SofaF1

I have been consulting with some of my non-internet F1 fans and asking them their thoughts for the coming year. One of them is / was a huge Michael Schumacher fan so I thought her opinion would be interesting. One of her friends is also a huge Schumacher fan. And they have both, independently decided to throw their lot in with the same driver.

Felipe Massa.

But surely, I said, you can’t expect him to beat Kimi this year?

Her answer was simple, she said nobody knew about this year. That in the fall out post Michael almost anyone could win this year. But that what she wanted was to not have to change horses very often so when she chose Massa she wanted security for the next five years. And she thought that Massa would be the man to win most in those five years.

Now I’ve always liked Massa. And I don’t think he’s faster than Kimi now. But you’ve got to look at the care and attention that Todt is putting into him and think… Actually she might have a point.

I like the colours.

Is this the worst possible answer a driver can give? How degrading is it to the engineers and all the work they have put into that car? You simply can’t say that, and Alonso should know. It will not take much for the attitude to change from ‘wow, we’ve got the world champion in our team let’s build him a great car’ to ‘who does he think he is coming here telling us what to do?’

Also, Massa says Ferrari and McLaren are behind BMW at the moment? Has he been eating some special pasta, or could it be true?

I’ve been reading a very interesting set of posts over at F1Fanatic. (Prizes for places, not points, Places not points revisited and The argument against championship points (III))

The gist is that Keith doesn’t think that the points system helps F1. In fact more than that, he reckons it just gets in the way. His system would be to rank people by number of first places, then number of second places etc. So it wouldn’t matter if you’d come second every race of the season – you would be ranked lower than a person who had come first once and never scored in any other race.

This system would, as he rightly points out make people push much more for the win. There would be no more situation where Alonso (as he did in both of the last two seasons) could simply ride out his points advantage. He would have had to have gone out and won races.

I think it’s a pretty solid idea. What does everyone else think?

I watched the Superbowl last night and was rather disconcerted by something. Once the Indianapolis Colts had won and the podium ceremony was set up, it was the owner of the team who received the trophy first, then the coach, then finally the captain. Clearly, all anyone watching in the stadium or at home wanted to see was the captain, Peyton Manning, lift it. So why the other two guys? Imagine Schumacher winning a race and Montezemelo being given the trophy, then Jean Todt, then Michael. It seems counter-intuitive. I thought it must be a cultural thing, or that American Football is run by corporations rather than sportsmen. But is F1 any different? Or maybe they realised that they have to give the owner something, and no one would be paying any attention after Manning had lifted it. Perhaps they were just saving the best for last.

So remember my post: Most Stupid Decision ever? where I said there was going to be enforced tire changes between one hard and one soft (one of which was painted red on the side so you could tell what was going on) even though they didn’t help strategy and was simply a marketing move by Bridgestone to keep people interested in the tyres? And how it was completely stupid.

Well they’ve listened to me and decided not to have a red rule.

But they are going to force the teams to change tires anyway, between hard and soft and now they just aren’t going to have red on them. So you won’t even know what’s going on.

There is a suggestion that the teams might have to disclose their strategy moments after the race starts which would be something I guess. But why not just not do it? Why not just leave the fact that the tyres aren’t going to be relevent this year exactly that way.

Also on tyre related stupidity did you hear the one about a Formuala 1 commission to reduce costs which suggested that there should only be a limited spec of tyres made which means that there are only warm tires because teams only go racing during the summer months – but forgot that teams go testing in the winter which means instead of 1 extra design of tyre all of the teams will be flying out all of their cars, crew and drivers to Bahrain to their testing which… Costs lots more. Well done everyone – trebles all round.

Nick’s post about the teams expectations reminded me of an idea that I’d had for a while which is to run another championship right here on sofaf1. The idea is based exactly on what Nick observed which is that not all of the teams want or rather expect the same things. I think that at the end of the season a team that has moved forward three places in the points order at the back of the grid might be a more impressive thing than a front runner moving back a few places. And yet that front runner does better in the championship. So I wanted one where basically the most impressive team would win.

I’m thinking the maths for this might be quite complicated. But I’ll work it all out. Some factors that will be in there. Reliability, achievement of their season objectives, improvement over last years performance, achievement of our own objectives and so on.

Any other factors you think I should include?

Although Alex has stolen some of my thunder, I’ve collected here the predictions of every team who’s said want they want to achieve this year. Obviously for the top teams the only goal is the championship, but hopefully this will serve as a reference later in the year for those middle of the grid guys whose eyes were bigger than their stomachs. Only time will tell.

Toyota are targeting a win, or to be at least as good as 2005, battling for third, and much better than last year.

Super Aguri aim to be in the top ten, and want to target points.

Renault think Kovalainen could win a race, and that Fisichella’s going to challenge for the championship.

Red Bull aim to be in the top five, amongst the ‘big boys’.

Toro Rosso plan to stay ahead of Super Aguri and possibly compete with Williams.

Honda are aiming for consistent race wins, and possibly the championship.

McLaren want the championship with Alonso, or to be fighting for it at the end.

BMW plan to shorten the gap to the top four, and possibly break in to them.

Ferrari want the championship.

I haven’t got Williams or Spyker yet. If you have any more, or any contradictory, claims let me know!

In fulfillment of a comment I made a few days ago, here is a list of all the races I have on tape. My general criteria for keeping a Grand Prix are that it has a lot of overtaking and/or a close battle for the lead until the end. I have no problem lending them out or doing some joint watching. Anyone else’s lists of taped events are greatly encouraged.

2003: Silverstone and Japan (title decider).
2004: Monaco, Silverstone and Spa.
2005: US (6 cars), Monza, Japan, Brazil, and China.
2006: Hungary, France, Bahrain, Australia, Brazil and China.

There’s nothing like a positive attitude to turn a team around. And while over at Ferrari we find Kimi stringing together longer sentences than ever before*, with:

“My debut in the Ferrari went well, but honestly I had hoped for something more: I would have liked to drive it more in the dry instead of for just five laps. Yes, I’m happy, but I could have been a lot more. The seven tenths gap to Massa is surely down to that, because I didn’t have time to change some things in the car. These things can happen when you’re looking for the limit. I tried to, but I still don’t know much about the car, and in any case I never lost control so in the end the spin turned out to be quite enjoyable. No, there’s no point, the program is right as is. I look closely at the F2007 because I like it, and when I test it myself next week I’ll know more about it. There are many things different, I will have to get used to them, but I’m not exactly a rookie. There’s still a lot of pressure, I don’t see differences from McLaren, of which I don’t want to talk about anyway. It was a bit emotional, but in the circumstances I was more interested in the technical aspects than the emotional ones.”

But that’s not the biggest change, oh no, the biggest change is over at McLaren where everyone seems to be genuinely happy. Just listen to these quotes, all from Autosport:

Alonso:

“I call it ‘new McLaren’ because with all the new sponsors and everything it feels like a new team, and all the people are so excited about this new year, this new project, after not having success in the past, they feel that this is the year to come back.

“I feel confident. I feel more confident even than last year at the beginning of the season. We changed from V10 to V8, I was in Renault, I was thinking what’s going to happen this year with the V8? This year with McLaren I’m not thinking what is going to happen with the new team, I think it will be OK with the new team.

“With the team I’ve been working 10 days in a row basically in January, and it feels very good. The atmosphere in the team has really impressed me, how they focus on winning.

“It’s probably the nicest car I’ve had in my hands, but we need it to be quick, not nice, so we’ll see. I think all the information we have now from the wind tunnel and the engine side, it’s so good, it’s maybe too good to be real! So we need to put the car on the track and see what exactly is the performance of this year’s car.”

Whitmarsh:

“I think Fernando has a distinctive driving style by comparison with his colleagues in F1 – clearly a pretty effective one – and there was a thought inevitably to what extent does he tune that to Renault, or was the Renault being tuned to him, it was a much lesser issue, virtually no issue at all, when we put him in the car with next year’s tyres. It was a very confidence-boosting day for him and the team.

“However much you try to do everything the best possible way, it’s useful having someone who is astute and intelligent with the credibility of Fernando to come and say why are you doing that, why are you doing this?

“It’s early days yet. There are mixed emotions. You’d like him to come on board and say, ‘This is perfect, I can’t improve upon it.’ I’ll be pleased when he finds – which he will do – things that he can contribute to. And I think there’s every sign that he will.”

Alonso again:

“Lewis will I think be a help for the team, in a way he has no experience, so we can think that maybe he’s not helping the team, at least at the beginning of the season. But I think completely the opposite. I think because he’s young and quick he can give us some fresh ideas into the team, and some fresh air, that maybe we need. Because sometimes F1 teams get stuck in some of the ideas, traditions, things like that, and I think we can get something from Lewis.

“We will be doing teamwork a lot. I think it’s one of the things that are changing in McLaren a lot this year. They’re really focusing on the team, on getting both drivers the same conditions, and between us we’ll work together to improve the car. I think Lewis will have a very good opportunity because between all of us, we can improve.

“I will learn things from him, because as I said sometimes it’s fantastic to change your ideas, and he will learn a lot from everybody in the team as well. I feel really, really optimistic with this relationship.

“There are always top teams like Ferrari, Renault, Honda that will be fighting for sure,” he said. “And maybe surprises, like maybe Toyota are quick this year, or BMW. Who knows? But at the end of the year there will be only two of these teams fighting for the championship, and hopefully McLaren will be one of them.”

Team spirit like that is infectious and can’t be faked. Hearing all that made me upgrade my thoughts about McLaren this year. You might say that all of this talk is all very well but it can’t make the car go any faster. But we know that it can. Great teamwork and leadership from the front drivers is exactly the way to motivate the hard working team of engineers back home. They need to feel part of the front line gang rather than blamed when things go wrong and forgotten when things go right. Only the class acts remember their teams unprompted when they win. All of this could help Alonso get those extra tenths.

So are their any clouds on the horizon? Well apparently there may be. There are rumours that the surprise sale of a section of McLaren to a third party were a snub to Mercedes who depending on who you believe were not willing to pay enough money to Ron to clear the debt he’d always wanted to clear. Or because Ron felt that Mercedes shouldn’t be more involved because they hadn’t been pulling their weight in the deal. Ron felt that he’s provided the drivers and chassis for a world championship run but it’s been squandered by the Mercedes engine team. And so he didn’t want them to have even more control.

What used to be standard has now become unique. McLaren Mercedes are now the only constructor team with an exclusive engine deal. Did Mercedes get a bit grabby behind the bikesheds? And did Ron have to give them a bloody nose? Only time will tell. But if this relationship starts to unravel then all the team spirit in the world won’t make the slightest difference.

* I know Nick challenged my assertion about Kimi’s lack of dialogue. But I think Nick and I probably agree about the amount Kimi spoke to the press. Whereas before we were disagreeing as to whether this same reticence occurred while he was debriefing his team.

An obscene amount of money would you consider following round the formula one circus for a year?