SofaF1

Is the most important feeling in Formula 1 the desire to win?Or is it something else.

James said something interesting the other day, i know, i know, he suggested that the thing that was driving michael wasn’t so much the desire to win but was more a desire to stop somebody else from having that winning feeling.

I wonder if it’s only Michael who thinks like this. I actually doubt that. The evidence seems to be bourne out by the difference that is made to a driver who has broken his duck. Usually this is explained by the idea of getting the monkey off your back but actually what it might be is that in Formula 1 it isn’t a let down when you win. Which is kind of incredible.

Think of Rubens, he had to wait more than 100 races before he had his first win. All of that time he must have been dreaming what it would be like and in his mind it would just keep getting better and better. But when he finally won you could see by the look on his face and the tears in his eyes that it had still beaten expectations.

And that’s kind of amazing after that kind of a build up. So to get back to the point. Given that actually winning is a better feeling than you could even expect it to be aren’t the drivers who have experienced winning driving around in something closer to a jealous rage? And that could be very powerful.

Finally what about drivers who’s first win is under a cloud couldn’t that ruin you as a driver? I think this happened to Fisi. And i think it was going to happen to Kimi but Ron stopped it from happening at the last moment i think he sacrificed a win to make his drivers first win more special.

Is he as good as people say he is? Should he partner Alonso? One journalist said his Silverstone drive was the greatest he’s ever seen from any driver. Really? Or is that just nationalism creeping in? It is almost impossible for us to tell how good he is, and/or whether he’ll be able to cope with a) F1 cars and b) Fernando Alonso as team-mate. One thing is for sure, this weekend marked the beginning of the British journalists’ emigration from Button to Hamilton…

What annoys me is the amount of unnecessary time they spend on Button. If he had qualified on the front row then, yes, spend a lot of time talking about him. But if he qualifies 19th, forget it. But they just talked about him more! Ignoring the potential battle of the three greatest drivers up the front (which ended up as Raikkonen slowing Michael down so we never knew if he could have challenged Alonso).

Anyway, I think what Martin Brundle said in his Sunday Times column was right: the problem with Button is that he can’t adapt to changing conditions in the car; hence the slow lap times after pit-stops; this and a fundamental ‘mind-management’ issue, which led to farces like him moving to Williams, then back again.

Back in the old days of formula 1. By which I mean, for the purposes of this post, the period immediate preceding this one. There used to be three top teams. They were pretty much Ferrari, Williams and McClaren. Every so often one of them would have an off season and another team would have their time at the top.

Now we have the same thing with Renault replacing Williams. But something else has been afoot these last few seasons. The top teams have been much closer to the mere mortals than they ever used to be. A fact proved by renault moving up. There really are now four top teams (it’s only williams further slump this year that makes this not look true and the fact that so many teams desperately want that fourth place) but it has been true ever since they made the most important rule change of all. When they made the points go to the top eight instead of six drivers. With two drivers a team it’s made that difference.

The main thing to have come out of the grand prix today is a small mathematical shift in the championship.

Psycologically a driver needs to know that they can go and make the difference by themselves, and that’s no longer posisble for Michael. You want to be able to go out there and win all of the races and just hold your apponent behind you.

Before the race this weekend Alonso was 21 points ahead of Michael. And if Michael had won every race and Alonso had come second then he would have got 22. And now Alonso is 23 points ahead of Michael and there is only a 20 points advantage to win (keeping Alonso in second while Michael wins).

So from here on in Micahel can’t do it by himself. He has to rely on his team or a mistake from Alonso.

So the perfect weather for the race that gives you everything. Every grand prix has character but in the world of Formula 1 the older you are the better you are. Like Monaco Silverstone still seems a bit old school and this year with it’s super fast corners it really should be a supreme test of the drivers. But hold on what about the straight line speed that’s required? You need a great car too. So this race will be a package race. You can’t drive around the car sorry Jenson and David and the car can’t just hand you a victory. Sorry Massa.

Renault and Alonso have that package. And so do Ferrari and Michael. I’d also like to include McClaren and Kimi but do they have the reliability?

Also watch out for Rubens going faster than Jenson not just because I don’t like Jenson (i do as a person but not as a driver. He’s smooth but not fast enough.) but mainly because Rubens goes like the clappers here. Also watch for toyota who might just have something up their sleeve. A podium for them might not be out of the question if the race gets shaken up.

So the weather doesn’t look like a factor but don’t let that fool you. As Murray used to say “Anything can happen in Formula 1 and it usually does”. And at the british grand prix doubly so.

One of the things that’s very difficult to know is how a driver keeps doing what they are doing race in race out. The feeling of complete danger doesn’t seem to stop them from going out there so how do they do it?

Modern Formula 1 is very different than it was in the old days. Thanks in no small part to Max Mosley and Prof. Sid Watkins many drivers now seem to feel that they are playing a video game where nothing can really hurt them. This cognitive dissidence is probably healthy for a modern Formula 1 driver. The idea that while the sport is dangerous which makes it cool it’s only dangerous for other people. This is especially easy as it has been, thankfully, a long time since a driver has been killed.

Formula 1 drivers, in my opinion, now fall into three groups:

1. The drivers who will go out and do the crazy thing knowing it’s crazy but want it to be as safe as possible when they do it: Michael, DC, Webber and Montoya. Eg. American Grand Prix last year, the tire company had told them that the tires were unsafe to drive. And while DC worked hard for an alternative solution right up to the line, he was still asking on the radio as he went round on the parade lap if there was any way he’d be allowed to race.

2. The full cognitive dissidence boys, Alonso, Kimi, Sato. It doesn’t matter to them, in their minds if the races becomes safer or less safe because bad things don’t happen to them. They do, of course, these particular three have all been in bad crashes. But that doesn’t stop them from knowing each time they go in to a corner: “I’m going to be okay”.

3. The last group contains just one man: Jacques Villeneuve. He’s probably nuts but he’s the only one who seems on the surface to actually relish it when it’s less safe. He of course has history because his father was killed in a Formula 1 race and weirdly this seems to have taken him the other way to the rest of the Formula 1 fraternity. Perhaps it is because unlike everyone else who has had to learn about the danger once they are already out on track and trying to win – Jacques had to conquer his fear before he got into the car.

All of this leads us to the British Grand Prix this weekend which will have some of the fastest cornering speeds ever experienced in F1’s history. Now in true James Allen stylee lets just listen to what Jacques has to say about it and started with those that had been complaining:

“Maybe they should stop driving F1, we just raced in Monaco, no one complained and it was great. There is a small amount of risk but it is tiny. In the past there used to be 100 corners in a season with that amount of risk, and 50 with more risk than that – and now there’s just three during the whole season. It’s no big deal, just lift – you don’t have to go flat.”

Okay so, so far so chastising of the others. Now listen to him psyche himself up to not do what he’s just advised the others to do:

“It has the type of corners where you have to go beyond your human limit, not the limit but your personal one, where you reach the corner and your foot wants to get off the throttle, and you have to tell it to stay flat. That’s the most exhilarating moment in driving a race car. Copse is flat on new tires and low fuel, which makes it exciting. It’s a little bit like Eau Rouge used to be – a corner that you know is flat, but it’s hard to bring yourself to actually do it flat. But you know it, every lap you go ‘OK, next lap it’s flat’, but somehow each time your foot comes off the throttle. That’s what makes it exciting. I haven’t done it flat yet. I went in flat [in testing] and went off the track. I didn’t crash, just went wide. But it will be flat this weekend. Other people have done it flat I think, and when I mean flat I mean not braking with your left foot, because that’s not flat! The thing is that the way the cars are made now, with traction control and everything, it’s hard to go off. You can go off but it’s a lot harder than it was in the past. I don’t expect people going off, but you never know.”

I think that paragraph there gives more away about the psyche of a F1 driver than most other interviews I’ve ever seen. He’s almost saying “I want to go flat but know I can’t. But if other people are going flat then I must be able to do it because there’s no way there’s going to be somebody out there who’s braver than me”!

That’s what Niki Lauder says Jenson needs to prove that he’s as fast as Kimi or Alonso.

And he isn’t – he’s slower.

Bernie has come out in favour of having twenty races in a season. In fact that’s only one more than we were supposed to have this year. The only that traditionally stops us from having more races is the teams saying that the season is too long and incredibly exhausting. One of the main people to use this defense is ron dennis. He of course isn’t in the management group any more – i’m sure this is just a coincidence.

Bernie has said that he’s going to make things easier for everyone by spreading out the races more. In fact this means that he’ll make the season longer which is great. It has always seemed to me that the easiest way to deal with the longer season is to make the closed season longer by getting rid of winter testing. The fairest way to reduce testing is simply to reduce the period that testing is for.

The only people that you’d hear complaining about this are some of the biggest teams and also the journalists. The off season which only lasts for a month now is a complete nightmare for f1 journalists who have completely nothing to write about. Of course they could just take a nice long holiday during that time. But what if the off season was three months. Before i’ve never really been that worried about it but since we’ve started this blog i’m not so sure.

An alternative would be to really spread out the grand prix and have all of them three weeks apart. With the odd one two weeks apart. That way we’d only have say december off from f1. Grand prix with snow anyone?

It doesn’t sound right, does it? Why would Toyota want to supply a team that can and is beating them? And why do Williams want to split themselves in half like that again (as they did with BMW)? It seems they have both compromised heavily: Williams want a better engine than Cosworth, and the Toyota was the only one around (perhaps they were hoping for a Mercedes?); Toyota wanted a better team than Midland to supply, and Williams were the only ones looking (perhaps they wanted Red Bull?).

What we have to look out for, of course, is how will it affect driver choice? And is Adrian now allowed to support Williams?

Watching Top Gear this week I was reminded of one of the things that I really like about Jeremy Clarkson. He’s one of those guys that in your half remembered prejudices about people you assume is a little Englander who is hugely biased about the things that happen in the rest of the world. Especially if it comes to Germany.

However he really isn’t. He was talking about the Monaco grand prix and said that the stewards should have awarded 100 points to Michael for being so skilled that he managed to stop everyone from beating his time and also not injuring the car all at that speed. That, he said, takes skill. He also said Fisi should have got points for thumping Jaques rather than being stopped!

There was another F1 factor in this weeks episode as they had a piece with Jackie Stewart. Jackie took one of the presenters – Captain Slow James May – and taught him how to shave 20 seconds off of his lap time in one day. It was an amazing thing to watch. I know Jackie is training up and coming drivers but I wonder if he trains the public? Of course Jackie (who’s 66) was still miles faster than James 20 second reduced time which is still mind blowing.