My Top Ten Drivers of 2012: The Rest...

Here are my views on those F1 drivers from 2012 who didn't make my top 10 ranking I published a few days ago.

My top 10 drivers of 2012 can be read here.

From about seventh place downwards in my ranking a number of drivers were in close contention with each other. Those who came particularly close to making the top 10 (in no particular order) were Sergio Perez, Michael Schumacher, Pastor Maldonado and Paul Di Resta.

Credit: Morio / CC

Sergio Perez is perhaps the most glaring omission from the final cut, given his season featured three memorable podium runs in Malaysia, Montreal and Monza. There he showed astounding confidence and verve and found pace to sail through the field like he was operating with different laws of physics to anyone else, and further he gets his big break for 2013 with a move to McLaren. But Sergio's problem is that an F1 season lasts 20 races, and aside from the three races mentioned there wasn't a great deal to write home about. There was one good race (Hockenheim), a couple more in which he was unlucky to start at the back (Melbourne and Monaco) and three more where first lap contact put him to the back (Spain) or wiped him out altogether (Spa and Brazil). But in the remaining races you'd hardly know that he was there.

And worse, in the latter part of the year and with a signed McLaren contract in his pocket he threw errors into the mix too. He binned it in Suzuka (trying to pass Lewis Hamilton - the guy he's replacing next year - no less) then making what looked avoidable contact with other cars in each of the next four races. Rumour has the top brass at Sauber believing that Perez is inconsistent, and that the C31 was a better car than he tended to make it look. And what about those podium runs themselves: how much of those were down to Perez's driving and how much down to the peculiar magic touch of the C31 on the Pirelli tyres if voodoo-like factors aligned? Next year, in the McLaren glare, we'll start to get answers to some of these questions. Of course, it's a fantastic opportunity and he is young and has time to improve. But at the very least all at McLaren would be forgiven for having some doubts about its new charge. Indeed, some recent comments from Martin Whitmarsh seem to betray as much.

This year we finally witnessed the swansong of the great Michael Schumacher. Debates about the wisdom of his comeback will continue to rage no doubt, but this year Schumi continued his year-on-year improvement since his return in 2010, and for the most part drove more than respectably. The qualifying gap between him and Rosberg was closed for the first time, and he was often the more convincing in races too, particularly in the year's mid-part when the lemon-like characteristics of the W03 became obvious. The main problem Schumi had was that intangible quality called luck. The opening round in Melbourne summed up his season: he qualified fourth (ahead of his team mate) and was running strongly in third...then his hydraulics went. In no fewer than six of the first seven rounds something impeded or stopped Schumi through little fault of his, and over the piece there were five mechanical retirements for him (compared to Rosberg's big fat zero). Without the bad luck it would have been fascinating to see if he could have beaten Rosberg's points total.

Further thoughts on the US GP

F1 passes its audition
Last weekend F1 as a sport had its most important audition in a long while. And whaddaya know, it only went and nailed it.

Austin - here to stay?
Credit: mrlaugh / CC

There was of course a bigger picture on Sunday. F1 for years, perhaps decades, has regarded breaking America as an itch that it's just never been able to scratch. Despite repeated and varied attempts pitching its tent successfully in the US market, and all its associated rewards, has always eluded the sport one way or another.

For this reason plenty of eager eyes were on last weekend's US Grand Prix at Austin and not just because of what was on track and how it would impact on the title battle. And it's hard to imagine how it all could have gone better.

The Austin facility is a fine one, the layout challenging, undulating and popular with fans and drivers alike. And not even the worries about a tepid race were borne out; we were treated to tense, old-fashioned tête à tête between two great drivers pushing to the limit throughout. In addition, there was ample wheel-to-wheel racing up and down the field. It turns out cars could follow closely through the flowing first sector (Kimi even passed in it), and over and above the DRS zone there was also plenty of overtaking into turn one as well as some even in the 'Mickey Mouse' leg of the track. Best of all, some 120,000 were there on race day to see it all (and plenty were in attendance on the other two days), and I don't know about you but I got the distinct impression that many of them will be back. Not even a clash with the NASCAR finale put a serious dampener on proceedings.

Of course, this is just the beginning; what happens next is crucial and F1 has had plenty of false dawns before (I'm looking at you, Turkey), and historically F1 has shown an unhealthy tendency to blow a hole in its own foot in regard to races in the States. But it's tempting to think that F1 has just given itself its best ever chance of at last getting it right in the US.

Further thoughts on the Malaysian Grand Prix

Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez were
the surprise pace setters at Sepang
Credit: Morio / CC

Surprise surprise
As Fernando Alonso and Sergio Perez lined up in eight and ninth places on the starting grid at Sepang last weekend, not even their respective mothers would have predicted confidently they'd be in the front two at the race's conclusion. This held even as the rain fell in the minutes before the start: for all we talk about rain's ability to act as a leveller, and to shuffle the usual running order, its ability to do those with any regularity is over stated. Usually, the cars that have grip in the dry will also have grip in the wet. And shock results in rainy conditions that we remember, such as Olivier Panis's 1996 Monaco victory, often owe more to attrition or other freak occurrences than to an unlikely candidate having the legs of the field all being equal. This wasn't the case at Sepang: Alonso and Perez against all expectations were fairly and squarely the quickest two guys out there in the race.

Finding a performance on pace which ranks as a similar surprise is a tricky business. Giancarlo Fisichella's run to second place in the Force India at Spa in 2009 was a similar turn-up, as was, famously, Sebastian Vettel's pole and win in a Toro Rosso at Monza the previous year. Before that, for a comparable shock you may have to go back to Damon Hill's dominant drive in the Arrows in Hungary 1997, which would have been rewarded with a win but for a last lap hydraulic problem. In other words, the 2012 Malaysian Grand Prix will be one that we will remember.

Checo checks in
There are always lots of young drivers with promise in F1. The key differentiator is exactly how good they are. For every Ayrton Senna there a dozen or two who transpire to be good without being top drawer (think Heikki Kovalainen, Jarno Trulli and the like), and even a few who can altogether (such as Stefano Modena and Jan Magnussen).

F1 2012 Season Preview: HRT - Struggling on

Without wishing to sound patronising, the fact that HRT are still going probably ranks as their best achievement. In their short existence as an F1 team they've been widely derided, have often given the outward impression of stumbling from one crisis to the next, and usually concerned more immediately with surviving than making progress up the order. But they continue to struggle on, against the odds somewhat, into their third season in the sport. And, relatively speaking, as 2012 starts the future in some ways looks a bit more promising for them now than at any point before.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

As Campos Meta, the team entered the sport for the 2010 season, at the time assuming a strict and swingeing budget cap to be in place for all teams. Perhaps it was naive to think that would hold, but whatever the case throughout the team's life money and sponsors have been extremely hard to come by (and worse, F1 is a business that makes it even harder for new teams by keeping television-rights income among the established members of the top 10 teams). The money factor made itself felt before even their first race, financial problems resulting in majority shareholder José Ramón Carabante taking over control of the team from Adrián Campos, with Colin Kolles parachuted in to replace Campos as team principal and the team rebranded as HRT.

For the next two years HRT's cars have spent most of the time off the back of the pack, and although they've avoided placing last in the constructors' championship in both seasons (by finishing ahead of Virgin/Marussia in both 2010 and 2011) that owes something to the slightly strange and distortive countback system in establishing the order. And at the start of both seasons they've made all cringe by still being in the process of building their cars as the practice sessions were underway for the opening round.

My Top 10 F1 Drivers of 2011: The rest...

Here are my views on those F1 drivers from 2011 who didn't make the top 10 list I published a few days ago.

My top 10 drivers of 2011 can be read here.

Tenth place in the top ten was a close run thing between a number of drivers. Kamui Kobayashi got it, squeaking ahead of Jaime Alguersuari, Heikki Kovalainen and Felipe Massa.

Felipe Massa
Credit: Mark McArdle / CC

Taking them in reverse order brings us immediately to the curious case of Felipe Massa. In truth it was another desperately disappointing season for the popular Brazilian, in which his coming within two corners of winning the title in 2008 seemed like it was from another age. If anything, he was even further adrift of his team mate Fernando Alonso this year than last - only once (in China) did he clearly out race him. And while the Ferrari 150° Italia wasn't a great car, almost never did Massa look better than it, evidenced by the fact that he never finished higher than fifth in a year that his stable mate claimed ten podium finishes. He can claim to have been unlucky on occasion, there was more than one botched pitstop (see Malaysia, Turkey and Valencia), in Spa he punctured and at Monza he was hit by Webber. But even with these the pace wasn't there most of the time. Further, he didn't help himself, getting involved in a series of incidents to an extent that he didn't do in 2010: crashes in Canada and Hungary stopped better results, as did spins in Spain and Abu Dhabi. He hit a particular low by breaking his suspension twice in two days in India, with almost exactly the same error. Then there was his famous running battle with Lewis Hamilton this year. Yes, he was more the victim of these clashes all told, but he also sometimes displayed a machismo when wheel to wheel with him that didn't help matters, most obviously in Monaco and India. And, to be honest, his Hamilton grudge expressed out of the car struck me as a classic case of displacement.

Mooted reasons for Massa's struggles continue to vary. We'll probably never know how much the Hungary accident has affected him, but my instinct is that a lot of Massa's problems stem from the guy he's sharing a garage with. Massa of all the front runners appears particularly vulnerable to confidence, as well as particularly in need of emotional support. In a team mostly focussed on Alonso, and where Alonso almost always beats him, Massa isn't getting much of either of these things and it shows. Ferrari are retaining him for next year, showing admirable loyalty it has to be said, but next year is very much last chance saloon. They don't expect him to beat Alonso, but they do expect him to finish a bit closer behind him, as well as to take points from rivals more often.