Here We (well some of us) Go!

Boy F1 looked absolutely terrible in Australia, didn't they? Let's tot it up:

• Bottas gets hurt, forcing Williams to withdraw a car;
• Kvyat and Magnusson blow up on the out-lap to the grid;
• and two Manor cars never turn a wheel all weekend.

Fifteen cars take the green light.  And then in the first lap we lose the two Lotus cars.  And then -- and then! -- McLaren almost limp home into the points with a hamster-on-a-wheel engine.  Eleven finishers, and it wasn't even raining.

F1 in general needs to get their acts together or they are going to be in trouble.

The entire farce just about makes me want to look into this WEC thing.

What we learned, Misadventure-Down-Under edition:

• Mercedes has resumed normal service after doing something else during winter testing.  The World Championship celebratory parties are scheduled back at the factory for the same time this year as last.  Thank you for standing by.
• Ferrari has made a huge step forward.  Whether it is real will have to wait for a sustained effort from Williams, plus deferred judgement on Lotus, but podiums don't look impossible this year.
• Vettel looked pretty good in the car all weekend.
• Raikkonen can't buy luck.   A first corner squeeze and then two messed up pit stops.  Apart from those problems the weekend suggests 2015 will be better than last year.
• The McLaren-Honda is just as miserable as testing suggested it would be and it isn't clear that there is enough change available to fix the problem.  Honda really got screwed by coming into the formula a year late, although if they'd done it properly and made a rocket everyone would be saying how much of an advantage being out the extra year was.  One wonders if Alonso's symptoms will perhaps linger a little as there are probably no points on offer for him this year.
• The Ferrari revival is all-around -- Sauber's performance with the same motor in the back shows that this year they have it together.
• Speaking about Sauber, I still don't care who does or does not drive for them.
• Hopefully once Renault shows up their cars will make it to the grid without ingesting engines.  Riccardo and Sainz both seem to have used up one of their four engines for the year, as has Magnusson.  All told, between Renault and Honda, this is the kind of "reliability" we were afraid of last year, and last year it turned out incredibly well.
• At this point, Manor isn't a real F1 team -- they just seem to have some pit/paddock passes they've stolen from somewhere.

Quiet Day Of Racing Down Under

So the fans in the stands were not terribly impressed with the noise, and frankly after listening to this I don't blame them:


I suppose that the bottom line for Ferrari is that we have to be reasonably pleased that both cars got home at the end.  Alonso looked reasonably quick as compared to the mid-fielders, so this car likely won't be struggling with the back-of-the-packers.  There's clearly still much to do to make this a competitive package.

Your overwhelming winner on the day was Mercedes, powering four of the top five places (and five of the top six), with Alonso being the only outlier.

Renault has to be the overwhelming loser, between problems for Vettel and the total Caterham collapse and Lotus' problems.  The highest place non-excluded finisher was a Toro Rosso back in 8th.

The honorable mention for being the loser has to be Red Bull, with Riccardo's car being excluded at the end -- one can only assume that had Vettel made the flag he would have had similar problems, Red Bull never being shy about doing what they think is right even in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise.  At least the car wasn't slow and illegal.

Bottas showed that the Williams can be fast in the right hands, promising for them.

However over all the racing felt very dry to me.  Now this has been a common complaint for me about Australia, something about the circuit does not seem to be conducive to generating entertaining racing.  So I'll reserve judgement for now on the new rules.

Another complaint I had was that the safety car period felt like it went on for ever and ever, and TSN piling on commercial after commercial didn't help that feeling.  You can say a lot about the old CART days, but one thing they knew how to do was a safety car period.

Qualifying Notes, Australia

This the first time I have been able to listen to he sound of the engines.  After the high RPM of the past generation, and growing up with V10 and V12 power plants, is have to admit I don't like the sound.  It isn't even a growl, it is more of a "rasp". Definitely not my F1.

And since I have changed TV providers over the winter, I cannot judge if the cars look slower because of the rules change, or due to some artifact of being able to see a reasonable picture for the first time ever.

Hard to say at this point if the results were a function of "new rules" lottery or "wet session" lottery.

Mercedes at the front, more or less what I expected.

Expected Vettel to do better, with or without his team mate's performance.

Alonso 6th... Not what we expected.  Neither was Raikkonen being out after Q2.  Raikkonen sounded kind of vague as to what happened -- "playing around with the switches or something".  At this point it does not look like Ferreri were sandbagging in testing...

The displays on the steering wheels are quite elaborate this year.  (See caviar above about a reasonable picture.)

Ricardo did his job well -- run with the big boys when Vettel ran into trouble.  The rain might have masked power problems with the Renault, we will have a better idea about hat over the next few events.

Odd that Williams didn't figure more in Q3.  

Hope for a dry race tomorrow.

What We Learned: Australia 2011

What we learned from yesterday's GP:

• DRS isn't working in its current form. The only convincing DRS-enabled pass was Jenson Button blowing past a backmarker that he'd have blown past later anyways. When his McLaren was on even terms with Massa's Ferrari -- that is to say, the McLaren was visibly faster once released by the Ferrari -- DRS didn't help. Most of the other passes that happened could be attributed to tire degradation, in that cars with fresh tires are much faster than cars on worn tires. Watching one of the Ferrari's stalk Button before he peeled off on a tire change, you could see the DRS being deployed and it making almost no impression on the McLaren. Definitely not the go-faster tool that the FIA envisioned.
• Ferrari is probably the third-fastest car right now. Alonso had a terrible start, but even so managed to be making up ground on third-place Petrov at the end. If he had not had the terrible start, he probably would have been ahead of Petrov's Renault. However he'd also be behind Button's McLaren, so at this point there is work to do. The F150* will almost definitely win races and may contend later this year, but for now it is clearly best of the rest.
• Vettel still has it: a dominating performance in qualifying gave him the platform to convert to an almost uncontested win. This car/driver combination still looks unbeatable. What more needs to be said?
• I don't want to write off Massa, but this performance is just more of the same we saw last year -- much slower than his team mate and vague complaints of technical difficulties, this time "rear tire issues". It would be too easy to write him off at this point, we'll check back in after a couple more races before we polish the axe.
• Petrov impressed, but would Kubica have bettered that result? The year's worth of experience had done Petrov's performance a world of good, and a trouble-free run grants him his first podium. He probably is the beneficiary of Alonso and Button's poor luck. All things being equal, I don't see him regularly coming home in front of those two cars.
• Sauber stumbles: running the entire distance on one tire change, especially when others were having severe problems making them last, is impressive. To see both cars excluded due to a technical infringement that didn't grant them a competitive advantage is a shame.

---
*= ...th itallia blah blah blah, whatever. It's the F150 to me.

Rain Action

So we've now had two races with rain, and both of them yielded more action than the dry desert race we had before.

Australia featured a lot of action, with cars having more ability to pass each other. Malaysia seemed to be drying faster, and after the initial burst of activity we were left with a high-speed procession -- until mechanical failures happened.

While the track at Bahrain was not conducive to having a lot of passing, one would have hoped that a car which was a second faster than the one it was catching up to would be able to at least have a couple of good goes.

Australia had the tire change gamble that paid off for Button and not so much for the Red Bull cars or Hamilton. Behind the leaders there was quite a bit of action due to the still wet sectinos of the track. Malaysia seemed to dry more quickly and once everyone settled down there wasn't much action.

At this point people are predicting rain for China tomorrow, and while that might be good as far as action goes, it would be nice to see a dry race to see if the 2010 cars are actually any good at providing more than a high speed train.

Another "Learning Experience"

Well, if past history is anything to go by, Jenson Button has the best chance of being the World Champion. Hamilton won in Australia last year, Raikonnen the year before, and we all remember how those years turned out.

This event wasn't kind to Ferrari last year either, so we should not fall into the trap of trying to predict the whole season from one race. Last year Ferrari turned it around and won the day at the next race, so we can hope for a similar result next week.

In retrospect, using the option tire for the first stint was probably a smart move. There was always going to be an increased penalty for using the option tire, and it was surprising just how much of a penalty that turned out to be. By running the option tire first, you get the penalty out of the way early, and if (or, in Australia, when) there is a safety car, much of that penalty will be wiped out in one go. One strategy which now has to be investigated would be short-fueling the first stint, running the option tire, then running the rest of the race split in two stints. It would also put your fuel stops out of cycle with the rest of the field, which would be an advantage in that while you'd initially be unable to get on terms with the faster, lighter car ahead of you, you would then end up with the faster and lighter car yourself -- with, one hopes, clear track in front of you, once the car ahead stopped.

Raikkonen today:

"When I ended up in the wall it was my mistake. A shame as, given what happened later, I could have finished second. We lost valuable points but we will try and make up for it starting right away in Malaysia. There, we will get a clearer picture of the situation because this circuit is not very indicative of performance. The KERS worked well at the start, but there was not much room to go anywhere. If we did not think it gave an advantage, we would not use it. Definitely the main problem was in managing the tyres, but we also need to improve our overall performance."

Well good on him for accepting responsibility for the mistake; everyone is due one now and then. Hopefully it won't become a habit. Elsewhere he is described as thinking his failure cost him third place, I think this is somewhat optimistic even including the BMW/Red Bull collision in the closing staged. While he definitely was on course for points, I don't think that they would be a significant haul, and they would be enhanced by the collision ahead of him.

Massa's failure is described merely as "mechanical", and Massa does nothing to clear up the mystery in his comments. This will give the team something else to think about, as mechanical reliability was supposed to be the cornerstone of this year. Indeed, Massa's retirement is the only one which isn't at least indirectly a result of a collision, self-induced or otherwise.

It's a short hop to Malaysia next week, so there is not much time to make substantial changes. However you can be sure that even as the lawyers prepare for the FIA's Court Of Appeal, the engineers are working on a diffuser design that matches the Brawn's interpretation of the rules, to be quickly applied to the car should the lawyers fail. There is clearly enough to keep everyone usefully busy in the short term.

Australia 2009: Results

Well, I was close but I was way off, wasn't I?

• A Brawn was on pole, however that was pretty much a gimmie. I was wrong about them being fragile, though, and the second Brawn lined up behind the first. BMW was towards the front, but both Toyota and Ferrari disappointed -- even before the Toyota penalty was taken into account.
• Winner: I totally missed this one. Button's Brawn ran like a freight train, watch, or other excessively-reliable-cliche.
• Podium: another miss. Even if Kubica and Vettel had not tangled at the end of the race the way they did, I would still only be one-for-three.
• Race Happenings: I was wrong on the start, as Barrichello appeared to trigger a multiple-car pile-up behind him and then get off scott free -- but I disagree with Brundle's assertion that Barrichello was at fault; the rules state that if a car is alongside you (which he was, well before the corner) then you can't turn in on him. So that should get categorized as an "unavoidable race contact". There wasn't really any mid-pack mid-race incident, so I missed on that one too. What else? Well the Safety Car really is kind of a gimmie at Australia, isn't it, and Hamilton and Truly managed to get the stewards involved...

Overall the race seemed to show that the cars were more comfortable following one another closely through corners, which is good, and there were a couple of incidents which suggested that the KERS push-to-pass system also made a difference to a couple of passing or defending moments.

The good news from the weekend is that despite the domination of "the diffuser club" in qualifying, BMW and Red Bull seemed able to run with the Brawn, the BMW enough that when the Brawn and Red Bull were forced to run the option tire, it was able to close up the deficit. BMW had a legitimate claim to second today, and possibly first.

The only negative I can put up has to be the unabashed homerism that the BBC announcers show -- seriously, it is almost enough to make me look into getting Speed again just so I don't have to listen to how fucking wonderful Jenson Button is.

Australia 2009 Predictions

Ahh, time to put my money where my mouth is. Let's see:

• Pole: one Brawn; the other will have technical problems and be at or near the back. BMW and Ferrari at the front, then the mid-field. Toyota towards the sharp end of the mid-field, maybe ahead of one Ferrari or BMW. Williams will disappoint. McLaren no better than 11th, and ForceIndia at the back.
• Winner: BMW or Ferrari.
• Podium: Two of either BMW or Ferrari, with one of the other. My thinking here is that the Brawn will be fragile; one of the cars will finish in the points.
• Race happenings: a clean start. One mid-race mid-field collision which will take out two or three mid-field cars. The Safety Car will get deployed, and Safety Car rules will come into play, resulting in a protest by someone. Passing other cars will still be difficult.

For what it's worth.

Diffusers Legal, For Now

BMW's protest of the diffuser design on the Williams, Toyota, and Brawn cars has been denied:

[...] the FIA issued a statement confirming that the stewards believe the cars are legal.

This decision will, of course, be appealed and there will be a formal hearing of the FIA's International Court of Appeal. Since that is not likely to happen for several weeks, the cars are likely to be protested again in Sepang.

There are two things that will happen from this: first, all the other teams will now prepare diffuser designs that are in line with Brawn etc's interpretation of the rules; however the teams which are on the record as protesting will not dare use them until after the hearing.