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.
