Unexpected

A win is a win is a win.

One can be less than charitable, claiming that Ferrari only won because

• The changable conditions caused a restart, which
• Made everyone start the restart on wets, but
• Everyone dove into the pits to get their tires changed, but
• Button went a lap early, meaning he ended up behind Hamilton and Alonso, and
• McLaren inexplicably bumbled Hamilton's stop meaning he came out behind Alonso as well

...and while all that may be true, the bottom line is that you have to be fast enough to be present enough to take advantage of both mis-steps.  Even with the Hamilton mis-step, Alonso only came out scant seconds ahead of Hamilton.  And while the Ferrari was clearly faster than the McLaren, I'm not sure Hamilton wouldn't have been able to defend successfully.

That day, those conditions, Alonso and the F2012 were fast enough.  And combined with his results from Australia, Alonso even leads the Drivers' championship.

I'll take it.

I worry for the near future, though -- the F2012 isn't fast enough in qualifying.  Both outings so far suggest that race pace is adequate, at least in Alonso's hands.

Massa again I'm not sure about, he definitely needs better results --immediately -- if he's even going to last the season.  I don't see him being dropped any time soon, but unless things improve there will be someone else in that car come September.

Roll on China.

Half-Assed Predictions for 2012

With the 2012 season gearing up, here are my predictions, such as they are, for 2012:

• Your manufacturer's world champion: McLaren.  Just watching the testing buzz I think that Red Bull is vulnerable this year for some reason and that the McLaren will have an early, run-away advantage over the field.
• Your world champion: Either Jensen Button or Sebastien Vettel.  I think that Vettel is the real deal and if anyone can overcome the challenges that I think Red Bull will have in the early going it will be him.  If he can't, my view is that Hamilton will be easilly rattled early going and Button will be the one with the lead. The question will be "can Vettel catch him before the end of the season".
• Ferrari will have a miserable year.  Maybe two wins maximum, both for Alonso, both when the McLarens and Vettel are sidelined or held back for some reason.  Possibly regular podiums.  The car will be reliable rather than fast and the team will struggle to find speed.  Ferrari will be best of the rest this year -- possibly a distant 2nd or 3rd in the Manufacturer's title behind McLaren but on the approximate order of Red Bull.
• Alonso will collect maybe two wins and a handful of podiums, but the car will be reliable rather than fast.  Alonso will deal with this reality better than Massa does.
• 2012 will be Massa's last year at a top F1 team, possibly his last year in F1 at all.  Massa is a quality driver, no doubt -- he just isn't an elite driver and the car won't be able to make up that difference.  He'll be in around the Mercedes and Webber and achieve a reasonably reliable record.  It won't be considered enough and Ferrari might be decent enough to wait until the end of the season to announce a replacement -- but more likely it'll happen before September.
• Mercedes may win one race, but it won't be Schumacher.  It will be Rosberg and he'll do it on merit -- not through "changeable conditions".  Overall they may hound Ferrari but my view is they'll be 4th overall.
• Politically: FOTA will continue to implode as the FIA uses Ferrari's absence as a wedge with the rest of the teams.  There will be no replacement Concorde Agreement signed in 2012.  There will be some talk about the teams buying an interest in the commercial side of F1 but I expect this will be blocked by the smaller teams on the grounds that buying an equity position into F1 as a requirement for participation will blow affordability out of the water, and the alternative (the grandee teams owning an interest while the smaller teams don't) would be construed as the fox guarding the hen house.  Besides, any and all negotiations will be thrown up into chaos because...
• Shocker: 2012 will be Bernie Ecclestone's last in F1.  I don't know if he's gonna die or have a stroke or get sent to prison or something, but my gut tells me we'll be dealing with the chaos of his sudden absence rather than his continued presence.  And chaos it will be since he won't be around to manipulate the Concorde Agreement negotiations or help take care of whatever regulations interpretation firestorm blows up.  There will be a ton of opportunists who streak in either to "take control" or make a money grab.  If the courts are involved and the various shell and holding companies Ecclestone uses have to be liquidated then control of the sport will be in doubt.  It will be a very tense winter in the run-up to 2013 with lots of people wondering if F1 will survive into 2014.

My 2012 Deadpool predictions:

• Bernie Ecclestone (see above).
• HRT will change ownership at least once if not expire completely.
• Marussia (formerly Virgin) will change ownership at least once but probably survive into 2013.
• Lotus Cars will experience ownership problems that will result in the Lotus team (formerly Renault) having catastrophic cash flow problems.  Whether or not the Lotus team survives is up to whomever buys Lotus Cars (unlikely) or the team's ability to find a large quantity of alternative financing in a hurry.  The results of the early season will be critical in terms of finding that finance.
• Red Bull will have another go at selling Torro Rosso but be stymied again by the global economy and the fact that HRT will always be a cheaper buy.
• I think the Indian billionaire financing Force India will stay ahead of the hounds for 2012, but the team will be fundamentally owned by someone else for 2013.

Tune in again in November for the laughing and pointing.

2011 Ferrari Summary

Well, that's done. Ferrari comes away from 2011 with 3rd in the Manufacturers' title, and drivers Alonso and Massa end up 4th and 6th in the Driver's title. This was somewhat less than was desired, let alone expected -- Ferrari was very big on the goal of winning this year.

Based on the way the car performed, this result is more or less what could have been expected. Alonso has been extremely rapid, and downright brilliant at times, yet could only win once, in Britain when Vettel got held up and McLaren for some reason had lost the plot -- possibly due to the on-again, off-again rules about exhaust handling which for that race were on-again.

Overall the story has been of repeated, constant, machine-like consistency from the Red Bulls in general, and Vettel in particular. This is the season that 2010 should have been like for Red Bull.

One can also point fingers at the car. The F150* demonstrated excellent race pace on option tires, but never got the best out of the primes. This is possibly related, as the car was very gentle on the option tires, meaning there was more performance for longer than other cars were capable of delivering -- the flip side of this was that both drivers --especially Massa -- constantly had trouble putting heat into the primes because the car was just too gentle on them. This meant during the prime stints, the car just couldn't live with its competition. Giving up on development in September didn't help either, as the other teams continued to bring improvements.

Nevertheless, in order to profit from others misfortunes you have to be there or there abouts, and when McLaren stumbled Ferrari was usually there to take the advantage.

Alonso has continued in appearing to get the best available out of his car at all opportunities. Being able to run with, and occasionally ahead of, healthy Red Bulls (albeit those driven by Mark Webber) and McLarens showed that he hasn't lost any skill or drive. He seemed to have more visible mechanical issues over the year (several DRS and KERS failures) than his team mate, yet somehow managed to stay well ahead of him most of the time. Alonso is one of those drivers who can win the championship without having the benefit of the best car on the grid.

Massa, on the other hand... I somehow feel that he's never really come back from his accident in 2009. Although I wonder how much of his poor performances has been the car (vs his just not being an Alonso-caliber driver), I somehow feel that a younger, hungrier driver might stay closer to Alonso than Massa has. I never doubt the sincerity and commitment of Massa's effort... I just think perhaps it isn't enough any more.

Overall this year was what I expected -- a Red Bull technical demonstration. McLaren comes and goes, and this year they were on more than I expected. But I never expected anything better than 3rd in the manufacturer's, and possibly 3rd in the driver's.

So now we pack everything away and await the new car introductions in January.

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*= th Italia blah blah blah

Pack Away 2011

Even before Monza, the word was out: Ferrari had effectively given up on 2011. While a Monza-specific package would undoubtedly be used for the Itallian Grand Prix, the word on the strip was that there would not be any further updates to the car, which would probably race on the rest of the season in a mostly Spa-spec package. Any further development parts will be field trials of the 2012 car.

We've been here before, although the situation isn't perhaps as pointless as it was back in 2009: Alonso, at least, will be back next year. And hopefully there will be a similar 2010-style payoff in 2012, as Alonso was very much alive in the championship chase right to the last event in 2010.

(I've said before that 2010 was a strange year where Red Bull and McLaren both seemed determined to not win the titles, and Ferrari's competitiveness was more due to steady reliability in high points paying positions rather than outright pace. But still, you have to be in it to win it, and the 2010 edition of Ferrari almost got there.)

We've also had the requisite round of scapegoating and otherwise musical chairs happening, none of which I expect to lead to a runaway Ferrari championship any time soon.

Ferrari as an organization is still going backwards from the Micheal Schumacher era. Look how long it took Schumacher to win his first title with Ferrari: '96 through '99 each showed promise, but the rebuilding didn't really come together until 2000.

That Raikkonen was able to sweep in in '07 and scoop the title out from under Hamilton and Alonso's nose says more about the team's competitive inertia and the quality of the team assembled before and during Schumacher's reign; the same with Massa's just-shy effort to grasp the title for himself the following year.

Since then, we've been sliding backwards. The people who built and composed that super team of the early '00s have been replaced by people who have joined a successful team, not built one. It's a subtle difference, but an important one.

These people are very capable and very competant -- keeping Ferrari in the top tier is no easy feat. But there is clearly something missing, some magic that is needed for that extra little push.

I don't like Alonso as a person, but as a driver he's won me over. I think that he is excelling at making a good car go very well. Massa only looks ordinary because the F150 is, frankly, ordinary. It belongs behind the McLaren and Red Bull cars, fighting with the Mercedes. And unless someone exceptional like Vettel* can be persuaded to take Massa's place, whomever ends up in the second Ferrari will continue to look ordinary next year.

The problem is that the other major teams will be turning their attentions to 2012 at the same time. Red Bull is your winner for 2011, so there's no point in either them or McLaren to keep developing. So Ferrari is not going to have a real head start on the rest of the field by abandoning 2011 now.

I'm sure the boys at the track will continue to give it all they've got for the rest of the year.

I just don't see any results changing substantially, either now or in 2012.

---

* = which will never happen, but what a championship season it would be!

Your 2014 F1 Engines

Autosport reports on the current vision of a 2014 F1 engine:

• 1.6L V6 turbo
• 15,000 RPM rev limit
• no external starter
• runs under electric power in the pit lane:

  Rule 5.19: The car must be run in electric mode (no ignition and no fuel supply to the engine) at all times when being driven in the pit lane.

• mandatory 8-speed gearbox

Victory!

So I suppose it would be inappropriate to let the first victory of 2011 pass unremarked. Alonso clearly had the car and the talent to get the job done on Sunday at Silverstone, romping away from the Red Bulls and the obviously disadvantaged McLaren in a manner that only Vettel had demonstrated thus far this year.

At this point I do not think this marks a revival of Ferrari fortunes for the year. I think that Ferrari benefited from the changing conditions through the weekend by managing to find the correct solution for their car at the right times. I also think that the radically changing exhaust rules through the weekend worked to their advantage, as the more-effective systems on the Red Bulls and McLarens were being affected by the rules changes that were happening between the sessions.

So this may very well be a one-off for the year; "normal" service may well resume at the next event.

The biggest effect on the track activity was the behavior of those mangling the technical rules during the event. When the rules are being adjusted between the sessions, one cannot plan effectively to put in a program to dial the car in to the track conditions. McLaren was the most visibly affected by this, although I personally put Red Bull's vulnerability down to the effects of the uncertainty.

To announce now that the rules changes will be changed again, throwing out the new interpretations of the rules in favor of bringing in more specific regulations for 2012 -- well frankly this should have been the strategy from the start. The FIA's technical regulators really dropped the ball on this one.

So we'll enjoy the result --even if we would have preferred Massa to put a proper pass on Hamilton on the last lap -- but be fully prepared for more frustration as the rest of the season progresses.

European Progress?

It appears that if you combine A) restrictions in engine map usage with B) a low-downforce circuit, you end up with a situation where at least one of the Ferraris can run comfortably ahead of the McLarens, and with -- if not in front of -- the Red Bulls.

This race was always going to be a totally unique situation, what with the transition of regulations. Restricting the engine map usage a race before the off-throttle-blowing becomes illegal creates a single snapshot moment, one that is not really worth developing for.

It appears that Red Bull and Ferrari were well positioned for this race. The McLarens for whatever reason did not have the downforce needed to really run with the front cars. I am sure that McLaren will be better positioned in Silverstone, where the high-speed track is more likely to suit their cars. One can speculate that this may be more due to the Ferrari and Red Bull falling back into McLaren's clutches, as they have so far apparently avoided the performance loss due to engine mappings; one might speculate that this was more due to McLaren using the regulation to a better advantage than their rivals.

So all that verbiage aside, I fully expect that Silverstone will bring us the usual top three battling it out, albeit rather closer together than Valencia showed. There is a very small chance that Red Bull's performance advantage is completely due to the off-throttle blown diffusers, meaning that they will suffer disproportionally when the rules change -- but frankly I doubt it.