Pat W

An Easter Sunday

How did I spend my Easter Sunday?

Watching racing – hey you know me, what did you expect? I had no plans all day and this was the first fully-stacked motorsport weekend of 2010, there’s no way I was going to miss it.

I woke at 7.45am when my alarm beeped, a cleverly-timed alarm designed to get me downstairs for 8am for the BBC F1 pre-race show. I hit the off button and promptly fell asleep until 9am. 9am.. The race starts at 9am! Cue a mad rash downstairs. I arrived as the cars rounded the last corner on their warm up lap. That was close. I watched the race in a bit of a daze, trying to fire up the live timing which was having troubles of its own, as well as trying to find the 5Live commentary feed and other accoutrements to enjoying F1.

You can read my thoughts on the F1 race elsewhere, the important point is that as soon as it was over it was time to flick over to ITV4 to catch some BTCC action from their first meeting of the year at Thruxton – but wait, what’s this, Superleague Formula’s first race at Silverstone was on at the same time? Which to choose?

The answer of course, is both. I had Superleague’s official free web stream on my PC, with the BTCC coverage on my TV. I found I was more into the Superleague so I muted the TV. To be honest I wasn’t really following either race all too well, if you combine following two races with keeping up with Twitter and other sites which were reporting on the BBC F1 Forum happening at the time which I’d abandoned, there was a lot of information to take in.

Eventually there was time for a break for shower, breakfast and a cup of tea at something like 1pm. Perfect for a Sunday normally, the hunger hurt a little after being up since 9.. The BTCC support races were playing out during this time and I watched a couple of them, the Porsches were as tedious as ever despite their larger grid – and the Clio Cup was as madcap as ever despite their much reduced grid!

At 2pm came another decision. SF race 2, or BTCC race 2? I took the same solution as before since the internet had become awfully quiet, I’m guessing people were off doing family things for Easter. I muted the TV again and again barely followed the touring car race, I’ve found no reason to get interested in it this year.

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Conversely, I’ve never watched Superleague Formula before and I’ve been openly critical of the entire concept. I still don’t like the concept and their timing and scoring system is very confusing with the three letters representing teams not drivers, but I tell you what, they’ve made the right choices on the car and engine package and on the driver choices. There was top notch racing in race 2. Bourdais fought his way up, Montagny passed several cars from the back to finish 8th or so, and this Dolby fellow is quite a find isn’t he? I thought it was a very good race, lots of passing yet it was nice and clean.

Not like BTCC race 3 which was the last race of the day at Thruxton, after a couple more support races. I watched this with the sound off as well because I was listening to ‘Giggles Radio’ on Sidepodcast, but since listening to music is a little less taxing than watching a race I was able to follow this encounter a little more. It seemed okay other than what looked to me to be very slow-looking touring cars, until Matt Neal decided to get up to his tricks and just rammed Rob Collard into the barrier. He claimed he had nowhere to go, which is nonsense. 3 cars, 1 ahead and 2 side by side with Neal one of the two. He just rams the car in front such that it loses momentum and the 3rd car knocks it into a spin because he genuinely can’t avoid it. Had Matt backed off and remained side by side behind the first car, they’d all make it round and he’d have a good drag race on the front straight. Crazy behaviour.

I used to be a Matt Neal fan until a couple of years ago when he seemed to ramp up his antics. He’s just a knobhead, and so are the BTCC stewards for not clamping down on him. I used to dislike Plato for similar things but he seems to have got better recently.

Literally minutes after this race ended, the WRC Rally Jordan review was beginning on the Dave channel (for non-UK people, yes we have a TV channel called “Dave”). I half-watched this but the antics with the penalties to get a favourable road position left a bad taste.

After this I went out for some clear air and a walk and came back to write my Malaysia review. On the whole a rather exceptionally lazy day of watching racing and while there were some negatives it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.

One of the more interesting sub-plots was seeing the work being done at Silverstone. I’d seen pictures but nothing in video, and it was very strange seeing the current front straight with a gravel trap where the grandstands used to be, and some new stands erected outside of it. Being up close was part of that area of Silverstone but I guess what you lose in proximity you gain in being able to see more of the straight. The place looked a bit raggedy in places as there is still work ongoing, but generally much more modern than before, and I expect to see it looking somewhat nicer come the F1 and MotoGP events in the summer.

A good day overall then. What did you do?

Thoughts on F1: Malaysian GP

Thoughts on F1: 2010 Malaysian GP

The first ‘normal’ race* of the 2010 season wasn’t any different to a normal race of the 2009 season.

The fast cars at the front raced away at the start. It just so happened they wore the same livery. Those fast cars stuck down the order made up places in the first couple of laps before settling down, stuck in traffic. Then we waited for the pitstops while nearly everyone essentially held station, just like last year. The stops changed the midfield order a bit and a tyre miscue ruined one of the front-runners’ chances of a win. There was a bit of strategy, it was just with tyres instead of fuel. Fine. Whatever. Same difference, same result. Red Bull would still have walked away with it. McLaren and Ferrari would still have been caught in traffic.

I tell you, just like any race of the last decade. The stops were just a tiny bit shorter.

It was interesting that Button and Hamilton were on opposite strategies (Button starting on hards and Hamilton on softs) yet after the pitstops they were running togther, even side by side as one left the pits. I sensed Ron would’ve been pleased the strategy put them in the same place and allowed the two to sort out who led.

It was a great drive from Vettel and mostly from Webber. Mark cost himself the race when he allowed a gap for Sebastian to nose through at the very start. We saw good runs from Rosberg, Kubica and Sutil too. You could legitimately argue those three would’ve been behind the Ferraris and McLarens had they started in their normal positions and you’d probably be right – but we’ll never know.

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I was going to praise Button, Hamilton, Massa and Alonso as a collective unit for their progress up the field but I can’t do that. Button made the wrong tyre call twice in as many days – that’s fine, we’re all fallible and that’s the way it goes sometimes. Massa and Alonso did a good job – scratch that, Alonso did an exceptional job to run that quickly with an ailing gearbox that eventually let go.

We turn to Mr Hamilton. He was doing reasonably well but seemed to get desperate and started blocking and weaving against Vitaly Petrov. I am very disappointed in the race stewards for not awarding him a drive-through penalty or worse. They deployed the ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’ warning flag, a flag I personally feel is underused across the whole of racing, yet in this case was not the right response in my view. I would like to know why that action was taken. Weaving is completely out of order.

New Rules

I was in favour of the ban on refuelling. To my mind the fuel strategies of the last couple of years haven’t varied a great deal from team to team. They all pitted within 2 or 3 laps of each other – what’s the point in that? The interesting tactical decisions of most of the previous decade or more, and that you still see in the likes of IndyCar and ALMS, they seemed to have disappeared from F1 as everyone ran broadly the same ideal strategy as computed by their expensive software. If everyone is going to run the same fuel throughout, why not just run the same fuel throughout by having them not refuel? It makes ’em think. Gives ’em something new to figure out, for a while anyway.

I miss the 1-stop vs 2-stop (not so much 3-stop) as much as anyone but I genuinely don’t remember seeing a good race like that in quite a while. To me the period from roughly ’98 to roughly ’07 was the best for that sort of racing. If they aren’t willing to think out of the box any more on fuel strategy let’s give them a different challenge.

On Friday when I talked about the Australian GP I suspected people would complain about the Sepang race. I was right, there hasn’t been as many people criticising it as Bahrain but what I have seen has been quite vocal. I perhaps uncharitably said these people were goldfish because they forget that past dry Sepang races are mid-range in terms of excitement – neither turgidly dull or spectacularly fun.
They also seem to forget the very large amount of criticism of the 2009 races in general, the season itself was fine but the races weren’t great unless you were a team superfan. If the races are still not great under very different competition rules then surely that points to a larger more fundamental problem with F1? It isn’t refuelling or not-refuelling that is the problem. There is something else at play. It might be aero, it might be the tyres, it might be something else – I have my suspicions but I don’t know for sure.

If the races were processional and boring with refuelling and processional and boring without refuelling, then surely it has nothing to do with whether or not they are refuelling?

Is that too simplistic? I don’t know. It just seems obvious to me but what do I know?

Future

So we go to Shanghai in China in two weeks. Woopidoo. If anyone calls that race boring because of the new rules I will personally shoot them. This race is almost always boring. Barcelona after that isn’t great, either. Bernie’s decision to stack the first half of the year with rubbish racetracks may yet decide the outcome of the refuelling / non-refuelling debate.

Anyway where was the rain today? I was promised rain. I like rainy races.

* I call this the first ‘normal’ race because Australia was rain-affected, and in Bahrain it seems clear to me that every team was taking it easy as they explored the new rules. At Sepang they stepped up a gear.

Thoughts on F1: 2010 Australian GP

Well that was better wasn’t it! A wet or drying track always spices up the racing no matter what the rules are.

The race started with every driver on intermediate tyres and we saw some great racing as the drivers struggled with the lower grip conditions. The Safety Car interruption was only brief and was early enough not to really have any effect on the gaps between cars and it was only a short while after that Button pitted for dry tyres. It seemed most thought he’d struggle including many of the BBC TV team and they were briefly proven right with a slide on his out lap, yet he responded with the fastest lap in the race. This triggered tyre stops from everyone else in the field, the Red Bulls staying out a further lap longer for Vettel and two for Webber. Webber’s was a touch too late.

That seemed to set most drivers up for the rest of the race with talk that the softer Bridgestone, for which everyone had opted, being able to last the distance. Not so for some, Hamilton and a couple of others were in again for a new set of softs.

The pitters emerged 30 seconds further back than they had been, but were now able to run 1 to 2 seconds per lap faster – could they make up the time loss? This is what we’ve waited the winter to find out under the new rules – can a driver on brand new softs catch and pass a driver who stays out nursing worn tyres?

[picapp align=”right” wrap=”false” link=”term=Australian+GP&iid=8364859″ src=”9/0/2/a/F1_2010_ae55.jpg?adImageId=12028016&imageId=8364859″ width=”380″ height=”253″ /]

As it turns out they couldn’t, at least Hamilton and Webber couldn’t, the gap was too much. Lewis and Mark ran together as they closed down the train of Kubica, Massa and Alonso who had not stopped and were running 2nd, 3rd and 4th – they caught Alonso but could not penetrate his staunch defence. How much of that was the problem of running in dirty air, how much was down to Hamilton and Webber using up the tyres to catch the trio, and how much was down to Alonso himself? I don’t think we’ll ever know but I think it was a combination of the three and perhaps Alonso deserves a credit for driving a wide car – not to mention his recovery from the back after his turn one spin.

Hamilton didn’t like the call but you can see what McLaren were doing – splitting the strategy in case Button’s staying the distance didn’t work if his tyres went off at the end. It was the right call because at the time nobody had any idea whether the soft tyres would actually make it – what if they’d got so bad with 8 laps to go that the top four who stayed out all had to pit? That would’ve put Hamilton in the lead with Webber half a second behind and Rosberg nearby. We just didn’t know. Perhaps at another circuit or with less of a gap it would’ve worked.

The other point to make is all the credit went to Button for staying out so long, but let’s not forget Kubica, Massa and Alonso went nearly as far. They drove just as well.

Further down the field you saw some passing as the pitters passed the non-pitters, the passers included Barrichello and Schumacher. For them, it worked.

On the whole it was a good run from Button, it was the right call to pit early. It was a good drive from Vettel too until he crashed out with an apparent mechanical failure. The only other notable drive was Webber’s – he drove a fast but scrappy race, clashes with other drivers kept delaying him (some his fault, some not) until he ultimately ruined his own day by spearing Hamilton into the gravel, luckily both continued.

A quick nod to Jaime Alguersuari and Lucas di Grassi for not getting fazed at all by racing wheel to wheel with Michael Schumacher! It was good to see they weren’t willing to back down and didn’t jump out of the way of his reputation arriving a second before the man himself. Nice to see Chandhok make the finish too, albeit 4 laps down.

In General

What is interesting is that we haven’t yet had a true representation of a fuel-ban race in dry conditions. In Bahrain the teams were taking it easy, learning the rules and learning what the tyres would do – plus there was the effect of the temperature which meant they’d take it easy anyway so as not to stress the car parts.

In Australia the first third of the race was on a damp but drying track, meaning the two-compound rule did not apply. The rest of the race played out the way I’d imagine a fuel-ban race would run on a dry track with no restriction on tyre choice, it was fascinating watching the cars on new rubber chase those on old. Unfortunately we have this rule where both hard and soft tyres must be run in a dry race, which could mitigate against good racing.

Malaysia looks certain to be rain-affected as well so perhaps we go to China for the first true race under the new rules, and that race is a yawn-a-thon in normal circumstances – I’m dreading the goldfish telling us how the new rules have suddenly made that race dull, when in reality it usually is anyway. The same goes for Catalunya, and Monaco is always unique. Turkey and Montreal could be the pairing where we get a decent read on how these races really pan out, unfortunately I fear that by then we’ll have had some knee-jerk rule changes.

Speaking of Malaysia, we’re into that weekend already. It still rains at 5pm every day and while that may not affect qualifying, it looks set to interrupt the race again – hopefully it won’t be quite as heavy as last year and the race can be completed.

TMR Game – Week 10

Welcome to Week 10 of the Too Much Racing Game!

Apologies for my recent absence and I hope it wasn’t a hindrance, and thanks to Sebastian for compiling some unofficial results for last week! You’ll be pleased to hear I agree with his figures, I will include them here in case you didn’t see the link to those results so in this post you’ll see results from the last two weeks.

Just a word of warning, this is a WRC week and that means an early cut-off. The rally actually runs from Thursday to Saturday. I think it is quite harsh to have everyone pick by Thursday morning especially since I was slightly delayed with this post, so I propose a closing point of 6am UK time Friday morning (11 minutes before that day’s running begins). This does mean people entering Thursday will have a distinct advantage but I don’t know what else to suggest. Thoughts?