Australian Grand Prix

That was an unbelievable showing from the whole Brawn GP team. The cars were reliable and had spectacular pace. And both the drivers put those to good use to take a well-deserved and much celebrated 1-2. It shows not only Ross Brawn’s midas touch but also the potential of the ex-Honda squad he leads. I have to admit that I shared the popular skepticism with regards to the reliability of the cars—after all they didn’t have so much as a proper winter testing—but happily they got to the end. I also think the driving style of the drivers helped—I was always under the impression that Button had a bit more in reserve.

David Coulthard was talking later on on whether Ross Brawn purposely builds a physically strong car and I suspect he does. That is the only way Rubens could have got away with his nose relatively intact after his clashes. Normally, as Eddie Jordan said, the nose cone would be flying in that kind of impact. 

Vettel in the Red Bull stayed vaguely in touch with Button’s Brawn although promptly lost a podium finish with a clash with Robert Kubica whose BMW came alive in the last part of the race on prime tyres.

It’s difficult to know what Ferrari could have done if many of the things that went wrong for them had went right: strategy, cold tyre problems in the restart, Raikkonen’s mistake and a steering issue for Massa. I think it’s fair to say that the Ferrari of these days don’t seem to radiate the solidity of the Jean Todt/Ross Brawn/Michael Schumacher days. Getting back lost operating philosophies is more difficult than clawing back lost performance. I hope the team have not yet fully forgotten their methodical perfection of the recent years.

And it was incredible to watch how quickly fortunes change; Hamilton’s arrival had the F1 media nearly forget that there was at least one other talented British driver on the grid (read Button) who can get the job done. And now Button is leading the championship with an inch-perfect driving and an incredible start to the season! Keeping my fingers crossed for their reliability in the Malaysian GP!

More Information: Race Pictures

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Briatore’s mantra

I previously sussed that Flavio Briatore bases his recent comments on the diffuser issue on what people call the ‘spirit’ of the regulations. His latest thoughts on the issue clearly highlight this:

The interpretation of the regulations was very clear in the past - the cars need less downforce for safety reasons. Correct? Every time we build a new car it was to be two to three seconds slower than the previous car. Correct? That was always the intention of the Federation.

What happened here is that the three teams (Brawn GP, Williams, Toyota) are going pretty clearly in the direction of downforce. And as we all knew that we will run on slick tyres from '09 on, it was the intention of FIA president Max Mosley and the Federation to impose new rules to reduce downforce.

But somebody was going in the downforce direction that was forbidden by the FIA, and that is not following the principles of the rules.

It’s certainly the intention of the new rules to reduce downforce. Having said that, you can’t expect a Brawn aero boffin to tell his colleagues, “All right guys, the FIA wants us to go slower this year and so make sure you build a slow car.” That will be ridiculous. What the three teams have done is simple: they read the regulations and interpreted in such a way that they could put into the car their fastest possible diffuser concept all the while staying on the correct side of the rules. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect this of any team. F1Fanatic says Williams made a point with their protest against the Ferrari and Red Bull teams. This was a masterstroke from Williams. 

As I’ve been saying, any team’s job is to make sure their car complies with the regulations. If they also factor into their car design the supposed outcome of the regulations (which Briatore seems to claim his team did), well, they are doing something which they don’t need to.

This diffuser row, if anything, is putting into spotlight the inadvertent (or may be intentional) practice of the FIA to leave their technical wordings open to widely differing interpretations.

More Information: Briatore’s Say

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Surtees’ indelicate comment on Button

The only MotoGP and Formula 1 champion, John Surtees, reportedly had the following to say of Jenson Button:

Sebastian Vettel is an example of a real driver, look at Button - frankly, I wouldn't have confirmed him with the team. If you don't give 100 per cent, even when the car is not good, you have to be sacked - you can't just be good when you have a good car.

I consider this comment to be seriously flawed. Firstly, comparing Button with another driver from another team is not the right way to go about criticizing (or commending, for that matter) his performance. The two operate in completely different scenarios in just about every area and it is simply not right that their results are matched just like that. If Vettel winning the wet Monza has made him the ‘real driver’ in Surtees’ eyes, what does he make of the Button who won the rain-soaked Hungarian GP in 2006? Secondly, I don’t understand how Surtees is so certain that Button is not giving his 100%. From his on-track results? Results are skewed by a number of factors—car performance being the primary one. Only the driver and his engineers know what he’s doing in the car. Nobody else does.

More Information: Surtees On Button

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Flavio Briatore’s latest

The Renault boss man is on it again. His latest gripe is about some teams cleverly exploiting the diffuser rules and its associated performance gain. He famously got wound up when his team fell back on horsepower and now it is the diffuser issue. Reportedly, he stops short of saying that Williams and Toyota employ illegal diffusers in their cars.

Without doubt the Renault aerodynamicists are as clever as the others in the paddock. I wonder why then Briatore chooses to go public instead of pushing his engineers to go into the same ‘loophole-exploiting’ mode as the Williams and Toyota men do? Being illegal is operating deliberately outside the regulations which is clearly different from being right on the edge in sticking to the rules.

There’s always going to be two answers to this problem—the diffuser is legal if you go by the wording of the rules (the Williams and Toyota way) and it is illegal if you bring the ‘spirit’ of the regulations into the picture (which seems to be Flavio’s premise). The ‘spirit’ of the regulations is not what the teams have to be concerned with, in my point view. It’s the FIAs job to do that. The FIA Technical Working Group will have (must have) framed the diffuser dimensions to make it work to their target and their target might have been to reduce the downforce. The teams are obliged to design their cars to the rules and not to the effect which the rule change promised to bring.

If, as is reported, the Toyota, Williams and Brawn cars’ diffusers are designed per the wording of the regulations, they are legal. This is how I see this issue.

More Information: Technical Analysis | Diffuser Is Legal

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The new “winning” system

"The world champion is the one who wins the most Grands Prix." That’s fantastic! The previous points system used to reward consistency and I think it’s right it has been changed now. I watch F1 to see who wins and not to see who potters around to finish in points scoring positions when a win is within their reach. Raikkonen won only 1 GP in 2003 to Michael’s 6. But he nearly won the championship with his consistency. I personally wouldn’t have liked if that had happened.

Plus, the teams who are not competing for the titles are not affected because the existing points system remains the same for them.

And the talk of the previous championship results being different is all a bit academic. As some one said, what positions the drivers aim for depends on what the points system is. Doing a quick math and juggling around the positions from previous years may not be exactly useful moving forward.

More Information: The Hot Exchange! | F1 Fanatic’s Poll | From The FIA

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Most exciting start to a season for me

It looks like we’ll be off to a bloody exciting season when the Oz Grand Prix kicks off the 2009 F1 season this 27th. Lots of questions are in my mind currently…can Ferrari fend off the amazing Brawn cars to win the first grand prix…is the 2009 season for McLaren going to be like their 2006 season or the 2004 season (which was even worse)…where does BMW stack up in relation to its rivals?

Felipe Massa has openly voiced out that his car stands not a chance of beating Brawn on pure pace. I can’t see why he would want to play it up more than what it is. I’m just astounded as to what Brawn GP is up to. My big cheers and respects for the whole team. It’d be really exciting to see the scarlet and white cars fight it out on track.

A lot of stories on McLaren’s pre-season form were doing rounds in the recent weeks. Seemingly to bring all that to an end, Martin Whitmarsh, earlier today, came out and said that they are not where they want to be. That didn’t actually quite drive into me the seriousness of their situation. But what did was this—the team principal, just a few hours ago, has sort of told the media that McLaren are in really big trouble. Are the team looking at the nightmare 2004 season repeating itself again? But we should also remember that they did a stunning job that season to bounce back in the second half to win the Belgian GP.

Lastly, where the hell is BMW in the pecking order. They drive me crazy—they look like they don’t want to give a clue of what they are up to.

More Information: Whitmarsh, Haug Interview | Allen On McLaren

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FOTA proposals

The FOTA has come up with a set of changes to make F1 better and to also reduce the expenditure involved for the competing teams. The proposals include a reduced, fixed price for buying engines, gearboxes and the KERS system. What I’m wondering here is if manufacturers can sell engines, gearboxes and the KERS system for a set price, why can’t they manufacture, and race them at a set price? Reportedly, some teams are against the idea of budget caps. My point is budget caps have a great potential to maintain technological innovation, that has been a preserve of F1 thus far, but still allow for controlled expenditure. Engineers love to challenge themselves and innovate and if you give them free reigns to develop their car within a certain amount of money, they would still love it. In a short while, we could well see them take the efficiency of innovation to unprecedented levels. I believe they would rather buy into this idea than seeing their hands tied with regard to what they can develop in their car.

More Information: FOTA Fan Survey | FOTA Proposals

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