F138

The new F138 is gorgeous. It really is. Call it a "modesty panel" or "vanity panel", the lack of the stepped-nose really makes the car look like a proper F1 car again. And overall, now that we've had a few years with the new rules, I find the disparity between the huge front wing and the tiny tiny rear wing less visually jarring -- proving that with enough exposure, people can get used to anything.

The only dark thought which occurs to me is the thought that the car that has gotten the closest to being a world championship car has been the ugly one from last year.

I think I said a few years back when the car was ugly that the car would be considered beautiful if it was a winner.  And I'm sure that would have applied to last year's car -- had it been ultimately successful.

Hopefully this car will pick up where the last one left off.

Last Of The New Boys

One thing that F1 Fanatic called my attention to was the fate of the last round of "new teams" that were introduced with such fanfare in 2009:

• USF1 didn't make it to the first test
• Campos became HRT and expired at the end of 2012
• Virgin became Marussia and have deteriorated to the point where they are having to choose drivers with money over drivers with talent
• Team Lotus became Caterham and has managed to beat Marussa; being in the top 10, they are guaranteed money from the commercial side of Formula 1.

While F1 is supposed to be a meritocracy, and it is a good idea to have more teams than money-paying positions, you want to always have someone on the outside looking in, hungry to join the elite.  That keeps the old guard hungry, and if/when teams fall by the wayside you have someone new ready to pick up the position.

2012 Predictions Revisited

This is a monster post that has taken me two weeks to write because I've been busy with other things and have not had the time to get it done.  But we should get on with the laughing and pointing, because that's what is important in life, right?

So let's have a look at those half-assed predictions I made for the 2012 season:

Prediction: McLaren wins the Manufacturer's Championship.

Verdict: Wrong.  Red Bull wins again.  McLaren clearly had the faster car for most of the year, but reliability problems -- mostly in the pits -- and Button's continued lack of results ended up weakening the team to the point that both Red Bull and Ferrari finished ahead of them.

Prediction: Button or Vettel as Driver's Champion.

Verdict: Half right.  At the time I wrote that I really thought Button would be the one, so because I hedged I'm not claiming full marks.

You can't really argue with Vettel as Champion -- despite some uninspired drives early in the season, his two results in the last two or three races were champion's drives, coming from the back (in Abu Dhabi, twice).  And Red Bull (or, more likely, Renault) kept letting him down in potentially race-winning circumstances.  At the end of the season, though, the cumulative result was enough.

Button though reverted to his long-term trend of uninspiring drives.  He scooped a couple of wins in changing conditions that made him look like a genius, but when the conditions were good he, frankly, wasn't.  Years ago when he was a team mate of Jacques Villeneuve someone said that because he and Villeneuve were roughly equivalent you could argue that Button was as good as Villenuve was at the time.  However I've never rated Villeneuve highly, considering him only capable of winning in a car that is exceptionally good.  Button's only real success came in the overwhelming Brawn, since then he's been an adequate driver that doesn't get from his car what his team mate can.

Prediction: Ferrari will finish 2nd or 3rd in the Manufacturer's Championship

Verdict: correct.  The tone of my prediction was a lot more negative than what happened.  In Alonso's hands the Ferrari was routinely capable of scoring podiums and good points; and while I don't think Massa is a great driver I think his results more closely show what a typical driver would get from the Ferrari.  Overall the year was much better than I thought it would be.

Prediction: Alonso two wins and a handful of podiums.

Verdict: three-quarters right because I was, again, too negative.  Alonso finishes the year with three wins and was mechanical in his reliability through the year.  He was well placed to pick up positions and points when his rivals encounterd problems.  His two non-finishes were both due to collisions.  Alonso's results given the car he started with are nothing short of awesome, and the fact that he was still mathematically within reach of the title through most of the Brazilian Grand Prix incredible.

Prediction: 2012 will be Massa's last year at a top F1 team, possibly his last year in F1 at all.

Verdict: wrong.  Massa turned his season around in a very big way once the knives came out in late summer.  That, combined with a weak selection of available alternates (and I'm sad to include Micheal Schumacher in that group) meant that renewing Massa for 2013 was a no-brainer.  Hopefully Massa can continue the momentum he showed at the end of last year; hopefully the Ferrari will be easier to drive and more competitive in the early season.

Prediction: Mercedes may win one race, but it won't be Schumacher.

Verdict: totally right.  The only race where Mercedes was dominant was China, and Schumacher threw away a competitive positioning.  Rosberg kept his car on the island and walked away with the victory.  Apart from China, the Mercedes never really looked competitive, and faded quite dramatically towards the end of the year.

Prediction: There will be no replacement Concorde Agreement signed in 2012.

Verdict: dunno but probably wrong.  There has not been any formal announcement of a signing, but the press has stopped yammering about the Concorde complaints and gossip, and we're definitely going racing in 2013... so I guess one has been signed.

Prediction: 2012 will be Bernie Ecclestone's last in F1.

Verdict:  Well it is technically 2013 and he hasn't quit or been drummed out yet... so we'll be charitable and call that a wrong.  I think lots of people will be predicting that 2013 will be Ecclestone's last year, but that's low-hanging fruit now.

Deadpool predictions:

• Bernie Ecclestone (wrong, see above)
• HRT (correct)
• Marussa ownership change (hard to follow but I think so)
• Lotus cash flow (I'm going to call that correct)
• Torro Rosso to get sold (wrong)
• Not Force India owner (correct)

Final score: for the predictions, I have 3.25 out of 8.  I did better in the deadpool, scoring 4 out of 6.

Overall, 2012 was a pretty good year, where we had seven winners in the first seven races, and Raikkonen/Lotus scored a surprise win before the end.  That's a huge percentage of the grid as race winners, and when you are looking for suspense and unexpected results, you look for this kind of turn-over.

Tune in in February for the 2013 edition of "half assed predictions".

Champion Vettel

You can't argue with the last two races. While the rest of Vettel's season was marked with inconsistancy, the fact that two weeks in a row he came from literally the back of the grid to score good points, enough to finish the year three points ahead of Alonso, to me means he is deserving of this year's titles. Coming from the back as he did were both champion's drives, and the net result on the rest of the year makes him champion for 2012.

A worthy champion for a great year.

Perspective

If someone had told us immediately after this year's disappointing pre-season test that Alonso would be 10 points behind the championship leader with two races left to run, I think we'd be ecstatic.

2012 has been another year where the car's performance has been constantly downplayed, yet Alonso has managed to score good points with it more often than not.  Combined with an excellent reliability record, plus no little luck avoiding other cars (Belgium perhaps excepted) and Alonso has placed himself in position to catch Vettel as the season winds down.

Unfortunately it isn't a case of catching Vettel, per se.  It is more a case of continuing with the reliability and consistency and being in a position to capitalize on Vettel's misfortune.

Sunday in Abu Dhabi offered hints as to what might have been.  Had Vettel not profited from the safety car periods falling when they had, Alonso might have cut the points lead that much more than he did.  However you can't wish away Vettel's good luck any more than Vettel could wish away the bad luck from Saturday.  Had that not happened, I think there's little doubt that the Red Bull would have circulated comfortably ahead of the Ferrari and the points gap would be larger than it is.

Red Bull is clearly the faster car right now -- I think Webber's fumbling around with it shows that the car has elite speed.  Massa's Ferrari still lacks parts that are on Alonso's,  but even so neither Ferrari can seem to live with either Red Bull right now.

With only two races left to run, the odds of a technological breakthrough diminish.  And we are definitely into the part of the season where express effort now against the rest of the 2012 season will negatively impact the 2013 campaign.

I think barring an extraordinary run of bad luck for Vettel, the title is his for 2012.

Those of us who cheer for Ferrari will once again have to be disappointed that the team came so close -- again -- and start contemplating next year.

Charmed Life

Red Bull drivers led a charmed life on Sunday.

While no one can dispute that Vettel got his act together when it mattered and managed to be in the right place at the right time, much of his spectacular result can be placed at the feet of profiting from the Safety Car periods that happened when he did. Further, while all the chatter about him passing a car while outside the white lines on lap fourteen, I counted no fewer than four changes of direction while he vigorously defended his position.  Vettel comes away very fortunate that he was permitted to continue without a sterner penalty than just giving back the position.

Webber, on the other hand.  His first collision I can excuse as a racing incident.  The collision with Massa similarly I would be willing to write off as a racing incident.  But my view is he caused Massa to spin -- the long-lens footage is inconclusive, but the in-car camera from Massa's car clearly shows Webber charging back on-track in front of the Ferrari, causing Massa to take abrupt avoiding action.

Massa was right to be incensed that no action was taken.  I wonder how the stewards would have ruled had Massa failed to take avoiding action and clobbered the Red Bull instead?

The comentators gleefully claiming that Webber had "frightened Massa into a spin" didn't help, either.

Frankly when Webber happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time once too often and got clobbered by Grosjean's avoiding action, I thought it was merely karma.

It isn't in Webber's history to drive like this.  I hope this is merely a one-off performance, and not an indication of things to come.

Victory Laps, Compared

Right, you're on. First of us to win a race in 2012
gets the other guy to clean his pool.

Kimi Raikkonen once again shows us how it is done.  His victory in Abu Dhabi on Sunday might have been helped more than a little bit by Vettel's bad luck on Saturday and McLaren's fragility on Sunday, but he was in the right place when it mattered and kept his Lotus Renault in front of Alonso long enough to capture the win.

This I think is more in line with what Schumacher hoped for when he started his comeback tour three years ago. A car capable of being regularly competitive, consistant points-scoring finishes, and the occasional victory.  Then building towards being a championship contender in year three.

It hasn't worked out for Schumacher, who finds himself out of the top seats for 2013 and looking at a return to retirement.

Raikkonen has been the more consistent of the Lotus drivers in 2012 (although some of that is Grosjean's propensity for running into things on lap 1).  There have also been some odd strategic calls, such as in China where Raikkonen fell from 2nd or 3rd all the way out of the points over the space of a single lap.  But he never looked disinterested in the racing the way his critics accused him of being in his final year with Ferrari.  The Lotus was definitely top of the 2nd tier teams, hanging on to the bottom of the top tier -- and was usually in the right place to take advantage when the absolute top got it wrong.

This win is well deserved, and I think we all enjoy it more than we would have a Schumacher victory.  Schumacher is regularly out-shone by Rosberg, whom himself is not doing anything really special with the Mercedes.  The whole last three years make it look like Schumacher's time really has passed, and it is time for him to assume his rightful place as one of the historical elite.

Ironically, Raikkonen was hinting that he'd call it quits after 2013 before the race started.  It will be interesting to see if he finds himself in a more competitive Lotus next year and changes his mind.