fact a warehouse, named after a lunchtime game in which the workforce take a running jump at the highest iron bar stored on the premises.  The man closest to touching it with his fingertips wins a free go at the roulette wheel in the casino over the road, the losers have a whipround to pay for his chips.

Not really.

Valencia’s street circuit is every bit as inspiring as its location.  Slow and twisting for the first two thirds of the lap, featuring needless little kinks in the road before each braking zone that serve no purpose other than to prevent overtaking, it opens up at the end into a series of fast, moderately exciting blind sweepers between concrete walls through which absolutely no overtaking can be done.  The inaugural event, won by the sadly sidelined Felipe Massa, is remembered for a near-collision in the pits between Massa and Adrian Sutil for which the former should have been penalised but wasn’t.  It is alleged, Your Honour, that a motor race took place that day too, but nobody can recall the details.

Pole position is therefore an excellent place to start, especially if you’re in a McLaren with a KERS button.  Lewis Hamilton must have felt awfully confident on the grid, chased by a teammate struggling for race pace and a man born under a ladder to a mother with a penchant for kicking black cats.  Hamilton led away, with Slowpoke Kovalainen and Jinxy Barrichello in close attendance behind.

Behind there was a scrum containing the main title protagonists.  Jenson Button had got a little way alongside Sebastian Vettel into the first fast right-hander and then lifted to avoid contact, losing out to Kimi Raikkonen, Nico Rosberg, Fernando Alonso and Mark Webber.  Three abreast into the braking zone for turn 2, Alonso made hay the long way around the outside while Button deposed Webber just in time to have a Renault almost squeeze him into the wall exiting turn 3.  Immediately back on the defensive, Button kept Webber back by means of a short-cut through the following chicane that would later see him forced to cede position to the Red Bull driver.

In the background, Timo Glock’s efforts to sneak a heavy-fuelled point were being spoiled by Sebastien Buemi’s front wing, which was busily machining its way through the Toyota’s rear tyre quickly and violently enough to puncture it.  Luca Badoer, who’ll be in the Ferrari at Spa too assuming you’re not available next weekend, had got himself up to 14th off the line, 14th unfortunately being the ideal position from which to be tipped into a spin by Renault debutant Romain Grosjean.  The red car rejoined last, a position that allowed its pilot to continue his passable impression of a man who’d never seen a car before.

Hamilton was edging away at the front, with Kovalainen not quite capable of matching his pace and helpfully backing up the rapid Barrichello.  Raikkonen was hanging on gamely in his Ferrari, with Vettel just behind and a fast-moving conga line comprising Alonso, Webber, Button, Kubica, Heidfeld and Sutil further back.  On a track designed to allow for it, those six could have put on quite a show.  Here, they stayed in formation until the pit stops, just like Rubens, who took advantage of clear air once Heikki pitted to jump the Finn after his first stop.  Willed on by engineer Jock Clear on the ship-to-shore radio and by a worldwide army of fans, the old boy was having a stormer.

Rubens wasn’t so far away from jumping Hamilton either, but the reigning world champion appeared to have things well under control.  The prospective world champion didn’t, Button mired in the midfield and all set to lose ground to Sebastian Vettel until the German endured a disastrous pitstop.  The fuel rig didn’t seem to deliver any fuel, leading the Red Bull to make an extra stop a lap later.  That probably put paid to any chance of a points finish, but the Renault engine felt there was still sufficient doubt and grenaded itself soon after.  Blowing up a quarter of your season’s engine allocation in one weekend, especially a weekend that sees the champion-in-waiting having a terrible time, isn’t the way to win a world championship, and one imagines that Jenson had a smile on his face as he passed the stricken Sebastian.  He’d have had still more of a grin on his chin at the end of the final pitstops, when traffic saw Webber fall behind Button and out of the points.  Eventually someone will take advantage of Button’s bad run – his eventual 7th place equalled his worst result of the year, achieved last time out in Hungary - but the wait for that man to step forward goes on.

The paying spectators had plenty of time to chew on that as they waited for action on the track.  Some drivers were trying to give them value – Barrichello was 4 seconds adrift of Hamilton and hanging on gamely, Badoer was indulging in his second rotation of a long, long afternoon and Grosjean was performing a half-turn off the back foot going through the final sector – but passing moves were hard to come by.  Earlier in the race, Heidfeld had allowed Kubica to pass him in an area the spectators couldn’t access, and we can only hope that some of them saw it on the big screens, because it was as close to a pass as they were going to get.

The ongoing punctures vs passes contest was settled decisively by the left-rear of the eternally unlucky Kazuki Nakajima.  Running in a quiet 13th, the Japanese driver had his left-rear Bridgestone disintegrate at the end of the back straight.  The long, slow trek back to the pits promoted Luca Badoer to last but one.  Luca’s race pace was at least better than his qualifying effort, and his fastest lap of the race was better than that of two other drivers, but a big drive at Spa next week is all that can possibly see him remain a Ferrari race driver for the rest of the year.  He did at least achieve his stated aim of seeing the finish, something that could not be said of Sebastien Buemi’s exploding left-front brake disc.

The battle at the front looked like Hamilton’s to lose until the final round of pitstops.  McLaren say that they were trying to save fuel and give Lewis another lap, knowing Barrichello would be running longer and was just close enough to be a threat, but that it wasn’t clear whether they’d saved enough to go a lap longer than planned.  They say they were trying to switch the order in which their cars pitted, and that Hamilton was told to stay out a lap longer than scheduled, but had committed to entering the pit lane and couldn’t rejoin the racetrack.  They say that this is why Hamilton’s tyres weren’t ready for him when he got there.

It’s a strange operating procedure that sees mechanics stood in the pitlane without tyres until the last minute, but that’s how a McLaren pitstop works.  This effort was so last minute that Lewis almost ran over the man carrying his left-rear across the pitlane, and that the rest of the pitstop was complete before the front tyres had left their warming blankets.  What should have been 8 seconds in the pits became over 13, and what should have been a close battle for the lead set up by a series of Barrichello fastest laps became a 5 second lead for the Brazilian veteran.  To add to McLaren’s misery, Raikkonen jumped Kovalainen too.

Lewis pushed valiantly to the end but it was a losing battle.  Rubens had pace to spare, as, bizarrely, did his teammate, who yet again started going awfully quickly in the latter stages of the race.  35 seconds up the road from Button, Barrichello saw out an uneventful final stint to claim his first victory since the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix some 85 races ago, then sobbed his heart out on the team radio.  His outpouring of emotion and relief was largely unintelligible, but after a year of heartbreak and frustration he can be forgiven for falling to bits.

What mattered was that he’d kept everything together on the circuit.  Now the nearest challenger to the faltering Button, Barrichello has played himself back into championship contention, and it’ll be fascinating to see how Button reacts to his teammate demonstrating that the Brawn is still a winner.  Rubinho’s success, cheered to the echo by the crowd and applauded by every set of mechanics as he toured into parc ferme, was the most popular of the season so far.

An honest, open, engaging character, the Brazilian is impossible to dislike, and if he should really think about his occasional emotional outbursts before delivering them, he’s somehow even more endearing for not bothering.  Fans across the world are pulling for an unlikely Barrichello title triumph.  petrolheadblog.com, of course, remains impartial:

Assumed knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it’s been a while, so we’ll recap: the top 10 cars ran the final part of qualifying with enough fuel to start the race tomorrow and were weighed at the end of the session. 11th down [...]]]> This week, “He did it for you, for me, for all of us…”

Assumed knowledge is a dangerous thing, and it’s been a while, so we’ll recap: the top 10 cars ran the final part of qualifying with enough fuel to start the race tomorrow and were weighed at the end of the session. 11th down to 20th were knocked out while everyone was running on low fuel and declared their starting fuel at the end of the qualifying hour. The FIA released the weights of all the cars after qualifying, and we can use those weights to establish who did well today and who’ll do well tomorrow. Drivers, cars, weights in kilos as ever:

1. Hamilton McLaren-Mercedes 653.0
2. Kovalainen McLaren-Mercedes 655.0
3. Barrichello Brawn-Mercedes 662.5
4. Vettel Red Bull-Renault 654.0
5. Button Brawn-Mercedes 661.5
6. Raikkonen Ferrari 661.5
7. Rosberg Williams-Toyota 665.0
8. Alonso Renault 656.5
9. Webber Red Bull-Renault 664.5
10. Kubica BMW-Sauber 657.5
11. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber 677.0
12. Sutil Force India-Mercedes 672.5
13. Glock Toyota 694.7
14. Grosjean Renault 677.7
15. Buemi Toro Rosso-Ferrari 688.5
16. Fisichella Force India-Mercedes 692.5
17. Nakajima Williams-Toyota 702.0
18. Trulli Toyota 707.3
19. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari 678.5
20. Badoer Ferrari 690.5

First, a word on the elephant in Ferrari’s room.  Have a look at the times from the first part of the qualifying hour:

5.   Raikkonen    Ferrari                                    1:38.843
19. Alguersuari Toro Rosso-Ferrari           1:39.925
20. Badoer          Ferrari                                    1:41.413

It’s bad enough to be 2.6 seconds slower than your team leader, but to be 1.5 seconds slower than the car nearest you on the grid is something else.  Frank Williams once said that he felt anyone in the world could, with practice, get to within around 5 seconds of a superstar time in an F1 car, but that finding those last few seconds would be next to impossible.  Luca Badoer, then, is out there representing you, me and everyone else who ever closed their eyes and pictured themselves on the grid of a Grand Prix.

We’ll examine in more detail once the race is over, but Luca’s first couple of days back in Grand Prix racing have gone from nervy to tentative to little boy lost and back again without ever threatening to reach competence.  Not all of that is his fault, and his handicaps are greater than those faced by Alguersuari in Hungary and Romain Grosjean this weekend, but even allowing for that he’s been horrendously slow.

The news is little better at Toyota, where Jarno Trulli receives a No Stops Til Christmas award and the Order of Merit from OPEC.  Trulli, the qualifying maestro, didn’t ever threaten to top 18th place in a car suffering the same grip issues it had at Monaco.  Timo Glock fared a little better, but P13 is no return on a considerable Japanese investment, and in the current climate this F1 programme is becoming increasingly difficult to justify.  TF109 is not a fundamentally bad car (remember Bahrain, when the front row was all red and white and the race should have fallen to Trulli), but the team are incapable of extracting the best from it consistently.  Tailing off after a strong early season is a Toyota trademark; that the cars are never developed as quickly and aggressively as they should be suggests it’s a cultural and structural issue, especially since the personnel are clearly capable of designing a fast motor car.  Glock might be able to troll around long enough to sneak a point tomorrow, Trulli hasn’t got a hope of even that, and it’s not enough.

The mid-grid scrum contains a hard luck story from Kazuki Nakajima, who’d have had the pace to get into Q3 if his car had found the strength to reach the end of Q1.  It didn’t, he didn’t, and his pointless season looks certain to continue.  The pace is there, the results are coming, and Williams seem fond enough of him to allow time for it to happen, but his drive is connected to the team’s Toyota engine deal.  Since they’re looking odds-on to end that deal, Kaz might want to put himself in the shop window, and tomorrow’s Trulliesque one-stop slog to the finish won’t be the ideal way to go about it.

Just ahead, Force India continue to make strides forward, and Romain Grosjean has taken one qualifying session to hit Nelson Piquet Jr’s level at Renault.  The weights don’t show that Romain was only three tenths of a second off his illustrious team leader Fernando Alonso in Q2, and that’s an excellent effort from a man with no track testing under his belt in the R29.  Grosjean’s fuel load, much lighter than Glock directly ahead of him, means he must pass the Toyota on the opening lap tomorrow – ahead of Glock is a group of cars fuelled similarly to the Frenchman, and he’ll be able to race them for a top 10 finish if he can clear Timo and keep in contact with them early on.  Fernando is slow and light, a candidate for no more than a couple of points tomorrow.

At the sharp end, aren’t McLaren returning to form?  Fresh from victory in Hungary a month ago, Lewis Hamilton’s first pole position since last October was no surprise given the searing pace he’d shown throughout practice.  Lewis has a revised McLaren this weekend, running a shorter wheelbase designed to help on the faster tracks at Spa and Monza coming up next.  Whether that’s a help or a hindrance this weekend is made hard to judge by the awkward presence of Heikki Kovalainen’s long-wheelbase MP4-24 alongside him, but what is clear is that McLaren have made great inroads into their early-season downforce deficit.  Hamilton, no longer fighting an errant rear end, has the confidence to place the car exactly as he wishes on the circuit and know that it’ll stick – seek out an onboard view of his pole run, as composed and orderly a flying lap as you’ll ever see.

Heikki is a man in need of a result, having received public notice from McLaren this week that unless he hurries up, he’ll be seeking alternative employment in 2010.  The team aren’t short of choice when it comes to finding a suitable replacement, but a few race performances to match this qualifying effort will see him safe.  Heikki was mighty until the very last corner of Q3, when a slide under braking cost him pole position, but qualifying has never been the Finn’s problem.  Reaching his car’s potential over a race distance, though, has been.  Fuelled a lap longer and running a similar pace all weekend, Heikki has a sniff of a win if he can keep Lewis in sight through the first stint, but you couldn’t bet on him.  His task tomorrow will be to show that you should have.

The Woking outfit are beginning to look like pacesetters again, though the acid test will come at Spa, full of the kind of fast sweepers that MP4-24 loathed as recently as the Silverstone race.  As Mark Webber will tell you, you’ve got to be quick everywhere, not just somewhere.  Webbo’s Red Bull looks a handful this weekend, appearing to lack traction and rear-end grip, and while the Australian was bullish post-qualifying, his car is nothing like heavy enough to bring any strategic advantage – only Alonso of the cars ahead is definitely there to be beaten.  Sebastian Vettel’s recovery from a serious engine problem in the morning session was decent but he has neither the pace of or a weight advantage on the silver cars ahead – a podium is an outside possibility, a win looks out of the question.

That, of course, is excellent news for the world championship leader Jenson Button.  Whether through the thorough analysis carried out in Friday practice, the warm weather or a mix of the two, Brawn GP are back on the pace this weekend.  Jenson, though, is still unhappy with the balance of a car that got better with race fuel but still couldn’t top P5.  His race pace over the last three events could charitably be called erratic, the car apparently only to Jense’s liking in the latter stages of the race – tomorrow, much will depend on whether the car and tyres behave to his liking for the full distance.  If they do, Jenson should at least jump Vettel at the end of his longer first stint, and that would do nicely at a time when finishing ahead of the Red Bulls must be his prime objective.

On the other side of the Brawn garage, Rubens Barrichello was the star of the show, his sole Q3 run putting him within a tenth of pole position with 3 or 4 laps of extra weight on board compared to Hamilton.  Rubinho has been the faster Brawn all weekend, was the fastest man of all in low-fuel Q2 and, as so often this season, is driving absolutely beautifully.  If the grid position and fuel advantage were being enjoyed by, say, Seb Vettel at Spa, that car would be a nailed-on certainty for a race win.  However, it isn’t.

There is little scope for overtaking around the Valencia streets, assuming Rubens could get close enough to the McLarens and their KERS in the first place.  The veteran’s pace on Sunday afternoons has not always been everything the team have expected of him, so passing them in the first pit sequence isn’t guaranteed either.  Allied to that, there’s the famous Barrichello luck.  Rubens hasn’t been able to buy a break all year – you get the impression that were luck available in stores, it’d sell out the instant he walked in.

You can’t go for Rubens, then, as much as you’d surely love to.  If you can’t go for Rubens, you have to select a McLaren as the race winner, and you can’t go for Heikki Kovalainen because his race pace, excellent when the car was poor, has dipped relative to Hamilton since the car came on song.  All that means, then, that tomorrow the European Grand Prix should fall to Lewis Hamilton.

One of those issues was the penalty given to Renault for an incident at the Hungaroring.  The team were adjugded to have released Fernando Alonso’s car from its first pit stop before it was safe to do so, and were excluded from this week’s European Grand Prix [...]]]> …what?  Issues from Hungary to talk about?  Oh, bugger.

One of those issues was the penalty given to Renault for an incident at the Hungaroring.  The team were adjugded to have released Fernando Alonso’s car from its first pit stop before it was safe to do so, and were excluded from this week’s European Grand Prix as a result.  Unsafe releases from the pits generally relate to drivers being released directly into the path of another competitor, and generally earn the offending car a pitlane drive-through or stop-go penalty.  Renault’s, though, was different.

The tyres on a Formula One car are held in place with a wheel nut, which is in turn fitted with a retaining device that must be locked into place to secure the nut.  Alonso’s Renault left the pitlane with the standard four tyres and four nuts, but only three retaining devices.  The driver was immediately aware he was in trouble and attempted to drive slowly back to the pits, completing the journey a wheel short after the offending right-front detached itself five corners from home.

The stewards of the meeting decided that Renault knowingly released their car in an unsafe condition, failed to make an attempt to stop Alonso leaving the pitlane once this came to light, then failed to notify their driver of the problem and give appropriate instructions even after he had radioed in to state he believed he had a puncture.  Alonso would retire from the race with a fuel pump issue soon afterwards, and a driver cannot be disqualified from an event he’s no longer involved in.  The stewards considered that the alternative punishment, a maximum $50,000 fine, was too lenient a punishment for the crime, and so Renault were banned from the Valencia race.

There are, to this mind at least, several reasons why that decision does not represent a triumph for common sense.

It’s difficult to deny that the car left in an unsafe condition – the wheel fell off, after all – but it is a fact of life that accidents happen, and equally that mistakes are made.  Each corner of the car has a team of people servicing it at a pitstop, this being faster than having one man operating the wheel gun while removing and fitting new wheels.  Once service is complete, a man at each corner raises an arm in the air to show that the car is ready to go.  While it is undoubtedly faster to raise an arm in the air before the car is ready to go, it’s also monumentally stupid; it cannot be driven at speed unless all the wheels are on securely, and if they aren’t, a slow-speed lap and return pit visit will follow.

It appeared, reviewing the TV footage, that only one man was aware the retaining device was not correctly fitted, and that his actions did not make it obvious to his colleagues.  In a sport where success is measured in tenths of a second, the pit crew do not have the luxury of waiting to see what the chap with the wheelgun might do next – unless he makes it clear that he’s not done, then the car is ready, and you act accordingly.  This Renault did.  One man made a mistake, which in turn led another man to assume pit work was complete.  No malice, no attempt to bend the rules, just a consequence of the chase for every fraction of a second.  Mistakes of that nature, without any attempt to manipulate rules for performance gains, do not deserve draconian punishment.

The idea of preventing Fernando from entering the racetrack is a sensible one provided two assumptions are made.  The first is that the driver receives the instruction within a couple of seconds of leaving the pitlane, and the second is that he follows it immediately.  It’s necessary to give the instruction quickly because, as this heartbreaker from the archives illustrates, you’re not allowed to work on the car in the pit lane:

Williams should have pulled their car back into the pit stall and resumed work there, though in the heat of the moment that isn’t always the first thing on a mechanic’s mind.  Renault would have had to do the same thing, and while this would have been easier for them since their machine still had a tyre on each corner, it would have been a time-consuming exercise had Fernando got any kind of distance up the road from them.  Add in to that the perils of manhandling a car bodily down the pitlane while the other cars are doing 62 mph in the opposite direction, and the number of people right in the firing line should anything at all go wrong, and you begin to wonder how that would have been any safer than letting him go.

Unless, of course, the stewards meant Fernando should have parked at the end of the pit lane, got out and walked back into retirement.  The car was otherwise still raceworthy, and while returning to the pits would have taken time, reattaching the wheel would have been the work of a couple of seconds.  Twice a world champion, the most complete driver in Formula One and a man blessed with astonishing determination and desire, Alonso would surely have reacted to news of a loose wheel by figuring that he could probably score a couple of points anyway.  All he’d need to do would be get back to the pits and have it sorted, and one assumes the team would have instructed him to do so.

Ah yes, failing to advise the driver to take appropriate action.  Your car has a loose wheel which may or may not fall off.  Your car is otherwise ready for active service.  You are one of the best drivers in the world.  What, then, do you feel the appropriate action is?

You’re on the Renault pit wall.  You can’t drive a nail into a piece of wood, but then you’ve employed Fernando Alonso to do that and it’s his car in trouble.  Everything else about the car is currently fine, but there’s a wheel loose.  What’s your call?

It’s the same call every time, and it matters not whether your driver knows the exact nature of the problem.  If the car is otherwise raceworthy, it comes back to the pits for a new wheel.  In a demo run at a promotional event, park it.  When they’re giving out the points and paying the prize money, you keep it moving.

Fernando, we’re told, wasn’t given word that the wheel was loose.  This isn’t important.  A car with a puncture comes back to the pits for the same reason and at around the same speed, Fernando had slowed to an appropriate speed so wasn’t endangering himself or others unnecessarily, and a man of his considerable natural talent is more than sharp enough to tell the difference between a puncture and a loose wheel after a few seconds.  They do feel different, more obviously so as the wheel becomes less secure, and even if for some reason he couldn’t feel it, Fernando would have the mental capacity to notice a tyre beginning to wobble around in front of him.

On any other weekend, as on many weekends before it (Williams in the 1991 clip above, Minardi at Imola in 1994, Renault and Alonso again in Hungary again in 2006), the incident would have been treated as the unfortunate error of pitcrew judgement that it was.  A fine would have been levied, and that would have been that.  The Hungaroring weekend, though, was the weekend that saw Felipe Massa struck by a flying spring, and the weekend after a loose wheel killed Henry Surtees.  Both of those incidents were unconnected, both to each other and to Alonso’s wheel shedding, but sometimes you have to be seen to be doing something, and sometimes what people see is a knee-jerk reaction.

You may want to reflect, though, that this weekend’s race is in Spain, that Fernando Alonso is Spanish and that, while Michael Schumacher’s aborted comeback might have kept ticket sales moving while the home hero was out of the running, he’s now a non-starter.  The Spanish did not much care for Formula One until Alonso made it big.  They might well not much care once he’s gone.  To have a Spanish race without him, especially one set on a dull track in the middle of a dock with little else currently going for it, would be commercial suicide, wouldn’t it?

It’d be nice to think that today’s decision represents a win for common sense, the realisation that the actions you take in the middle of a traumatic period aren’t always the ones you’d have taken with a clearer head.  It’d be nice to think that today’s decision was exactly the one that would have been made three weeks ago had the stewards present had the luxury of those clear heads.  It’d be very easy, though, to conclude that were the European Grand Prix being held at Brands Hatch, Renault would still be banned from it.

His injuries, for those disinclined to click on the link, included fractures to the head and neck.  Had we all [...]]]> It was a glorious dream while it lasted, wasn’t it?  Michael Schumacher has announced that injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in February are severe enough to end his planned comeback before it ever got started.

His injuries, for those disinclined to click on the link, included fractures to the head and neck.  Had we all known that before now, perhaps we’d have greeted Schumi’s return with a little more scepticism.  We didn’t, though, and we shouldn’t now reflect that it was any kind of desperate dream or publicity stunt; it appears, to these eyes at least, that Michael spent the last couple of weeks giving this comeback one hell of a go.

The replacement’s replacement is a man most famous for breaking down in tears after retiring from 4th place at the Nurburgring 10 years ago, Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer.  Badoer will finally be making his racing debut for the Maranello concern some 11 years after signing to test for the team.  Already passed over once, when Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone in 1999 and was replaced by Mika Salo, Badoer has a chance to rid himself of an unwanted record.  With 48 starts to his name, Luca has made more starts without scoring a point than any other Formula One driver.

We wish him the best of luck.  Not the same now, though, is it?

First, some news on Ferrari.  Felipe Massa’s personal doctor has said today that his left eye doesn’t show any signs of long-term damage, his recovery is progressing well and he should be able to race again.  Only a couple of days ago [...]]]> Yes, there are still issues from Hungary to talk about.  All in good time.

First, some news on Ferrari.  Felipe Massa’s personal doctor has said today that his left eye doesn’t show any signs of long-term damage, his recovery is progressing well and he should be able to race again.  Only a couple of days ago it appeared that his life was in danger, so it’s great to hear that not only is he progressing well, but he’ll be able to return to his chosen career should he have the desire to.

It’d be a surprise if that was much before the end of the season, though, and in the meantime Ferrari do have a car to be driven.  Recent days have seen fevered speculation over Massa’s replacement, with long-time Maranello target Fernando Alonso hotly tipped by many.  In the end, though, the team have gone for someone with no experience of current-spec Formula One cars.

It’s only last week that we were discussing Jaime Alguersuari and whether he’d sink, as seemed likely, or swim at Scuderia Toro Rosso.  The signs from a remarkably encouraging debut are that he might just keep his head above water, so if Jaime can do it, it seems a safe bet that this chap will manage fairly well too:

Alright, he’s got no recent driving experience, but he has got 91 wins, 7 world championships (5 of those consecutively), 76 fastest laps and 68 pole positions to his name, so he’s probably worth a shot.

It has been suggested that getting Michael Schumacher to agree to a brief comeback must have taken the hardest of hard sells from the Ferrari top brass.  Really?  Getting him to retire in the first place must have taken some doing, since when he stepped out of his car in the Interlagos paddock in October 2006 he was a driver still at the top of his game, with plenty of driving left in him and, to the eyes of the distant observer, being sidelined against his will.  “Any chance you could leave us the keys, Michael?  It’s just we’ve got this Finnish bloke coming to have a look at your car…”

That day Michael carved through the field from the back after an early puncture, eventually falling only one place short of the podium.  With four laps of his career to go he fought wheel-to-wheel with his replacement Kimi Raikkonen for P4, and with one lap remaining he set the race’s fastest lap.  It seemed a shame that it was all coming to an end; though you couldn’t help but be happy that he’d gone while at the peak of his powers, you equally couldn’t shake the idea that it’d be some time before any kind of decline set in.  It seemed even more of a shame when, over a year later, he tested the Ferrari during the off-season and was as searingly quick as he’d always been.

Watching Raikkonen drifting and sliding around the Hungaroring on Sunday, revelling in a car that gave him leeway to get the tail out without damaging either his lap time or his limbs, it was easy to imagine how much Schumacher in his prime would have loved the Ferrari F60.  While it’s not a great racing car, it has quietly turned into a very good one, quick enough to compete near the front of races when the stars are aligned.  It looks like a car willing to be taken by the scruff of the neck, a car capable of regular good days that could become occasional great days in the right hands, the hands of a driver quick enough to make the difference.  You think Michael wouldn’t love that?

14 years ago, Ferrari were in exactly that situation when Schumacher first signed for them.  Their one race win in 1995, Jean Alesi’s emotional triumph in Montreal, was handed to them when Schumacher’s Benetton hit trouble late in the race.  Elsewhere, there were two dominant teams, one harnessing the design skills of Adrian Newey and the other the leadership skills of Ross Brawn.  The Ferrari was competent, sure, but the team didn’t really look like race winners.  Then Michael arrived.

This year, the F60 is yet to win a race.  Elsewhere, there are two dominant teams, one harnessing the design skills of Adrian Newey and the other the leadership skills of Ross Brawn.  The Ferrari is competent, sure, but the team don’t really look like race winners.

Michael’s arriving.  He couldn’t, could he?