Paul Ricard Preview - New but far from new

In F1, as we are often reminded, nothing should be ruled out. However absurd it may seem.

F1 returns to a familiar place this weekend
Photo: Octane Photography

The French Grand Prix is an apt tale in this. This weekend it at last returns to F1 after a decade away, at the Paul Ricard circuit near Marseille. Even allowing for the habitual agonising that accompanies the calendar choices, this recent French loss likely has been the most egregious move.

France is where motorsport's roots first sprouted. The first ever organised motor race took place there in July 1894 as did the first Grand Prix in 1906.

And a French Grand Prix appeared on the F1 calendar every year aside from 1955, when it was cancelled in the wake of the Le Mans disaster. Many great French drivers, teams and manufacturers have and still do bestride F1. But after 2008, after years of threatening by Bernie Ecclestone, the round was dropped - the familiar tale of lack of funding. And of F1 pitilessly abandoning its heritage and core audience in the name of chasing quick bucks.

Barcelona Preview: Moment of clarity?

F1 in 2018 has been as clear as mud. Four rounds in we still don't have a strong sense of the pecking order. All rounds have contained surprises and then have been shaken up by a safety car (actual or virtual) intervention.

The Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona -
F1's standard round?
Photo: Octane Photography

But if we want a normal dull stop-off that gives us a steer of which cars are hot and which not then the Spanish Grand Prix coming this weekend at Barcelona would be top of our list to provide it.

It has been known as F1's bellwether - the correlation between getting pole at Barcelona and going onto win that year's title was for a time near exact.

Three in every four Grands Prix at this track have been won by the pole-sitter; only on three occasions has it been won from a start off the front row, and all of that trio came in peculiar circumstances.

The circuit's many medium-to-fast speed long-ish turns reward a car that is working well - ill-handling machines can't be hustled around this place readily. That it's a default testing venue takes away another variable, as all have a firm sense of the optimum set-up. Grids here often have a Noah's Ark look. Also the modern aero-laden F1 car can't follow another very happily through this layout, and therefore overtaking often is rare.

Melbourne Preview: Unknown pleasures

When the flag drops, the b******t stops. OK, F1 races aren't started by flags anymore, so in that sense this aphorism is showing its age. But the fundamental at its core holds firm. And never more so than at the first race gathering of an F1 season.

The Albert Park track in Melbourne is a highly popular venue
By Chris Phutully - https://www.flickr.com/photos/
72562013@N06/13186495033/, CC BY 2.0,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/
index.php?curid=31802460

Teams love to create the impression that they know what's going on, that they have incredibly accurate models and intelligence to channel pre-season testing into a coherent competitive order. And from the various analyses that spring up as well as the more general mood music, us watching on can get a broad sense of who's hot and who's not before it's all done in anger too. But really it is not until the actual hour of qualifying for the opening round that we get our proper confirmation, and that goes for the teams us much as the rest of us mere mortals. At that point the bluster of testing, and its various accompanying health warnings that we don't know the respective programmes, fuel loads, extent that the engines are cranked up among the many other things that can influence lap time, fizzles away. The stopwatch suddenly will be much harder to deny.

And it is that which is before us this weekend in Melbourne for the start proper of the 2016 campaign. Almost no matter what happens to the formula, it's hard to think how that will ever be different. Or anything other than tantalising. And that goes for everyone.

TeamSport Infographic - F1 2014 round up before Abu Dhabi

As you'll no doubt be aware by now the season-concluding, and championship-deciding, Abu Dhabi Grand Prix awaits us this weekend. And TeamSport - UK indoor karting specialists - in anticipation of this have produced the infographic below, which details the state of play as we head into the vital final round, with the top six in the drivers' championship detailed. So you can have no excuse for not being genned up.

More detail can be found here, and you can let TeamSport know what you think on Twitter.

  Source: TeamSport

The perils of the Party of Five

It appears that I may owe you all an apology.

I had thought that Bernie Ecclestone and the cabal of top F1 teams were merely selfish, complacent and blinkered. In the course of yesterday though I instead was met with the creeping realisation that I may have overestimated them; that rather they are idiotic and wilfully destructive. While remaining selfish.

What I had assumed was merely lethargy may well actually have been strategy.

Are the 'big five' teams planning on a takeover?
Photo: Octane Photography

We all know the state that F1 is in with its finances. We know its manifestations, particularly those of recent days and weeks. We even know in large part why it's happening - that cost control has flopped and what cash there is is massively concentrated among a few at the top. To the point that a couple of teams get each year guaranteed Bernie money just for being them that exceeds what the teams at the back spend on everything in a season. That it persists in large part because the teams - particularly the said big ones via the infamous Strategy Group - get a major say of the sport's governance, with the myriad potential for vested interests therein. All teams look out for number one; turkeys don't vote for Christmas (as was pointed out on Twitter by the inimitable Fake Charlie Whiting, can you imagine Man United getting a say in the laws on how throw-ins are taken?). And that the FIA has been neutered, only getting a third of the say on the sport that is supposed to be its own. As well as that Bernie seems oddly protective of the deformed model he's helped create.

Reflections on Hockenheim - missing Schu?

A German manufacturer dominating an F1 season, one of the dominant drivers is German, as is the world champion (of the last four years) in addition to two other drivers, and the German economy despite the calamity around it remains itself rather strong. This all should add up to a healthy turn out at the German Grand Prix?

Much of the Hockenheim running was in front of
sparsely-populated grandstands. Here's qualifying.
Photo: Octane Photography

Well, no actually. Apparently only somewhere in the region of 50,000 was in attendance for the race, way short of the Hockenheim's track's vast capacity of 120,000. Running on Friday, even on Saturday, had a grandstand backdrop that looked a lot like there'd been some kind of evacuation. Though F1's declining following ain't a new issue, this seemed to slide things over a cliff edge.

As intimated this isn't new, therefore plenty of theories as to what is driving it all didn't require much dusting down. High ticket prices, dissatisfaction with the regs and/or the sport's creeping gimmickry, the lack of competitive competition in turn related probably to the skewed financial distribution, the TV coverage disappearing behind paywalls, while some of course still haven't been able to resist bringing out what already seems like an old chestnut of engine noise.

Further thoughts on the British Grand Prix

Kimi's in
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. And this applies to the weird world of F1 as much as it does anything. Matters tend not to be dwelt upon; no sooner does something happen than all look ahead to what the implications will be. And so it was with Mark Webber's Silverstone announcement that he's off to sportscars next year, before you knew it focus shifted to who would plug the Aussie Grit-shaped hole at Red Bull (though for various reasons for a while almost no one had expected him to still be there next year anyway). And sure enough the Bulls' boss Christian Horner quickly stated that there are three candidates: the two Toro Rosso pilots - Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne - and Kimi Raikkonen.

Kimi Raikkonen - in a
perhaps not inappropriate hat
Credit: Matthias v.d. Elbe / CC

But perhaps the fun speculating about it all will be short-lived, as the momentum behind Kimi to fill the Red Bull vacancy already looks unstoppable. Conspicuously, no one is denying anything, and moreover the key players are making noises which indicate considerable movement down the Kimi to Red Bull path. Lotus's Eric Boullier admitted in the team principals' press conference at Silverstone that 'Red Bull is chasing Kimi'. And Horner in the same room didn't make effort to downplay it in response, commenting that 'Kimi Raikkonen is a driver you would be foolish to ignore', before going onto make noises that he wants to 'pick the best candidate for that role' and elsewhere that 'we want the fastest line-up that we can'. All roads lead to Kimi you'd have thought, being by far the most qualified available candidate in the here and now, and even the Ice Man himself has admitted to there being talks with the Milton Keynes team. Indeed, paddock gossip had Kimi to Red Bull as a done deal already.

And it's one of those moves that no matter how far you dig it's hard to discover any show-stoppers: the temptations of a Red Bull to Kimi are obvious, given that the car has been the sport's gold standard for a number of years. From Red Bull's perspective the temptations of Kimi are obvious too: the Finn has established himself as one of the very best and most reliable F1 drivers in the contemporary age, and surely in a Red Bull he'd be good both for wins and for consistent points in chasing the constructors' title. Kimi you feel further fits the Red Bull brand perfectly; indeed he was sponsored by the company in his rallying sojourn. Of course, a potential impediment would be what Luca Montezemolo called 'two roosters in the same hen house' resultant from pairing Kimi with Sebastian Vettel, but among the top drivers surely Kimi represents the lowest risk of all on this front, given his firmly apolitical and equanimous attitude. Further, while some have claimed that Vettel could veto the move, you'd imagine that had Seb not given it all his blessing it would never have been allowed to get this far (and, given the lingering existence of Seb-doubters, just perhaps Seb's keen to prove himself alongside him?). As for the Toro Rosso two, harsh though it sounds (but hey F1 is a harsh business) it's hard to argue that either pilot has made a consistent case for the step up - not yet anyway. And in any case Red Bull clearly feels no obligation to promote from within. To borrow Sherlock Holmes's maxim: eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

Further thoughts on the Hungarian Grand Prix

Title tilts
Way back in the aftermath of the Spanish Grand Prix in May I made the entirely foolhardy decision to try to predict the drivers who I thought would be title contenders this year. I went for Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. And, unusually, I can pat myself on the back as if I was picking drivers now I'd again go for that four.

Fernando Alonso leads the way,
but who is likely to challenge?
Credit: Morio / CC

The inclusion of Alonso is a no-brainer. He sits 40 points clear at the table top and is driving beautifully. And even though his Ferrari is by no means the envy of the field, as outlined in this column last week several things count in his favour: that Alonso is always maximising things and finishing everywhere, and that the field remains tight and the likelihood is that others will take points off each other.

After the events of Hungary one could argue that Lewis Hamilton is Alonso's most credible rival. Following a mini-trough the McLaren has looked to be back on the money in the last two rounds. Lewis has a lot of ground to make up - 47 points - but with each win getting seven points back at least and with nine rounds remaining nothing is beyond the realms. And Lewis has been driving brilliantly all year.

Sebastian Vettel remains right in there also, even though just as with Hamilton there is a long way back to the table summit (in his case, 42 points). The car remains quick, Newey & co. will continue to push the boundaries to make it quicker, and Seb remains as competitive as always. And remember that this time last year after a period of relative struggle he came back from the summer break with a devastating run of form and victories, which definitively put the title beyond others' reach. The same again would suit him just fine.

Kimi Raikkonen also manages to hang in there in the vicinity of Lewis and Seb at least, mainly due to his consistency and ability to bring the car home in 2012 (he's finished everywhere and only in China did he fail to score). And in a race there are few, arguably no, cars as good as the Lotus, and as we saw in Hungary (and elsewhere) Kimi remains perfectly capable of taking advantage of it. Further, Eric Boullier reckons that once its double-DRS system is race-worthy Lotus will be in a position to win every time. There of course is likely to be a bit of blarney in there, but the confidence may tell us something. If nothing else a device that boosts the car in qualifying (which an enhanced DRS system will do) will target Lotus's overarching weakness in 2012. And remember where the next round is: Spa is very much Kimi country.

The most glaring omission from my selection (I hear you cry) is Mark Webber, who lest we forget remains in second place in the championship. However, I retain a hunch that over an entire season Vettel will ultimately emerge on top of the Red Bull intra-team battle. The list also omits Romain Grosjean and Jenson Button. I wouldn't count either out for race wins in the year's remainder, but for the championship I believe both have ceded too much ground, not only on Alonso at the top but also on their respective team mates. I say this because on the days that they have a mechanical advantage their team mate will also, so overhauling someone in the same equipment to that extent will be doubly-difficult.

Hungarian GP Report: Jenson rains on Lewis's parade

Jenson Button won today's Hungarian Grand Prix, and it may not surprise you that rain was involved. He put in the sort of performance he seems to have been producing in these sort of conditions since the dawn of time. Smooth, error-free and rapid, accompanied by strategy calls that made you wonder if Jenson has some kind of early warning system of what the weather's about to do and the resultant effect on track conditions (you wonder why in these situations his rivals don't just conclude to do whatever Jenson is doing on the strategy calls?). All sounds terribly familiar, but no less impressive for that.

Jenson Button took another fine win in mixed conditions
Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

For the most part though it looked like Lewis's race to lose, having taken the lead from Vettel in the wet early part of the race and seeming to have not a care in the world as he retained it. But a variety of occurrences upon occurrences from lap 40 through to lap 57 ensured that he did lose it and then some.

First off, Lewis in his third tyre stop put on super softs, when most directly behind him (including Jenson) put on softs with a view to running non-stop to the end. This seemed to ensure Lewis would have to stop once more than those behind him, and it never seemed likely he'd have that sort of pace advantage to retain his lead after the extra stop. It seemed very odd that they should paint themselves into a corner on strategy like that when leading comfortably. Then on lap 47 rain gathered at the back of the circuit, and Lewis hit a wet kerb at the chicane and spun, letting Jenson lead. But worse for him was that in recovery he spun turn to face the right way without heed of Paul di Resta approaching, who had to leave the track to avoid him. This earned Lewis a drive-through penalty, which was just about fair enough in my view as the move risked a side impact collision which would have been very dangerous. Though it's possible that Lewis didn't see him, in his defence. But worst of all for Lewis, as the rain intensified, he made the wrong call to pit for intermediates (or rather someone made the wrong call) only to have to change back to slicks a handful of laps later. He eventually salvaged fourth place, passing Webber in traffic late on in a move reminiscent of Nigel Mansell's pass on Ayrton Senna here in 1989.