SofaF1

So there have been a few people who have been trying to cheat the poll, so if you happened to glance at the poll when Sato was in the lead then you can be rest assured the whole world hasn’t gone mad, somebody just voted for him 20 times. This happened at a few different times for a few different drivers, I have reverted to reality.

In the end Lewis just edged out Alonso. Surprisingly given current form Kimi edged out Massa, and so did Kubica! Nobody voted for Ralf or Fisi, but then well that was kind of the point.

So on to the new poll.

One of the key things suggested on this site and other preseason as a concern for Ferrari was that with all of the changes at Ferrari there was a chance that Ferrari would revert to type and be less of a precision engineering machine and be more of a poisonous nest of vipers. With the law suit against one of their own workers Nigel Stepney for alleged sabotage it certainly seems like the latter.

there has also been suggestions that Jean Todt never really wanted Kimi in the team. he was furious when Kimi went to McLaren all those years ago and told him at the time, “that’s the biggest mistake you’ll ever make in your life”. Todt felt he could convince Michael to race one more season, but Luica Montazemalo wanted the future and didn’t want Kimi locked in somewhere else. Michael wouldn’t take the drive away from Masa and and so he fell on his sword. Todt may be deriving some perverse pleasure from seeing Kimi struggle.

But it Ferrari just in a bumpy patch, is Ferrari actually fin but just a tad slow, or is Ferrari in meltdown? You tell us.

So what do you think of the new design for Formula1.com? At first, because I’m scared of change, I didn’t like it. But when I tried to analyse why, I couldn’t come up with many reasons. The best thing about the old design was that everything fitted onto one page/screen. I guess we couldn’t expect them, with the amount of information F1 expunges, to keep that up for long though. I miss the circuit diagrams too. Overall, it now just looks like any other motorsport page, which I think it shouldn’t. And they still don’t have the amazing options that MotoGP.com has: purchasable live footage and interviews.

I noticed something in the coverage of NASCAR that we definitely need for F1. They manage to impose onto the footage a moving pointer that shows you who’s driving each car. And this is in real-time, so there’s no fiddling with the material. It seems remarkably clear. I’m guessing someone has patented it, otherwise there’s really no reason for us not to have it (I’ve been searching YouTube for a clip of it in use, but can’t find it). Perhaps it’s more useful for new people to the sport, but I still frequently get confused between Sutil and Albers – after all, they are moving at 200mph.

David Edwards wrote an article for thelondonpaper that typifies the British media’s ignorance of Formula 1, how annoying they’re becoming, and how it’ll never stop until Hamilton retires. Here’s what he says ‘I would have to admit that, while stopping short of actually watching a whole race, I have followed entire laps of recent races. And all because of Hamilton. And all because he’s a Brit’. In an Alex-style exercise, we can translate what he actually said ‘I would have to admit that I’m an idiot. Really, I am. I haven’t actually watched a race, yet I think I’m qualified to give judgements on the sport. And I use the word “Brit” because it makes me sound more patriotic’.

Sadly, he continues, claiming that Hamilton’s nationality is important, he ‘is one of us. He plays for our team. We can relate to him in a way we could never really do with Giancarlo Fisichella’. One of the many reasons I like F1 is that nationality isn’t important. Yes, Hamilton is British, but he drives for a team of multi-nationals (founded by an Australian, with German engines, to begin with). And anyway, how does being born and raised in the same vague geographical area make you able to support them? It’s a myth. After all, I was born and raised in the same town as Nick Heidfeld, but I don’t feel more or less sympathy to him than I do Felipe Massa.

Annoyingly, however, David Edwards does make one good point: F1 hasn’t actually changed. People are saying it’s more exciting this year, but it isn’t. In fact, the racing is less exciting. As we’ve noted, all the races so far have been decided by the first corner. For us on sofaf1, the sport is always fascinating. All it proves is that fans are more interested in characters rather than the sport. I personally am going to move to Germany, where I doubt anyone is watching it anymore.

Ho ho. Yesterday in my post I was talking about what Alonso could do about Lewis.

In formula one at the moment:

• We know that whoever exits the second corner of the race first wins the grand prix.
• We know that the race fuel is set by the team in the third qualifying session.
• And we know that all other things being equal the lighter driver will be able to get on pole.

So doesn’t this mean that to a certain extent McLaren control the race?

I think it probably does. Adam Cooper asked the question of Alonso after the race and Alonso pointedly pushed the question in the direction of Ron.

I think that McLaren do give turn about to each of the drivers. Monaco was Alonso’s, Canada was Lewis’, and Indie was supposed to be Alonso’s. The only problem was the slip by Alonso during quali. So I think part of the frustration shown by Alonso was because he felt it was his turn.

I think he would have come out and said it except for even he would know it was poor form on after your team mates first win and on this occasion it would involve him admitting his mistake.

So what Alonso needs to do is go to Ron and demand that he consistently gets the better fuel load. Schumacher, he is probably thinking, never had to put up with this. But Ron has just made these big claims about how fair he is. Why would he change this for Alonso.

Alonso and his engineer need to go away and analyse the data. They need to find some nice data which proves that Alonso is faster on a light fuel load than Lewis is. Something that Ron can use to argue to himself that he’s doing it for the team. That Alonso is more likely to win on the lower fuel load than Hamilton. Of course I have no idea that such a piece of data exists but then you can make data say anything.

Then once armed with that data you go and have a meeting with Santander. Santander is a Spanish company who presumably want a Spanish winner. The whole idea of an English winner doesn’t work as well for them because in the UK they aren’t even known as Santander, here they’re called Abbey. So Alonso knows they basically came on board to be with him (and there are a couple of other firms in this camp too) so you go to them and make nice. Hint that you wish you could do more for them but that it is difficult because Ron won’t let you win.

Ron can say no to a driver but a leading sponsor? The sponsors are the ones who pay Alonso’s salary. And they do it because they think he can sell their product. But if he’s not allowed to win then it’s going to be easy for him to sell the product. I’m not saying this is true, just what he should say to them.

This pressure from the sponsors to protect their investment may be the one thing than Ron would listen to?

Well whether it was initiated by Alonso or not Santander did have a series of meetings with McLaren recently. And the outcome? For a man worried about the privacy of his drivers Ron’s just taken an interesting move. He’s given Santander time with Lewis to make a tv ad specially for the UK which will highlight how Abbey and Santander are the same thing. And there will be a cardboard Lewis in every branch of Abbey from here on in.

So perhaps that one wildcard I thought of yesterday for Alonso has already been foiled by Ron. There’s only one thing left for it now: he’ll just have to drive faster.

No wonder Alonso feels put out. His team mate seems to be beloved the world over and seems actually faster than him. And despite me calling him a big girls blouse for complaining (and he is still that) it’s hard not to imagine he is being ignored by his team.

McLaren is an English team and Lewis is an English driver. He’s also been part of the team for a very long time. That kind of bond is very hard to beat. A lot of the engineers must have that almost paternal feeling of “my boy done good”.

And finally Lewis has that air of plucky brit about him. A sort of underdog status which in theory should start not to work now that he’s way out in the lead of the world championship and yet still does because he’s a rookie.

Alonso will go inside himself now. He’ll draw his close team of engineers together. And he’ll stop doing favours for Lewis. There’s not to be any making things easy. If I were Alonso I think I’d know what I’d do. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow…

[Update: that post is here]

Well, its not only been a great week for Hamilton, Nick and Fourstar have both scored heavily too. Fourstar picking Hamilton for pole and the win with Alonso in second managed to liberate 8 points without even breaking sweat. Nick lost out a little bit going for Alonso on pole but easily clawed all that back with Webber and Vettel in 7th and 8th (albeit a late revision). Both Alex and myself also picked Hamilton for the win, the first time we were all in agreement and all right! (we did all pick Raikkonen to win in Bahrain, right car wrong driver!)

Alex also went for Alonso on pole so dropped a point there but grabbed one for Massa. Hamilton scored 6 of my points with Alonso helping out with the last one.

So,

Round 7

1 Nick 11
2 Fourstar 10
3 Bearded Stew 7
4 Alex 6

Which does wonders for Fourstar and leaves Alex wandering wondering.

Championship

1 Nick 49
2 Bearded Stew 27
3 Fourstar 27
4 Alex 25

Well a great North American tour for Hamilton, grabbing his first race win last week in Canada and following it up with another at Indianapolis. So 2 race wins after just 7 races in F1 (and just as a comparison, Button has only managed one win in 7 years and 7 races, although he did keep leaving his teams just as their cars were getting good)

Indianapolis for me seemed to be the race of the rookies, Vettel amazingly scoring his first point in his first race, and becoming the youngest driver to score a world championship point in the process, Kovalainen starting to show what we all reckoned he was capable of earlier in the season with strong finish in 5th, and Hamilton of course. Those who didn’t fare so well were Rosberg, huge disappointment after his storm up the order only to pull his car over 4 laps before the end to refill with talc, Heidfeld too another strong race until the car failed underneath him, but as Martin pointed out at least he had his deckchair with him to enjoy the warmth!

Webber did well to score his first points of the season for Red Bull but did seem to be a bit heated with some off track action, but he did finally beat both Williams’, one in the race and one by default. Trulli in the points again, but what will become of Ralf?

In the warm up to the qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix Nick texted me to say, “I wish they’d shut up about Lewis”. I reminded him to embrace and enjoy it as it would be going on all summer.

It did, at the time, seem pretty over the top. I mean he hadn’t even won anything. Was this another Jenson situation? Was he being hyped? Clearly there was an element of hype going on. But I think the guys on ITV knew he was the real deal.

They had to ramp up the chances of Jenson, or at least they felt they had to, because they ratings are never higher than when they have a British champion to cheer. I think what they didn’t realise was that the excessive way they went about it meant that viewers had higher expectations than they should have. I think this often left viewers disappointed with Jenson even when he’d done quite well for him.

So I think viewers were naturally skeptical at ITV when they started going crazy for Lewis. And yet this time it was different. This time it was for real. In fact so far Lewis has exceeded even the lofty heights he has been raised to. They put him on a pedistal, he put himself on the podium.

So now it has all come true. He’s won two races. He’s been on pole twice. He’s only getting better. The only danger now is that he begins to believe he’s invincible. He was getting pretty close to those walls. We don’t want to see him have a nasty crash.

He has a race in hand now. It will be interesting to see how he uses it. Alonso traditionally has been willing to settle for second once he was this far ahead knowing that because he was more reliable he’d always be in first or second so there was very little chance for Michael to catch up. But I’m not convinced that Lewis is that kind of driver. I think he wants to win badly. And with Alonso nipping at his heels he’ll have to be careful. Even if Alonso is a big girls blouse about wanting to be loved by the team, he’s still extremely quick.

Back after Lewis’ first grand prix I was so impressed I said he’d equal Michael Schumacher’s seven world championships. I was told I was being a bit previous. And maybe I still am. But everyone must see that Lewis isn’t an empty shirt, no he’s the real deal.

In the aftermath of Lewis’ famous victory in the US Grand Prix:

Bernie Ecclestone admits: ‘Podium Champagne is just Cava in a fancy bottle’

So now you know. And theNewbie scores of of them there pole poll points…

Well with F1’s resident Pole having a quiet lie down it’s time for us to have a quick recap of what Indie is all about. Indie is in many ways the oddest circuit that we go to. The mechanics have to set up the cars in two different opposing directions. On the one hand there is the need to deal with the high speed straight but you can’t go too far that way because otherwise the car will be undriveable in the twisty bits.

Traditionally the cars with the higher top speeds have more flexibility here which is part of the reason Ferrari have always done well here (they’ve only lost one race). This tire advantage should be gone for this year except that Ferrari have shown that while the new Bridgestone’s are different than previous years tires they still have a slight advantage. With that famous banked corner being so crucial for tires expect Ferrari to do well from that.

Because of the mix of strategies about being fast in different parts of the track, the fact that although most will two stop anything from one to three is possible, the wear rate on the tires from having to deal with that banked corner and the long straight leading into two tight corners all conspire to make Indie traditionally one of the circuits most suited to overtaking. That alongside that there is a safety car more often than not tends to keep the racing tight and exciting. I just hope Ralf doesn’t try and crash into that wall again.

So McLaren look dominant at the moment and so it may be a fight between Lewis and Alonso at Alonso’s bogey circuit. Although to be fair to Alonso his record isn’t as bad here as some have made out. Also there’s a chance that because of the likelihood of a safety car it may be Lewis’s turn to be disadvantaged.

Ferrari have always gone well here. But was that the tires or raw pace? Kimi must get back on track here if he’s going to stand a chance in the championship. He really needs a pole to checkered flag victory to get his confidence back.

BMW are going awesomely at the moment, maybe even faster than Ferrari. And because Kubica is off we will have the utter thrill of seeing Vitel in the car. Now that’s guaranteed excitement right there!

It should be an awesome race, so lets hear your predictions!