SofaF1

So a statistician would be intrigued by the results of this weeks poll, I think. Before the race weekend there was a clear bias in favour of Kimi being a car breaker, and although that remains over the race weekend there votes for “Both” started moving the poll in a new direction. All that seemed to have happened over the weekend was a clear case (perhaps the clearest of the season) of Kimi breaking the car. And yet both was the new vote. Odd.

Personally I think that despite this weekend Kimi is generally not at fault for breaking the car. I think that he has a clear disadvantage though. One of the things that James keeps going on about is that Alonso is the more rounded driver and I think this might well be true, James also re-tells (and re-tells and re-tells) the story that when Alonso arrived at McLaren he said that he “didn’t want a rocketship he wanted a car that could be thrashed around”. This is actually the most telling example of Alonso’s “roundedness” if true. And it’s something that Lewis “I slapped the barriers four or five time” Hamilton is also reaping the rewards of. Kimi it wouldn’t seem, would ever ask this of his team, he’d presume that Ferrari would make the car as fast and as reliable as it could be and he would do the rest. Alonso’s genius is perhaps that he knew to ask for this. Kimi’s car is less ready to take the kind of beating that the new generation of drivers are used to giving their cars. When Kimi went to McLaren it was too early for him to dictate terms to them. And after having Michael Ferrari weren’t ready to hear it either. Alonso was able to tell McLaren what he needed because McLaren didn’t know what to do. They knew that Alonso knew how to win more than they did.

So despite me making the poll I think it’s that the car can’t take it and it should be able to is the answer. Who’s fault that is is perhaps the more important question.

We saw when Kimi got his car back into the pits that his pit crew were working great guns on trying to get the car back up and running, and then Luca stopped them but Kimi didn’t get out of the car. Apparently all of the crew knew that there wasn’t time but Kimi had come on to the radio and had shouted “we need to get that thing fixed, NOW”! He apparently never shouts at his crew, and is always calm and collected with them. They were so fearful that they kept working on it. When Luca told the crew to stop work he apparently stayed in the car for another 5 minutes with his helmet on so that he could calm down. I don’t know the facts but my guess is that he knew it was his fault and he was more angry because of this. I can totally buy this argument. I can see Kimi as harsher on himself than his team.

Anyway on to the new poll. This is the change you would make to improve Formula 1.

Options:

Two races, one in qualifying order one in reverse order

No qualifying, race in reverse championship order

No Blue Flags

Longer Races

Classic separation of quali and race, eg. No race fuel.

No overtaking in pit stops

No pit stops

No fuel stops (just tires)

No tire stops (just fuel)

No change

The British Press are famously mean sons of bitches and they are so powerful that they know when somebody trys to snub them they’d rather shame them than let them get away with it. Ron Dennis has been denying the British press some access to Lewis – understandably he’s so young – and the press are presumably under enormous pressure from their Editors to get the story. So it’s easier to invent a story than try and explain the subtle difference between the what is allowed as strategy and what isn’t in Formula 1. I have decided to write that article as it should have appeared in the press rather than the slams against Ron Dennis which have caused the FIA to investigate them. Here goes:

Basically, Ron Dennis who runs McLaren thought there would probably be a safety car so he set up his two cars in two different strategies one for if there was a safety car and one if there wasn’t. He actually gave Lewis the more likely better setup which is why Lewis was so confident going in to the race. Lewis was set up better for the scenario of a safety car period occurring which round Monaco is pretty likely (it’s happened the last four times). So he thought he was sitting pretty despite being on pole. In the end two things happened, there was no safety car and Alonso drove better than Lewis. By the end of the race the McLarens were almost a minute ahead of the Ferrari. They had lapped everybody except for that car. They were mega. So after the race when asked Ron said something along the lines of, “we controlled the race from after the first pit stops, our pace was so strong that we turned down the revs and took it easy”. He was partly laying down a marker “we’re so much better than you that we beat you by that much and we weren’t even trying” and also speaking the truth they would have been mad to have their two drivers properly racing each other when they were so far ahead of the competition. They could crash and loose their advantage. This is part of the team element of Formula 1 and is totally fair.

It sounds similar to the thing that Ferrari got in trouble for a few years ago but there is a significant difference. A few seasons ago Ferrari got penalised for getting a faster Barrichello to move over to let a slower Michael pass him and win the race for points. That’s banned. In this case Alonso was faster than Lewis, drove better than Lewis and the only way that Lewis would have won is if he had been given the better strategy by McLaren. Whoever qualifies better in Q2 at McLaren gets to pick the strategy so Alonso obviously picked the one that didn’t include the safety car. If Lewis had wanted that strategy he should have been faster on Saturday.

He is really good Lewis and I really like him, I don’t think he’ll even have been disgruntled really. All that’s happened is F1 is starting to be interesting to sports Editors in the UK and they want a) Lewis to win and b) It to be somebody else’s fault when he doesn’t. It’s frustrating for us, but they just want to sell newspapers. I just hope the FIA doesn’t do something stupid.

Not Hamilton, but Kubica. I only realised halfway through the race that it was the Pole’s debut too. We were shown an on-board shot of Robert losing control at the hairpin and almost hitting the barriers. I thought to myself ‘rookie mistake’, then realised he was a rookie. Lewis, we have to admit, was soundly beaten by his teammate on his first time round the track in a car that was easily superior to everything else. Kubica, however, beat his teammate. And this isn’t to mention the problem that affected him in the closing laps as he lost several seconds, the pit-crew were ready for him to come in, but somehow he gathered it all back together again and kept his place. (I have to admit my concern wasn’t just for his performance, but for mine because I put him in as coming 5th!)

Well they say a win at Monaco is worth half a championship and certainly for Nick that seems to be holding true!

I was pretty happy that I picked the winner correctly and would have been happy with those four points, the fact that I got an extra point for Hamilton and another couple for Alonso on pole meant I could barely contain myself with my best points haul so far.

Nick on the other hand took it to a whole new level landing a massive 14 points, correctly getting Alonso on Pole, Alonso winning followed by Hamilton and Massa, and Kubica and Heidfeld taking 5th and 6th.

Fourstar picked Hamilton for second gaining 2 points and picking up a third point for Heidfeld.

Alex was a bit off with Heidfeld on pole although that would have been quality, but his omen in the morning was partially correct, it was all about Lewis (for him), who scored him his only 2 points.

Round 5

1 Nick 14
2 Bearded Stew 7
3 Fourstar 3
4 Alex 2

Which only just moves me up to second place in the championship, but we are all struggling to keep up with Nick at the moment!

Championship

1 Nick 34
2 Bearded Stew 20
3 Alex 19
4 Fourstar 15

Well, perhaps surprisingly most of the cars finished at Monaco this year, Liuzzi, both Spykers and Webber were the exceptions. Mark Webber again this time engine/transmission woes, maybe Coulthard swapped their gearboxes over when no one was looking! Coulthard didn’t really fare that well either being disadvantaged by his 13th place grid position and trouble with his wings, but slipped back to 14th by the end of the race. Scott Speed on the other hand drove from 18th to 9th during the course of the afternoon in his Torro Rosso.

Rosberg qualified an amazing 5th just ahead of Webber, but a bad strategy left him languishing down in 12th. Wurz on the other hand did the opposite and hauled the other Williams up from 11th into the points.

Barrichello again kept his globe ahead of Button’s dream although they both slipped back a place from where they started.

Heidfeld and Kubica did well again only being disrupted by Fisichella dragging his Renault round to maintain 4th.

Great weekend for Alonso with the pole, fastest lap and win, Hamilton and family understandably disappointed not to win this weekend but a great consistent result still showing he is a worthy contender and a win is bound to come soon. He is obviously very talented and should be a very successful racing driver. My only fear is what a win will do to him/his ego/his drive if it comes too soon.

It could happen at one of these next two races though…stay tuned.

Allegedly, the words of Lewis Hamilton when he went round Ste. Devote on his scooter before first practice, and before he whacked the barriers there with his McLaren. But it might also be a description of the fight set to take place today between him, Alonso and Massa. Elsewhere in the article from which this quote came, in The Sunday Times, were other quotes from Lewis – some seemed similarly youthful and enthusiastic, but some were much more mature and considered. I couldn’t help feeling that’s he’s been infected by Ronspeak, or Ronnian as I like to call it. I hope he maintains the right balance. On the opposite page Martin Brundle gave his views on the weekend so far. If it rains, he said, which it seems like it might, all bets are off.

Are you? No, not that Hamilton is good – although I am – but that Jackie Stewart would make a good replacement for James Allen. His description of Alonso’s lap of Monaco was one of the best single lap commentaries I’ve ever heard. I can’t believe the amount of interesting information he fitted in to 1 minute and 20 seconds. Immediately I wanted to watch it again. I think he’d make a great commentator. Perhaps itv could let him do one or two just to see?

Two things occur to me.

One that when they were suggesting that it made no sense for Hamilton to go out again in Q1 because he was definitely safe I remembered that I had thought we had heard Ted saying a few races ago that in McLaren whoever got the better position in Q1 got the pick of the strategy.

Two that they are likely to be two laps different on fuel (between the McLarens) which would mean that there is quite a difference in pace between them especially at the beginning. Unlike Mark I think Lewis might have been light but compromised so he will be aiming to get past Alonso at the front.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them coming together at the start.

Monaco has lots of things that are funny about it. One is the way that the residents don’t pay income tax. Another is that there is a street market every Friday. That doesn’t seem odd you might be saying, lots of places have street markets. Well yes they do, but Formula One only has one street circuit and that’s in Monaco too. You might think that the market would handily move to a wednesday or something at times of the grand prix, but no. The market came first so it keeps it’s Friday slot and that means that the Friday practice sessions happen on a Thursday. They actually dismantle and rebuild bits of the circuit overnight.

Talking of rebuilding lets take a quick look at the practice sessions. Hamilton have his car an almighty whack yesterday in practice two and the mechanics are furiously rebuilding it. Given the extra day I’m sure they’ll be fine. In practice one and two Alonso headed up the time sheets. This flatters Alonso slightly because he was the only major runner to use the super softs in practice one and hamilton obviously didn’t finish practice two. The Ferraris haven’t looked so fast. Certainly not in practice one on those harder tires. In practice two though Kimi was second, several places ahead of Massa. Some have suggested that Monaco is a bit of a bogey circuit for Massa. He certainly hasn’t gone well here.

All important in this race is the qualifying and the strategy. Massa has been on pole a lot recently. Is he hiding his light under a sandbag?

Ferrari had a long run of success here in the first half of Michael’s time with them but not for the last five years. In fact a different driver has won monaco in the last six times we’ve raced here. But the big disadvantage was always seen to be due to Michelan. Now that they are out of the picture anything could happen.

But as always it’s your job to guess. At this race there’s always a chance we won’t get eight people finishing. What would happen then? Although as it’s unlikely I think we should have all eight guesses (plus that all important poll). Good luck!

Click on the picture to be taken to a zoomable map (this has always been a feature but I forgot to tell anyone)

So at the Monaco grand prix you want to have your tires really soft. And you don’t really want to have to use your hard tires very much at all. But the rules say you have to use them at some point in the race.

The one thing that we know about Monaco is that there is often a safety car. And that it’s often at the begining. So it seems likely that at least some of the teams will start on the hard tires and hope for a safety car period in the first couple of laps. That way they will have used their hard tires and complied with the regulations and then they’ll be able to spend most of the race on the ideal tires.

But Alex isn’t there something weird about the way that the safety car period works this year you seem to be saying? Well as it’s almost certain to be crucial I thought I’d better repeat the new rules here.

The pit lane is closed when the safety car is deployed. When the safety car crosses the pit entrance with an F1 car directly behind him the pit lane is open.

Then one-half to one lap before the restart the safety car will signal that all lapped cars go past the safety car and rejoin at the back. This is to stop a backmarker being in the middle of the pack.

So those are the new safety car rules. We’ll probably need them just because Monaco is Monaco, but there’s also a chance it might rain…

Well with all of this going on and the usual Monaco madness it’s going to be a great race whoever wins.

Formula 1 cars are so aerodynamically tuned that they could drive upside down. Being this aerodynamically advanced has made the cars faster but the problem is that it is almost impossible to overtake one.

Several people have suggested a ban on wind tunnels. They have been the cause of the aerodynamic advances, and they are terrible for the environment. It’s actually not the races or even the flying to the races that are the least environmentally friendly part of F1. It’s the keeping dozens of wind tunnel centres running engines 24 hours a day blowing wind and measuring what it does when it blows over the cars.

The problem with banning wind tunnels is that the cars are currently difficult to overtake and would simply stay that way. There has to be an incentive to make cars easy to overtake. The only way to do this must be to make it imperative that you overtake in the race. If you must overtake you must create a car which can be overtaken. I think this is true. I know that in theory it must be possible to make a car which deals with turbulence from a car in front but still deposits incredibly disturbed air behind it. But I think if this vision was possible we would have seen it already. I think that if we made it imperative to overtake we would see cars being built which were less aerodynamically sensitive. They would have to be able to deal with anything thrown at them and still go quickly. And not be perfect machines.

So how do we make overtaking imperative? Surely in the pinnacle of motorsport it would already be vitally important? But no. As has been said before on this blog, “if you put all of the cars in order of fastest to slowest why would you expect any overtaking”? Overtaking happens almost by accident in Formula 1. When it happens it is all the more spectacular because of its rarity – a factor I worry about destroying with these proposals. And yet I will propose away because I think Formula 1 is nothing if not the fastest evolving sport in the world. It keeps changing and that’s part of its charm to the seasoned observers.

So how do we ensure overtaking?

Well the first thought is always to reverse the grid at the start of the race, but that seems complicated. How would you get people to drive quickly in qualifying if they knew that the faster they drove the further from the front they would be qualifying.

The GP2 solution to this is to have two races, the first in qualifying order so fastest first and the second in the reverse order (only the top eight). This is something that Formula 1 could easily do but I think it is a bit tricky because it means two races and a qualifying. The two races might devalue each of the races. It might be too difficult to attract people to watch both of the events. In GP2 you get points for both which is how you make it worth it for everyone to do well in the first one. This system does work in the feeder series, so perhaps there is some merit, even though we seem to have rejected it in a previous SofaF1 Poll.

The next solution is requires very little modifying with the current Formula 1 race system. To get more overtaking almost everything could stay the same. All you would have to do is to get rid of the blue flag system. The blue flag system means that if you are lapping another car that car has to immediately spring out of the way (well within three blue flags being waved). This system means that races aren’t compromised by weird situations where some cars are incredibly difficult to overtake and back drivers into the clutches of weaker cars. And yet that seems to me exactly the kind of thing that we want to see. If a driver can take advantage of a situation like this then it really means they are a great driver – it’s almost nothing to do with cars at that point it is simply taking advantage of another drivers mistake.

My last offering is perhaps the most controversial and yet it would be easier to explain than the way that GP2 works. I think that perhaps this is my favoured solution. I think that we should get rid of qualifying, and re-instate the 115% rule. Eh? In this scheme during free practice every car would have to be within 115% of the fastest time in free practice. To make things less dangerous we could use the fastest time from practice 1, and say that you must get within that time in any of the sessions. This would stop the last practice effectively being qualifying. So if there is no qualifying how do we decide the grid? Well that’s simple, we use the reverse of the drivers championship. The championship leader starts at the back, the person in dead last starts the race. One extra rule is that the constructor team scores no points for the first race with a new driver unless it is the first race of a season. This would stop teams from simply fielding new drivers every race to try and get them to the front of the championship. There is bound to be overtaking in this situation. Some might claim that the grid will be dangerous but already we have situations naturally where fast cars are at the back of the grid and what happens? They overtake the other cars, they tend not to crash into them.

So on Tuesday next week I’m going to put these three and “keep Formula 1 as it is now” into the SofaF1 poll, but if you’d like to add your own pet theory then I’d love to hear it and include it in the poll too.