Friday Practice in Melbourne Senna consistently stated that lack of Friday Practice hurt his race weekends. Copyright Williams F1/LAT Photographic
The problem with the off-season is that all of last years statistics are now available for scrutiny and there are any number of stories which I have half-completed because I found myself mired in the statistics which were telling a story all of their own.
This one though seemed relatively straightforward: Bruno Senna said that his lack of Friday running at all but 5 GP weekends hurt his race weekend. This was easy to check out because he did run on 5 Friday Practice sessions at Melbourne, Monaco, Canada, Singapore, and Austin. Therefore the statistics should tell us whether he's right.
If we take Australia where he participated in all of the weekend sessions he qualified 14th and was taken out in the race by Felipe Massa (for which Felipe received no penalty).
Obviously the first two or three races of the year can be dismissed to a certain degree as all of the drivers and teams are getting used to the cars, and if you wanted to follow the media position, nothing starts until the circus comes back to Europe. This would suit Senna's interpretation in that Valtteri Bottas had the Friday car in Malaysia, China and Bahrain.
For the stats:
Malaysia: Qualified 13th and finished 6th
China: Qualified 14th and finished 7th
Bahrain: Qualified 15th and retired from the race.
Bruno scored a point in Monaco when he had the car over the full weekend Copyright: Williams F1/LAT Photographic
Over the course of the season, for the 16 races from Spain onwards Bruno had an average qualifying position of 14.8 on the grid: His average qualifying position for the 4 races where he had Friday practice was 14.25 and his average when Bottas had the car was 14.9.
On his full weekend race-days he came 10th in Monaco, 17th in Canada, 18th in Singapore and 10th in Austin; an average position of 14th (13.75), but on the Bottas Weekends his average race position is 10.18.
Senna was nowhere in Canada after Friday Free Practice sessions which began with a faulty DRS and ended with a crash that damaged three corners of the car and the gearbox
Now all of that is Statistics and as we know there are two schools of thought when it comes to statistics:
they never lie, and
You can make them say whatever you like
There is no question in my mind but that Bruno Senna is a good race driver. The 2012 season has shown, statistically, that when his races are trouble free he invariably tends to make up places from his grid position and can fight for and defend points positions.
Bruno scored points in 10 Grand Prix last season, his highest finishing position being 7th in Hungary. His problem would appear to be the same as Mark Webber's, Jenson Button's, etc. He is a consistently good racer but is not a good qualifier.
Williams and Bruno were running well in Singapore and Bruno was in line to score points before losing KERS with 16 laps to go. Copyright: Williams F1/LAT photographic
Both Button and Webber have worked hard on the Qualification aspect of their racecraft and are stronger now than they have been, are able now to put a perfect lap together on occasion but these guys are not natural qualifiers. They are as strong as their team-mate in the race and are more consistent, but they are not as quick over one qualifying lap. Jenson and Mark have the experience and practice gained over many seasons in F1 but Bruno is a relative newcomer and tacking his qualifying problems would go a long way to making him a strong candidate for a midfield team.
He was more consistent than Pastor Maldonado last year but it is clear that he doesn't have the raw pace of his ex-team-mate. If he could have qualified last years Williams where it should have been, in 6-10 place at 75% of the races, I think that his consistency in the race itself would have seen him score regularly and perhaps seen him on one podium.
To summarise, his ability to gain places is a prime asset but it will only benefit him when he improves his qualifying to the extent that he can regularly put his car through to Q3 on a Saturday.
Bruno came in 10th in Austin, qualifying in 11th. Hungary was the only race where he reached Q3, qualifying 9th and finishing in 7th. Copyright Williams F1/LAT Photographic
Banned in Belgium! Smashed in Singapore! Romain Grosjean suffered more than Michael Schumacher
at the hands of the Race Stewards
Copyright Lotus F1/LAT Photographic
From my perspective, each GP race is a unique event within the overall season and whatever penalties are imposed at that track on that weekend should not affect any of the following races. The only exceptions are penalties imposed for changes of engine, gearbox changes, race bans or grid penalties imposed on the back of serious incidents.
Once bans or penalties have been imposed that should be that, they should not be revisited for the purpose of imposing harsher penalties at a later date.
The question of imposing appropriate penalties has been seething and simmering away in my head since it raised its head again in the new FIA magazine Auto.
In that new E-Magazine publication Garry Connelly, a regular chairman of race stewards at GP meetings, makes numerous statements in respect of what the race stewards look at before they make decisions.
The Sinner and the sinned against: Maldonado had a crash history last season while Senna found himself the innocent
party on a number of occasions. Did Pastor's punishment fit the crime? The Race Stewards would appear to think so.
Copyright Williams/LAT Photographic
After reading the article the whole approach to imposing on-track penalties, and in particular the Romain Grosjean race ban, would appear to be relatively unrelated to the actual incidents which took place. Take the following quote for example:
Take a driver who has caused a collision, typically the offence is punishable by a drivethrough, but more recently there have been a couple of occasions where a stop-go has been imposed. That has typically been because the offence has been a second one or more by that driver during the season. So you do look at the driver’s record. We also now take into account the consequences of the penalty. This wasn’t done previously and it might lead people to think that there are inconsistencies, but if someone is coming third in a race by 50 seconds, then giving them a drive-through is not a penalty, potentially. You’ve also got to look at the consequences of their action. To relate this to a civil situation, if I throw a punch at you and miss, I’m probably going to get charged by the police with attempted assault or something like that. But if I connect and break your jaw, I’m going to get charged with assault causing bodily harm or something like that. That could lead me to suffer more dire consequences. It’s the same action, but the repercussions are much different each time.
From my perspective as a long-time fan this is not a fair manner in which to approach the imposition of a penalty on a driver in a Grand Prix. Racing is about what happens on the track, on the day. If you must race someone differently because he is a championship contender that is discrimination and hands contenders a significant unfair advantage over the other teams and drivers in the field.
No wonder Michael jumped out of the way of Sebastian Vettel in Brazil: and there I was thinking he was doing Vettel the favour!
Take Connelly's statement in regard to the Grosjean incident:
But what Romain got the extra penalty for was not that, or at least not wholly for that. When you’re a relatively new driver to Formula One and you have the privilege of driving in a potentially winning or podium finish car, you’re mixing it with a group of drivers who have many years more experience than you do at the sharp end of the field. It therefore behoves you, in our view, to exercise greater care and attention because you are, with all due respect, the new kid on the block and maybe a little out of your league compared with the guys around you at that end of the grid.
Pardon me but this is bulls#*t of the highest order. What great driver in the history of the sport has ever given other drivers one single iota of respect on the basis that they've been around for a while? If you come into F1 you're not in there to crash at Turn 1, but as I said in an earlier post relating to the Grosjean Race Ban, you're not in there to hold back into Turn 1 if there are places to be made up. If you do then you simply shouldn't be in the car. You're in F1 to win.
Now take the Race Steward quote after Belgium:
The stewards regard this incident as an extremely serious breach of the regulations which had the potential to cause injury to others. It eliminated leading championship contenders from the race.
Championship contenders are in the same race as all of the others. If you want to protect them maybe we should have a second race every weekend where only the top 4 in the championship race against each other - the excitement of Indy 2005 springs to mind. If you wrap the championship contenders in cotton wool you automatically handicap all other drivers in that they cannot race at 100% when attacking or defending their position from these three or four guys. Completely contrary to the spirit of motor racing. All the drivers are out there to win and to help the team they drive for win.
Amazing really that MSC didn't get a race ban after rear ending Senna and then Grosjean, but then I guess Michael doesn't fit the above profile in that he was the older driver in F1 and was mixing with drivers who had many many years less experience than he did, so he doesn't have to exercise care and attention.
We can now assume that Michael got favourable treatment because he was not a young driver
Courtesy Mercedes AMG
It's time for the race stewards to forget about a driver's history and deal with every incident on a case by case, GP by GP basis. I would remind Connelly that in a civil situation a defendant is only charged and sentenced on the particular crime they have committed.
Let's get back to determining a penalty on the act itself rather than on a driver's history or who the victim was.
Will Marussia survive the coming season in its current form or might they do better if they were able to buy their design from the likes of Williams, Sauber, or Force India. This would benefit the midfield teams from a monetary point-of-view and provide Marussia with a design which has been shown to be good enough to score points consistently and reach the podium on occasion.
It would give us, the fans, a good idea of the drivers' abilities in a reasonable machine and would tighten up the midfield battle. Let's face it we've had situations in the recent past where works teams are being raced against and beaten by teams to whom they have supplied engines, what is the difference between that and two midfield teams racing each other using the same base chassis?
HRT & Marussia might have raced competitively had they the use of another team's tried and tested design Courtesy HRT F1
You'll remember that, prior to the US GP in Austin this year, Mario Andretti called for teams to be able to run third cars and guest drivers in an effort to increase the popularity of the sport in the USA and around the world. He told the media that he wouldn't have been in F1, not to mind World Drivers' Champion if the third car rule wasn't in place. Andretti got his first pole position at his first race in Formula 1 at the 1968 US GP in Watkins Glen thanks to Colin Chapman who provided him with a Lotus 49:
I would love F1 go back to the rule where you could add a third car and have guest driver come in; that's how I broke in. If you can have your own guys flying their own flag in their country it brings a lot more attention. It always plays well and the more buzz you can create the better
Ferrari have been calling for the re-introduction of this rule since 2009 when Luca di Montezemolo wanted to bring Michael Schumacher back to race alongside Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso in 2010. At that time he said that the teams at the back of the grid were dangerous because they were too small and too slow and a third car being raced by Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren and Williams would provide for a more competitive and safer spectacle. In 2010 Ferrari clarified their position in relation to the third car question at the FOTA Fans' Forum saying that they would make a competitive car available to a new team on the grid. di Montezemolo is nothing if not consistent; at the Ferrari World Finals at Mugello last year he further clarified the Ferrari position:
There's the issue of the third car, which mark my words, we support not so much for our own interests but more for those of the sport in general. We believe the interest of the fans, media and sponsors could increase if there is a bigger number of competitive cars on track rather than cars that are two or three seconds off the pace, being lapped after just a few laps. There you are, it would be nice one day in the future to see one of our cars running in American colours, or Chinese, or maybe those of Abu Dhabi.
When asked by Autosport Bernie Ecclestone said that:
If by chance we lost a couple of teams then I think it will probably be good. But the other teams don't like it. You can imagine if we have got three Ferraris, three Red Bulls, and three McLarens, it is not so good for other people.
Martin Whitmarsh, McLaren disagrees with the third car proposals on the basis that F1 should be concentrating on ensuring that all the teams on the grid can be competitive:
I think the DNA, the structure of Formula 1, requires the variety of teams and we have got some new teams and we have got some smaller teams and we recognise that it is very, very challenging to get the budget to compete in Formula 1.If, today, Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes all fielded third cars then I think, in my view, it would be damaging for the sport. There are pros and cons and I think it is right to have the debate and people have different views but at the moment I think what we should be concentrating on is ensuring that we have got a viable and sustainable model for all of the teams in F1.
It doesn't discuss the impact of having guest drivers participating in local events in competitive machinery, something which might see Indycar drivers sitting on the F1 grid in the USA, Fisichella or Trulli at Monza, etc.
The idea has been mooted before and has operated in one form or another over recent years. David Richards (ex-BAR Team Principal) planned to enter a Prodrive Team in 2008 running a privateer McLaren, Super Aguri ran the previous year's Honda F1 car in '06, '07 & '08, and Toro Rosso used cars designed by Red Bull for a long time even though they made alterations to the rear of the cars to enable Ferrari engines to be fitted.
Vettel wins in Monza in 2008 in a Toro Rosso owing much to its sister Red Bull as shown below both photographs copyright owned by: Clive Mason/Getty Images
In fact, it was the Toro Rosso/Red Bull car (as above) giving Sebastian Vettel his maiden win at Monza in 2008 which prompted the midfield teams to complain on the basis that Formula 1 is about the constructors and each constructor was only entitled to race two cars, not four.
Ross Brawn, last year after a meeting of the Technical Working Group said that the possibility wasn't out of the question, but that it would have to make any arrangement fair to the smaller constructor teams, while Martin Whitmarsh said:
We'd all be excited to see a Valentino Rossi or a Sebastien Loeb in an F1 car but we have to act responsibly. It's challenging for teams to attract the budgets to go racing and if the top four teams ran third cars I feel it would be damaging to the sport
Marussia Team Boss, John Booth agreed that every entrant should be a constructor.
The real argument, historically, would appear to have been that the new teams would need time to build up resources, experience, and improve and as such, bringing in privateers racing third cars would kill the small constructor teams off. That argument is losing credence now with the demise of HRT, the elevation of Caterham to Column 2 of the Concorde Agreement and the recent news that Marussia, the only "new" team left has not been offered a new Concorde Agreement deal.
Ferrari will continue to agitate for the customer car option:
There are three basic reasons for this. The gap between the best five or six teams and the back is too big, secondly to race for a small team today is very expensive when you have to develop a new car it gets difficult, thirdly I want to see new new drivers in Formula One
Look at the past Giancarlo Baghetti that won a fantastic race in Formula One, his first with the privately run Ferrari. I would like to see McLaren, Ferrari, Williams and Red Bull supplying other teams to make sure that they are more competitive. it means that they spend less money and then we can give room to the drivers of the future
I would like to see Williams, Sauber, and Force India supplying the smaller teams: it would achieve the same result but would provide the monetary benefit to the midfield, as they improve so do those at the back.
Pedro de la Rosa attempts to qualify the HRT F! challenger in Melbourne Courtesy: HRT F1
Look, I'm sad too that the HRT F1 Team will not be on the grid in 2013 but really, given the shoestring budget they've worked on for the last 3 years and the fact that they were owned by an investment bank it's no surprise that they weren't and won't be at the races next year.
I'm sad for the guys who have been working there and I'm particularly sad for Pedro de la Rosa who has, unfortunately, had to put up with the lowly position on each grid over the course of this season. His proven skills behind the wheel deserved better than HRT F1 gave him.
But that is the life of an F1 driver really. I'm picturing Alesi behind the wheel of a Prost, Hill in an Arrows (though he did have THAT drive to console himself with), and Villeneuve in the BAR (though that was his own choice and hubris).
The car itself and it's production was always dubious. In it's three years on the grid it failed to make pre-season testing every year and turned up at Melbourne each year without having turned a wheel. In 2010 the car started the race from the pitlane and in 2011 and 2012 the team failed to make the 107% cut.
Their highest ever finish in a Grand Prix has been 13th in Canada last year which resulted from an impressive drive by Vitantonio Liuzzi, the only impressive drive he had all year.
As with all of the three at the back HRT F1 failed to luck into any point over the course of the team's short life but this does not take away from the effort which the team personnel put into the car and the races. Their coverage was always timely, their attitude positive - all that they lacked was funding and sponsorship which meant they were always dealt a loaded deck.
The money wasn't there and any aero testing was taking place at the Mercedes factory in Brackley a journey of 2,000 miles from their Headquarters in Spain.
No money and no points, let's face it it was time for the team to go.
It is the nature of F1 that the weakest do not survive and the failure of one of the Bottom 3 has been written in the stars.
HRT F1 join the luminaries of F1 such as Simtek (who ran for a season and a half, laced with the tragedy of Roland Ratzenberger's death at Imola in 94, before giving up mid 95), Pacific (who also began in 94 and managed to finish out the 95 season), Lola (who only managed to turn up for Melbourne in 97 before being scrapped), Forti in 1995, Fondmetal in 91 and, of course, Andrea Moda in 1992.
The truth is that you need to be well funded to enter the sport and your future planning needs to be sound. Many have tried and most have failed, particularly since the reinvigoration of the sport through the direct participation of the manufacturers such as Honda, Toyota, BMW, Mercedes, Renault, etc.
Is there room for another team on the grid, probably, but it needs to have a strong plan to bring the fight to the midfield. I wouldn't be surprised to see Marussia struggle next year with finances and sponsorship, though it may well be that Caterham would begin to feel the pinch. Toss a coin and whichever side it lands on there's a struggling team.
I was wondering how much in-season testing costs the teams after Luca de Montezemolo had a go at Formula 1 the other day about the ban on in-season testing.
Luca took the opportunity presented by the Ferrari
World Finals in Valencia
which ran until Sunday last to make it clear that Ferrari wants its Formula 1
operation to revert to a time when it was relevant to Ferrari’s primary
business, the production of road cars.
"There are things that aren’t going well in this
sport and the moment has arrived to clarify these once and for all in the
appropriate places. We can no longer have a situation in which the transfer of
technology from the track to the street is reduced to the bare minimum, engines
and gearboxes are always the same and the aerodynamics no longer has anything
to do with research for road cars.Moreover, it cannot be that in this sport you can’t
test. We’ve been saying this for a while and we will repeat it in the
appropriate places so for the moment I don’t want to add anything else. But our
patience has run out so someone needs to think about whether they want Formula
1 still to have companies that invest and consider it the most advanced
research bench for its own cars – as Ferrari has always done since
1950. We are constructors, not sponsors: I’m no longer happy that we can’t do
testing on tarmac and that you can’t give any chance for young drivers to
emerge – since some people have used the expression “It’s a joke” in recent
days, I would like to say that this is the real joke.
I have to say that, having looked at the running costs of F1 today, I think there is a case to be made for the
return of in-season testing. This is, after all, part of the cost of going racing.
Testing at Mugello this year. Was it an unacceptable strain on the resources of smaller teams?
Copyright: Andy Hone/LAT Photographic
The question as to its return or otherwise centres
around two things; Team Finance Versus Car Development.
The likes of Christian Horner, of Red Bull, and Martin
Whitmarsh, of McLaren, oppose its return saying that it will see
the bigger teams test more while the smaller teams save their money, thus, they
argue, unbalancing the sport by seeing the smaller teams fall backwards throughout
the season.
As a compromise Christian
Horner considered that longer running and more tyres might be made available for Friday Free Practice on race weekends. But this position is flawed given that the bigger teams benefit from constant running of two wind tunnels testing new parts for the race cars while the midfield teams seem to run less hours and the smaller teams make do with whatever downtime deals they can do with Mercedes or Williams along with commercial wind tunnel time.
The ex-Team Principal of Ferrari, now the Head of the
FIA, Jean Todt supports the Ferrari position and considers that in-season
testing improves the quality of the racing on the track and serves to fine-tune
cars for the races.
In the course of looking at this story I came across an
article by Mat Coch, F1 Journalist, which criticised Luca for making the call
to return to in-season testing, saying he was “slapping dozens of recently
unemployed Spaniards in the face” (an obvious reference to HRT).
There is no basis for linking these two stories and
certainly no journalist should take up such a critical and unsupported
position. In fact the return of in-season testing would see many of these guys being hired by the remaining teams to run the tests.
When the ban was announced hundreds of F1 personnel were let go across the teams as their jobs were no longer required. Many of these guys were hired by the three new teams entering the sport now known as Caterham, Marussia and HRT. It is a nonsense to suggest that a call for in-season testing would be a slap in the face to the HRT personnel when, in fact, it would provide a lifeline to them. Ridiculous statement unsupported by the facts.
It is no secret that Ferrari have never supported the
ban on in-season testing and the fact that it has been imposed as a
cost-cutting exercise does not seem to be sustained by the facts.
Having looked at the Annual Reports of one of the F1 teams from 2006 to year ended 2011 it would appear that there has been little change in staff numbers or costs over these 6 years and a relatively similar cost employed under the two headings which might be used to incorporate the testing costs: Distribution costs and Administrative expense. In fact in the two years 2008/2009 when the ban on in-season testing was flagged and came into force the administration expenses of the team increased dramatically but have now fallen to a couple of million above the 2006 level. Are the teams saving money from the in-season testing, these accounts seem to say no.
The top teams all appear to make use of two wind
tunnels and keep referring to the need to operate tunnels with capacity to test
larger models, this is a huge outlay on those teams; an outlay which cannot be
mirrored by the smaller teams.
Mercedes have two wind tunnels at Brackley, a full-scale and a 60% tunnel and, when Honda were building the larger one in 2004, they expected to run both tunnels 24 hours a day.
Red Bull, back when it was Jaguar racing, converted the old Concorde Windtunnel in Bedford for F1 testing and have since added a second tunnel.
McLaren have three wind tunnels; 2 for F1 and one for their Car manufacturing.
MTC: Copyright JK1812
Lotus(formerly Renault) use the Renault F1 Wind Tunnel at Enstone which they upgraded at huge cost from a 50% to a 60% model in 2011. No doubt they too utilise a second tunnel to correlate results. This is being replicated by Ferrari, who have been making use of the Toyota facility in Germany which supports 60% modelling as well as their own in-house unit.
Ferrari Wind Tunnel
The costs of building the larger Brackley tunnel in 2004 was calculated at around £30 million and the cost to the bigger teams running these tunnels at all hours of the day and night must be exorbitant.
The Midfield teams like Williams and Sauber have their own wind tunnels but obviously do not use them all of the time. Williams did a deal with Lotus to allow Lotus/Caterham to use one of their wind tunnels during downtime while Caterham constructed their own facility and they also did a deal with Marussia which allows Marussia to use the tunnel for 40% of the downtime. That deal is thought to have cost Marussia around £4 million per annum.
Force India were stung for just under £700,000 this year for monies owing to Aerolabs for the use of their facility, we do not know how much the overall cost was but would be likely to have been more than Marussia, given Force India's position on the Grid.
Then at the back we have Marussia, Caterham and Toro Rosso.
I'm assuming that Caterham, now that they're sponsored by EADS who own Airbus and by extension Aerolabs, will have a deal done to use that tunnel for the coming seasons.
Toro Rosso are apparently building their own unit in Faenza with Red Bull wanting both tunnels on a full time basis.
Marussia are likely to maintain its deal with Williams, the question being whether they have the money to utilise a second facility?
Before HRT's untimely demise they had a deal with Mercedes to use the Brackley facility.
Given the massive amount of Wind Tunnel time being undertaken by the larger teams in comparison to the midfield and smaller teams it is clear that there is still a hugely disproportionate spend from the front of the grid to the back.
Wind tunnel and on-track testing cost each team about £25 million in 2008 and, with the ban on in-season testing we can be sure that, for the bigger teams, much of the money saved is plowed back into increased wind tunnel time.
Arty shot of the Wind Tunnel at Grove
Courtesy: Williams F1
It was reported back in 2008 that the teams were spending hundreds of hours in the wind tunnel prior to bringing the car parts to track: now, if we take the Brackley wind tunnels operating continuously over 350 days a year as Honda expected, that figure would be over 16,000 hours.
So the big
teams still retain the advantage and the increase in Wind Tunnel hours by the big four or five teams makes a mockery of the opposition of Martin Whitmarsh and Christian Horner on the grounds of balance and equality.
Now I don't know the difference in price between operating a wind tunnel continuously over 350 days and six days of in-season testing but I would imagine that limiting wind tunnel usage across the board to a reasonable number of hours which would allow all teams equal time in conjunction with two 3 day in-season tests might well balance out costs across the grid and bring further employment across the grid.
If I could get a cost on this it might make for a clear cut case one way or the other but, like all things F1 I doubt it.
Heikki may try rally driving Courtesy of Caterham F1
Heikki Kovalainen says he may try rallying now that the Formula One grid in 2013 would appear to be locked out. WRC.com report him as saying:
“There’s not much outside of Formula One that interests me, but rallying is one of those things. Sometimes I think it’s a bit surprising that I didn’t become a rally driver earlier in life; I had lots of opportunities when I was growing up to drive on forest tracks, like most kids in Finland, but then I discovered racing circuits. Next year we’ll see what happens: there’s life outside Formula One as well.”
It reports that Kovalainen defeated Sebastien Loeb when the the two went head-to-head in the Champion of Champions final at the 2004 Race of Champions. Kovalainen beat Loeb in identical rally cars: the Peugeot 307 WRC even though he'd never driven the car before. That win means that he's the only F1 driver to win the title "Champion of Champions" at the annual Race of Champions event.
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