End Of An Experiment

So that's it then for the "new boys" introduced in 2009.

• USF1 didn't make it to the first test
• Campos became HRT and expired at the end of 2012
• Team Lotus became Caterham and expired in 2014.
• Virgin became Marussia and several ownership groups later they have finally expired today in January 2017.

Now to be scrupulously fair, all four of these teams came in under the impression that a cost-containment spending cap was about to be implemented and planned accordingly. Unfortunately for them, the big spenders didn't want that to happen, and it didn't. Today Liberty Media is again talking about a spending cap, and we'll have to see how -- and even if -- such a scheme can be implemented. I predict rampant cheating.

The Driver Must Drive The Car Alone And Unaided

So as I write this there is no word on whether or not Nico Rosberg will be penalised for the pit-wall radio transmissions sent to him during the race. But Martin Brundle was frothing at the mouth over the prospect of penalties over something which he thought was stupid, "so because some driver hasn't memorised a manual the car is going to break" is about what he said.

I have no sympathy for that.

Firstly, you can't argue that knowing this stuff isn't part of a Formula One driver's job -- the regulations as they are today clearly make it part of the job.

Secondly, these drivers already have to know a ton of stuff -- tyre management, sporting regulations and procedures, all the car management procedures, how to talk to the media and sponsors -- a whole ton of stuff. These guys are paid a lot of money for what they do, expecting them to know how to drive the diagnostics system isn't exactly unreasonable.

Thirdly, you would think that with all the simulator work that the teams do they could run some scenarios to practice this kind of thing so that the drivers get used to dealing with the menu system while in the car and under pressure.

Finally, there's a lot of money in Formula One, surely if the menuing system is too complicated they could have someone make it simpler?

(There's also the issue that most of the rules are geared towards making failures more likely rather than less -- increasing attrition and "interest" in the proceedings. But that's a separate concern.)

I think that Mercedes will be penalised somehow. And there will be a lot of complaint.

Making Elimination Qualifying Work

So having watched this so-called "disaster" for Bahrain (and not thinking that it was terrible), I think I understand both what the intent of the plan was and why it doesn't work.

The intent of the plan is to draw out the tension of the session, where the number of eligible running cars is reduced as time goes on. The idea is that things get more and more frantic as the bar for continuing rises and rises.

There are two reasons why it doesn't work: the cars, and the sessions.

Firstly the cars. Modern F1 cars have evolved into these complicated science projects that are good for one thing -- running Grand Prix races. They are not suited to an elimination style qualification. The cars basically have one good timed lap in them, so we get the situation that we have had for the last two races: everyone boils out of the pits, sets one time, and that's it. There is practically no chance that a team could turn a car for a second timed run, and since for the first two sessions the number of cars being dropped is relatively small, for the vast majority of the runners there is absolutely zero point in even trying. Thus, empty track time. If you send a car with enough fuel for more than one timed run then you will be compromising both runs since you A) have to carry around the extra fuel for the extra timed run(s), and B) you have to go easier on your tires so that you don't root them out too early. Neither situation is conducive to setting a time which is ultimately competitive.

Secondly, the sessions. Since qualifying is still broken up into Q1, Q2, Q3, then for the majority of the field there simply is no incentive to even try to run a second time in the session -- the times are set, and moving from 10th to 8th means nothing in Q1.

So here's my idea for solving both problems:

A) Make the cars start on race-fuel (or some common, minimum fuel level; and B) run qualifying as a single session, with the elimination starting after 10 or 15 minutes.

Presto, everyone has to look after their tires; the cars get faster as the session winds down; everyone would have incentive to keep running to keep burning off the fuel load; changing to the softer tires would become a strategy as to when you'd do it; and setting times would always be relevant because the times are always live.

You'd also get an hour of on-track chaotic running which the media thinks the man-in-the-stands likes to watch.

F92A Memory

2015 Retrospective

So 2015 has come and gone, and frankly I expected it to be another waste of time. Nothing significant had changed at Ferrari -- Arrivabene and Vettel had both arrived too late to have significant input on the car's development, and with that in hand I didn't think that Ferrari would have any answer to any Mercedes-powered car, let alone the factory team running up front.

Shows what I know. Practically any other team would have killed to have had Ferrari's "bad year". A couple of wins, including the both pole and the win in Singapore. Second in the manufacturer's title, third and fourth in the driver's. And I believe Vettel's points haul rivals Alonso's from when Alonso was nearly champion a couple years back.

It was telling, though. The year that Alonso was nearly champion, we headed to Canada having had seven separate drivers as race winners for that year. This year we headed to Canada having had seven separate drivers as podium visitors for the year. Mercedes' reliability was epic, as was Vettel's machine-like predictability in picking up third. Although as a team fan I'm pleased with the result, it made for some dry racing.

Would Alonso have made out as well in this year's Ferrari? I'd like to say yes, but there's no way to know.

For the future, there's not much to say. None of the technical regulation proposals get me excited, and the fiddling around with a "cheap" motor and an equivalency formula just leaves me cold. The fact that the engines are hugely more efficient than what has come before is interesting, but really what draws people to the sport is the competition and the teams trying to come up with new technical solutions to close their gaps. Taking out in-season testing and engine development really puts a halt to that.

You really need multiple teams at the top with a fair chance to win on any given day, it makes the highs of winning higher and the lows of failing lower. You need a better reason for tuning in over "I wonder if Maldonaldo will run into anyone today?"

Driver Skill Is Obviously All-Important

Your finishers, in China 2015:



If only Sainz had not fallen out and spoiled a perfect finish.

Best Of The Rest

A solid 3-4 finish is pretty good, especially considering the mess of futility that last year was.  I am pretty happy about it.

Thinking about it, I think the deficiencies, we can assume that the Ferrari engine is a huge step forward this year.  Maybe not "Mercedes" class -- although the engine is powering perenial back-marker Sauber into more reasonable competitive results, and we know traditionally their car isn't much good -- but still pretty good (the engine).  So from that, I think that the Williams car is inferior to the Ferrari car, which fits with my theory of the Williams merely being the best also-ran last year which benefited from the Mercedes dominance.  With the Ferrari resurgence, Williams is once again behind the serious leaders.  The other Mercedes team that benefited last year, Force India, is similarly unremarkable, and Lotus is really just coming to grips with things.  Clearly, the Mercedes is less of an advantage this year.

Renault is in big trouble, and not just because Red Bull is threatening to have a temper tantrum and go home.  Their engine is where the Ferrari of 2014 was -- which was nowhere.

Red Bull having a gearbox which is apparently made of glass isn't helping any either.  This is the first post-Newey year, but you'd expect them to have their act together a little better than this.

Honda is of course the worst of the worst, but that's because they are in their first year and anyways are showing a surprising amount of realism in their expectations.  I think Q2 is a reasonable goal for this year, judging from what's happened so far this year.

For me, I think this is as good as we can expect for this year.  Ferrari isn't going to take the race to the Mercedes week in and week out, but with reliability they can collect solid points and be there for when the Mercedes duo trip over each other.  Perhaps in the desert at Bahrain things might go better, and perhaps at circuits where engine power is less important (ie: Monaco) they will have a chance, but for me the titles are already out of reach.  And frankly I'm okay with that.

Win!

Well that was entirely unexpected.

Let's deconstruct it a little bit.  In hindsight, two things are clear to me.  First, the Mercedes is not as kind to its tires as the Ferrari is.  Second, Mercedes made two strategy mistakes, in not holding back enough option tires for Sunday, and in making the pit stop under safety car in the first place.

If we game this out a bit, then what would have happened is that after the safety car the Mercedes cars would have led, then pitted for prime tires.  Vettel would have made his only stop under green and come out behind the Mercedes.  Then when the Mercedes cars pitted again, they would be much closer together.  The Mercedes would be a faster car on fresher tires, but with the Ferrari handling its tires much more gently it might have been more interesting in the closing stages.  If Hamilton was truly unhappy with his car, he might have been persuaded by Vettel to make a mistake.  But I think that unlikely, I think Vettel would be more content to not risk his second place.

Mercedes' strategy mistake of not holding back another set of options is probably a direct result of the car being harder on its tires.

But all of this is affected in unpredictable ways because of the heat on Sunday.  Did the Mercedes suffer?  Hamilton's comments suggest that maybe they did.  They seemed to struggle a bit, while both Ferrari cars ran with good pace throughout the race.

Due to the heat I don't think we can call this solid competition yet, or even a championship horse race.  Lets wait and see how things play out in China, or better yet once the series returns to Europe.

But for now, I'll take it.

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.

Taking My Lumps: 2014 Predictions Revisited

So it is a little later than November, but still enough time to revisit my predictions for 2014 so that people can get on with the requisite pointing and laughing.

Your Manufacturer's Champion: I said: Mercedes. Score: +1.

Your World Champion: I said: Jenson Button. Score: +0. Mercedes had their act together and McLaren didn't, to the point where Williams was the Mercedes B-team.

I said:Ferrari might be third in the manufacturer's title. While I could hang my hat on might, I'm going to be honest and say when you score 60% of what the team ahead of you scored, you were not close. So score +0 for that one.

I said: Alonso if the car is fast and reliable, and Raikonnen if it isn't. Well I was right about Alonso but wrong about the circumstance. Alonso kept showing up and getting the job done, while Raikkonen seemed constantly mystified as to why his car didn't change direction in a timely manner. So I'll score myself +1 here because I'm falling behind.

I said I think Lotus will start the best, but Red Bull will overtake them by year's end. I'll count that as +3/4, since I was right about Red Bull at the end, and that Lotus would be scrabbling for finance all year.

I said: [...]the 2013 champion will be conspicuous by his absence at the sharp end for much of the year. Nailed it. +1.

I said: Williams will enjoy (relative) success for the first third of the year, then the bigger teams will improve faster than they do and they will fade down the stretch. Had that upside down. Williams came on strong at the end of the year as other Mercedes cars faded. Score +0.

The Mid-Field: I said: Williams, Force India, Lotus, and Sauber -- in that order at the end of the year. I got the order right, but Williams was higher up, and I didn't slot STR in anywhere. Still, I'm going to score myself +3/4.

I said: Force India might actually see a change of ownership this year -- wrong, this owner somehow keeps holding on with his fingernails, I really don't know why. Score +0.

I said: for Catarham and Marussia it is a pure lottery, one that will be driven by random unreliability between them and ahead of them on the road. That's a non-prediction, but still kind of true. I score myself +1/2.

I said: The FIA will go through all kinds of contortions to avoid granting the proposed entry for 2015 to the Haas team, perhaps even going to the extent of pushing the entry back to 2016. Haas isn't showing up until 2016, and the Romanians have vanished from the news. Score +1.

I said: With Ecclestone finally gone [...] yeah stop it right there, Ecclestone is still here. Damn it. Score +0.

Your 2014 Deadpool predictions:

• Bernie Ecclestone no.
• Force India ownership -- no.
• Lotus ownership -- this one is trickier, since there was a large cash infusion. 1/2.
• Marussia -- nailed it. Caterham is probably done, but they showed up for the last race and that counts at this point.

So our grand total: 6/12 for predictions, and 1 of 4 for the deadpool.

I know next year I don't put Ecclestone in the deadpool and he'll be gone. Just my luck.

So tune in again in the next forty days or so when we do this again for some reason.

Vettel: A Downgrade

I think when you line them up one to one, in equal cars, the driver you are always going to take is Alonso over Vettel.

I have not seen Vettel work in a struggling car, trying to get the most out of a car which can't win. Now he's clearly very tallented and has been well suited to the cars that Red Bull have provided him with over the last few years (excepting 2014, of course). But those cars have been winners.

Meanwhile you can't claim that Ferrari's offerings have been championship-winners-in-waiting. The engine in 2014 was a disappointment, the F138 looked gorgeous but couldn't deliver. A couple of cars have taken the championship to the end, but we can all agree that this was Alonso and not the car that was the foundation.

Alonso never looks like he's just circulating, he's always got his head down and his turn-in sharp.

There was a meme circulating around the beginning of the year which showed Vettel sitting in the 2012 car, and he had this look on his face like Alonso almost beat me in this piece of shit?! Surely taken out of context, but funny to think about. But probably not that far from the truth.

All in all, this driver swap is a downgrade for Ferrari.

NBCSN

So on Saturday afternoon, I said:

On Saturday I fired up the TV at 1PM to watch the qualifying.  Confusingly to me, only the NBC channels had it on.  Oh well, when in Rome -- so I clicked over to NBC.  After ten minutes or so I figured out that I wasn't actually watching qualifying, but a tape-delayed P3 session from the morning.  Which was interesting, as I have not had much occasion to watch practice over the last many years.

Once 2PM ground around and qualifying actually started, I took a closer interest in what was being presented.  And after ten minutes, I was done with NBC.

During an active, timed session that counted, while cars were on the track, we were "treated" to several minutes of Anthony Edwards and Matt LeBlanc.

Memo to NBC: I don't tune in to F1 qualifying to watch some VIP-row reporter listen to what "Goose" and "Joey" have to say.  I'm barely interested in what Hobbes and Matchett have to say, but at least most of what they talk about is relevant to what is actually happening.

Fortunately, TSN was actually showing the session, so I didn't have to suffer with Entertainment Tonight style programming.

Disney to bid on F1?

Forbes on Why Disney Looked At Buying Formula 1

I was going to have some commentary, but this link is from back in July sometime and I totally forget what I was going to say.

Standing Starts

Frankly I could excuse stupid ideas like the titanium rubbing strips to make the show more visually interesting.  That kind of thing is harmless.

But a standing start after safety car is not harmless.  There's just too much chance of collision, of someone having a poor start and losing out that position.   We've seen too many cars swamped at starts and lose out track position.  It doesn't seem a reasonable thing to risk that much a shake up of the order just in the name of improving the show.  And what about false starts?  If someone has an engine problem and stalls?  What will the abort procedure be -- everyone stops their engines and we do a full start routine, or what?

Stupid.

Systemic Problem

It is becoming clear that Ferrari has a systemic problem: Fernando Alonso is an exceptional driver.

No wait, bear with me a minute.

Does anyone seriously believe that Massa is a better driver than Raikkonen?  Anyone?  Well, except you in the back, you can sit down.  But here in the real world, Massa is rated as inferior to Raikkonen.  And yet, Massa found himself in Austria running ahead of not only his replacement at Ferrari, but his former team leader as well.  In a driver-to-driver comparison, this is simply not a result you would expect.

And thus: the problem.

It is clear to me that Alonso's team mates are perhaps providing a realistic view into what the Ferrari cars provided are seriously capable of.  Alonso, being Alonso, is capable of extracting more performance from those cars than mere mortals can -- providing Ferrari with a false sense of accomplishment, and plain making his team mates look bad.

Ferrari needs to figure out how to make a car that mere mortals can drive.

Until then, success will continue to elude Ferrari.

Massa On Ferrari's 2014 Season

Massa's insights into Raikkonen's struggles are really interesting:

"To beat Fernando, your car has to be perfectly suited to your style, because if everything is not 100 per cent right, it is impossible to beat him."

I think that I was wrong at the beginning of the year, that Alonso would tilt himself and Raikkonen would just get on with business.  I think that it is clear that Alonso is getting on with the business of wringing the most possible out of the car, while Raikkonen is trying too hard to force things into happening, and not getting away with it.

Massa rates Alonso as on par with Schumacher skill-wise, which I think might be over-rating him a bit -- but not by much.  Alonso has the skill to drag an uncompetitive car into contention, even if it isn't quite enough.  This is similar to Schumacher's skill, where he was always in the title hunt even if the car wasn't quite up to it.  Personally I'm not quite convinced that he's that good.  He's pretty good, probably the class of this year's field, and definitely deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Schumacher.  But his equal?  I'm not sold on that.

Live Racing

Ah, Monaco.  A week of specticle and a couple hours of poor racing.  It seems that the business ofracing trumps the actual racing, since that can be the only explanation for Monaco's continued appearance on the calendar.  There is no passing and lots of collisions; the grid order is usually closely related to the finishing order.  And this year the way the cars lined up (Mercedes-Mercedes, Red Bull-Red Bull, Ferrari-Ferrari) showed that for the most part the car is more important than the driver.

Still, one gets a sense of who can actually build a car over who can pick an engine.  Ferrari's appearance ahead of such Mercedes-powered teams as -- well, everyone except Mercedes themselves -- shows that their car is perhaps not entirely the brick with wheels that its finishing record has suggested.

So for this race I am less inclined to credit Alonso's fourth place to the failure of the junior Mercedes teams' to execute and to credit it more to both the basic servicability of the Ferrari and Alonso's mad skills as a driver.  To be sure, Vettel's gearbox expiry certainly helped, as apples-to-apples the Ferrari is never going to pass a Red Bull around Monaco.

I'm starting to wonder about Raikkonen, though.  His lunge down Magnusson's inside at the hairpin was rushed, when anyone could see that the McLaren would be easy pickings in any safer passing place.  Raikkonnen fell out of the points with this manuever.  It makes one wonder as to how much of the rest of his "bad luck" Raikkonen is actively courting by trying to make things happen when they shouldn't.

Overall the race was pretty boring to me.  I am not amused by Mercedes cars chasing each other at the front of the grid.  But then, I'm a blatent Ferrari homer.  At least I admit it.  The British coverage is all about "how can Hamilton make the pass", and when Saint Lewis runs at the front, it is all about "how can Hamilton defend against the pass."  I'm tired of listening about Lewis Hamilton.

Today I did something different, due to a change of Sunday circumstances I got to watch the race live. So I indulged in a season pass to the F1 Timing And Scoring App for $11, and got to be able to track the progress (or lack thereof) of the Ferrari cars through the race.  It is interesting to watch, even if it is out-of-sync with the actual race -- it appeared to be three quarters of a lap behind the actual running on TV, but I suppose that I could have paused the PVR and then had actual synchronization (note to self... that isn't a bad idea).  One interesting thing is that the app commentary identified the cause of Raikonnen's second pit stop under safety car almost immediately, while the TV commentary didn't figure it out for 20 or 30 minutes.  

I'm not sure if I'll get to watch any more races live this year, but frankly I've spent more on less in the past, so I don't view it as a waste.

This Season Just Gets Worse

...well I did say it would be a return to normal service, yes?  Although perhaps not exactly as predicted.  While the "other" Mercedes-powered teams were again not really present, you can't argue with the Red Bull return to form.  And add some promising developments from Lotus, and the stage seems to be set for a catastrophic result for Ferrari should the "other" Mercedes teams get their collective acts together.  Ferrari is no longer even competing for "best of the rest", they are competing for the bottom half points.  And that, frankly, is a terrible development.

I'm not sure how to take the "news" that Adrian Newey is being linked with Ferrari.  While everything he has touched has turned to gold -- more or less -- one has to wonder if he is out of tricks.  Still, a team with Ferrari's resources could cock-up everything and still occasionally score points, so I don't see how having Newey in the fold could do any worse than what is happening this year.

Two weeks to the interlude in Monaco, a week of pageantry and terribly boring racing.

(Update: Joe Saward has better reasoning as to why the Newey-to-Ferrari story is probably rubbish.)

20 Years: Senna

20 years ago we lost arguably the greatest driver of them all. R.I.P. Ayrton. #RememberSenna pic.twitter.com/2PvxrUfhmN
— F1 Porn (@F1Porn) May 1, 2014

Senna was definitely one of the greats, but the greatest? I don't know if we can say that. That Senna deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Schumacher and Fangio is a given, but frankly the name Prost deserves the same respect and Prost was one of Senna's contemporaries. One might even argue that Senna rose in a period of great opportunity, with Prost as his principle foil but Mansell and Piquet, although not in the same league, had the talent and equipment to make the competition of the time mighty.

Had Senna continued on with Williams or Ferrari, who knows how many of Schumacher's championships would be held by Senna instead? Had Senna gone to Ferrari, would he have been able to turn the team around sooner? Would Schumacher have even gone to Ferrari? If Schumacher stays at Benetton, where would Alonso have bloomed? So many dominos could have fallen differently had that day not happened that way 20 years ago.

I've often thought that Schumacher's record of greatness is principally because of his competition's lower caliber. There just wasn't another talent capable of taking the fight to Schumacher as Senna could have. 

Senna might have been over his peak, but the sad thing is we will never know for sure.

Ratzenberger: 20 years

20 years today “@F1Porn: R.I.P. Roland Ratzenberger. pic.twitter.com/7X5xpX81nC”
— David Mackintosh (@xdroop) April 30, 2014

I read something that suggested that far from being overshadowed by Senna's death the following day, Ratzenberger's name is better remembered today because of its proximity to what happened. I know that at the time I thought that Ratzenberger would become the answer to a trivia question, but the internet seems to remember far better than I anticipated people doing.